A man’s life’s no more than to say ‘one’ – Hamlet tells his friend Horatio (1). And Voltaire has a character from one of his novels declare, “… We in a manner begin to die the very moment we are born: our existence is no more than a point, our duration an instant, and our globe an atom… I consider myself as a single drop in an immense ocean.”
On the other hand, whatever we see, new or old, flourishing or declining, either directly or by a very short deduction, leads man to the consideration of his own end. Accordingly, we find that the fear of death has always been considered as the great enemy of human quiet, the polluter of the feast of happiness, and the embitterer of the cup of joy. Continue reading