Brill—The Pioneer

Brill wrote his own eulogy, as it were, about one year before his death. His turn had then come to entertain his beloved Vidonian Club, and he chose as his topic “Thoughts on Life and Death.” It was a survey of his activities in and outside of the Club and turned out to be a beautiful phantasy in honor of defunct Vidonians. Re-reading his paper now, we see clearly that it was meant to be a farewell to his friends by one who felt his own end approaching. What Brill said about death had a touch of classical philosophy. Permit me to quote from his paper:

“… the average modern man is horrified at the idea of dying and does everything to run away from it, an attitude which is foolish, not only because there can be no everlasting life in the religious sense, but also because the whole thing is based on evasions of the truth. I am well aware that the Christian “everlasting life” extends beyond the grave, so they tell us, but the evidence for it is one-sided to say the least. It would be better to accept reality—live well and die contentedly. As a matter of fact, much can be said in favor of a natural death. Those who have lived well their allotted sum of years usually die without fear, I am thinking of Hobbes, Hume, and many others. Some actually look forward to death as we do to sleep after a hard day's work.”

In Brill's paper we find a particularly original approach of a scientist-philosopher, one could almost say: of a scientist-poet, to the eternal problem of life and death. He remembered an experience which he had years ago on an island in the St. Lawrence River. Millions of shad-flies swarmed around him. They belonged to the ephemeral insects, came out of the water and were massing around him. Then they fell dead or almost dead back into the water and were gobbled up by the fish. He had witnessed the last transfiguration of the shad-fly, the copulation swarm, the crown of their whole existence. After living for two or three years as very greedy larvae in the mud of the