It is but the trick of our fancy which suggests the thought of any kind of suffering after all consciousness has ceased—
Nec radicitus e vita se tollit et eicit
Sed facit esse sui quiddam super inscius ipse[14].
Men feel that the sadness of death lies in the separation from wife, and children, and home; in the extinction which a single day has brought to all the blessings and the gains of a lifetime. But they forget that along with these blessings is extinguished all desire and longing for them. So, too, men "spice their fair banquets with the dust of death." They say, "our joy is but for a season; it will soon be past, nor ever again be recalled,"—as if forsooth any want or any desire can haunt that sleep from which there is no awaking—
Nec quisquam expergitus exstat,
Frigida quem semel est vitai pausa secuta[15].
Nature herself might utter this reproof to all weak complaining: "Thou fool, if thy life hath given thee joy, and all its blessings have not been poured into a leaky vessel, why dost thou not leave the feast like a satisfied guest, and take thy rest contentedly? But if all has hitherto been to thee vanity and vexation of spirit, why seek to add to thy trouble? I can devise or frame no new pleasure for thee. "There is no new thing under the sun"—"eadem sunt omnia semper."' To the weak complaint of age, Nature would speak with sterner voice: 'Away hence with thy tears and thy complainings. It is because, unable to enjoy the present, thou art ever weakly longing for what is absent, that death has come on thee unsatisfied.' 'This would be, indeed, a just charge and reproof. For the old order is ever yielding place to new; and life is given to no man in possession, to all men for use. The time before we were born is a mirror to us of what the future shall be. Is there any gloom or horror there? Is there not a deeper rest than any sleep?'
'The terrors of the unseen world are but the hell which fools make for themselves out of their passions[16]. The torments of Tantalus, of Tityus, of Sisyphus, and the Danaides, are but symbols of the blind cowardice and superstition, of the craving passions, of the ever-foiled and ever-renewed ambition, of the thankless discontent with the natural joy and beauty of the world, which curse and degrade our mortal existence. The stories of Cerberus and the Furies, and of the tortures of the damned are creations of a guilty conscience, or the projections into futurity of the experiences of earthly punishment.'
Other consolations are suggested by the thoughts of those who have gone before us. Echoing the stern irony of Achilles—
ἀλλά, φίλος, θάνε καὶ σύ' τίη ὀλοφύρεαι οὕτως;