THE DREAD OF DEATH.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 241, 29 January 1898, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE DREAD OF DEATH.

The man who is well dreads death so keenly, if he is of a nature to reflect on the matter at all, in obedience to a natural physical instinct. It is the very law of his being to live, and in obedience to that law Lo resists not only death but tho very thought of death. He sets himself against it heart and soul, and recoils from it by a natural impulse. His power of will, inspired by such emotions as lovo for others patriotism, the sense of duty or honour, may overcome the dread of death and triumph over the need to live, but the fact that there are plenty of mental impulses too strong for the dread of death does not alter the fact that as long as we are capable of living we desire to live and desire it intensely. As a rule, when men do not dread death at all, and quietly resign themselves to it, not in obedience to any higher call, but merely because it has no terrors for thorn, we may be sure that they are doomed. The Marquesas Islanders, for example, n.eet death halfway. Their talk in, or was, Avhen Mr Stevenson visited them, of burial and the tomb. Their thoughts were turned to tho grave. But the race was rapidly dying out. Their willingness to die and the lack of any dislike to death were signs of the fate that was overtaking them. The man who can say, " Though I dread death like other men, 1 will not fear to undergo it for a great oauso," is a hero. He who says truely, " Death may come when it will, I mind it no more than the thought of entering another room," may not be ill in mind, but ho can hardly be sane of body.