anished life comes to be
looked upon as a day that has past, but leaving many memories behind it.

It is, I think, a healthy tendency that is leading men in our own
generation to turn away as much as possible from the signs and the
contemplation of death. The pomp and elaboration of funerals; protracted
mournings surrounding us with the gloom of an ostentatious and
artificial sorrow; above all, the long suspension of those active habits
which nature intended to be the chief medicine of grief, are things
which at least in the English-speaking world are manifestly declining.
We should try to think of those who have passed away as they were at
their best, and not in sickness or in decay. True sorrow needs no
ostentation, and the gloom of death no artificial enhancement. Every
good man, knowing the certainty of death and the uncertainty of its
hour, will make it one of his first duties to provide for those he loves
when he has himself passed away, and to do all in his power to make the
period of bereavement as easy as possible. This is the last service he
can render before the ranks are closed, and his place is taken, and the
days of forgetfulness set in. In careers of riot and of vice the thought
of death may have a salutary restraining influence; but in a useful,
busy, well-ordered life it should have little place. It was not the
Stoics alone who 'bestowed too much cost on death, and by their
preparations made it more fearful.'[81] As Spinoza has taught, 'the
proper study of a wise man is not how to die but how to live,' and as
long as he is discharging this task aright he may leave the end to take
care of itself. The great guiding landmarks of a wise life are indeed
few and simple; to do our duty--to avoid useless sorrow--to acquiesce
patiently in the inevitable.

FOOTNOTES:

[77] _The Tempest._

[78] _Measure for Measure._

[79] Garth.

[80] _History of European Morals_, i. p. 203. The legend is related by
Camden.

[81] Bacon.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAP OF LIFE***

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