The Essays, vol 11 | Page 6

"is the
sovereign good hap of human life. "People do not much care to
recognise it. No one can say that he is resolute for death who fears to
deal with it and cannot undergo it with his eyes open: they whom we
see in criminal punishments run to their death and hasten and press
their execution, do it not out of resolution, but because they will not
give them selves leisure to consider it; it does not trouble them to be
dead, but to die:
"Emodi nolo, sed me esse mortem nihil astigmia:"
["I have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead."

--Epicharmus, apud Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 8.]
'tis a degree of constancy to which I have experimented, that I can
arrive, like those who plunge into dangers, as into the sea, with their
eyes shut.
There is nothing, in my opinion, more illustrious in the life of Socrates,
than that he had thirty whole days wherein to ruminate upon the
sentence of his death, to have digested it all that time with a most
assured hope, without care, and without alteration, and with a series of
words and actions rather careless and indifferent than any way stirred
or discomposed by the weight of such a thought.
That Pomponius Atticus, to whom Cicero writes so often, being sick,
caused Agrippa, his son-in-law, and two or three more of his friends, to
be called to him, and told them, that having found all means practised
upon him for his recovery to be in vain, and that all he did to prolong
his life also prolonged and augmented his pain, he was resolved to put
an end both to the one and the other, desiring them to approve of his
determination, or at least not to lose their labour in endeavouring to
dissuade him. Now, having chosen to destroy himself by abstinence,
his disease was thereby cured: the remedy that he had made use of to
kill himself restored him to health. His physicians and friends, rejoicing
at so happy an event, and coming to congratulate him, found
themselves very much deceived, it being impossible for them to make
him alter his purpose, he telling them, that as he must one day die, and
was now so far on his way, he would save himself the labour of
beginning another time. This man, having surveyed death at leisure,
was not only not discouraged at its approach, but eagerly sought it; for
being content that he had engaged in the combat, he made it a point of
bravery to see the end; 'tis far beyond not fearing death to taste and
relish it.
The story of the philosopher Cleanthes is very like this: he had his
gums swollen and rotten; his physicians advised him to great
abstinence: having fasted two days, he was so much better that they
pronounced him cured, and permitted him to return to his ordinary
course of diet; he, on the contrary, already tasting some sweetness in

this faintness of his, would not be persuaded to go back, but resolved to
proceed, and to finish what he had so far advanced.
Tullius Marcellinus, a young man of Rome, having a mind to anticipate
the hour of his destiny, to be rid of a disease that was more trouble to
him than he was willing to endure, though his physicians assured him
of a certain, though not sudden, cure, called a council of his friends to
deliberate about it; of whom some, says Seneca, gave him the counsel
that out of unmanliness they would have taken themselves; others, out
of flattery, such as they thought he would best like; but a Stoic said this
to him: "Do not concern thyself, Marcellinus, as if thou didst deliberate
of a thing of importance; 'tis no great matter to live; thy servants and
beasts live; but it is a great thing to die handsomely, wisely, and firmly.
Do but think how long thou hast done the same things, eat, drink, and
sleep, drink, sleep, and eat: we incessantly wheel in the same circle.
Not only ill and insupportable accidents, but even the satiety of living,
inclines a man to desire to die." Marcellinus did not stand in need of a
man to advise, but of a man to assist him; his servants were afraid to
meddle in the business, but this philosopher gave them to under stand
that domestics are suspected even when it is in doubt whether the death
of the master were voluntary or no; otherwise, that it would be of as ill
example to hinder him as to kill him, forasmuch as:
"Invitum qui servat, idem facit occidenti."
["He who makes a man live against his will, 'tis as cruel as to kill
him."--Horat., De