LXXXIX. I have sometimes observed, that those who attend on dying people have been much dejected upon finding them in their last moments, make some very irregular and extraordinary motions, and have been afraid and believed that those agitations, had proceeded from some impatience that had seized them. But let them not be uneasy on this account; because it is most likely, that these motions are merely mechanical; and that in case they should not be so, there is no mischief to be apprehended from them; for in that proximate state to death, if people are not deprived of their senses, the use of their reason is so feeble, or so confused, that very little, if any, of that free will can be exercised by them which is necessary to constitute sin, or at least any serious sin; for no intoxicated man, nor any one at the instant he awakes from a profound sleep, can be in a more stunned or stupified state, than a dying person at such a crisis. XC. Finally, both with respect to the matter of this appendix, as well as with regard to that of the subject of this Essay, I shall proceed to give a last, and most efficacious consolation, against the apprehension, that the extreme pains of death are likely to endanger the loss of people’s souls; for admitting that those pains were real, and as severe as they are represented to be, is there any danger that the dying person who is oppressed by them, should fall into the serious sin of impatience, or that he should incur the guilt of any other mortal crime? To this, I resolutely answer that he could not; for the same reasoning that states the pain to be so insufferably intense, removes all the hazard of sinning, because it must disturb the understanding to such a degree, as to deprive a man of all free will. This is a consequence resulting from all passions that are excessively violent, as is agreed by all philosophers and theologians. Virgil, who had great judgment and penetration in these matters, represents Chorœbus, who had been totally deprived of his senses by grief for the imprisonment of his beloved Cassandra, as divested of all free will or reflexion also, in the following lines: _Non tulit hanc speciem furiatâ mente Chorœbus,_ _Et sese medium injecit moriturus in agmen._ PARADOX X. _The desire of posthumous fame is vain and futile._