Message #190065

[Demiurge]

remarks ('Impronte Gemmarie,' ii. 10, 11). * A skeleton, likewise, was often painted on the wall of tombs; for example, in that pathetic scene at Pompeii, where a mother is represented laying a mortuary fillet over the bones of her child. In all these cases the form is merely intended to symbolise the condition of death by placing before the eye the body as deserted by life, reduced to the state most expressive of mortality and decay, and which cannot be mistaken for one of sleep. But it is easy to perceive how ready was the transition from the hieroglyph of mortality regarded as a state (especially when to the popular mind the figure also represented a restless and malignant spiritual being) to the adoption of the same inauspicious shape for the embodiment of the idea of the actual principle of destruction.