July 26, 2015

A Treasury of English Famous Essays

英美散文菁華

陳榮吉 編譯

10.    On the Fear of Death 談生死

       William Hazlitt, 1778 – 1830, English essayist

       Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives me no concern – why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be” I have no wish to have been alive a hundred years ago, or in the reign of Queen Anne. Why should I regret and lay it so much to heart that I shall not be alive a hundred years hence, in the reign of I cannot tell whom”

       To die is only to be as we were born; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, in contemplating this last idea. It is rather a relief and disburthening of the mind: it seems to have been a holiday time with us then: we were not called to appear upon the stage of life, to wear robes or tatters, to laugh or cry, be hooted or applauded; we had lain perdu all this while, snug out of harm’s way; and had slept out our thousands of centuries without wanting to be waked up; at peace and free from care, in a long nonage, in a sleep deeper and calmer than that of infancy, wrapped in the softest and finest dust. And the worst that we dread is, after a short fretful, feverish being, after vain hopes, and idle fears, to sink to final repose again, and forget the troubled dream of life!