The end of feeling. Seneca, Epistles 4.30.5-6
How
to shake our fear of death? Seneca presents Bassus' method, which was
to recognize that fear is about our anticipation of some bad feeling,
then to realize that death presents no feeling at all: it is the end
of feeling.
Bassus
noster videbatur mihi prosequi se et componere et vivere tamquam
superstes sibi et sapienter ferre desiderium sui. Nam de morte multa
loquitur et id agit sedulo ut nobis persuadeat, si quid incommodi aut
metus in hoc negotio est, morientis vitium esse, non mortis; non
magis in ipsa quicquam esse molestiae quam post ipsam. Tam demens
autem est qui timet quod non est passurus quam qui timet quod non est
sensurus. An quis quam hoc futurum credit, ut per quam nihil
sentiatur, ea sentiatur? Ergo inquit mors adeo extra omne
malum est ut sit extra omnem malorum metum.
Our
Bassus seemed to me always a credit to himself, putting his life
together and bearing his desire to overcome so wisely that he
appeared likely to survive his own demise, when the time came. He
said many things about death, seeking tirelessly to persuade us that
any fear or discomfort in this business belongs to the weakness of
the person dying, not to death herself. He maintained that she brings
with her as little trouble as we feel after she has gone. That the
man who fears what he is not going to suffer is just as ludicrous as
the one who fears what he shall not feel. Does anyone really believe,
he asked, that we will feel death, whose ministrations put us beyond
all feeling? “Death is so far beyond every mortal evil,” he said,
“that she is also beyond every fear such evils inspire.”