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from causing mischief. All over 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. Schiffer, 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 Melusine, iv.

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O a four, mother, brother, or Fato says in his Laws' (ix. Sta :-"If be be convicted, the servarts of the Judges and the magistrates shall star him at an appointed place at the city where three ways meet,

suicides were in many cases burned.1 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.

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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, voit qu'à mesure qu'on qu'on avance,

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and there expose his body naked, and each of the magistrates on behalf of the whole city shall take a stone and cast it upon the head of the dead man, and so deliver the city from pollution; after that, they shall bear him to the borders of the land, and cast him forth unburied, according to law." The duels by which the ancient Swedes were legally compelled to repair their wounded honour were to be fought on a place where three roads met (Leffler, Om den fornsvenska hednalagen, p. 40 sq.; supra, i. 502). In various countries it has been the custom to bury the dead at crossroads (Grimm, 'Ueber das Verbrennen der Leichen,' in Kleinere Schriften, ii. 288 (Bohemians); Lippert, Die Religionen der europäischen Culturvölker, p. 310 (Slavonians); Winternitz, Das altindische Hochzeitsrituell, p. 68; Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, pp. 267, 268, 562 n. 3)-a custom which may have given rise to the idea that cross-roads are haunted (Winternitz, op. cit. p. 68; Oldenberg, op. cit. p. 267 sq.; cf. Wuttke, op. cit. § 108, p. 89 sq.).

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

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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 UrQuell, iii. 50 (Polanders).

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Bourquelot, loc. cit. iv. 264 (at Abbeville).

4 Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 726 sqq. Hyltén-Cavallius, op. cit. i. 472 sq. (Swedes).

5 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, Ivii. 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).

6 See Bourquelot, loc. cit. iv. 248; Gummere, Germanic Origins, p. 322.

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Vantagonisme devient plus prononcé entre l'esprit religieux et les idees mardizes relinvement a la mort volontaire. Le dierge contine a suivre la route qui a ete tracce par Saint Augustin et a detarer le suicide criminel et impie; mais la tristesse et le desespci n'entendent pas sa voix, ne se souviennent pas de ses prescriptions." The revival of classical learning, accompanied as it was by admiration for antiquity and a desire to imitate its great men, net only increased the number of suicides, but influenced popular sentiments on the subject. Even the Catholic cascists, and later ca philosophers of the school of Grotius and others, began to distinguish certain cases of legitimate suicide, such as that committed to avoid dishonour or probable sin, or that of a condemned person saving himself from torture by anticipating an inevitable death, or that of a man offering himself to death for the sake of his friend. Sir Thomas More, in his Utopia, permits a person who is suffering from an incurable and painful disease to take his own life, provided that he does so with the agreement of the priests and magistrates; nay, he even maintains that these should exhort such a man to put an end to a life which is only a burden to himself and others. Donne, the well-known Dean of St Paul's, wrote in his younger days a book in defence of suicide, "a Declaration," as he called it," of that paradoxe, or thesis, that Self-homicide is not so naturally sin, that it may never be otherwise." He there pointed out the fact— which ought never to be overlooked by those who derive their arguments from "nature"-that some things may be natural to the species, and yet not natural to every individual member of it. In one of his essays Montaigne pictures classical cases of suicide with colours of unmistakable sympathy. "La plus volontaire mort," he observes, "c'est la plus belle. La vie despend de la

1 Bourquelot, loc. cit. iv. 253. 2 Ibid. iv. 464. Morselli, op. cit. p. 35

Buonafede, op. cit. p. 148 sqq. Lecky, op. cit. ii. 55.

4 More, Utopia, p. 122.

* Donne, Biathanatos, p.45. Donne's book was first committed to the press in 1644, by his son.

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volonté d'aultruy; la mort, de la nostre."1 rationalism of the eighteenth century led to numerous attacks both upon the views of the Church and upon the laws of the State concerning suicide. Montesquieu advocated its legitimacy :-"La société est fondée sur un avantage mutuel; mais lorsqu'elle me devient onéreuse, qui m'empêche d'y renoncer? La vie m'a été donnée comme une faveur; je puis donc la rendre lorsqu' elle ne l'est plus la cause cesse, l'effet doit donc cesser aussi."2 Voltaire strongly opposed the cruel laws which subjected a suicide's body to outrage and deprived his children of their heritage. If his act is a wrong against society, what is to be said of the voluntary homicides committed in war, which are permitted by the laws of all countries? Are they not much more harmful to the human race than selfmurder, which nature prevents from ever being practised by any large number of men ? Beccaria pointed out that the State is more wronged by the emigrant than by the suicide, since the former takes his property with him, whereas the latter leaves his behind. According to Holbach, he who kills himself is guilty of no outrage on nature or its author; on the contrary, he follows an indication given by nature when he parts from his sufferings through the only door which has been left open. Nor has his country or his family any right to complain of a member whom it has no means of rendering happy, and from whom it consequently has nothing more to hope. Others eulogised suicide when committed for a noble end, or recommended it on certain occasions. Suppose," says Hume, "that it is no longer in my power to promote the interest of society; suppose that I

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1 Montaigne, Essais, ii. 3 (Œuvres, p. 187).

2 Montesquieu, Lettres Persanes, 76 (Euvres, p. 53).

Voltaire, Commentaire sur le livre Des délits et des peines, 19 (Euvres complètes, v. 416). Idem, Prix de la justice et de l'humanité, 5 (ibid. v. 424).

• Idem, Note to Olympie acte v. scène 7 (Euvres complètes, i. 826, n. b).

Idem, Dictionnaire Philosophique, art.
Suicide (ibid. viii. 236).

5 Beccaria, Dei delitti e delle pene, § 35 (Opere, i. 101).

6 Holbach, Système de la nature, i.

369.

In the early part of the nineteenth century this was done by Fries, Neue oder anthropologische Kritik der Ver nunft, iii. 197.

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