Motives for Suicide
In the Westminster Review, New Series, No. 23, we find this suggestive return:
In the year 1851, there were 3598 suicides recorded in France, to each of which the presumed motive was affixed. Out of these no less than 800 are set down to mental alienation; and to that number we should add 70 cases of monomania, 39 of cerebral fever, and 54 of idiocy—all ranking under the general head of uncontrollableness—which will make a total of 963, or more than a fourth of the whole cases. If we now examine the remaining cases, we find “domestic quarrels” next in amount, being no less than 385; while grief for the loss of children amounts to only 46, grief at their ingratitude or bad conduct, 16; sudden anger, only 1. Next in importance to domestic quarrels is the desire to escape from physical suffering: these amount to 313. Debt and embarrassment rank next—203. Want, and the fear of want, 179. Disgust at life—which may properly be called low spirits—stands high—166; shame and remorse, very low, only 7. Thwarted love shows only 91, and jealousy, 25. Losses at play, 6; loss of employment, 25.
Fallacious as all such figures must necessarily be, from the impossibility of always assigning the real motive to the act, they point with sufficient distinctness to certain general conclusions:—First, that insanity is the origin of by far the largest proportion of cases; secondly, that, except the dread of physical suffering, the other large proportions are all of cases which belong to the deliberative kind. In literature it is always passion, and passion of vehement sudden afflux, which determines suicide: the agonies of despair or jealousy, the arrowy pangs of remorse, or the dread apprehension of shame, are the only motives which the dramatist or novelist ever conceives.