Suicide; studies on its philosophy, causes, and prevention
Suicide is a question partly social, partly medical; hence it may with propriety be discussed in a volume intended for intelligent readers generally. The term, suicide is meant the intentional destruction of one's own life.
It embraces all who kill themselves purposely, or, as the legal phrase expresses it, " with malice aforethought," whatever the cause of the act or the mental state of the agent. It excludes deaths from acts or lines of conduct which, however much opposed to self-preservation, are not intended to destroy life.
Although in judging examples belonging to this class it is customary to declare them suicidal, such declaration is rather a moral estimate of conduct tending to death than a technical deliverance as to the character of the death itself. Fundamentally, suicide has reference to the individual viewed in the two-fold aspect of his social and personal life.
It presupposes two necessary conditions : (i) Moral and physical impressions derived from without ; (2) on the part of the recipient of these impressions, a nervous impressibility, which not only magnifies and distorts vi Preface. them, but which gives them a dangerous power to affect his happiness.
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