The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

Of considering one’s own case impersonally.

If anyone who has experienced the pangs of death should make light of the sort of consolation here referred to, we reply that we are not ourselves speaking in absolute ignorance of the visage of the supreme moment. We have ourselves had occasion more than once to look death in the face, less often no doubt than a soldier in active service; but we have had more time to consider it at our ease, and we have never found reason to desire that it should be veiled by an irrational belief. It is better to see and to know the truth; it is better not to tread the brink of the precipice with bandaged eyes. To disguise death is to pay it too great a compliment. We have had more than one example of it under our eyes. We have seen our grandfather, who, by the way, was himself not a believer, stricken down by successive attacks of apoplexy, and he said to us, smiling in the intervals of his pain, that he felt but one regret, and that was that so many superstitions should be in existence, and that Catholicism in particular (it was at that time when France was aiding the Papacy) should still be in power. Note also that the progress of science—in especial, of physiological and medical sciences—tends to increase the number of instances in which death is foreseen and is waited for almost with serenity. The least stoical of mankind sometimes feel the inclination toward an act of heroism, which, though in a measure forced upon them, is nevertheless not without its dignity. In the course of certain cases of protracted disease, such as consumption or cancer, the patient, if he possesses the necessary scientific qualifications, can calculate the probabilities of his life and determine within a few days at what time he will die. Bergot, whom I knew, was such a patient; Trousseau was another, and there have been many more. Knowing one’s self to be condemned, feeling one’s self to count for but one in the infinity of the universe, one can consider one’s self and one’s progress toward the unknown in a sense impersonally.

Sudden death a blessing.

If such a death is not without its bitterness, it is nevertheless the one which, of all others perhaps, is likely to prove attractive to a philosopher, to a mind with a passion for clearness, for foresight, for comprehension. For the rest, in the majority of cases, death takes its victims in the height of their vigour, in the midst of the struggle for existence; it is a matter of a few hours, like birth; its very suddenness renders it less redoubtable to the majority of mankind, who find it comparatively easy to be brave in the presence of a danger that is brief, and they hold out against the supreme enemy with the same obstinate courage that they would display against any other. On the contrary, when death approaches slowly, and deprives us of our strength by degrees, and each day leaves us in possession of something less than the day before, another source of consolation is open to us.

Decline in interest in life with decline in vitality.

It is a law of nature that diminution of vitality brings with it a proportionate diminution of desire; a man cares less keenly for what he feels himself less capable of attaining. Illness and old age always make us set less value upon the joys of which they deprive us which they first render bitter and then impossible; and the last joy of all, that of bare existence, is as subject to the law as its predecessors. Consciousness of one’s inability to live brings with it inability to desire to live; it becomes a burden to draw one’s breath. One feels one’s self dispersing, falling into dust, and no longer possessing the strength to check the process of decay. Moreover, egoism declines with declining strength; as we approach the grave we gain a power of estimating ourselves more nearly at our just value, of understanding that a faded flower has no right to live; that, as Marcus Aurelius said, “a ripe olive ought to fall from the tree.” One sentiment alone survives, a sense of weariness, of extreme weariness. We long for rest, long to relax the tension of life, to lie at ease, to have done with it once for all. Oh! to be no longer on one’s feet. The dying well know the supreme joy of looking forward to their last resting place! They no longer envy the interminable file of the living whom they perceive, as it were in a dream, vainly marching and countermarching upon the surface of the earth where they sleep. They are resigned to the solitude and abandonment of death. They are like travellers in the desert—worn with fever, and fatigue, and unwilling to make another step in advance; they are no longer borne up by the hope of revisiting familiar skies; they are unable to surmount the remaining difficulties of the way and request their companions to leave them, to march on without them, and, stretched upon the sand, watch without a tear, without a desire, the departing caravan creeping away toward the horizon.

Persistence of curiosity.

Naturally, some of us will always shrink before death, and wring our hands, and lose our self-possession. Some temperaments are subject to vertigo, to a horror of abysses, and in especial to a horror of the great abyss toward which all paths converge. Montaigne counsels such people to throw themselves blindly over the verge; others counsel them to fix their eyes till the end on some small mountain flower in the crevice of the rock. The manliest of mankind will give their attention to the depths of space and to the heavens, will fill their hearts with the immensity of the universe, will magnify their souls to the limits of the abyss, will subdue the rebellious individuality in themselves before it is forcibly subdued for them, and will scarcely be aware of the precipice till they have fairly passed beyond its brink. And for the philosopher, who is essentially a worshipper of the unknown, death possesses the attraction of novelty; birth only excepted, it is the most mysterious incident in life. Death has its secret, its enigma, and we are haunted by a vague hope that, as the final touch of irony, it may be revealed to us at the last moment; that the dying, according to the ancient belief, divine it and close their eyes only to shield them from an intolerable brightness. Man’s last agony and his last pulse of curiosity are one.