Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
which, foreseeing how happy it is to die, they leave this world with
singing and joy. Nor can any one doubt of this, unless it happens to us
who think with care and anxiety about the soul (as is often the case
with those who look earnestly at the setting sun), to lose the sight of
it entirely; and so the mind's eye, viewing itself, sometimes grows
dull, and for that reason we become remiss in our contemplation. Thus
our reasoning is borne about, harassed with doubts and anxieties, not
knowing how to proceed, but measuring back again those dangerous tracts
which it has passed, like a boat tossed about on the boundless ocean.
But these reflections are of long standing, and borrowed from the
Greeks. But Cato left this world in such a manner as if he were
delighted that he had found an opportunity of dying; for that God who
presides in us forbids our departure hence without his leave. But when
God himself has given us a just cause, as formerly he did to Socrates,
and lately to Cato, and often to many others--in such a case, certainly
every man of sense would gladly exchange this darkness for that light:
not that he would forcibly break from the chains that held him, for
that would be against the law; but, like a man released from prison by
a magistrate or some lawful authority, so he too would walk away, being
released and discharged by God. For the whole life of a philosopher is,
as the same philosopher says, a meditation on death.
XXXI. For what else is it that we do, when we call off our minds from
pleasure, that is to say, from our attention to the body, from the
managing our domestic estate, which is a sort of handmaid and servant
of the body, or from duties of a public nature, or from all other
serious business whatever? What else is it, I say, that we do, but
invite the soul to reflect on itself? oblige it to converse with
itself, and, as far as possible, break off its acquaintance with the
body? Now, to separate the soul from the body, is to learn to die, and
nothing else whatever. Wherefore take my advice; and let us meditate on
this, and separate ourselves as far as possible from the body, that is
to say, let us accustom ourselves to die. This will be enjoying a life
like that of heaven even while we remain on earth; and when we are
carried thither and released from these bonds, our souls will make
their progress with more rapidity; for the spirit which has always been
fettered by the bonds of the body, even when it is disengaged, advances
more slowly, just as those do who have worn actual fetters for many
years: but when we have arrived at this emancipation from the bonds of
the body, then indeed we shall begin to live, for this present life is
really death, which I could say a good deal in lamentation for if I
chose.
_A._ You have lamented it sufficiently in your book on Consolation; and
when I read that, there is nothing which I desire more than to leave
these things; but that desire is increased a great deal by what I have
just heard.
_M._ The time will come, and that soon, and with equal certainty,
whether you hang back or press forward; for time flies. But death is so
far from being an evil, as it lately appeared to you, that I am
inclined to suspect, not that there is no other thing which is an evil
to man, but rather that there is nothing else which is a real good to
him; if, at least, it is true that we become thereby either Gods
ourselves, or companions of the Gods. However, this is not of so much
consequence, as there are some of us here who will not allow this. But
I will not leave off discussing this point till I have convinced you
that death can, upon no consideration whatever, be an evil.
_A._ How can it, after what I now know?
_M._ Do you ask how it can? There are crowds of arguers who contradict
this; and those not only Epicureans, whom I regard very little, but,
somehow or other, almost every man of letters; and, above all, my
favorite Dicaearchus is very strenuous in opposing the immortality of
the soul: for he has written three books, which are entitled Lesbiacs,
because the discourse was held at Mitylene, in which he seeks to prove
that souls are mortal. The Stoics, on the other hand, allow us as long
a time for enjoyment as the life of a raven; they allow the soul to
exist a great while, but are against its eternity.
XXXII. Are you willing to hear then why, even allowing this, death
cannot be an evil.
_A._ As you please; but no one shall drive me from my belief in
mortality.
_M._ I commend you, indeed, for that; though we should not be too
confident in our belief of anything; for we are frequently disturbed by
some subtle conclusion. We give way and change our opinions even in
things that are more evident than this; for in this there certainly is
some obscurity. Therefore, should anything of this kind happen, it is
well to be on our guard.
_A._ You are right in that; but I will provide against any accident.
_M._ Have you any objection to our dismissing our friends the
Stoics--those, I mean, who allow that the souls exist after they have
left the body, but yet deny that they exist forever?
_A._ We certainly may dismiss the consideration of those men who admit
that which is the most difficult point in the whole question, namely,
that a soul can exist independently of the body, and yet refuse to
grant that which is not only very easy to believe, but which is even
the natural consequence of the concession which they have made--that if
they can exist for a length of time; they most likely do so forever.
_M._ You take it right; that is the very thing. Shall we give,
therefore, any credit to Pauaestius, when he dissents from his master,
Plato? whom he everywhere calls divine, the wisest, the holiest of men,
the Homer of philosophers, and whom he opposes in nothing except this
single opinion of the soul's immortality: for he maintains what nobody
denies, that everything which has been generated will perish, and that
even souls are generated, which he thinks appears from their
resemblance to those of the men who begot them; for that likeness is as
apparent in the turn of their minds as in their bodies. But he brings
another reason--that there is nothing which is sensible of pain which
is not also liable to disease; but whatever is liable to disease must
be liable to death. The soul is sensible of pain, therefore it is
liable to perish.
XXXIII. These arguments may be refuted; for they proceed from his not
knowing that, while discussing the subject of the immortality of the
soul, he is speaking of the intellect, which is free from all turbid
motion; but not of those parts of the mind in which those disorders,
anger and lust, have their seat, and which he whom he is opposing, when
he argues thus, imagines to be distinct and separate from the mind. Now
this resemblance is more remarkable in beasts, whose souls are void of
reason. But the likeness in men consists more in the configuration of
the bodies: and it is of no little consequence in what bodies the soul
is lodged; for there are many things which depend on the body that give
an edge to the soul, many which blunt it. Aristotle, indeed, says that
all men of great genius are melancholy; so that I should not have been
displeased to have been somewhat duller than I am. He instances many,
and, as if it were matter of fact, brings his reasons for it. But if
the power of those things that proceed from the body be so great as to
influence the mind (for they are the things, whatever they are, that
occasion this likeness), still that does not necessarily prove why a
similitude of souls should be generated. I say nothing about cases of
unlikeness. I wish Panaetius could be here: he lived with Africanus. I
would inquire of him which of his family the nephew of Africanus's
brother was like? Possibly he may in person have resembled his father;
but in his manners he was so like every profligate, abandoned man, that
it was impossible to be more so. Whom did the grandson of P. Crassus,
that wise and eloquent and most distinguished man, resemble? Or the
relations and sons of many other excellent men, whose names there is no
occasion to mention? But what are we doing? Have we forgotten that our
purpose was, when we had sufficiently spoken on the subject of the
immortality of the soul, to prove that, even if the soul did perish,
there would be, even then, no evil in death?
_A._ I remembered it very well; but I had no dislike to your digressing
a little from your original design, while you were talking of the
soul's immortality.
_M._ I perceive you have sublime thoughts, and are eager to mount up to
heaven.
XXXIV. I am not without hopes myself that such may be our fate. But
admit what they assert--that the soul does not continue to exist after
death.
_A._ Should it be so, I see that we are then deprived of the hopes of a
happier life.
_M._ But what is there of evil in that opinion? For let the soul perish
as the body: is there any pain, or indeed any feeling at all, in the
body after death? No one, indeed asserts that; though Epicurus charges
Democritus with saying so; but the disciples of Democritus deny it. No
sense, therefore, remains in the soul; for the soul is nowhere. Where,
then, is the evil? for there is nothing but these two things. Is it
because the mere separation of the soul and body cannot be effected
without pain? But even should that be granted, how small a pain must
that be! Yet I think that it is false, and that it is very often
unaccompanied by any sensation at all, and sometimes even attended with
pleasure; but certainly the whole must be very trifling, whatever it
is, for it is instantaneous. What makes us uneasy, or rather gives us
pain, is the leaving all the good things of life. But just consider if
I might not more properly say, leaving the evils of life; only there is
no reason for my now occupying myself in bewailing the life of man, and
yet I might, with very good reason. But what occasion is there, when
what I am laboring to prove is that no one is miserable after death, to
make life more miserable by lamenting over it? I have done that in the
book which I wrote, in order to comfort myself as well as I could. If,
then, our inquiry is after truth, death withdraws us from evil, not
from good. This subject is indeed so copiously handled by Hegesias, the
Cyrenaic philosopher, that he is said to have been forbidden by Ptolemy
from delivering his lectures in the schools, because some who heard him
made away with themselves. There is, too, an epigram of Callimachus[20]
on Cleombrotus of Ambracia, who, without any misfortune having befallen
him, as he says, threw himself from a wall into the sea, after he had
read a book of Plato's. The book I mentioned of that Hegesias is called
[Greek: Apokarterteron], or "A Man who starves himself," in which a man
is represented as killing himself by starvation, till he is prevented
by his friends, in reply to whom he reckons up all the miseries of
human life. I might do the same, though not so fully as he, who thinks
it not worth any man's while to live. I pass over others. Was it even
worth my while to live, for, had I died before I was deprived of the
comforts of my own family, and of the honors which I received for my
public services, would not death have taken me from the evils of life
rather than from its blessings?
XXXV. Mention, therefore, some one, who never knew distress; who never
received any blow from fortune. The great Metellus had four
distinguished sons; but Priam had fifty, seventeen of whom were born to
him by his lawful wife. Fortune had the same power over both, though
she exercised it but on one; for Metellus was laid on his funeral pile
by a great company of sons and daughters, grandsons, and