This is the great and sole subject of philosophy: learning how to die. All human wisdom, in the end, comes down to preparing us to leave life with tranquility and without fear. For death is not something distant and foreign: it is always present within us; it accompanies us from our first day, and each of our moments is a small step toward it. Whether we play, keep watch, or sleep, we are dying, like a jar that wears away simply by being used. If you do not know how to die, do not trouble yourself: nature will instruct you fully and on the spot, sufficiently for the occasion. She will do this job for you precisely. Once you have purchased this journey without return, endure all the rest as best you can.

Let us therefore prepare, from this very day, to meet death with a steadfast heart. Let us see how it was taken by the greatest and the most ordinary of men, and whether there is any reason to fear it. Some peoples celebrated death as a passage to a better dwelling. As for us, who do not know what lies beyond, why should we torment ourselves with uncertain conjectures about a thing of which we can know nothing? Death is one of the attributes you received at birth; it mingles and blends with our life, for from the moment of birth we hasten toward death at the very same speed as all things that perish.

And if someone asks you why you fear so much to end, consider that evil can consist only in the loss of the sensation of good; yet when you are dead you will feel nothing at all: death will not touch you, since you will no longer be there to feel it. It is to be dead in order to die. If you are without fear of what you will not feel, you are without fear of death. Far from death being an evil, it puts an end not only to our troubles but to our pains; and, as the proverb says, for the wretched, death is not unhappy. It is, for a tormented life, a welcome release.

Nevertheless, I wish us to have this further resource: he who has always lived as he ought, with his conscience at peace and having made good use of his life without abusing it, such a man may die content. The disposition of our death is the end of our life, just as the final scene of a play is the judgment of the whole: thus one must build upon a sound foundation and learn to live well, which is the only art of knowing how to die. The preparation for death is, in my view, the most profitable of all preparations; yet it is so easy to grasp that if it torments us before its hour, the fault is ours, for we make difficulty about entering a house in which, sooner or later, we are all compelled to dwell.

Consider, too, the example of the nature that surrounds us. Plants and animals know none of our disquiet: they are born, they grow, they wither, without any dread. Why should man, alone among creatures, make himself wretched with a thought the whole universe endures without pain? We stone ourselves with our own reflections; the course of our life is troubled and agitated not by things, but by our opinions about things. If you know well that death will end a life you cannot prolong at will in any case, you will learn to enjoy the present moment, and not to put off until an age you may never reach what depends upon you today.

Thus we see that he who, at evening, can reflect that he has lived according to his nature and his reason, looks upon the coming of night without astonishment, as the workman regards the end of his task, or as the traveler regards the end of his road. Wherever there is life, there is, a little sooner or a little later, death; and he who ends his meal with moderation has no trouble rising from the table. We must learn to bear death with the same simplicity with which we bear sleep, the brother of death, to which we surrender ourselves without resistance every evening of our lives, in honor of our nature.

Finally, we must take care neither to hasten death with vain fears, nor to defer it with deceiving hopes. Life must be spent living, not complaining; and, as ancient wisdom says, one must not preoccupy oneself with the morrow, but consider each day as the last, without trembling at what it may bring. Death, which is called the most dreadful of evils, cannot torment the man who knows it is nothing to him, and who has ordered his life so that it may close like a well-written book, every page of which has been filled with care. That is true freedom: to fear nothing that nature commands us, and to know that, if she gives us life, she lends it to us only for a time, on condition that we return it whenever she wishes.