Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when you were not: that gives us no concern. Why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? To die is only to be as we were before we were born. -William Hazlitt, essayist (1778-1830)
Hazlitt's little argument has no force. In fact the thought of death does trouble us. We recognize death as an offense, something that shouldn't happen. We know ourselves as transcendent beings. Death troubles us when we are not confident about what will come after.
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