To cease from bodily activity, to end all efforts of will and of
thought, to stop all these forever, is no evil. For do but contemplate
thine own life as a child, a growing lad, a youth, an old man: the
change to each of these periods was the death of the period which
preceded it. Why then fear the death of all these--the death of thyself?
Think too of thy life under the care of thy grandfather, then of thy
life under the care of thy mother, then under the care of thy father,
and so on with every change that hath occurred in thy life, and then ask
thyself concerning any change that hath yet to be, Is there anything to
fear? And then shall all fear, even of the great change,--the change of
death itself,--vanish and flee away. (Book ix., §21.)