affect sometimes a firmness and a contempt of death, which is, in fact, only the fear of looking it in the face; so that it may be said that this firmness, and this contempt, are to their minds what the bandage is to their eyes.
23.
Philosophy trimnphs easily over past, and over future evils, but present evils triumph over pMlosophy.[1]
24.
Few people know what death is. We seldom suffer it from resolution, but from stupidity
- ↑ 23. This sentiment has been expressed in a homely, but perhaps more forcible way by Goldsmith, in The Goodnatured Man, " This same philosophy is a good horse in a stable, but an arrant jade on a journey."
as in them lies, employing all their senses,—^their ears in hearing the instructions that are given them,—^their eyes and hands lifled up towards heaven,—^their voices in loud prayers, with a vehement and continual emotion, do dpubtless things very commendable and proper for such a necessity: we ought to commend them for their devotion, but not properly for their constancy; they shun the encounter, they divert their thoughts from the consideration of death, as children are amused with some toy or other, when the surgeon is going to give them a prick with his lancet." — — ^Montaigne, b. iii. c. 4. (Cotton's Translation.)
