B1221 <=> B1223 (BTG XLVIII From the Author, p. 1222)

If he seriously ponders and is really able to enter deeply into this and to cognize his own death, what could be more terrifying?

In ordinary life, particularly in recent times, over and above the depressing fact of the inevitability of death which must infallibly occur to them, there are indeed for people a large number of other similar facts, whose real picturing alone of the possibility of experiencing them must evoke in us feelings of inexpressible and intolerable anguish.

Suppose that such contemporary people as have already lost entirely all possibility of having any real objective hope for the future, that is to say, those of them who have never “sown” anything during their responsible life and who in consequence have nothing to “reap” in the future – suppose they should cognize the inevitability of their speedy death, then from only an experiencing in thought alone would they hang themselves.

“The particularity of the action of the consequences of the properties of the said organ on the common psyche of people consists just in this that, thanks to it, there does not arise among most contemporary people – these three-brained beings in whom were placed all the hopes and expectations of our CREATOR, as possible servers of higher purposes – the cognition of any of these genuine terrors, and also that it enables them peacefully to carry on their existence in unconscious fulfillment of what was foreordained, but in the service only of Nature’s nearest immediate aims, as they have meanwhile lost, on account of their unbecoming abnormal life, any possibility of serving higher purposes.

Thanks to these consequences, not only does the cognition of these terrors not arise in the psyche of these people, but also for the purpose of self-quieting they even invent all kinds of fantastic explanations plausible to their naive logic for what they really sense and also for what they do not sense at all.