Those years, because he had spent a sufficient number of them in the raw places of the earth, had given him a philosophy and viewpoint of his own, both of which he kept unto himself without effort to impress them on other people.

He believed that life itself was the cheapest thing on the face of all the earth.

All other things had their limitations.
There was so much water and so much land, so many mountains and so many plains, so many square feet to live on and so many square feet to be buried in.

All things could be measured, and stood up, and catalogued--except life itself.

"Given time," he would say, "a single pair of humans can populate all creation." Therefore, being the cheapest of all things, it was true philosophy that life should be the easiest of all things to give up when the necessity came.
Which is only another way of emphasizing that Kent was not, and never had been, afraid to die.