ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 
167 
derecl more purely as a scientific question. It has come scienti- 
fically into notice in connection with the work of sanitary 
advancement, and upon this basis it has been discussed with 
much activity. Growing out of the discussion has arisen an 
effort to introduce into our country the ancient Greek and 
later Eoman method of cremation, but without reference to that 
sentiment by which the cultivated Greek made the process' 
a solemnity and a hope. It is the design of our modern crema- 
tion to accomplish a destruction, not to institute a rite : to get 
rid as quickly as possible of an offensive and objectionable mass 
of organic putridity, not to consign for perpetuity the unmatch- 
able mechanism of life, in its design indestructible, that it may 
exist again. 
In this proposal of modern times there is a return to a phi- 
losophy of a Eoman school which once had many followers ; but 
which, failing to appeal to the heart of man, fell before the 
gentler and sympathetic part of the mental organisation. I 
believe it will fall so again and again, unless in the course of 
nature the two nervous lives with which we are endowed should 
be organically remodelled, and the reasoning parts gain the 
pre-eminence, the head overcome the heart. But then the 
passions will one and all be lost, and the cold reasoning being 
• — he will be no longer an animal — that will remain will have 
no sentiments and therefore no sympathies ; no uncertainties, 
therefore no hopes ; no hates, therefore no loves ; and no grati- 
fications except those that are infinite and away from the 
common sphere in which he is doomed to breathe his purely 
physical life. There is little indication up to the present 
moment of any such radical reorganisation of man as this, 
and we need not expect the cremationists much chance in our 
generation. Indeed they are out-voted a hundred to one by 
the extreme sentimentalists, who would still embalm their dead 
and retain near them even the silent form of that which, after 
it became silent, was felt to be beyond all previous conception 
beloved and precious. I have myself seen many instances 
of embalmment; I believe there is no mode of disposal of 
the dead that is so tranquillising and solacing, at the moment, 
to the living ; and I am far more prepared to see the advance- 
ment of this mode of disposal of the dead than of that by the 
sharp and decisive fire. 
'The probabilities are that, on the whole, matters will long 
remain much as they exist at the present moment. The 
majority will hold by the present system of simple interment 
in the earth ; a minority will follow the process of embalming ; 
a smaller minority will support cremation. Putting aside all 
feeling in the matter, it may be useful to consider what disad- 
vantages or advantages pertain to each method. 
