Dr. Schlegel dwells at much length on the abandoned state of Paris, and after giving us some important statistical evidence, he alludes to the gross immorality of the people, and denounces the French capital as “a suffocating boiling cauldron, in which, as in the stew of Macbeth’s witches, there simmer, with a modicum of virtue, all kinds of passions, vices, and crimes.”
Alluding to the peculiarities of the French people, particularly their indifference to human life, an eminent writer observes, speaking of their notions of suicide, that a Frenchman asks you to see him “go off,” as if death were a place in the _malle poste_. “Will you dine with me to-day?” said a Frenchman to a friend. “With the greatest pleasure;—yet, now I think of it, I am particularly engaged to shoot myself; one cannot get off _such_ an engagement.” This is not the suicide _à la mode_ with us. We ape at no such extra civilization and refinement. We can be romantic without blowing out our brains. English lovers do not, when “the course of true love” does not run smooth, retire to some sequestered spot, and rush into the next world by a brace of pistols tied with cherry-coloured ribbons. When we do shoot ourselves, it is done with true English gravity. It is no joke with us. We have no inherent predilection for the act; no “hereditary imperfection of the nervous juices,” as Montesquieu, with all the impudence and gravity of a philosopher, asserts, forcing us to commit suicide. “Life,” said a man who had exhausted all his external sources of enjoyment, and had no internal ones to fly to, “has given me a headache; and I want a good sleep in the churchyard to set me to rights,” to procure which, he deliberately shot himself.[45]
A late French writer thus attempts to account for the prevalence of suicide in France:—“The external circumstances which tend to suggest the idea of suicide are very numerous, at the present day, in France; but more particularly so in the capital. The high development of civilization and refinement which prevails here—the clash of interests—the repeated political changes—all contribute to keep the moral feelings in a perpetual state of tension. Life does not roll on among us in a peaceful and steady current; it rushes forward with the force and precipitation of a torrent. In the terrible _mêlée_, it often happens that the little minority, which has obtained a footing high above the multitude for a time, falls down as suddenly as they have risen. The struggles of life are full of miscalculations, disappointments, despair, and disgust. Hence the general source of our frequent suicides. But there are other causes in operation; and not the least, the strange turn that plays and spectacles have lately taken. The public taste has undergone a complete revolution in this respect. Nothing is more patronized now at the theatre than the display of crime unpunished, human misery unconsoled, and a low literature, impregnated by a spurious philosophy, declaiming against society, against domestic life, against virtue itself; applauding the vengeance of the assassin, and recognising genius only as it is seen in company with spleen, poison, and pistols. We appeal to all who read the novels of the present day, and who visit the theatres, whether what we say is not the fact.”