Page:Forging of Passion Into Power.djvu/37

Rh to take this opportunity of stating my conviction that cremation and burying under stone are polar mistakes. Cremation may be necessary in cases of zymotic disease until we have devised something better. But I feel convinced that the scientific solution is that every carcase of man and beast shall be buried underground and a fruit-tree planted over it. The superstition against eating fruit grown on the dead bodies of one’s friends is a good specimen of the wasteful and distracting kind of idolatry which keeps the world in bondage. What are fruit-trees for, if not to forge and transform cannibalistic selfishness into sacramental joy? While we eat meat, we are obliged to cut the lives of creatures short, because those which die a natural death are unsuitable for food. But fruit lives on that which has died at its own time.