IN ARTICULO MORTIS. 
277 
tempted to linger on so fertile a theme for my pen, but must 
proceed to that which, on the present occasion, is the task 
before me. 
The perusal of La Eoche’s essay has recalled many ob- 
servations I have made, and many thoughts that have crossed 
my mind, when, in the exercise of my useful, though often 
powerless, art, I have been obliged to see, with humiliated sense, 
the mastery of the last great enemy. Whether a brief descrip- 
tion of certain of these observations and thoughts will, reduced 
to writing, be of service, I cannot predict ; but in the un- 
surpassed and unsurpassable state of general ignorance on the 
subject, I feel if they do anything they can do nothing but 
good. They may tend to bring the phenomena of death before 
the mind of the world, as phenomena belonging strictly to the 
natural — phenomena which should quicken no mystery, gratify 
no credulity, inspire no false report of Nature and her works. 
THE MIND AND DEATH. 
In the first place I would remove, as far as is possible, the 
idea — offspring of superstition and grand-offspring of fear 
— that by the strict ordinance of nature death is mentally a 
painful or cruel process to those who are passing through it. 
I admit, as an obvious truth told every day to all of us by 
Nature herself, that in the details of her work she. Nature, is 
not always kind, not always — according to our sense of the word 
— beneficent ; that in her one and grand intent of evolving an 
universal perfection there is no such special adaptation for ad- 
vancement, that the advancement shall come with happiness 
ever by its side, or without pain or misery, to those who are to 
be perfected. At the same time in this matter of dying the 
Supreme Intelligence is to all forms of living thing beneficent. 
In animals inferior to man and less capable of defence. He has 
removed further than from man the foreknowledge and dread of 
death ; so that at the abattoir animals after animals, seeing their 
fellows fall, go in turn to their fate without a shudder or a 
moment of resistant fear. 
In regard to human kind the Supreme Wisdom has also con- 
fined the direct terror of actual death to or near to the moment 
of death. We find in poetry and sentiment displays of argu- 
ment truly about life ; about the value of life as individually 
cast in the man ; about the dread of losing life, and the like. 
We find in fact that the poetry is misapplied romance, and the 
sentiment mistaken effort at philosophy. At a pinch, at despe- 
rate and sudden and unexpected conflict with death, most men 
of strong physical powers and strong will would give all they 
