M. You say, then, that they are so?
A. Yes; I say that because they no longer exist after having existed, they are miserable.
M. You do not perceive that you are asserting contradictions; for what is a greater contradiction, than that that should be not only miserable, but should have any existence at all, which does not exist? When you go out at the Capene gate and see the tombs of the Calatini, the Scipios, Servilii, and Metelli, do you look on them as miserable?
A. Because you press me with a word, henceforward I will not say they are miserable absolutely, but miserable on this account, because they have no existence.
M. You do not say, then, “M. Crassus is miserable,” but only “Miserable M. Crassus.”
A. Exactly so.
M. As if it did not follow that whatever you speak of in that manner either is or is not. Are you not acquainted with the first principles of logic? For this is the first thing they lay down, whatever is asserted (for that is the best way that occurs to me, at the moment, of rendering the Greek term ἀξίωμα; if I can think of a more accurate expression hereafter, I will use it), is asserted as being either true or false. When, therefore, you say, “Miserable M. Crassus,” you either say this, “M. Crassus is miserable,” so that some judgment may be made whether it is true or false, or you say nothing at all.
A. Well, then, I now own that the dead are not miserable, since you have drawn from me a concession that they who do not exist at all cannot be miserable. What then? We that are alive, are we not wretched, seeing we must die? for what is there agreeable in life, when we must night and day reflect that, at some time or other, we must die?
The Auditor seemed quick to agree earlier that those yet to be born are miserable, but that is always the problem with being quick to agree: we easily forget what it was that we agreed to.
I am quite sympathetic, because I still find myself doing this regularly. I begin with a grand, sweeping statement, and I cast my net wide, assuming that everything will be caught under it. Do I perhaps feel miserable at this moment? Then everything must be miserable, always and everywhere.
The problem is that I start with a conclusion, and only worry about manufacturing the premises to fit after the fact, instead of rightly working from the premises to a conclusion. I jump to the universal without considering the particulars.
Even when I realize that I have judged too hastily, I will be tempted to offer ever-narrowing conditions and qualifications to defend the original claim, until I find that I have whittled it away into nothing. I suppose I might eventually arrive where I need to be, though there are better ways to get there.
If I still insist that the dead have no existence, can I nevertheless say that they are miserable in some modified manner? Granted, they have no awareness to feel it, but might there be a way that suffering is somehow attached to them?
There comes a point when I am just playing with words. Cicero points to the basic order of logic to remove the confusion. In the simplest of terms, something either is, or it is not. For all the details or stipulations I might add, there is no in-between, and there is no having it both ways. If I keep this rule of consistency in mind, I will avoid contradictions, and I will avoid much grief.
So many of my blunders, both in theory and in practice, come from not clearly grasping the identity of the subject at hand, and yet I proceed to sloppily attach predicates to it. Where there are living attributes, there must first be living things.
Just outside the walls of ancient Rome, the Appian Way was lined with the tombs of the rich and famous. I can imagine that people had all sorts of impressions as they passed these memorials; maybe they experienced grief, or reverence, or fear, or pride, but whatever they felt proceeded from their own judgments.
They may have seen ornate structures, or read glorious epitaphs, but within those piles of stone were just ashes or bones. The estimation came from the minds of the living, not from the remains of the dead. Again, where there are living attributes, there must first be living things.
The scope has indeed been narrowed, to the point where I should be more concerned about the quality of this life, as I currently know it, before there is any speculation about what might happen when it is over. One step at a time, instead of racing to the end.
Looking only at what I am right now, is it possible to be happy, or must I always be miserable? The difficulty will be that, whatever good things may come to me during this lifetime, I am burdened by the prospect of losing them, and constantly aware that my ultimate destruction is inevitable.
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