The origin and development of the moral ideas

In various other cases, besides the voluntary sacrifices of widows or slaves, the suicides of savages are connected with their notions of a future life.38 The belief in the new human birth of the departed soul has led West African negroes to take their own lives when in distant slavery, that they may awaken in their native land.39 Among the Chukchi there are persons who kill themselves for the purpose of effecting an earlier reunion with their deceased relatives.40 Among the Samoyedes it happens that a young girl who is sold to an old man strangles herself in the hope of getting a more suitable bridegroom in the other world.41 We are told that the Kamchadales inflict death on themselves with the utmost coolness because they maintain that “the future life is a continuation of the present, but much better and more perfect, where they expect to have all their desires more completely satisfied than here.”42 The suicides of old people, again, are in some cases due to the belief that a man enters into the other world in the same condition in which he left this one, and that it consequently is best for him to die before he grows too old and feeble.43

The notions of savages concerning life after death also influence their moral valuation of suicide. Where men are supposed to require wives not only during their lifetime, but after their death, it may be a praiseworthy thing, or even a duty, for a widow to accompany her husband to the land of souls. According to Fijian beliefs, the woman who at the funeral of her husband met death with the greatest devotedness would become the favourite wife in the abode of spirits, whereas a widow who did not permit herself to be killed was considered an adulteress.44 Among the Central African Bairo those women who refrained from destroying themselves over their husbands’ graves were regarded as outcasts.45 On the Gold Coast a man of low rank who has married one of the king’s sisters is expected to make away with himself when his wife dies, or upon the death of an only male child; and “should he outrage native custom and neglect to do so, a hint is conveyed to him that he will be put to death, which usually produces the desired effect.”46 The customary suicides of the Chukchi are solemnly performed in the presence and with the assistance of relatives and neighbours.47 The Samoyedes maintain that suicide by strangulation “is pleasing to God, who looks upon it as a voluntary sacrifice, which deserves reward.”48 The opinion of the Kamchadales that it is “allowable and praiseworthy” for a man to take his own life,49 was probably connected with their optimistic notions about their fate after death.

Whilst in some cases suicide opens the door to a happy land beyond the grave, it in other cases entails consequences of a very different kind. The Omahas believe that a self-murderer ceases to exist.51 According to the Thompson Indians in British Columbia, “the souls of people who commit suicide do not go to the land of souls. The shamans declare they never saw such people there; and some say that they have looked for the souls of such people, but could not find their tracks. Some shamans say they cannot locate the place where the souls of suicides go, but think they must be lost, because they seem to disappear altogether. Others say that these souls die, and cease to exist. Still others claim that the souls never leave the earth, but wander around aimlessly.”52 So also the Jakuts believe that the ghost of a self-murderer never comes to rest.53 Sometimes the fate of suicides after death is represented as a punishment which they suffer for their deed.

Thus the Dacotahs, among whom women not infrequently put an end to their existence by hanging themselves, are of opinion that suicide is displeasing to the “Father of Life,” and will be punished in the land of spirits by the ghost being doomed for ever to drag the tree on which the person hanged herself; hence the women always suspend themselves to as small a tree as can possibly sustain their weight.54 The Pahárias of the Rájmahal Hills, in India, say that “suicide is a crime in God’s eyes,” and that “the soul of one who so offends shall not be admitted into heaven, but must hover eternally as a ghost between heaven and earth,”55 The Kayans of Borneo maintain that self-murderers are sent to a place called Tan Tekkan, where they will be very poor and wretched, subsisting on leaves, roots, or anything they can pick up in the forests, and being easily distinguished by their miserable appearance.56 According to Dyak beliefs, they go to a special place, where those who have drowned themselves must thenceforth live up to their waists in water, and those who have poisoned themselves must live in houses built of poisonous woods and surrounded by noxious plants, the exhalations of which are painful to the spirits.57 In other instances we are simply told that the souls of suicides, together with those of persons who have been killed in war,58 or who have died a violent death,59 are not permitted to live with the rest of the souls, to whom their presence would cause uneasiness.

It is, however, hard to believe that the fate of the self-murderer, whether it be annihilation, a vagrant existence on earth, or separation in the other world, was originally meant as a punishment; for a similar lot is assigned to the souls of persons who have been drowned,61 or who have died by accident or violence.62 It seems that the suicide’s future state is in the first place supposed to depend upon the treatment of his corpse. Frequently he is denied burial, or at least the ordinary funeral rites,63 and this may give rise to the notion that his soul never comes to rest or, possibly, even ceases to exist. Or he is buried by himself, apart from the other dead,64 in which case his soul must naturally remain equally isolated. Among the Alabama Indians, for instance, “when a man kills himself, either in despair or in a sickness, he is deprived of burial, and thrown into the river.”65 In Dahomey “the body of any person committing suicide is not allowed to be buried, but thrown out into the fields to be devoured by wild beasts.”66 Among the Fantis of the Gold Coast “il y a des places réservées aux suicides et à ceux qui sont morts de la petite vérole.

Ils sont enterrés à l’écart loin de toute habitation et de tout chemin public.”67 In the Pelew Islands a self-murderer is buried not with his own deceased relatives, but in the place where he ended his life, as are also the corpses of those who fall in war.68 Among the Bannavs of Cambodia “anyone who perishes by his own hand is buried in a corner of the forest far from the graves of his brethren.”69 Among the Sea Dyaks “those who commit suicide are buried in different places from others, as it is supposed that they will not be allowed to mix in the seven-storied heaven with such of their fellow-country men as come by their death in a natural manner or from the influence of the spirits.”70 The motive for thus treating self-murderers’ bodies is superstitious fear. Their ghosts, as the ghosts of persons who have died by any other violent means or by accident, are supposed to be particularly malevolent,71 owing to their unnatural mode of death72 or to the desperate or angry state of mind in which they left this life. If they are not buried at all, or if they are buried in the spot where they died or in a separate place, that is either because nobody dares to interfere with them, or in order to prevent them from mixing with the other dead.

So also murdered persons are sometimes left unburied,73 and people who are supposed to have been killed by evil spirits are buried apart;74 whilst those struck with lightning are either denied interment,75 or buried where they fell and in the position in which they died.76 We sometimes hear of a connection between the way in which a suicide’s body is treated and the moral opinion as regards his deed. Among the Alabama Indians his corpse is said to be thrown into the river “because he is looked upon as a coward”;77 and of the Ossetes M. Kovalewsky states that they bury suicides far away from other dead persons because they regard their act as sinful.78 But we may be sure that moral condemnation is not the original cause of these practices.