nd maintain such rates, with little or no alteration,
long after their environment has completely changed? These questions may
not have great practical importance, but, from the view-point of the
psychologist and the sociologist, they are full of speculative interest.

When we study the phenomena of suicide as they appear in the light of
statistics, we are struck by the fact that among the general and
world-wide conditions that limit or control the suicidal impulse are
weather and war. Other factors, such as education, religion, or economic
status, may seem to be more influential, if observation be limited to a
single nation or a single continent; but if a comprehensive survey be
made of the whole world, weather and war will be seen to take a
prominent place among the few agencies that affect uniformly the
suicidal tendency.

As soon as accurate and trustworthy statistics of self-destruction
became available in Europe, sociologists began to study the question
whether suicide is controlled or regulated in any way by natural laws,
and, if so, whether cosmical causes, such as climate, temperature,
season, and weather, have any perceptible influence upon the suicide
rate. It was soon discovered that the tendency to self-destruction is
greatest in the zone lying between the fiftieth and fifty-fifth
parallels of north latitude. South of forty-three degrees the annual
suicide rate is only 21 per million, and north of fifty-five degrees it
is only 88 per million; but between the parallels of forty-three and
fifty it rises to 93 per million, and between fifty and fifty-five it
reaches its maximum of 172 per million. The suicide belt, therefore,
lies in the north temperate zone, where the climate is most favorable to
human development and happiness. This fact, however, does not prove that
a moderate and equable climate predisposes to suicide. Things may
coexist without being in any way related to each other, and the
frequency of suicide in the north temperate zone may be due wholly to
the fact that the zone in question is the home of the most cultivated
races and the seat of the highest and most complicated civilization. In
this zone the struggle for life is fiercest, the interference with
natural laws is most extensive, and the physical and emotional wear and
tear of the economic contest is most acutely felt. It is more than
probable, therefore, that the high rate of suicide in the north
temperate zone is due to the civilizatio