Non Posse Suaviter Vivi Secundum Epicurum

As to the vulgar sort, besides their fear of what is in hell, the hope they have conceived of an eternity from the tales and fictions of the ancients, and their great desire of being, which is both the earliest and the strongest of all, exceed in pleasure and sweet content of mind that childish dread. And therefore, when they lose their children, wives or friends, they would rather have them be somewhere and still remain, though in misery, than that they should be quite destroyed, dissolved, and reduced to nothing. And they are pleased when they hear it said of

a dying person, that he goes away or departs, and such other words as intimate death to be the soul’s remove and not destruction. And they sometimes speak thus:

But I’ll even there think on my dearest friend;[*](Il. XXII. 390.)

and thus:

What’s your command to Hector ? Let me know;

Or to your dear old Priam shall I go?

[*](Eurip. Hecuba, 422.)

And (there arising hereupon an erroneous deviation) they are the better pleased when they bury with their departed friends such arms, implements, or clothes as were most familiar to them in their lifetime; as Minos did the Cretan flutes with Glaucus,

Made of the shanks of a dead brindled fawn.

And if they do but imagine they either ask or desire any thing of them, they are glad when they give it them. Thus Periander burnt his queen’s attire with her, because he thought she had asked for it and complained she was acold. Nor doth an Aeacus, an Ascalaphus, or an Acheron much disorder them whom they have often gratified with balls, shows, and music of every sort. But now all men shrink from that face of death which carries with it insensibility, oblivion, and extinction of knowledge, as being dismal, grim, and dark. And they are discomposed when they hear it said of any one, he is perished, or he is gone, or he is no more; and they show great uneasiness when they hear such words as these:

Go to the wood-clad earth he must,

And there lie shrivelled into dust,

And ne’er more laugh or drink, or hear

The charming sounds of flute or lyre;

and these:

But from our lips the vital spirit fled

Returns no more to wake the silent dead.

[*](Il. IX. 408.)