Page:Essays Vol 1 (Ives, 1925).pdf/142

122 made from death to life, without suffering and without fear, make it again from life to death. Your death is one of the parts of the order of the universe; it is a part of the life of the world”;

Et quasi cursores vitaī lampada tradunt.
 * (b) inter se mortales mutua vivunt

(a) “Shall I change for you the admirable arrangement of things? Death is the condition of your creation, it is a portion of yourself; you fly from yourself. This existence of yours, which you have the enjoyment of, is equally divided between death and life. The day of your birth starts your steps toward dying as well as toward living.”

Prima, que vitam dedit, hora, carpsit.

Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet.

(c) All the time you live you purloin from life; it is at its expense. The continual work of your life is to build up death. You are in death while you are in life, for death has passed when you have ceased to be in life. Or, if you like it better in this way, you are dead after life; but during life you are dying; and death treats the dying much more roughly than the dead, and more acutely and essentially.

(b) If you have profited by your life, you have had enough of it; go hence content.

Cur non ut plenus vitæ conviva recedis?

If you have not known how to make use of it, if it was use-