The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations Part 18

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. Cra.s.sus, 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 a.s.sembly. 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?(55)

_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 Cra.s.sus 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 honour; 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 a.s.serting contradictions; for what is a greater contradiction, than that they 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. Cra.s.sus is miserable," but only "Miserable M. Cra.s.sus."

_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 a.s.serted, (for that is the best way that occurs to me, at the moment, of rendering the Greek term, ????a, if I can think of a more accurate expression hereafter I will use it,) is a.s.serted as being either true or false. When, therefore, you say, "Miserable M. Cra.s.sus," you either say this, "M.

Cra.s.sus 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, cannot 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,(56) 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?