“Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life, doth greatly please.”
Professor Hufeland, on the subject of death, observes, “that many fear death less than the operation of dying.” People, he continues, “form the most singular conceptions of the last struggle—the separation of the soul from the body, and the like; but this is all void of foundation. No man certainly ever felt what death is; and insensibly as we enter life, equally insensibly do we leave it. The beginning and the end are here united. My proofs are as follows:—First, man can have no sensation of dying; for to die means nothing more than to lose the vital powers; and it is the vital power which is the medium of communication between the soul and the body. In proportion as the vital power decreases, we lose the power of sensation and consciousness; and we cannot lose life without, at the same time, or rather before, losing our vital sensation, which requires the assistance of the tenderest organs. We are taught also by experience that all those who ever passed through the first stage of death, and were again brought to life, unanimously asserted that they felt nothing of dying, but sunk at once into a state of insensibility.[38]
“Let us not be led into a mistake by the convulsive throbs, the rattling in the throat, and the apparent pangs of death, which are exhibited by many persons when in a dying state. These symptoms are painful only to the spectators, and not to the dying, who are not sensible of them. The case here is the same as if one, from the dreadful contortions of a person in an epileptic fit, should form a conclusion respecting his internal feelings: from what affects us so much, he suffers nothing.
“Let one always consider life, as it really is, a mean state, which is not an object itself, but a medium for obtaining an object, as the multifarious imperfections of it sufficiently prove: as a period of trial and preparation, a fragment of existence, through which we are to be fitted for, and transmitted to, other periods. Can the idea, then, of really making this transition—of ascending to another from this mean state, this doubtful, problematical existence, which never affords complete satisfaction—ever excite terror? With courage and confidence we may, therefore, resign ourselves to the will of that Supreme Being who, without our consent, placed us in this sublunary theatre, and give up to his management the future direction of our fate.