eyes of mankind are turned to him. much. But here is the summit. does this day.-Burke. He may live long, he may do He never can exceed what he CICERO, pro Marcello. § 4-12. Pro Balbo. § 9, 10. PROGRESS OF JUSTICE SLOW COMPARED WITH THAT OF CRIME. "Pede pana claudo." 35 NOW proceed, my lords, to the next recriminatory charge, I which is delay. I confess I am not astonished at this charge. From the first records of human impatience down to the present time it has been complained that the march of violence and oppression is rapid; but that the progress of remedial and vindictive justice, even the divine, has almost always favoured the appearance of being languid and sluggish. Something of this is owing to the very nature and constitution of human affairs; because as justice is a circumspect, cautious, scrutinizing, balancing principle, full of doubt even of itself, and fearful of doing wrong even to the greatest wrong-doers, in the nature of things its movements must be slow in comparison with the headlong rapidity with which avarice, ambition, and revenge pounce down upon the devoted prey of those violent and destructive passions. And indeed, my lords, the disproportion between crime and justice, when seen in the particular acts of either, would be so much to the advantage of crimes and criminals, that we should find it difficult to defend laws and tribunals (especially in great and arduous cases like this) if we did not look not to the immediate, not to the retrospective, but to the provident operation. of justice. Its chief operation is in its future example; and this turns the balance, upon the total effect, in favour of vindictive justice, and in some measure reconciles a pious and humble mind to this great mysterious dispensation of the world. CICERO, pro Milone. § 81-85. De Officiis. ii. 40, 897. THE SPEAKER, HIS END BEING NEAR, DECLARES HIS DETERMINATION TO SPEAK THE TRUTH, AND ΤΟ HOLD HIMSELF STILL RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS OPINIONS AND ACTIONS. IN N this crisis I must hold my tongue, or I must speak with freedom. Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever; but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure that he may speak it the longer. But as the same rules do not hold in all cases, what would be right for you, who may presume on a series of years before you, would have no sense for me, who cannot, without absurdity, count on six months of life. What I say, I must say at once. Whatever I write is in its nature testamentary. It may have the weakness, but it has the sincerity of a dying declaration. For the few days I have to linger here I am removed completely from the busy scene of the world; but I hold myself to be still responsible for everything that I have done whilst I continued on the place of action. If the rawest tyro in politics has been influenced by the authority of my grey hairs, and led by anything in my speeches or my writings, to enter on this war, he has a right to call upon me to know why I have changed my opinions, or why, when those I voted with have adopted better notions, I persevere in exploded error. SENECA, Epist. lxxvii. CICERO, Philipp. ii. § 118. xii. § 17, 24, 29, 30. PART IV. PHILOSOPHICA L. THE CONDITION OF IMMORTALITY A SOURCE OF THE HE ancient and modern Epicureans provoke my indignation when they boast, as a mighty acquisition, their pretended certainty that the body and the soul die together. If they had this certainty, then, would the discovery be so very comfortable? When I consult my reason, I am ready to ask these men, as Tully asked their predecessors, where that old doating woman can be found who trembles at the "pit of Tophet" and the "fires of hell," and all the infernal hobgoblins, furies with their snakes and whips, devils with their cloven feet and lighted torches? Was there need of so much philosophy to keep these mighty geniuses from living under the same terrors? I would ask, further, is the mean between atheism and superstition so hard to find? Or, may not these men serve as examples to prove what Plutarch affirms, "that superstition leads to atheism"? For me, who am no philosopher, nor presume to walk out of the high road of plain common sense, but content myself to be governed by the dictates of nature, and am therefore in no danger of becoming atheistical, superstitious, or sceptical, I should have no difficulty which to choose, if the option was proposed to me, to exist after death, or to die whole, as it has been called. Be there two worlds, or be there twenty, the same God is the God of all, and wherever we are, we are equally in His power. Far from fearing my Creator, that all-perfect Being whom I adore, I should fear to be no longer His creature.-Lord Bolingbroke. CICERO, Tusc. Disp. i. § 10, 24, 36, 37, 48, 49, 118. MAN, ELEVATED ABOVE THE OTHER ANIMALS BY HIS CONSCIOUSNESS OF A GOD. M AN was ever a creature separated from all others by his instinctive sense of an existence superior to his own, invariably manifesting this sense of the being of a God more strongly in proportion to his own perfectness of mind and body, and making enormous and self-denying efforts, in order to obtain some persuasion of the immediate presence or approval of the Divinity. So that, on the whole, the best things he did were done as in the presence or for the honour of his gods; and whether in statues, to help him to imagine them, or temples raised to their honour, or acts of self-sacrifice done in the hope of their love, he brought whatever was best and skilfullest in him into their service, and lived in a perpetual subjection to their unseen power. Also, he was always anxious to know something definite about them; and his chief books, songs, and pictures were filled with legends about them, or especially devoted to illustration of their lives and nature. SENECA, Epist. xci. xcii. lxxiii. xli. Benef. vi. c. 23. THE HUMAN SOUL-ITS CAPABILITY OF RELIGION A SIGN OF ITS HEAVENLY ORIGIN AND ITS IMMORTALITY. BU UT all these things are inconsiderable, and contribute but little to our present purpose, in respect of that our incomparable dignity, that results to the human mind from its being capable of religion, and having indelible characters thereof naturally stamped upon it. It acknowledges a God, and worships Him; it builds temples to His honour; it celebrates His never enough exalted majesty with sacrifices, prayers, and praises ; depends upon His bounty; implores His aid; and so carries on a constant correspondence with heaven-and, which is a very strong proof of its being originally from heaven, it hopes at last to return to it. And truly, in my judgment, this previous impression and hope of immortality, and these earnest desires after it, are a very strong evidence of that immortality. These impressions, though in most men they lie overpowered and almost quite extinguished by the weight of their bodies, and an extravagant love to present enjoyment, yet now and then, in time of adversity, break forth and exert themselves, especially under the pressure of severe distempers, and at the approaches of death. But those whose minds are purified, and their thoughts habituated to divine things, with what constant and ardent wishes do they breathe after that blessed immortality! How often do their souls complain within them that they have dwelt so long in these earthly tabernacles ! Like exiles, they earnestly wish, make interest, and struggle hard to regain their native country. More over, does not that noble neglect of the body and its and that contempt of all the pleasures of the flesh, whic heavenly souls have attained, evidently show that, in a time, they will be taken from hence, and that the body and are of a very different and almost contrary nature to one anot). |