The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1869-12-11
THE PHENOMENA or DEATH.

death than his own birth. Born withou
the consciousness Of suffering and yet sub
: jected at the time to what in after life
would be extreme suffering, he would die
if the perfect law be fulfilled in Linn, il
him, in like manner oblivious to all pain
mental and physicrl. At his entrance into
the world, he sleeps into existence and
awakeus into knowledge; at his exit from
the world, his physical cycle completed, he
dozes into sleep ard sleeps into death.
The true euthanasia, or purely painless,
purely natural physical death, is described
in its perfection, as among the most won.
deriul of natural phenomena. The facul-
ties of mind which have been intellectual,
without pain; or anger or sorrow, lose their
sway, retire, rest. Ideas of time and place
are gradually lost ambition ceases re.
pose is the one thing asked for, and sleep
day by day gently and genially wiles away
the hours. The wakings are short, care
less, painless, happy awakenings to busy
world, to hear sounes of children at play
to hear, just audibly, gentle voices offering
aid and comfort, to talk little on simple
things, and by the merest weakness, to be
enticed once again into that soothing sleep
which, day by day, with more frequent
repetition, overpowers all. At last the in
| tellectual man reduced to the instructive,
the consummation is desirable and with
out pain or struggle or knowledge OF the
coming event, the deep sleep that falls so
often is the sleep perpetual-euthanasia.
This as it is described, is the death by na>
ture and when mankind has learned the
truth, when, as will be, the time shall come
"that there shall be no more an infant of
day." the act of death shall be as nercifully
accomplished as any operation which, on
the living body stepped in deep oblivion,
the modern surgeon painlessly performs.
From the process of the purely natura
death there are some exceptions. The su'
preme organizing mind has exposed us to
natural accidents, in which the death, sud
den, unexpected, inevitable, is painless also.
Lightning stroke, sun stroke, crash of mat.
ter, swift bureal in great waters-these are
common acts of nature that kill, and so
quickly that the body hath not time to
know or to feel. To experience pleasure of
pain, we have to receive the impression, and
it has to be transmitted to the organ Of the
mind here it has to be fixed or regis
tered lastly, that the mind has to become
aware that the impression is registered,
which last act is in truth the conscious act.
Time is required for this, although almost
inappreciable. Destruction by lightning
stroke is so swift that the impression con-
veyed to the body is not registered, and
therefore is not known CT tels.
1t is the same with sudden immersion in
water, consequent insensablity and restora>
tion. The experience ot some who have
undergone this is, entire loss of all consci-
ousuess of all that took place from and af-
ter the immersion. Nature is kind in her
determined, unrelentiug action.
And even in death caused by the action
of the spirit of free will man, which renders
the world practically chamber of suicides
for, by want, by pleasure, by care, by
strife, by labor, by Incidence, by courage,
by cowardioe, by lust by unnatural chastity,
by debacemeut, by ambition, By generosity,
by avarice, BY pride, by servility, by love,
by hate, and by all the Numbered opposed
and opposing passions in their access, we
die, We KILT is on the whole not cruel
or painful. In all the pestilence, the brain
Of the stricken unusually loeseS its func-
tioDs long before dissolution, and to the
sufferer the last act is restless sleep. In
extremely violent death from human causes,
the railway collision, the crush in battle,
life is extiugushed in a momeu: without
the CONSCIOUSNESS Of pain. In consump.
ton, although painful to behold, how many
of its victims live to their final hour in
happy planning of the future and die in
the dream.
The points on the subject are simply
these:
Nature, which is to us the visible mani,
festation of the Supreme intelligence, is Sen-
efcent in the inAiction of the act of death !;
that thwarted in her ways, she is still benz
efcent, aud that she may be trusted by
her children.
The great law and intention of nature, is
that in death there should be no suffering
whatever