Last Rites for Atheists

Any atheist with the courage of his convictions should die and let himself be buried without fuss. After all, why make much ceremonial ado about a body that has just passed into Nothing? But in practice, even atheists have a hankering for music and a few well-chosen words, and this pressing problem has just been taken up by Corliss Lamont, 52, the wealthy fellow traveler. In a pamphlet entitled A Humanist Funeral Service (Horizon Press; $1.00), Lamont paradoxically proposes some comforting last rites for unbelievers. In 1932, Lamont wrote his Columbia Ph.D. thesis on "The Illusion of Immortality," and he still insists that "death is the final end of the individual conscious personality," but he now feels that "rituals concerned with death are a form of art and . . . can serve as a healthy release and purge of tension."

Highlights from Lamont's lament:

INTRODUCTORY MUSIC: "It is usually desirable to have 15 or 20 minutes of introductory music." Sample selections: Handel's Largo, Bach's Come Sweet Death.

INTRODUCTION : "We are gathered ... to do honor to the life and memory of John Stevens. Death has come to our friend, as it comes eventually to all men . . ."

MEDITATION : "Life and death are different and essential aspects of the same creative process . . . And we accept as inevitable the eventual extinction of human individuals and the return of their bodies, indestructible in their ultimate elements, to the Nature that brought them forth ..."

BRIEF PERSONAL REMARKS: "Optional. About five minutes."

BURIAL SERVICE: "In saying our last farewell to John Stevens, we shall read a sonnet by George Santayana, who once wrote: 'The length of things is vanity; only their height is joy.' From Santayana's To W.P.:

With you a part of me hath passed away;

For in the peopled forest of my mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array ..."

For those who prefer it, Lamont also offers a CREMATION SERVICE: "Through the purifying process of fire, this body now becomes transformed into the more simple and ultimate elements of our universe . . ."

The humanist funeral service, Lamont hopes, will purge the business of death of "sentimentality, showiness, and somberness."

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