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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
affected. The sphincter muscles cease to act, and no longer retain the contents of the body."
That death should result from a constant fear of it gnawing at the vitals and constantly interfering with the healthy activity of the body, is not strange at all; indeed, what is strange in the life of man is that he should live even as long as three score years or so. M. Jean Finot, analyzing the causes of death, in The Philosophy of Long Life' (pages 106 and 107) observes:---
“We do not die even centenarians. Why this premature death ? Why do we die? This is the eternal debate which has already given us so many explanatory treatises explaining nothing whatever. To attempt to give a résumé of the reasons which have been given us by writers from theologians to biologists would be a task demanding hundreds of volumes, besides being completely useless. ... Let us, then, put aside the thousand and one causes quoted by our predecessors, and let us give one which deserves more honour than is generally accorded to it. This despised cause is the fear of death. Man, arrived at a certain mental state, undergoes a sort of autosuggestion of death. He then believes himself to have reached the end of his days, and feeds as much on the fear of death as on bodily foods. From this moment onward death fascinates him. He hears its call with terror everywhere and always. The philosophic and salutary consciousness of a hereafter gives place to a cowardly and nervous fear of separation from life. The victim feeds upon this fear, intoxicates himself with it, and dies of it. The man possessed by this thought eats badly and digests even worse. His nervous system is disorganised and his organism remains deaf to the stimulus of the outer life. Regrets for the life which he believes to be fading away make him waste the vital resources of his organism in a limitless sorrow and nameless maladies."
No need to cite further authorities on this simple matter, which any one can observe by studying the effect of the emotion on himself and others with whom he comes in contact ; suffice it to say that the culmination is reached when the individual will is completely pata
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