That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die

Cicero says that to study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die. The reason of which is, that study and contemplation do in some sort withdraw from us our soul, and employ it separately from the body, which is a kind of apprenticeship and a resemblance of death; or, else, because all the wisdom and reasoning in the world do in the end conclude in this point, to teach us not to fear to die.

To know how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint. There is no evil in life for him who has rightly comprehended that the privation of life is no evil.

“He who has learned to die has unlearned to serve.”

Let us disarm him of his novelty and strangeness, let us converse and be familiar with him, and have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as death. Upon all occasions represent him to our imagination in his every shape; at the stumbling of a horse, at the falling of a tile, at the least prick with a pin, let us presently consider, and say to ourselves, “Well, and what if it had been death itself?”

We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for him everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.