_Death should not be dreaded, on account of what there is simply in the
thing itself, or on account of what a person feels at that crisis._
LXXVI. There is a fear of death, which is well founded and salutary;
another, which is ill founded and pernicious; and another, which ought to
be indifferent, because it is natural, and which only by being carried
to too great an excess can become vicious. He fears death reasonably and
profitably, who contemplates it as a transition from hence to eternity;
he fears it naturally, who considers it as the termination of his life;
and he fears it unreasonably, who viewing it simply with regard to what
there is in the thing itself, abstracted from all that has preceded,
and all that is to follow it, supposes that it will be attended with
excessive pain.
LXXVII. This apprehension, although it is very common both among the
ignorant and the learned, I look upon to be chimerical and vain, and to
have no foundation in truth, therefore, I shall not scruple placing it
in the catalogue of vulgar errors. I don’t mean to treat here, of the
pains incident to diseases which dispose or lead to death, which without
doubt are often very severe; but I only mean to enquire or examine,
whether it is probable we feel any, or any very sensible pain, at that
moment when the soul is separated from the body. It is generally thought,
that at that instant, a more intense pain is felt, than can be produced
by all the torments a man is capable of inventing. Authors exaggerate
this pain in books, orators in pulpits, and all sorts of people in
conversation, and reason upon it in the following manner. If, say they,
tearing a nail from the finger, or a finger from the hand, produces a
pain so acute, that a man is scarce able to endure it, what must he
feel, or how will he be able to bear that which tears the soul from the
body? Here the strict union between these parts is described in the most
feeling manner, in order to enhance or aggravate the sensation that must
be experienced at their separation; and they compare it to the final
parting of two fast or fond friends, who have lived long and happily
together; or to two integrant parts of an animated body, the division
of which is the more painful, the more firmly and intimately they are
united together. To heighten this description, they add, that this pain
pervades all, and every one of the parts of the human body, both internal
and external, because the soul is torn equally from them all alike; which
is a universality, that cannot exist in any other pain, because he who
is roasted alive, or thrown into a great fire, does not feel pain in his
entrails, at the time his external parts begin to scorch: agreeable to
this mode of reasoning, they conclude, that the pain which is felt at the
moment of death, is enormous, beyond all imagination and description.
LXXVIII. I see this matter in quite a different light, and look upon
all this aggravated degree of pain to be imaginary, and consider the
reasoning by which the existence of it is attempted to be proved,
as fallacious and delusive. It is confounding our ideas of objects,
to suppose that the division of integral parts, is analogous to the
separation of the soul from the body. The pain in the first instance,
consists in the forcibly breaking their connexions, or in the first
shocks of the violence, which disposes to their disunion. In the
separation of the soul from the body, there is no insertion of material
fibres to be torn out by the roots, nor any division to be made of
connected substantial parts. From whence then can bodily pain be derived?
LXXIX. The using the same words promiscuously, causes mankind to run
into infinite errors, and especially if the application of them is made
to things that are fundamentally very different. The expression _tearing
the soul from the body_, fascinates or misleads many people in the
business we are now treating of; the phrase should be understood in a
figurative sense, and we are apt to construe it in a strict or literal
one. In consequence of which, as we know we can’t tear from our bodies,
the most minute shred, without feeling great pain, or even extract any
foreign substance, that has been violently introduced into, and sticks
in any part of our frame, without being liable to the same sensation;
led away then and betrayed by the sound of the expression, we are apt to
imagine, that something similar happens in the separation of the soul
from the body; but the soul is a pure spirit, that can neither adhere,
or be made to adhere to any body whatever, nor can it be bound to it by
ligatures, nor united with it by fibres, nor fixed to it by any kind of
fastening, nor intangled with it by any kind of roots or insertions; and
finally, the mode of its union to the body, is incomprehensible to all
our philosophy or understanding; and consequently, a description of its
disunion cannot be given in the words of any language. There is no doubt,
but the term _tearing from_ is metaphorical; and that we might with less
impropriety, although we never can with propriety, in describing the
separation of the soul from the body, say, that it evaporated off, it
was dissipated, or that it had been exhaled, than that it had been torn
away; for its disunion from the body, is performed by a movement that is
supremely insensible, because on the part of the corporeal substance,
there is not the least resistance made to its flying off. Vapours are
continually exhaling from every part of our bodies, without giving us
the least pain. And why is this? Why it is, because that on account of
their thinness and delicacy, they find no opposition in their passage,
either from the solids, or the pores of the skin. What obstruction then
can you suppose the soul meets with, in its exit from the body, which is
infinitely more subtil and thin, than the finest vapours?
LXXX. Let us contemplate the thing in another point of view; and admit
that the soul at the time of its being snatched away from the body,
caused a violent shock, like that of tearing to pieces all the entrails,
and inverting the whole interior organization. I say that even supposing
this, the pain that it would occasion would be very slight, or next to
nothing; and the reason is, because that in those ultimate stages of
life, all the faculties are so extremely languid, and the operations of
nature so feeble and remiss, as hardly to be perceived; and the sensation
of pain, which is one of those faculties, being in the same state with
the others, and the agent which is to stimulate them being equally feeble
with the rest; although in the time of vigour, it was capable of exerting
a force that had the power of producing great pain, in the present state
of things, it is not capable of giving a shock that can excite any very
acute sensation, nor if it was, is the subject it is exercised upon
capable of perceiving, or being violently affected by it.
LXXXI. I am inclined to think, that a few moments before death, there
comes on a kind of half death, or stupor, that is something like a
lethargy or swooning, and that in this interval, there remains no kind
of recollection or reflexion; and it is probable, that the morning of
our life, and the evening of our death, are preceded by a sort of
crepuscules or twilight, which brighten and grow clearer as the day of
our life comes on, and which darken and grow more obscure, as the total
night of our death draws near.
LXXXII. Hitherto we have been treating of natural deaths; but violent
deaths, which do not happen till three or four days after receiving
the injury that occasions them, may be considered to come under the
description of natural ones; as we may suppose those people die in the
same way, that those do who are carried off by an acute disease.
LXXXIII. Sudden violent deaths, which are so much dreaded, are the least
painful of all; and indeed I was about to say, that people in such
cases, hardly feel any pain at all, or at most but an instantaneous one;
because the operation of the cause which induces them, takes away in
a moment, all sense of feeling. It is well known, that those who have
fallen from a great height, and have lain a considerable time afterwards
as if they were dead, have, when they came to themselves, affirmed, they
did not feel the blow they received upon coming to the ground. The great
Chancellor Bacon, tells a story of a gentleman who was very desirous of
knowing what people felt who were hanged, and in order to be satisfied
about it, determined to make an experiment of the thing on himself. For
this purpose, he fastened a rope to the cieling of a room, in which rope
he made a noose, and after adjusting it to a proper length, he stood upon
a stool, and fixed the nooze round his neck, in the expectation, that
after suffering himself to be suspended, he should be able to recover the
stool again; but the good gentleman was a little out in his calculation;
for if it had not been for a friend who was present, to whom he had
communicated what he intended to do, and who cut the rope in time, the
experimental philosopher had been as dead as if he had been executed by
the hands of the hangman. The account he gave of this matter was, that
from the moment his body became suspended by the rope, he lost all sense
and recollection; that he had not the least remembrance of the stool, or
apprehension of the danger he was in, nor even any sensation of pain,
arising from the suffocation that was brought on.
LXXXIV. This, I firmly believe, is what happens to all those who are
executed by the hands of justice, whether they are hanged, strangled by
the bow-string, or beheaded; and in general, to all those who suffer
violent deaths that are as sudden as these are; for they can only feel a
momentary or instantaneous pain, and the instant they receive the fatal
blow, they are from that time, to the separation of the soul from the
body, mere effigies of men, and have no more sensation of pain, than
stocks or stones; and notwithstanding, that between the intermediate
space of their receiving the blow, or in case they are hanged, of being
turned off, they are seen to make some convulsive motions, these motions
are merely mechanical, and are by no means governed by the will, or
directed by reason.
LXXXV. We will not exempt, as coming under this general rule, even those
who are burnt alive. This is a sort of punishment, which strikes all the
world with extreme horror, because they generally conceive, that from the
instant a person who is executed in this way, is thrown into the fire,
to the time of his resigning his last breath, he feels the excruciating
torments of the fire. But I am of opinion, that he feels nothing after
the first minute that he is committed to the flames; nor can I conceive,
that his perception of pain can endure even so long as that.
LXXXVI. I think I have tolerably well proved, what I at first asserted;
but as the reader may object, that this paradox ought to have been
classed among physical matters, instead of among moral and political
ones, I will endeavour now, to remove this objection; which I hope I
shall be able to do, notwithstanding the decadence of the faculties, and
the want of sensation at the moment of death, are properer objects for
philosophical, than moral speculations. I shall begin with observing,
that we ought to distinguish between the matter of the proof, and the
essence of the subject we are handling. The subject in the present case,
consists in a theoretical proposition, that death with respect to what
there is simply and merely in the thing itself, ought not to be feared,
or that the fear of death, considered in this manner, is not reasonable
or well-founded; now thus considered, the question is purely a moral one,
because it directly combats an inordinate passion of the soul. The proofs
of the truth of the proposition, appertain to philosophy; but this is
what we see happen every day with regard to other moral questions. When
the question is, whether a marriage should be dissolved on account of
imbecility, all the proofs in the trial are purely physical, &c.
LXXXVII. But the question more immediately appertains to morality, on
account of the end for which I proposed it, than it does with respect to
its own proper matter; for this end is a point of morality of the most
serious importance. There is great necessity for banishing this panic
terror, and this dismal apprehension of the tormenting pains of death.
It is very common to see dying people (and I speak of what I have known
and experienced myself) extremely distressed by this idea, not so much
on account of the dread of the exquisite pain itself, as on account of
the consequences that may result from it. They figure to themselves, that
the pains which terminate this mortal life, are so extremely intense,
that they will occasion them to lose all patience, and prevent their
submitting themselves to the will of Providence with the christian
resignation they ought; and are also apprehensive, that it would cause
them to break out into furious acts of desperation. This anxiety has such
an effect on them, that it prevents the operation of those christian
dispositions, that should accompany a man in his last moments, and which
are so necessary to promote his dying a good death; and besides this,
they even put him in danger of distrusting the Divine Goodness at so
critical a period. I have seen many who were in their perfect senses, and
who had been people of good and exemplary lives, who have been greatly
distressed by this idea;
_O genus attonitum gelidæ formidine mortis!_
LXXXVIII. I suppose that sentence of St. Paul’s, _Fidelis autem Deus
est, qui non patietur vos tentari supra id quod potestis_, in English,
_God is good and just, and will not suffer you to be tried or tempted
beyond your strength_, would be an excellent antidote for this malady.
The thinking otherwise of the Deity, would not be contemplating him, as a
most merciful father, nor as a just God, but considering him as a cruel
tyrant, who at the moment on which your eternal happiness depends, should
afflict you so severely, as to cause you to commit acts of desperation.
What faith, and the light of natural reason teaches us, is, that his
goodness never permits the rigour of the trial, to exceed the power
of the soul to contend with and resist it; and as I observed before,
this reflexion is an excellent antidote against the malady we have been
speaking of; but with all this, if it is not assisted and enforced by the
persuasive eloquence of an able friend, or a good pastoral director, it
is apt to lose some of its efficacy, and not to quiet the fluctuations of
the mind so thoroughly as could be wished, and especially if not attended
to in time; and I therefore think that it would be necessary, whether
sick or well, for all people to remain in a firm persuasion, that these
excruciating pains in the article of death are imaginary.
_Appendix to the foregoing._
LXXXIX. I have sometimes observed, that those who attend on dying people
have been much dejected upon finding them in their last moments, make
some very irregular and extraordinary motions, and have been afraid and
believed that those agitations, had proceeded from some impatience that
had seized them. But let them not be uneasy on this account; because it
is most likely, that these motions are merely mechanical; and that in
case they should not be so, there is no mischief to be apprehended from
them; for in that proximate state to death, if people are not deprived
of their senses, the use of their reason is so feeble, or so confused,
that very little, if any, of that free will can be exercised by them
which is necessary to constitute sin, or at least any serious sin; for
no intoxicated man, nor any one at the instant he awakes from a profound
sleep, can be in a more stunned or stupified state, than a dying person
at such a crisis.
XC. Finally, both with respect to the matter of this appendix, as well
as with regard to that of the subject of this Essay, I shall proceed to
give a last, and most efficacious consolation, against the apprehension,
that the extreme pains of death are likely to endanger the loss of
people’s souls; for admitting that those pains were real, and as severe
as they are represented to be, is there any danger that the dying
person who is oppressed by them, should fall into the serious sin of
impatience, or that he should incur the guilt of any other mortal crime?
To this, I resolutely answer that he could not; for the same reasoning
that states the pain to be so insufferably intense, removes all the
hazard of sinning, because it must disturb the understanding to such
a degree, as to deprive a man of all free will. This is a consequence
resulting from all passions that are excessively violent, as is agreed
by all philosophers and theologians. Virgil, who had great judgment and
penetration in these matters, represents Chorœbus, who had been totally
deprived of his senses by grief for the imprisonment of his beloved
Cassandra, as divested of all free will or reflexion also, in the
following lines:
_Non tulit hanc speciem furiatâ mente Chorœbus,_
_Et sese medium injecit moriturus in agmen._