ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



and coal and the processes of combustion from 

 which it sprang, and it has its subsequent conditions 

 in the invisible gases into which it has vanished, but 

 as a point of heat and light, it exists no more. Our 

 wise attitude toward death is, I think, to forget or 

 ignore it entirely. We shall not know it when it 

 overtakes us. "Avida nunquam desinere mortalitas." 

 " Men must endure their going hence, even as 

 their coming hither — ripeness is all." 



XI. DEATH 



I 

 In death the elements of the body are not changed 

 — oxygen is still oxygen, carbon still carbon. What 

 has happened, then? Can it be explained by saying 

 that a process has been reversed? Does it bear any 

 true analogy to the redistribution of type after the 

 printer has set it up and printed his book? The type 

 is the same, but the relation of all the units has been 

 changed. The printer has arranged them so that 

 collectively they expressed to him certain meanings 

 or ideas. These ideas did not exist in the type, but in 

 the order of its arrangement. In one order or com- 

 bination the letters meant one thing; in another 

 order or combination they expressed quite another. 

 The same type will spell dog or God. When redis- 

 tributed and returned to the different fonts, the let- 

 ters express nothing but themselves. If this is a true 

 analogy, then, in the case of the living book, man, 



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