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their improvidence, and in a debasing acquiescence in ills
which they might well remedy; that the rewards were illuso-
ry and the result, after all, of luck, whose empire should be
bounded by the grave; that its terrors were enervating and
unjust; and that even the most blessed rising would be but
the disturbing of a still more blessed slumber.
To all which I could only say that the thing had been
actually known to happen, and that there were several well-
authenticated instances of people having died and come
to life again—instances which no man in his senses could
doubt.
‘If this be so,’ said my opponent, ‘we must bear it as best
we may.’
I then translated for him, as well as I could, the noble
speech of Hamlet in which he says that it is the fear lest
worse evils may befall us after death which alone prevents
us from rushing into death’s arms.
‘Nonsense,’ he answered, ‘no man was ever yet stopped
from cutting his throat by any such fears as your poet as-
cribes to him—and your poet probably knew this perfectly
well. If a man cuts his throat he is at bay, and thinks of noth-
ing but escape, no matter whither, provided he can shuffle
off his present. No. Men are kept at their posts, not by the
fear that if they quit them they may quit a frying-pan for a
fire, but by the hope that if they hold on, the fire may burn
less fiercely. ‘The respect,’ to quote your poet, ‘that makes
calamity of so long a life,’ is the consideration that though
calamity may live long, the sufferer may live longer still.’
On this, seeing that there was little probability of our

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