Читать книгу The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other Essays - Roswell Park - Страница 5

"Earth that nourished thee, shall claim

Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up

Thine individual being, shalt thou go

To mix forever with the elements."

Though were I minded to rehearse certain difficulties met in the preparation of this paper, which I have long had in mind, I might also add the following lines from the same poet's "Hymn to Death":

"Alas! I little thought that the stern power

Whose fateful praise I sung, would try me thus

Before the strain was ended."

One may well quote, at this point, Lamartine, who asked, "What is life but a series of preludes to that mystery whose initial solemn note is tolled by death?" (On this theme Liszt built up that wonderful symphonic tone poem "Les Preludes.")

Even infinity is now questioned by the mathematicians. This being the case, where shall we, where can we stop?

Note.—While writing the foregoing paper there came to my notice the recent book "Death; Its Causes and Phenomena," by Carrington and Meader (London, 1911). It is interesting, but save that it contains a helpful bibliography, is of little assistance to one wishing to pursue the study from its pragmatic aspect. One of the authors is committed to a personal theory that death is caused by cessation of the vibrations which during life maintain vital activity; the other that death is, as it were, the culmination of a bad habit of expectancy that something of the kind must occur, into which we have fallen, in spite of the fact that other living beings below man undergo the same fate, though not capable of expecting anything.