Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
argue has given rise to the idea of the shades below, and to those
fears which you seem, not without reason, to despise; for as our bodies
fall to the ground, and are covered with earth (_humus_), from whence
we derive the expression to be interred (_humari_), that has occasioned
men to imagine that the dead continue, during the remainder of their
existence, under ground; which opinion has drawn after it many errors,
which the poets have increased; for the theatre, being frequented by a
large crowd, among which are women and children, is wont to be greatly
affected on hearing such pompous verses as these,
Lo! here I am, who scarce could gain this place,
Through stony mountains and a dreary waste;
Through cliffs, whose sharpen'd stones tremendous hung,
Where dreadful darkness spread itself around.
And the error prevailed so much, though indeed at present it seems to
me to be removed, that although men knew that the bodies of the dead
had been burned, yet they conceived such things to be done in the
infernal regions as could not be executed or imagined without a body;
for they could not conceive how disembodied souls could exist; and,
therefore, they looked out for some shape or figure. This was the
origin of all that account of the dead in Homer. This was the idea that
caused my friend Appius to frame his Necromancy; and this is how there
got about that idea of the lake of Avernus, in my neighborhood,
From whence the souls of undistinguish'd shape,
Clad in thick shade, rush from the open gate
Of Acheron, vain phantoms of the dead.
And they must needs have these appearances speak, which is not possible
without a tongue, and a palate, and jaws, and without the help of lungs
and sides, and without some shape or figure; for they could see nothing
by their mind alone--they referred all to their eyes. To withdraw the
mind from sensual objects, and abstract our thoughts from what we are
accustomed to, is an attribute of great genius. I am persuaded, indeed,
that there were many such men in former ages; but Pherecydes[8] the
Syrian is the first on record who said that the souls of men were
immortal, and he was a philosopher of great antiquity, in the reign of
my namesake Tullius. His disciple Pythagoras greatly confirmed this
opinion, who came into Italy in the reign of Tarquin the Proud; and all
that country which is called Great Greece was occupied by his school,
and he himself was held in high honor, and had the greatest authority;
and the Pythagorean sect was for many ages after in such great credit,
that all learning was believed to be confined to that name.
XVII. But I return to the ancients. They scarcely ever gave any reason
for their opinion but what could be explained by numbers or
definitions. It is reported of Plato that he came into Italy to make
himself acquainted with the Pythagoreans; and that when there, among
others, he made an acquaintance with Archytas[9] and Timaeus,[10] and
learned from them all the tenets of the Pythagoreans; and that he not
only was of the same opinion with Pythagoras concerning the immortality
of the soul, but that he also brought reasons in support of it; which,
if you have nothing to say against it, I will pass over, and say no
more at present about all this hope of immortality.
_A._ What, will you leave me when you have raised my expectations so
high? I had rather, so help me Hercules! be mistaken with Plato, whom I
know how much you esteem, and whom I admire myself, from what you say
of him, than be in the right with those others.
_M._ I commend you; for, indeed, I could myself willingly be mistaken
in his company. Do we, then, doubt, as we do in other cases (though I
think here is very little room for doubt in this case, for the
mathematicians prove the facts to us), that the earth is placed in the
midst of the world, being, as it were, a sort of point, which they call
a [Greek: kentron], surrounded by the whole heavens; and that such is
the nature of the four principles which are the generating causes of
all things, that they have equally divided among them the constituents
of all bodies; moreover, that earthy and humid bodies are carried at
equal angles by their own weight and ponderosity into the earth and
sea; that the other two parts consist, one of fire, and the other of
air? As the two former are carried by their gravity and weight into the
middle region of the world, so these, on the other hand, ascend by
right lines into the celestial regions, either because, owing to their
intrinsic nature, they are always endeavoring to reach the highest
place, or else because lighter bodies are naturally repelled by
heavier; and as this is notoriously the case, it must evidently follow
that souls, when once they have departed from the body, whether they
are animal (by which term I mean capable of breathing) or of the nature
of fire, must mount upward. But if the soul is some number, as some
people assert, speaking with more subtlety than clearness, or if it is
that fifth nature, for which it would be more correct to say that we
have not given a name to than that we do not correctly understand
it--still it is too pure and perfect not to go to a great distance from
the earth. Something of this sort, then, we must believe the soul to
be, that we may not commit the folly of thinking that so active a
principle lies immerged in the heart or brain; or, as Empedocles would
have it, in the blood.
XVIII. We will pass over Dicaearchus,[11] with his contemporary and
fellow-disciple Aristoxenus,[12] both indeed men of learning. One of
them seems never even to have been affected with grief, as he could not
perceive that he had a soul; while the other is so pleased with his
musical compositions that he endeavors to show an analogy betwixt them
and souls. Now, we may understand harmony to arise from the intervals
of sounds, whose various compositions occasion many harmonies; but I do
not see how a disposition of members, and the figure of a body without
a soul, can occasion harmony. He had better, learned as he is, leave
these speculations to his master Aristotle, and follow his own trade as
a musician. Good advice is given him in that Greek proverb,
Apply your talents where you best are skill'd.
I will have nothing at all to do with that fortuitous concourse of
individual light and round bodies, notwithstanding Democritus insists
on their being warm and having breath, that is to say, life. But this
soul, which is compounded of either of the four principles from which
we assert that all things are derived, is of inflamed air, as seems
particularly to have been the opinion of Panaetius, and must necessarily
mount upward; for air and fire have no tendency downward, but always
ascend; so should they be dissipated that must be at some distance from
the earth; but should they remain, and preserve their original state,
it is clearer still that they must be carried heavenward, and this
gross and concrete air, which is nearest the earth, must be divided and
broken by them; for the soul is warmer, or rather hotter, than that
air, which I just now called gross and concrete: and this may be made
evident from this consideration--that our bodies, being compounded of
the earthy class of principles, grow warm by the heat of the soul.
XIX. We may add, that the soul can the more easily escape from this
air, which I have often named, and break through it, because nothing is
swifter than the soul; no swiftness is comparable to the swiftness of
the soul, which, should it remain uncorrupt and without alteration,
must necessarily be carried on with such velocity as to penetrate and
divide all this atmosphere, where clouds, and rain, and winds are
formed, which, in consequence of the exhalations from the earth, is
moist and dark: but, when the soul has once got above this region, and
falls in with, and recognizes, a nature like its own, it then rests
upon fires composed of a combination of thin air and a moderate solar
heat, and does not aim at any higher flight; for then, after it has
attained a lightness and heat resembling its own, it moves no more, but
remains steady, being balanced, as it were, between two equal weights.
That, then, is its natural seat where it has penetrated to something
like itself, and where, wanting nothing further, it may be supported
and maintained by the same aliment which nourishes and maintains the
stars.
Now, as we are usually incited to all sorts of desires by the stimulus
of the body, and the more so as we endeavor to rival those who are in
possession of what we long for, we shall certainly be happy when, being
emancipated from that body, we at the same time get rid of these
desires and this rivalry. And that which we do at present, when,
dismissing all other cares, we curiously examine and look into
anything, we shall then do with greater freedom; and we shall employ
ourselves entirely in the contemplation and examination of things;
because there is naturally in our minds a certain insatiable desire to
know the truth, and the very region itself where we shall arrive, as it
gives us a more intuitive and easy knowledge of celestial things, will
raise our desires after knowledge. For it was this beauty of the
heavens, as seen even here upon earth, which gave birth to that
national and hereditary philosophy (as Theophrastus calls it), which
was thus excited to a desire of knowledge. But those persons will in a
most especial degree enjoy this philosophy, who, while they were only
inhabitants of this world and enveloped in darkness, were still
desirous of looking into these things with the eye of their mind.
XX. For if those men now think that they have attained something who
have seen the mouth of the Pontus, and those straits which were passed
by the ship called Argo, because,
From Argos she did chosen men convey,
Bound to fetch back the Golden Fleece, their prey;
or those who have seen the straits of the ocean,
Where the swift waves divide the neighboring shores
Of Europe, and of Afric;
what kind of sight do you imagine that will be when the whole earth is
laid open to our view? and that, too, not only in its position, form,
and boundaries, nor those parts of it only which are habitable, but
those also that lie uncultivated, through the extremities of heat and
cold to which they are exposed; for not even now is it with our eyes
that we view what we see, for the body itself has no senses; but (as
the naturalists, ay, and even the physicians assure us, who have opened
our bodies, and examined them) there are certain perforated channels
from the seat of the soul to the eyes, ears, and nose; so that
frequently, when either prevented by meditation, or the force of some
bodily disorder, we neither hear nor see, though our eyes and ears are
open and in good condition; so that we may easily apprehend that it is
the soul itself which sees and hears, and not those parts which are, as
it were, but windows to the soul, by means of which, however, she can
perceive nothing, unless she is on the spot, and exerts herself. How
shall we account for the fact that by the same power of thinking we
comprehend the most different things--as color, taste, heat, smell, and
sound--which the soul could never know by her five messengers, unless
every thing were referred to her, and she were the sole judge of all?
And we shall certainly discover these things in a more clear and
perfect degree when the soul is disengaged from the body, and has
arrived at that goal to which nature leads her; for at present,
notwithstanding nature has contrived, with the greatest skill, those
channels which lead from the body to the soul, yet are they, in some
way or other, stopped up with earthy and concrete bodies; but when we