96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



holding out aught as higher or more enduring than the fountain of hu- 

 man love and the fulfillment of human duties, are sufficient to bear the 

 weight of both life and death. Here was a man who utterly dismissed 

 from his thoughts, as being unprofitable, or worse, all speculations on 

 a future or unseen world ; a man to whom life was holy and precious, 

 a thing not to be despised, but to be used with joyfulness ; a soul full 

 of life and light, ever longing for activity, ever counting what was 

 achieved as not worthy to be reckoned in comparison of what was left 

 to do. And this is the witness of his ending, that as never man loved 

 life more, so never man feared death less. He fulfilled well and truly 

 that great saying of Spinoza, often in his mind and on his lips, 'Homo 

 liber cle nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat. '''''' 



There is surely a clear straining after startling announcements in 

 the very manner of this passage. Why does Mr. Pollock fall into the 

 manner of our translators of Scripture, with his " unholpen of," and 

 the unmeaning adjective which, from his point of view, he chooses for 

 Professor Clifford's view of life, namely, " holy," unless he wants to 

 emi^hasize, by the use of such affectations, the antithesis between his 

 meaning and the meaning of the book of which his turns of phrase re- 

 mind us ? And, however true it may be, as it doiibtless was, that 

 Professor Clifford met death with the courage and calmness that befit 

 a man in meeting the inevitable, it is clearly nothing but an exaggera- 

 tion, and an attempt to strain beyond the truth, to endeavor to make 

 us believe that, if, as we are told. Professor Clifford was a man of warm 

 affections, he did not fear death any the more, believing it, as he did, to 

 be the extinction of love, than he would have done if he had thought 

 it but the entrance on a life of deeper and truer love. What Spinoza 

 says is well said for a man of action and for a man of thought, but 

 very ill said, indeed, for a man of loving nature. Thought and action 

 are so full of the present that they do not live in the future. True 

 affection can not but shiver at the thought of extinction, and with 

 Professor Clifford, too, doubtless it was so, as it would be with any 

 one else. It does not follow that, because a man is brave and reticent, 

 he does not suffer from the pang he conceals. If it could be shown 

 that in relation to his personal affections he really feared death less 

 than those who do not regard it as the end of either life or love, all 

 we can say is that the only proper inference would be that he feared 

 it less, because to him it signified less, because he loved less. And 

 that is not at all the inference we should draw from the facts of his 

 life. We suspect that Mr. Pollock is only imitating his friend in 

 straining after a startling saying, without considering that what is 

 intellectually startling is not, on that account, the more, but the less 

 likely to be true. 



This tendency to strain after intellectual excitements and surprises, 

 which has flowed from so many quarters upon the present generation, 

 is a very natural accompaniment of an age of discovery and of popu- 



