Part 19 (1/2)
_M._ To teach you, if I can, that death is not only no evil, but a good.
_A._ I do not insist on that, but should be glad to hear you argue it, for even though you should not prove your point, yet you will prove that death is no evil: but I will not interrupt you, I would rather hear a continued discourse.
_M._ What, if I should ask you a question, would you not answer?
_A._ That would look like pride; but I would rather you should not ask but where necessity requires.
IX. _M._ I will comply with your wishes, and explain as well as I can, what you require; but not with any idea that, like the Pythian Apollo, what I say must needs be certain and indisputable; but as a mere man, endeavouring to arrive at probabilities by conjecture, for I have no ground to proceed further on than probability. Those men may call their statements indisputable who a.s.sert that what they say can be perceived by the senses, and who proclaim themselves philosophers by profession.
_A._ Do as you please, we are ready to hear you.
_M._ The first thing, then, is to inquire what death, which seems to be so well understood, really is; for some imagine death to be the departure of the soul from the body; others think that there is no such departure, but that soul and body perish together, and that, the soul is extinguished with the body. Of those who think that the soul does depart from the body, some believe in its immediate dissolution; others fancy that it continues to exist for a time; and others believe that it lasts for ever. There is great dispute even what the soul is, where it is, and whence it is derived: with some, the heart itself (cor) seems to be the soul, hence the expressions, _excordes_, _vecordes_, _concordes_; and that prudent Nasica, who was twice consul, was called Corculus, _i.e._ wise-heart; and aelius s.e.xtus is described as _Egregie cordatus h.o.m.o, catus aeliu' s.e.xtus_-that great _wise-hearted_ man, sage aelius. Empedocles imagines the blood, which is suffused over the heart, to be the soul; to others, a certain part of the brain seems to be the throne of the soul; others neither allow the heart itself, nor any portion of the brain, to be the soul; but think either that the heart is the seat and abode of the soul; or else that the brain is so. Some would have the soul, or spirit, to be the _anima_, as our schools generally agree; and indeed the name signifies as much, for we use the expressions _animam agere_, to live; _animam efflare_, to expire; _animosi_, men of spirit; _bene animati_, men of right feeling; _exanimi sententia_, according to our real opinion-and the very word _animus_ is derived from _anima_. Again, the soul seems to Zeno the Stoic to be fire.
X. But what I have said as to the heart, the blood, the brain, air, or fire being the soul, are common opinions: the others are only entertained by individuals; and indeed there were many amongst the ancients who held singular opinions on this subject, of whom the latest was Aristoxenus, a man who was both a musician and a philosopher; he maintained a certain straining of the body, like what is called harmony in music, to be the soul; and believed that, from the figure and nature of the whole body, various motions are excited, as sounds are from an instrument. He adhered steadily to his system, and yet he said something, the nature of which, whatever it was, had been detailed and explained a great while before by Plato. Xenocrates denied that the soul had any figure, or anything like a body; but said it was a number, the power of which, as Pythagoras had fancied, some ages before, was the greatest in nature: his master, Plato, imagined a three-fold soul; a dominant portion of which, that is to say, reason, he had lodged in the head, as in a tower; and the other two parts, namely, anger and desire, he made subservient to this one, and allotted them distinct abodes, placing anger in the breast, and desire under the praecordia. But Dicaearchus, in that discourse of some learned disputants, held at Corinth, which he details to us in three books; in the first book introduces many speakers; and in the other two he introduces a certain Pherecrates, an old man of Phthia, who, as he said, was descended from Deucalion; a.s.serting, that there is in fact no such thing at all as a soul; but that it is a name, without a meaning; and that it is idle to use the expression, ”animals,” or ”animated beings;” that neither men nor beasts have minds or souls; but that all that power, by which we act or perceive, is equally infused into every living creature, and is inseparable from the body, for if it were not, it would be nothing; nor is there anything whatever really existing except body, which is a single and simple thing, so fas.h.i.+oned, as to live and have its sensations in consequence of the regulations of nature. Aristotle, a man superior to all others, both in genius and industry (I always except Plato), after having embraced these four known sorts of 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 ??de????a, as if it were a certain continued and perpetual motion.
XI. If I have not forgotten anything unintentionally, these are the princ.i.p.al 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sistance? 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 pa.s.s, I agree with it whilst 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, a.s.sert 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 dest.i.tute 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 G.o.ds now lives;
as Ennius saith, agreeing with the common belief; hence, too Hercules is considered so great and propitious a G.o.d amongst the Greeks, and from them he was introduced among us, and his wors.h.i.+p 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 ill.u.s.trious fame we receive Castor and Pollux as G.o.ds, 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 a.s.serted, it would appear that even those who are called their princ.i.p.al G.o.ds, were taken from among men up into heaven.