Epicurus. By many arguments already laid down: then by thinking that some perhaps, in almost every age, have been timid and delicate as Ternissa; and yet have slept soundly, have felt no parent’s or friend’s tear upon their faces, no throb against their breasts: in short, have been in the calmest of all possible conditions, while those around were in the most deplorable and desperate.
Ternissa. It would pain me to die, if it were only at the idea that any one I love would grieve too much for me.
Epicurus. Let the loss of our friends be our only grief, and the apprehension of displeasing them our only fear.
Leontion. No apostrophes! no interjections! Your argument was unsound; your means futile.
Epicurus. Tell me, then, whether the horse of a rider on the road should not be spurred forward if he started at a shadow.
Leontion. Yes.
Epicurus. I thought so: it would, however, be better to guide him quietly up to it, and to show him that it was one. Death is less than a shadow: it represents nothing, even imperfectly.
Leontion. Then at the best what is it? why care about it, think about it, or remind us that it must befall us? Would you take the same trouble, when you see my hair entwined with ivy, to make me remember that, although the leaves are green and pliable, the stem is fragile and rough, and that before I go to bed I shall have many knots and entanglements to extricate? Let me have them; but let me not hear of them until the time is come.
Epicurus. I would never think of death as an embarrassment, but as a blessing.
Ternissa. How? a blessing?