Cicero then proceeds to exhaust the whole Platonic reasoning for the soul’s immortality, and its ascent to the celestial regions, where it will explore and traverse all space—receiving, in its boundless flight, infinite enjoyment. From his system of future existence, Cicero excludes all the gloomy fables feigned of the descent to Avernus, the pale murky re[pg 241]gions, the sluggish stream, the gaunt hound, and the grim boatman. But even if death is to be considered as the total extinction of sense and feeling, our author still denies that it should be accounted an evil. This view he strongly supports, from a consideration of the insignificance of those pleasures of which we are deprived, and beautifully illustrates, from the fate of many characters distinguished in history, who, by an earlier death, would have avoided the greatest ills of life. Had Metellus died sooner, he would not have laid his sons on the funeral pile—had Pompey expired, when the inhabitants of all Italy were decked with wreaths and garlands, as testimonies of joy for his restoration to health from the fever with which he was seized in Campania, he would not have taken arms unprepared for the contest, nor fled his home and country; nor, having lost a Roman army, would he have fallen on a foreign shore by the sword of a slave[432]. He completes these illustrations by reference to his own misfortunes; and the arguments which he deduced from them, received, in a few months, a strong and melancholy confirmation.—“Etiam ne mors nobis expedit? qui et domesticis et forensibus solatiis ornamentisque privati, certe, si ante occidissemus, mors nos a malis, non a bonis abstraxisset.”
The same unphilosophical guest, who had asserted that death was a disadvantage, and whom Cicero, in charity to his memory, does not name, is doomed, in the second dialogue, De Tolerando Dolore, to announce the still more untenable proposition, that pain is an evil. But Cicero demonstrated, that its sufferings may be overcome, not by remembrance of the silly Epicurean maxims,—“Short if severe, and light if long,” but by fortitude and patience; and he accordingly censures those philosophers, who have represented pain in too formidable colours, and reproaches those poets, who have described their heroes as yielding to its influence.
In the third book, De Ægritudine Lenienda, the author treats of the best alleviations of sorrow. To foresee calamities, and be prepared for them, is either to repel their assaults, or to mitigate their severity. After they have occurred, we ought to remember, that grieving is a folly which cannot avail us, and that misfortunes are not peculiar to ourselves, but are the common lot of humanity. The sorrow of which Cicero here treats, seems chiefly that occasioned by deprivation of friends and relatives, to which the recent loss of his daughter Tullia, [pg 242]and the composition of his treatise De Consolatione, had probably directed his attention.
The fourth book treats De Reliquis animi Perturbationibus, including all those passions and vexations, which the author considers as diseases of the soul. These he classes and defines—pointing out, at the same time, the remedy or relief appropriate to each disquietude. In the fifth book, in which he attempts to prove that virtue alone is sufficient for perfect felicity—Virtutem ad beate vivendum se ipsâ esse contentam—he coincides more completely with the opinions of the Stoics, than in his work De Finibus, where he seems to assent, to the Peripatetic doctrine, “that though virtue be the chief good, the perfection of the other qualities of nature enters into the composition of supreme happiness.”
In these Tusculan Disputations, which treat of the subjects most important and subservient to the happiness of life, the whole discourse is in the mouth of Tully himself;—the Auditor, whose initial letter some editors have whimsically mistaken for that of Atticus, being a mere man of straw. He is set up to announce what is to be represented as an untenable proposition: but after this duty is performed, no English hearer or Welsh uncle could have listened with less dissent and interruption. The great object of Cicero’s continued lectures, is by fortifying the mind with practical and philosophical lessons, adapted to the circumstances of life, to elevate us above the influence of all its passions and pains.
The first conference, which is intended to diminish the dread of death, is the best; but they are all agreeable, chiefly from the frequent allusion to ancient fable, the events of Greek and Roman history, and the memorable sayings of heroes and sages. There is something in the very names of such men as Plato and Epaminondas, which bestows a sanctity and fervour on the page. The references also to the ancient Latin poets, and the quotations from their works, particularly the tragic dramas, give a beautiful richness to the whole composition; and even on the driest topics, the mind is relieved by the recurrence of extracts characteristic of the vigour of the Roman Melpomene, who, though unfit, as in Greece,
“To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,”
long trod the stage with dignity and elevation.
Paradoxa.—This tract contains a defence of six peculiar opinions or paradoxes of the Stoics, somewhat of the description of those which Cato was wont to promulgate in the Senate. These are, that what is morally fitting (honestum) is [pg 243]alone good,—that the virtuous can want nothing for complete happiness—that there are no degrees in crimes or good actions—that every fool is mad—that the wise alone are wealthy—that the wise man alone is free, and that every fool is a slave. These absurd and quibbling positions the author supports, in a manner certainly more ingenious than philosophical. The Paradoxa, indeed, seem to have been written as a sort of exercise of rhetorical wit, rather than as a serious disquisition in philosophy; and each paradox is personally applied or directed against an individual. There is no precision whatever in the definitions; the author plays on the ambiguity of the words, bonum and dives, and his arguments frequently degenerate into particular examples, which are by no means adequate to support his general proposition.
De Naturâ Deorum.—Of the various philosophical works of Cicero, the most curious perhaps, and important, is that on the Nature of the Gods. It is addressed to Brutus, and is written in dialogue. This form of composition, besides the advantages already pointed out, is peculiarly fitted for subjects of delicacy and danger, where the author dreads to expose himself to reproach or persecution. On this account chiefly it seems to have been adopted by the disciples of Socrates. That philosopher had fallen a victim to popular fury,—to those imputations of impiety which have so often and so successfully been repeated against philosophers. In the schools of his disciples, a double doctrine seems to have been adopted for the purpose of escaping persecution, and Plato probably considered the form of dialogue as best calculated to secure him from the imputations of his enemies. It was thus, in later times, that Galileo endeavoured to shield himself from the attacks of error and injustice, and imagined, that by presenting his conclusions in the Platonic manner, he would shun the malignant vigilance of the Court of Inquisition[433].