We cannot like both life and death at once; no one can be expected to
like two such opposite things at the same time; if we like life we must
dislike death, and if we leave off disliking death we shall soon die.
Death will always be more avoided than sought; for living involves
effort, perceived or unperceived, central or departmental, and this will
only be made by those who dislike the consequences of not making it more
than the trouble of making it. A race, therefore, which is to exist at
all must be a death-disliking race, for it is only at the cost of death
that we can rid ourselves of all aversion to the idea of dying, so that
the hunt after a philosophy which shall strip death of his terrors is
like trying to find the philosopher’s stone which cannot be found and
which, if found, would defeat its own object.
Moreover, as a discovery which should rid us of the fear of death would
be the vainest, so also it would be the most immoral of discoveries, for
the very essence of morality is involved in the dislike (within
reasonable limits) of death. Morality aims at a maximum of comfortable
life and a minimum of death; if then, a minimum of death and a maximum of
life were no longer held worth striving for, the whole fabric of morality
would collapse, as indeed we have it on record that it is apt to do among
classes that from one cause or another have come to live in disregard and
expectation of death.
However much we may abuse death for robbing us of our friends—and there
is no one who is not sooner or later hit hard in this respect—yet time
heals these wounds sooner than we like to own; if the heyday of grief
does not shortly kill outright, it passes; and I doubt whether most men,
if they were to search their hearts, would not find that, could they
command death for some single occasion, they would be more likely to bid
him take than restore.
Moreover, death does not blight love as the accidents of time and life
do. Even the fondest grow apart if parted; they cannot come together
again, not in any closeness or for any long time. Can death do worse
than this?
The memory of a love that has been cut short by death remains still
fragrant though enfeebled, but no recollection of its past can keep sweet
a love that has dried up and withered through accidents of time and life.
XXIV
The Life of the World to Come