"
"How then do you account for the existence and universality of the
idea?" asked Helen, who had happened lately to come upon some
arguments on the other side.
But while she spoke thus indifferently she felt in her heart like
one who wakes from a delicious swim in the fairest of rivers, to
find that the clothes have slipped from the bed to the floor:--that
was all his river and all his swim!
"I account for its existence as I have just said; and for its
universality by denying it. It is NOT universal, for _I_ haven't
it."
"At least you will not deny that men, even when miserable, shrink
from dying?"
"Anything, everything is unpleasant out of its due time. I will
allow, for the sake of argument, that the thought of dying is always
unpleasant. But wherefore so? Because, in the very act of thinking
it, the idea must always be taken from the time that suits with
it--namely, its own time, when it will at length, and ought at
length to come--and placed in the midst of the lively present, with
which assuredly it does not suit. To life, death must be always
hateful. In the rush and turmoil of effort, how distasteful even the
cave of the hermit--let ever such a splendid view spread abroad
before its mouth! But when it comes it will be pleasant enough, for
then its time will have come also--the man will be prepared for it
by decay and cessation.
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