The only justification there is to live, once conscious of the damnable
scheme of life, is the burning desire to do something to help mankind
bear the conditions and to make easier the burden of life for those who
are here and for those who are to come; for very often the greatest
benefactors of the race are so maligned and persecuted in their day that
only the future can render a just appreciation of their labor and their
value.
For without the improvement bestowed on life by the world's benefactors,
over the crudity of Nature, it were better that we remain in the bosom
of our wilder brothers, and hang from the trees by the length and the
strength of our tails. Aye, back and back and back, down every degree of
life until the time before the first cell of protoplasm from an
inanimate into an animate state started.
Why must we be made to suffer such dreadful torment before death, since
by eternal decree it is the common lot all must endure?
Death, puzzling, eternal death, is Nature's final stamp upon our fearful
struggle through life.
And the agony of death is more poignantly mental than physical, since
the mind, reviewing the acts of the past, anticipates with anxiety and
with picturesque vividness the wrongs, scandals, terrors, fears and
injustice of the future.
Since life is so replete with physical pains, no wonder our picture of
death is so horrible.
We see upon the lifeless form the cast of its agonizing pain, and augur
from that an eternity of sorrow. But fortunately, in reality we can only
feel pain as long as we possess "life." In a sense, therefore, death is
a blessing.
After all, the severest pains of death lie in the brains of the living.
The mind is capable of suffering in one moment all that a lifetime can
repay with pleasure, and no joy is sufficient in value to compensate you
for enduring an irreparable loss.
The conditions that existed before our birth are identical with the
conditions that will exist at our death. As we knew no life and felt no
pain before our birth, we shall know no life and feel no pain after our
death.
Death is no longer the enigma of life. Living is its problem. The sting
of death has been removed. We know death's destiny, and no longer fear
its consequences. The only suffering attached to death now is the
injustice of its time of coming, the reluctance of parting with loved
ones, and the loss of the opportunity to attain. Well might I say with
Shakespeare, that:
"Cowards die many times before their death;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."
The most despicable characters of human life are those who prey upon
credulous persons when in the face of death and shrouded with the fear
of its uncertainty, picturing to those persons horrible and frightening
tales of an eternity of torture.
What unspeakable misery must those whose religious conviction has so
terrified death and its aftermath, especially when it is intensified and
horrified through the mouthpiece of ignorant priests, suffer in
consequence of death.
Oh, what a fearful sting must be there!
Just think what this poor, vast, credulous multitude pay, with the sweat
of their brows and the bend of their backs, to enrich these moral beasts
in exchange for their ignorant and terrifying mumblings, that rob the
deluded ones of every fiber of courage and every thought of perfect
peace and rest.
It is while living that death possesses its sting and anguish. Anyone
that seeks tribute from the dying, or from the living for services on
behalf of the dead, is a damnable moral scoundrel and a cunning rascal.
To those whose minds have been poisoned from childhood with this
religious conviction, this most awful of beliefs, I cry: "Throw off
these tyrants of the mind. Emancipate yourselves from this fearful
ignorance and mental bondage!" What a burden will be lifted from their
lives and what a glorious freedom they will experience!
If we are to die, let us die in perfect calmness and in perfect peace.
Let us become firmly convinced that, once we are dead, no thought, no
act, can possibly harm us. We are beyond the pale of Nature's pangs. We,
the individuals that we were, are free from everything. We are at rest,
and forever.
X
But after this life with all our pains and sorrows, what then? What is
there to repay us for living?