Suicide through obsession.

— One reads in the Droit:

“Mr. Jean-Baptiste Sadoux, manufacturer of canoes at Joinville-le-Pont, caught sight yesterday of a young man who, after having wandered for some time upon the bridge, climbed onto the parapet and threw himself into the Marne. Immediately he went to his aid and, at the end of seven minutes, drew him out. But the asphyxia was already complete, all the attempts made to revive that unfortunate having been fruitless.

“A letter found upon him revealed that he was Mr. Paul D…, twenty-two years of age, residing in the rue Sedaine, in Paris. The letter, addressed by the suicide to his father, was extremely touching. He asked his pardon for abandoning him and said that for two years he had been dominated by a terrible idea, by an irresistible will to destroy himself. He added that he seemed to hear outside of life a voice that called him without respite and, despite all his efforts, he could not prevent himself from going to it. They found, also, in the pocket of his coat, a new rope, in which a slipknot had been made. After the medico-legal examination, the body was delivered to the family.” The obsession here is quite evident and, what is no less so, is that Spiritism is completely foreign to him, a new proof that this evil is not inherent to the belief. But, if Spiritism has nothing to do with the case, it alone can give its explanation. Here is the instruction given in this regard by one of our familiar Spirits, and from which it stands out that, despite the impulse to which the young man yielded to his misfortune, he did not succumb to fatality. He had his free will and, with more will, could have resisted. Had he been a Spiritist, he would have understood that the voice that solicited him could be none other than that of an evil Spirit and the terrible consequences of an instant of weakness.

(Paris. – Desliens Group, December 20, 1868. – Medium: Mr. Nivard.)

The voice said: Come! come! But that voice of the tempter would have been ineffective, had the direct action of the Spirit not made itself felt. The poor suicide was called and was impelled. Why? His past was the cause of the painful situation in which he found himself; he clung to life and feared death. But, I ask, in that incessant appeal he heard, did he find strength? No; he drew the weakness that ruined him. He overcame his fears, because, in the end, he hoped to find on the other side of life the repose that this side denied him. He was deceived: the repose did not come. The darkness surrounds him, his conscience reproaches him for the act of weakness, and the Spirit that dragged him down jeers around him and riddles him with constant mockery. The blind man does not see him, but hears the voice that repeats to him: Come! come! And then mocks his tortures. The cause of this case of obsession lies in the past, as I have just said; the obsessor himself was impelled to suicide by the very one whom he has just made fall into the abyss. She was his wife in the preceding existence and had suffered considerably from the dissoluteness and the brutalities of her husband. Too weak to accept with resignation and courage the situation that was given to her, she sought in death a refuge against her ills. She avenged herself afterward, and you know how. Nevertheless, the act of this unfortunate was not fatal; he had accepted the risks of the temptation; this was necessary to his advancement, because it alone could make disappear the stain that had soiled his previous existence. He had accepted its risks with the hope of being stronger and had deceived himself: he succumbed. He will begin again later; will he resist? This will depend on him. Pray to God for him, so that He may give him the calm and the resignation he so needs, the courage and the strength not to fail in the trials he will have to bear later.

Louis Nivard.