None of these explanations is at all satisfactory, and it seems to me that the solution of the problem is to be found, not in the mere physical action of light, heat, or weather on the human body, but in the influence of the whole environment on the human mind. Sir Arthur Helps was the first, so far as I know, to suggest that the increased tendency to suicide in spring and summer is due to a psychological rather than a physical cause. Speaking, in "Realmah," of the fact that suicides are more frequent on pleasant days than on unpleasant ones, he says: "Perhaps it is because, on these beautiful days, the higher powers seem to be more beneficent; and the wretch overladen with misery thinks that he can trust more to their mercy." This explanation is little more satisfactory than the others; but it does, nevertheless, recognize and take into account the influence of the environment on a preexisting emotional state. It errs only in interpretation. The smiling, happy, joyous aspect of Nature in June does not inspire the unhappy man with confidence in the beneficence and mercy of the higher powers. On the contrary, it shows him that the higher powers pay no attention at all to his feelings and have no sympathy whatever with his grief. The blue skies, sunshine, leafy trees, and singing birds, which make up the environment of June, add to the happiness of the man who is happy already, but they intensify, by contrast, the misery of the man who is already miserable. In November and December, when all is dark, bare, and cheerless, Nature seems to be in sympathy with the unhappy man's mood, and from that voiceless, pitying sympathy of the great World-Mother he derives a certain sustaining comfort and consolation. In June his mood is the same, but the mood of Nature has changed. The great World-Mother no longer sympathizes with his grief, but laughs him to scorn with her sunshine, her blossoming flowers, her leafy trees, and her jubilation of mating birds. He looks about him and thinks: "Everybody is happy, everything is rejoicing. I am the solitary exception; I am the only living thing that is out of place." And then there comes upon him a heartbreaking sense of loneliness, a feeling of complete isolation, as if the great, happy world had cast him off and gone on its way singing. He has thought of suicide before--he has thought of it often; and now, when the world, in its triumphant gladness, ignores his very existence, when there is no longer sympathy, nor pity, nor any further hope of a share in the happiness that he sees about him, it seems to him that the time for self-destruction has come. Whether he be a Russian, an American, or a Japanese, he can observe and he can feel: and when he sees that the whole world is jubilant, while he himself is wretched, he becomes more acutely conscious than ever before of his loneliness and misery, and resolves to give up the struggle and get out of the way of the world's