The last illness is, of course, sometimes very unpleasant, especially if cancer or angina pectoris enter into the picture, but I have often marvelled at the endurance of men who should, according to all one’s preconceived ideas, be broken up with distress. Not uncommonly a man refuses to believe that he is really so seriously ill as other people think, and there is always the hope eternal in every breast that he will get better. Quite commonly he looks hopefully in the glass every morning as he shaves for signs of coming improvement; there are few men who really believe that sentence of early death has been passed upon them.
The illness which causes the most misery is an illness complicated with neurasthenia, and probably the neurasthenic tastes the bitterest misery of which mankind is capable, unless we admit melancholia into the grisly competition. But I often think that the long sleepless early morning hours of neurasthenia, when the patient lies listening for the chimes, worrying over his physical condition and harassed with dread of the future, are the most terrible possible to man. Nor are they in any way improved by the knowledge that sometimes neurasthenia does not indicate any real physical disease.
But it is difficult to find any really rational cause for the desire to live longer, unless Sir Thomas Browne is right in thinking that the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying. After all, what does it really matter whether we die to-morrow or live twenty more years? In another century it will be all the same; at most we but postpone dissolution. Death has to come sooner or later; and whatever we believe of our life beyond the grave is not likely to make any difference. We were not consulted as to whether we were to be born, nor as to the parts and capabilities which were to be allotted to us, and it is exceedingly unlikely that our wishes will be taken into consideration as regards our eternal disposition. We can do no more when we come to die than take our involuntary leap into the dark like innumerable living creatures before us, and, conscious of having done our duty to the best that lay in us, hope for the best.
Twentieth-century biological science appears to result in a kind of vague pantheism, coupled with a generous hedonism. Scientific men appear to find their pleasure, not like the old Greeks, sought by each man for himself, but rather in “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” It is difficult for a modern man to feel entirely happy while he knows of the vast amount of incurable misery that exists in the world. The idea of Heaven is simply an idea that the atrocious injustice and unhappiness of life in this world must be balanced by equally great happiness in the life to come; but is there any evidence to favour such a belief? Is there any evidence throughout Nature that the spirit of justice is anything but a dream of man himself which is never to be fulfilled? We do not like to speak of “death,” but prefer rather to avoid the hated term by some journalistic periphrasis, such as “solved the great enigma.” But is there any enigma? Or are we going to solve it? Is it not more likely that our protoplasm is destined to become dissolved into its primordial electrons, and ultimately to be lost in the general ocean of ether, and that when we die we shall solve no enigma, because there is no enigma to solve?
To sum up, death probably does not hurt nearly so much as the ordinary sufferings which are the lot of everybody in living; the act of death is probably no more terrible than our nightly falling asleep; and probably the condition of everlasting rest is what Fate has in store for us, and we can face it bravely without flinching when our time comes. But whether we flinch or not will not matter; we have to die all the same, and we shall be less likely to flinch if we can feel that we have tried to do our duty. And what are we to say of a man who has seen his duty, and urgently longed to perform it, but has failed because God has not given him sufficient strength? “Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor,” as old Cicero said of himself. If there is any enigma at all, it lies in the frustrated longings and bitter disappointment of that man.
Probably the best shield throughout life against the atrocious evils and injustices which every man has to suffer is a kind of humorous fatalism which holds that other people have suffered as much as ourselves; that such suffering is a necessary concomitant of life upon this world; and that nothing much matters so long as we do our duty in the sphere to which Fate has called us. A kindly irony which enables us to laugh at the world and sympathize with its troubles is a very powerful aid in the battle; and if a doctor does his part in alleviating pain and postponing death—if he does his best for rich and poor, and always listens to the cry of the afflicted,—and if he endeavours to leave his wife and children in a position better than he himself began, I do not see what more can be expected of him either in this world or the next. And probably Huxley was not far wrong when he said: “I have no faith, very little hope, and as much charity as I can afford.” It is amazing that there are some people in the world to-day who look upon a man who professes these merciful sentiments as a miscreant doomed to eternal flames because he will not profess to believe in their own particular form of religion. They think they have answered him when they proclaim that his creed is sterile.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I have read or heard that one of the charges against Cardinal Wolsey was that he had given the King syphilis by whispering in his ear. The nature of the story so whispered is not disclosed, but may be imagined. But the proud prelate had several perfectly healthy illegitimate children, and on the whole it is probable that Henry caught the disease in the usual way.
[2] They really seem to have taken some little pains to make the death of the King’s old flame as little terrible as possible. They might have burnt her or subjected her to the usual grim preliminaries of the scaffold. Probably they did this not because the King had ever loved her, but because she was a queen, and therefore not to be subjected to needless infamy; one of the Lord’s anointed, in short.
[3] To pause for a moment, probably the element of human sacrifice may have entered into the hair-cutting episode, as it did in the action of the women of Carthage during the last siege; and possibly there may have been some shamefaced reserve in the attributing of the fashion to the example of an egregious “Buster Brown” of New York. To my own memory the fashion was first called either the “Joan of Arc” cut or the “Munitioner” cut. The “Buster Brown” cut came later, and seems to have been seized upon by the English as an excuse against showing deep feelings. It is pleasanter to think that Joan of Arc was really at that time in the hearts of English women; the cult of semi-worship that so strengthened the Allies was really worship of the qualities which mankind has read into the memory of the little maid of Domremy. As she raised the siege of Orleans, so her memory encouraged the Allies to persevere through years of agony nearly as great as her own.