FEAR ONLY THE FEAR OF DEATH

Gisborne Times, Volume VIII, Issue 580, 26 November 1902, Page 2

FEAR ONLY THE FEAR OF DEATH

1 FRENCH SCIENTIST SAYS THAT TO BE AFRAID OF DEATH ITSELF ONLY SHORTENS : LIFE. j Men should bo afraid of tho four of I death—nut of death itself. If men follow this rule, there is no reason v<liy they . should not all become centenarians—so it is asserted in the Revue d’Economio 1 Politique by M. Jean Emot. j This author begins an articlo on tho limitations of life by mentioning some I traditional long lives. Among those cases arc those of a rcsi- , dent of Goa, who is said to have reached his 400th year in the enjoyment of all his | intellectual faculties, a Scotchman who lived to bo over 200 years old, and vuri- , ous monks of Mont Athos who have reached 150 years. He asserts iiiat Servian statistics for 1897 show three persons between 135 aud 110 years old, 18 [ from 130 to 135, 123 from 110 to 125, and , 290 from 105 to 115. In 1890 there were. I he says, in the United States, 3981 persons over 100 years old, and 21 ffi London. M. Finot cites a mathematical formula, which he credits to Dr Richardson, by which anyone may get an idea of his probable length of life. It is only necessary to add the ages of one's father and mother to those of one’s two grandfathers and two grandmothers, and the total divided b>six indicates the exact number of years one should live. M. Finot does not belevc that tho average length of human life has been reduced. On the contrary, he believes that it is constantly increasing, owing to the progress of hygiene. Why do we grow old at all i The writer answers : “ For three reasons ; want of physical exercise in the open air; poisoning by microbes which the phagocytes have not succeeded in destroying; fear of death. It is hard to imagine the importance of this last element. If a man fear-, death it will carry him away, -Vnd yet it it- unite pleasant to die; no sensation cuuia be compared to it.” To prove this assertion, M. Finot quotes Heim, who related the sensations" ho experienced while falling with bis companions from the summit of one of the Alps to a death which he miraculously escaped ; “At first a sense of beatitude, then complete insensibility to touch and pain ; finally an extreme rapidity of thought and of imagination which in a few seconds enabled him to recollect the events of his whole life. Therefore it is not death we should fear, but {the fear it inspires in us. We are wrong, says Socrates, to fear death, as it is our greatest possession on earth, and Seneca adds that it is the best of the inventions of life, while Montesquieu concludes that we should shed tears for men when they are born and not when they die.”