And it now seemed to him that the only people who regularly died as bravely as philosophers should were those who knew no philosophy at all: the uneducated peasants in his local estates and villages. ‘I never saw one of my peasant neighbours12 cogitating over the countenance and assurance with which he would pass this last hour,’ he wrote – not that he would necessarily have known if they did. Nature took care of them. It taught them not to think about death except when they were dying, and very little even then. Philosophers find it hard to leave the world because they try to maintain
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