Toynbee considers one familiar response to mortality: trying to compensate for the certainty of death by extracting as much pleasure as possible from life. He links this attitude to carpe diem, the injunction to seize the day, and to older traditions in which awareness of death becomes an argument for immediate enjoyment.

He nevertheless rejects this as an adequate reconciliation with death. Pleasure can make life more enjoyable, and a person may try to intensify experience while time remains, but none of this alters the fact of mortality or resolves the anxiety created by it. His example of Mycerinus, who symbolically doubles his remaining years by turning night into day, illustrates the attempt to defeat death through greater intensity of living. Toynbee calls the solution illusory because multiplying pleasures or experiences does not ultimately overcome the condition that gives rise to the problem.