gue: this is
what is called "tasting the bitterness of death." Here again, we
see, it is not strictly death that is personified. The embodiment
is not of the mortal act, but of the decree determining that act.
The Jewish angel of death is not a picture of death in itself, but
of God's decree coming to the fated individual who is to die.

The Greeks sometimes depicted death and sleep as twin boys, one
black, one white, borne slumbering in the arms of their mother,
night. In this instance the phenomenon of dissolving
unconsciousness which falls on mortals, abstractly generalized in
the mind, is then concretely symbolized. It is a bold and happy
stroke of artistic genius; but it in no way expresses or suggests
the scientific facts of actual death. There is also a classic
representation of death as a winged boy with a pensive brow and
an inverted torch, a butterfly at his feet. This beautiful image,
with its affecting accompaniments, conveys to the beholder not
the verity, nor an interpretation, of death, but the sentiments
of the survivors in view of their bereavement. The sad brow denotes
the grief of the mourner, the winged insect the disembodied
psyche, the reversed torch the descent of the soul to the under
world; but the reality of death itself is nowhere hinted.

The Romans give descriptions of death as a female figure in dark
robes, with black wings, with ravenous teeth, hovering everywhere,
darting here and there, eager for prey. Such a view is a
personification of the mysteriousness, suddenness, inevitableness,
and fearfulness, connected with the subject of death in men's
minds, rather than of death itself. These thoughts are grouped
into an imaginary being, whose sum of attributes are then
ignorantly both associated with the idea of the unknown cause and
confounded with the visible effect. It is, in a word, mere poetry,
inspired by fear and unguided by philosophy.

Death has been shown in the guise of a fowler spreading his net,
setting his snares for men. But this image concerns itself with
the accidents of the subject, the unexpectedness of the fatal
blow, the treacherous springing of the trap, leaving the root of
the matter untouched. The circumstances of the mortal hour are
infinitely varied, the heart of the experience is unchangeably the
same: there are a thousand modes of dying, but there is only one
death. Ever so complete an exhibition of the occasions and
accompaniments of an event is no explanatio