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ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 
By Dr. RICHARDSON, F.R.S. 
T HE recent discussion on cremation has, for a moment, 
excited much public interest on the whole subject of dis- 
posal of the dead. The subject is one fruitful for discussion, and 
one that will probably long remain fruitful, not because of the 
practical difficulties of modes of disposal, but because of the 
differences of sentiment that prevail, and of the social, and 
I may say legal objections to that mode which many men of 
science, dealing only with the scientific side of the question, are 
inclined to consider as the method most perfect and most 
advantageous to the physical interests of society. 
In studying this subject in a practical point of view, men of 
science have to take into their consideration the psychological 
not less than the material side of it. That they will by any 
force of enactment make any one exclusive method universal is 
not to be expected. They might as well hope to introduce one 
religion, or one taste, or one food, or one sentiment, and give 
to that unit universal rule in communities, the members of 
which are more sharply divided by psychological differences 
than by any other causes of division common to mankind. 
To bury, to embalm, to cremate, mean in fact three acts the 
inclination to either of which depends altogether upon the dis- 
position of those who have to carry the acts into practice. This 
disposition depends not on reasoning, but on instinct. This 
instinct depends not on accident, but on the most veritable of all 
human endowments, on the organic origin and build of the man 
and of the men from whom the man springs; in other words, 
upon racial and family dispositions or qualities. 
It accorded with the disposition of the ancient Greek to burn 
his dead. For the Greek was the father of mirth, and it was 
never in his happy mind to retain long near to him that which 
would hold him in gloom. So to the eternal fire must go the 
nearest and the dearest when the spirit that animated the body 
was resolved away. Burial of the dead was to his mind a slow 
and even wearisome process, to be followed out only in emer- 
