Secondly, by killing himself a person does an injury to the community of which he is a part. Thirdly, "life is a gift divinely bestowed on man, and subject to His power who killeth and maketh alive'; and therefore he who takes his own life sins against God, as he who kills another man's slave sins against the master to whom the slave belongs, and as he sins who usurps the office of judge on a point not referred to him; for to God alone belongs judgment of life and death." The second of these arguments is borrowed from Aristotle, and is entirely foreign to the spirit of early Christianity. The notion of patriotism being a moral duty was habitually discouraged by it, and, as Mr. Lecky observes, "it was impossible to urge the civic argument against suicide without at the same time condemning the hermit life, which in the third century became the ideal of the Church." 2 But the other arguments are deeply rooted in some of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity-in the sacredness of human life, in the duty of absolute submission to God's will, and in the extreme importance attached to the moment of death. The earthly life is a preparation for eternity; sufferings which are sent by God are not to be evaded, but to be endured. The man who deliberately takes away the life which was given him by the Creator displays the utmost disregard for the will and authority of his Master; and, worst of all, he does so in the very last minute of his life, when his doom is sealed for ever. His deed, as Thomas Aquinas says, is "the most dangerous thing of all, because no time is left to expiate it by repentance.' "4 He who kills a fellow-creature does not in the same degree renounce the protection of God; he kills only the body, whereas the self-murderer kills both the body and the soul." By denying the latter the right of Christian 3 Thomas Aquinas, op. cit. ii.-ii 64. 5. 2 Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 44. 3 Cf. St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, i. 23. Thomas Aquinas, op. cit. ii.-ii. 64. 5. 3. Cf. St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, i. 25. Damhouder, op. cit. lxxxviii. 1 sq., p. 258. burial the Church recognises that he has placed himself outside her pale. The condemnation of the Church influenced the secular legislation. The provisions of the Councils were introduced into the law-books. In France Louis IX. enforced the penalty of confiscating the self-murderer's property,' and laws to the same effect were passed in other European countries.2 Louis XIV. assimilated the crime of suicide to that of leze majesté. According to the law of Scotland, "self-murder is as highly criminal as the killing our neighbour." In England suicide is still regarded by the law as murder committed by a man on himself; and, unless declared insane, the self-murderer forfeited his property as late as the year 1870, when forfeitures for felony were abolished." In Russia, to this day, the testamentary dispositions of a suicide are deemed void by the law." The horror of suicide also found a vent in outrages committed on the dead body. Of a woman who drowned herself in Edinburgh in 1598, we are told that her body was “harled through the town backwards, and thereafter hanged on the gallows." In France, as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, self-murderers were dragged upon a hurdle through the streets with the face turned to the ground; they were then hanged up with the head downwards, and finally thrown into the common sewer. However, in most cases the treatment to which suicides' bodies were subject was not originally meant as a punishment, but was intended to prevent their spirits 1 Les Établissements de Saint Louis, i. 92, vol. ii. 150. 2 Bourquelot, op. cit. iv. 263. Morselli, op. cit. p. 196 sq. 3 Louis XIV., Ordonnance criminelle,' A. D. 1670, xxii. 1, in Isambert, Decrusy, and Taillandier, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, xviii. 414. 4 Erskine-Rankine, Principles of the Law of Scotland, p. 559. 5 Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, iii. 104. For earlier times see Bracton, De Legibus et Con 3 1 from causing mischief. mischief. All over Europe wandering tendencies have been ascribed to their ghosts. In some countries the corpse of a suicide is supposed to make barren the earth with which it comes in contact, or to produce hailstorms or tempests or drought.* At Lochbroom, in the North-West of Scotland, the people believe that if the remains of a self-murderer be taken to any burying-ground which is within sight of the sea or of cultivated land, this would prove disastrous both to fishing and agriculture, or, in the words of the people, would cause "famine (or dearth) on sea and land"; hence the custom has been to inter suicides in out-of-the-way places among the lonely solitudes of the mountains. The practice of burying them apart from other dead has been very wide-spread in Europe, and in many cases there are obvious indications that it arose from fear. In the North-East of Scotland a suicide was buried outside a churchyard, close beneath the wall, and the grave was marked by a single large stone, or by a small cairn, to which the passing traveller was bound to cast a stone; and afterwards, when the suicide's body was allowed to rest in the churchyard, it was laid below the wall in such a position that no one could walk over the grave, as the people. believed that if a woman enceinte stepped over such a 1 Ross, in Celtic Magazine, xii 352 (Highlanders of Scotland). Atkinson, Forty Years in a Moorland Parish, p. 217. Hyltén-Cavallius, Wärend och Wirdarne, i. 472 sq. (Swedes). Allardt, 'Nylandska folkseder och bruk,' in Nyland, iv. 114 (Swedish Finlanders). Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, § 756, p. 474 sq. Schif fer, Totenfetische bei den Polen,' in Am Ur-Quell, iii. 50 (Polanders), 52 (Lithuanians). Volkov, 'Der Selbstmorder in Lithauen,' ibid. v. 87. von Wlislocki, Tod und Totenfetische im Volkglauben der Siebenbürger Sachsen,' ibid. iv. 53. Lippert, Christenthum, Volksglaube und Volksbrauch, p. 391. Dyer, The Ghost World, pp. 53, 151. Gaidoz, Le suicide,' in Mélusine, iv. 12. 5 2 Schiffer, in Am Ur-Quell, iii. 52 (Lithuanians). Ibid. pp. 50 (Polanders), 53 (Lithuanians). von Wlislocki, Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Magyaren, p. 61. Strausz, Die Bulgaren, p. 455. Prexl, 'Geburts- und Todtengebrauche der Rumänen in Siebenbürgen,' in Globus, Ivii. 30. 4 Strausz, op. cit. p. 455 (Bulgarians). 5 Ross, in Celtic Magazine, xii. 350 sq. 6 Gaidoz, in Mélusine, iv. 12. Frank, System einer vollständigen medicinischen Polizey, iv. 499. Moore, op. cit. i. 310 (Danes). Schiffer, in Am UrQuell, iii. 50 (Polanders), 53 (Lithu anians). Volkov, ibid. v. 87 (Lithu anians). Strausz, op. cit. p. 455 (Bulgarians). In grave, her child would quit this earth by its own act.1 England persons against whom a coroner's jury had found a verdict of felo de se were buried at cross-roads, with a stake driven through the body so as to prevent their ghosts from walking. For the same purpose the bodies of 1 Gregor, Folk-Lore of the NorthEast of Scotland, p. 213 sq. 2 Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, iii. 105. Atkinson, op. cit. p. 217. This custom was formally abolished in 1823, by 4 Geo. IV. c. 52 (Stephen, op. cit. iii. 105). Why were suicides buried at cross-roads? Possibly because the cross was supposed to disperse the evil energy ascribed to their bodies. Both in Europe and India the cross-road has, since ancient times, been a favourite place to divest oneself of diseases or other evil influences (Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, §§ 483, 484, 492, 508, 514, 522, 545, PP. 325, 326, 331, 341, 345, 349, 361. Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, pp. 272, 473, 519. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, pp. 267, 268 n. 1). In the sacred books of India it is said that "a student who has broken the vow of chastity shall offer an ass to Nirriti on a crossroad" (Gautama, xxiii. 17), and that a person who has previously undergone certain other purification ceremonies "is freed from all crimes, even mortal sins, after looking on a cross-road at a pot filled with water, and reciting the text, Simhe me manyuh (Baudhayana, iv. 7. 7). In the hills of Northern India and as far as Madras, an approved charm for getting rid of a disease of demoniacal origin is to plant a stake where four roads meet, and to bury grains underneath, which crows disinter and eat (North Indian Notes and Queries, i. § 652, p. 100; Madden, The Turace and Outer Mountains of Kumaoon,' in Jour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, xvii. pt. i. 583; Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, i. 290). In the Province of Bihar, "in cases of sickness various articles are exposed in a saucer at a cross-road " (Grierson, Bihar Peasant Life, p. 407). According to a Bulgarian tale, Lot was enjoined by the priest to plant on a crossroad three charred twigs in order to free himself from his sin (Strausz, op. cit. p. 115). The Gypsies of Servia believe that a thief may divert from himself all suspicions by painting with blood a cross and a dot above it on the spot where he committed the theft (von Wlislocki, Menschenblut im Glauben der Zigeuner,' in Am Ur-Quell, iii. 64 sq.). In Morocco the cross is used as a charm against the evil eye, and the chief reason for this is, I believe, that it is regarded as a conductor of the baneful energy emanating from the eye, dispersing it in all the quarters of the wind and thus preventing it from injuring the person or object looked at (Westermarck, Magic Origin of Moorish Designs,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxiv. 214). In Japan, if a criminal belonging to one of the lower classes commits suicide, his body is crucified (Globus, xviii. 197). When, under Tarquinius Priscus (or Tarquinius Superbus), many Romans preferred voluntary death to compulsory labour in the cloaca, or artificial canals by which the sewage was carried into the Tiber, the king ordered that their bodies should be crucified and abandoned to birds and beasts of prey (Pliny, Historia naturalis, Xxxvi. 24; Servius, Commentarii in Virgilii Æneidos, xii. 603). The reason for thus crucifying the bodies of selfmurderers is not stated; but it is interesting to notice, in this connection, the idea expressed by some Christian writers that the cross of the Saviour symbolised the distribution of his benign influence in all directions (d'Ancona, Origini del teatro italiano, i. 646; Tauler, quoted by Peltzer, Deutsche Mystik und deutsche Kunst, p. 191. am indebted to my friend Dr. Yrjö Hirn for drawing my attention to this idea). With reference to persons who had killed a father, mother, brother, or child, Plato says in his Laws' (ix. 873):-"If he be convicted, the servants of the judges and the magistrates shall slay him at an appointed place without the city where three ways meet, I suicides were in many cases burned.' And when removed from the house where the act had been committed, they were commonly carried out, not by the door, but by a window, or through a perforation specially made for the occasion in the door, or through a hole under the threshold, in order that the ghost should not find its way back into the house, or perhaps with a view of keeping the entrance of the house free from dangerous infection. However, side by side with the extreme severity with which suicide is viewed by the Christian Church we find, even in the Middle Ages, instances of more humane feelings towards its perpetrator. In medieval tales and ballads true lovers die together and are buried in the same grave; two roses spring through the turf and twine lovingly together. In the later Middle Ages, says M. Bourquelot, "on "on voit qu'à mesure qu'on avance, and there expose his body naked, and p. 1 Bourquelot, loc. cit. iv. 263. HylténCavallius, op. cit. i. 459; Nordström, Bidrag till den svenska samhällsforfattningens historia, ii. 331 (Swedes). von Wlislocki, 'Tod und Totenfetische VOL. II im Volkglauben der Siebenbürger Sachsen,' in Am Ur-Quell, iv. 53. 2 Wuttke, op. cit. § 756, p. 474; Frank, op. cit. iv. 498 sq.; Lippert, Der Seelencult, p. 11 (people in various parts of Germany). Schiffer, in Am Ur Quell, iii. 50 (Polanders). 3 Bourquelot, loc. cit. iv. 264 (at Abbeville). 4 Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthü mer, p. 726 sqq. Hyltén-Cavallius, op. cit. i. 472 sq. (Swedes). See infra, on Regard for the Dead. Contact with a self-murderer's body is considered polluting (Prexl, 'Geburtsund Todtengebräuche der Rumänen in Siebenbürgen,' in Globus, lvii. 30; Hyltén-Cavallius, Wärend och Wir darne, i. 459, 460, and ii. 412). We are told that in the eighteenth century people did not dare to cut down a person who had hanged himself, though he was found still alive (Frank, op. cit. iv. 499). Among the Bannavs of Cambodia everybody who takes part in the burial of a self-murderer is obliged to undergo a certain ceremony of purification, whereas no such ceremony is prescribed in the case of other burials (Mittheil. d. Geogr. Ges. zu Jena, iii. 9). See Bourquelot, loc. cit. iv. 248; Gummere, Germanic Origins, p. 322. S |