ANIMALS. 385 



to escape the universal ruin, and is tlie last that submits to the 

 blow. 



Cast your eyes upon a sick man, who h&s a hundred times 

 told you that he felt himself dying, that he was convinced he 

 could not recover, and that he was ready to expire ; examine 

 what passes on his visage, when through zeal or indiscretion, 

 any one comes to tell him that his end is at hand. You will 

 see him change, like one who is told an unexpected piece of 

 news. He now appears not to have thoroughly believed what 

 he had been telling you himself : he doubted much ; and his 

 fears were greater than his hopes ; but he still had some feeble 

 expeccations of living, and would not have seen the approaches 

 of death, unless he had been alarmed by the mistaken assiduity 

 of his attendants. 



Death, therefore, is not that terrible thing which we suppose 

 it to be. It is a spectre which frights us at a distance, but 

 which disappears when we come to approach it more closely. 

 Our ideas of its terrors are conceived in prejudice, and dressed 

 up by fancy : we regard it not only as the greatest misfortune, but 

 as also an evil accompanied with the most excruciating tortures ; 

 we have even increased our apprehensions, by reasoning on the 

 extent of our sufferings. " It must be dreadful," say some, 

 *' since it is sufficient to separate the soul from the body : it must 

 be long, since our sufferings are proportioned to the succession 

 of our ideas ; and these being painful, must succeed each other 

 with extreme rapidity." In this manner has false philosophy 

 laboured to augment the miseries of our nature ; and to aggra- 

 vate that period which Nature has kindly covered with insensi- 

 bility. Neither the mind nor the body can suffer these calami- 

 ties : 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 fainting, which is a 

 state similar to death : the body can suffer but to a certain de- 

 gree ; if the torture become 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 reflection ; and 

 wherever there are any signs of it, we may be sure that the suf- 

 ferings of the patient are no greater that what wc ourselves may 

 have remembered to endure. 



But, in the article of death, we have many instances in whicli 



