There is nothing more certain than the fact that death awaits each and every one of us, and meanwhile we all live as if it will never come.
Whether or not our life ends after we die is a question of the greatest importance, and it is impossible not to think about it. Whether or not our actions will be wise or pointless depends on whether or not we believe in immortality.
That is why our main task should be to solve the following question: do we die fully or not fully in corporeal death, and if not fully, then what exactly is immortal in us? When we finally learn what is mortal and what is immortal in us, it will become clear that we should care more in this life about what is immortal rather than what is mortal. Yet people typically do just the opposite.
— After Pascal
This world would be terrible if the suffering in it did not result in the good. It would be some kind of evil system designed to torture people in both body and spirit. If that is the case, then the world is inexpressibly immoral as it creates evil not for a future good, but idly, aimlessly. It is as if it tempts people only to make them suffer. It strikes us from the moment we are born, mixes bitterness into every cup of joy and makes death an ever present terror. And, of course, if there is no God and immortality, then the revulsion people express about life is understandable: it is caused in them by the existing order, or rather, by disorder—by the terrible moral chaos, as we should call it.
But if God does exist above us and immorality before us, then everything changes. We see the good in evil, the light in the darkness, and hope banishes despair.
Which of the two hypotheses then is more likely? Can we really accept that moral beings—humans—have been forced to justly curse the existing order of the universe when before them is a way out that can solve their contradiction? They should curse the world and the day they were born if there is no God and no future life. On the other hand, if there is both this and the other, then life itself becomes good and the world becomes a place for moral self-perfection, a place of endlessly increasing happiness and holiness.
— Erasmus
The deeper you understand your life, the less you believe in its destruction in death.
We often try to visualize death and our transition thither, but this is utterly impossible, just as impossible as it is for us to visualize God. All we can do is believe that death—just like everything that comes from God—is good.
Whatever the source within a human being that feels, understands, lives and exists may be, it is holy and divine, and therefore it must be eternal.
— Cicero
Only the one who has never seriously contemplated death does not believe in immortality.
