[f. Gr. θάνατος death + -ISM.] The belief or doctrine that at death the human soul ceases to exist. So Thanatist, a believer in thanatism.
1900. Academy, 1 Dec., 512/1. For ourselves we prefer to say that even atheism and thanatism are speculations.
1902. J. McCabe, trans. Haeckel’s Riddle Universe, xi. 67/1. We give the name of ‘thanatism’ … to the opinion which holds that at a man’s death … his ‘soul’ also disappears,—that is, that sum of cerebral functions which psychic dualism regards as a peculiar entity, independent of the other vital processes in the living body. Ibid., 69/1.
1903. W. S. Lilly, in 19th Cent., March, 466. I suppose that thanatists, as it is the fashion to call them, are really not very numerous.
1922. G. Stanley Hall, Senescence, xi. 469. The cult of no race [the Egyptians] has been so saturated with thanatism.
