Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, On the Nature of the Gods, and On the Commonwealth

THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.

imagining them deprived of the conveniences of life? Take away this opinion, and you remove with it all grief; for no one is afflicted merely on account of a loss sustained by himself. Perhaps we may be sorry and grieve a little; but that bitter lamentation and those mournful tears have their origin in our apprehensions that he whom we loved is deprived of all the advantages of life and is sensible of his loss. And we are led to this opinion by nature, without any arguments or any instruction.
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XIV. But the greatest proof of all is that nature herself gives a silent judgment in favor of the immortality of the soul, inasmuch as all are anxious, and that to a great degree, about things which concern the future:

as Statius says in his Synephebi. What is his object in doing so, except that he is interested in posterity? Shall the industrious farmer, then, plant trees the fruit of which he shall never see? And shall not the great man establish laws, institutions, and a republic? What does the procreation of children imply, and our care to continue our names, and our adoptions, and our scrupulous exactness in drawing up wills, and the inscriptions on monuments, and panegyrics, but that our thoughts run on the future? There is no doubt but a judgment may be formed of nature in general by looking at each nature in its most perfect specimens; [and what is a more perfect specimen of a man than those who look on themselves as born for the assistance, the protection, and the preservation of others? Hercules has gone to heaven; he never would have gone there had he not, while among men, made that road for himself.] These things are of old date and have, besides, the sanction of universal religion.
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XV. What will you say? What do you imagine that so many and such great men of our republic, who have sacrificed their lives for its good, expected? Do you believe that they thought their names would not continue beyond their lives? None ever encountered death for their country but under a firm persuasion of immortality! ✓ Themistocles might have lived at his ease; so might Epaminondas; and, not to look abroad and among the ancients for instances, so might I myself.