than life._
For no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body, than we begin
to move ceaselessly towards death.[585] For in the whole course of
this life (if life we must call it) its mutability tends towards
death. Certainly there is no one who is not nearer it this year than
last year, and to-morrow than to-day, and to-day than yesterday,
and a short while hence than now, and now than a short while ago.
For whatever time we live is deducted from our whole term of life,
and that which remains is daily becoming less and less; so that our
whole life is nothing but a race towards death, in which no one is
allowed to stand still for a little space, or to go somewhat more
slowly, but all are driven forwards with an impartial movement, and
with equal rapidity. For he whose life is short spends a day no more
swiftly than he whose life is longer. But while the equal moments are
impartially snatched from both, the one has a nearer and the other
a more remote goal to reach with this their equal speed. It is one
thing to make a longer journey, and another to walk more slowly.
He, therefore, who spends longer time on his way to death does not
proceed at a more leisurely pace, but goes over more ground. Further,
if every man begins to die, that is, is in death, as soon as death
has begun to show itself in him (by taking away life, to wit; for
when life is all taken away, the man will be then not in death, but
after death), then he begins to die so soon as he begins to live.
For what else is going on in all his days, hours, and moments, until
this slow-working death is fully consummated? And then comes the time
_after death_, instead of that in which life was being withdrawn,
and which we called being _in death_. Man, then, is never in life
from the moment he dwells in this dying rather than living body,--if,
at least, he cannot be in life and death at once. Or rather, shall
we say, he is in both?--in life, namely, which he lives till all is
consumed; but in death also, which he dies as his life is consumed?
For if he is not in life, what is it which is consumed till all be
gone? And if he is not in death, what is this consumption itself?
For when the whole of life has been consumed, the expression "after
death" would be meaningless, had that consumption not been death. And
if, when it has all been consumed, a man is not in death but after
death, when is he in death, unless when life is being consumed away?