DEATH

Our feelings with regard to the termination of our earthly existence are

remarkably varied. In some people, there is an absolutely genuine and

strong desire for cessation of individual consciousness, as in the case

of John Addington Symonds. Probably, however, this is met with only in

keenly sensitive natures which have suffered greatly in this life. Such

unfortunate people are sometimes constitutionally unable to believe in

anything better than cessation of their pain. Anything better than

that is "too good to be true", so much too good that they hardly dare

wish for it. Others, who have had a happy life, naturally desire a

continuance of it, and are therefore eager, like F. W. H. Myers, for

that which Symonds dreaded. Others, again, and these are probably the

majority, have no very marked feeling in the matter; like the good

Churchman in the story, they hope to enter into everlasting bliss, but

they wish you would not talk about such depressing subjects. This seems

to suggest that they have secret qualms about the reality of the bliss.

Perhaps they have read Mark Twain's _Captain Stormfield's Visit to

Heaven_, and, though inexpressibly shocked by that exuberant work, are

nevertheless tinged with a sneaking sympathy for its hero, who found the

orthodox abode of the blest an unbearably dull place. The harp-playing

in particular was trying, and he had difficulty in managing his wings.

Anyhow, these people avoid the subject. As Emerson says somewhere,

religion has dealings with them three times in their lives: when they

are christened, when they are married, and when they are buried. And

undoubtedly its main appeal is in the period prior to this third

formality, if they happen to have a longish illness. The rich Miss

Crawley, in _Vanity Fair,_ is typical of many. In days of health and

good spirits, this venerable lady had "as free notions of religion and

morals as Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire"; but when she was

in the clutches of disease, and even though in the odour of sanctity, so

to speak--for she was nursed by Mrs Reverend Bute Crawley, who hoped for

the seventy thousand pounds if she could keep Rawdon and Becky off the

doorstep--even with this spiritual advantage she was in much fear, and

"an utter cowardice took possession of the prostrate old sinner."

Well, let those laugh who will. As for me, I have great sympathy with

Miss Crawley. Probably those who laugh, or are contemptuous of such

cowardice, are people who have not yet come to close quarters with

death--have not looked him, as the French say, in the white of the

eyes. Let them wait until that happens. If they come back after that

rencontre, they will be a little more tolerant of the cowardice of those

whom they called weaker brethren.

Fear of death may be divided into classes, according to its cause, i.e.,

the intellectual state out of which it seems to arise. It may be due to

the expectation of physical suffering; or, as in such cases as Cowper's

and Dr Johnson's, to expectation of what may happen after death, in

that undiscovered country from which Hamlet said no traveller returned,

though he had just been talking with his father's ghost, piping hot--as

Goldsmith has it in his Essay on Metaphor--from Purgatory. In my own

case, I think the fear is a little of both. And I admit that in both

directions the fear is irrational. As to the physical part, it is

probable that when my time comes I shall depart without much of what is

usually called pain, for the heart seems to be my weak place, and I may

reasonably hope that even though if attacked by other ailments, it

will be the heart that will give way. There will probably be suffering

through difficulty of breathing, and I dread this somewhat, for I know

how unpleasant it has been in the attacks which I have survived. Still,

it can hardly be compared with the agonising pain of many diseases.

Rationally, then, I ought not to have much fear on the physical side.

On the spiritual side I confess with Oliver Wendell Holmes that I have

never quite got from under the shadow of the orthodox hell. I had a

Puritan upbringing, not severe in its home theology I am thankful

to say, but involving attendance at an Independent Chapel where the

minister--a good man and no hypocrite--was wont to preach very terrible

sermons. I shall never quite get over the baneful effect of those

damnatory fulminations. They branded my soul. They caused me more pain

than anything else has ever done throughout my life--and this is saying

a great deal. They made me hate God. Remember, I was a defenceless

child. I knew of no other God. I thought all decent people believed like

those about me. I was the only heretic--a rebel, an outlaw, an Ishmael.

Conceive, if you can, the agony of a sensitive child struggling with

that thought! Condemned to eternal torment, with those who, in Dante's

terrible line, "have no hope of death." ("Inferno," iii, 46.)

Then I fell in with O. W. Holmes's Autocrat and Professor, and found a

friendly hand in the darkness. It led me to Emerson and Carlyle; then

I found Darwin, Spencer, and the rest of them. My loneliness was

mitigated, but the seared place in my soul was not healed, and never

will be healed. I cannot read the Inferno and Purgatorio of Dante

without horror, and thus the poetic beauty of those great cantos is

darkened for me. I cannot worship "God," for "God" is the fiend whose

image was stamped into my mind in its most plastic, most defenceless

period. Truly that early teaching has much to answer for. It has

poisoned a great part of my life. I suppose if I could have "accepted"

that Being as my God, accepting also the sacrifice--the Blood--by which

that Being's anger was supposed to be assuaged--I suppose I should have

been happy, feeling myself "saved." (But I have lately been surprised to

find how ineffective this belief can be. An acquaintance of mine, an

orthodox churchwoman who has no religious doubts, and who talks much of

the Bible, confesses to "a fear of death which clouds even her brightest

moments"--an ever-present, unconquerable dread.) However, I could not

accept the dogma. Why, I don't know. Somehow my whole mind and heart

revolted against the entire plan of salvation. I never believed any of

it. I felt it could not be true. And yet it tortured me. Illogical?

Yes: human beings are illogical. I am no exception. The Christian who

believes he will go to heaven is equally illogical in his unwillingness

to die.

When or if we succeed in getting rid of hell, the spiritual fear of

death becomes less torturing, remaining only as a vague dread, as in

Hamlet's soliloquy. Bacon says that we fear death as children fear to

go in the dark. In my own case, it is somewhat thus that the fear now

presents itself. The old hell-fear, though not utterly obliterated, is

becoming less all-swallowing. This very desirable state of affairs

is partly the result of the conclusions to which I have been led by

psychical research. After many years of experiment and close study, I

can say that I know something about after-death conditions. Not that I

pretend to be able to coerce other people into a similar belief, even if

I wanted to. Each must travel his own path. Moreover, psychical research

being a science, its results are not more certain than those of other

sciences. Alternative theories in explanation of any phenomenon are

always possible. There is no such thing as knock-down proof. But for my

part I can say that I know--in the same way that I know the truth of

Mendeleef's law, or Avogadro's law, or Dalton's atomic theory--that

human beings do not become extinct when they die, that they are often

able to communicate with us after that event, and that they are not in

any orthodox heaven or hell. My knowledge is based partly on a lengthy

and carefully-conducted series of sittings which some intimate friends

of mine have had with a medium known to me; partly on my own results

over a period of several years of systematic investigation; and partly

on various curious experiences of psychic friends of mine who are in no

sense professional mediums. (Details to some extent in my _New Evidences

in Psychical Research_ (Rider, 1911) and _Psychical Investigations_

(Cassell, 1917.) I now believe, with the Bishop of London, that a man

is essentially the same five minutes after death as he was five minutes

before. As the old woman says in _David Copperfield_, "death doesn't

change us more than life"--no, nor as much!

The upshot is, of course, that my spiritual fear of death has, I am

thankful to say, almost vanished. The lurid future has taken on a milder

radiance.

It is not that I want assuring of "happiness" in a future state as

compensation for misery in this. I should be quite contented if I could

be assured that death is annihilation. It would at least be a cessation

of suffering; and that is much. I could agree with Keats:

"Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath.

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy.

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--

To thy high requiem become a sod!"

--(_To the Nightingale_)

Easeful death--it is a good word. Keats knew disease, and was content

with prospect of ease; though at the end there is a note of depression

or despair at the thought of becoming a "sod," deaf and blind to beauty.

This reminds us of the attitude of other poets towards the great

problem. Tennyson is mildly optimistic and placid; stretches, indeed,

somewhat lame hands of faith in his sorrowful moments when his friend

has died, but on the whole is healthily disposed; friendly to the most

cheerful way of looking at it; inclined, with true British burliness, to

make the best of a bad job--a job which, after all, may not be so very

bad when we come to closer quarters with it. Afar, death is the spectre

feared of man; seen nearer, he may metamorphose into a beautiful Iris,

sent by heavenly mercy. And, afterwards, the new spiritual state will

probably be an improvement--Aeonian evolution through all the spheres.

Therefore, away with all selfish mourning either about our own

prospective fate or that of those who have left us. Let us hate the

black negation of the bier:

"And wish the dead, as happier than ourselves

And higher, having climb'd one step beyond

Our village miseries, might be borne in white

To burial or to burning, hymned from hence

With songs in praise of death, and crowned with flowers."

No doubt Tennyson was to a very great extent able to stay himself on

the personal mystic experiences described in his poem _The Ancient

Sage_--experiences which gave him a subjective assurance that death was

"a ludicrous impossibility". Browning, characteristically buoyant, was

ready to face death with a laugh; the fog in the throat will pass, the

black minute's at end, then thy breast. In _Prospice_ we feel the eager

sureness with which he looked forward to rejoining her whose bodily

presence had left him a few months before. But even Browning's cheery

salutation is outdone by Whitman. The American, though acquainted with

suffering as Browning was not, and though apparently without much belief

or interest in personal survival, was almost uncannily friendly to his

own taking off. And it was not because he suffered so greatly that

he hailed release. It was more the natural outcome of his joyous

temperament, subdued at the last to a kind of solemn exaltation. The

following stanzas were written with George Inness' picture _The Valley

of the Shadow of Death_ in mind:

"Nay, do not dream, designer dark,

Thou hast portray'd or hit thy theme entire;

I, hoverer of late by this dark valley, by its confines, having

glimpses of it,

Here enter lists with thee, claiming my right to make a symbol too.

For I have seen many wounded soldiers die,

After dread suffering--have seen their lives pass off with smiles,

And I have watch'd the death-hours of the old; and seen the

infant die;

The rich, with all his nurses and his doctors;

And then the poor, in meagreness and poverty;

And I myself for long, O Death, have breath'd my every breath

Amid the nearness and the silent thought of thee.

"And out of these and thee,

I make a scene, a song (not fear of thee,

Nor gloom's ravines, nor bleak, nor dark--for I do not fear thee,

Nor celebrate the struggle, or contortion, or hard-tied knot),

Of the broad blessed light, and perfect air, with meadows, rippling

tides, and trees and flowers and grass,

And the low hum of living breeze--and in the midst God's beautiful

eternal right hand,

Thee, holiest minister of Heaven--thee, envoy, usherer, guide

at last of all,

Rich, florid, loosener of the stricture-knot called life,

Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death."

This is indeed a change from the idea of Death as King of Terrors, as

"spectre feared of man". (_In Memoriam_)

The Greek idea, at its best, seems to have been half-way between the

two extremes. It regarded death with more or less equanimity, as being

certainly not the greatest evil--no king of terrors--but merely an

emissary of greater Powers, to whose will we must bow, though with

dignity:

"He that is a man in good earnest must not be so mean as to whine

for life, and grasp intemperately at old age; let him leave this

point to Providence."--(Plato: _Gorgias_)

Sophocles has the same thought, with an added touch of Hamlet-like

irritation about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune:

"It is a shame to crave long life, when troubles

Allow a man no respite. What delight

Bring days, one with another, setting us

Forward or backward on our path to death?

I would not take the fellow at a gift

Who warms himself with unsubstantial hopes;

But bravely to live on, or bravely end,

Is due to gentle breeding. I have said."--(_Ajax_)

Cicero voices the same pagan feeling, in the contented language of a

rather tired, wise old man:

"I look forward to my dissolution as to a secure haven, where I

shall at length find a happy repose from the fatigues of a long

voyage."--(_De Senectute_)

And was it not Cato--fine old Stoic--who, finding his natural force

abating, and accepting the hint furnished by a stumble in the street,

stooped and kissed the ground: "Proserpine, I come!" and went home,

making a speedy end, unwilling to suffer the indignity of disease and

the shame of being served in weakness? Modern opinion wisely reprobates

suicide, but there is something noble in the Roman attitude, condemn it

as we will. As a modern and almost comic example of a modern Stoic's

attitude to this same question of death we may cite the famous lines of

Walter Savage Landor:

"I strove with none, for none was worth my strife,

Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art,

I warmed both hands before the fire of life,

It sinks, and I am ready to depart."

"Strove with none", indeed! As a matter of fact, Landor strove with

everybody. He was one of the most quarrelsome men that ever lived.

The only man who could tolerate him was Browning. But in his mellower

moments, at least, he was "ready to depart", quietly acquiescing in the

scheme of things. To depart, note; not to be extinguished. And this view

is, all things considered, the most sane and wholesome view of the great

problem of Death. We did not begin to live when we were born in this

present tenement of flesh; we shall not cease to live when we quit it.

'Tis but a tent for a night, an interlude, a descent into matter, a

temporary incarnation for educative purposes, of the soul or a part of

it, as it pursues its lone way towards the ineffable goal. This life is

but a sleep and a forgetting;

"The soul that rises with us, our life's star,

Has had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar."

Death, then, is to be welcomed when it comes. We must not run to meet

it, or run from it; but we should welcome it when God thinks fit to send

it, His messenger. The beautiful eternal right hand beckons, and the

soul gladly arises and departs, to "that imperial palace whence it

came", or to fare forth on some "adventure brave and new".