The Unsolved Mystery

Southland Times, Issue 11655, 9 February 1891, Page 3

The Unsolved Mystery

(Benjamin Tatlob, in the Scottish Review) Philosophers have concerned themselves much with attempts to define death, bat as they have not been able to agree first bow to define life, it is not surprising that they have not been very successful in defining its negative. Men, for tbe most part, are interested more in finding practical answers to :he question, 'Is life worth living ?' than in pnreniog scientific analysis of tbe nature of life itself. There is a much more general disposition to speculate on the natare of death. Life we know in some sort, but death is an absolutely unknown quantity. That which is mysterious is always more interesting than thu which is patent even if ancomprehended. Life is familiar, bat death must always remain a mystery and an ansolved problem to the living being. When Faber wrote : ' Death is an unsurveyed land, an nnarranged science/ be expressed what still remains the sum of our conceptions. It is true that Mr Herbert Spenc-r has attempted a more scientific formula. He tells ns that life ia 'the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and «acce3eive, in correspondence with external co-exist-ences and seqneoces,' which, if not very intelligible to ihe ooi-sci6ntific mind,bai led to mach heated disputation in philosophic circles Tbe 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 knowledge of what death is, to be told that it is simply a want of that 'correspondence' of relations which is defined as life ? The mystery of not being still remains greater than the mystery of baing. When Socrates suggested that pleasure is a state of not-paio,tbe mind can more readily grasp tbe signiScunce than in a thesis which declares that death is notlife. Bat Socrates, as we know, argued that while life is contrary to death, death is produced from life and life from death. He also forced the lone-suffering Simmias to admit that, if death is anything, it is nothing else tbsn tbe separation of tbe soul from the body, •Is not this to die ?' he asked : 'for the body to be apart by itself separated from the sonl, and for tbe sool to subsist apart bylitself separated from tbe body ?' Philosophy he affirm"d to be in itself nothing else than a preparation for, aod meditation on, death — asserting that death and philosophy have this in common that while death separates tbe soul from the body, philosophy draws off the mind from bodily things to the contemplation of abstract truths. Therefore a man who fears death can Deitber be a philosopher nor a true lover of wisdom. Tbis is all very fine, but somehow the philosophic admiration of death seems to suggest the face of Mr Mould, the undertaker, in wbose countenance 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 wb«re all life dies, says Milton, death lives. Which may all be accepted witbont in tbe least en. lightening as about 'the strange, mysterious power, seen every day, yet never understood bat by the uncommunicative dead.' Hnmboldt owned that be bad never known the feeling of an anxious longing for dfeath, yet heid that death is not a break in existence — it ia but an intermediate circumstance, a transition from one form of our finite existence to another. Job did not feel tbis when be spoke of ' a land of darkness, as darkness itself ; and of tbo shadow of death, without an/ order, and where the light is as darkness.' But it in difficult to think otherwise in regarding the fern of a dead child, where is, as Leigh Hunt says, death in its soblimest and purest imagß. • The sensp of death is most in apprehension,' and tbe apprehension is more general than Sonthey would have it, for be declared as the result of bis observation that tbe fear of death is not common. Where it exists, be said, it proceeds rather from a diseased and enfeebled mind, than from any principle in our nature. Bat be is surely wrong, for it is an ineradicable principle in our nature to feartha unknown even while we strive with it. Even the Christian's most ardent desire to depart and be with Christ cannot wholly obliterate the feeling of dread of tbe dark passage which has to be traversed before is reached the commingling of time with eternity. Tbe Kuasian exile shudders as be crosses the river Irtish by 'tbe ferry of death,' because he knows it will divide him for ever from what be bas known, while beyond it lies the awful mystery of Siberia. Siebeokas, in his fantastic philosophic fashion, contended that both men and watches stop while they are being wound up for a new and larger day. Tbe dark intervals of sleep and death, he believed, act as the preservation against tbe light of an idea, which would otherwise grow too strong, and against the burning of never-cooled desire?, and the mingiing and commingling of thoughts, just aa planetary systems are kept asunder by wide wastes. ( 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.'