236 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE FEAK OF DEATH. 



By M. GUGLIELMO FERRERO. 



MA1ST occupies in view of death a situation that is peculiar, for 

 he is probably the only being that knows he has to die. The 

 battle against death spurs an immense number of men to study and 

 work; and all the great intellectual and moral creations in art, re- 

 ligion, and science have been produced under the influence of the 

 .feelings excited by the certainty of that event. Yet the psychol- 

 ogy of the ideas and emotions relative to death is still to be con- 

 structed. 



Man is not normally preoccupied with the thought of death. 

 While he is in full vigor of health and strength he is not afraid of 

 it and takes little heed of it. The idea that he will have to die some 

 day rarely enters his mind, and when it does present itself it is so 

 vague and relates to an event so uncertain as to the time when it will 

 occur that no distress is produced by it. This inertia of the thought 

 of death in the strong man follows from the important agency exer- 

 cised by organic sensations in determining the psychical condition. 

 We know that not only exterior phenomena acting on the sensorial 

 organs that are directed to the outer world produce sensations in 

 us, but changes of condition originating in the organism itself are 

 also accompanied by sensations. The parts of the body that are 

 by their situation withdrawn from the direct influence of external 

 agents possess a special sensitiveness through which we perceive their 

 changes of condition. One of these sensations, for example, is the 

 feeling of fullness after dinner, the sign of an abundance of food in 

 the stomach. The same stomach, empty, gives the painful feeling 

 of hunger. In the field of organic sensibility sharply defined sensa- 

 tions are given only under abnormal conditions resulting from patho- 

 logical disturbances. In a normal state they are v^ry weak, and 

 escape observation all the more easily because they differ but little 

 in quality and intensity. But, being very numerous and continual, 

 these sensations exercise a great influence over our psychical condi- 

 tion and sometimes indirectly determine the trend of our thoughts 

 and the forms of our feelings. Thus, for example, the vivacity of 

 mental images and ideas often depends on special conditions of or- 

 ganic sensibility. When an image or an idea is in opposition to the 

 preponderant series of organic sensations with which the conscious- 

 ness is occupied, a conflict takes place in which the image and the 

 idea are nearly always vanquished. It is, for instance, very hard 

 to form a lively conception of the pangs of hunger after having 

 eaten a good meal; for the organic sensations of fullness proceeding 



