Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
hundred thousand years ago; or rather, all that have ever been born.
_A._ So, indeed, I think.
_M._ Tell me, I beseech you, are you afraid of the three-headed
Cerberus in the shades below, and the roaring waves of Cocytus, and the
passage over Acheron, and Tantalus expiring with thirst, while the
water touches his chin; and Sisyphus,
Who sweats with arduous toil in vain
The steepy summit of the mount to gain?
Perhaps, too, you dread the inexorable judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus;
before whom neither L. Crassus nor M. Antonius can defend you; and
where, since the cause lies before Grecian judges, you will not even be
able to employ Demosthenes; but you must plead for yourself before a
very great assembly. These things perhaps you dread, and therefore look
on death as an eternal evil.
VI. _A._ Do you take me to be so imbecile as to give credit to such
things?
_M._ What, do you not believe them?
_A._ Not in the least.
_M._ I am sorry to hear that.
_A._ Why, I beg?
_M._ Because I could have been very eloquent in speaking against them.
_A._ And who could not on such a subject? or what trouble is it to
refute these monstrous inventions of the poets and painters?[6]
_M._ And yet you have books of philosophers full of arguments against
these.
_A._ A great waste of time, truly! for who is so weak as to be
concerned about them?
_M._ If, then, there is no one miserable in the infernal regions, there
can be no one there at all.
_A._ I am altogether of that opinion.
_M._ Where, then, are those you call miserable? or what place do they
inhabit? For, if they exist at all, they must be somewhere.
_A._ I, indeed, am of opinion that they are nowhere.
_M._ Then they have no existence at all.
_A._ Even so, and yet they are miserable for this very reason, that
they have no existence.
_M._ I had rather now have you afraid of Cerberus than speak thus
inaccurately.
_A._ In what respect?
_M._ Because you admit him to exist whose existence you deny with the
same breath. Where now is your sagacity? When you say any one is
miserable, you say that he who does not exist, does exist.
_A._ I am not so absurd as to say that.
_M._ What is it that you do say, then?
_A._ I say, for instance, that Marcus Crassus is miserable in being
deprived of such great riches as his by death; that Cn. Pompey is
miserable in being taken from such glory and honor; and, in short, that
all are miserable who are deprived of this light of life.
_M._ You have returned to the same point, for to be miserable implies
an existence; but you just now denied that the dead had any existence:
if, then, they have not, they can be nothing; and if so, they are not
even miserable.
_A._ Perhaps I do not express what I mean, for I look upon this very
circumstance, not to exist after having existed, to be very miserable.
_M._ What, more so than not to have existed at all? Therefore, those
who are not yet born are miserable because they are not; and we
ourselves, if we are to be miserable after death, were miserable before
we were born: but I do not remember that I was miserable before I was
born; and I should be glad to know, if your memory is better, what you
recollect of yourself before you were born.
VII. _A._ You are pleasant: as if I had said that those men are
miserable who are not born, and not that they are so who are dead.
_M._ You say, then, that they are so?
_A._ Yes; I say that because they no longer exist after having existed
they are miserable.
_M._ You do not perceive that you are asserting contradictions; for
what is a greater contradiction, than that that should be not only
miserable, but should have any existence at all, which does not exist?
When you go out at the Capene gate and see the tombs of the Calatini,
the Scipios, Servilii, and Metelli, do you look on them as miserable?
_A._ Because you press me with a word, henceforward I will not say they
are miserable absolutely, but miserable on this account, because they
have no existence.
_M._ You do not say, then, "M. Crassus is miserable," but only
"Miserable M. Crassus."
_A._ Exactly so.
_M._ As if it did not follow that whatever you speak of in that manner
either is or is not. Are you not acquainted with the first principles
of logic? For this is the first thing they lay down, Whatever is
asserted (for that is the best way that occurs to me, at the moment, of
rendering the Greek term [Greek: axioma]; if I can think of a more
accurate expression hereafter, I will use it), is asserted as being
either true or false. When, therefore, you say, "Miserable M. Crassus,"
you either say this, "M. Crassus is miserable," so that some judgment
may be made whether it is true or false, or you say nothing at all.
_A._ Well, then, I now own that the dead are not miserable, since you
have drawn from me a concession that they who do not exist at all can
not be miserable. What then? We that are alive, are we not wretched,
seeing we must die? for what is there agreeable in life, when we must
night and day reflect that, at some time or other, we must die?
VIII. _M._ Do you not, then, perceive how great is the evil from which
you have delivered human nature?
_A._ By what means?
_M._ Because, if to die were miserable to the dead, to live would be a
kind of infinite and eternal misery. Now, however, I see a goal, and
when I have reached it, there is nothing more to be feared; but you
seem to me to follow the opinion of Epicharmus,[7] a man of some
discernment, and sharp enough for a Sicilian.
_A._ What opinion? for I do not recollect it.
_M._ I will tell you if I can in Latin; for you know I am no more used
to bring in Latin sentences in a Greek discourse than Greek in a Latin
one.
_A._ And that is right enough. But what is that opinion of Epicharmus?
_M._
I would not die, but yet
Am not concerned that I shall be dead.
_A._ I now recollect the Greek; but since you have obliged me to grant
that the dead are not miserable, proceed to convince me that it is not
miserable to be under a necessity of dying.
_M._ That is easy enough; but I have greater things in hand.
_A._ How comes that to be so easy? And what are those things of more
consequence?
_M._ Thus: because, if there is no evil after death, then even death
itself can be none; for that which immediately succeeds that is a state
where you grant that there is no evil: so that even to be obliged to
die can be no evil, for that is only the being obliged to arrive at a
place where we allow that no evil is.
_A._ I beg you will be more explicit on this point, for these subtle
arguments force me sooner to admissions than to conviction. But what
are those more important things about which you say that you are
occupied?
_M._ To teach you, if I can, that death is not only no evil, but a
good.
_A._ I do not insist on that, but should be glad to hear you argue it,
for even though you should not prove your point, yet you will prove
that death is no evil. But I will not interrupt you; I would rather
hear a continued discourse.
_M._ What, if I should ask you a question, would you not answer?
_A._ That would look like pride; but I would rather you should not ask
but where necessity requires.
IX. _M._ I will comply with your wishes, and explain as well as I can
what you require; but not with any idea that, like the Pythian Apollo,
what I say must needs be certain and indisputable, but as a mere man,
endeavoring to arrive at probabilities by conjecture, for I have no
ground to proceed further on than probability. Those men may call their
statements indisputable who assert that what they say can be perceived
by the senses, and who proclaim themselves philosophers by profession.
_A._ Do as you please: We are ready to hear you.
_M._ The first thing, then, is to inquire what death, which seems to be
so well understood, really is; for some imagine death to be the
departure of the soul from the body; others think that there is no such
departure, but that soul and body perish together, and that the soul is
extinguished with the body. Of those who think that the soul does
depart from the body, some believe in its immediate dissolution; others
fancy that it continues to exist for a time; and others believe that it
lasts forever. There is great dispute even what the soul is, where it
is, and whence it is derived: with some, the heart itself (_cor_) seems
to be the soul, hence the expressions, _excordes_, _vecordes_,
_concordes;_ and that prudent Nasica, who was twice consul, was called
Corculus, _i.e._, wise-heart; and AElius Sextus is described as
_Egregie_ cordatus _homo, catus AEliu' Sextus_--that great
_wise-hearted_ man, sage AElius. Empedocles imagines the blood, which is
suffused over the heart, to be the soul; to others, a certain part of
the brain seems to be the throne of the soul; others neither allow the
heart itself, nor any portion of the brain, to be the soul, but think
either that the heart is the seat and abode of the soul, or else that
the brain is so. Some would have the soul, or spirit, to be the
_anima_, as our schools generally agree; and indeed the name signifies
as much, for we use the expressions _animam agere_, to live; _animam
efflare_, to expire; _animosi_, men of spirit; _bene animati_, men of
right feeling; _exanimi sententia_, according to our real opinion; and
the very word _animus_ is derived from _anima_. Again, the soul seems
to Zeno the Stoic to be fire.
X. But what I have said as to the heart, the blood, the brain, air, or
fire being the soul, are common opinions: the others are only
entertained by individuals; and, indeed, there were many among the
ancients who held singular opinions on this subject, of whom the latest
was Aristoxenus, a man who was both a musician and a philosopher. He
maintained a certain straining of the body, like what is called harmony
in music, to be the soul, and believed that, from the figure and nature
of the whole body, various motions are excited, as sounds are from an
instrument. He adhered steadily to his system, and yet he said
something, the nature of which, whatever it was, had been detailed and
explained a great while before by Plato. Xenocrates denied that the
soul had any figure, or anything like a body; but said it was a number,
the power of which, as Pythagoras had fancied, some ages before, was
the greatest in nature: his master, Plato, imagined a threefold soul, a
dominant portion of which--that is to say, reason--he had lodged in the
head, as in a tower; and the other two parts--namely, anger and
desire--he made subservient to this one, and allotted them distinct
abodes, placing anger in the breast, and desire under the praecordia.
But Dicaearchus, in that discourse of some learned disputants, held at
Corinth, which he details to us in three books--in the first book
introduces many speakers; and in the other two he introduces a certain
Pherecrates, an old man of Phthia, who, as he said, was descended from
Deucalion; asserting, that there is in fact no such thing at all as a
soul, but that it is a name without a meaning; and that it is idle to
use the expression "animals," or "animated beings;" that neither men
nor beasts have minds or souls, but that all that power by which we act
or perceive is equally infused into every living creature, and is
inseparable from the body, for if it were not, it would be nothing; nor
is there anything whatever really existing except body, which is a
single and simple thing, so fashioned as to live and have its
sensations in consequence of the regulations of nature. Aristotle, a
man superior to all others, both in genius and industry (I always
except Plato), after having embraced these four known sorts of