The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1889-12-18
FEELINGS ABOUT DEATH.
The Pagan Wants to Die Suddenly, Blu
the Christian Does Not.


the Christian Does Not.
1t is an interesting inquiry why civil
lied man has for so long time mani
tested horror of sudden death, The
pagans knew no such feeling, but, on
the contrary, they prayed for the mode
of death which to Christians has APP
peared so dreadful that they have for
INFLATED special petitions for protection
from it. This fear and repugnance are
certainly not grounded in experience or
reason, nor can they be said to repre-
sent an altruistic sentiment. For it is
indisputab BILE that, so far as the subject
is concerned swift and painless death
is preferable to that which comes at the
close of lingering illness and
much physical suffering. Nor can
there be found any support in
philosophy for the apprehension of
sudden and instantaneous death, for it
is clear that such taking off does
away with all the fearful looking for
ward, the agonizing anticipations, the
morbid and gloomy thoughts, which
beset the sufferer who journeys slowly
toward the Valley of the Shadow.
Nor, indeed, is the common sense of
mankind so far astray on this subject as
the conventional position indicates.
Speaking in the freedom Of private con-
versation, many persons are heard to
express the thought that they would
prefer this form of death to any other
for themselves. Curiously enough, they
fail to apply what is natural sentiment
with them to the cases of others, and
when relative or friend is laid on a
bed of suffering the majority would
think it shockingly inhuman to wish for
their speedy deliverance. Evidently the
under any cond itions is better than
death. But upon what view of death
does this idea depend? Surely not upon
the Christian view. In effect the whole
way of thinking represented is pagan.
| That which it so shrunk from is the
most material and unspiritual of visions.
To die, from this point of view, is ''to
lie in cold obstruction and to rot" and
all the time to be conscious of what is
going on. Philosophy, religion, physi-
ology, psychology, are each and all de-
fined and set at naught by so crude, con-
fused, fantastic and impossible con-
ception! The old Greeks knew better.
Their fine sense of estheticism saved
them from grotesque combinations of
medieval superstition and barbarious ig-
norance which the modern races have
inherited, and to which they cling with
scarcely suspicion of the incongruitY
of their belief.
Lessing's essay upon the manner in
which the Greeks represented Death is
full of instruction and suggestion upon
the subject. The grizzly skeleton of the
middle ages was represented among the
Hellenes by beautiful boy bearing an
inverted torch. Instead of symbols OF
mourning such as have come to typify
mortality, those old pagans delicately
suggested the passage from matter tc
spirit by the figure of the butterfly ris
ing above the rent chrysalis. Death
and love were with them never far sep
arated, and the CANCEL of the Darker
Drink in their graceful and subtle
mythology came often as a friend, with
smiling lips and welcoming hands
and never as the frowning fend
our morbid fancy paints him
There was more unselfishness = in
that archaic view than in the modern
one. Moreover, the ancients looked a
death with the eyes of the dying, an6
not from the position of the survivors
Tears and grief for these there must be
: but the sorrow which pictured the de
parted as gamer by his removal wa
less likely to endure than that which
virtually. and despite conventional fic
lions or belief, regards the dead as no
only gone forever from the rays of thu
sun, but as RELOCATED to some vague ant
misty form of existence beyond compre
hension and realization. and therefore
useless for consolation, stimulus or hope
IN. Y. Tribune.