feeling naturally implanted in the human breast, and it was only when nations were entirely barbarian or had became decadent and corrupt that the notion of suicide was held up as noble and even heroic. Whatever certain among the later Greeks may have practised and taught, in earlier days, as we have seen, the act of suicide was regarded as a dark and presumptuous deed. They truly felt that there was in it something of ἀσέβεια,[15] something of that ὕβρις which so surely stirred the wrath of heaven and inevitably called down righteous vengeance. Indeed the evil and malice of suicide did not end with death but continued beyond the grave. The umbra of a man who had slain himself was dreaded and feared. So in ancient Athens it was the custom to cut off the hand of a suicide and to cremate it or at least to bury it far from his body, the object of such mutilation being to prevent his ghost from attacking the living.[16]
Similar beliefs exist among native African tribes. Thus the Wajagga of East Africa dread the spectres of suicides. When a man has hanged himself a certain complicated ceremonial becomes imperative. They take the rope from his neck and suspend a goat in the noose, after which the animal is swiftly slain. The idea seems that hereby the phantom will be in some way appeased, and he will not be so likely to tempt human beings to follow his evil example.[17]
The Baganda of Central Africa have an even greater horror of the ghosts of suicides, and the most elaborate precautions are invariably taken to protect themselves against these dangerous visitors. The body of a man who has destroyed himself is removed as far from all human habitation as possible, to waste land or to a cross-road, and there is utterly consumed with fire. Next the wood of the house in which the horrid deed has been done is burned to ashes and scattered to the winds; whilst if the man has hanged himself upon a tree this is hewn to the ground and committed to the flames, trunk, roots, branches and all. Even this is hardly deemed to be sufficient. Curiously enough there is a lurking idea that the ghost of a suicide may survive after the cremation of the body, so horrible is this crime felt to be and so irradicated the taint that this terrible deed establishes. This is extremely significant since the cases in which cremation, a complete purgation and destruction by fire, cannot obliterate guilt and
