To this question not many answers can be given, because the modes of
disposing of the dead have always been and must always be few.

Plainly, no such novel mode as casting the dead into the sea will be
generally adopted. Plainly, also, the mode of the Parsees, grounded as
it is in ancient, if not original use--to give the dead to beasts and
birds--will not become universal. And, plainly also, cremation will not
be welcome to the many, free as it is from objection on the score of
public health, if a method equally sanitary, and at the same time
satisfactory to a reverent and tender sentiment, can be devised.

The inquiry, then, has reached its limit; for, apart from the modes that
have just been named, there are no others but earth-burial and
entombment, and earth-burial, as we have seen, cannot be made sanitary
under common conditions. Therefore, if the demands of affection and
sanitation are both to be met, entombment is to do it, or it cannot be
done.

Happily, better than any other method of disposing of the dead that has
ever been devised, entombment has met the demand of affection. Never has
any other mode so commended itself to men as this. There may have been
at times a general adoption of cremation, and there may have been a
general prevalence of earth-burial, but the one has not long satisfied
the sorrowing survivors, and the other has owed its beginning and
continuance to the apparent absence of alternative. Wherever the living
have been able, and the dead have been dearly loved or highly esteemed,
the tendency to entomb and not to bury has been constantly manifested.

To call attention to this tendency is enough to prove it, so easily