Caprio believes that the psychopathology of civilization may be viewed as the result of man's desire for immortality and his failure to repress successfully an unconscious fear of death. He supports this hypothesis by a rather indiscriminate, journalistic listing of death customs through the ages, of the taboos related to the dead, of the attitudes toward suicide, and of the attitudes of some psychotic individuals toward death. Although the central thesis is not without interest, the paper is written in a jerky, headline style, and the argument is inadequately elaborated.