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The philosopher does not The old man has not the

philosopher in me that protests. fear death; it is the old man. courage to submit, and yet I have to submit to the inevitable."

I know a lady, a hundred and two years old, who is so oppressed by the idea of death, that those about her have to conceal from her the death of any of her acquaintances. Mde. Robineau, however, when between one hundred and four and one hundred and five years old, became quite indifferent to the close approach of her own death. She often expressed a wish for it, thinking herself useless in the world.

M. Yves Delage1 in an analysis of my "Nature of Man" doubted the existence of an instinct for death. "Animals," said he, "cannot have the instinct for death, because they do not know of death. In their case, we must consider that what happens is an apathy tending to the abolition of the sense of self-preservation. In man, the knowledge of death implies that the indifference to its approach cannot be an instinct." "There may be developed, at the end of life, a special state of mind which accepts death with indifference or with pleasure, but such a state cannot be designated as an instinct." M. Delage, however, does not suggest what the state of mind in question is to be called. As the aunt of Brillat-Savarin compared her sensations just before death with the desire to sleep, and as this desire is an instinctive manifestation, I think that the cheerful acquiescence in death, exhibited by extremely old people, is also a kind of instinct. However, the important matter is that the sentiment exists, and not what we are to call it. M. Delage is far from denying its existence.

1 Année biologique, vol. vii, p. 595.

Dr. Cancalon,' another of my critics, cannot admit the existence of an instinct of death, "because of the theory of evolution. Of what good would it have been, as M. Metchnikoff tells us that natural death is very rare; how could it have been transmitted, as it comes into existence long after the age of reproduction, and how could it have aided the survival of the species? If its existence were proved as the result of biological evolution, it would be a contradiction of adaptation and an argument in favour of final causes." I cannot agree in any way with these opinions. In the first place, it is well known that men and animals have many harmful instincts that do not tend to the survival of the species. I need recall only the disharmonic instincts which I described in the "Nature of Man," such as the anomalies of the sexual instinct, the instinct which drives parents to devour their young or which attracts insects to flames. The instinct of natural death is far from being harmful, and may even have many advantages. If men were convinced that the end of life were natural death accompanied by a special instinct like that of the need for sleep, one of the greatest sources of pessimism would disappear. Now pessimism is the cause of the voluntary death of a certain number of people and of many others refraining from reproduction. The instinct of natural death would contribute to the maintenance of the life of the individual and of the species. On the other hand, there is no difficulty in admitting the existence of instincts hostile to the preservation of the species, especially in the case of man, in whom individualism has reached its highest development. As man is the only animal with a definite notion of death, there is nothing extraordinary if it is in man that the instinctive wish for

1 Revue occidentale, July 1st, 1904, vol. xxx, p. 87.

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death develops. M. Cancalon denies the possibility that death can be pleasant, as it is the arrest of the physiological functions; but as sleep and syncope are often preceded by very pleasant sensations, why may not this also happen in natural death? Several facts prove it beyond dispute. It is even probable that the approach of natural death is one of the most pleasant sensations that can exist.

It is indubitable that in a large number of cases of death, the cessation of life is associated with very painful sensations. One has only to see the horror shown in the faces of many dying people to be convinced of this, but there are diseases and serious accidents in which the approach of death does not arouse sorrowful sensations. I myself, in a crisis of intermittent fever, in which the temperature descended in a very short time from about 106° Fahr. to below normal, experienced a feeling of extraordinary weakness, certainly like that at the approach of death. This sensation was much more pleasant than painful. In two cases of serious morphia poisoning, my sensations were more agreeable; I felt a pleasant weakness, associated with a sensation of lightness of the body, as if I were floating in the air.

Those who have noted the sensations of persons rescued from death have related similar facts. Prof. Heim, of Zurich, has described a fall in the mountains which nearly killed him, as well as several similar accidents to Alpine tourists. In all these cases he states that there was a sensation of pleasure.1 Dr. Sollier has told of a young woman addicted to morphia, who had been convinced that she was at the point of death. On recovering from a most serious attack of syncope, from which she was restored only by giving another dose of morphia, she cried: "I seem to

1 Egger, "Le moi des mourants," Revue philosophique, 1896, i, p. 27.

come from far away; how happy I was!" Another of Dr. Sollier's patients, a lady who had an attack of peritonitis from which she expected to die, felt herself "suffused with a feeling of well-being, or rather the absence of all pain." In a third case of Dr. Sollier, a young woman suffering from puerperal fever, feeling herself at the point of death, had a similar sensation "of physical well-being and of detachment from everything.' 991

As a sensation of happiness occurs even in cases of pathological death, it is much more likely to occur in natural death. If natural death be preceded by the loss of the instinct of life and by the acquisition of a new instinct, it would be the best possible end compatible with the real organisation of human nature.

I do not pretend to give the reader a finished study on natural death. This chapter of Thanatology, the science of death, only opens the subject; but it is already apparent that study of the circumstances of natural death in plants, in the animal world, and in human beings, may give facts of the highest interest to science and humanity.

1 Ibid., pp. 303-307; v. also Bulletin de l'Institut général phycholog.,

1903, p. 29.

PART IV

SHOULD WE TRY TO PROLONG

HUMAN LIFE?

I

THE BENEFIT TO HUMANITY

Complaints of the shortness of our life-Theory of "medi-
cal selection" as a cause of degeneration of the race-
Utility of prolonging human life

ALTHOUGH the duration of the life of man is one of the longest amongst mammals, men find it too short. From the remotest times the shortness of life has been complained of, and there have been many attempts to prolong it. Man has not been satisfied with a duration of life notably greater than that of his nearest relatives, and has wished to live at least as long as reptiles.

In antiquity, Hippocrates and Aristotle thought that human life was too short, and Theophrastus, although he died at an advanced age (he lived probably seventy-five years) lamented when he was dying "that nature had given to deer and to crows a life so long and so useless, and to man only one that was often very short."1

Seneca (De brevitate vitæ) and later, in the 18th century, Haller, strove in vain against such complaints, which have lasted until our own days. Whilst animals have no more

1 Cicero, Tusculanes, chap. xxviii.

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