Dr. Dalrymple meditates on death, the Stoics, vigils, and tomb robbers in the February edition of New English Review.

If the Stoics had been right—that death is nothing to be feared—surely Mankind would have lost its fear of it by now, but I see no sign of this, perhaps rather the reverse; for as belief or confidence in an afterlife declines, it—Mankind— clings more than ever to the only life that it has, or believes that it has.