70 HISTORY or 



ferings are proportioned to the succession of our 

 ideas ; and these being painful, must succeed 

 each other with extreme rapidity. In this man- 

 ner has false philosophy laboured to augment the 

 miseries of our nature, and to aggravate that 

 period which nature has kindly covered with in- 

 sensibility. Neither the mind nor the body can 

 suffer these calamities ; the mind is, at that time, 

 mostly without ideas, and the body too much 

 enfeebled to be capable of perceiving its pain. 

 A very acute pain produces either death or faint- 

 ing, which is a state similar to death : the body 

 can suffer but to a certain degree ; if the torture 

 becomes excessive, it destroys itself; and the mind 

 ceases to perceive, when the body can no longer 

 endure. 



In this manner excessive pain admits of no re- 

 flection ; and wherever there are any signs of it, 

 we may be sure that the sufferings of the patient 

 are no greater than what we ourselves may have 

 remembered to endure. 



But in the article of death we have many in- 

 stances in which the dying person has shown, that 

 every reflection which presupposes an absence 

 of the greatest pain, and consequently that pang 

 which ends life, cannot even be so great as those 

 which have preceded. Thus, when Charles XII. 

 was shot at the siege of Frederickshall, he was 

 seen to clap his hand on the hilt of his sword ; 

 and although the blow was great enough to ter- 

 minate one of the boldest and bravest lives in the 

 world, yet it was not painful enough to destroy 

 reflection. He perceived himself attacked ; he 



