The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-09-14
DEATH-AND AFTERWARDS.
In Arnold, in the Fortnightly Review.

the further world proclalms lt. There Is rest
less instinct, uhquenchable hope, silent dis
content with the very best of transitory pleas
ures which perpetually disturb his skeptieism
or shake his resignation; but only few feel
quite certain that they will never cease to exist.
The vast majority either put the question
aside, being absorbed in the pursuits of life;
or grow weary of meditating it with
out result; or incline to think, not
without melancholy satisfaction, that the
death of the body brings an end to the individ
nal Of these, the happiest and most useful in
their generation are the healthy minded ones
who are too full of vigor or too much busted
with pleasure duty. to trouble themselves
about death and its effects. The most envabie
are such as find, or affect to find, in the author
ity of the arguments of any extant religion,
suficing demonstration of a future existence.
And perhaps the most foolish those who,
following ardent researches of science, learn so
little at the knees of their ''stareyed" mistress
as to believe those forces which are called intel
lect and will capable Of extinction, while they
discover and proclaim the endless conservation
of motion and matter
If all sure what a difference it would
of developed science one word from the lips of
some clearly accredited herald sent by the depart
ed would turn nine-tenths of the sorrows of
earth into disguised joys, and abolish quite as
large a proportion of the faults and vices OF
mankind. Men and women are naturally good;
it is fear and the feverish passion to get much
as possible out of the brief span Of mortal years,
which breed most human offenses. And many
noble and gentle souls, which will not stoop to
selfish sins, even because life is short, live
in, thoro cd po11c IF
earth under sentence from which there is no
appeal. waiting in sad but courageous incertitude
the last day of their incarceration: afraid to
love- to rejoice, to labor and to hope,
lest love shall end in eternal part
Ing, gladness in the cherries dust.
generous tolls in the irony of results efaced and
hope itself in a vast and scornful denial What
change if all these could really believe that
they are cherished guests in an intermediate
mansion of the universe, not doomed captives in
one of its dungeons! How happy, as well as
fair and attractive this planet would become if
1t were not doctrine, not theory, not poetic
dream, but fact seen and accepted that death
arrives not like Monsieur de Paris, to strip
the criminal, to clip his collar and hair and lop
away from him life and love and delight; but as
mother lullirg her children to sleep, so that
they may wake ready for play in the fresh morn
ing; as the gentlest angel of all the ministers of
man, bringing him much more than birth ever
brought, and leading him by path full of
miracles of soft arrangement, and delicately
contrived for his benefit as is the process of
birth itself, to brighter heights of existence,
simple in their turn and order as the first drops
of the breast milk of his mother and neither
more nor less wonderful!
There is thing to say hereupon, even
if one should personally and sincerely declare
he was quite sure he should never cease to be.
That would be worth nothing philosophically,
and be rendered no whit more valuable because
a man should have studied all the creeds and
read all the systems, and be eager to convey the
assurance which mono of all these can give or
take away. Goodwill may recommend d con
vctioE, but cannot impart it, Yet there
reflections apart from all conventional assertions
and dogmas, which might be worth indicting,
rather as suggestions to other minds than argu
ments; rather as indications of fresh paths of
thought than rs guiding along them. And the
first which occurs is to represent the great mis-
take of refusing to believe in the continuity of
individual life because of the incomprehensi-
biity of it, Existence around US, illumi-
mated by modern sciences, is full of ncred-
ible occurrences; one mora or less makes
no logical difference. There is positively not
single prodigy IN the ancient religions but ha s
its everyday illustration in nature Transfer
nations of classic gods and goddesses are grossly
commonplace to the magic of the medusa, which
is now filling our summer seas with floating
bells or crystal and amethyst. Born from the
CLASSY goblet of their mother, the young hydro
zoon becomes first free germ resembling rice
grain; next fixed cup with four lips; then those
lips turn to tentacles. and it is hyaline flower,
which splits across the calyx into segments and
the protean thing has grown into pine cone
crowned with tuft of transparent flaments.
The cone changes into series of sea daisies
threaded on pearly stalk; and these, one by
one, break off and float away, each a perfect
little medusa. with purple bell and trailing
tentacles. What did zeus or Hermes
ever effect like that? Does anybody find the
Immaculate Conception incredible? The
nearest rose bush may rebuke him, since he
will see there the aphides, which. in their wing
less state, produce, without union, creatures
like themselves; and these again, though un-
coupled bring forth fresh broods, down to the
tenth or eleventh generation; when, 10! on
sudden winged males and females suddenly re-
suit and pair Or is the Buddhist dogma of
Immortality in the past for every existent indi-
vidual too tremendous a demands The lowest
living thing, the protameba, has obviously never
died! 1t is formless film of protoplasm which
multiplies by simple division; and the specimen
under any modern microscope Derives and must
derive in unbroken existence from the amoeba
which moved and fed forty 9oRs ago. The living
slime of our nearest puddle lived before the Alps
were made!
1t is not. therefore, on account of the incred-
Utility of conscious life after death that sensi
BILE people should doubt it. l stood last year in
the central aisle of the health exhibition at
South Kensington, and observed a graceful
English girl lost in momentary interest the
showcase containing the precise ingredients of her
fair and perfect frame. There-neatly measured
out, labeled, and deposited in trays or bottles
were exposed the water. the lime, the phos-
phorus. the sex. the iron and other various ee-
ments, perversey styled clay" which go to the
building up of our houses of flesh and bone As
] watched her balfamused, halfpensiye
countenance the verse came to mind 'Whv
should it seem to you a wonderful thing though
one rose from the dead9' Minerals and gases
have, so science opines, an atomic and ethereal
life in their PARTICLES and if we could only
imagine them conversing elementally,
how sceptical they would be that
any power could put together the coarse
ingredients of that glass case, to form by delicate
chemistry of nature the peerless beauty, the joy
Gus health, the exquisite capacities and the
lovely human life of the bright maiden who con-
templated with unconvinced smiles those mate
rails of her beipg! But if. passing behind such
had dared to speak to her of the deeper secrets
in nature which she herself embodied and en-.