In this final part of his long essay, Montaigne talks with incredible logic and beauty of why it is stupid to fear our last day.
Seneca reported that an old
weather-beaten guard approached Ceaser asking for permission to kill himself.
Ceaser looked at his withered and decrepit body and said, ‘You think then, that
you are alive?’ If a man should fall into such a condition suddenly, he would
not be able to bear it, but nature leads us step by step into this miserable
state, so that we are not even conscious of the moment when our youth dies in
us, even though this may be a harder death than the final end of the
languishing body – the death of old age; the fall is not as great from an
uneasy being to none at all as it is from an energetic and flourishing being to
one that is troublesome and painful. The body, bent and bowed, has less force
to support a burden, and this is also true for the soul. That’s why we have to
raise her (the soul) up firmly against the enemy. No anxiety, fear or
disturbance should have any place in her. She should be master to all her lusts
and passions, mistress of necessity, shame, poverty and any other injuries of
fortune.
Our religion very religion
has no surer foundation than the contempt of death. It is very logical really: why
should we fear to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be lamented? Also, since there are so many ways in which we could
die, isn’t it worse to fear them all than just undergo one of them? And what
does it matter, when it is inevitable? When Socrates was (wrongly) told, ‘The
thirty tyrants have sentenced you to death’, he responded, ‘And nature them.’ It
is ridiculous to trouble ourselves about taking the only step that is to end
all our troubles! As our birth brought us the birth of all things, so in our
death is the death of all things included. And to lament that we will not be alive a hundrer years from now is as
foolish as feeling sorry that we were not alive a hundred years ago. Death is
the beginning of another life. Nothing can be a grievance that is but once. Is it reasonable to fear a thing for so long that
will come so soon?
Long lives and short are made
one by death. There is no long, nor short, to things that are no more.
Aristotle tells us of little animals on the banks of the river Hypanis that
never live more than a day; those that die at eight in the morning die in their
youth and those that die at five in the evening die in their old age. Which of
us would not laugh to see this time of death affect our grief or relief? The
most and the least, of ours, in comparison with eternity, or yet with the
duration of mountains, rivers, stars, trees, and even some animals, is no less
ridiculous.
Nature compels us to leave
this world as we entered it. The same pass we made from death to life, without
passion or fear, should be repeated from life to death. Your death is a part of
the order of the universe. Death is a part of you, and while you try to evade
it, you evade yourself. This very being of yours that you nor enjoy is equally
divided between birth and death. The day of your birth is one day’s advance
towards the grave. Seneca said, ‘The first hour that gave us life took away
also an hour’, and Manilius said, ‘As we are born we die, and the end commences
with the beginning’.
The whole time you live, you
take from life and live at the expense of life itself. The perpetual work of
your life is only to lay the foundation of death. You are in death while you
are in life, because you still are after death, when you are no longer alive.
Or, if you want to put it another way, you are dead after life, but you are
dying while you are living, and death handles the dying much more rudely than
it handles the dead. If you have
profited from life, go away satisfied. Lucretius said, ‘Why not depart from
life as a satisfied guest from a feast?’
And if you have not profited
from life, why are you worried about losing it? For what purpose do you desire
to keep it? To this, Lucretius said, ‘Why seem to add longer life, merely to
renew ill-spent time, and be again tormented?’
Life is neither good nor
evil, it is only the scene for good or evil, and if you have lives a day, you
have seen it all. One day is equal and alike all other days. There is no other
light, no other shade, no other sun or moon or stars. The order and character
of things is the same as that that your ancestors enjoyed, and that your
posterity will be entertained with. And come the worst day that can come, the
distribution and variety of all the acts of my comedy are performed in a year.
If you have observed the revolution of the four seasons, then you know the
infancy, the youth, the strength, and the old age of the world. The year has
played its part, and knows no other art but to begin again; it will always be
the same thing.
Give place to others, as
others have given place to you. Who can complain when all have the same
destiny? Live as long as you can – you
shall by that nothing shorten the space you are to be dead; it is to no
purpose, you shall be in the condition that you fear so much for just as long
as if you had died at birth. Death will still remain eternal.
And yet you will be in such a
condition that you will have no reason to be displeased, because when you are
dead, there will be no other living self to lament over your grave. It should
not concern you whether you are living or dead because in living, you are still
in being, and in death, you are no more.
Wherever your life ends, it
is all there. Make use of your time while you can. It depend upon your will,
not the number of days that you have. Is it possible that you can imagine never
to arrive at the place towards which you are continually going? and yet there
is no journey without an end.
Lucretius said, ‘No night has
followed day, no day has followed night, in which there has not been heard sobs
and sorrowing cries, the companions of deaths and funerals.’
Anyway, imagine how much more
unbearable an immortal life would be to man than the one he has now. If you
didn’t have death, you would be cursing Fate for depriving you of it. There is
some bitterness mixed in death only so that, seeing how convenient it is, you
do not greedily and indiscreetly seek and embrace it, and so that you may live
in a balance between being neither too sick of life nor excited about death.
You will die once, and death lies somewhere between pleasure and pain. Why fear
your last day? It contributes no more to your end than any of your other days.
Everyday travels towards
death, the last only arrives at it.
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