COLLECTIVE DEATH.

Timaru Herald, Volume LV, Issue 5517, 20 September 1892, Page 3

COLLECTIVE DEATH.

(Spectator.) Tha rumour, very possibly more or less exaggerated, of the dissappebranoe of an island said to be 25 milrs by 15 m area— more than half as large again us the Isle of Man — with a population of 12,800 people, owing to a great volcanic eruption whioh had strewn the sea for many miles with volcanic debris, rendero it probable thnt tbe extinction of Herculuneum and Pompeii, is not at all events a unique event m the history of our planet. Bishop Butler once speculated on the probability thut a whulo corporation might go mad at once Certainly a more probable event would bo the death of a community — which has indeed happened m the case if Sangir has really been destroyed with all its 12,000 inhabitants. It is curious how much ffioro 'thj imagination is impressed by the sudden decease of a whole society, than by its gradual decease spread over a long term of years, with the gradual substitution of the children, m tbe places and duties filled by the parents. In the latter case the society docs not die, but is m a constant condition of dissolution and reproduction. But why should it be to much less shocking to think of tho never-ceasing death and rone wai of a society, than of itsiuotantaneouß and complete disappearance from the earth ? Jo it simply that we are well accustomed to the one and not to the other ? If that wero a<l, we ought to be much more horriSod at tho dtoeass of a whole family than at the decease of tho most important members of it; yet there is often a tragedy m tho latter caoe which tbero cannot be m tho former, where there are no mourners left to foel the pangs of separation. It is more impressive to see the total blasting of a treo than to see its leaves drop off one by one ; hut then, that is because, m the latter case, the trunk survives, und we think of the trunk as the living thing, and of the leaves as merely some of the manifestations of its life. But as all . the population of any oountry at any one moment dies Booner or later, the mere fact that they leave succosi'ora behind them, who m thoir turn also die, only cumulates tbe death prospect. And though it cumulates also the birth proßpect, there ie nothing surely m tbe expectation of innumerable births to render less awful the prospect of the collective death of the persons now nlivo. Indeed, to our mind, their simultaneous death is not more but rather less awful than their gradual dropping off m groups and units. Deaths that leave, a blank behind them a<*o much more awful than deaths which leave no sense of blank. If Sangir really perished out of tho earth at one fell blow, thero was hardly any pang inflicted — nono that would compare with the pangs which tbo death of tbe same number of people m the ordinary way would necessarily inflict. It was said of Saul and Jonathan that they wore lovely and pleasant ia their live^, and m thoir deaths they were not divided. And if that could bo laid of the ifhole population of any fragment of the earth, there would be, not a greater, but a much lesß oloud of woe, though a loss benignant cloud of promise also, banging over the future of that portion of the earth than over any similar fraction of the remainder. Collective though it is a phenomenon to which we are hardly at all accustomed, is surely a very much loss paiDful prospect than the ordinary human inheritance of incessantly recurring grief and parting. Wo suppose it is, m the main, the mere magnitude of .the phenomenon of collective death which impresses it. Subdivided into innu'morable units of loss aud vanishing!, the imagination is not staggered as it is by the sadden gathering to a single focus of some 12.00Q Bcenes of dark and painful experience, though tha mere convergence of ell of thorn, m tbo same pqjqt really implip", not a vast increase, but a vast diminution of the sum total of earthly iamentnlion, If the earth wore suddenly scattered iuto a thousand fragments as some one of the planets prohahly has boon m that intervening spape between Mars and Jupitee, m which the planetoids revolve, the catastrophe would bring much lesa trouble and dismay to tbe men than would bo the inevitable result of the gradual decay and death of all of the beings existing on the earth at the moment when tbe supposed catastrophe occurred. Yet, if there could be any planetary spectators of like constitution to ourselves (say on Mare) of Booh a catastrophe, they would be much more shocked by it if they could be sure that there had been a multitude of living sooieließ and nuliona upon the exploded sphere than they would be by learning that, during ouch century, the whole population of the earth of a hundred years ago had found their graves under its surface. Now, if ever we could really deserve and earn planetary sympathy for our griefs, it would not be at a moment whon all our destinies wore euddenly and simultaneously cut short — when destruction descended upon uo like tho drop soene at tha end of the last act.