Pliny the Elder, quoted in Benjamin Farrington's Greek Science 2, (Penguin: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1949) inveighs against religion. Farrington introduces Pliny, and at the end calls Pliny's a cheerful life:
"And here in conclusion, is another passage, which owes some of its arguments to Lucretius, but is completely personal and characteristic. 'Beyond the grave lie the empty speculations about the spirits of the dead. For every man it will be the same after his last day as it was before his first. After death neither body nor spirit will have sensation any more than they did before he was born. This vanity of staking a claim on the future and imagining for oneself a life in the season of death takes various forms: the immortality of the soul, the transmigration of souls, the life of the shades in the underworld, the worship of the spirits of the dead, even the deification of one who has already ceased to be a man. As if, forsooth, we drew our breath in any way that could distinguish us from the other animals; as if there were not many creatures who live longer than we do, for whom nobody has imagined a similar immortality. These are the inventions of a childish folly, of a mortality greedy of never ceasing to be. Plague take it, what madness is this, of repeating life in death? How shall those born ever rest, if sense is to remain with the soul on high or with the ghost below? Nay, this fond fancy destroys nature's chief blessing, death, and doubles the smart of him that is to die by the calculation of what is still to come. If life is to be so sweet, who can find it sweet to have ceased to live? But how much happier, how much more sure, that every man should come to trust himself and take from his proven insensibility of what was before he was born his warrant of the peace that is to be.' The author of these words lived an active, cheerful life in the service of his fellow-men and died an adventurous death while making too close an observation of Vesuvius in eruption." (136-137)
Farrington notes Lucretius, whose On the Nature of Things I read years ago and highly recommend. Farrington's book details Ancient Greek and Roman scientific achievements, despite religious efforts to corral and conscript science. Judeo-Christianity, like the war machine now, soon drew the best minds to its service, and science progressed little until the Renaissance.
Interesting quote. Interesting book.
