FOURTH DAY.] DEA TH B Y SUFFOCA T10N. 99 



sleep that ends in death is agreeable. There is far 

 more pain in recovering from the insensibility 

 produced by the abstraction of air than in under- 

 going it, as I can answer from my own feelings; 

 and it is, I believe, quite true, what has been 

 asserted, that the pain of being born, which is 

 acquiring the power of respiration, is greater than 

 that of dying, which is losing the power. 



ORN. I have heard, that persons who have been 

 recovered from the insensibility produced by hanging, 

 have never any recollection of the sufferings which 

 preceded it ; and as the blood is immediately 

 determined to the head in this operation, probably 

 apoplectic insensibility is almost instantaneous. 



HAL. The laws of nature are all directed by 

 Divine Wisdom for the purpose of preserving life 

 and increasing happiness. Pain seems in all cases 

 to precede the mutilation or destruction of those 

 organs which are essential to vitality, and for the end 

 of preserving them; but the mere process of dying 

 seems to be the falling into a deep slumber ; and in 

 animals, who have no fear of death dependent upon 

 imagination, it can hardly be accompanied by very 

 intense suffering. In the human being moral and 

 intellectual motives constantly operate in enhancing 

 the fear of death, which, without these motives in a 

 reasoning being, would probably become null, and the 



H2 



