But his soul not deserting me, but oft looking
back, no doubt departed to these regions whither it saw that I myself was
destined to come. Which, though a distress to me, I seemed patiently to
endure: not that I bore it with indifference, but I comforted myself with
the recollection that the separation and distance between us would not
continue long. For these reasons, O Scipio (since you said that you with
Laelius were accustomed to wonder at this), old age is tolerable to me,
and not only not irksome, but even delightful. And if I am wrong in this,
that I believe the souls of men to be immortal, I willingly delude myself:
nor do I desire that this mistake, in which I take pleasure, should be
wrested from me as long as I live; but if I, when dead, shall have no
consciousness, as some narrow-minded philosophers imagine, I do not fear
lest dead philosophers should ridicule this my delusion."
Nor can I omit the striking passage in the _Apology_, when pleading before
the people of Athens, Socrates says, "Let us reflect in another way, and
we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for
one of two things--either death is a state of nothingness and utter
unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the
soul from this world to another.
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