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The point of time in which the souls of the good and evil are separated
from the body, are we to say it is after death, or in death rather?
If it is after death, then it is not death which is good or evil,
since death is done with and past, but it is the life which the soul
has now entered on. Death was an evil when it was present, that is to
say, when it was being suffered by the dying; for to them it brought
with it a severe and grievous experience, which the good make a good
use of. But when death is past, how can that which no longer is be
either good or evil? Still further, if we examine the matter more
closely, we shall see that even that sore and grievous pain which the
dying experience is not death itself. For so long as they have any
sensation, they are certainly still alive; and, if still alive, must
rather be said to be in a state previous to death than in death. For
when death actually comes, it robs us of all bodily sensation, which,
while death is only approaching is painful. And thus it is difficult
to explain how we speak of those who are not yet dead, but are agonized
in their last and mortal extremity, as being in the article of death.
Yet what else can we call them than dying persons? for when death
which was imminent shall have actually come, we can no longer call them
dying but dead. No one, therefore, is dying unless living; since
even he who is in the last extremity of life, and, as we say, giving
up the ghost, yet lives. The same person is therefore at once dying
and living, but drawing near to death, departing from life; yet in
life, because his spirit yet abides in the body; not yet in death,
because not yet has his spirit forsaken the body. But if, when it has
forsaken it, the man is not even then in death, but after death, who
shall say when he is in death? On the one hand, no one can be called
dying, if a man cannot be dying and living at, the same time; and as
long as the soul is in the body, we cannot deny that he is living. On
the other hand, if the man who is approaching death be rather called
dying, I know not who is living.
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