Non-Fiction > Uncollected essays > Volumes 33-38, 1876-1878 - Cornhill magazine > Volume 37

434 JES TRIPLEX.
Death. The whole way is one wilderness of snares, and the end of it,
for those who fear the last pinch, is ii-revocable rnin. And yet we go
spinning through it all, like a party for the Derby. Perhaps the reader
remembers one of the humorous devices of the deified Caligula: how he
encouraged a vast concourse of holiday makers on to his bridge over Baias
bay ; and when they were in the height of their enjoyment, turned loose
the Prsetoi'iau guards among the company, and had them tossed into
the sea. This is no bad miniature of the dealings of natuie with the
transitory race of man. Only, what a cheqviered picnic we have of it,
even while it lasts ! and into what great waters, not to be crossed by any
swimmer, God's pale Praetorian throws ns over in the end ! We live the
time that a match flickers ; we pop the cork of a ginger-beer bottle, and
the earthquake swallows us on the instant. Is it not odd, is it not in-
congruous, is it not, in the highest sense of human speech, incredible,
that we should think so highly of the ginger-beer, and troiible our heads
so little about the devouring earthquake 1 The love of Life and the fear
of Death are two famous phrases that grow harder to understand the
more we think about them. It is a well-known fact that an immense
proportion of boat accidents would never happen if people held the sheet
in their hands instead of tying it ; and yet, unless it be some martiaiet of
a professional mariner or some landsman with shattei'cd nerves, every
one of God's creatures ties it. A strange instance of man's unconcern and
brazen boldness in the face of death !
"We confound ourselves with metaphysical phrases, which we imjiort
into daily talk with noble inappropriateness. We have no idea of what
death is, apart from its circumstances and some of its consequences to
others ; and although we have some experience of living, there is not a
man on earth who has flown so high into abstraction as to have any
practical guess at the meaning of the word life. All literature, from Job
and Omar Khayam to Thomas Carlyle or Walt Whitman, Ls but an
attempt to look upon the human state with such largeness of view as
shall enable us to rise from the consideration of living to the Definition
of Life. And our sages give us about the best satisfaction in their power
when they say that it is a vapour, or a show, or made out of the same
stuiT with dreams. Philosophy, in its more rigid sense, has been at the
same work for ages ; and after a myriad bald heads have wagged over
the problem, and piles of words have been heaped one upon another into
dry and cloudy volumes without end, philosophy has the honour of lay-
ing before us, with modest pride, her contribution towards the subject :
that life is a Permanent Possibility of Sensation. Truly a fine result !
A man may very well love beef, or hunting, or a woman ; but surely,
siu-ely, not a Permanent Possibility of Sensation ! He may be afraid
of a precipice, or a dentist, or a large enemy with a club, or even an
undertaker's man ; but not certainly of abstract death. We may trick
with the word life in its dozen senses until we are weary of tricking ;
we may argue in terms of all the philosoj^hies on earth, but one fact