THE FEAR OF DEATH

Evening Star, Issue 18173, 13 January 1923, Page 11

THE FEAR OF DEATH

CONVENTION AND REALITY, Wo have on record (says Dr Bk A. Hanrpton in ‘ Discovery ’) the experiences of many people who, from drowning, asphyxiation, or other causes, have sunk into a ■state of (unconsciousness that, had it lasted but a little longer, would have passed the limit of reooveralbdHty and ended in death. These experiences show a remarkable agreement in. the absence of feex and even of discomfort; in many cases there is a feeling of lightness and freedom, sometimes of travelling with great speed, sometimes of complete tranquillity that is almost pleasuralble. We may quote in this connection the last words of William Hunter, the great anatomist: “If I had strength enough to hold a pen I would write down how easy and pleasant a thing it is to die.” In a similar way tho certain expectation of death seems to contain little of the terror with which our imagination tends to endow it. Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist, standing on the scaffold awaiting execution, and with no idea that he might be reprieved, calmly calculated exactly how many minutes, he had to live, and iseemed to (be pre-occupied jvath an almost purely intellectual interest in the great amount of “living” that could bo done in a ehorit space of time. A man wiio marvellously 'escaped after falling off a tall building seemed to have felt little daring his descent except a mild wonder at the length of time he was talcing to roach tho ground. There is no reason, to suppose that thessi experiences are exceptional except in that they were recorded, and we are entitled to assume that they represent the normal sensations that accompany the final vanishing of consciousness and the typical attitude in the expectation of death. Tho fact that om~ conception of dying is derived from our observation of the process of death in others, rather than from the necessarily rare data that we have spoken of above, probably accounts for some ideas that are commonly held, hut as certainly .incorrect, notably for tho idea expressed in tho phrase “ the agony of death.” The word “agony” seems to have como into the language from the New 'Testament, where the Greek word (literally meaning “a struggle”) is used to describe the spiritual conflict of Christ in the garden of Gothsemano; it ,oame to be employed (as it is now .almost exclusively in French) to .describe the act of death, possibly because tho spasmodic twilchings that arc earn dimes observed to occur at the point of death, though long after the loss of consciousness, were imagined to bo tho physical result of the soul struggling to leave its habitation. It Is but comparatively lately that the word acquired its present commonest meaning of great pain, thus coloring our conception of dying—and not only in old wives’ talcs—-with an idea of pain and distress that, as has already been ircmiarkcd, reality docs not substantiate.