Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero
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page 49 of 604 (08%)
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similitude of souls should be generated. I say nothing about cases of
unlikeness. I wish Panætius 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 |
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