Religion: Words & Works

¶Death has become a dirty word, writes British Anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer in the October issue of Encounter, and is taking the place of sex as an off-color theme. "Whereas copulation has become more and more 'mentionable,' particularly in the Anglo-Saxon societies, death has become more and more 'unmentionable' as a natural process . . . Our great-grandparents were told that babies were found under gooseberry bushes or cabbages; our children are likely to be told that those who have passed on (fie! on the gross Anglo-Saxon monosyllable) are changed into flowers, or lie...

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