Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
shall be nothing but soul, then nothing will interfere to prevent our
seeing everything in its real substance and in its true character.
XXI. It is true, I might expatiate, did the subject require it, on the
many and various objects with which the soul will be entertained in
those heavenly regions; when I reflect on which, I am apt to wonder at
the boldness of some philosophers, who are so struck with admiration at
the knowledge of nature as to thank, in an exulting manner, the first
inventor and teacher of natural philosophy, and to reverence him as a
God; for they declare that they have been delivered by his means from
the greatest tyrants, a perpetual terror, and a fear that molested them
by night and day. What is this dread--this fear? What old woman is
there so weak as to fear these things, which you, forsooth, had you not
been acquainted with natural philosophy, would stand in awe of?
The hallow'd roofs of Acheron, the dread
Of Orcus, the pale regions of the dead.
And does it become a philosopher to boast that he is not afraid of
these things, and that he has discovered them to be false? And from
this we may perceive how acute these men were by nature, who, if they
had been left without any instruction, would have believed in these
things. But now they have certainly made a very fine acquisition in
learning that when the day of their death arrives, they will perish
entirely. And if that really is the case--for I say nothing either
way--what is there agreeable or glorious in it? Not that I see any
reason why the opinion of Pythagoras and Plato may not be true; but
even although Plato were to have assigned no reason for his opinion
(observe how much I esteem the man), the weight of his authority would
have borne me down; but he has brought so many reasons, that he appears
to me to have endeavored to convince others, and certainly to have
convinced himself.
XXII. But there are many who labor on the other side of the question,
and condemn souls to death, as if they were criminals capitally
convicted; nor have they any other reason to allege why the immortality
of the soul appears to them to be incredible, except that they are not
able to conceive what sort of thing the soul can be when disentangled
from the body; just as if they could really form a correct idea as to
what sort of thing it is, even when it is in the body; what its form,
and size, and abode are; so that were they able to have a full view of
all that is now hidden from them in a living body, they have no idea
whether the soul would be discernible by them, or whether it is of so
fine a texture that it would escape their sight. Let those consider
this, who say that they are unable to form any idea of the soul without
the body, and then they will see whether they can form any adequate
idea of what it is when it is in the body. For my own part, when I
reflect on the nature of the soul, it appears to me a far more
perplexing and obscure question to determine what is its character
while it is in the body--a place which, as it were, does not belong to
it--than to imagine what it is when it leaves it, and has arrived at
the free aether, which is, if I may so say, its proper, its own
habitation. For unless we are to say that we cannot apprehend the
character or nature of anything which we have never seen, we certainly
may be able to form some notion of God, and of the divine soul when
released from the body. Dicaearchus, indeed, and Aristoxenus, because it
was hard to understand the existence and substance and nature of the
soul, asserted that there was no such thing as a soul at all. It is,
indeed, the most difficult thing imaginable to discern the soul by the
soul. And this, doubtless, is the meaning of the precept of Apollo,
which advises every one to know himself. For I do not apprehend the
meaning of the God to have been that we should understand our members,
our stature, and form; for we are not merely bodies; nor, when I say
these things to you, am I addressing myself to your body: when,
therefore, he says, "Know yourself," he says this, "Inform yourself of
the nature of your soul;" for the body is but a kind of vessel, or
receptacle of the soul, and whatever your soul does is your own act. To
know the soul, then, unless it had been divine, would not have been a
precept of such excellent wisdom as to be attributed to a God; but even
though the soul should not know of what nature itself is, will you say
that it does not even perceive that it exists at all, or that it has
motion? On which is founded that reason of Plato's, which is explained
by Socrates in the Phaedrus, and inserted by me, in my sixth book of the
Republic.
XXIII. "That which is always moved is eternal; but that which gives
motion to something else, and is moved itself by some external cause,
when that motion ceases, must necessarily cease to exist. That,
therefore, alone, which is self-moved, because it is never forsaken by
itself, can never cease to be moved. Besides, it is the beginning and
principle of motion to everything else; but whatever is a principle has
no beginning, for all things arise from that principle, and it cannot
itself owe its rise to anything else; for then it would not be a
principle did it proceed from anything else. But if it has no
beginning, it never will have any end; for a principle which is once
extinguished cannot itself be restored by anything else, nor can it
produce anything else from itself; inasmuch as all things must
necessarily arise from some first cause. And thus it comes about that
the first principle of motion must arise from that thing which is
itself moved by itself; and that can neither have a beginning nor an
end of its existence, for otherwise the whole heaven and earth would be
overset, and all nature would stand still, and not be able to acquire
any force by the impulse of which it might be first set in motion.
Seeing, then, that it is clear that whatever moves itself is eternal,
can there be any doubt that the soul is so? For everything is inanimate
which is moved by an external force; but everything which is animate is
moved by an interior force, which also belongs to itself. For this is
the peculiar nature and power of the soul; and if the soul be the only
thing in the whole world which has the power of self-motion, then
certainly it never had a beginning, and therefore it is eternal."
Now, should all the lower order of philosophers (for so I think they
may be called who dissent from Plato and Socrates and that school)
unite their force, they never would be able to explain anything so
elegantly as this, nor even to understand how ingeniously this
conclusion is drawn. The soul, then, perceives itself to have motion,
and at the same time that it gets that perception, it is sensible that
it derives that motion from its own power, and not from the agency of
another; and it is impossible that it should ever forsake itself. And
these premises compel you to allow its eternity, unless you have
something to say against them.
_A._ I should myself be very well pleased not to have even a thought
arise in my mind against them, so much am I inclined to that opinion.
XXIV. _M._ Well, then, I appeal to you, if the arguments which prove
that there is something divine in the souls of men are not equally
strong? But if I could account for the origin of these divine
properties, then I might also be able to explain how they might cease
to exist; for I think I can account for the manner in which the blood,
and bile, and phlegm, and bones, and nerves, and veins, and all the
limbs, and the shape of the whole body, were put together and made; ay,
and even as to the soul itself, were there nothing more in it than a
principle of life, then the life of a man might be put upon the same
footing as that of a vine or any other tree, and accounted for as
caused by nature; for these things, as we say, live. Besides, if
desires and aversions were all that belonged to the soul, it would have
them only in common with the beasts; but it has, in the first place,
memory, and that, too, so infinite as to recollect an absolute
countless number of circumstances, which Plato will have to be a
recollection of a former life; for in that book which is inscribed
Menon, Socrates asks a child some questions in geometry, with reference
to measuring a square; his answers are such as a child would make, and
yet the questions are so easy, that while answering them, one by one,
he comes to the same point as if he had learned geometry. From whence
Socrates would infer that learning is nothing more than recollection;
and this topic he explains more accurately in the discourse which he
held the very day he died; for he there asserts that, any one, who
seeming to be entirely illiterate, is yet able to answer a question
well that is proposed to him, does in so doing manifestly show that he
is not learning it then, but recollecting it by his memory. Nor is it
to be accounted for in any other way, how children come to have notions
of so many and such important things as are implanted, and, as it were,
sealed up, in their minds (which the Greeks call [Greek: ennoiai]),
unless the soul, before it entered the body, had been well stored with
knowledge. And as it had no existence at all (for this is the
invariable doctrine of Plato, who will not admit anything to have a
real existence which has a beginning and an end, and who thinks that
that alone does really exist which is of such a character as what he
calls [Greek: eidea], and we species), therefore, being shut up in the
body, it could not while in the body discover what it knows; but it
knew it before, and brought the knowledge with it, so that we are no
longer surprised at its extensive and multifarious knowledge. Nor does
the soul clearly discover its ideas at its first resort to this abode
to which it is so unaccustomed, and which is in so disturbed a state;
but after having refreshed and recollected itself, it then by its
memory recovers them; and, therefore, to learn implies nothing more
than to recollect. But I am in a particular manner surprised at memory.
For what is that faculty by which we remember? what is its force? what
its nature? I am not inquiring how great a memory Simonides[13] may be
said to have had, or Theodectes,[14] or that Cineas[15] who was sent to
Rome as ambassador from Pyrrhus; or, in more modern times,
Charmadas;[16] or, very lately, Metrodorus[17] the Scepsian, or our own
contemporary Hortensius[18]: I am speaking of ordinary memory, and
especially of those men who are employed in any important study or art,
the great capacity of whose minds it is hard to estimate, such numbers
of things do they remember.
XXV. Should you ask what this leads to, I think we may understand what
that power is, and whence we have it. It certainly proceeds neither
from the heart, nor from the blood, nor from the brain, nor from atoms;
whether it be air or fire, I know not, nor am I, as those men are,
ashamed, in cases where I am ignorant, to own that I am so. If in any
other obscure matter I were able to assert anything positively, then I
would swear that the soul, be it air or fire, is divine. Just think, I
beseech you: can you imagine this wonderful power of memory to be sown
in or to be a part of the composition of the earth, or of this dark and
gloomy atmosphere? Though you cannot apprehend what it is, yet you see
what kind of thing it is, or if you do not quite see that, yet you
certainly see how great it is. What, then? Shall we imagine that there
is a kind of measure in the soul, into which, as into a vessel, all
that we remember is poured? That indeed is absurd; for how shall we
form any idea of the bottom, or of the shape or fashion of such a soul