Page:Freud - Reflections on war and death.djvu/62

 of life. And yet the motto of the Hanseatic League said: Navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse: It is necessary to sail the seas, but not to live.

It is therefore inevitable that we should seek compensation for the loss of life in the world of fiction, in literature, and in the theater. There we still find people who know how to die, who are even quite capable of killing others. There alone the condition for reconciling ourselves to death is fulfilled, namely, if beneath all the vicissitudes of life a permanent life still remains to us. It is really too sad that it may happen in life as in chess, where a false move can force us to lose the game, but with this difference, that we cannot begin a return match. In the realm of fiction we find the many lives in one for which we crave. We die in