Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/330

318 Alas, then, if one person in our village is to commit suicide, if nobody else will, I must! And why? Simply because one person has committed suicide there yearly for several years past. Nothing can withstand the simple rules of arithmetic! But fortunately this "irresistible social law" allows of a considerable laxum in its operation ; about two hundred and forty persons a year must kill themselves in London, but the special number may vary between two hundred and sixty-six and two hundred and thirteen. Our readers, too, may take comfort from hearing that "suicide is more frequent among Protestants than among Catholics."

The chief things we note here are, the utter worthlessness of the reasoning itself, and its formal contradiction by the author's admissions previously quoted. What can we think of the judgment of a man who allows statistics to make him believe that marriages have no connection with personal feelings ! or that can use a few imperfect returns about murders, suicides, and undirected letters, to upset all the affirmations of personal consciousness, the whole common sense of the world, as expressed in human language, and his own common sense to boot ! For we do not forget, that though at p. 26 he tells us that the question who, what individual, shall commit suicide "depends upon special laws, which in their total action must obey the large social law to which they are subordinate," at p. 208 he tells us that this is only true for great numbers of men, and long periods of time ; for "in a small number, and a short period, the individual moral principle triumphs, and disturbs the operation of the larger and intellectual law" : we must study "social phenomena for a period sufficiently long, and on a scale sufficiently