vii THE STAGES OF LIFE AND DEATH 317 



It is not then the result of an inborn natural law, but an acquired 

 instinct, which torments and obsesses us by reason of the moral 

 and intellectual reflections it brings in its train. 



We are thus led to consider the psychical conditions of man 

 during the brief period preceding death. It is a question which 

 has awakened the philosophic curiosity of many writers, amongst 

 whom it will suffice to mention Epicurus, Cicero, Lattanzio, 

 Montaigne, Buffon, and also Leopardi. in his admirable Dialogo 

 di Federico Ruysch e delle sue mummie. 



Many medical reports and searching examinations of indi- 

 viduals who have barely escaped an accidental death have proved 

 to us that death is not physically painful, and that from the point 

 of view of the sensations there is no difference between death and 

 falling asleep. Euthanasia may therefore be termed a constant 

 phenomenon ; the approach of the fate which each one of us bears 

 with him is accompanied by a kind of serene reverie, not by 

 acute 'pain, as those who are present at an apparently painful 

 death might suppose. Some individuals who have been saved 

 from drowning say that they felt nothing in the supreme moment, 

 others speak of pleasant sensations, others again of vaguely dis- 

 agreeable but not painful sensations (such as a sense of oppression 

 in the chest}, others remembered at that moment particulars of their 

 life, long forgotten. The reports of persons who have fallen over 

 a precipice when mountaineering in the Alps are of a like kind : 

 they declare that they never lost consciousness for an instant, 

 that they suffered no pain as they fell from rock to rock, that 

 they thought with extraordinary rapidity of a number of things 

 both past and future, that they heard a sort of pleasant tinkling, 

 and even experienced an indescribable feeling of well-being ! The 

 few who die a natural death from old age are said to fall peace- 

 fully asleep without a struggle or pain. The centenarian Fon- 

 tanelle was asked what he felt as he lay on his death-bed. " Eien 

 qu'une difficulte d'etre," was his reply. A relation of Brillat- 

 Savarin, aged 93, asked for a glass of water shortly before his 

 death and said to the illustrious author of La Physiologie du gout : 

 " Thank you for this last service. If you ever become as old as I 

 am, you will see that death is as necessary to man as sleep." 



Worthy of note is the sense of peace and mental lucidity 

 sometimes seen a short time before natural death. Even in 

 maniacs and persons suffering from serious psychical disturbances 

 a flash of consciousness, a momentary recovery of their intellectual 

 powers, has been remarked. Thurnam (1845) drew up statistics 

 and found that this phenomenon occurred in a fourth of the cases 

 of insanity. 



More recently Egger, Sollier, Ferrari, and others have observed 

 the phenomenon of hypermnesia in the dying. Egger thinks that 

 the idea of approaching death, working by contrast, awakens the 



