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.

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 the things which
concern futurity:

One plants what future ages shall enjoy,

as Statius saith in his Synephebi. What is his object in doing so,
except that he is interested in posterity? Shall the industrious
husbandman, then, plant trees the fruit of which he shall never see?
And shall not the great man found 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 futurity? There is no doubt but a judgment may be
formed of nature in general, from looking at each nature in its most
perfect specimens; and what is a more perfect specimen of a man than
those are 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 thither 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.

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 that their names should 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. But, somehow
or other there clings to our minds a certain presage of future ages;
and this both exists most firmly, and appears most clearly, in men of
the loftiest genius and greatest souls. Take away this, and who would
be so mad as to spend his life amidst toils and dangers?