In China and in Japan, even up to our own times, Suicide has been regarded as a virtue; life is held cheaply there, and if a mandarin or other official be superseded, he turns quite naturally to suicide as the proper end of his existence; but during the last few years in Japan, especially where there has been intercourse with Europeans, there are regulations intended to prevent it; ten years imprisonment is the punishment for the attempt in the case of lovers. Until lately it was the custom for a man of honour who had been insulted by another, to rip his body open with a sword, in presence of his opponent, calling on him to do likewise; the aggressor was dishonoured for ever if he failed to do so. The Peruvians and Mexicans, at the time of the Spanish conquest, killed themselves in large numbers rather than be slain or made captive by the invaders.─Falret. The Priests of Ancient Egypt, who were the philosophers of the nation, by their doctrines of a universal soul and metempsychosis, contributed not a little to popularise suicide.─Bayle. Sesostris, who had become blind, killed himself, with calmness and reflection. But at a later date, following the death of Cleopatra, it became even more usual; a society existed for the purpose of associating together persons desirous of self-inflicted death.─Buonafede. Among the Chaldeans, as among the Hebrews, suicide seems to have been rare. On the coast of Malabar, it was the custom for wives to throw themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands.─Voltaire. And among the Negro races of Africa the same custom has been noted. Among the aboriginal natives of the North American Continent, somewhat similar customs prevailed to those referred to in India among the Brahmins; wives and slaves had to sacrifice themselves at a chief’s funeral. The ancient Scandinavian tribes, the worshippers of Odin, anticipated their entry after death into the Hall of Valhalla, otherwise “the hall of those dead by violence,” and hence old persons and others who had failed to die in battle, were led to seek death at their own hands. Christianity, the greatest Religion, founded upon and springing from the decadent Jewish Faith, at once condemned suicide, thus following up the traditions which the Jews had preserved from their earliest times. The Fathers of the Christian Church denounced it; St. Augustine in his “City of God,” St. Chrysostom, and Thomas Aquinas, are particularly prominent in inveighing against the enormity of the offence, and yet even these condoned the sin in certain instances. The Councils of the Church repeatedly censured it. The Council of Arles, A.D. 452, condemned it as a crime, which could only be due to diabolical energy. The Council of Braga, A.D. 563, repeated the condemnation. The Council of Auxerre, A.D. 578, inflicted a penalty on its commission, viz.: no commemoration was to be made in the Eucharist, and no Psalms were to be sung at the burial.