Chapter 97

86Kubary, inOriginal-Mittheil. aus der ethnol. Abtheil. d. königl. Museen zu Berlin, i. 78.

87Hall,Arctic Researches, p. 572.Cf.supra,ii. 238, n. 3.

88Keating,op. cit.ii. 172.

89Buchanan,Sketches of the History, &c. of the North American Indians, p. 184.

From the opinions on suicide held by uncivilised races we shall pass to those prevalent among peoples of a higher culture. In China suicide is extremely common among all classes and among persons of all ages.90For those who have been impelled to this course by a sense of honour the gates of heaven open wide, and tablets bearing their names are erected in the temples in honour of virtuous men or women. As honourable self-murderers are regarded servants or officers of state who choose not to survive a defeat in battle or an insult offered to the sovereign of their country; young men who, when an insult has been paid to their parents which they are unable to avenge, prefer not to survive it; and women who killthemselves on the death of their husbands orfiancés.91In spite of imperial prohibitions, sutteeism of widowed wives and brides has continued to flourish in China down to this day, and meets with the same public applause as ever;92whilst those widowed wives and brides who have lost their lives in preserving their chastity, are entitled both to an honorary gate and to a place in a temple of the State as an object of worship.93Another common form of suicide which is admired as heroic in China is that committed for the purpose of taking revenge upon an enemy who is otherwise out of reach—according to Chinese ideas a most effective mode of revenge, not only because the law throws the responsibility of the deed on him who occasioned it, but also because the disembodied soul is supposed to be better able than the living man to persecute the enemy.94The Chinese have a firm belief in the wandering spirits of persons who have died by violence; thus self-murderers are supposed to haunt the places where they committed the fatal deed and endeavour to persuade others to follow their example, at times even attempting to play executioner by strangling those who reject their advances.95“Violent deaths,” says Mr. Giles, “are regarded with horror by the Chinese”;96and suicides committed from meaner motives are reprobated.97It is said in the Yü Li, or “Divine Panorama”—a Taouist work which is very popular all over the Chinese Empire—that whilst persons who kill themselves out of loyalty, filial piety, chastity, or friendship, will go to heaven, those who do so “in a trivial burst of rage, or fearing the consequences of a crime which would not amount to death, or in the hope of falsely injuring afellow-creature,” will be severely punished in the infernal regions.98No pardon will be granted them; they are not, like other sinners, allowed to claim their good works as a set-off against evil, whereby they might partly escape the agonies of hell and receive some reward for their virtuous deeds.99Sometimes suicide is classified by the Chinese as an offence against religion, on the ground that a person owes his being to Heaven, and is therefore responsible to Heaven for due care of the gift.100

90Gray,China, i. 329. Huc,The Chinese Empire, p. 181. Matignon, ‘Le suicide en Chine,’ inArchives d’anthropologie criminelle, xii. 367sqq.Cathonay, ‘Aux environs de Foutchéon,’ inLes missions catholiques, xxxi. 341sq.Ball,Things Chinese, p. 564sqq.

91Gray,op. cit.i. 337sqq.

92de Groot,Religious System of China, (vol. ii. book) i. 748. Ball,op. cit.p. 565. Cathonay, inLes missions catholiques, xxxi. 341.

93de Groot,op. cit.(vol. ii. book) i. 792.

94Huc,op. cit.p. 181. Matignon, inArchives d’anthropologie criminelle, xii. 371sqq.de Groot,op. cit.(vol. iv. book) ii. 450sq.Cathonay, inLes missions catholiques, xxxi. 341sq.Ball,op. cit.p. 566sq.

95Davis,China, ii. 94. Dennys,Folk-Lore of China, p. 74sq.

96Giles,Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, ii. 363, n. 9.

97Gray,op. cit.i. 337.

98Giles,op. cit.ii. 365.

99Ibid.ii. 363.

100Alabaster,Notes and Commentaries on Chinese Criminal Law, p. 304.

“The Japanese calendar of saints,” says Mr. Griffis, “is not filled with reformers, alms-givers, and founders of hospitals or orphanages, but is overcrowded with canonised suicides and committers ofharakiri. Even to-day, no man more … surely draws homage to his tomb, securing even apotheosis, than the suicide, though he may have committed a crime.”101There were two kinds ofharakiri, or “belly-cutting,” one obligatory and the other voluntary. The former was a boon granted by government, who graciously permitted criminals of the Samurai, or military, class thus to destroy themselves instead of being handed over to the common executioner; but this custom is now quite extinct. Voluntaryharakiri, again, was practised out of loyalty to a dead superior, or in order to protest, when other protests might be unavailing, against the erroneous conduct of a living superior, or to avoid beheading by the enemy in a lost battle, or to restore injured honour if revenge was impossible. Under any circumstancesharakiricleansed from every stain, and ensured an honourable interment and a respected memory.102It is said in a Japanese manuscript, “To slay his enemy against whom he has cause of hatred, and then to kill himself, is the part of a noble Samurai, and it is sheer nonsense to look upon the place where he has disembowelledhimself as polluted.”103In old days the ceremony used to be performed in a temple.104

101Griffis,Religions of Japan, p. 112.

102Chamberlain,Things Japanese, p. 219sqq.Rein,Japan, p. 328. Kühne, inGlobus, lxxiv. 166sq.A very full account of the ceremony ofharakiriis given in Mitford’sTales of Old Japan, ii. 193sqq., from a rare Japanese manuscript.

103Mitford,op. cit.ii. 201.

104Ibid.ii. 196.

Among the Hindus we meet with the practice of self-immolation of widows—until recently very prevalent in many parts of India105—and various forms of self-destruction for religious purposes. Suicide has always been considered by the Hindus to be one of the most acceptable rites that can be offered to their deities. According to the Ayen Akbery, there were five kinds of suicide held to be meritorious in the Hindu, namely:—starving; covering himself with cow-dung and setting it on fire and consuming himself therein; burying himself in snow; immersing himself in the water at the extremity of Bengal, where the Ganges discharges itself into the sea through a thousand channels, enumerating his sins, and praying till the alligators come and devour him; cutting his throat at Allahabad, at the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna.106To these might be added drowning at Hurdwar, Allahabad, and Saugor; perishing in the cold of the Himalayas; the practice of dying under the wheels of Juggurnath’s car;107and the custom of men throwing themselves down from certain rocks to fulfil the vows of their mothers, or to receive forgiveness for sins, or to be re-born rajas in their next state of transmigration.108It is also common for persons who are afflicted with leprosy or any other incurable disease to bury or drown themselves with due ceremonies, by which they are considered acceptable sacrifices to the deity,109or to roll themselves into fires with the notion that thus purified they will receive a happy transmigration into a healthy body.110Suicide was furtherresorted to by Brâhmans for the purpose of avenging an injury, as it was believed that the ghost of the deceased would persecute the offender, and, presumably, also because of the great efficacy which was attributed to the curse of a dying Brâhman.111When one of the Rajput rajas once levied a war-subsidy on the Brâhmans, some of the wealthiest, having expostulated in vain, poniarded themselves in his presence, pouring maledictions on his head with their last breath; and thus cursed, the raja laboured under a ban of excommunication even amongst his personal friends.112We are told of a Brâhman girl who, having been seduced by a certain raja, burned herself to death, and in dying imprecated the most fearful curses on the raja’s kindred, after which they were visited with such a succession of disasters that they abandoned their family settlement at Baliya, where the woman’s tomb is worshipped to this day.113Once when a raja ordered the house of a Brâhman to be demolished and resumed the lands which had been conferred upon him, the latter fasted till he died at the palace gate, and became thus a Brahm, or malignant Brâhman ghost, who avenged the injury he had suffered by destroying the raja and his house.114At Azimghur, in 1835, a Brâhman “threw himself down a well, that his ghost might haunt his neighbour.”115The same idea undoubtedly underlies the custom of “sittingdharna” which was practised by creditors who sat down before the doors of their debtors threatening to starve themselves to death if their claims were not paid;116and the sin attached to causing the death of a Brâhman would further increase the efficacy of the creditor’s threats.117At the same time religious suicide is said to be a crime in a Brâhman.118And in the sacred books we read that for him who destroyshimself by means of wood, water, clods of earth, stones, weapons, poison, or a rope, no funeral rites shall be performed by his relatives;119that he who resolves to die by his own hand shall fast for three days; and that he who attempts suicide, but remains alive, shall perform severe penance.120The Buddhists allow a man under certain circumstances to take his own life, but maintain that generally dire miseries are in store for the self-murderer, and look upon him as one who must have sinned deeply in a former state of existence.121It should be added that in India, as elsewhere, the souls of those who have killed themselves or met death by any other violent means are regarded as particularly malevolent and troublesome.122

105Malcolm,Memoir of Central India, ii. 206sqq.Chevers,Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for India, p. 665.Cf.supra,i. 473sq.Sir John Malcolm observes (op. cit.ii. 206, n. ‡) that the practice of suttee was not always confined to widows, but that sometimes mothers burned themselves on the death of their only sons.

106Chevers,op. cit.p. 664.Cf.Laws of Manu, vi. 31.

107Ibid.p. 664. Ward,View of the History, &c. of the Hindoos, ii. 115sqq.Rájendralála Mitra,Indo-Aryans, ii. 70.

108Sleeman,Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, i. 132sq.Malcolm,Memoir of Central India, ii. 209sqq.Forsyth,Highlands of Central India, p. 172sq.

109Sleeman,op. cit.ii. 344sq.

110Ward,op. cit.ii. 119.

111Chevers,op. cit.p. 659sqq.Crooke,Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, i. 191sqq.van Mökern,Ostindien, i. 319sqq.

112Tod, quoted by Chevers,op. cit.p. 659sq.

113Crooke,op. cit.i. 193.

114Ibid.i. 191sq.

115Chevers,op. cit.p. 663.

116Cf.Steinmetz, ‘Gli antichi scongiuri giuridici contro i creditori,’ inRivista italiana di sociologia, ii. 58. For the practice ofdharnaseeibid.p. 37sqq.; Balfour,Cyclopædia of India, i. 934sq.; van Mökern,op. cit.i. 322sq.

117Cf.Jones, quoted by Balfour,op. cit.i. 935.

118Ward,op. cit.ii. 115. Forsyth,op. cit.p. 173.

119Vasishtha, xxiii. 14sq.

120Ibid.xxiii. 18sqq.

121Hardy,Manual of Budhism, p. 479.

122Crooke,Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, i. 269. Fawcett, ‘Nâyars of Malabar,’ in the Madras Government Museum’sBulletin, iii. 253.

The Old Testament mentions a few cases of suicide.123In none of them is any censure passed on the perpetrator of the deed, nor is there any text which expressly forbids a man to die by his own hand; and of Ahithophel it is said that he was buried in the sepulchre of his father.124It seems, however, that according to Jewish custom persons who had killed themselves should be left unburied till sunset,125perhaps for fear lest the spirit of the deceased otherwise might find its way back to the old home.126Josephus, who mentions this custom, denounces suicide as an act of cowardice, as a crime most remote from the common nature of all animals, as impiety against the Creator; and he maintains that the souls of those who have thus acted madly against themselves will go to the darkest place in Hades.127The Talmud considers suicide justifiable, if not meritorious, in the case of the chief of a vanquished army who is sure of disgrace and death at the hands of the exulting conqueror,128or when a person hasreason to fear being forced to renounce his religion.129In all other circumstances the Rabbis consider it criminal for a person to shorten his own life, even when he is undergoing tortures which must soon end his earthly career;130and they forbid all marks of mourning for a self-murderer, such as wearing sombre apparel and eulogising him.131Islam prohibits suicide, as an act which interferes with the decrees of God.132Muhammedans say that it is a greater sin for a person to kill himself than to kill a fellow-man;133and, as a matter of fact, suicide is very rare in the Moslem world.134

1231 Samuel, xxxi. 4sq.2 Samuel, xvii. 23.1 Kings, xvi. 18.2 Maccabees, xiv. 4sqq.

1242 Samuel, xvii. 23.

125Josephus,De bello Judaico, iii. 8. 5.

126Cf.Frazer, ‘Burial Customs as illustrative of the Primitive Theory of the Soul,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xv. 72.

127Josephus,op. cit.iii. 8. 5.

128Cf.1 Samuel, xxxi. 4.

129Guittin, 57 B, quoted by Mendelsohn,Criminal Jurisprudence of the Ancient Hebrews, p. 77, n. 163.Cf.2 Maccabees, xiv. 37sqq.

130Ab Zara, 18 A, quoted by Mendelsohn,op. cit.p. 78, n. 163.

131Mendelsohn,op. cit.p. 77.

132Koran, iv. 33.

133I have often heard this myself.Cf.Westcott,Suicide, p. 12.

134Lisle,Du suicide, pp. 305, 345sq.Legoyt,Le suicide ancien et moderne, p. 7. Morselli,Il suicidio, p. 33. Westcott,op. cit.p. 12.

Ancient Greece had its honourable suicides. The Milesian and Corinthian women, who by a voluntary death escaped from falling into the hands of the enemy, were praised in epigrams.135The story that Themistocles preferred death to bearing arms against his native country was circulated with a view to doing honour to his memory.136The tragedians frequently give expression to the idea that suicide is in certain circumstances becoming to a noble mind.137Hecuba blames Helena for not putting an end to her life by a rope or a sword.138Phaedra139and Leda140kill themselves out of shame, Haemon from violent remorse.141Ajax decides to die after having in vain attempted to kill the Atreidae, maintaining that “one of generous strain should nobly live, or forthwith nobly die.”142Instances are, moreover, mentioned of women killing themselves on the death of their husbands;143and in Cheos it was the custom to preventthe decrepitude of old age by a voluntary death.144At Athens the right hand of a person who had taken his own life was struck off and buried apart from the rest of the body,145evidently in order to make him harmless after death.146Plato says in his ‘Laws,’ probably in agreement with Attic custom, that those who inflict death upon themselves “from sloth or want of manliness,” shall be buried alone in such places as are uncultivated and nameless, and that no column or inscription shall mark the spot where they are interred.147At Thebes self-murderers were deprived of the accustomed funeral ceremonies,148and in Cyprus they were left unburied.149The objections which philosophers raised against the commission of suicide were no doubt to some extent shared by popular sentiments. Pythagoras is represented as saying that we should not abandon our station in life without the orders of our commander, that is, God.150According to the Platonic Socrates, the gods are our guardians and we are a possession of theirs, hence “there may be reason in saying that a man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.”151Aristotle, again, maintains that he who from rage kills himself commits a wrong against the State, and that therefore the State punishes him and civil infamy is attached to him.152The religious argument could not be foreign to a people who regarded it as impious interference in the order of nature to make a bridge over the Hellespont and to separate a landscape from the continent;153and the idea that suicide is a matter of public concern evidently prevailed in Massilia, where no man was allowed to make away with himself unless the magistrates had given him permission to do so.154But theopinions of the philosophers were anything but unanimous.155Plato himself, in his ‘Laws,’ has no word of censure for him who deprives himself by violence of his appointed share of life under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable misfortune, or out of irremediable and intolerable shame.156Hegesias, surnamed the “death-persuader,” who belonged to the Cyrenaic school, tried to prove the utter worthlessness and unprofitableness of life.157According to Epicurus we ought to consider “whether it be better that death should come to us, or we go to him.”158The Stoics, especially, advocated suicide as a relief from all kinds of misery.159Seneca remarks that it is a man’s own fault if he suffers, as, by putting an end to himself, he can put an end to his misery:—“As I would choose a ship to sail in, or a house to live in, so would I choose the most tolerable death when about to die…. Human affairs are in such a happy situation, that no one need be wretched but by choice. Do you like to be wretched? Live. Do you like it not? It is in your power to return from whence you came.”160The Stoics did not deny that it is wrong to commit suicide in cases where the act would be an injury to society;161Seneca himself points out that Socrates lived thirty days in prison in expectation of death, so as to submit to the laws of his country, and to give his friends the enjoyment of his conversation to the last.162Epictetus opposes indiscriminate suicide on religious grounds:—“Friends, wait for God; when he shall give the signal and release you from this service, then go to him; but for the present endure to dwell in the place where he has put you.”163Such a signal, however, is given often enough: it may consist in incurable disease, intolerable pain, or misery of any kind. “Remember this: the door is open; be not more timidthan little children, but as they say, when the thing does not please them, ‘I will play no longer,’ so do you, when things seem to you of such a kind, say I will no longer play, and be gone: but if you stay, do not complain.”164Pliny says that the power of dying when you please is the best thing that God has given to man amidst all the sufferings of life.165

135Schmidt,Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 443.

136Diodorus Siculus,Bibliotheca historica, xi. 58. 2sq.

137See Schmidt,op. cit.ii. 442sqq.

138Euripides,Troades, 1012sqq.

139Idem,Hippolytus, 715sqq.

140Idem,Helena, 134sqq.

141Sophocles,Antigone, 1234sqq.

142Idem,Ajax, 470sqq.Cf.ibid.654sqq.

143Euripides,Supplices, 1000sqq.Pausanias, iv. 2. 7.

144Strabo,Geographica, x. 5. 6, p. 486. Aelian,Varia historia, iii. 37.Cf.Boeckh,Gesammelte kleine Schriften, vii. 345sqq.; Welcker,Kleine Schriften, ii. 502sq.

145Aeschines,In Ctesiphontem, 244.

146Some Australian natives cut off the thumb of the right hand of a dead foe in order to make his spirit unable to throw the spear efficiently (Oldfield, inTrans. Ethn. Soc.N.S. iii. 287).

147Plato,Leges, ix. 873.

148Schmidt,op. cit.ii. 104.

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