The suicide of the Samaritaine.

Recently the newspapers reported the following fact: “Yesterday (April 7, 1858), at about seven o'clock in the evening, a man of about fifty years of age and decently dressed, presented himself at the establishment of the Samaritaine, in Paris, and ordered a bath to be prepared for him. After about two hours had passed, the attendant on duty, surprised by the customer's silence, decided to enter his cabinet, in order to verify what was happening. A horrifying scene then met his eyes: the unfortunate man had cut his throat with a razor and all his blood mingled with the water of the bathtub. And, as the identity of the suicide could not be ascertained, the corpse was removed to the morgue.” We thought we might draw an instruction useful to our learning from a conversation with the Spirit of this man. We therefore evoked him on April 13, consequently only six days after his death.

I pray God Almighty to permit the Spirit of the individual who committed suicide on April 7, 1858, in the baths of the Samaritaine, to communicate with us.

Answer. – Wait… (After a few seconds) Here he is.

Observation. – To understand this answer one must know that there is generally a familiar Spirit, of the medium or of the family, at all regular meetings, who is always present without needing to be called. It is he who makes the evoked Spirits come and, according as he is more or less elevated, he himself serves as messenger or gives orders to the Spirits inferior to him. When our meetings have Miss Ermance Dufaux as interpreter, it is always the Spirit Saint Louis who willingly takes charge of this task.

Where do you find yourself today?

Answer. – I do not know… tell me.

In the Galerie Valois, Palais-Royal, no. 35, at a meeting of persons who study Spiritism and who are benevolent toward you.

Answer. – Tell me whether I am alive… I am suffocating in the coffin.

Who impelled you to come here?

Answer. – I feel relieved.

What was the motive that dragged you to suicide?

Answer. – Dead? I? No… for I dwell in my body… You do not know how I suffer!… I am suffocating… Would that a compassionate hand might annihilate me once and for all! Observation. – His soul, though separated from the body, is still completely immersed in what might be called the whirlwind of corporeal matter; lively still are the earthly ideas in him, to the point of believing himself incarnate.

Why did you not leave clues that might make you recognizable?

Answer. – I am abandoned; I fled from suffering to give myself over to torture.

Do you still have the same motives for remaining unknown?

Answer. – Yes; do not stir with a red-hot iron the wound that bleeds.

Could you give us your name, age, profession, and residence?

Answer. – Absolutely not.

Did you have a family, a wife, children?

Answer. – I was a despised man; no one loved me.

And what did you do to be thus repudiated?

Answer. – How many are so, as I am!… A man can live abandoned in the bosom of the family, when no one esteems him.

At the moment of taking your own life did you not experience any hesitation?

Answer. – I longed for death… I hoped to rest.

How is it that the idea of the future did not make you renounce such a project?

Answer. – I did not believe in it at all. I was a disillusioned man. The future is hope.

What reflections occurred to you on feeling the extinction of life?

Answer. – I did not reflect, I felt… But life was not extinguished in me… my soul is bound to the body… I am not dead… and yet, I feel the worms gnawing at me.

What sensation did you experience at the decisive moment of death?

Answer. – Has it, then, been accomplished?

Was the moment in which life was extinguished in you painful?

Answer. – Less painful than afterward. Only the body suffered. (Saint Louis continues): “The Spirit unburdened itself of the load that oppressed it; it felt the voluptuousness of pain.” (To Saint Louis): Does such a state always follow suicide?

Answer. – “Yes. The Spirit of the suicide remains bound to the body until the end of that life. Natural death is the liberation of life: suicide ruptures it completely.”

Does the same occur in accidental deaths, though involuntary, but which shorten existence?

Answer. – No. What do you understand by suicide? The Spirit answers only for its own acts.

Observation. – We had prepared a series of questions that we proposed to address to the Spirit of this man about his new existence; in view of the answers, they became purposeless; for us, it was evident that he had no consciousness of his situation; his suffering was the only thing he could describe to us. This doubt of death is very common in persons recently disincarnated and especially in those who, during life, did not raise the soul above matter. It is a phenomenon that seems singular at first sight, but which is naturally explained. If we ask an individual, somnambulized for the first time, whether he is sleeping, he will almost always answer no, and this answer is logical: it is the interlocutor who puts the question badly, using an improper term. In common language, the idea of sleep is attached to the suspension of all the sensitive faculties; now, the somnambulist who thinks, who sees and feels, who is conscious of his liberty, does not believe himself asleep, and in fact he is not sleeping, in the vulgar sense of the word. This is the reason why he answers no, until he becomes familiar with this manner of apprehending the fact. The same happens with the man who has just disincarnated; for him death was the annihilation of the being, and, like the somnambulist, he sees, feels, and speaks, and thus he does not consider himself dead, and affirms this until he acquires the intuition of his new state. [1]

Translator's note: See Heaven and Hell, – Second Part. – Chapter V. – Suicides. – The suicide of the Samaritaine.