Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/489

 SUICIDE IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT STUDIES 475

ity of explaining the fact by presupposing its action." Durk- heim asks too much of statistics. They could never prove that suicide depends on insanity alone, or on alcoholism alone, or on the physical environment alone. The continual oscillations shown by the statistical series, however slight they may be, are just the best proof of a continual interaction of factors in the production of the social phenomenon.

Having established that none of the so-called extra-social factors is the " unique" cause of suicide which, moreover, was so evident as to render perfectly useless such an ostentatious display of arguments Durkheim flatters himself to be the dis- coverer of the philosopher's stone of the purely social cause of suicide.

What are, now, these alleged causes ?

1. The want of social " integration" (egoistic suicide).

2. The violent absorption of the individual by the commu- nity (altruistic suicide).

3. The lack of social control over individual desires (anomic suicide).

But in all these three typical instances Durkheim necessarily presupposes a normal condition of equilibrium in the relation- ship of the individual to the community. Suicide, then, appears to be, in its three typipal forms, the result of a rupture in the accommodation of the individual mind to the social environ- ment. This rupture cannot take place without the concomi- tance of a predisposition on the part of the individual, otherwise we could not explain the fact that some yield to the courant suicidogene, and some do not. Then the three alleged social causes presuppose the incidence of an abnormal and enfeebling condition of the social milieu, with a predisposition to mental disturbance in the individual. If they cannot work independ- ently of such a rencontre, we have the right to ask whether in reality anything corresponds to the "social " causes, as con- ceived by Durkheim. In so far as the three types of suicide show the intersection, as it were, of an individual organic pre- disposition by a collective morbid agent, we arc able to v<