Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
principles, from which all things deduce their origin, imagines that
there is a certain fifth nature, from whence comes the soul; for to
think, to foresee, to learn, to teach, to invent anything, and many
other attributes of the same kind, such as to remember, to love, to
hate, to desire, to fear, to be pleased or displeased--these, and
others like them, exist, he thinks, in none of those first four kinds:
on such account he adds a fifth kind, which has no name, and so by a
new name he calls the soul [Greek: endelecheia], as if it were a
certain continued and perpetual motion.
XI. If I have not forgotten anything unintentionally, these are the
principal opinions concerning the soul. I have omitted Democritus, a
very great man indeed, but one who deduces the soul from the fortuitous
concourse of small, light, and round substances; for, if you believe
men of his school, there is nothing which a crowd of atoms cannot
effect. Which of these opinions is true, some God must determine. It is
an important question for us, Which has the most appearance of truth?
Shall we, then, prefer determining between them, or shall we return to
our subject?
_A._ I could wish both, if possible; but it is difficult to mix them:
therefore, if without a discussion of them we can get rid of the fears
of death, let us proceed to do so; but if this is not to be done
without explaining the question about souls, let us have that now, and
the other at another time.
_M._ I take that plan to be the best, which I perceive you are inclined
to; for reason will demonstrate that, whichever of the opinions which I
have stated is true, it must follow, then, that death cannot be an
evil; or that it must rather be something desirable; for if either the
heart, or the blood, or the brain, is the soul, then certainly the
soul, being corporeal, must perish with the rest of the body; if it is
air, it will perhaps be dissolved; if it is fire, it will be
extinguished; if it is Aristoxenus's harmony, it will be put out of
tune. What shall I say of Dicaearchus, who denies that there is any
soul? In all these opinions, there is nothing to affect any one after
death; for all feeling is lost with life, and where there is no
sensation, nothing can interfere to affect us. The opinions of others
do indeed bring us hope; if it is any pleasure to you to think that
souls, after they leave the body, may go to heaven as to a permanent
home.
_A._ I have great pleasure in that thought, and it is what I most
desire; and even if it should not be so, I should still be very willing
to believe it.
_M._ What occasion have you, then, for my assistance? Am I superior to
Plato in eloquence? Turn over carefully his book that treats of the
soul; you will have there all that you can want.
_A._ I have, indeed, done that, and often; but, I know not how it comes
to pass, I agree with it while I am reading it; but when I have laid
down the book, and begin to reflect with myself on the immortality of
the soul, all that agreement vanishes.
_M._ How comes that? Do you admit this--that souls either exist after
death, or else that they also perish at the moment of death?
_A._ I agree to that. And if they do exist, I admit that they are
happy; but if they perish, I cannot suppose them to be unhappy,
because, in fact, they have no existence at all. You drove me to that
concession but just now.
_M._ How, then, can you, or why do you, assert that you think that
death is an evil, when it either makes us happy, in the case of the
soul continuing to exist, or, at all events, not unhappy, in the case
of our becoming destitute of all sensation?
XII. _A._ Explain, therefore, if it is not troublesome to you, first,
if you can, that souls do exist after death; secondly, should you fail
in that (and it is a very difficult thing to establish), that death is
free from all evil; for I am not without my fears that this itself is
an evil: I do not mean the immediate deprivation of sense, but the fact
that we shall hereafter suffer deprivation.
_M._ I have the best authority in support of the opinion you desire to
have established, which ought, and generally has, great weight in all
cases. And, first, I have all antiquity on that side, which the more
near it is to its origin and divine descent, the more clearly, perhaps,
on that account, did it discern the truth in these matters. This very
doctrine, then, was adopted by all those ancients whom Ennius calls in
the Sabine tongue Casci; namely, that in death there was a sensation,
and that, when men departed this life, they were not so entirely
destroyed as to perish absolutely. And this may appear from many other
circumstances, and especially from the pontifical rites and funeral
obsequies, which men of the greatest genius would not have been so
solicitous about, and would not have guarded from any injury by such
severe laws, but from a firm persuasion that death was not so entire a
destruction as wholly to abolish and destroy everything, but rather a
kind of transmigration, as it were, and change of life, which was, in
the case of illustrious men and women, usually a guide to heaven, while
in that of others it was still confined to the earth, but in such a
manner as still to exist. From this, and the sentiments of the Romans,
In heaven Romulus with Gods now lives,
as Ennius saith, agreeing with the common belief; hence, too, Hercules
is considered so great and propitious a God among the Greeks, and from
them he was introduced among us, and his worship has extended even to
the very ocean itself. This is how it was that Bacchus was deified, the
offspring of Semele; and from the same illustrious fame we receive
Castor and Pollux as Gods, who are reported not only to have helped the
Romans to victory in their battles, but to have been the messengers of
their success. What shall we say of Ino, the daughter of Cadmus? Is she
not called Leucothea by the Greeks, and Matuta by us? Nay, more; is not
the whole of heaven (not to dwell on particulars) almost filled with
the offspring of men?
Should I attempt to search into antiquity, and produce from thence what
the Greek writers have asserted, it would appear that even those who
are called their principal Gods were taken from among men up into
heaven.
XIII. Examine the sepulchres of those which are shown in Greece;
recollect, for you have been initiated, what lessons are taught in the
mysteries; then will you perceive how extensive this doctrine is. But
they who were not acquainted with natural philosophy (for it did not
begin to be in vogue till many years later) had no higher belief than
what natural reason could give them; they were not acquainted with the
principles and causes of things; they were often induced by certain
visions, and those generally in the night, to think that those men who
had departed from this life were still alive. And this may further be
brought as an irrefragable argument for us to believe that there are
Gods--that there never was any nation so barbarous, nor any people in
the world so savage, as to be without some notion of Gods. Many have
wrong notions of the Gods, for that is the nature and ordinary
consequence of bad customs, yet all allow that there is a certain
divine nature and energy. Nor does this proceed from the conversation
of men, or the agreement of philosophers; it is not an opinion
established by institutions or by laws; but, no doubt, in every case
the consent of all nations is to be looked on as a law of nature. Who
is there, then, that does not lament the loss of his friends,
principally from imagining them deprived of the conveniences of life?
Take away this opinion, and you remove with it all grief; for no one is
afflicted merely on account of a loss sustained by himself. Perhaps we
may be sorry, and grieve a little; but that bitter lamentation and
those mournful tears have their origin in our apprehensions that he
whom we loved is deprived of all the advantages of life, and is
sensible of his loss. And we are led to this opinion by nature, without
any arguments or any instruction.
XIV. But the greatest proof of all is, that nature herself gives a
silent judgment in favor of the immortality of the soul, inasmuch as
all are anxious, and that to a great degree, about the things which
concern futurity:
One plants what future ages shall enjoy,
as Statius saith in his Synephebi. What is his object in doing so,
except that he is interested in posterity? Shall the industrious
husbandman, then, plant trees the fruit of which he shall never see?
And shall not the great man found laws, institutions, and a republic?
What does the procreation of children imply, and our care to continue
our names, and our adoptions, and our scrupulous exactness in drawing
up wills, and the inscriptions on monuments, and panegyrics, but that
our thoughts run on futurity? There is no doubt but a judgment may be
formed of nature in general, from looking at each nature in its most
perfect specimens; and what is a more perfect specimen of a man than
those are who look on themselves as born for the assistance, the
protection, and the preservation of others? Hercules has gone to
heaven; he never would have gone thither had he not, while among men,
made that road for himself. These things are of old date, and have,
besides, the sanction of universal religion.
XV. What will you say? What do you imagine that so many and such great
men of our republic, who have sacrificed their lives for its good,
expected? Do you believe that they thought that their names should not
continue beyond their lives? None ever encountered death for their
country but under a firm persuasion of immortality! Themistocles might
have lived at his ease; so might Epaminondas; and, not to look abroad
and among the ancients for instances, so might I myself. But, somehow
or other there clings to our minds a certain presage of future ages;
and this both exists most firmly, and appears most clearly, in men of
the loftiest genius and greatest souls. Take away this, and who would
be so mad as to spend his life amidst toils and dangers? I speak of
those in power. What are the poet's views but to be ennobled after
death? What else is the object of these lines,
Behold old Ennius here, who erst
Thy fathers' great exploits rehearsed?
He is challenging the reward of glory from those men whose ancestors he
himself had ennobled by his poetry. And in the same spirit he says, in
another passage,
Let none with tears my funeral grace, for I
Claim from my works an immortality.
Why do I mention poets? The very mechanics are desirous of fame after
death. Why did Phidias include a likeness of himself in the shield of
Minerva, when he was not allowed to inscribe his name on it? What do
our philosophers think on the subject? Do not they put their names to
those very books which they write on the contempt of glory? If, then,
universal consent is the voice of nature, and if it is the general
opinion everywhere that those who have quitted this life are still
interested in something, we also must subscribe to that opinion. And if
we think that men of the greatest abilities and virtues see most
clearly into the power of nature, because they themselves are her most
perfect work, it is very probable that, as every great man is
especially anxious to benefit posterity, there is something of which he
himself will be sensible after death.
XVI. But as we are led by nature to think there are Gods, and as we
discover, by reason, of what description they are, so, by the consent
of all nations, we are induced to believe that our souls survive; but
where their habitation is, and of what character they eventually are,
must be learned from reason. The want of any certain reason on which to