With regard to the Jews, we are met by the difficulty of the coincidence of race and religion, in the most marked form the world has ever seen. The Jews are undoubtedly more liable to lunacy than are Christians; in Bavaria, for example, there is one lunatic to 908 Catholics, 967 Protestants, and 514 Jews. History renders it quite certain that in the days of Jewish purity, and in the time of the kings up to the Babylonish captivity, the number of suicides was very small. Self-destruction is not even mentioned in the Pentateuch as a crime; it was apparently thought that the command, “thou shall not kill,” obviously included it. In later days the number increased; after the close of Old Testament history, when the Jews became more mixed with other nations, it became common. Many killed themselves in the Roman siege of Jerusalem, as Josephus narrates; in 1521, forty Jews were imprisoned in France, doubtless for purposes of extortion; they all killed themselves [Contes de Guillaume de Nangis, p. 96]. And although many Jews put an end to their existence during the times of terrible persecution of the Middle Ages, notably 1200-1400, they have always preserved a reputation throughout Europe for contempt of suffering, and for the avoidance of self-destruction. Coming now to the present day once more, I introduce here a Table, compiled chiefly from Italian and German sources, which shows the comparative suicide rates, in juxtaposition to the comparative proportions of Catholic and Protestant inhabitants; it is very suggestive, and calls for a few words respecting the Protestant Religion. Compare Morselli, Influenze Sociali, p. 218.