Our self-justifications are false: I find from experience that it is our inability to suffer the thought of dying which makes us unable to suffer the pain of it, and that the pain we do suffer is twice as grievous since it threatens us with death. But as reason condemns our cowardice in fearing something so momentary, so unavoidable, so incapable of being felt as death is, we seize upon a more pardonable pretext.
