Childhood possesses a most highly sensitive mental organisation, coupled with a want of power to fully weigh the consequences of any act; but what undoubtedly causes many cases now is over-pressure in education; while the education itself produces precocious development of the reflective faculties, of vanity, and of the desires. During the last few years there have been several English cases of children killing themselves, because unable to perform school tasks; yet it must be allowed that the most modern alteration in school life,─the abolition of corporal punishment,─has removed one fertile cause of suicide in childhood. _See_ Ferrey and Collineau. A writer in the Psychological Journal discusses 24 cases, 17 boys and 7 girls; of these children 1 was five years old, 2 nine, 2 ten, 5 eleven, and 7 twelve. All the girls drowned themselves. MARRIAGE, CELIBACY, WIDOWHOOD. Having regard simply to numbers, there are most suicides among the unmarried, next among the married, then among widowed persons, and lastly, among persons divorced and separated. Bachelors kill themselves oftener than married men; but in Italy, France, Switzerland and Saxony, married women oftener than virgins. Widows surpass widowers in frequency of suicide, and it has been suggested by statistics that widowhood in this respect brings woman nearer to man than any other social condition. Wars tend to raise the rate among women, because they make so many widows; the suicide rate of widows rose in a sudden leap in Germany and in France, when the last war broke out, and remained over and above the rate of virgins and wives for two years after. Married men have, throughout, the lowest rate; suicide is more frequent among celibate men than among virgins. Divorce causes more male suicide than female. Among men, allowing for extant numbers of each class, we find these resultant proportions for 1882:─ ───────────┬──────────┬──────────┬───────── COUNTRIES. │ Married. │ Single. │ Widowed. ───────────┼──────────┼──────────┼───────── France │ 100 │ 104 │ 160 Italy │ 100 │ 114 │ 198 Wurtemburg │ 100 │ 147 │ 162 ───────────┴──────────┴──────────┴───────── Taking France as an example, the following proportions are found among the suicides, after excluding males under fifteen years of age, and females under eighteen:─ ───────────┬───────────┬──────────┬───────── THE SEXES. │ Celibate. │ Married. │ Widowed. ───────────┼───────────┼──────────┼───────── Men │ 422·14 │ 271·71 │ 737·0 Women │ 80·00 │ 80·87 │ 121·0 ───────────┴───────────┴──────────┴───────── That is, unmarried men fewer than widowers. Unmarried women a trifle fewer than married women. In Prussia, curiously enough, these states are altered; married men kill themselves the most often, and married women kill themselves the least often. Italy, again, resembles France.