Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/472

456 certain death, thus in the case of executions. But, in order to bring this process much more distinctly before our eyes, I regard it as by no means unbecoming to the dignity of philosophy to quote what has been said by some criminals before their execution, even at the risk of incurring the sneer that I encourage gallows' sermons. I certainly rather believe that the gallows is a place of quite peculiar revelations, and a watch-tower from which the man who even then retains his presence of mind obtains a wider, clearer outlook into eternity than most philosophers over the paragraphs of their rational psychology and theology. The following speech on the gallows was made on the 15th April, 1837, at Gloucester, by a man called Bartlett, who had murdered his mother-in-law: "Englishmen and fellow countrymen, – I have a few words to say to you, and they shall be but very few. Yet let me entreat you, one and all, that these few words that I shall utter may strike deep into your hearts. Bear them in your mind, not only now while you are witnessing this sad scene, but take them to your homes, take them, and repeat them to your children and friends. I implore you as a dying man – one for whom the instrument of death is even now prepared – and these words are that you may loose yourselves from the love of this dying world and its vain pleasures. Think less of it and more of your God. Do this: repent, repent, for be assured that without deep and true repentance, without turning to your heavenly Father, you will never attain, nor can hold the slightest hope of ever reaching those bowers of bliss to which I trust I am now fast advancing" (Times, 18th April 1837).

Still more remarkable are the last words of the well-known murderer, Greenacre, who was executed in London on the 1st of May 1837. The English newspaper the Post gives the following account, which is also reprinted in Galignani's Messenger of the 6th of May 1837: "On the morning of his execution a gentleman advised him to put his trust in God, and pray for forgiveness through the