In opposition to the Stoics, and others, who admitted the dread of servitude, sickness, or any other calamity, or even the ambitious love of glory to be a just cause of voluntary death, in opposition to them, the Platonists justly maintain, that the soul must be retained in the custody of the body, from which it cannot be released, but at the command of him, who gave it. On this subject there are many fine thoughts in Plotinus, Olympiodorus, and Macrobius on the dream of Scipio. Brutus, following the opinions of the Platonists, had formerly condemned the death of Cato, whom he himself afterwards imitated. He considered it as an act of impiety for any one to withdraw himself from his allegiance to the supreme being, and to shrink from evils, which he ought to bear with fortitude. And Megasthenes, as may be seen, in Strabo book XV. remarked the disapprobation, which the Indian sages expressed of the conduct of Calanus: for it was by no means agreeable to their tenets, that any one, through impatience, should quit his post in life. In the fifth book of Quintus Curtius, there is an expression of King Darius to this effect, that he had rather die by another's guilty hand than by his own. In the same manner the Hebrews call death a release, or dismission, as may be seen not only in the Gospel of St. Luke, ch. ii. v. 19, but in the Greek version of the Old Testament, Gen. xv. 2, and Numb. xx, towards the conclusion: and the same way of speaking was used by the Greeks. Plutarch, in speaking of consolation, calls death the time, when God shall relieve us from our post. VI. There are certain other rights too, which owe their origin to the voluntary law of nations, such as the right of possession from length of time, the right of succession to any one who dies intestate, and the right resulting from contracts, though of an unequal kind. For though all these rights, in some measure, spring from the law of nature, yet they derive their confirmation from human law, whether it be in opposition to the uncertainty of conjecture, or to certain other exceptions, suggested by natural reason: points, all of which have been slightly touched upon in our discussions on the law of nature. CHAPTER XX. ON PUNISHMENTS.