MAETERLINCK ON DEATH.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1207, 12 February 1914, Page 4

MAETERLINCK ON DEATH.

A REMARKABLE SIMILE. Maeterlinck's essay on “Death” has been expanded into a book of more than two hundred pages entitled, “Our Eternity.” It is a serenely logical Inquiry into the profoundest of mysteries, written partly in the poetic vein which all readers of Maeterlinck so much enjoy. He is a stylist whose manner never offends, and a rationalist whose daring never jars upon a sensitive and reverential spirit. The essay has been translated by Alexander de Mattos. “We can no more conceive death,” Maeterlinck remarks, “than we can conceive nothingness,” and in any case, “if noth* ingness were possible, since it could not be anything whatever, it could not be dreadful.” In his new chapters, Maeterlinck analyses with ruthless logic the claims of the Spiritualists and the Psychical Research Society that they have established communication with spirits which have passed into the Beyond. Why, he asks, do the departed tell us nothing of them selves and their new experiences • why, if they can spe ' do tlr y tantalise us with s which answer no question ? “Do they not yet know that tho sign which will prove to us they survive is to be found rot with us, but with tuf-i, on ~he other Ede of the grave t Why do they come back with empty hands and empty words ? I j that what one finds woeu one is steeped in infinity ? Beyond our last hour is it all bare and shapeless and dim ? If it be so, let them teii us ; and tae evideuc .* •; the '-:ss will at least possess a grandeur that is ail too absent from these crossexamining methods. Of what use is it to die, it all life’s trivialities continue ? Is it ready worth while to have passed through the terrifying gorges which open on the eternal fields, in order to remember that we bad a great uncle called Peter, and that our cousin Paul was afflicted with varicose veins and a gastric complaint ? . . , There are a thousand things, large or small, alike unknown to us, which we must perceive when feeble eyes uo longer arrest our vision. It is in those regions from which a shadow separates us and not in foolish tittle-tattle of the past that they would at last find the clear and genuine proof which they seem to seek with such enthusiasm. Without demanding a great miracle, one would nevertheless think that we had the right to expect from a mind which nothing now enthralls some other discourse than that which it avoided when it was still subject to matter.” Maeterlinck is happy and oiten deeply impressive in his similes, and from a simile he advances to logical argument, as for instance here “Suppose that an unborn child were endowed with a certain consciousness ; that unborn twins, for instance, could, in some obscure fashion, exchange their impressions and communicate their hopes

and fears to each other. Having known nought but the warm maternal shades, they would not feel straightened nor uuhappy there. They would probably have no other idea than to prolong as long as possible that life of abundance free from cares and of sleep free from alarms.

“But if, even as we are aware that we must die, they too knew that they must be born, that is to say, suddenly leave the shelter of the gentle darkness and abandon for ever that captive but peaceful su;uce, to be precipitated into an absolutely different, unimaginable aud boundless world, how great would be their anxieties aud their fears ! And yet there is no reason why our own anxieties aud tears should be more justified aud less ridiculous.

“The character, the spirit, the intentions, the beuevolence, or the indifference of the unknown to which we are subject do uot alter between our birth and our death. We remain always iu the same infinity, in the same universe. It is perfectly reasonable and legitimate to persuade ourselves that the tomb is uo more dreadful than the cradle. It would even be legitimate and reasonable to accept the cradle only on account of the tomb.

“If, before being born, we were permitted to choose between the great peace of non existence and a life that should uot be completed by the glorious hour of death, which of us, knowing what he ought to know, would accept the disquieting problem of an existence that would not lead to the reassuring mystery of its eud ? Which of us would wish to come into a world where we can learn so little, if he did uot know that he must enter it if he would leave it and learn more ?

“The best thing about life is that it prepares this hour for us, that it is the one and only road leading to the magic gateway and into that incomparable mystery where misfortunes and sufferings will no longer be possible, because we shall have lost the body that produced them ; where the worst that can befall us Is the dreamless sleep which we number among the greatest boons on earth ; where, lastly, it is almost unimaginable that a thought should not survive to mingle with the substance of the universe, that is to say, with infinity, which, if it be uot a waste of indifference, can be nothing but a sea of joy.” Although we cannot understand the profound mystery of Death, or prove that it leads to a higher consciousness, we can, says Maeterlinck, reason and hope. “If,” he remarks, “the infinity into which we shall be projected have no sort of consciousness nor anything that stands for it, the reason will be that consciousness or anything that might replace it Is uot indispensable to eternal happiness. That, I think, is about as much as we may be permitted to declare, for the moment, to the spirit anxiously facing the unfathomable space wherein death will shortly hurl it. It can still hope to find there the fulfilment of its dreams ; it will perhaps find less to dread than it had leared.”