The greatest number of mankind die, therefore, without feeling the fatal stroke; and of the few who retain their senses to the last, there is hardly one, perhaps, who does not entertain the hope of recovery. Nature, for the happiness of man, has rendered this principle more powerful than reason. A person dying of a disorder which he already knows to be incurable, by repeated instances in others, and is now assured that it is so by the tears of his friends, and by the countenance or departure of the physician, is still buoyed up with the idea of getting over it; the opinion of others he considers as a groundless alarm; the hour of dissolution comes; and while every thing else is, as it were dead, hope is still alive and vigorous.
A sick man will say that he feels himself dying; that he is convinced he cannot recover; but if any person, from zeal, or indiscretion, shall tell him that his end is actually at hand, his countenance instantly changes, and betrays all the marks of surprize and uneasiness. He now seems not to believe, what he had been endeavouring to impress upon others; he had only some doubt, some uneasiness, about his situation; but his hopes were far greater than his fears; and but for the gloomy assiduity, the parade of woe, which generally surrounds a death-bed, and too often embitters the last moments, he would be insensible of his approaching dissolution.
By no means is death so dreadful, therefore, as we suppose it to be. It is a spectre which terrifies us at a distance, but disappears when we approach it more closely. Our conceptions of it are formed by prejudice, and dressed up by fancy. We consider it not only as a misfortune greater than any other, but as one accompanied by the most excruciating anguish. Death, it is said, must be terrible, since it is sufficient to separate the soul from the body; the pain must also be of considerable duration, since time is measured by the succession of our ideas; one minute of pain, in which these ideas succeed each other with a rapidity proportioned to the agony we suffer, must appear longer than a whole age, in which they flow in their usual gentleness and tranquillity. In such philosophy, what an abuse of reason! But for the consequences of it, hardly would it deserve to have its futility exposed. As by such arguments, however, weak minds are deceived, and the aspect of death rendered a thousand times more hideous than it possibly can be; to point out the erroneous principles may be of advantage.
When the soul is originally united to our body, do we experience any extraordinary joy, which delights and transports us? Most certainly not. What reason then can we have to suppose that the separation of the soul from that body may not be effected without pain? From what cause should such pain arise? Shall we fix its residence in the soul, or in the body? Pain of the mind can only be produced by thought, and that of the body is proportioned to its strength or weakness. In the instant of death, the body must be in its weakest state, and therefore if it does experience pain, it must be in a very trifling degree.
Let us now suppose a violent death; that for example, of a man whose head is carried off by a cannon-ball. Can the pain he suffers last longer than a moment? Has he, in the interval of that moment, a succession of ideas so rapid, that he can imagine the pangs he feels are equal to an hour, a day, an age? These points we shall endeavour to discuss.
I own the succession of our ideas is, in reality, the only natural measure of time; and that, in proportion as they flow with more or less uniformity, they appear of longer or shorter duration. But in this measure there is an unit, or fixed point, which is neither arbitrary nor indefinite, but determined by Nature, and correspondent to our organization. Between two ideas which succeed each other, there must be an interval that separates them; however quick one thought may be, a little time is required before it can be followed by another, no succession being possible in an indivisible instant. The same observation holds with respect to the sensations of the body. A transition from pain to pleasure, or even from one pain to another, requires a certain interval. This interval, by which our thoughts and sensations are necessarily separated, is the unit I mention; and it can neither be extremely long, nor extremely short; it must even be nearly upon an equality in its duration, as it depends upon the nature of the mind, and the organization of the body, whose movements can have but one certain degree of celerity. In the same individual, therefore, there can be no succession of ideas so rapid, or so slow, as to produce that enormous difference of duration, by which the pain of a minute is converted into that of an hour, a day, or a century.
A very acute pain, of however short continuance, tends to produce either a swoon, or death. As our organs have only a certain degree of strength, they cannot resist above a certain degree of pain. If that becomes excessive, it ceases, because the body being incapable of supporting it, is still less capable to transmit it to the mind, with which it can hold no correspondence, but by the action of these organs. Here this action ceases, and therefore, all internal sensation must necessarily cease also.
What has already been advanced, is perhaps amply sufficient to evince, that, at the instant of death, the pain is neither excessive nor of long duration; but in order to dispel all fear from the bosom of timidity itself, we shall add a few words more upon the subject. Though excessive pains admit of no reflection, yet signs, at least, of it have been observed in the very moment of a violent death. When Charles XII. received, at Frederickshall, the blow which terminated his exploits and existence, he clapped his hand upon his sword. Since it excluded not reflection, this mortal pang could not, therefore, be excessive. The brave warrior found himself attacked; he reflected that he ought to defend himself; and thence, it is evident, he felt no more than what he might have suffered from an ordinary blow. That this action was nothing more than the result of a mechanical impulse it would be absurd to assert, as it has been evidently shewn, in our description of man, that the most precipitate movements of the passions depend upon reflection, and are nothing more than effects of an habitual exertion of the mind.
If I have rather enlarged on this topic it is only that I might destroy a prejudice so repugnant to the happiness of man. To this prejudice many have fallen victims; and I have myself known several, of the female sex in particular, who, from the very dread of death, have died in reality. Such terrible alarms seem, indeed, to be particular to those whom Nature or education have endowed with superior sensibility, as the gross of mankind look forward to death, if not with indifference at least without terror.
In viewing things as they are consists the spirit of true philosophy. With this philosophy our internal sensations would always correspond, were they not perverted by the illusions of imagination, and by the unfortunate habit of fabricating phantoms of excessive pains and of pleasure. Nothing appears terrible nor charming but what is at distance. To obtain a certain knowledge of either we must have the resolution, or the wisdom, to take a close and particular view of them, and all their extraordinary circumstances will disappear.