Читать книгу The Anatomy of Suicide - Forbes Winslow - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Moral causes of disease—Neglect of psychological medicine—Mental philosophy a branch of medical study—Moral causes of suicide—Tables of Falret, &c.—Influence of remorse—Simon Brown, Charles IX. of France—Massacre of St. Bartholomew—Terrible death of Cardinal Beaufort, from remorse—The Chevalier de S——. Influence of disappointed love—Suicide from love—Two singular cases—Effects of jealousy—Othello—Suicide from this passion—The French opera dancer—Suicide from wounded vanity—False pride—The remarkable case of Villeneuve, as related by Buonaparte—Buonaparte’s attempt at suicide—Ambition—Despair, cases of suicide from—The Abbé de Rancé—Suicide from blind impulse—Cases—Mathews, the comedian—Opinion of Esquirol on the subject—Ennui, birth of—Common cause of suicide in France—Effect of speculating in stocks—Defective education—Diffusion of knowledge—“Socialism” a cause of self-destruction—Suicide common in Germany—Werter—Goëthe’s attempt at suicide—Influence of his writings on Hackman—Suicide from reading Tom Paine’s “Age of Reason”—Suicide to avoid punishment—Most remarkable illustrations—Political excitement—Nervous irritation—Love of notoriety—Hereditary disposition—Is death painful? fully considered, with cases—Influence of irreligion.

In our voyage through life, the passions are said to be the gales that swell the canvass of the mental bark; they obstruct or accelerate its course, and render the passage favourable or full of danger, in proportion as they blow steadily from a proper point, or are adverse or tempestuous. Like the wind itself, the passions are engines of mighty power and of high importance. Without them we cannot proceed, and with them we may be shipwrecked and lost. Curbed in and regulated, they constitute the source of our most elevated happiness; but when not subdued, they drive the vessel on the rocks and quicksands of life, and ruin us.

“How few beneath auspicious planets born

With swelling sails make good the promis’d port,

With all their wishes freighted.”

Young.

“In this country,” Dr. J. Johnson justly observes, “where man’s relations with the world around him are multiplied beyond all example in any other country, in consequence of the intensity of interest attached to politics, religion, amusement, literature, and the arts; where the temporal concerns of an immense proportion of the population are in a perpetual state of vacillation; where spiritual affairs excite in the minds of many great anxiety; and where speculative risks are daily involving in difficulties all classes of society,—the operation of physical causes in the production of disease dwindles into complete insignificance when compared with that of anxiety and perturbation of mind.”

“Mens conscia recti in corpore sano,” is Horace’s well-known description of the happy man. Lucretius appears to have formed a correct estimate of the most important bodily and mental conditions on which our happiness depends:—

“O wretched mortals! race perverse and blind!

Through what dread, dark, what perilous pursuits

Pass ye this round of being! Know ye not,

Of all ye toil for, Nature nothing asks,

But for the body freedom from disease,

And sweet unanxious quiet for the mind?”

Like human beings, the sciences are closely connected with, and are mutually dependent upon, one another. The link in the chain may not be apparent, but it has a real and palpable existence. Medical and moral science are more nearly allied than we should, à priori, conclude. We speak of the science of medicine, not the practice of it; for, like judgment and wit, or, as the author of the School for Scandal ironically observes, like man and wife, how seldom are they seen in happy union. Garth feelingly alludes to this unnatural divorce:—

“The healing art now, sick’ning, hangs its head,

And, once a science, has become a trade.”

Psychological medicine has been sadly neglected. We recoil from the study of mental philosophy as if we were encroaching on holy ground. So great is the prejudice against this branch of science, that it has been observed, that to recommend a man to study metaphysics was a delicate mode of suggesting the propriety of confining him in a lunatic asylum!

In order to become a useful physician, it is necessary to become a good metaphysician; so says a competent authority. It was not, however, Dr. Cullen’s intention to recommend that species of philosophy which confounds the mind without enlightening it, and which, like an ignis fatuus, dazzles only to lead us from the truth. To the medical man we can conceive no preliminary study more productive of advantage than that which tends to call into exercise the latent principle of thought, and to accustom the mind to close, rigid, and accurate observation. The science of mind, when properly investigated, teaches us the laws of our mental frame, and shews us the origin of our various modes and habits of thought and feeling—how they operate upon one another, and how they are cultivated and repressed; it disciplines us in the art of induction, and guards us against the many sources of fallacy in the practice of making inferences; it gives precision and accuracy to our investigations, by instructing us in the nicer discriminations of truth and falsehood.

The value of mental philosophy as a branch of education will be properly appreciated when we consider that this ennobling principle was given to us for the purpose of directing and controlling our powers and animal propensities, and bringing them into that subjection whereby they become beneficial to the individual and to the world at large, enabling him to exchange with others those results which the power of his own and the gigantic efforts of other minds have developed; maintaining and perpetuating the most dignified and exalted state of happiness, the attribute of social life; unfolding not only treasures which the concentrated powers of individuals are enabled to discover, but developing those more quiet and unobtrusive characteristics of virtuous life, those social affections, which are alone calculated to make our present state of being happy.

Independently of the utility of the study, what a world of delight is open to the mind of that man who has devoted some portion of his time to the investigation of his mental organization! In him we may truly behold—