Cure of fear. This is a term for a disposition of the soul arising on the expectation of something undesirable which it is unable to avert.* Now such expectation must be relative to a positive event, which may either be necessary or possible; and, if possible, may either be occasioned by the act of the person, or by something else: in no one of which divisions can fear be recommended by the reason. In no case then ought a rational being to admit of fear. If the event be necessary, as it is clearly beyond the bounds of mortal capacity to avert it, fear can do nothing but expedite the evil and ante­date the distress; in consequence of which two pre­dicaments we are precluded from arranging our religious and secular concerns. So the indulgence of this tendency brings misery upon us in this world and the next. If the event is possible, but not dependent on the person’s act, being in its own nature one that admits both of occurrence and non-occur­rence, to determine on the side of its incidence, and invite gratuitous affliction, is irreconcileable with right reason: such an event is rather to be left to its own character of contingence. Indeed, this division, though partaking of a contradictory anticipation, has this characteristic in common with the first, that although the incidence were ascer­tained, it would still be better to abstain from fear.* But if it be dependent on the act of the party, he should keep aloof from ill-selection, and avoid entering upon any act that can lead to irreparable results. For surely to commit offences in the expectation of concealing them, is not a reasonable course; because whatever his idea may be, the dis­covery of the offence involving his disgrace is surely possible, and that which possibly may occur is always near occurrence. In no case then is he to enter on such a course.* The cause of fear then in the first instance is a persuasion of what may pos­sibly be contradicted; and in both instances the consequences of it are suspension of intellect and failure in perception. Of all occasions of fear, death being peculiarly urgent upon the many, it seems right to throw open our treatise to this particular subject, and endeavour to disentangle the reader’s mind from so insidious an apprehension.

Cure for the fear of death. — First we are to know that death is not the cessation of human being; for the reasonable soul is the most tenacious of our endowments, being a ray from the glory of Omnipotence, over whose unbounded permanence extinc­tion cannot pass, and whose essential substance has no connexion with the events of space.

This has been established as a fundamental prin­ciple of science by many convincing proofs, of which the following are all that suit the exigence of the present subject.

First, let a man suppose that one of his members, a finger for instance, is destroyed, his identity is thereby unaffected: next, let him in imagination withdraw some other member, and so on till he has successively supposed the negation of every limb he has; and he will find his essence to survive through every stage intact.*

After presuming this, we go on to state that fear of death proceeds either from ignorance of its true nature, and the notion of its implying a cessation of existence, or from some privation we suppose in it, or from circumstances posterior to death, (which last applies either to the individual as punishment at the final resurrection, or to our children and survivors,) or from uncertainty in these matters and want of decision upon them.* Now most of these points, when examined with the eye of reason, and weighed by the standard of thought, are not really conducive to fear. As to the first, it appears from what was shown above, that death is properly the severance of connexion between soul and body, and the cessa­tion of the former to exert the bodily organs. As to the second, since bodily pain operates through bodily vitality, and this vitality is an effulgence of the body’s junction with the soul, death, which severs the junction, must destroy pain; for the cause of our sensibility to what is painful exists no longer.* For the third, we are to reflect that death is a complementary to the properties of human nature; or, as the philosophers of old expressed it in their definition, man is a creature who lives, speaks, and dies. Death then is completion, and the privation is properly in the reason of him who predicates it.*

A being endued with reason is bound to leave the groping dens of inclination, and come forth on the broad expanse of reality, till he recognises the pre­ponderance of intellectual over animal life,* devotes himself to the pursuit of true perfection, and, soar­ing on the wings of zeal over the seven* heavens, seeks rest only on the summit of the virtues.

For the fourth, retribution being a consequence of crime, we are to refrain from wrong-doing. It is from acts of sin that this fear in reality proceeds.*

As to the fifth, if it be the fear of separating from family, children, relations, and friends, he ought to reflect how the goodness of eternal Providence, guided by unintermitting wisdom, directs every one of all existing atoms to the purposed end, according to what he judges best for the harmony of the world; and this course no one can alter or influence: even granting his life were to last, the fortunes of his children will be not according to his wishes, but agreeable to the will of God. We every day wit­ness how often men of eminence exhaust their efforts in the discipline of their children, and it entirely fails of effect.* But if our affliction is merely for the loss either of them or of our property and possessions, it belongs to the class of sorrow; which is a hurrying to meet affliction and suffering, and that in a matter which affliction no way relieves; but of this the cure will come presently, if it so please the Almighty.*

In the next place we have to state, as a received principle of philosophy, that all existing things decay; and the human body, being one of those things, must perish with the rest. For its elementary por­tions have been brought together by the action of the spheres,* in their own nature being elective of dissolution and dispersion: so that a time must come when they will separate.

Thus whoever desires the being of his body, must likewise, by implication, desire the decay which attaches to it.* Moreover, if death were not to occur, our turn for possessing the objects and enjoy­ments of life would never arrive.* It is computed by Hakím Abú Aly Mashkovy, that if we suppose any of the departed whose lineage is marked by the care of their descendants, (as for instance his holi­ness Aly, the consignee of the Caliphat,) to be still alive, together with every one born of his posterity in the course of four hundred years, (the period intervening between his time and that of the Hakím,*) they would amount altogether to upwards of a thousand thousand;* for in spite of all the trying adversities and hard fortunes that have befallen the race, and the efforts so constantly made by tyrants* to extirpate them, there are still near two hundred thousand* Alites dispersed about the world: then if we extend the supposition to the case of every other of the Prophet’s contemporaries, the above number must be substituted for each once in every four hundred years. It is clear then that in the first four hundred years, if no one were to die, while procreation and production were to pro­ceed as usual, men’s number would become immense; and on the doubling of this period, the duplication of numbers, proceeding like that of squares* in a chess-board, would be beyond the bounds of numeration. The expanse of the wil­derness and utmost extent of the four quarters,* which geometricians by demonstrative computation and the test of induction from survey have accu­rately measured,* if divided among the several persons, would not give to each so much ground as he could put his foot on to stand upright; or if they should wish to stand altogether with their hands extended, the face of the earth would not hold them, much less afford room for sitting and rising, and movements of necessity. Space for casting rubbish, for building, and cultivation, there could be none.* This being the result in eight hundred years or less, from the duplication of these what could follow? Thus, the horror of death and desire for perpe­tuity of life may be set down for a fancy of those who deal in impossibilities — a blunder of those who harbour absurdities: no rational being should allow the reflectors of his mind to be sullied by these mists. The proper conclusion is, that whatever is seen to be a part of the world’s arrangement pro­ceeds on the most perfect and comprehensive course: to imagine any improvement upon it, is to imagine perversely.*

But for any one, who, not desiring perpetuity of bodily life, doth yet extend his hope in behalf of life lengthened beyond the equable limit, let him reflect, that the previous arguments may be applied to this. Certain too it is, that in age all the powers verge upon decline; the senses internal and external suffer from exhaustion, the delight of health, which is the root of all delights, is lost to us, and, according to the text, long-lived, we retrovert our nature, all our cir­cumstances are reversed; strength changed to fee­bleness, health to sickness, and honor to vileness; till even our own family and children weary of us. To crown the whole, we are visited at every instant with the loss of a contemporary — at every glance with the departure of an intimate — every hour brings its calamity — every look shows us an affliction.* In reality, then, every one who desires life prolonged beyond the average limit, desires likewise these trials which attend on it. Wherefore, knowing as we do, that death is inevitable, and really consists in the release of a pure and noble spirit from bearing the burden of a gross and earthy body — in the escape of the soaring faculties encaged in this mortal frame* — and sure as we are, that the resting-place of the human soul is in another world, it becomes us as rational beings to exert ourselves agreeably to these sublime doctrines and everlasting enjoyments: not casting down our heads like the brutes engrossed in food and drink, but lifting them like men to the world on high, and employing our powers of body in securing that which leads to felicity of mind.* To this end, renouncing all ties of personal attachment, according to the text, Die ye before your deaths,* let us die the death of desire, that when the decease of nature overtakes us, we may pass at once from the narrow bounds of time and place to that unlimited expanse which is beyond them — to the august vicinity of the Lord of Worlds — to that seat of righteous­ness where prophets and holy men are appointed* to repose: thus shall we be rewarded with a life of nature, and one that knows no end; or, as Plato tells us, “Die in your appetites, that you may live in your faculties.”*

Such is the cure for diseases in the repelling power. Next, of the acquisitive power the diseases are, likewise, either in the department of excess, or in that of deficiency, or from perversion of state. Under each of which are several species; but the most formidable of them are four: excess of appetite, levity, sorrow, envy; the cure of which it seems sufficient to give in the form of compendium.