ace
which they grudge and which they ought to lavish, dreading lest they
should weaken the last resistance, that is to say, the most useless
and painful quiverings of life that does not wish to give place to the
coming quiet.

It is not for me to decide whether their pity might show greater
daring. It is enough to state once more that all this does not concern
death. It happens before it and below it. It is not the arrival of
death, but the departure of life that is appalling. It is not death,
but life that we must act upon. It is not death that attacks life; it
is life that wrongfully resists death. Evils hasten up from every
side at the approach of death, but not at its call; and, though they
gather round it, they did not come with it. Do you accuse sleep of
the fatigue that oppresses you if you do not yield to it? All those
strugglings, those waitings, those tossings, those tragic cursings are
on this same side of the slope to which we cling and not on the other
side. They are, for that matter, accidental and temporary and emanate
only from our ignorance. All our knowledge only helps us to die in
greater pain than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when
science will turn against its error and no longer hesitate to shorten
our misfortunes. A day will come when it will dare and act with
certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour,
knowing that it has reached its term, even as it withdraws silently
every evening, knowing that its task is done. Once the doctor and
the sick man have learnt what they have to learn, there will be no
physical nor metaphysical reason why the advent of death should not be
as salutary as that of sleep. Perhaps even, as there will be other
things to consider, it will be possible to surround death with deeper
delights and fairer dreams. Henceforth, in any case, once death is
exonerated from all that goes before, it will be easier to face it
without fear and to enlighten that which follows after.

IX

THE HORRORS OF THE GRAVE ALSO
DO NOT BELONG TO DEATH

Death, as we usually picture it, has two terrors looming behind it.
The first has neither face nor shape and overshadows the whole region
of our mind; the other is more definite, more explicit, but almost as
powerful and strikes all our senses. Let us first examine the latter.

Even as we impute to death all the evils that precede it, so do we add
to the dread which it inspires all that happens