Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/96

 82 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

pleting to the end of the nineteenth century the table of Quetelet, will show how the statistics of suicide in relation to the statistics in general of this country have been modified in this interval.

The maximum of suicides occurs in the period from 1886 to 1890, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-nine for both males and females. This is found regularly from 1898 to 1900 for males, but in 1898 the age is lower for women, though this phenomenon is not reproduced in the following years. It remains none the less an important index, which it is necessary to inspect.

I have already indicated that Quetelet, in this special case, has neglected too much the social causes, properly called, and especially the economic causes, the essential importance of which, however, he recognizes in general. Basing my conclu- sions on the general reports of the criminal courts in France from 1826 to 1880, and especially on sees, n and 12, I have stated in my Lois sociologiques* that the principal social condi- tions causing suicide are, in the order of their importance excluding cerebral diseases, which also undergo the same influ- ences as follows: (i) poverty; (2) family difficulties and physical suffering, the influence of these two being about equal ; (3) alcoholism; (4) love, jealousy, and debauchery; (5) the fear of legal prosecution. In general, then, they are: (i) physical and psychical disturbances; (2) economic difficulties ; (3) genetic troubles; (4) moral difficulties. This natural classi- fication of particular phenomena confirms my general classifica- tion of the social phenomena, following their order of increasing speciality.

The periods of economic crises, especially the financial crises, are naturally the most fruitful in suicides ; the latter appear also when the social life is most unstable. In France the field for suicides par excellence is Paris and the department of the Seine.

When the unfavorable economic and moral causes become united, their concurrence acts powerfully on suicide. This is noticeable when one investigates the phenomena of suicide in

'Paris: Alcan ; 3d ed., p. 122.