ence prevents more
pain than it inflicts; the wedded laws of life and death wear the
solemn beauty and wield the merciful functions of God; all is
balanced and ameliorating; above the slaughterous struggle safely
soar the dove and the rainbow; out of the charnel blooms the rose
to which the nightingale sings love; nor is there poison which
helps not health, nor destruction which supplies not creation with
nutriment for greater good and joy.

By painting such pictures as that of a woman with "Sin" written on
her forehead in great glaring letters, giving to Death a globe
entwined by a serpent, or that of Death as a

14 Hermann Wagner, Der Tod, beleuchtet vom Standpunkte der
Naturwissenschaften.

skeleton, waving a black banner over the world and sounding
through a trumpet, "Woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth!" by
interpreting the great event as punishment instead of fulfilment,
extermination instead of transition, men have elaborated, in the
faith of their imaginations, a melodramatic death which nature
never made. Truly, to the capable observer, death bears the double
aspect of necessity and benignity: necessity, because it is an
ultimate fact, as the material world is made, that, since organic
action implies expenditure of force, the modicum of force given to
any physical organization must finally be spent; benignity,
because a bodily immortality on earth would both prevent all the
happiness of perpetually rising millions and be an unspeakable
curse upon its possessors.

The benevolence of death appears from this fact, that it
boundlessly multiplies the numbers who can enjoy the prerogatives
of life. It calls up ever fresh generations, with wondering eyes
and eager appetites, to the perennial banquet of existence. Had
Adam not sinned and been expelled from Paradise, some of the
Christian Fathers thought, the fixed number of saints foreseen by
God would have been reached and then no more would have been
born.15

Such would have been the necessity, there being no death. But, by
the removal of one company as they grow tired and sated, room is
made for a new company to approach and enjoy the ever renewing
spectacle and feast of the world. Thus all the delightful boons
life has, instead of being cooped within a little stale circle,
are ceaselessly diffused and increased. Vivacious claimants
advance, see what is to be seen, partake of what is furnished, are
satisfied, and retire; and their places are immediatel