steady effort, to make as much of it, as if it were to be our whole
existence. If we have duties to perform, in themselves severe and
laborious, we may inquire, if there be not some way, by which to
invest them with pleasant associations? A man may find amusement
in his free thoughts, while following his plough upon the hill
side; in digging up the words for a dictionary, or in copying out
a brief. He may train himself, by an inefficient and shrinking
spirit, to recoil from these tasks, as insupportable burdens. How
many men find their pleasure, in what would be the positive horror
and torment of the indolent! How weak the spirit, and how silly
the vanity which we display, in ever renewing narrations of our
little personal troubles, pains and misfortunes! If we would have
the discretion to measure the sympathy, which we may expect from
others, in such discourses, by that, which we are conscious of
feeling for theirs of the same character, it would go far to teach
us the folly of that querulous spirit, which doles forth the story
of sufferings and sorrows, as though the narrator were the only
sufferer, and were entitled to a monopoly of all the passing pity.
Note 59, page 169.
This compendium of the moral acquirements, entering into the
character of an accomplished philosopher, I consider one of the
happiest, which any book of morals can show. Here is an ample
volume of ethics, on a page. How differently would a modern
auto-biographer have announced the same facts! In what rounded
periods and circuitous expressions would he have striven to
convey the same ideas, to impress the reader, that his modesty
forbade the frank personality of the Roman philosopher. The
whole spirit of this admirable summary would have evaporated in
barren generalities. What we admire in the ancients is their
noble simplicity and directness, which disdains the vanity of
circumlocution, that wishes to hide itself under the semblance of
modesty.
It seems to me, that it would not be amiss for the clergy of the
day to seek the models of their homilies and sermons in such a
manner of declaring moral truth. Abstract ethical declamation,
and all the scholastic acquirements and the _limæ labor_ are but
poor substitutes for that searching directness, which, avoiding
abstractions and generalities, appeals at once to the personal
consciousness. I allow, that I should love to hear such sermons,
as that of Dr Primrose to his fellow prisoners, in the Vicar of
Wakefield. There is no eloquence, there can be none, except in
simple and direct appeals to thought and conscience.
Note 60, page 171.
Various writers of splendid genius have tasked their imagination,
to present us with the results of endowing a person with
immortality on earth. Such a character has been delineated with
great power by Godwin, in his St Leon; and by Croly in the story
of _Salathiel, or the Wandering Jew_. It is an instructive labor,
to record the wanderings, changes, weariness, abandonment, and
final despair of a wretch cursed with immortality; and by the
circumstance rendered a monster, out of relation with human beings;
and cut off from all real sympathy with his mortal kind. It is
questionable, whether these writers, or any others who have drawn
similar pictures, have formed adequate conceptions, of what would
be the actual result of an earthly immortality. The view of the
author before me seems just. I can easily imagine the immortal
delivered from earthly sorrows. But, when I contemplate him
divested of the hopes, fears, affections and sympathies, which
trace their origin to our common mortal nature, I cannot imagine
the affections, that are to replace these.
I can conceive none other, than a being, who would become drowsy
at sixty, and sleepy at a hundred. All beyond presents to me a
lethargy of almost unconscious existence, from which my fancy can
devise no effort of sufficient energy to arouse him. In fact, it
is sufficient, that nature has awarded, in her universal decree,
that man should not be out of analogy and relation with the rest
of nature; to convince us, that the decision involves our best
interest. The more our views of nature enlarge, the more we become
conscious, that she has arranged all her laws with such perfect
wisdom, that if we could reverse any of them, we should do it at
the expense of our own happiness.
Of all pictures of men, rendered immortal upon earth, the most
forcible, brief and revolting, is that of Swift. ‘After this
preface, he gave me a particular account of the Struldbrugs among
them. He said, they commonly acted like mortals, till about
thirty years old; after which they grew melancholy and dejected,
increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned
from their own confession; for otherwise, there not being more than
two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to
form a general observation by. When they come to fourscore years,
which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they
had not only all the follies and infirmities of other men, but
many more, which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying.
They were not only opinionative, covetous, peevish, morose, vain,
talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural
affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy
and their impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those
objects, against which their envy seems particularly directed,
are the vices of the younger sort, and the death of the old. By
reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all
possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they
lament, and repine, that others have gone to a harbor of rest, at
which they can never hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of
anything, but what they learned, and observed in their youth and
middle age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or
particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition,
than their best recollection. The least miserable among them, are
those, who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories. These
meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad
qualities, which abound in others.
‘If a Struldbrug happen to marry one of his kind, the marriage is
dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the
younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a
reasonable indulgence, that those, who are condemned, without any
fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should
not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife. As soon as
they have completed the term of eighty years, they are considered
dead in law. At ninety they lose their teeth and hair, and have
no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get,
without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to,
still continue without increasing, or diminishing. In talking, they
forget the common appellations of things, and the names of persons,
even of those, who are their nearest friends and relations. For the
same reason, they can never amuse themselves with reading, because
their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a
sentence to the end; and by this defect they are deprived of the
only entertainment whereof they might be capable.
‘They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, and the
women more horrible than the men. Besides the usual deformities
in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in
proportion to their number of years, which is not to be described;
and among half a dozen, I soon distinguished who was the oldest,
although there was not above a century or two between them.
‘The reader will easily believe, from what I have heard and seen,
that my keen appetite for perpetuity and life was much abated. I
grew heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions I had formed, and
thought no tyrant could invent a death into which I would not run
with pleasure, from such a life. The king heard all that had passed
between me and my friends upon this occasion, and rallied me very
pleasantly, wishing I could send a couple of Struldbrugs to my own
country, to arm our people against the fear of death.’
Note 61, page 171.
Fear, absolutely useless, gratuitous fear, probably constitutes
much the largest proportion of the whole mass of human misery;
and of this proportion the fear of death is the principal part.
There are but very few people who, in examining the feeling of
revulsion and horror, most constantly present to their minds, will
not find it to be the dread of death. The whole observation, which
I have made upon human nature, has only enlightened me the more
as to the universality and extent of the influence of this evil.
I see it infusing bitterness into the bosoms of the young, before
they are as yet capable of reflection; and ceasing not to inspire
its terrors into the heart, which has experienced the sorrows of
fourscore winters. I see little difference in the alarm with which
it darkens the mind of the heir, elate with youthful hope, and the
galley slave--those apparently the most happy, and the tenants of
penitentiaries and lazar-houses. All cling alike convulsively to
life, and shudder at the thought of death.
Part, and perhaps the greater part, of this fear is a sad
heritage, which has been transmitted down to us, an accumulating
fund of sorrow, for a hundred generations. I have stated my
conviction in another place, that our education, religious
ceremonies, domestic manners, in short, all the influences of the
present institutions of society tend to increase this evil. I am
well aware, at the same time, that the number of those, who will
admit it to be an evil, is but small. Most view it as it has been
considered in all Christian countries, from time immemorial, as
an instrument in the hand of God and his servants, to awe, and
restrain the mind, recall it from illusions and vanities, and
reduce it to the seriousness and obedience of religion. The broad
declamation of the pulpit for effect, revolting representations of
hell-torment and the vindictive justice of God, have passed with
a readier tolerance, under a kind of tacit allowance, that if the
means were unworthy, the proposed end was such as would sanctify
them. It is almost unnecessary to remark, that all my hope of
producing any useful impression is with the small, but growing
number, (in the next age, I trust, it will be a majority) who
hold this whole doctrine in utter unbelief; who have no faith in
amendment and conversion, that grows out of the base and servile
principle of fear; and least of all the fear of death; who believe
that a great reform, a thorough amelioration of our species, will
never be effected, until it is made a radical principle of our
whole discipline, and all our social institutions, to bring this
servile passion completely under the control of our reason. With
these, it is a deep and fixed conviction, that every thing base,
degrading and destructive of intellect and improvement, readily
associates with fear; and that the basis of true religion, generous
conception, high thoughts and really noble character, is firmly
laid in a young mind, when trained to become as destitute of fear,
as if it were conscious of being a sinless angel, above the reach
of pain or death.
It would be to no purpose for me to pause in this place, to obviate
the strictures of those who will denounce this doctrine, by quoting
from the scriptures the frequent inculcations of the _fear of the
Lord_, and the Apostle’s declaration, that by the _terrors of the
Lord we persuade men_. The true and religious fear, inculcated
in the scriptures, not only has no relation to the passion I am
discussing, but cannot exist, any more than the other requisite
traits of religious character, in a bosom swayed by the grovelling
and selfish passion of servile fear.
That nature has implanted in our bosoms an instinctive dread of
death, I readily admit. But fear, as a factitious and unnatural
addition to the true instincts of human nature, has been so
accumulated by rolling down through a hundred generations, that we
are in no condition to know the degree, in which nature intended
we should possess it. We have innumerable base propensities,
which we charge upon nature, that are, in fact, no more, than the
guilty heritage, bequeathed us by our ancestors. Nature could have
implanted no higher degree of instinctive dread of death, than
just what was requisite, to preserve the race from prodigal waste,
or rash exposure of a gift, which, once lost, is irretrievable.
If nature has inwrought in any constitution one particle of fear,
beyond what was required for this result, she has, as in all other
excessive endowments, granted reason and judgment, to regulate, and
reduce it to its due subordination.
Will not religion achieve the great triumph of casting out the
base principle of fear? I would be the last to deny, or undervalue
the trophies of true religion. I have no doubt that religion has,
in innumerable instances, extracted the pain and poison from the
sting of death. More than this, it would unquestionably produce
this triumph in every case, if every individual were completely
under the influence of the true principle. It would attain this end
by processes and discipline exactly concurrent, if not similar,
with those I am about to propose. But it is a lamentable fact,
that very few are under the influence of true religion. Of those,
whom charity deems most sincerely pious, under all professions and
forms, the far greater number exhibit, on the bed of dangerous
sickness, the same fear of death with the rest. We consider this
a generally conceded fact; for, among all but the most extravagant
sects, death-bed terror, or triumph has ceased to be considered a
test of the personal religion of the deceased. Even in the cases
of enthusiastic triumph in the last moments, which we have all
witnessed, and which are justly so soothing to the survivors, it
would often be difficult to determine the respective influence of
laudanum, and partial insanity doing its last work upon the nervous
system.
Be this as it may, the triumph over the fear of death, which I
would inculcate, should not be tested by the equivocal deportment
of the patient, in the near view of death; but by his own joyous
consciousness of deliverance from this tormenting thraldom and
bondage, during his whole life. Let fear and horror crowd what
bitterness they may into the last few hours, it can bear but little
proportion to the long agony of a whole life, passed in _bondage
through fear of death_. To produce the desired triumph, the highest
training of philosophy should concur with the paternal spirit and
the immortal hopes of the gospel; and a calm, reasoning, unboasting
fearlessness of death should enable us to taste all the little of
pure and innocent joy, that may be found between the cradle and
the grave--as unmolested, as unsprinkled with this fear, as if the
destroyer were not among the works of God.
How may this result be obtained? How may a generation be so trained
as to lose not a particle of enjoyment, nor be influenced to one
unworthy act, by the fear of death? To answer these questions, in
the requisite detail of illustration, would require volumes. It
might, perhaps, best be done by selecting a single child as an
example; and by developing, at every advancing step, the process
of his training; pointing out every instance, in which it would be
necessary to withdraw him from the influence of the present systems
of discipline; in which, in a word, his whole education should
be conducted with a preponderant purpose, among other desirable
results, to render him perfectly fearless of death. It is hoped
that some one of those, who believe this a chief desideratum in the
reformation and improvement of the present system of education,
will take this great point in hand; and in this way indicate to
the age the modes of discipline, through which this result may
be expected. It is obvious, that a much severer discipline would
be required for the first generation so trained, than for the
second; who, with less transmitted cowardice than their parents,
would perpetuate a constantly improving moral constitution to the
generations to come. My present plan admits only a brief summary of
motives and arguments, commonly adduced, as calculated to diminish,
regulate, and subdue the fear of death. It is evident, that these
motives and arguments are predicated upon present opinions, and
such as may be supposed capable of acting upon the existing
generation, enduring the hereditary and inculcated bondage of this
passion.
1. The terrific and undefinable images of horror, that
imagination affixes to the term _death_, are founded in an entire
misconception. The word is the sign of no positive idea whatever.
It conjures up a shadowy horror to the mind, finely delineated,
as a poetic personage, by Milton; and implies some agony that is
supposed to lie between the limits of existence and non-existence,
or existence in another form. This is simple illusion. So long
as we feel, death is not--and when we cease to feel, or commence
feeling in a changed form, death has been:--_fuit mors_. So
that the term imports a mere phantom of the imagination. In the
words of Droz, ‘it is not yet; or it is past.’ If one can arrest
the _punctum stans_, and the actual sensation, where waking
consciousness terminates, and sleep commences, he can tell us, what
death is. Every one is conscious of having passed through this
change; but no one can give any account, what were his sensations
in the dividing moment of interval between wakefulness and sleep.
2. Imagination is allowed to settle all the circumstances, and
form all the associations belonging to the supposed agony of this
event. It is one of the few important incidents in life, upon which
reason is never allowed to fix a calm and severe scrutiny. It has
been seen in a light, too sacred and terrible, to permit such a
lustration. ‘It is dreadful,’ says common apprehension, ‘for it
is the breaking up the long and tender partnership, and producing
a separation between the body and the soul--dreadful, because it
is the wages of sin, and is appointed to be a perpetual memorial
of the righteous displeasure of God in view of sin;’ ‘dreadful,’
say others, who most unphilosophically believe that man was not
originally intended to be mortal, ‘because a violence upon nature;
dreadful, because a departure of the spirit from the regions
of the living, and the light of the sun, into an unknown and
eternal condition. Suns will revolve, moons wax and wane, years,
revolutions, ages, counted by all the particles of mist in the
sea, will elapse, but the place, whence the spirit is gone, will
never know it more.’ ‘It is terrible,’ says common apprehension,
‘for it is often preceded and accompanied by spasm, and convulsive
struggle.’ The psalmody, which we sing in church, speaks of the
_ghastly paleness_, the _chill sweat_, and the _mortal coldness_,
circumstances all, which, seen in other associations, would assume
no aspect of peculiar terror.
Then, too, the attendants in the sick room with a look of horror
inspect the extremities of the patient, and petrify bystanders with
the terrible words, ‘he is struck with death,’ as though the grisly
phantom king of the poet’s song had invisibly glided in, and, with
his icy sceptre, given his victim the blow of mortal destiny. Who
knows not that, though there are usually mortal symptoms, which
enable an experienced eye to foresee approaching dissolution,
the term _death-struck_ imports nothing but the weakest vulgar
prejudice, a prejudice under the influence of which millions have
been suffered to expire, that might have been roused! Innumerable
persons, pronounced to be in that situation, have actually
recovered; and no moment, in the ordinary forms of disease, can
with any certainty be pronounced beyond hope and the chances of
aid, but that which succeeds the last sigh. Thus every thought of
the living, and every aspect of the dying, by a wayward ingenuity,
heightens the imagined horror of the event.
Then there are conversations and hymns and funeral odes and
Night Thoughts, which speak of the coldness, silence and eternal
desolation of the grave; as though the unconscious sleeper felt the
chill of the superincumbent clay, the darkness of his narrow house
or this terrible isolation from the living. The pale and peaceful
corpse is contemplated with a look of horror. Two, of stout heart
and tried friendship, abide near the kneaded clod, until the living
are relieved from their ghostly terrors, by its deposition out of
their sight in the narrow house. The family, the children, the
friends alike showing the creeping horror, glide quick and silently
on tiptoe through the apartment, where the sleeper lies. The first
nightfall after the disease is one of peculiar and unmitigated
horror. The family, however disinclined to union before, this
evening unite, with that impress on their countenances, which words
reach not. Now return to their thoughts the nursery tales, the
thrilling narratives of haunted houses and wandering ghosts; and
if the minister comes among them, it is probably to evoke before
their imaginations condemned spirits doomed to eternal sufferings,
quenchless flames, groans without respite, and all the ineffable
and eternal torments, that the clerical vocabulary of centuries has
accumulated.
Need we wonder, that in a christian country, and among families
of the best training, such impressions have become so universal,
that they, who would be reputed brave, blazon their courage, by
affirming their readiness to sleep in a cemetery, or the funeral
vault of a church! It requires no extraordinary effort, and nothing
more than the simple triumph of reason among the faculties, to
enable any man, to sleep alone in a charnel house with as little
dread, as in the apartment of an inn, so that the places were alike
in comfort and salubrity. It does not require us to be wise, or
courageous; but simply not cowards and fools, to feel as little
horror in the view of corpses, as statues of plaster or marble.
One of the most terrible ideas of death, after all, is, that we
shall thus, immediately upon our decease, inflict this shrinking
revulsion of terror upon all, who look at our remains.
The view, which reason takes of the sick and dying bed is, that,
in the far greater number of mortal cases, the transition from
life to death is as imperceptible, as the progress of the sun
and the seasons. One faculty dies after another. The victim has
received the three warnings unconsciously. Ordinarily, a person may
be said to have paid a third part of his tribute of mortality at
forty-five; half at fifty-five; and the whole at three score and
ten.
When acute and severe sickness assails the patient, he has passed
through what may be called the agony of death at a very early
period of his disease. His chief suffering is past, as soon the
irritability and the vigorous powers of life have been broken down.
When the disorder assumes the typhoid and insensible form, the
dull sleep, that precedes the final rest of the tomb, is already
creeping upon him; and severe suffering is precluded. If there are
convulsions after this, as often happens, they are seldom more
than spasmodic movements, impressed by the nervous action upon
the tendons, more terrible to the beholder, than the sufferer;
differing little from those starts and struggles, with which many
persons in high health commence sleeping and waking. He who has
experienced the sensation of fainting, and, still more, of an
epileptic fit, has suffered, I am ready to believe, all that there
is in dying.