("Iliad," v. 514 and 515)

And should not we then,--when reason shows us that a real
converse with persons departed this life may be had, and that he
that loves may both feel and be with the party that affects and
loves him,--relinquish these men that cannot so much as cast off
all those airy shades and outside barks for which they are all
their time in lamentation and fresh afflictions?

Moreover, they that look upon death as the commencement of another
and better life, if they enjoy good things, are the better pleased
with them, as expecting much greater hereafter; but if they have
not things here to their minds, they do not much grumble at it,
but the hopes of those good and excellent things that are after
death contain in them such ineffable pleasures and expectances,
that they wipe off and wholly obliterate every defect and every
offence from the mind, which, as on a road or rather indeed in a
short deviation out of the road, bears whatever befalls it with
great ease and indifference. But now, as to those to whom life
ends in insensibility and dissolution,--death brings to them no
removal of evils, though it is afflicting in both conditions, yet
is it more so to those that live prosperously than to such as
undergo adversity? For it cuts the latter but from an uncertain
hope of doing better hereafter; but it deprives the former of a
certain good, to wit, their pleasurable living. And as those
medicinal potions that are not grateful to the palate but yet
necessary give sick men ease, but rake and hurt the well; just so,
in my opinion, doth the philosophy of Epicurus; it promises to
those that live miserably no happiness in death, and to those that
do well an utter extinction and dissolution of the mind, while it