‘I owe to my brother Severus, the love which I have for truth and justice. From him I derived the desire to govern my states by equal laws, and to reign in such a manner as that my subjects might possess perfect liberty.
‘I thank the Divinity for having given me virtuous ancestors, a good father, a good mother, a good sister, good preceptors and good friends; in a word, all the good things I could have desired.’[59]
A crowd of useful thoughts cannot but flow from such self-converse. Hold every day one of these solitary conversations with yourself. This is the way in which to attain the highest relish of existence; and, if I may so say, to cast anchor in the river of life.
[LETTER XXIV.]
ON DEATH.
If we were to allow ourselves to express the wish that we might never die, an absurd wish which, perhaps, every man has sometimes indulged, a moralist might say, ‘Suppose it were granted, where would be the end of dissension, hatred, revenge? Where would the victim whom injustice pursues, find an asylum and repose?’ To all this it is sufficient to reply, that if we accuse nature for having subjected us to the penalty of death, we have not less reason to accuse her for having often rendered death desirable, as a relief from greater evils. Instead of showing herself so niggardly in bestowing happy moments, why did she not spare humanity the evils that render death a comparative release?
There are, as I believe, more solid reasons to justify nature in rendering death an inevitable allotment. When, undertaking to reform the universe in my day dreams, I render our earthly existence eternal, I find no difficulty in imagining all the evils which afflict us removed. But I strain my imagination to no purpose to give form and reality to those pleasures which shall be adequate to replace those which this new order of things cannot admit. Suppose that it were no longer necessary that generation should succeed generation; and that death were banished from the earth. The same beings, without hopes or fears, would always cover its surface. No more loves; no more parental tenderness; no more filial piety! Flattering hopes forsake the bosom along with enchanting remembrances. All those affections which give value to life owe their existence to death.[60]
Our prejudices transform death into a terrible spectre, accompanied by frightful dreams. The dark and anti-social doctrine, that we were placed on the earth for the punishment of exile, and that we ought never to intermit our contemplation of the grave, was imagined by hypocrites, who preached to others contempt of the world, that they might appropriate it to themselves. A wise man sees in existence a gift which he ought not to sacrifice. In learning how to live, he instructs himself how to die.
We must sometimes look Death in the face to judge how we shall be able to sustain his approach.[61] It is not necessary often to repeat this stern examination which presents gloomy ideas, even to minds the most disciplined. Another manner of contemplating the final scene offers all the useful results of the first, and presents nothing afflicting. It consists in observing the influence which death ought to exercise over life. This term, unknown, but always near, should render our duties more sacred, our affections more tender, our pleasures more vivid. In noting the rapidity of the flight of time, a wise man seizes upon those ideas which disturb the hours of the multitude, to enhance the charm of his own thoughts. It was not without an aim that certain of the ancient philosophers placed in their festal hall a death’s head decked with roses.