Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.

Gilman’s remark reframes death not as a moral calamity but as a structural necessity: without death, life would lose its dynamism, renewal, and meaning. The challenge to “use your imagination” pushes readers to test their assumptions by envisioning immortality’s likely consequences—stagnation, overcrowding, and the arrest of generational change. By calling death an “essential condition of life,” the quote aligns with evolutionary and ecological thinking in which finitude enables adaptation and continuity at the level of species and society. The tone—impatient with “fuss”—also critiques sentimental or fear-driven attitudes that treat death as uniquely scandalous rather than as a natural boundary that shapes human purpose.