Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1919 — MYSTERY OF LIFE [ARTICLE]

MYSTERY OF LIFE

Who Knows Where It Comes From or What It Is? ’ Marked Difference Between Mankind and the Wild Things, in Their View of Death —Lower Animals Little Impressed. 7 Some folks talk about “the mystery of life,” and it is as good a way as to speak of if. For, truth is, nobody seems to know anything about life. Yet everything pays more attention to living than to anything else. Practically .every motive in the world, among the wild things, is to live. Not evep man. with all his knowledge, knows where life comes from, or what it is, George F. Burba writes ih the Columbus Dispatch. It is just the opposite of death, he will tell you; one either lives or dies. If he is living, the body is in a certain condition. The' blood flows through the veins. The heart beats. The body Is warm. One is conscious of that which goes on about him. The very opposite is true when a thing is dead, whether the thing is a man or a dog or a bird or a fish. But the why of it all—nobody understands that. The wild things strive with all their might to escape death, but they pay little attention to the dead things about them. It doesn’t seem to make any impression upon an animal to run upon another animal that is dead, out in the woods. They fear death, but they do not respect the dead,'nor show any emotion In the presence of death. They do not know what it is—that is, they, do not know that the dead creature they encounter in the woods is dead and done for. If it is something they want to devour, they devour It; if it is not, they pass on without paying much attention to it.

Death is more of a mystery to man. That is, it impresses him to a greater extent. He thinks more of it. He tries no harder to live than do the wild things, but there is something in connection with the presence of a dead creature that Impresses a human being. This is especially true if one encounters death out in the fields or woods. Tramping through a forest, and coming suddenly upon a dead animal, one pauses in contemplation of the mystery before him. Yesterday a splendid stag, let us say, roaming the woods in triumph; strong and swift and beautiful; conscious of his strength and fleetness; living—breathing, seeing, feeling. Today—there he* lies. His coat roughened by the winds or rain, his eyes sightless, his limbs without motion^—unconscious he lies there like a log rotting in the elements. Can this be the stag of yesterday? Is the thing called life all he needs today to arouse him from the slumber —to smooth his splendid coat, to bring the gleam of light into the eye, to give speed to the limbs? Then, whence the thing called life? Or, from whence did it come in the beginning? Thus do we meditate and marvel at the mystery of life and death when we are in the presence of death —especially if we encounter it in the great shadows of the forest—out where there is nothing to interrupt us, out where reigns that which gives life and which recallsit! 'J.