Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/90

 76 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

derangement are found in diverse degrees : poverty, alcoholism, disappointment, superstition (principally religious), certain dis- eases arising from poverty and debauchery, economic and polit- ical crises, the repercussion of which acts with an incredible intensity on the mental and moral condition. If mental derange- ment seems proportional to the intensity of psychic function and the intensity of civilization, these sad digressions from normal life fortunately do not appear to be a fatality that civilization itself, by its progressive organization, may not be able to lead back to perturbations less excessive and to a more superior and stable equilibrium.

Thus in a social condition insufficiently equilibrated, mental derangement seems to be a real institution, the index to the intensity of the social troubles. It is the same with that other manifestation of individuo-collective disturbance which is shown by suicide and infanticide, which we shall study next.

B. Suicide. Dr. Casper, in his Beitrage zur medicinischen Statistik (Berlin, 1825), has shown that the number of suicides is greater in the cities than in the country, and in 1827 Balbi, in his dictionary of geography, stated that the Russian empire had only one suicide for 149,182 inhabitants, or two and one-half times less than in France. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that suicide is a sociological phenomenon of which the factors are equally psychical, biological, and physical. The appearance of suicide is always in relation to the lack of equili- brium of some or all the factors which are represented in the nervous system of the individual, and which incite him irresisti- bly to seek an end for his misery in the simpler but inferior equilibrium which death promises him.

Let us note the contradiction into which Quetelet has fallen in his agreement with Lucrue and Caton, and we may add with Catholicism, and especially the doctrine of the Jesuits that "crime is not in the action, but rather in the intention of the one who commits it." This distinction is perfectly idle in speaking of suicide, which is neither good nor bad, but the end of all good and all bad. And how can society consider as criminal an act which is entirely its negation and its work, since the individual