St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-02-16
DEATH.
The Unsolved Mystery That Puz-
zles Philosophers.

Sc ottish Review.
Philosophers have concerned them
selves much with attempts to define
death, but as they have not been able
to agree first how TO define life, it is not
surprising that they have not been very
successful in defining its negative.
Men, for the most part, are interested
more in finding practical answers to the
question. "ls life worth living?" than
i'll pursuing scientific analyses of the
nature of life itself. There is a much
more general disposition to speculate on
the nature of death. Life we know in
some sort, bat death is an absolutely
mysterious is always more interesting
than that which is patent even if I'M
comprehended.
Life is familiar, but death must al
ways remain a mystery and an unsolved
problem to the living being. When
Faber wrote: death is an u~nsuryeyed
land, an ~unarranged science" he eX-
pressed what still remains the sum of
conceptions. 1t is true that Her
bert Spencer has attempted a more
scientific formula. He tells us
that life is The definite COM
bination of heterogeneous changes,
both simultaneous and success
sive, in correspondence with external
coexistences and consequences" =
which. if not very ineligible to the
nOn-scientiic mind, has led to much
heated disputatiOn i'll philOsophic cir
Giles. The best that Can be said for this
definition is, that it is at least as near
the mark as any other. But does 1t
bring us any nearer to a knowledge OF
yrho n 6notb l.. m hn told that IN iS Sim NV
a want of that correspondence" of re-
lations which is defined as life?
The mystery OF nOt-being still re-
mains greater than the mystery of
being. When Socrates suggested that
pleasure is a state OF nOt-paiD, the mind
can more readily grasp the significance
than in a thesis which declares that
death is not life. But Socrates, a. we
know, argues that while life is contrary
to death, death is produced from life
and life from death. He also forced
the long-suffering Simmias to adj
init that, if death is anything; it
is nothing else than the separation
of the soul from the body. 'Is not this
to die" he asked, flor the body to be
apart by itself separated from the soul,
and for the soul to subsist apart by
itself separated from the bOdyr Phil
Osophy he affirmed to be in itself moth
ing else than a preparation for, and
meditation on, notwithstanding that
death and philosophy have this in COM
soul from the body, philosophy draws
off the mind from bodily things to the
contemplation of abstract truths.
Therefore, Il man that fears death can
neither be a philosopher nor a true
lover of wisdom. This is all veryfine, but
somehow the philosophic admiration of
death seems to suggest the face OF MI.
Mould, the undertaken, in whose coun-
tenance a queer attempt at melancholy
was at odds with a smirk of satisfaction.
"What is DEATH says Seneca, ''but a
ceasing to be what we were befOre?'
And where all life dies" says Milton,
''death lives" which may all be accept
ed without the least enlightenIng us
about 1.-The strange, mysterious power
seen every day, yet never understood
but by the 'uncOmmunicatlve dead"
Humboldt owned that he had never
known the feeling of an anxious longing
for death, yet held that death is not a
break in eXistence-it is but an inter
mediate circumstance. a transition
from one form Of our finite existence to
another.
job did not feel this when he spoke of
"a land of darkness, as darkness itself,
and of the shadow of death, without
any order and where light is as dark
ness" But it is difficult to think other
wise in regarding the form of a dead
child, where is, as Leigh Hunt says,
death in its sublimest and purest image.
THE sense of death is most in appre-
hension," and the apprehension is more
general than SOutheY would have 1t, for
he declared as the result of his ObServa-
ton that the fear Of death is not COM
mon. Where it exists. he said, it proceeds
rather from a diseased and enfeebled
mind than from any principle III our
nature. But he is surely wrong, for it
is an iueradicable principle in our ma
ture to fear the unknown. even while
we strive with 1t. Even the Christians
most ardent desire TO depart and be
with Christ cannot wholly obllterate the
feeling of dread of the dark passage
which has to be traverSed before is
reached the commlngliDg of time with
eternity.
The Russian exile shudders as he
crosses the river Irk0Ot by "the ferry of
DEATH" because he knows ii will divide
him forever from what he has known.
while beyond it lies the awful mystery
Of Siberia. Sibenkas, in his fantastic,
philosophic fashion, %contended that
both men and watches stop while they
are being wound up for a new aud
larger day. The dark intervals of sleep
and death, he believed, act as the pre-
servatives against the light of an idea
which would otherwise grow too strong,
and against the burning of n~ever-cooled
desires and the mingling and comming-
ling of thoughts, just as planetary sys-
TENS are kept asunder by WIDE wastes.
1.-The eternal day, which would else
blind our spirits. is divided into diurnal
periods by midsummer nights, which at
one time We call sleep-at another,
DEATH"