his ghost would be able to return and harry the surviver, or at least that some dire retribution must fall on the head of his enemy who drove him to such extreme measures.[6] Again, custom required that if a man committed suicide, letting it be known that it was on this account, the person with whom he had had the difference that led to this abominable act must immediately follow his example.[7]
Lord Avebury’s statement:[8] “It is said that in China, if a rich man is condemned to death, he can sometimes purchase a willing substitute at a very small expense,” has been traversed and Professor Parker would not commit himself any further than by saying: “It is popularly stated that substitutes can be bought for Taels fifty, and most certainly this statement is more than true, so far as the price of human life is concerned; but it is quite another question whether the gaolers and judges can always be bribed.”[9] Dr. W. T. A. Barber, who had been a missionary in China, relates that he had known very large numbers of persons who committed suicide out of spite against some one else, “the idea being, first, the trouble given by minions of the law to the survivor; second that the dead would gain a vantage ground by becoming a ghost, and thus able to plague his enemy in the flesh.”[10]
It is not surprising to learn that in ancient times, before the advent of Christianity, among such savage people as the Celts and the Thracians suicide was not only common but treated with the most appalling lightness and even flippancy. Thus Athenæeus, speaking of the banquets of the Thracians, quotes from Seleucus as follows: “And Seleucus says, ‘that some of the Thracians at their drinking parties play the game of hanging; and fix a round noose to some high place, exactly beneath which they place a stone which is easily turned round when any one stands upon it; and then they cast lots, and he who draws the lot, holding a sickle in his hand, stands upon the stone, and puts his neck into the halter; and then another person comes and raises the stone, and the man who is suspended, when the stone moves from under him, if he is not quick enough in cutting the rope with his sickle, is killed; and the rest laugh, thinking his death good sport.’ ”[11]
Upon the authority of the famous Stoic philosopher, Posidonius, Athenæus tells us of similar brutalities which took place among the Celts. He writes: “But Posidonius,[12] in the
