though he be persuaded that
his soul is mortal; not, indeed, from a desire of glory, which he will
be insensible of, but from a principle of virtue, which glory will
inevitably attend, though that is not his object. The process, indeed,
of nature is this: that just in the same manner as our birth was the
beginning of things with us, so death will be the end; and as we were
noways concerned with anything before we were born, so neither shall we
be after we are dead. And in this state of things where can the evil
be, since death has no connection with either the living or the dead?
The one have no existence at all, the other are not yet affected by it.
They who make the least of death consider it as having a great
resemblance to sleep; as if any one would choose to live ninety years
on condition that, at the expiration of sixty, he should sleep out the
remainder. The very swine would not accept of life on those terms, much
less I. Endymion, indeed, if you listen to fables, slept once on a time
on Latmus, a mountain of Caria, and for such a length of time that I
imagine he is not as yet awake. Do you think that he is concerned at
the Moon's being in difficulties, though it was by her that he was
thrown into that sleep, in order that she might kiss him while
sleeping. For what should he be concerned for who has not even any
sensation? You look on sleep as an image of death, and you take that on
you daily; and have you, then, any doubt that there is no sensation in
death, when you see there is none in sleep, which is its near
resemblance?

XXXIX. Away, then, with those follies, which are little better than the
old women's dreams, such as that it is miserable to die before our
time. What time do you mean? That of nature? But she has only lent you
life, as she might lend you money, without fixing any certain time for
its repayment. Have you any grounds of complaint, then, that she
recalls it at her pleasure? for you received it on these terms. They
that complain thus allow that if a young child dies, the survivors
ought to bear his loss with equanimity; that if an infant in the cradle
dies, they ought not even to utter a complaint; and yet nature has been
more severe with them in demanding back what she gave. They answer by
saying that such have not tasted the sweets of life; while the other
had begun to conceive hopes of great happiness, and, indeed, had begun
to realize them. Men judge better in other things, and allow a pa