(c) Equality is the chief part of equity.[1] Who can complain of being included where all are included? However long you may live, you will thereby subtract nothing from the time that you must be dead; it is all for naught; you will be as long in that state which you dread as if you had died in infancy.[2]
Licet, quod vis, vivendo vincere secla,
Mors æterna tamen nihilominus illa manebit.[3]
(b) And truly I shall put you in such a condition that you will have no discontent: —
In vera nescis nullum fore morte alium te,
Qui possit vivus tibi te lugere peremptum,
Stansque jacentem;[4]
neither will you desire the life which you so bewail.
Nec sibi enim quisquam tum se vitamque requirit.
Nec desiderium nostri nos afficit ullum.[5]
Death is less to be feared than nothing, if there be any thing less than nothing: —
multo mortem minus ad nos esse putandum,
Si minus esse potest quam quod nihil esse videmus.[6]
(c) It concerns you neither dead nor living: living, because you are existing; dead, because you no longer are.[7] (a) No man dies before his hour; what amount of time you leave
- ↑ See Seneca, Epistle 30.
- ↑ Cf. Lucretius, III, 1087-1089, 1092-1094.
- ↑ Live as long as you will, conquering time; eternal death will yet no less remain. — Idem, III, 1090.
- ↑ Thou dost not see that in true death there will be no other self which, living and standing by thy prostrate body, can mourn to thyself thy extinction. — Idem, III, 885. In the original text, line 885 reads: —
Nec videt in vera nullum fore morte alium se. - ↑ For then no man feels the want of his own life. Nor are we affected by any regard for ourselves. — Idem, III, 919, 922.
- ↑ We must account death to be much less to us, if indeed there can be less than what we see to be nothing. — Idem, III, 926. Translated by Montaigne before quoting.
- ↑ Cf. Cicero, Tusc. Disp., I, 38.
