Non Posse Suaviter Vivi Secundum Epicurum

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. II. Goodwin, William W., editor; Baxter, William, translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.

But (said he, looking upon me) I should be impertinent, should I say any thing upon this subject, when we have heard you but now discourse so fully against those that would persuade us that Epicurus’s doctrine about the soul renders men more disposed and better pleased to die than Plato’s doth. Zeuxippus therefore subjoined and said: And must our present debate be left then unfinished because of that? Or shall we be afraid to oppose that divine oracle to Epicurus? No, by no means, I said; and Empedocles tells us that

What’s very good claims to be heard twice.
Therefore we must apply ourselves again to Theon; for I think he was present at our former discourse; and moreover,
he is a young man, and needs not fear being charged by these young gentlemen with having a bad memory.

Then Theon, like one constrained, said: Well then, if you will needs have me to go on with the discourse, I will not do as you did, Aristodemus. For you were shy of repeating what this gentleman spoke, but I shall not scruple to make use of what you have said; for I think indeed you did very well divide mankind into three ranks; the first of wicked and very bad men, the second of the vulgar and common sort, and the third of good and wise men. The wicked and bad sort then, while they dread any kind of divine vengeance and punishment at all, and are by this deterred front doing mischief, and thereby enjoy the greater quiet, will live both in more pleasure and in less disturbance for it. And Epicurus is of opinion that the only proper means to keep men from doing ill is the fear of punishments. So that we should cram them with more and more superstition still, and raise up against them terrors, chasms, frights, and surmises, both from heaven and earth, if their being amazed with such things as these will make them become the more tame and gentle. For it is more for their benefit to be restrained from criminal actions by the fear of what comes after death, than to commit them and then to live in perpetual danger and fear.

As to the vulgar sort, besides their fear of what is in hell, the hope they have conceived of an eternity from the tales and fictions of the ancients, and their great desire of being, which is both the earliest and the strongest of all, exceed in pleasure and sweet content of mind that childish dread. And therefore, when they lose their children, wives or friends, they would rather have them be somewhere and still remain, though in misery, than that they should be quite destroyed, dissolved, and reduced to nothing. And they are pleased when they hear it said of

a dying person, that he goes away or departs, and such other words as intimate death to be the soul’s remove and not destruction. And they sometimes speak thus:
But I’ll even there think on my dearest friend;[*](Il. XXII. 390.)
and thus:
  • What’s your command to Hector ? Let me know;
  • Or to your dear old Priam shall I go?
    • [*](Eurip. Hecuba, 422.)
    And (there arising hereupon an erroneous deviation) they are the better pleased when they bury with their departed friends such arms, implements, or clothes as were most familiar to them in their lifetime; as Minos did the Cretan flutes with Glaucus,
    Made of the shanks of a dead brindled fawn.
    And if they do but imagine they either ask or desire any thing of them, they are glad when they give it them. Thus Periander burnt his queen’s attire with her, because he thought she had asked for it and complained she was acold. Nor doth an Aeacus, an Ascalaphus, or an Acheron much disorder them whom they have often gratified with balls, shows, and music of every sort. But now all men shrink from that face of death which carries with it insensibility, oblivion, and extinction of knowledge, as being dismal, grim, and dark. And they are discomposed when they hear it said of any one, he is perished, or he is gone, or he is no more; and they show great uneasiness when they hear such words as these:
  • Go to the wood-clad earth he must,
  • And there lie shrivelled into dust,
  • And ne’er more laugh or drink, or hear
  • The charming sounds of flute or lyre;
    • and these:
  • But from our lips the vital spirit fled
  • Returns no more to wake the silent dead.
    • [*](Il. IX. 408.)

    Wherefore they must needs cut the very throats of them that shall with Epicurus tell them, We men were born once for all, and we cannot be born twice, but our not being must last for ever. For this will bring them to slight their present good as little, or rather indeed as nothing at all compared with everlastingness, and therefore to let it pass unenjoyed and to become wholly negligent of virtue and action, as men disheartened and brought to a contempt of themselves, as being but as it were of one day’s continuance and uncertain, and born for no considerable purpose. For insensibility, dissolution, and the conceit that what hath no sense is nothing to us, do not at all abate the fear of death, but rather help to confirm it; for this very thing is it that nature most dreads,—

    But may you all return to mould and wet,[*](Il. VII. 99.)
    to wit, the dissolution of the soul into what is without knowledge or sense. Now, while Epicurus would have this to be a separation into atoms and void, he doth but further cut off all hope of immortality; to compass which (I can scarce refrain from saying) all men and women would be well contented to be worried by Cerberus, and to carry water into the tub full of holes, so they might but continue in being and not be exterminated. Though (as I said before) there are not very many that stand in fear of these things, they being but the tenets of old women and the fabulous stories of mothers and nurses,—and even they that do fear them yet believe that certain rites of initiation and purgation will relieve them, by which being cleansed they shall play and dance in hell for ever, in company with those that have the privilege of a bright light, clear air, and the use of speech,—still to be deprived of living disturbs all both young and old. For it seems that we
    Impatient love the light that shines on earth,[*](Eurip. Hippol. 193.)

    as Euripides saith. Nor are we easy or without regret when we hear this:

  • Him speaking thus th’ eternal brightness leaves,
  • Where night the wearied steeds of day receives.