ormally disposed to self-destruction. His
suicidal tendency, however, is reduced by war, just as that of the civil
population is, and for the same reasons.

_Professional Classes Furnish Most Suicides_

Statistics of self-destruction are not yet accurate and detailed enough
to enable us to determine the relation that suicide bears to business
employment; but it may be said, in a general way, that the occupations
in which the suicide rate is lowest are those that involve rough manual
labor out of doors and employ men of comparatively little educational
culture, such as miners, quarrymen, shipwrights, fishermen, gardeners,
bricklayers, and masons. Next come farmers, shopkeepers, and town
artisans. And at the head of the list, with the highest suicide rate of
all, are physicians, journalists, teachers, and lawyers. The tendency
of these professional classes to commit suicide is from one and a half
to three times as great as that of the population generally.

Clergymen, however, who also constitute an educated professional class,
have a suicide rate which is only half that of the population as a
whole, and this is undoubtedly due to the restraining influence of
religion, which is much stronger in clergymen than in laymen. The
relation of suicide to religion raises a number of curious and
interesting questions, but, unfortunately, the religious factor is so
involved with other factors in the complicated problem of
self-destruction that it is almost impossible to isolate it so as to
study it alone. For example, the suicide rate of Protestant Christians
in the northern part of Ireland is twice that of Roman Catholics in the
southern part; but here education comes in as a complication: the
Protestants are generally better educated than the Catholics, and their
higher suicide rate may be due to their education and not to the form of
their religion. In Europe generally, the tendency to suicide is much
greater among both Protestants and Catholics than among Jews; but here
education, race, and economic condition all come in as complicating
factors, so that it is impossible to credit the Jewish faith alone with
the lower rate. In view, however, of the fact that the suicide rate of
the Protestant cantons in Switzerland is nearly four times that of the
Catholic cantons, it seems probable that Catholicism, as a form of
religious belief, does restrain the suicidal impulse. The efficient
cause may be the Catholic practice of confessi