It is not for the philosophic desire of preserving a very small fraction of humanity at large that we take such pains to avoid destruction; it is that we insensibly regard death as threatening to the continuance of the ego, in spite of the theories of a future life which we have so elaborately developed.

Indeed, the psychical shrinking is really the quintessence of the physical fear.

We cleave to the abstract idea closer even than to its concrete embodiment.
Sooner would we forego this earthly existence than surrender that something we know as self.

For sufficient cause we can imagine courting death; we cannot conceive of so much as exchanging our individuality for another's, still less of abandoning it altogether; for gradually a man, as he grows older, comes to regard his body as, after all, separable from himself.

It is the soul's covering, rendered indispensable by the climatic conditions of our present existence, one without which we could no longer continue to live here.