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And now again, together with this series of recollections, another series of recollections began to pass through his mind as to how his disease had grown and increased. It was the same thing; the further back he went the more of life there was. There was also more of good in life, and life itself was fuller. And both these recollections blended together. As the torments kept on growing worse and worse, so also all life grew worse and worse, he thought to himself. There was a bright point far back in the beginning of life, and after that everything was blacker and blacker and quicker and quicker. "The pace is in inverse proportion to the distance from death," thought Ivan Il'ich to himself. And this image of a stone flying downwards with ever-increasing velocity fastened upon his mind. Life, a series of ever-increasing sufferings, was always flying more and more rapidly towards its end, and that end most frightful suffering. "I am flying. . . ." He trembled, writhed, would have resisted, but he knew already that it was no use resisting; and again, wearied of looking, yet unable not to look at what was before him, he gazed at the back of the divan, and waited and waited for that frightful fall, jolt, and destruction. "It's no good resisting," he said to himself, "yet if only I knew why this is, and that is impossible. It might be explained if I were to say that I have not lived as I ought to have lived, but this I cannot possibly acknowledge," said he to himself as he recollected all the correctness, regularity, and respectability of his life. "It is impossible to allow that," said he to himself, smiling