Part III: Illustrative Types
I will now deal with a few illustrative types to help the student in the congregation of lines, signs, and formations that go to form each individual character. It is seldom, if ever, that one distinct mark or peculiarity has the power to ruin or blight any one nature. An evil or dangerous sign as regards character merely shows the particular tendency in this or that direction. It takes a variety of wheels to make a watch: so does it take a variety of characteristics to make a criminal or a saint. The type bearing the disposition toward suicide is a very striking example of this. But before I go farther I would like to make a few remarks as to the subject of suicide itself. In every town in which I may reside, an establishment which has considerable interest for me is that strange temple of death, the morgue. Why not? If one in any sense studies life, he should study it to the borders of that “undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns.” The semi-barbarous, semi-human idea that by such an act the suicide has made him or her self an outcast, not only to this world, but to the next, cannot be too highly condemned. Even in this so-called enlightened age I have seen clergymen refuse to attend the grave. In some countries I have seen the body of the suicide dug up in the dead of night and buried in the sand of the sea-shore, or, worse still, thrown over the cliffs into the sea. It is not the treatment to the corpse that I raise my voice against—the dead feel nothing, the corpse is clay—it is the brutality of the living that makes me speak. People who lightly consider this matter are apt to say that such things do
not exist nowadays—but do they not? During my stay in England in 1893, four cases came to my notice, and even in New York in 1894, in the case of a well-known actress, it was almost impossible to get any clergyman to say a few words over the grave.
I must lay considerable stress on this point of suicide, even if I am severely criticized for my remarks—for what would be the good of attempting to analyze life if one did not state his opinions freely and without reserve? I know I shall be criticized for saying that I have not found that it is weak-minded people who generally commit suicide. On the contrary, I have merely found that they belong to a different class of mentality from those who prefer to hang on to the skirts of life through misery and misfortune. It is preposterous that we should set up any narrow lines of what is right or what is wrong, knowing as we do that we are, and always have been, in complete ignorance of the laws governing life, from the birth of the child to the development of the individual. What seems right to one may be utterly wrong to another, according to the mental vision which decides our conduct. There is a well-known disease which affects the senses in such a way that the scratching of a pencil in the same room sounds to the sufferer like the rumble of a mail-cart, while the striking of a match seems more dazzling than a flash of lightning. In the same way the mind, under pressure of desire, of sorrow, or of anxiety, may become more keenly sensitive to “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” Why, then, should we judge and measure and condemn such people, simply because we do not all see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their understanding?
I must also take exception to the every-day phrase of the jury—“Committed suicide while of unsound mind,” as used in reference to all people, whether evidence is given to prove insanity or not. The idea that because an individual commits suicide he must necessarily be insane, is on the face of it absurd, as it has often been demonstrated that the most marvelous reason and logic have been used to balance every side of the question before the individual has come to the conclusion that in his particular case the search for death was the noblest thing in life. I have known suicides to show the greatest possible courage, the strongest fortitude, and the greatest will in facing that mighty angel of mystery whom, all their life long, they have been taught p. 146 to avoid and dread. I have known the most noble deeds of silent martyrdom performed by those who afterward would scarce receive Christian burial. I have known not a few cases of persons suffering from an incurable disease ending life a few months sooner—and why? Not because of the agony they suffered, but because they were causing their children to suffer, and burdening them with expenditure which they could not afford; and yet I have been told that such a person could have no part or lot in that kingdom of peace, be it rest or be it life, which lies beyond the silence of the tomb. Is it man, or ghoul, or devil, I ask, who has thus the presumption to dictate to man the wishes or the judgments of that which is Almighty? What man among the mortals of the earth has the right to elect himself the mouthpiece of the Omnipotent and the Unknown? How many poor suicides has this relic of barbarianism condemned to the everlasting torment of the spirit? How many mothers has this fetishism broken beneath the wheels of its Juggernaut? How many sisters have cried and sobbed beneath the darkness of the night? How many brothers have raised defiant eyes to heaven that such a thing could be?
Alas! thou great Spirit of life, of death, of all that is, of all that will be, we know not thy name, thy being, thy creation, or the ultimate purpose for which thou hast endowed man and shaped man in the carrying out of thy design. As we are nothing, forgive us all things; as we ask for nothing, give us but what we need; and as we be nothing, be thou to us the all-sufficient, the life, the death, the eternal of the soul.