The attitude of men toward the question of death, the most important of life’s questions, is that which best characterizes each one of them, and if one always knew their thoughts about it, one would be able to draw therefrom the most definite conclusions as to their whole conception of life. The fear of death is also the best test-stone for every philosophy. A philosophy that does not overcome this fear, or at best leads to sad reflections upon the transitoriness of life, is in the first place of not very much practical value, and in any case does not completely fulfil its purpose. Nor is it even quite consonant with reason; for how could we picture a reasonable condition of man and society, if there were no death? For when the lives of prominent persons have been too prolonged, it has been a manifest misfortune to their fellow-men. Far from being an evil that makes a shrill discord in the universe, death is rather an advantage, the only conceivably possible arrangement under which a world such as ours, in which the good must contend with the evil, can exist. This at least is certain, that even upon those whose “heart is fortified” against any event, the incompleteness and trouble of life often lies heavily, and that to them this earthly existence seems merely a transitory state from which there must some day be release. Even the happiest life knows such moods, and though one might be entirely satisfied with his own lot, he could not possibly be so for his nation and for the millions of men whose life seems only one long chain of deprivations and blunders that mock at all attempts to help. An old German poet, Heinrich von Laufenburg (1445), already gives expression to this mood in the following verses: “_I would I were at home on high, And all my worldly toil laid by; At home above is life deathless, And all is joy without distress; A thousand year make there one day, And pain and strife are gone for aye. Then up! my heart and hardihood, Seek ye the good above all good; Ye may not stay for long below, To-day, to-morrow, ye must go. Farewell, O world! may God thee bless; I fare to Heaven’s happiness._” But neither is this yet the right conception of death. One can also die “full of days,” and age is not necessarily a tedious, ever-increasing, hopelessly incurable disease, but it can also be a continuous advancing, an evolving of oneself toward a nobler and a purer life than is possible on this earth. Death is then but the wholly natural and by no means violent and illogical transition into an analogous kind of existence that only needs to be continued; the fruit is ripe, and falls, not to be destroyed, but for a useful harvest.