HOW TO DIE 



resignation to the will of Heaven. "Ah, my good 

 father," he replied, "can you suppose that a man who 

 has been able to pass a life of near eighty years with 

 honor, cannot tell how to terminate properly the last 

 quarter of an hour of it?" And this fortitude is as 

 typical as it is admirable. 



Any man may rationally enough shrink from the 

 thought of a death by violence, prepared though he be 

 to meet such death with fortitude should it come. 

 This shrinking, however, may represent not fear of 

 death, but fear of pain. Here, as indeed elsewhere, 

 it is, in the words of Seneca, the paraphernalia of the 

 death-bed that terrify, rather than death itself. "Der 

 Tod is nichts, aber das Sterben ist ein schdndliche 

 Erfindung" Death is nothing, but dying is a terrible 

 experience, says Heine, paraphrasing the words of 

 Seneca. But in general it is the prospect rather than 

 the reality that is terrible. When the last hours come, 

 as a rule they bring with them the benison of uncon- 

 sciousness. 



Even where consciousness is retained to the end, the 

 last hours are rarely, in case of natural death, hours of 

 suffering. "If I could hold a pen," said William 

 Hunter, the anatomist, in one of the last moments of 

 his life, "I would write how easy and pleasant a thing 

 it is to die." And these words but give expression to 

 what is perhaps the normal experience of mankind. 

 For the vast majority of the human race, dying proves as 

 painless a process as the falling asleep that they have 

 practised every night of their lives. 



Thus to liken dying to falling asleep is perhaps the 

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