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MORAL SENTENCES.
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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.[1]
23.
Philosophy triumphs easily over past, and over future evils, but present evils triumph over philosophy.[2]
24.
Few people know what death is. We seldom suffer it from resolution, but from stupidity
- ↑ as in them lies, employing all their senses,—their ears in hearing the instructions that are given them,—their eyes and hands lifted up towards heaven,—their voices in loud prayers, with a vehement and continual emotion, do doubtless 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.)
- ↑ This sentiment has been expressed in a homely, but perhaps more forcible way by Goldsmith, in The Good-natured Man, "This same philosophy is a good horse in a stable, but an arrant jade on a journey."
