VII. HER MOTHER LOVE
TOLD BY THE PHYSICIAN
By general although unspoken assent, the eyes of all the company were now directed to the venerable hakeem, as if to invite from him the next contribution to the night's entertainment. Meditatively for a moment the man of medicine stroked the broad white beard that descended almost to his girdle, and then began:
"Familiar to us all is the thought that death is but a birth into another state of existence, whether that state be the eternal paradise which is the final goal of every man's hopes, or merely another stage thitherward. Death is a birth, the truth of which will more forcibly appeal to our minds when we reflect also that birth is a death."
"How can that be, except for the still-born?" queried the astrologer.
The hakeem raised a hand deprecating the interruption.
"Nay, follow me in my argument," he continued quietly. "If death is a birth, then is a birth truly death. For the babe has been living through a prior stage of existence. To it the nine months passed in its mother's womb may have meant a long span of life. For time is but a relative term, and, measured against eternity, the whole period of man's sojourn on earth, be it three score or four score years, is but as the puff of a single breath. So the child in the womb lives there a full span of existence; it is nurtured and it grows, it sleeps and it wakes, it lies passive and it disports itself, it is sensitive to cold and to heat, to thirst and to hunger, and God alone knows what it thinks and what mental impressions it forms of the existence through which it is passing. And the hour of its birth is truly the hour of its death, for in pain and travail it is plucked from its warm and comfortable surroundings, and with the shock of physical change and unseeing dread it cries aloud in sharp anguish. Thus precisely do we ourselves die when we pass from this world to another existence, physically and mentally resenting the harsh change, terrified because of our very ignorance of what is really happening."
The physician paused, amid a deep hush that bore eloquent testimony to the impressiveness of the thought to which he had given utterance.
"But the parallel does not end here," he resumed.