DEATH 25 



It is pathetic, if it is nothing else. 



It would be easy to argue concerning the assassin wasps, 

 those Thugs of the insect world, who are not to be deceived 

 as to whether their victims be truly dead or only properly 

 drugged as they should be, or to ask in what mysterious 

 manner the opossum and many another animal learns to feign 

 death so as to deceive the very elect ; but in truth it matters 

 little whether the beasts that perish have, or have not, a true 

 abstract conception of death, for — in truth also — there may 

 be no death as we humans count death, and so our fellow 

 mortals may not be less ignorant but wiser than we. 



It must not be forgotten that indifference to danger, 

 absence of apprehension even when danger is unmistakably 

 imminent, need not spring only from failure to understand. 

 They spring also from perfect comprehension of the 

 reality. 



Certain it is, that did we meet in a man with that dis- 

 regard of death which enables many an animal to face it 

 when necessary and accept it without complaint we would 

 judge him as hero, philosopher, or saint. 



For all we can possibly know the beasts that perish so 

 contentedly and with so much dignified reserve, may be all 

 three, in that they apprehend more clearly than we do the 

 law of sacrifice which is inseparable from Unity, and which 

 makes the death of each one of God's creatures an Atone- 

 ment indeed. 



Certain it is, also, that both for men and animals, the 

 words of Marcus Antoninus are true — 



" Pleasant to die if there be gods 

 Sad to live if there be none." 



