The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations, of M.T. Cicero, With a Sketch of the Greek Philosophers Mentioned by · Marcus Tullius Cicero
_M._
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 neighbouring 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, aye, 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 colour, taste, heat, smell, and sound? which the soul could never know by her five messengers, unless everything was 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 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 endeavoured to convince others, and certainly to have convinced himself.
XXII. But there are many who labour 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 æther, 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. Dicæarchus, 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 Phædrus, 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; aye, 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 ἔννοιαι,) 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 εἴδεα, 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(62) may be said to have had, or Theodectes,(63) or that Cineas,(64) who was sent to Rome as ambassador from Pyrrhus, or in more modern times Charmadas;(65) or very lately, Metrodorus,(66) the Scepsian, or our own contemporary Hortensius:(67) 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 as that? and again how are we to conceive how much it is able to contain? Shall we imagine the soul to receive impressions like wax, and memory to be marks of the impressions made on the soul? What are the characters of the words, what of the facts themselves? and what again is that prodigious greatness which can give rise to impressions of so many things? What, lastly, is that power which investigates secret things, and is called invention and contrivance? Does that man seem to be compounded of this earthly, mortal, and perishing nature, who first invented names for everything, which, if you will believe Pythagoras, is the highest pitch of wisdom? or he, who collected the dispersed inhabitants of the world, and united them, in the bonds of social life? or he, who confined the sounds of the voice, which used to seem infinite, to the marks of a few letters? or he who first observed the courses of the planets, their progressive motions, their laws?
These were all great men; but they were greater still, who invented food, and raiment, and houses; who introduced civilization amongst us, and armed us against the wild beasts; by whom we were made sociable and polished, and so proceeded from the necessaries of life to its embellishments. For we have provided great entertainments for the ears, by inventing and modulating the variety and nature of sounds; we have learnt to survey the stars, not only those that are fixed, but also those which are improperly called wandering; and the man who has acquainted himself with all their revolutions and motions, is fairly considered to have a soul resembling the soul of that Being who has created those stars in the heavens: for when Archimedes described in a sphere the motions of the moon, sun, and five planets, he did the very same thing as Plato’s God, in his Timæus, who made the world; causing one revolution to adjust motions differing as much as possible in their slowness and velocity. Now, allowing that what we see in the world could not be effected without a God, Archimedes could not have imitated the same motions in his sphere without a divine soul.
XXVI. To me, indeed, it appears that even those studies which are more common and in greater esteem are not without some divine energy: so that I do not consider that a poet can produce a serious and sublime poem, without some divine impulse working on his mind; nor do I think that eloquence, abounding with sonorous words and fruitful sentences, can flow thus, without something beyond mere human power. But as to philosophy, that is the parent of all the arts, what can we call that but, as Plato says, a gift, or as I express it, an invention of the Gods? This it was which first taught us the worship of the Gods; and then led us on to justice, which arises from the human race being formed into society: and after that it imbued us with modesty, and elevation of soul. This it was which dispersed darkness from our souls, as it is dispelled from our eyes, enabling us to see all things that are above or below, the beginning, end, and middle of every thing. I am convinced entirely, that that which could effect so many and such great things must be a divine power. For what is memory of words and circumstances? what, too, is invention?
Surely they are things than which nothing greater can be conceived in a God! for I do not imagine the Gods to be delighted with nectar and ambrosia, or with Juventas presenting them with a cup; nor do I put any faith in Homer, who says that Ganymede was carried away by the Gods, on account of his beauty, in order to give Jupiter his wine. Too weak reasons for doing Laomedon such injury! These were mere inventions of Homer, who gave his Gods the imperfections of men. I would rather that he had given men the perfections of the Gods! those perfections, I mean, of uninterrupted health, wisdom, invention, memory. Therefore the soul (which is, as I say, divine,) is, as Euripides more boldly expresses it, a God. And thus, if the divinity be air or fire, the soul of man is the same: for as that celestial nature has nothing earthly or humid about it, in like manner the soul of man is also free from both these qualities: but if it is of that fifth kind of nature, first introduced by Aristotle, then both Gods and souls are of the same.
XXVII. As this is my opinion, I have explained it in these very words, in my book on Consolation.(68) The origin of the soul of man is not to be found upon earth, for there is nothing in the soul of a mixed or concrete nature, or that has any appearance of being formed or made out of the earth; nothing even humid, or airy, or fiery: for what is there in natures of that kind which has the power of memory, understanding, or thought? which can recollect the past; foresee the future; and comprehend the present? for these capabilities are confined to divine beings; nor can we discover any source from which men could derive them, but from God. There is therefore a peculiar nature and power in the soul, distinct from those natures which are more known and familiar to us. Whatever, then, that is which thinks, and which has understanding, and volition, and a principle of life, is heavenly and divine, and on that account must necessarily be eternal: nor can God himself, who is known to us, be conceived to be anything else except a soul free and unembarrassed, distinct from all mortal concretion, acquainted with everything, and giving motion to everything, and itself endued with perpetual motion.
Where the cold northern blasts, with horrid sound, Harden to ice the snowy cover’d ground,— the other, towards the south pole, is unknown to us; but is called by the Greeks ἀντίχθονα: the other parts are uncultivated, because they are either frozen with cold, or burnt up with heat; but where we dwell, it never fails in its season, To yield a placid sky, to bid the trees Assume the lively verdure of their leaves: The vine to bud, and, joyful in its shoots, Foretell the approaching vintage of its fruits: The ripen’d corn to sing, whilst all around Full riv’lets glide; and flowers deck the ground:— then the multitude of cattle, fit part for food, part for tilling the ground, others for carrying us, or for clothing us; and man himself, made as it were on purpose to contemplate the heavens and the Gods, and to pay adoration to them; lastly, the whole earth, and wide extending seas, given to man’s use. When we view these, and numberless other things, can we doubt that they have some being who presides over them, or has made them (if, indeed, they have been made, as is the opinion of Plato, or if, as Aristotle thinks, they are eternal), or who at all events is the regulator of so immense a fabric and so great a blessing to men? Thus, though you see not the soul of man, as you see not the Deity, yet, as by the contemplation of his works you are led to acknowledge a God, so you must own the divine power of the soul, from its remembering things, from its invention, from the quickness of its motion, and from all the beauty of virtue. Where, then, is it seated, you will say?
XXIX. In my opinion it is seated in the head, and I can bring you reasons for my adopting that opinion. At present, let the soul reside where it will, you certainly have one in you. Should you ask what its nature is? It has one peculiarly its own; but admitting it to consist of fire, or air, it does not affect the present question; only observe this, that as you are convinced there is a God, though you are ignorant where he resides, and what shape he is of; in like manner you ought to feel assured that you have a soul, though you cannot satisfy yourself of the place of its residence, nor its form. In our knowledge of the soul, unless we are grossly ignorant of natural philosophy, we cannot but be satisfied that it has nothing but what is simple, unmixed, uncompounded, and single; and if this is admitted, then it cannot be separated, nor divided, nor dispersed, nor parted, and therefore it cannot perish; for to perish implies a parting asunder, a division, a disunion of those parts which, whilst it subsisted, were held together by some band; and it was because he was influenced by these and similar reasons that Socrates neither looked out for anybody to plead for him when he was accused, nor begged any favour from his judges, but maintained a manly freedom, which was the effect not of pride, but of the true greatness of his soul: and on the last day of his life, he held a long discourse on this subject; and a few days before, when he might have been easily freed from his confinement, he refused to be so, and when he had almost actually hold of that deadly cup, he spoke with the air of a man not forced to die, but ascending into heaven.
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