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Emanuel Sternheim
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Death-and Afterwards
;
BY
SIR EDWIN ARNOLD, м.A., K.C.I.E.,
Author of "The Light of Asia"
WITH A SUPPLEMENT
*
REPRINTED BY AUTHORITY FROM THE FOURTEENTH
ENGLISH EDITION

LITERIS
NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY
PUBLISHERS ✰✰ NEW YORK ✰✰ MDCCCXCVII
५
**
“ Διὸς ἴμερος οὐκ εὐθήρατος ἐτύχθη.”
ÆSCH. Suppl.
ܙܝ
"Unto this day it doth my hertë boote
That I have had my worlde, as in my time."
CHAUCER.
"Never the spirit was born, the spirit will cease to be never;
Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams!
Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit
for ever;
Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of
it seems!"
The Song Celestial.
375352
Death-and Afterwards
M
AN is not by any means convinced as
yet of his immortality. All the great re-
ligions have in concert, more or less positively,
affirmed it to him; but no safe logic proves it,
and no entirely accepted voice from some farther
world proclaims it. There is a restless instinct,
an unquenchable hope, a silent discontent with
the very best of transitory pleasures, which per-
petually disturb his scepticism or shake his
resignation; but only a 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
¦
1
6
Death-
of meditating it without result; or incline to
think, not without melancholy satisfaction, that
the death of the body brings an end to the
individual. Of these, the happiest and most
useful in their generation are the healthy-
minded ones who are too full of vigor or
too much busied with pleasure or duty, to
trouble themselves about death and its effects.
The most enviable are such as find, or affect
to find, in the authority or the arguments of
any extant religion, sufficing demonstration of a
future existence. And perhaps the most foolish
are those who, following ardent researches of
science, learn so little at the knees of their
"star-eyed" mistress as to believe those forces
which are called intellect, emotion, and will,
capable of extinction, while they discover and
declare the endless conservation of motion.
and matter.
If we were all sure, what a difference it
would make! A simple "yes," pronounced
and Afterwards.
7
by the edict of immensely developed science;
one word from the lips of some clearly ac-
credited herald sent on convincing authority,
would turn nine-tenths of the sorrows of earth
into glorious joys, and abolish quite as large
a proportion of the faults and vices of man-
kind. Men and women are naturally good;
it is fear, and the feverish passion to get as
much as possible out of the brief span of mor-
tal years, which breed most human offences.
And many noble and gentle souls, which will
not stoop to selfish sins, even because life is
short, live prisoners, as it were, in their con-
demned cells of earth, under what they deem
a 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 labour, and to hope, lest love
shall end in eternal parting, gladness in cheer-
less dust, generous toils in the irony of results
effaced, and hope itself in a vast and scornful
W
}
8
Death
denial. What a change if all these could really
believe that they are cherished guests in an
intermediate mansion of a benign universe,
not doomed captives in one of its mournful
dungeons! How happy as well as fair and
attractive this planet would become if it were
not a doctrine, not a theory, not a poetic
dream, but a 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 de-
light; but as a mother lulling her children to
sleep, so that they may wake ready for play
in the fresh morning; as the gentlest angel of
all the many ministers of man, bringing him far
more than birth ever brought; and leading him
by a path as full of miracles of soft arrange-
ment, and as delicately contrived for his bene-
fit as is the process of birth itself, to heights
of advanced existence, simple, nevertheless, in
their turn and order as are the first drops of the
Sel
and Afterwards.
9
breast-milk of his mother, and neither more
nor less wonderful!
There is no new thing to say hereupon,
even if one should personally and sincerely
declare he was quite sure he had always ex-
isted, and should never cease to be. That
would be worth nothing philosophically, nor
be rendered a whit more valuable even if the
speaker should have studied all the creeds, and
mastered all the systems, and feel himself led by
something beyond them to state the assurance
which none of all these can give, or take
away. Good-will may recommend a convic-
tion, but cannot possibly impart it. Yet there
are reflections, disjoined from all conventional
assertions and religious dogmas, which may
be worth inditing, rather as suggestions to
other minds than arguments; rather as indica-
tions of fresh paths of thought than as pre-
suming to guide along them. And the first
which occurs is to represent the great mistake
IO
Death
S
of refusing to believe in the continuity of in-
dividual life because of the incomprehensi-
bility of it. Existence around us, illuminated by
modern sciences, is full of antecedently in-
credible occurrences; one more or less makes
no logical difference. There is positively not
a single prodigy in the ancient religions but
has its every-day illustration in Nature. The
transformations of classic gods and goddesses
are grossly commonplace to the magic of the
medusa, which is now filling our summer seas
with floating bells of crystal and amethyst.
Born from the glassy goblet of their mother,
the young hydrozoon becomes first a free germ
resembling a rice grain; next a fixed cup with
four lips; then those lips turn to tentacles, and
it is a hyaline flower; which presently splits
across the calyx into segments, and the protean
thing has grown into a pine-cone crowned
with a tuft of transparent filaments. The cone
changes into a series of sea-daisies, threaded
and Afterwards.
I I
on a 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 Doctrine of the Incar-
nation so incredible? The nearest rose-bush
may rebuke him, since he will see there the
aphides, which in their wingless state produce
without union creatures like themselves; and
these again, though uncoupled, bring forth fresh
broods, down to the tenth or eleventh gen-
eration; when, on a sudden, winged males
and females suddenly result, and pair. Or is
the Buddhist dogma of immortality in the past
for every existent individual too tremendous a
demand? The lowest living thing, the Prot-
amœba, has obviously never died! It is a
formless film of protoplasm, which multiplies
by simple division; and the specimen under
any modern microscope derives, and must de-
rive, in unbroken existence from the amoeba
I 2
Death-
which moved and fed forty cons ago. The
slime of our nearest puddle lived before the
Alps were made!
It is not, therefore, on account of the in-
credibility of a conscious life after death that
sensible people should doubt it. I stood last
year in the central aisle of the Health Exhi-
bition at South Kensington, and observed a
graceful English girl lost in momentary interest
over the showcase containing the precise in-
gredients of her fair and perfect frame. There
-neatly measured out, labelled, and deposited
in trays or bottles-were exposed the water,
the lime, the phosphorus, the silex, the iron,
and other various elements, perversely styled
<
'clay," which go to the building up of our
houses of flesh and bone. As I watched her
half-amused, half-pensive countenance, the verse
came to mind, "Why should it seem to you
wonderful thing, though one rose from the
dead?" Minerals and gases have, so science
"
and Afterwards.
13
opines, a kind of 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 them to-
gether in the coarse ingredients of that glass
case, so as to form by delicate chemistry of
Nature the youthful beauty, the joyous health,
the exquisite capacities, and the involved human
life of the bright maiden who contemplated
with unconvinced smiles those alleged materials
of her being! But if, passing behind such an
every-day analysis of the laboratory, science.
had dared to speak to her of the deeper secrets
in Nature which she herself embodied and
enshrined without the slightest consciousness
or comprehension on her part-how far more
wonderful the mystery of the chemistry of her
life would have appeared! Some very grave
and venerable F.R.S. might, perchance, have
ventured reverently to whisper: "Beautiful
human sister! built of the water, the flint, and
14
Death
the lime; you are much more marvellous than
all that! Your sacred simplicity does not and
must not yet understand your celestial com-
plexity! Otherwise you should be aware that,
hidden within the gracious house made of
those common materials-softly and silently
developed there by forces which you know
not, and yet govern, unwittingly exercising a
perpetual physiological magic-are tiny golden
beginnings of your sons and daughters to be.
You have heard of and marvelled at Iliads
written on films of fairy thinness, and enclosed
within nutshells! Diviner poems, in infinitely
finer characters, upon far subtler surfaces, are
inscribed upon each of those occult jewels of
your destined maternity! The history of al
the vanished lives of those to whom, by many
lines and stems, you are the charming heiress
-from their utmost heights of mental reach to
their smallest tricks of habit and feature; from
passions and propensities to moles and birth-
and Afterwards.
15
marks are occultly recorded in the invisible
epigraph of those enchanted germs, to be more
or less developed when the flame on that new
altar of later life, of which you are the sacred
priestess, brings to reproduction such miracu-
lous epitomes." She would not, and could
not, understand, of course; yet all this is mat-
ter of common observation, the well-established
fact of heredity by pangenesis, certain though
incomprehensible. What, therefore, is there to
be pronounced impossible, because of our blind-
ness, in regard to endless continuity and de-
velopments of individuality, when out of the
holy ignorance of such maidenly simplicity
there can be thus subtly and steadfastly pre-
pared the indescribable beginnings of mother-
hood? If one result of each human life should
be to produce, more or less completely, a
substantial, though at present invisible, environ-
ment for the next higher stage-while handing
on, by collateral lives, the lamp of humanity
16
Death-
to new hands-that would not be really more
strange than the condensation of the oak-tree
in the acorn, or the natural sorcery of the con-
tact of the milt and the spawn. "Miracles"
are cheap enough!
Another consideration having some force,
is that we should find ourselves speculating
about this matter at all. All the other aspirations
of infancy, youth, and manhood turn out more
or less, as time rolls, to have been prophecies.
Instincts explain and justify themselves, each
by each. The body foresees and provides for
its growth by appetite; the mind expands
towards knowledge by childish curiosity; the
young heart predicts, by the flushed cheek and
quickening pulse, that gentle master-passion.
which it has not yet learned even to name.
There is a significance, like the breath of a
perpetual whisper from Nature, in the way in
which the theme of his own immortality teases
and haunts a man. Note also that he discusses
and Afterwards.
17
it least and decides about it most dogmatically
in those diviner moments when the breath of a
high impulse sweeps away work-a-day doubts
and selfishnesses. What a blow to the philos-
ophy of negation is the sailor leaping from the
taffrail of his ship into an angry sea to save
his comrade or to perish with him! He has
never read either Plato or Schopenhauer-per-
haps not even that heavenly verse, "Whoso
loseth his life for my sake, the same shall save
it." But arguments which are as far beyond
philosophy, as the unconscious life is deeper
than the conscious, sufficiently persuade him
to plunge. "Love that stronger is than death"
bids him dare, for her imperious sake, the wel-
tering abyss; and any such deed of sacrifice
and heroic contempt of peril, in itself almost
proves that man knows more than he believes
himself to know about his own immortality.
Every miner working for wife and children in
a "fiery" pit; every soldier standing cool and
Tuglak
18
Death-
firm for his country and flag in those desert-
zarebas of Stewart and Graham, offers a similar
endorsement of Walt Whitman's indignant sen-
tence, "If rats and maggots end us, then
alarum! for we are betrayed."
"Well," it will be said, "but we may be
betrayed!" The bottom of the sea,
as the
dredging of the Challenger proves, is paved with
relics of countless elaborate lives seemingly
wasted. The great pyramid is a mountain of
bygone nummulites. The statesman's marble
statue is compacted from the shells and casts
of tiny creatures which had as good a right to
immortality from their own point of view as
he. Moreover, it may be urged, the suicide,
who only seeks peace and escape from trouble,
confronts death with just as firm a decisiveness
as the brave sailor or dutiful soldier. Most
suicides, however, in their last written words,
seem to expect a change for the better, rather
than extinction; and it is a curious proof of
،

and Afterwards.
19
the surviving propriety and self-respect of the
very desperate, that forlorn women, jumping
from Waterloo Bridge, almost always fold their
shawls quite neatly, lay- them on the parapet,
and place their bonnets carefully atop, as if
the fatal balustrade were but a boudoir for the
disrobing soul. In regard to the argument
of equal rights of continuous existence for all
things which live, it must be admitted. If
the bathybius-nay, even if the trees and the
mosses are not, as to that which makes
them individual, undying, man will never be.
If life be not as inextinguishable in every egg
of the herring and in every bird and beast, as
in the poet and the sage, it is extinguish-
able in angels and archangels. What, then, is
that specialized existence which, some believe,
can and does survive and take new shapes,
when the small dying sea-creature drops its
flake of pearl to the ooze, when the dog-fish
swallows a thousand trivial herring-fry, and
20
Death
when the poet and the sage lie silent and
cold?
The reason why nobody has ever answered,
or, probably, ever will answer, is that each
stage of existence can only be apprehended
and defined by the powers appertaining to it.
Herein lurks the fallacy which has bred such
contempt for transcendental speculations, be-
cause people try to talk of what abides beyond,
in terms of their present experience. It is true
they must do this or else remain silent; but
the inherent disability of terrestrial speech and
thought ought to be kept more constantly in
view. How absurd it is, for example, to
hear astronomers arguing against existence in
the moon or in the sun, because there seems
to be no atmosphere in one, and the other is
enveloped in blazing hydrogen! Beings are at
least conceivable as well as fitted to inhale
incandescent gas, or not to breathe any gases
at all, as to live upon the diluted oxygen of
and Afterwards.
2I
our own air. Embodied life is, in all cases, the
physiological equation of its environing condi-
tions. Water and gills, lungs and atmosphere,
co-exist by correlation; and stars, suns, and
planets may very well be peopled with proper
inhabitants as natural to them as nut-bushes
to us, though entirely beyond the wit of man
to imagine. Even here, in our own low de-
grees of life, how could the oyster compre-
hend the flashing cruises of the sword-fish,
or he, beneath the waves, conceive the flight
and nesting of a bird? Yet these are near
neighbours and fellow-lodgers upon the same
globe. Of the ingredients of that globe we
build our bodies: we speak by agitating its
air; we know no light save those few beams.
of the half-explored solar spectrum to which
our optic nerve responds. We have to think
in terms of earth-experience, as we have to live
by breathing the earth-envelope. We ought
to be reassured, therefore, rather than discon-
22
Death
certed, by the fact that nobody can pretend
to understand and depict any future life, for
it would prove sorely inadequate if it were at
present intelligible. To know that we cannot
now know is an immense promise of coming
enlightenment. We only meditate safely when
we realize that space, time, and the phenom-
ena of sense are provisional forms of thought.
Mathematicians have made us familiar with
at least the idea of space of four and more
dimensions. As for time, it is an absurd illu-
sionary appearance due partly to another illu-
sion, that of the seeming succession of events,
and partly to the motion of heavenly bodies, so
that by forgetting everything, and by going
close to the North Pole and walking east-
wards, a man might, astronomically, wind
back again the lost days of his life upon a
reversed calendar. Such simple considerations.
rebuke materialists who think they have found
enough in finding a "law," which is really
C
and Afterwards.
23
but a temporary memorandum of observed or-
der, leaving quite unknown the origin of it
and the originator. Even to speak, therefore,
of future life in the terms of the present is
irrational, and this inadequacy of our faculties.
should guard us from illusions of disbelief as
well as of belief. Nature, like many a ten-
der mother, deceives and puts off her children
habitually. We learned from Copernicus, not
from her, that the earth went round the sun;
from Harvey, not from her, how the loving
aching heart of man does its work; from
Simpson, not from her, how the measureless
flood of human anguish could be largely con-
trolled by the ridiculously simple chemical
compound of C,HCl, or "chloroform.” Men
must be prepared, therefore, to find themselves
misled as to the plainest facts about life, death,
and individual development. We shall inherit
the deplorable world-feuds of the past long
after they have sufficiently taught their nursery
24
Death
lessons of human effort, valor, patriotism, and
brotherhood; and we shall live in the gloom
of ancestral fears and ignorances when the use
of them for making man cling to the life which
he alone knows has for ages passed away.
But, all the time, it is quite likely that in many
mysteries of life and death we precisely re-
semble the good knight, Don Quixote, when
he hung by his wrist from the stable window,
and imagined that a tremendous abyss yawned
beneath his feet. Maritornes cuts the thong
with lightsome laughter, and the gallant gentle-
man falls-four inches! Perhaps Nature, so full
of unexplained ironies, reserves just as blithe-
some a surprise for her offspring, when their
time arrives to discover the simplicity, agree-
ableness, and absence of any serious change,
in the process called "dying." Pliny, from
much clinical observation, declared his opinion
that the moment
moment of death was the most
exquisite instant of life. He writes, "Ipse dis-
Makat
and Afterwards.
25
cessus animæ plerumque fit sine dolore, nonnun-
quam etiam cum ipsa voluptate." Dr. Solander
was so delighted with the sensation of perishing
by extreme cold in the snow, that he always
afterwards resented his rescue. Dr. Hunter, in
his latest moments, grieved that he "could not
write how easy and delightful it is to die."
The late Archbishop of Canterbury, as his
"agony" befell, quietly remarked, "It is really
nothing much, after all!" That expression of
composed calm which comes over the faces of
the newly dead may not be merely due to
muscular relaxation. It is, possibly, a last
message of content and acquiescence sent us
from those who at last know a little more about
it than ourselves-a message of good cheer and
of pleasant promise, not by any means to be
disregarded. With accent as authoritative as
that heard at Bethany it has seemed to many
to murmur, "Thy brother shall live again!"
The fallacy of thinking and speaking of a
*
26
Death
A
future life in terms of our present limited sense-
knowledge has given rise to extremely foolish
visions of "heaven," and made many gentle
and religious minds thereby incredulous. As
a matter of observation, no artist can paint
even in outline a form outside his experience.
Orcagna, in the Campo Santo at Pisa, tried.
to represent some quite original angels, and
the result is a sort of canary-bird with sleeved
pinions and a female visage. Man never so
much as imagined the kangaroo and ornitho-
rhynchus till Captain Cook discovered their
haunts; how, then, should he conceive the
aspect of angels and new-embodied spirits?
But why should he be sceptical about them
because his present eyes are constructed for no
such lovely and subtle sights ? We can per-
ceive how very easily our senses are eluded
even by lower modes of matter. The solid
block of ice, whereon we stood and skated, is
just as existent when it has melted into water
and Afterwards.
27
M
and become dissipated as steam; but it dis-
appears for us. The carbonic acid gas, which
we could not see, is compressed by the chemist
into fleecy flakes and tossed from palm to palm.
St. Paul was a much better physical philoso-
pher than the materialists and sceptics when
he declared "the things not seen are eternal."
But these invisible, eternal things are not, on
account of their exquisite subtlety, to be called
"supernatural." They must belong, in an as-
cending yet strictly connected chain, to the
most substantial and to the lowest, if there be
anything low. The ethereal body, if there be
such a garb, which awaits us, must be as
real as the beef-fattened frame of an East End
butcher. The life amid which it will live and
move must be equipped, enriched, and diver-
sified in a fashion corresponding with earthly
habits, but to an extent far beyond the narrow
vivacities of our present being. We need to
abolish utterly the perilous mistake that any-
28
Death-
*
thing anywhere is "supernatural," or shadowy,
or vague. The angelic Regent of Alcyone-if
there be one-in the heart of the Pleiades, is
extra-natural" for us; but as simple, real,
and substantial, no doubt, to adequate percep-
tions as a Chairman of quarter sessions to his
clerk.
، ،
Remembering, then, that the undeveloped
cannot know the developed, though it may
presage and expect it; remembering that bisul-
phide of carbon is aware of actinic rays invisible.
to us; that selenium swells to light which is
not felt by our organization; that a sensitized
film at the end of the telescope photographs
a million stars we did not see; and that the
magnetic needle knows and obeys forces to
which our most delicate nerves are absolutely
dull; it seems within the range, and not be-
yond the rights, of the imagination to enter-
tain confident and happy dreams of successive
states of real and conscious existence, rising by
and Afterwards.
29
evolution through succeeding phases of endless
life. Why, in truth, should evolution proceed
along the gross and palpable lines of the visible,
and not also be hard at work upon the subtler
elements which are behind-moulding, govern-
ing, and emancipating them? Is it enough,
together with the Positivists, to foresee the
amelioration of the race? Their creed is, cer-
tainly, generous and unselfish; but since it
teaches the eventual decay of all worlds and
systems, what is the good of caring for a race
which must be extinguished in some final cata-
clysm, any more than for an individual who
must die and become a memory? If death ends
the man, and cosmic convulsions finish off all
the constellations, then we arrive at the insane
conception of an universe possibly emptied
of every form of being, which is the most
unthinkable and incredible of all conclusions.
Sounder, beyond question, was the simple wis-
dom of Shakespeare's old hermit of Prague,
30
Death--
(6
who never saw pen and ink, and very
wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, 'That
that is, is!'
)))
If so very sensible a recluse had gone deeper
into that same grand philosophy of common-
sense, we might fancy him saying to the niece
of his Majesty: "There is an immense deal in
this plain fact, fair Princess! that we are alive,
and far advanced in the hierarchy of such life
as we know. We cannot indeed fly like a
bird, nor swim like a dog-fish, nor hunt by
smell like a hound, but-vanity apart-we seem
to sit at the top of the tree of visible earth-life,
and what comes next ought to come for us."
If there has been a boundless Past leading to
this odd little Present, the individual, it is
clear, remembers nothing. Either he was not;
or he lived unconscious; or he was conscious,
but forgets. It may be he always lived, and
inwardly knows it, but now "disremembers;"
for it is notable that none of us can recall the
and Afterwards.
3 I
first year of our human existence, though we
were certainly then alive. Instincts, moreover,
are bodily memories, and when the newly
hatched chick pecks at food, it must certainly
have lived somehow and somewhere long be-
fore it was an egg. If to live for ever in the
future demands that we must have lived for
ever in the past, there is really nothing against
this! "End and beginning are dreams;" mere
phrases of our earthly limited speech. But
taking things as they seem, nobody knows
that death stays-nor why it should stay-the
development of the individual. It stays our
perception of it in another's case; but so does
distance, absence, or even sleep. Birth gave
to each of us much; death may give very much
more, in the way of subtler senses to behold
colours we cannot here see, to catch sounds
we do not now hear, and to be aware of
bodies and objects impalpable at present to us,
but perfectly real, intelligibly constructed, and
32
Death-
constituting an organized society and a gov-
erned, multiform State. Where does Nature
show signs of breaking off her magic, that she
should stop at the five organs and the sixty
or seventy elements? Are we free to spread
over the face of this little earth, and never
freed to spread through the solar system and
beyond it? Nay, the heavenly bodies which
we can discern, for all their majesty, are to
the ether which contains them as mere spores
of seaweed floating in the ocean. Are the
specks only filled with life, and not the space?
What does Nature possess more valuable in
all she has labored to manufacture here, than
the wisdom of the sage, the tenderness of the
mother, the devotion of the lover, and the opu-
lent imagination of the poet, that she should
let these priceless things be utterly lost by a
quinsy, or a flux? It is a hundred times more
reasonable to believe that she commences afresh
with such delicately developed treasures, mak-
A
and Afterwards.
33
ing them groundwork and stuff for splendid
farther living, by process of death; which,
even when it seems accidental or premature,
is probably as natural and orderly as birth, of
which it is the complement; and wherefrom,
it may well be, the new-born dead arises to
find a fresh world ready for his pleasant and
novel, but sublimated, body, with gracious and
willing kindred ministrations awaiting it, like
those which provided for the human babe the
guarding arms and nourishing breasts of its
_ mother. Emerson says so well, speaking of
the gentle and ample birth arrangements made
for us here, "We are all born Princes!" As
the babe's eyes opened from the darkness of
maternal safeguard to strange sunlight on this
globe, so may the eyes of the dead lift glad
and surprised lids to "a light that never was
on sea or land;" and so may his delighted ears
hear speech and music proper to the spheres
beyond, while he smiles contentedly to find
34
Death-
how touch and taste and smell had all been
forecasts of faculties accurately following upon.
the lowly lessons of this earthly nursery! It
is really just as easy and logical to think such
may be the outcome of the "life which now
is," as to terrify weak souls into wickedness.
by medieval hells, or to wither the bright in-
stincts of youth or love with horizons of black
annihilation.
Katal
Moreover, those new materials and sur-
roundings of the farther being would bring a
more intense and verified as well as a higher
existence. Man is less superior to the sensitive-
plant now than his re-embodied spirit would
probably then be to his present personality.
Nor does anything except ignorance and de-
spondency forbid the belief that the senses so
etherealized and enhanced, and so fitly adapted
to fine combinations of an advanced entity,
would discover without much amazement sweet
and friendly societies springing from, but pro-
and Afterwards.
35
portionately upraised above, the old associa-
tions; art divinely elevated, science splendidly
expanding; bygone loves and sympathies ex-
plaining and obtaining their purpose; activities
set free for vaster cosmic service; abandoned
hopes and efforts realized in rich harvests at
last; despaired-of joys come magically within
ready reach; regrets and repentances softened
by wider knowledge, by surer foresight, and
by the discovery that, although in this universe
nothing can be "forgiven," everything may be
repaid and repaired. In such a stage, though
little removed relatively from this, the widening
of faith, delight, and love (and therefore of vir-
tue which depends on these) would be very
large. Everywhere would be discerned the
fact, if not the full mystery, of continuity, of
evolution, and of the never-ending progress in
all that lives towards beauty, happiness, and
use without limit. To call such a life Heaven"
or the "Hereafter" is a temporary concession to
((
All
36
Death-
the illusions of speech and thought, for these
words imply locality and time, which are but
provisional conceptions. It would rather be a
state, a plane of faculties, to expand again into
other and higher states and planes; the slow-
est and lowest in the race of life coming in
last, but each-everywhere-finally attaining.
After all, as Shakespeare so merrily hints,
"That that is, is!" and when we look into
the blue of the sky we actually see visible
Infinity. When we regard the stars of mid-
night we veritably perceive the mansions of
Nature, countless and illimitable; so that even
our narrow senses reprove our timid minds.
If such shadows of an Immeasurable and Inex-
haustible Future of peace, happiness, beauty,
and knowledge be but ever so faintly cast from
what are real existences, fear and care might,
at one word, pass from the minds of men, as
evil dreams depart from little children waking
to their mother's kiss; and all might feel how
tatang
and Afterwards.
37
subtly wise he was who wrote of that first
mysterious night on earth, which showed the
unsuspected stars; when-
"Hesperus, with the host of heaven,
came,
And lo! Creation widened on man's view!
Who could have thought such marvels lay
concealed
Behind thy beams, O Sun? or who could find-
Whilst flower and leaf and insect stood re-
vealed-
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we, then, shun death with anxious
strife ?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?"
WHILE the above was in course of re-publi-
cation, it was sent to two very distinguished
men of science, with a request for their opinion
upon the reasonableness, or lack of reason,
in its pages. One of them, renowned for his
chemical investigations, returned it with ex-
38
Death
pressions of pleasure and of general agreement
which have greatly encouraged this reprint.
The other, whose name is famous wherever
Science is followed, and whose researches in
Natural Philosophy confer imperishable lustre
on the Victorian era, has honored the author
with a letter, profoundly interesting and sug-
gestive, but which, from its nature and frank
confidences, he is not at liberty to quote. It
was accompanied, however, by a few memo-
randa upon the article, written by a highly
gifted friend of that illustrious correspondent;
and these it is permitted to append. The writer
says:
66
That which has been 'born' must 'die.'
The two are one: birth and death one event
which 'happens' to a being, but which is cleft
in twain by a little fissure we call life.
"Why is life a problem at all? Why is
there no categorical explanation (of our conscious-
ness of larger life) necessarily accepted by every
sound mind or sane intelligence? Is it not be-
S
•
and Afterwards.
39
cause a scientifically exhaustive answer cannot
be given in the terms of time and space as we
now realize them? When instead of masters
they become servants, when instead of blank
prison walls they become open doors and path-
ways, shall we not enter a new mental world,
though one firmly linked in continuity with the
present ?
"We need to translate the facts of physical
nature into those of moral, mental, and spiritual
nature. We need to repudiate with abhorrence
the whole machinery of magic and sorcery and
unnatural prodigy which we have confounded
with that which is most natural, most healthy
or holy-most sound and whole; that which
is to our mind and conscience what the brain
is to our physical structure-its director and
its interpreter.
"Most truly Mr. Arnold says that the high-
est must belong to the lowest in an unbroken
chain. And we are often rebuked by finding
the highest type of beauty and fitness in the
most despised or 'lowest' of microscopic organ-
isms or even particles. On the other hand,
40
Death-
the visible is not necessarily 'gross' except in
the sense of coarse-grained-large in scale: our
whole region of sense-perception may repre-
sent but one fibre of the tissue of consciousness.
"Let us try to realize that the current
phraseologies only mislead when supposed to
embrace actual fact becoming accessible first to
conception, then to consciousness and experience.
. The general tendency of observed order seems
to suggest that we have a 'planetary' conscious-
ness, or one which naturally starts from this
earth as a mental centre; that since the Coperni-
can era began we have been gradually develop-
ing a 'solar' or 'systematic' consciousness, and
are already beginning to refer many verified
facts to a mental 'sun' as a centre; and that a
complete generalization, or satisfying answer to
the problems which as yet baffle us, needs a
'cosmical' consciousness, of which indeed the
fore-gleams may be discerned in the very ques-
tions we ask, in the very doubts suggested
to us, in the very paradoxes of which Nature
is full. Or we may consider the same order
as the cellular, the functional, and the organic
and Afterwards.
41
consciousness. A neucleated cell might be:
(1) conscious of its own nucleus and of the
cell-world only; (2) conscious of the heart'
or 'lung' to which it belongs; and (3) conscious
of the complete Living Organism which is the
explanation of the two first, and their raison
d'être.
((
"Such a consciousness in the three grades
would be strictly related and strictly natural
throughout. But of course the second and third.
would successively appear, and indeed in a true
sense would be 'super' natural (that is, extra-
normal) to the first, as long as this first con-
sciousness (the planetary or cellular) was sup-
posed to include and to supply terms for the
whole accessible sphere of fact.
Many other similar illustrations will occur
to us. 'Cellular' consciousness of the individual
'I' may be compared to the first dimension in
space-one line only; or to the lowest level in
the triad of the physical (or mechanical), the
chemical, and the vital as given by Clifford,
Littre, and all the host of scientific authorities.
"Or it might be illustrated by the 'gaseous'
42
Death
condition (as compared to the liquid and then
the solid) of matters-whatever that may be-
or perhaps to the three responses to light and
heat, first surface-reflection, then absorption,
then radiation. But of course all this takes us
into the dangerous region of analogy-danger-
ous surely for the very reason that the general
consciousness is so embryonic--needing, there-
fore, rigorous test.
'Let us at least recognize the utter futility
of discussion or controversy which treats the
average or commonly accepted notions of root-
questions at issue as really representative or
adequate. No wonder that we cannot make
head or tail of this or that, when in the nature
of things there are none to make! But it does
not follow, because the vertebrate order cannot
be properly described in terms of the protozoic,
that we should deliberately relapse into 'agnos-
tic' bits of jelly, and denounce bone, muscle,
or nerve as 'metaphysic' or 'mysticism'--two
of the worst of names to hang a dog by. Let
us faithfully and patiently cultivate the dawn-
ing 'Copernican' consciousness. Assuredly we
and Afterwards.
43
shall thus find all our ideals transformed by
being 'lifted up' into the Real. And we may
be sure that if our notions are rectified and en-
larged and deepened, language will soon begin
to follow, and their practically fruitful applica-
tion to problems of conduct, social and indi-
vidual, will become possible in a sense hitherto
despaired of by most of us.”
From the same deeply thoughtful mind the
subjoined remarks have also been received on
the general subject:
"When the Galileo of Time-surely coming
-shall have made conceivable if not actually
accessible to us, what answers in the temporal
sphere to the 'antipodes' we know as spatial
fact; when we have begun to realize that 'past
and future' are no more absolute than the 'over
and under,' the above and below' which now
we know to be reversible not only in conception
but in physical experience, then perhaps we
may alter somewhat our estimate of the com-
parative value of the local, temporal, sensuous
character of a 'fact'; and our notion of what
C
J
44
Death-
We shall learn
sacramental as
and what is
constitutes its real significance.
to distinguish between what is
gift-bringing and representative,
merely event-ful or occasion-al. What comes to
pass must ever pass away, but what is real is
not thus gained or lost. A fact' in itself as
evident to the senses,-apart from its meaning
and effect, from what it conveys and manifests
to intelligence, is like-the black marks upon.
this paper, or the noises made in speaking. But
there is an undying reality which is conveyed
alike through sounds, black marks, etc., or
events; through the acts of an individual equally
with the narration of such acts, and most of all,
with the conception of them. That reality, that
substance, that precious and eternal treasure,
is the Meaning, the Object, the Gist of all we
know as fact; timeless, spaceless, yet energetic,
creative, fruitful. This is the reality of revela-
tion spiritual and material,-and more, Divinely
Natural; this is the reality of the Divine in
the Human proclaimed through incarnation; the
heavenly in the earthly, the holy and wholesome
nature in both.
and Afterwards.
45
"Finally, this is the underlying quality of
'phenomena' which gives and includes all that
makes them worth observation, classification,
interpretation, application. This it is which
transforms all that is presented to our conscious-
ness-whether as things or laws or occurrences
—into articulate language; showing us the uni-
verse of 'mind and matter,' energy and motion,
as one vast Message of Order and of Life.
"Do we ask what difference it would make
if we realized that in the very nature of things
there can be no 'fundamental basis;' that there
is no permanent fixity anywhere in relation to
us except in a secondary sense; that the very
notion out of which the metaphor sprung de-
pends on what we now know to be false; that
its real origin is the primitive idea of the earth's
being immovably fixed and settled on a Base or
absolute foundation? Why, surely, this:
"We have all to learn alike that what seems
to us like the vaguest of vacancies,-that which
appears incapable of 'supporting' a fly, much
less a pebble; that blank in which there is not
even an atmosphere in which to breathe and by
46
Death
means of which to move,-in the last resort
is just all the foundation which we have. That
which safely bears our 'solid world' in the
gulfs of space is no base or basis, no moveless
central 'rock' but throbbing energies in com-
plex and manifold action, in swing and wave
and thrill; whirling us onward in mighty sweeps
of threefold rhythm to which our hearts are set.
So therefore not solidity of base or fixity of
status is our supreme and vital need, but mov-
ing power beyond our ken or senses; known
to us in energizing action, and working through
blue 'void:' impelling us in rings of spiral
orbit round a moving sun on which we are
dependent.
"What then? Is fact less fact, or life less
life, or the real less real for that? No; the
revelation of the dynamical' order succeeds.
that of the 'statical,' only to give fresh and ever
fuller witness to the living truth; the Way of life
itself, like the spinning world, bears us forward
on its bosom, more swiftly than we can journey
on it; and even beyond our best there ever rises
a better hope,-a hope which can only melt,
and Afterwards.
47
as the spectrum-color melts, into the white and
perfect Light. The secret of religion, the key to
theology, the essence of revelation, is not, as
we have fancied, a question of fixed centre
or immovable foundation or solid support; the
world of our faith, the universe of our Spiritual
Verity, depends, not upon final or immutable
'foundations,' but upon the perfect order and
the unchanging might of coincident forces, of
balanced attractions, of undulating impulses,
of subtle vibrations, of harmonious rhythm, of
spiral progression, of ceaseless and universal
movement; in short, upon the supremacy, not
of Divine stability, but of Divine Energy. And
this entails the transformation of all our spiritual
thought and apprehension. Supposing that we
had hitherto conceived water to be something
which created instead of quenching thirst; sup-
posing we had imagined air to be solid or earth
to be vaporous, or confounded the character
and use of a coin and a seed, or fancied our
blood to be stationary like our bones, cannot
we see how fatally our current use of metaphor
would have misled us?
48
Death-
"Some of our actual conceptions have per-
haps been more like this than we realize. And
thus it is with all the prescientific ideas and
assumptions which we now have, willing or
unwilling, to unlearn; thus it is with that vast
mass of metaphor which forms the very tissue
of our thought and speech.
"But while losing much that we have learned
to cling to, we gain what is a hundredfold in
value, if we only have faith enough to trust
GOD now as light. We find that Truth meets
every need afresh; we find that never can true
thought outstrip our CHRIST. We find our liv-
ing Way through countless changes; stagnation
dies with apathy and dread; a fearless, hopeful
strength is given to us; we know that nothing
now can daunt or harm us. Each ray of light
which science brings, reveals: we welcome
what in old days terrified us.
"We grow and grow and feel GOD's touch
upon us; we give and give, and yet our store.
increases; we feel the breath of coming life and
gladness, we see a distant dawn of living radi-
ance. Things which had seemed but dry and
and Afterwards.
49
dusty bones begin to move, arising; the out-
worn weary words are vivid now; they beat
and glow with quick and pregnant meaning.
Let us go forth and greet the coming changes!
، ،
'Let us give up our own effete travesties.
Let us be brave and say to the GOD of light,
'Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth;' not pre-
scribing or limiting to our pettiness the range
and form of the answer, but adding, 'Not our
will, but thine be done.' For then will come
an answer charged with glory. At last the
life through death shall stand unveiled. And
we shall surely wonder that we could have
doubted; making sorrow barren and pain mere
torment; fighting against the very succor sent
us, the witness of the new force of conquer-
ing Life."
These observations seem in a high degree
novel, interesting, and valuable. They refer
chiefly-as will be seen-to that part of the
foregoing article which dwells upon the inherent
and natural impossibility, at present and in this
life of answering in any language, except that
50
Death-
of the algebra of hope and the calculus of
probability, the ever importunate riddle of our
existence. But men would be very well satis-
fied with a provisional answer; and it is justly
recognized above that if there can be no cer-
tain proof one way, there can still less be
positive disproof the other way. As Omar
Khayyâm says in his Rubaiyat :
(C
A hair, perhaps, divides the False and True,
Yes! and a single Alif were the clew,
Could you but find it, to the Treasure-House,
And, peradventure, to the Master, too!”
Mada
Each great discovery of Science raises us to a
new height from which the horizon of possi-
bilities, physical and extra-physical, perpetually
expands; although scientific minds seem occa-
sionally to miss the truest and best revelation
of their own triumphs. There are many excel-
lent savants, for example, who write about
Evolution, which explains so much, as if for-
getting that it "cannot explain itself." Ad-
G
and Afterwards.
51
mirably has Mr. Goldwin Smith, in "Lectures
and Essays," remarked upon this: "With our
eyes fixed on the 'Descent,' newly disclosed
to us, may we not be losing sight of the Ascent
of Man ?" And the same accomplished author
has the subjoined passage, which bears directly
on the matter:
"Suppose spiritual life necessarily implies the
expectation of a Future State, has physical sci-
ence anything to say against that expectation?
Physical science is nothing more than the per-
ceptions of our five bodily senses registered and
methodized. But what are these five senses?
According to physical science itself, nerves in a
certain stage of evolution. Why then should it
be assumed that their account of the universe, or
of our relations to it, is exhaustive and final?
Why should it be assumed that these are the
only possible organs of perception, and that no
other faculties or means of communication with
the universe can ever in the course of evolution
be developed in man? Around us are animals
absolutely unconscious, so far as we can discern,
52
Death-
of that universe which Science has revealed to
us. A sea anemone, if it can reflect, probably
feels as confident that it perceives everything
capable of being perceived as the man of science.
The reasonable supposition, surely, is that though
Science, so far as it goes, is real, and the guide
of our present life, its relation to the sum of
things is not much more considerable than that
of the perceptions of the lower orders of animals.
That our notions of the universe have been so
vastly enlarged by the mere invention of astro-
nomical instruments is enough in itself to suggest
the possibility of further and infinitely greater
⚫ enlargement. To our bodily senses, no doubt,
and to physical science, which is limited by
them, human existence seems to end with death;
but if there is anything in our nature which tells
us, with a distinctness and persistency equal to
those of our sensible perceptions, that hope and
responsibility extend beyond death, why is this
assurance not as much to be trusted as that of
the bodily sense itself? There is apparently no
ultimate criterion of truth, whether physical or
moral, except our inability, constituted as we
and Afterwards.
53
are, to believe otherwise; and this criterion.
seems to be satisfied by a universal and ineradi-
cable moral conviction as well as by a universal
and irresistible impression of sense.'
And, farther on:
"We are enjoined, sometimes with a vehe-
mence approaching that of ecclesiastical anath-
ema, to refuse to consider anything which lies
beyond the range of experience. By experience
is meant the perceptions of our bodily senses,
the absolute completeness and finality of which,
we must repeat, is an assumption, the warrant
for which must at all events be produced from
other authority than that of the senses them-
selves. On this ground we are called upon to
discard, as worthy of nothing but derision, the
ideas of eternity and infinity. But to dislodge
these ideas from our minds is impossible; just
as impossible as it is to dislodge any idea that
has entered through the channels of the senses;
and this being so, it is surely conceivable that
they may not be mere illusions, but real ex-
tensions of our intelligence beyond the domain
of mere bodily sense, indicating, an upward
54
Death-
progress of our nature. Of course if these ideas
correspond to reality, physical science, though
true as far as it goes, cannot be the whole truth,
or even bear any considerable relation to the
whole truth, since it necessarily presents Being
as limited by space and time.
"Whither obedience to the dictates of the
higher part of our nature will ultimately carry
us, we may not be able, apart from Revelation,
to say; but there seems no substantial reason
for refusing to believe that it carries us toward
a better state. Mere ignorance, arising from the
imperfection of our perceptive powers, of the
mode in which we shall pass into that better
state, or of its precise relation to our present
existence, cannot cancel an assurance, otherwise
valid, of our general destiny. A transmutation
of humanity, such as we can conceive to be
brought about by the gradual prevalence of
higher motives of action, and the gradual elimi-
nation thereby of what is base and brutish, is
surely no more incredible than the actual de-
velopment of humanity, as it is now, out of a
lower animal form or out of inorganic matter.'
11
and Afterwards.
55
Yet another erudite friend comments as fol-
lows upon "Death-and Afterwards":
"The argument appears to me to place in its
strongest form the moral presumption in favor
of a continued existence. It is Butler's Analogy
purified from the 'supernatural,' and brought
into harmony with Science. It still leaves on
my mind the difficulty, which is perhaps in-
superable, of balancing this moral presumption-
strengthened confessedly by natural analogies
-against the physical evidence at hand of man's
individual destruction, and the negative evidence.
Categ
-or rather negation of evidence-as to the
existence of any other state of being. All experi-
ence is against attaching much weight to the
mere want of evidence, and I would certainly
allow a moral presumption to weigh more than
a mere negation.
"This presumed, how are we to sum up the
argument? That there may be a future life, the
article establishes beyond doubt. Does it make
it equally clear that it is probable there is one?
It disposes of the illusion of disbelief: does it
56
Death-
substitute for it (as Mill thought) the presump-
tion that a future continuance of life is more
likely than the annihilation of intelligent beings?
"The thesis would be much strengthened if
we were permitted to reason on the probability
that purpose underlies the things that are seen.
Teleology has been abused, but I think it cannot
be wholly set aside, and the force of the analogy
is immensely increased if this world be part of a
system of things having some intelligent end in
view. We cannot answer the inquiry—'Why
preserve matter and motion, and not conscious-
ness and intelligence ?'--and the idea is nearly
irresistible that they may be preserved in states
of existence separable from matter and motion.
Suppose that, with the elimination of evils, the
perfection of species ensues: is that a sufficient
purpose for a solar system? One can hardly
think it. There may be vast developments on
this sphere, but one cannot help thinking that in
some way or other we must be brought by
correlation into connection with the rest of the
universe.
"One argument herein strikes me as ex-
and Afterwards.
57
ceedingly strong: 'Men must be prepared to
find themselves misled as to the plainest facts
about life, death, and individual development.'
This impresses me as a most important basis.
of reasoning. It might be read as a caution
against hoping for immortality; for Nature may
be misleading us by dangling this bait before
us, and the very general diffusion of belief in
another world cannot, after all, per se, rank
much higher than pervading belief in witchcraft
and necromancy. But, on the whole, Nature
does not seem beneficent, and the better is
more likely to prove the true, than the worse,
or than nothing.'
"I do not think the pretension can be sus-
tained that, because some sorts of life hereafter
will or may be continued, therefore all life will
or may be so continued. Much of the lower
vitalities may be mere scaffolding-steps to the
higher and more complex.
((
Gatemal
'There is, meanwhile, another consideration
which adds some strength to the position taken
up in the article, that if there be a moral sys-
tem of development, then uncertainty as to the
58
Death
1
future may be an essential condition of it, as
our natural ignorance is to the development
of the intellectual faculties.
(
While physical science leads without ques-
tion to agnosticism, I think you have shown
that there are moral and intellectual reasons
(backed by extremely forcible material analo-
gies) which restore the presumption that a
future life is possible, and even probable.'
The point here alluded to, the educational
and evolutionary action of our perpetual igno-
rance, our endless curiosity, our ceaseless effort,
has truly much value. It struck Virgil in the
same strong light, even as regarded agriculture:
"Pater ipse, colendi.
Haud facilem esse viam voluit, primusque per
artem
Movit agros, curis acuens mortalia corda,
Nec torpere gravi passus sua regna veterno."
How many exquisite devices of Nature are
carried to fulfilment in the dark! In how many
ways she coaxes her children of all the king-
and Afterwards.
59
doms to her ends, by softly misleading their
instincts! It is, indeed, almost like high treason
against her scheme to try to persuade men
that death is nonsense, so urgent is she to
have them love their present life, and cling to
it, and make the most of it. The philosophers
who take so much trouble to teach that "life
is not worth living," and yet go on existing
and discharging their social duties so admirably,
make one think that Nature is rather like the
hen-wives in Essex. When a pullet will not
sit, these good women pluck off the breast-
feathers from the recalcitrant fowls and whip
the bare space lightly with nettles; whereupon
the hens go straight to the nest to ease their
skin against the nice cool eggs; and habit
keeps them there, to the benefit of the farm-
yard and the poultry market. Pride, doubt,
fear, ignorance, ambition, fashion, bodily needs,
are all in turn the nettles of Nature.
It seems, of course, very annoying and
60
Death
humiliating to be coerced or cajoled into wis-
dom and patience; to have to rack our brains
for nothing, and find the right life-path chiefly
by the thorns which prick us if we wander from
it. Thus many will sympathize with Horace
when he says:
'Quid æternis minorem
Consiliis animum fatigas ?"
، ،
And also with Omar the Potter writing:
"Ah Love! Could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits, and then,
Re-mould it nearer to our Hearts' Desire!"
The chief object of these pages, however,
is to suggest that all such complaints are not
merely idle, but foolish; that all our fears are
needless, and not one single hope, expecta-
tion, or aspiration is half great enough, or glad
enough, or bold enough; that the secret of
the Universe is, after all, an open one, like
that of the earth's motion, or any other tardily
and Afterwards.
61
made intellectual discovery illuminating the
perpetual fact that "things are not what they
seem." We fear death, but may perhaps find
it agreeable, interesting, and coming just at the
right time, whenever it comes. For Goethe it
was enough that "it was common." We de-
bate with vast metaphysical periphrasis "past,
present, and future," and shall perchance dis-
cover-though still short of all ultimates—that
there is only an eternal Now. We distress
ourself about maintaining our identity and upon
remaining individual, when, quite conceivably,
the lower angels laugh at our small aspirations
herein, and exclaim, "So soon made happy!"
May there not be coalesced existences, as im-
mensely higher and better than our little "ego"
as that of the tree is than those of the cells
which build every inch of it, from rootlet to
topmost twig? Pain is, truly, or was, a hor-
rible puzzle; but its physiological and moral
uses were always plain; and Science has prac-
G
62
Death
tically mastered it at last with the benign
discovery of anesthetics. Hatreds, and malig-
nities; selfishnesses, and social evils of all kinds.
are very dreadful; but they plainly diminish
before the light of education. Probably the
Talmud legend is right in spirit, which says
that the dimple upon every man's and woman's
upper lip was imprinted there by the hand
of God, who, in creating all human flesh,
whispered, "It is well!" but pressed His fin-
ger upon our mouths to prevent us telling
each other what we know. And therefore,
since poets have the instinct of insight, and
see without eyes, it is no wonder to find a
modern man like Walt Whitman, who has
praised the joys of our life of sense so fluently
and heartily, singing of the approach of death
as he does in the tender dithyrambs which
occur in "The Passage to India," musical
words of faith and fearlessness with which
these pages shall be embellished.
and Afterwards.
63
((
"DEATH CAROL.
Come, lovely and soothing Death;
Undulate round the world; serenely arriving,
arriving,
In the day; in the night, to all, to each;
Sooner or later; delicate Death.
"Praised be the fathomless universe;
For life and joy; and for objects and knowl-
edge curious;
And for love; sweet love. But praise! praise!
praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding
Death.
"Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft
feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest
welcome?
Then I chant it for thee-I glorify thee above
all;
I bring thee a song that when thou must in-
deed come, come unfalteringly.
"Approach, strong Deliveress!
When it is so-when thou hast taken them,
64
Death-
I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
"From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee—
adornments and feastings for thee;
And the sights of the open landscape, and the
high-spread sky, are fitting;
And life and the fields, and the huge and
thoughtful night.
"The night in silence; under many a star;
The ocean shore, and the husky whispering
wave whose voice I know;
And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-
veil'd Death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
“Over the tree-tops I float thee a song!
Over the rising and sinking waves-over the
myriad fields, and the prairies wide:
Over the dense pack'd cities all, and the teem-
ing wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy; with joy to thee,
O Death!"
and Afterwards.
65
One reflection more shall be borrowed from
the brilliant pen to which I owe the most
striking of the above comments. It is this:
"I feel more and more how entirely wide
of the mark (for want of adopting your view
of the illusionary character of time, space, life,
death, etc.) must be, and must remain, our
controversies as to 'personality,' and the per-
sistence of that force which we know as
identity. Such expressions as 'immortality,' as
we understand and use them, do not merely
fail to cover the ground; they are but half-
thoughts-like the half of a man cloven in two
-unless complemented by corresponding terms
like 'in-natality.' We think of 'eternal life' as
something which begins but does not end; but
the fallacy of this becomes evident if we try to
think conversely of something 'eternal' which
ends though it does not begin.”
MAY 1 1921

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