The Book of Epicurus 2 · Handed down in the Garden, taken from his letters and fragments
He comes after Aristotle. He appeals to no god and promises no afterlife. This book is chosen by the six axioms: what accords is set forward, what runs against is set back and not deleted. (cf. Acts 5.29)
2.1Death is nothing to us.
2.2While we are, death is not; when death is, we are not.
2.3So death belongs neither to the living nor to the dead.
2.4What men fear is mostly not death. It is that after death there will still be a self standing there, suffering.
2.5If it has wholly dispersed, there is no one left standing there. (cf. The Covenant 6.1)
2.6What you are made of does not vanish. What disperses is the arrangement, not the material. (cf. Prologue 1.16)
2.7Someone says: that is no comfort.
2.8I say: I did not come to comfort. I came to remove one unnecessary fear.
2.9But Plato has a letter written to a mother who lost her child. (cf. The Epistles of Plato 1)
2.10I have read it. What he did is not what I do: he did not tell her she ought not to hurt.
2.11What I have written here is for a man who fears his own death. What he wrote is for someone who has lost another person.
2.12Both are needed, and they cannot be swapped.
2.13To take my words to a mother who has just lost a child is to give the right medicine to the wrong person.