20

20. To philosophize is to learn how to die

[Montaigne comes to terms with his melancholy, now somewhat played down. He remains preoccupied with that fear of death – fear that is of the often excruciating act of dying – which in older times seems to have been widespread and acute. His treatment is rhetorical but not impersonal. The [C] text may be influenced by the advice of the Vatican censor. The philosophical presuppositions of this chapter are largely overturned at the end of the Essays (in III, 13, ‘On experience’). Montaigne is on the way to discovering admirable qualities in common men and women. His starting-point here is Socratic: philosophy (by detaching the soul from the body) is a ‘practising of death’; [C] introduces an Epicurean concern with pleasure.]

[A] Cicero says that philosophizing is nothing other than getting ready to die.1 That is because study and contemplation draw our souls somewhat outside ourselves, keeping them occupied away from the body, a state which both resembles death and which forms a kind of apprenticeship for it; or perhaps it is because all the wisdom and argument in the world eventually come down to one conclusion; which is to teach us not to be afraid of dying.

In truth, either reason is joking or her target must be our happiness; all the labour of reason must be to make us live well, and at our ease, as Holy [C] Scripture [A] says.2 All the opinions in the world reach the same point, [C] that pleasure is our target [A] even though they may get there by different means; otherwise we would throw them out immediately, for who would listen to anyone whose goal was to achieve for us [C] pain and suffering?3

In this case the disagreements between the schools of philosophy are a matter of words. ‘Transcurramus solertissimas nugas.’ [Let us skip quickly through those most frivolous trivialities.]4 More stubbornness and prickliness are there than is appropriate for so dedicated a vocation, but then, no matter what role a man may assume, he always plays his own part within it.

Even in virtue our ultimate aim – no matter what they say – is pleasure. I enjoy bashing people’s ears with that word which runs so strongly counter to their minds. When pleasure is taken to mean the most profound delight and an exceeding happiness it is a better companion to virtue than anything else; and rightly so. Such pleasure is no less seriously pleasurable for being more lively, taut, robust and virile. We ought to have given virtue the more favourable, noble and natural name of pleasure not (as we have done) a name derived from vis (vigour).5

There is that lower voluptuous pleasure which can only be said to have a disputed claim to the name not a privileged right to it. I find it less pure of lets and hindrances than virtue. Apart from having a savour which is fleeting, fluid and perishable, it has its vigils, fasts and travails, its blood and its sweat; it also has its own peculiar sufferings, which are sharp in so many different ways and accompanied by a satiety of such weight that it amounts to repentance.6

Since we reckon that obstacles serve as a spur to that pleasure and as seasoning to its sweetness (on the grounds that in Nature contraries are enhanced by their contraries) we are quite wrong to say when we turn to virtue that identical obstacles and difficulties overwhelm her, making her austere and inaccessible, whereas (much more appropriately than for voluptuous pleasure) they ennoble, sharpen and enhance that holy, perfect pleasure which virtue procures for us. A man is quite unworthy of an acquaintance with virtue who weighs her fruit against the price she exacts; he knows neither her graces nor her ways. Those who proceed to teach us that the questing after virtue is rugged and wearisome whereas it is delightful to possess her can only mean that she always lacks delight.7 (For what human means have ever brought anyone to the joy of possessing her?) Even the most perfect of men have been satisfied with aspiring to her – not possessing her but drawing near to her. The contention is wrong, seeing that in every pleasure known to Man the very pursuit of it is pleasurable: the undertaking savours of the quality of the object it has in view; it effectively constitutes a large proportion of it and is consubstantial with it. There is a happiness and blessedness radiating from virtue; they fill all that appertains to her and every approach to her, from the first way in to the very last barrier.

Now one of virtue’s main gifts is a contempt for death, which is the means of furnishing our life with easy tranquillity, of giving us a pure and friendly taste for it; without it every other pleasure is snuffed out. [A] That is why all rules meet and concur in this one clause.8 [C] It is true that they all lead us by common accord to despise pain, poverty and the other misfortunes to which human lives are subject, but they do not do so with the same care. That is partly because such misfortunes are not inevitable. (Most of Mankind spend their lives without tasting poverty; some without even experiencing pain or sickness, like Xenophilus the musician, who lived in good health to a hundred and six.) It is also because, if the worse comes to worse, we can sheer off the bung of our misfortunes whenever we like: death can end them.9 But, as for death itself, that is inevitable.

[B] Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium Versatur urna, serius ocius Sors exitura et nos in æter-Num exitium impositura cymbæ.

[All of our lots are shaken about in the Urn, destined sooner or later to be cast forth, placing us in everlasting exile via Charon’s boat.]10

[A] And so if death makes us afraid, that is a subject of continual torment which nothing can assuage. [C] There is no place where death cannot find us – even if we constantly twist our heads about in all directions as in a suspect land: ‘Quae quasi saxum Tantalo semper impendet.’ [It is like the rock for ever hanging over the head of Tantalus.]11 [A] Our assizes often send prisoners to be executed at the scene of their crimes. On the way there, take them past fair mansions and ply them with good cheer as much as you like –

[B]… non Siculæ dapes Dulcem elaborabunt saporem, Non avium cytharæque cantus Somnum reducent –

[even Sicilian banquets produce no sweet savours; not even the music of birdsong nor of lyre can bring back sleep] –

[A] do you think they can enjoy it or that having the final purpose of their journey ever before their eyes will not spoil their taste for such entertainment?

[B] Audit iter, numeratque dies, spacioque viarum Metitur vitam, torquetur peste futura

[He inquires about the way; he counts the days; the length of his life is the length of those roads. He is tortured by future anguish.]12

[A] The end of our course is death.13 It is the objective necessarily within our sights. If death frightens us how can we go one step forward without anguish? For ordinary people the remedy is not to think about it; but what brutish insensitivity can produce so gross a blindness? They lead the donkey by the tail:

Qui capite ipse suo instituit vestigia retro. [They walk forward with their heads turned backwards.]14

No wonder that they often get caught in a trap. You can frighten such people simply by mentioning death (most of them cross themselves as when the Devil is named); and since it is mentioned in wills, never expect them to draw one up before the doctor has pronounced the death-sentence. And then, in the midst of pain and terror, God only knows what shape their good judgement kneads it into!

[B] (That syllable ‘death’ struck Roman ears too roughly; the very word was thought to bring ill-luck, so they learned to soften and dilute it with periphrases. Instead of saying He is dead they said He has ceased to live or He has lived. They [C] found consolation in [B] living, even in a past tense! Whence our ‘late’ (feu) So-and-So: ‘he was’ So-and-So.)15

[A] Perhaps it is a case of, ‘Repayment delayed means money in hand’, as they say; I was born between eleven and noon on the last day of February, one thousand five hundred and thirty-three (as we date things nowadays, beginning the year in January);16 it is exactly a fortnight since I became thirty-nine: ‘I ought to live at least as long again; meanwhile it would be mad to think of something so far off’. – Yes, but all leave life in the same circumstances, young and old alike. [C] Everybody goes out as though he had just come in. [A] Moreover, however decrepit a man may be, he thinks he still has another [C] twenty years [A] to go17 in the body, so long as he has Methuselah ahead of him. Silly fool, you! Where your life is concerned, who has decided the term? You are relying on doctors’ tales; look at facts and experience instead. As things usually go, you have been living for some time now by favour extraordinary. You have already exceeded the usual term of life; to prove it, just count how many more of your acquaintances have died younger than you are compared with those who have reached your age. Just make a list of people who have ennobled their lives by fame: I wager that we shall find more who died before thirty-five than after. It is full of reason and piety to take as our example the manhood of Jesus Christ: his life ended at thirty-three.18 The same term applies to Alexander, the greatest man who was simply man.

Death can surprise us in so many ways:

Quid quisque vitet, nunquam homini satis Cautum est in horas.

[No man knows what dangers he should avoid from one hour to another.]19

Leaving aside fevers and pleurisies, who would ever have thought that a Duke of Brittany was to be crushed to death in a crowd, as one was during the state entry into Lyons of Pope Clement, who came from my part of the world! Have you not seen one of our kings killed at sport? And was not one of his ancestors killed by a bump from a pig? Aeschylus was warned against a falling house; he was always on the alert, but in vain: he was killed by the shell of a tortoise which slipped from the talons of an eagle in flight. Another choked to death on a pip from a grape; an Emperor died from a scratch when combing his hair; Aemilius Lepidus, from knocking his foot on his own doorstep; Aufidius from bumping into a door of his Council chamber. Those who died between a woman’s thighs include Cornelius Gallus, a praetor; Tigillinus, a captain of the Roman Guard; Ludovico, the son of Guy di Gonzaga, the Marquis of Mantua; and – providing even worse examples – Speucippus the Platonic philosopher, and one of our Popes.20

Then there was that wretched judge Bebius; he was just granting a week’s extra time to a litigant when he died of a seizure: his own time had run out. Caius Julius, a doctor, was putting ointment on the eyes of a patient when death closed his.21 And if I may include a personal example, Captain Saint-Martin, my brother, died at the age of twenty-three while playing tennis; he was felled by a blow from a tennis-ball just above the right ear. There was no sign of bruising or of a wound. He did not even sit down or take a rest; yet five or six hours later he was dead from an apoplexy caused by that blow.

When there pass before our eyes examples such as these, so frequent and so ordinary, how can we ever rid ourselves of thoughts of death or stop imagining that death has us by the scruff of the neck at every moment?

You might say: ‘But what does it matter how you do it, so long as you avoid pain?’ I agree with that. If there were any way at all of sheltering from Death’s blows – even by crawling under the skin of a calf – I am not the man to recoil from it. It is enough for me to spend my time contentedly. I deal myself the best hand I can, and then accept it. It can be as inglorious or as unexemplary as you please:

prætulerim delirus inersque videri, Dum mea delectent mala me, vel denique fallant, Quam sapere et ringi.

[I would rather be delirious or a dullard if my faults pleased me, or at least deceived me, rather than to be wise and snarling.]22

But it is madness to think you can succeed that way. They come and they go and they trot and they dance: and never a word about death. All well and good. Yet when death does come – to them, their wives, their children, their friends – catching them unawares and unprepared, then what storms of passion overwhelm them, what cries, what fury, what despair! Have you ever seen anything brought so low, anything so changed, so confused?

We must start providing for it earlier. Even if such brutish indifference could find lodgings in the head of an intelligent man (which seems quite impossible to me) it sells its wares too dearly. If death were an enemy which could be avoided I would counsel borrowing the arms of cowardice. But it cannot be done. [B] Death can catch you just as easily as a coward on the run or as an honourable man:

[A] Nempe et fugacem persequitur virum, Nec parcit imbellis juventæ Poplitibus, timidoque tergo;

[It hounds the man who runs away, and it does not spare the legs or fearful backs of unwarlike youth;]

[B] no tempered steel can protect your shoulders;

Ille licet ferro cautus se condat ære, Mors tamen inclusum protrahet inde caput;

[No use a man hiding prudently behind iron or brass:Death will know how to make him stick out his cowering head;]23

[A] we must learn to stand firm and to fight it.

To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness; let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death. At every instant let us evoke it in our imagination under all its aspects. Whenever a horse stumbles, a tile falls or a pin pricks however slightly, let us at once chew over this thought: ‘Supposing that was death itself?’ With that, let us brace ourselves and make an effort. In the midst of joy and feasting let our refrain be one which recalls our human condition. Let us never be carried away by pleasure so strongly that we fail to recall occasionally how many are the ways in which that joy of ours is subject to death or how many are the fashions in which death threatens to snatch it away. That is what the Egyptians did: in the midst of all their banquets and good cheer they would bring in a mummified corpse to serve as a warning to the guests:24

Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum. Grata superveniet, quæ non sperabitur hora.

[Believe that each day was the last to shine on you. If it comes, any unexpected hour will be welcome indeed.]25

We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practise death is to practise freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die gives us freedom from subjection and constraint. [C] Life has no evil for him who has thoroughly understood that loss of life is not an evil. [A] Paulus Aemilius was sent a messenger by that wretched King of Macedonia who was his prisoner, begging not to be led in his triumphant procession. He replied: ‘Let him beg that favour from himself.’

It is true that, in all things, if Nature does not lend a hand art and industry do not progress very far. I myself am not so much melancholic as an idle dreamer: from the outset there was no topic I ever concerned myself with more than with thoughts about death – even in the most licentious period of my life.

[B] Jucundum cum aetas florida ver ageret.

[When my blossoming youth rejoiced in spring.]26

[A] Among the games and the courting many thought I was standing apart chewing over some jealousy or the uncertainty of my aspirations: meanwhile I was reflecting on someone or other who, on leaving festivities just like these, had been surprised by a burning fever and [C] his end, [A] with his head27 full of idleness, love and merriment – just like me; and the same could be dogging me now:

[B] Jam fuerit, nec post unquam revocare licebit.

[The present will soon be the past, never to be recalled.]28

[A] Thoughts such as these did not furrow my brow any more than others did. At first it does seem impossible not to feel the sting of such ideas, but if you keep handling them and running through them you eventually tame them. No doubt about that. Otherwise I would, for my part, be in continual terror and frenzy: for no man ever had less confidence than I did that he would go on living; and no man ever counted less on his life proving long. Up till now I have enjoyed robust good health almost uninterruptedly: yet that never extends my hopes for life any more than sickness shortens them. Every moment it seems to me that I am running away from myself. [C] And I ceaselessly chant the refrain, ‘Anything you can do another day can be done now.’

[A] In truth risks and dangers do little or nothing to bring us nearer to death. If we think of all the millions of threats which remain hanging over us, apart from the one which happens to appear most menacing just now, we shall realize that death is equally near when we are vigorous or feverish, at sea or at home, in battle or in repose. [C] ‘Nemo altero fragilior est: nemo in crastinam sui certior.’ [No man is frailer than another: no man more certain of the morrow.]29

[A] If I have only one hour’s work to do before I die, I am never sure I have time enough to finish it. The other day someone was going through my notebooks and found a declaration about something I wanted done after my death. I told him straight that, though I was hale and healthy and but a league away from my house, I had hastened to jot it down because I had not been absolutely certain of getting back home. [C] Being a man who broods over his thoughts and stores them up inside him, I am always just about as ready as I can be: when death does suddenly appear, it will bear no new warning for me. [A] As far as we possibly can we must always have our boots on, ready to go; above all we should take care to have no outstanding business with anyone else.

[B] Quid brevi fortes jaculamur ævo Multa?

[Why, in so brief a span do we find strength to make so many projects?]30

[A] We shall have enough to do then without adding to it.

One man complains less of death itself than of its cutting short the course of a fine victory; another, that he has to depart before marrying off his daughter or arranging the education of his children; one laments the company of his wife; another, of his son; as though they were the principal attributes of his being.

[C] I am now ready to leave, thank God, whenever He pleases, regretting nothing except life itself – if its loss should happen to weigh heavy on me. I am untying all the knots. I have already half-said my adieus to everyone but myself. No man has ever prepared to leave the world more simply nor more fully than I have. No one has more completely let go of everything than I try to do.

[B] Miser o miser, aiunt, omnia ademit Una dies infesta mihi tot præmia vitæ.

[‘I am wretched, so wretched,’ they say: ‘One dreadful day has stripped me of all life’s rewards.’]

[A] And the builder says:

Manent opera interrupta, minaeque Murorum ingentes.

[My work remains unfinished; huge walls may fall down.]31

We ought not to plan anything on so large a scale – at least, not if we are to get all worked up if we cannot see it through to the end.

We are born for action:32

Cum moriar, medium solvare inter opus.

[When I die, may I be in the midst of my work.]

I want us to be doing things, [C] prolonging life’s duties as much as we can; [A] I want Death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening. I once saw a man die who, right to the last, kept lamenting that destiny had cut the thread of the history he was writing when he had only got up to our fifteenth or sixteenth king!

[B] Illud in his rebus non addunt, nec tibi earum Jam desiderium rerum super insidet una!

[They never add, that desire for such things does not linger on in your remains!]33

[A] We must throw off such humours; they are harmful and vulgar.

Our graveyards have been planted next to churches, says Lycurgus, so that women, children and lesser folk should grow accustomed to seeing a dead man without feeling terror, and so that this continual spectacle of bones, tombs and funerals should remind us of our human condition:34

[B] Quin etiam exhilarare viris convivia cæde Mos olim, et miscere epulis spectacula dira Certantum ferro, sæpe et super ipsa cadentum Pocula respersis non parco sanguine mensis;

[It was once the custom, moreover, to enliven feasts with human slaughter and to entertain guests with the cruel sight of gladiators fighting: they often fell among the goblets, flooding the tables with their blood;]

[C] so too, after their festivities the Egyptians used to display before their guests a huge portrait of death, held up by a man crying, ‘Drink and be merry: once dead you will look like this’;35 [A] similarly, I have adopted the practice of always having death not only in my mind but on my lips. There is nothing I inquire about more readily than how men have died: what did they say? How did they look? What expression did they have? There are no passages in the history books which I note more attentively. [C] That I have a particular liking for such matters is shown by the examples with which I stuff my book. If I were a scribbler I would produce a compendium with commentaries of the various ways men have died. (Anyone who taught men how to die would teach them how to live.) Dicearchus did write a book with some such title, but for another and less useful purpose.36

[A] People will tell me that the reality of death so far exceeds the thought that when we actually get there all our fine fencing amounts to nothing. Let them say so: there is no doubt whatsoever that meditating on it beforehand confers great advantages. Anyway, is it nothing to get even that far without faltering or feverish agitation?

But there is more to it than that: Nature37 herself lends us a hand and gives us courage. If our death is violent and short we have no time to feel afraid: if it be otherwise, I have noticed that as an illness gets more and more hold on me I naturally slip into a kind of contempt for life. I find that a determination to die is harder to digest when I am in good health than when I am feverish, especially since I no longer hold so firmly to the pleasures of life once I begin to lose the use and enjoyment of them, and can look on death with a far less terrified gaze. That leads me to hope that the further I get from good health and the nearer I approach to death the more easily I will come to terms with exchanging one for the other. Just as I have in several other matters assayed the truth of Caesar’s assertion that things often look bigger from afar than close to,38 I have also found that I was much more terrified of illness when I was well than when I felt ill. Being in a happy state, all pleasure and vigour, leads me to get the other state quite out of proportion, so that I mentally increase all its discomforts by half and imagine them heavier than they prove to be when I have to bear them.

I hope that the same will apply to me when I die. [B] It is normal to experience change and decay: let us note how Nature robs us of our sense of loss and decline. What does an old man still retain of his youthful vigour and of his own past life?

Heu senibus vitae portio quanta manet. [Alas, what little of life’s portion remains with the aged.]39

[C] When a soldier of Caesar’s guard, broken and worn out, came up to him in the street and begged leave to kill himself, Caesar looked at his decrepit bearing and said with a smile: ‘So you think you are still alive, then?’40

[B] If any of us were to be plunged into old age all of a sudden I do not think that the change would be bearable. But, almost imperceptibly, Nature leads us by the hand down a gentle slope; little by little, step by step, she engulfs us in that pitiful state and breaks us in, so that we feel no jolt when youth dies in us, although in essence and in truth that is a harsher death than the total extinction of a languishing life as old age dies. For it is not so grievous a leap from a wretched existence to non-existence as it is from a sweet existence in full bloom to one full of travail and pain.

[A] When our bodies are bent and stooping low they have less strength for supporting burdens. So too for our souls: we must therefore educate and train them for their encounter with that adversary, death; for the soul can find no rest while she remains afraid of him. But once she does find assurance she can boast that it is impossible for anxiety, anguish, fear or even the slightest dissatisfaction to dwell within her. And that almost surpasses our human condition.

[B] Non vultus instantis tyranni Mente quatit solida, neque Auster Dux inquieti turbidus Adriæ, Nec fulminantis magna Jovis manus.

[Nothing can shake such firmness: neither the threatening face of a tyrant, nor the South Wind (that tempestuous Master of the Stormy Adriatic) nor even the mighty hand of thundering Jove.]41

[A] She has made herself Mistress of her passions and her lusts, Mistress of destitution, shame, poverty and of all other injuries of Fortune. Let any of us who can gain such a superiority do so: for here is that true and sovereign freedom which enables us to cock a snook at force and injustice and to laugh at manacles and prisons:

in manicis, et Compedibus, sævo te sub custode tenebo. Ipse Deus simul atque volam, me solvet: opinor, Hoc sentit, moriar. Mors ultima linea rerum est.

[‘I will shackle your hands and feet and keep you under a cruel gaoler.’ – ‘God himself will set me free as soon as I ask him to.’ (He means, I think, ‘I will die’: for death is the last line of all.)]42

Our religion has never had a surer human foundation than contempt for life; rational argument (though not it alone) summons us to such contempt: for why should we fear to lose something which, once lost, cannot be regretted? And since we are threatened by so many kinds of death is it not worse to fear them all than to bear one?43 [C] Death is inevitable: does it matter when it comes? When Socrates was told that the Thirty Tyrants had condemned him to death, he retorted, ‘And nature, them!’44

How absurd to anguish over our passing into freedom from all anguish. Just as our birth was the birth of all things for us, so our death will be the death of them all. That is why it is equally mad to weep because we shall not be alive a hundred years from now and to weep because we were not alive a hundred years ago. Death is the origin of another life. We wept like this and it cost us just as dear when we entered into this life, similarly stripping off our former veil as we did so. Nothing can be grievous which occurs but once; is it reasonable to fear for so long a time something which lasts so short a time? Living a long life or a short life are made all one by death: long and short do not apply to that which is no more. Aristotle says that there are tiny creatures on the river Hypanis whose life lasts one single day: those which die at eight in the morning die in youth; those which die at five in the evening die of senility.45 Which of us would not laugh if so momentary a span counted as happiness or unhappiness? Yet if we compare our own span against eternity or even against the span of mountains, rivers, stars, trees or, indeed, of some animals, then saying shorter or longer becomes equally ridiculous.

[A] Nature drives us that way, too:46 ‘Leave this world,’ she says, ‘just as you entered it. That same journey from death to life, which you once made without suffering or fear, make it again from life to death. Your death is a part of the order of the universe; it is a part of the life of the world:

[B] inter se mortales mutua vivunt… Et quasi cursores vitaï lampada tradunt.

[Mortal creatures live lives dependent on each other; like runners in a relay they pass on the torch of life.]47 –

[A] Shall I change, just for you, this beautiful interwoven structure! Death is one of the attributes you were created with; death is a part of you; you are running away from yourself; this being which you enjoy is equally divided between death and life. From the day you were born your path leads to death as well as life:

Prima, quae vitam dedit, hora, carpsit. [Our first hour gave us life and began to devour it.] Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet.

[As we are born we die; the end of our life is attached to its beginning.]48

[C] All that you live, you have stolen from life; you live at her expense. Your life’s continual task is to build your death. You are in death while you are in life: when you are no more in life you are after death. Or if you prefer it thus: after life you are dead, but during life you are dying: and death touches the dying more harshly than the dead, in more lively a fashion and more essentially.

[B] ‘If you have profited from life, you have had your fill; go away satisfied:

Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis? [Why not withdraw from life like a guest replete?]

But if you have never learned how to use life, if life is useless to you, what does it matter if you have lost it? What do you still want it for?

Cur amplius addere quæris Rursum quod pereat male, et ingratum occidat omne?

[Why seek to add more, just to lose it again, wretchedly, without joy?]49

[C] Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.50

[A] ‘If you have lived one day, you have seen everything. One day equals all days. There is no other light, no other night. The Sun, Moon and Stars, disposed just as they are now, were enjoyed by your grandsires and will entertain your great-grandchildren:

[C] Non alium videre patres: aliumve nepotes Aspicient.

[Your fathers saw none other: none other shall your progeny discern.]51

[A] And at the worst estimate the division and variety of all the acts of my play are complete in one year. If you have observed the vicissitude of my four seasons you know they embrace the childhood, youth, manhood and old age of the World. Its [C] play [A] is done.52 It knows no other trick but to start all over again. Always it will be the same.

[B] Versamur ibidem, atque insumus usque; [We turn in the same circle, for ever;] Atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus. [And the year rolls on again through its own traces.]

[A] I have not the slightest intention of creating new pastimes for you.

Nam tibi præterea quod machiner, inveniamque Quod placeat, nihil est, eadem sunt omnia semper

[For there is nothing else I can make or discover to please you: all things are the same forever.]53

Make way for others as others did for you. [C] The first part of equity is equality. Who can complain of being included when all are included?54

[A] ‘It is no good going on living: it will in no wise shorten the time you will stay dead. It is all for nothing: you will be just as long in that state which you fear as though you had died at the breast;

licet, quod vis, vivendo vincere secla, Mors æterna tamen nihilominus illa manebit.

[Triumph over time and live as long as you please: death eternal will still be waiting for you.]

[B] ‘And yet I shall arrange that you have no unhappiness:

In vera nescis nullum fore morte alium te, Qui possit vivus tibi te lugere peremptum, Stansque jacentem.

[Do you not know that in real death there will be no second You, living to lament your death and standing by your corpse.]

“You” will not desire the life which now you so much lament.

Nec sibi enim quisquam tum se vitamque requirit… Nec desiderium nostri nos afficit ullum.

[Then no one worries about his life or his self;… we feel no yearning for our own being.]

Death is less to be feared than nothing – if there be anything less than nothing:

multo mortem minus ad nos esse putandum Si minus esse potest quam quod nihil esse videmus.

[We should think death to be less – if anything is ‘less’ than what we can see to be nothing at all.]55

[C] ‘Death does not concern you, dead or alive; alive, because you are: dead, because you are no more.

[A] ‘No one dies before his time; the time you leave behind you is no more yours than the time which passed before you were born;56 [B] and does not concern you either:

Respice enim quam nil ad nos ante acta vetustas Temporis æterni fuerit.

[Look back and see that the aeons of eternity before we were born have been nothing to us.]

[A] ‘Wherever your life ends, there all of it ends. [C] The usefulness of living lies not in duration but in what you make of it. Some have lived long and lived little. See to it while you are still here. Whether you have lived enough depends not on a count of years but on your will.

[A] ‘Do you think you will never arrive whither you are ceaselessly heading? [C] Yet every road has its end. [A] And, if it is a relief to have company, is not the whole world proceeding at the same pace as you are?

[B] Omnia te vita perfuncta sequentur. [All things will follow you when their life is done.]57

[A] Does not everything move with the same motion as you do? Is there anything which is not growing old with you? At this same [C] instant [A] that you die58 hundreds of men, of beasts and of other creatures are dying too.

[B] Nam nox nulla diem, neque noctem aurora sequuta est, Quæ non audierit mistos vagitibus ægris Ploratus, mortis comites et funeris atri.

[No night has ever followed day, no dawn has ever followed night, without hearing, interspersed among the wails of infants, the cries of pain attending death and sombre funerals.]59

[C] ‘Why do you pull back when retreat is impossible? You have seen cases enough where men were lucky to die, avoiding great misfortunes by doing so: but have you ever seen anyone for whom death turned out badly? And it is very simple-minded of you to condemn something which you have never experienced either yourself or through another. Why do you complain of me60 or of Destiny? Do we do you wrong? Should you govern us or should we govern you? You may not have finished your stint but you have finished your life. A small man is no less whole than a tall one. Neither men nor their lives are measured by the yard. Chiron refused immortality when he was told of its characteristics by his father Saturn, the god of time and of duration.61

‘Truly imagine how much less bearable for Man, and how much more painful, would be a life which lasted for ever rather than the life which I have given you. If you did not have death you would curse me, for ever, for depriving you of it.

‘Seeing what advantages death holds I have deliberately mixed a little anguish into it to stop you from embracing it too avidly or too injudiciously. To lodge you in that moderation which I require of you, neither fleeing from life nor yet fleeing from death, I have tempered them both between the bitter and the sweet.

‘I taught Thales, the foremost of your Sages, that living and dying are things indifferent. So, when asked “why he did not go and die then,” he very wisely replied: “Because it is indifferent.”62

‘Water, Earth, Air and Fire and the other parts of this my edifice are no more instrumental to your life than to your death. Why are you afraid of your last day? It brings you no closer to your death than any other did. The last step does not make you tired: it shows that you are tired. All days lead to death: the last one gets there.’

[A] Those are the good counsels of Nature, our Mother.63

I have often wondered why the face of death, seen in ourselves or in other men, appears incomparably less terrifying to us in war than in our own homes – otherwise armies would consist of doctors and cry-babies – and why, since death is ever the same, there is always more steadfastness among village-folk and the lower orders than among all the rest. I truly believe that what frightens us more than death itself are those terrifying grimaces and preparations with which we surround it – a brand new way of life: mothers, wives and children weeping; visits from people stunned and beside themselves with grief; the presence of a crowd of servants, pale and tear-stained; a bedchamber without daylight; candles lighted; our bedside besieged by doctors and preachers; in short, all about us is horror and terror. We are under the ground, buried in our graves already! Children are frightened of their very friends when they see them masked. So are we. We must rip the masks off things as well as off people. Once we have done that we shall find underneath only that same death which a valet and a chambermaid got through recently, without being afraid.64 Blessed65 the death which leaves no time for preparing such gatherings of mourners.