om the universal divine mind. Moreover, the
arguments were conclusive to me which Socrates delivered on the last
day of his life concerning the immortality of the soul--he who was
pronounced by the oracle of Apollo the wisest of all men. But why say
more? I have thus persuaded myself, such is my belief; that since such
is the activity of our souls, so tenacious their memory of things past
and their sagacity regarding things future, so many arts, so many
sciences, so many discoveries, that the nature which comprizes these
qualities can not be mortal; and since the mind is ever in action and
has no source of motion, because it moves itself, I believe that it
never will find any end of motion, because it never will part from
itself; and that since the nature of the soul is uncompounded, and has
not in itself any admixture heterogeneous and dissimilar to itself, I
maintain that it can not undergo dissolution; and if this be not
possible, it can not perish; and it is a strong argument that men know
very many things before they are born, since when mere boys, while
they are learning difficult subjects, they so quickly catch up
numberless ideas, that they seem not to be learning them then for the
first time, but to remember them, and to be calling them to
recollection. Thus did our Plato argue....

Let me, if you please, revert to my own views. No one will ever
persuade me that either your father, Paulus, or two grandfathers,
Paulus and Africanus, or the father of Africanus, or his uncle, or the
many distinguished men whom it is unnecessary to recount, aimed at
such great exploits as might reach to the recollection of posterity
had they not perceived in their mind that posterity belonged to them.
Do you suppose, to boast a little of myself, after the manner of old
men, that I should have undergone such great toils, by day and night,
at home and in service, had I thought to limit my glory by the same
bounds as my life? Would it not have been far better to pass an easy
and quiet life without any toil or struggle? But I know not how my
soul, stretching upward, has ever looked forward to posterity, as if,
when it had departed from life, then at last it would begin to live.
And, indeed, unless this were the case, that souls were immortal, the
souls of the noblest of men would not aspire above all things to an
immortality of glory.

Why need I adduce that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest
equanimity, the most foolish with