Authors, Latin -- Biography; Cicero, Marcus Tullius; Statesmen -- Rome -- Biography
the law he lays down against suicide: "Vetat enim dominans ille in nobis
deus, injussu hinc nos suo demigrare."[336] "That God within us forbids
us to depart hence without his permission." As to justice, I need give
no quotation from his works as proof of that virtue which all his works
have been written to uphold.
This pagan had his ideas of God's governance of men, and of man's
required obedience to his God, so specially implanted in his heart, that
he who undertakes to write his life should not pass it by unnoticed. To
us our religion has come as a thing to believe, though taking too often
the form of a stern duty. We have had it from our fathers and our
mothers; and though it has been given to us by perhaps indifferent
hands, still it has been given. It has been there with all its written
laws, a thing to live by--if we choose. Rich and poor, the majority of
us know at any rate the Lord's Prayer, and most of us have repeated it
regularly during our lives. There are not many of us who have not
learned that they are deterred by something beyond the law from
stealing, from murder, from committing adultery. All Rome and all Romans
knew nothing of any such obligation, unless it might be that some few,
like Cicero, found it out from the recesses of their own souls. He found
it out, certainly. "Suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad
verum decus." "Virtue itself by its own charms shall lead you the way to
true glory." The words to us seem to be quite commonplace. There is not
a curate who might not put them into a sermon. But in Cicero's time they
were new, and hitherto untaught. There was the old Greek philosopher's
idea that the [Greek: to kalon]--the thing of beauty--was to be found in
virtue, and that it would make a man altogether happy if he got a hold
of it. But there was no God connected with it, no future life, no
prospect sufficient to redeem a man from the fear of death. It was
leather and prunella, that, from first to last. The man had to die and
go, melancholy, across the Styx. But Cicero was the first to tell his
brother Romans of an intelligible heaven. "Certum esse in caelo
definitum locum ubi beati aevo sempiterno fruantur." "There is certainly
a place in heaven where the blessed shall enjoy eternal life." And then
how nearly he had realized that doctrine which tells us that we should
do unto others as we would they should do unto us--the very pith and
marrow and inside meaning of Christ's teaching, by adapting which we
have become human, by neglecting which we revert to paganism. When we
look back upon the world without this law, we see nothing good in it, in
spite of individual greatness and national honor. But Cicero had found
it.--"That brotherhood between men, that agreement as to what may be
useful to all, and that general love for the human race!"[337] It is all
contained in these few words, but if anything be wanted to explain at
length our duty to our neighbors it will be found there on reference to
this passage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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