For who knows but that God, having a fatherly care for the human race, and
foreseeing future events, early removes some persons from life untimely?
Wherefore we must believe that they undergo nothing that should be avoided.
(For
In what must be, there's naught that men need dread,1
nor in any of
those events which come to pass in accordance with the postulates or the
logical deductions of reason), both because the great majority of deaths
forestall other and greater troubles and because it were better for some not
to be born even, for others to die at the very moment of birth, for others
after they have gone on in life a little way, and for still others while
they are in their full vigour. Toward all such deaths we should maintain a
cheerful frame of mind, since we know that we cannot escape
[p. 191] destiny. It is the mark of educated men to take it for
granted that those who seem to have been deprived of life untimely have but
forestalled us for a brief time; for the longest life is short and momentary
in comparison with eternity. And we know, too, that many who have protracted
their period of mourning have, after no long time, followed their lamented
friends, without having gained any advantage from their mourning, but only
useless torment by their misery.
Since the time of sojourn in life is very brief, we ought not, in unkempt
grief and utterly wretched mourning, to ruin our lives by racking ourselves
with mental anguish and bodily torments, but to turn to the better and more
human course, by striving earnestly to converse with men who will not, for
flattery, grieve with us and arouse our sorrows, but will endeavour to
dispel our griefs through noble and dignified consolation. We should hearken
to Homer and keep in mind those lines of his
2 which Hector spoke to
Andromache, endeavouring, in his turn, to comfort her :
Dearest, you seem
much excited; be not overtroubled in spirit; No man beyond what is fated
shall send me in death unto Hades. For not a man among mortals, I say, has
escaped what is destined, Neither the base nor the noble, when once he has
entered life's pathway.
Of this destiny the poet elsewhere
3 says :
When from
his mother he came, in the thread of his life Fate entwined it.
[p. 193]
