Fear--fear of pain, fear in every form--controls our lives, and shapes the courses of our puny destinies.
VIII
The mind, through fear of death, is capable of suffering, within a few moments, the tortures of an eternity, although to accomplish death, Nature may require only a few minutes. The extent of the mind"s capability for suffering is beyond compare.
Nature has been distinctly conspicuous in imbuing us not only with grave doubts and uncertainties, but also with an unshakable fear regarding death. In the deepest moments of despair, when living has absolutely no attraction and life becomes a burden and a menace, we fight desperately, and without abatement, for this narrow, worthless thread of existence.
Possibly the fear that we have in the face of death is caused by the fact that we must suffer pain before death is accomplished. And a great deal of the theory of "self-preservation" is due merely to our great horror of pain.
The indisputable fact that thousands "take their lives" by choosing the least possible painful method demonstrates, with a firm conviction, my thought that it is the avoidance of pain, rather than the retaining of life, that prompts our efforts to live.
It is only too true, and heard from the lips of thousands, that if they "could only lie down and never awake, what a blessing it would be." We speak in terms of "having lived too long," "being tired of living,"
"life not worth living," etc., as if life were a prison sentence, and, often, rather than continue the servitude, we surmount and overcome the deterrent of pain and destroy the life.
Very often our desire to keep on living is prompted by our baser impulses. We "live" sometimes to "get even" with someone--to spite someone. We "live" sometimes to be able to "show" what we can or cannot do. Were it not for these baser impulses, what an unlimited number of people would refuse to continue this monotonous, painful and non-paying life!
The foregoing expressions of life, at one time or another, represent the feelings of all humanity. In the United States alone during the year 1920 it has been conservatively estimated that more than twelve thousand persons committed suicide. These persons were engaged in all kinds of pursuits and came from ALL walks of life. They ranged from social outcasts to society leaders; from poverty stricken unfortunates to persons of great wealth; from illiterate men and women to editors and college professors; from laborers and layman to physicians and ministers. The youngest suicide was a mere infant of five years, the oldest, a centenarian of 106! Among the suicides of last year were two evangelists and twelve clergymen. It would appear that those who had devoted their thoughts and services to G.o.d would at least be spared the agony of such suffering as to force them to prefer death and to take their lives. I say with Ingersoll, it is a wonder G.o.d does not at least protect his friends and defenders.
The reluctance we have to die is due in a large degree to the possibility of securing a few more moments of joy from an already too much troubled world, with the hope that a little compensation will be derived from the pain and sorrow we have endured.
And yet those things that we may live to enjoy to-day and to-morrow may likewise be present to thrill us at some future date, away and beyond the limitation we are capable of surviving. It is from this desire that we unconsciously "feel" that we would like to "live" always, to get our full measure of return; and since such is neither the lot nor the privilege of our possession, it really makes no difference when we die as far as personal satisfaction is concerned.
The fear that possesses us now in the matter of death will likewise and with equal force possess us later, when we actually and without ceremony must submit to the inevitable.
The desire that possesses a person to live now will, with equal attraction, obsess him later.
Our desires and aspirations are never satisfied. What we may cherish to accomplish to-day may be consummated and achieved, yet to-morrow another something will demand our energies to be spent for further desires to be accomplished.
When we are babies we desire to walk; when we walk, we desire to talk; when we talk, we desire to grow; after we grow, we want to learn; after we learn, we want to do and to expand--and our performance and expansion are only curtailed by insolent death!
IX
The only justification there is to live, once conscious of the d.a.m.nable scheme of life, is the burning desire to do something to help mankind bear the conditions and to make easier the burden of life for those who are here and for those who are to come; for very often the greatest benefactors of the race are so maligned and persecuted in their day that only the future can render a just appreciation of their labor and their value.
For without the improvement bestowed on life by the world"s benefactors, over the crudity of Nature, it were better that we remain in the bosom of our wilder brothers, and hang from the trees by the length and the strength of our tails. Aye, back and back and back, down every degree of life until the time before the first cell of protoplasm from an inanimate into an animate state started.
Why must we be made to suffer such dreadful torment before death, since by eternal decree it is the common lot all must endure?
Death, puzzling, eternal death, is Nature"s final stamp upon our fearful struggle through life.
And the agony of death is more poignantly mental than physical, since the mind, reviewing the acts of the past, antic.i.p.ates with anxiety and with picturesque vividness the wrongs, scandals, terrors, fears and injustice of the future.
Since life is so replete with physical pains, no wonder our picture of death is so horrible.
We see upon the lifeless form the cast of its agonizing pain, and augur from that an eternity of sorrow. But fortunately, in reality we can only feel pain as long as we possess "life." In a sense, therefore, death is a blessing.
After all, the severest pains of death lie in the brains of the living.
The mind is capable of suffering in one moment all that a lifetime can repay with pleasure, and no joy is sufficient in value to compensate you for enduring an irreparable loss.
The conditions that existed before our birth are identical with the conditions that will exist at our death. As we knew no life and felt no pain before our birth, we shall know no life and feel no pain after our death.
Death is no longer the enigma of life. Living is its problem. The sting of death has been removed. We know death"s destiny, and no longer fear its consequences. The only suffering attached to death now is the injustice of its time of coming, the reluctance of parting with loved ones, and the loss of the opportunity to attain. Well might I say with Shakespeare, that:
"Cowards die many times before their death; The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come."
The most despicable characters of human life are those who prey upon credulous persons when in the face of death and shrouded with the fear of its uncertainty, picturing to those persons horrible and frightening tales of an eternity of torture.
What unspeakable misery must those whose religious conviction has so terrified death and its aftermath, especially when it is intensified and horrified through the mouthpiece of ignorant priests, suffer in consequence of death.
Oh, what a fearful sting must be there!
Just think what this poor, vast, credulous mult.i.tude pay, with the sweat of their brows and the bend of their backs, to enrich these moral beasts in exchange for their ignorant and terrifying mumblings, that rob the deluded ones of every fiber of courage and every thought of perfect peace and rest.
It is while living that death possesses its sting and anguish. Anyone that seeks tribute from the dying, or from the living for services on behalf of the dead, is a d.a.m.nable moral scoundrel and a cunning rascal.
To those whose minds have been poisoned from childhood with this religious conviction, this most awful of beliefs, I cry: "Throw off these tyrants of the mind. Emanc.i.p.ate yourselves from this fearful ignorance and mental bondage!" What a burden will be lifted from their lives and what a glorious freedom they will experience!
If we are to die, let us die in perfect calmness and in perfect peace.
Let us become firmly convinced that, once we are dead, no thought, no act, can possibly harm us. We are beyond the pale of Nature"s pangs. We, the individuals that we were, are free from everything. We are at rest, and forever.
X
But after this life with all our pains and sorrows, what then? What is there to repay us for living?
I answer:
_Nothing!_
I have no misgivings about the "future." I am firmly convinced that there is no "after life," that when we "breathe our last" we arrive at our eternity. We are "one with yesterday"s seven thousand years." We are like the flower which, "once blown, forever dies."
I firmly believe that life as now manifested in our bodies is a combustible force identical with that of any other form of life. No less so than the "seed" of the flower is different from the "germ" of the wheat.
Both are forces!
So are we!