The record-union., 1891-03-17
DEATH.
The Unso1ved Mystery That Puzzles
Philosophers.

philosophers.
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 sur
prlslng that they have not been very sue
cessful in defining its negative. Men, for
the most part, are interested more in find
Ing practical answers to the question, "Is
life worth living?" than in pursuing sci
entlfic analysis of the nature of life itself.
There is much more general disposition
to speculate ON the nature of death. Life
we know in some sort, but death is an
absolutely unknown quantity. That
which is mysterious is always more in
teresting than that which is patent even
If uncomprehended. Life is familiar, but
death must always remain a mystery and
an unsolved problem to the living being.
When Faber wrote, death is an unsur-
veyed land, an unarranged SCIENCE" he
expressed what still remains the sum of
our conceptions. 1t is true that Mr.. Her.
bert Spencer has attempted a more sci
entific formula. He tells us that life is
The definite combination of heterogene-
Gus changes, both simultaneous and sue
ceSsIve, in correspondence with external
co-eXistences and sequences''-which, if
not very Ineligible to the non-scientific
mind, has led to much heated diSputation
in philosophic circles. The best that can
be said for this definition is, that it is at
least as near the mark as any other. But
does it bring US any nearer to a knowl-
edge of what death is, to be told that it is
simply want of that correspondence"
of relations which is defined as life?
The mystery of not-being still remains
greater than the mystery of being. When
Socrates suggested that pleasure is state
of not-pain, the mind can more readily
grasp the significance than in thesis
which declares that death is not life. But
Socrates, as we know, argued that while
life is contrary to death, death IS pro-
duced from life and life from DEATH He
also forced the long-suffering Simmias to
admit that, if death is anything, it is moth
ing else than the separation of the soul
from the body. ''Is not this to die," he
asked, ''for the body to be apart by itself
separated from the soul, and for the soul
to subsiSt apart by itself separated from
the body?" Philosophy he affirmed to
be In itself nothing else than prepara-
ton for, and meditation on, death-as-
serting that death and philosophy have
rates the soul from the body, philosophy
draws on the mind from bodily things to
the contemplation of abstract truths.
Therefore, a man who fears death can
neither be philosopher nor true lover
of wisdom.
philosophic admiration of death seems to
suggest the face of Mr.. Mould, the under
taker, IN whose countenance queer at
tempt at melancholy was at odds with a
smirk OF satisfaction. ''What is death,''
says Seneca, "but ceasing to be what we
were before?'' ''And where all life dies.'
says Milton, ''death lives" Which may
all be accepted without in the least en-
Tightening us about ''the strange, myste-
rlous power seen every day, yet never
understood but by the uncOmmunicatiye
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-itis is but an inter
mediate circumstance, a transition from
one form Of our finite existence to an
other. Job did not feel this when he
spoke of "a land of darkness, as darkness
itself, and of the shadow of death, with
out any order and where light is as dark
ness" But it is difficult to think other
wise in regarding the form of dead
child, where is, as Leigh Hunt says, death
in its SubllmeSt and purest image. 1.-THE
sense of death is most in apprehension"
and the apprehension is more general
than Southey would have it, for he de-
clared as the result of his observation
that the fear of death is not common.
Where it exists, he said, it proceeds rath-
er from diseased and enfeebled mind
than from any principle in our nature.
But he is surely wrong, for it is an inc
radicable principle in our nature to fear
1hc uhhhONH. even WIllS we strive
with it.
Even the Christians most ardent desire
to depart and be with Christ cannot
wholly obliterate the feeling of dread of
the dark passage which has to be trav-
ersed before is reached the commingling
of time with eternity. The Russian exile
shudders as he crosses the River Irish by
''the ferry of death,' because he knows
it will divide him forever from what he
has known, while beyond it lies the aw-
tul mystery of Siberia. Siebenkas, in his
fantastic philosophic fashion, contended
that both men and watches stop while
they are being wound up for new and
larger day. The dark interval of sleep
and death, he believed, act as the preser-
vatives against the light of an idea, which
would otherwise grow too strong, and
against the burning of never-cooled de-
sires, and the mingling and commingline
of thoughts, just as planetary systems are
kept asunder by wide wastes. .The eter-
nal 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."-Scott-
lsh ReUieac.