Posts by Cassius

Elli from what source does that come?

Ok I am feeling a little better and just read the most recent posts. I don't think any of us think that many of the details of the stories of the gods acting childishly are relevant or useful, other than maybe at most in the way that various stories in the Bible (David / Bathsheba?) add depth to the full story.

But it does seem clear to me that

(1)Epicurus thought that healthy aspirational images of living deathlessly and pleasurably and without pain can come from the gods, regardless of whether we today want to consider those images as emanating from real beings or from anticipatory constructs of the mind.

(2) Mental pictures of a type which represent actual attainable examples of living that sort of highest life are useful and necessary not only to children, but to adults, for many reasons, not the least of which is so that we can communicate intelligibly about what we consider to be the highest sort of life available to humans.

Epicurus through Lucretius said that without a model the gods could not have created worlds, and I think it is safe to say that without a model it is not possible to visualize, work for, or obtain the highest Epicurean life.

That as much as anything is what I object to about the modern obsession with "absence of pain" - it is a disembodied ghost - an unattainable abstraction no more intelligible than the "trinity."

I want to think more about this before I go too much further. At this moment I am acutely reminded that I am not an Epicurean god because I think I have an allergy attack going on, and when my mind is not clear I cannot receive those clear images as data from which to discuss this!

Unless you purge your mind of such conceits, and banish them your breast, and forebear to think unworthily of the gods, by charging them with things that break their peace, those sacred deities you will believe are always angry and offended with you; not that the supreme power of the gods can be so ruffled as to be eager to punish severely in their resentments, but because you fancy those beings, who enjoy a perfect peace in themselves, are subject to anger and the extravagances of revenge: and therefore you will no more approach their shrines with an easy mind, no more in tranquility and peace will you be able to receive the images, the representations of their divine forms, that form from their pure bodies and strike powerfully upon the minds of men: From hence you may collect what a wretched life you are to lead.

Another link for more pictures.

I think he's immediately off track with his title - "Understanding good vs bad desires." He explains the general principle to some degree, but the larger point is that desires are not good and bad in themselves, only in the consequences in terms of pleasure and pain that they bring. So he ends up defaulting to the standard "live simply" result without really making any progress in understanding the larger issues as to why simplicity is often (but not always) the best choice. If you start off thinking that anything can be good or bad in itself without reference to pleasure and pain, you've given up the game before you start.

Quote from elli

I prefer a god acting as human being than a god acting like an ascetic unnatural being.

Yes, I do too. I think this is a very important subject to discuss.

Aside from Epicurus' statement that "gods" exist, what is more primary about how we discuss anything than "that which has no sensation is nothing to us" as part of PD2?

If a subject cannot be considered in terms of sensations, then it seems to me that the subject can have no relevance at all. Which means to me that if the subject of the best and highest life cannot be considered in terms of sensations that are intelligible to us, then the subject is essentially nothing to us.

So you can take that and go in two directions:

(1) You can say that since "gods" do not appear immediately in front of us and interact with us the subject has no relevance at all, just like being dead.

(2) Or you can say that "gods" conveys a manner of living which is intelligible to all of us in the form of our picture of human-like beings experiencing the best possible sensations - "living in the continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures alike of body and of mind, undisturbed either by the presence or by the prospect of pain."

If Epicurus stood for anything, he stood on the position that the soul cannot survive absent the body, and therefore all that is good must be experienced from birth to death. (Cited by DeWitt as encapsulated in VS 42. "The same time produces both the beginning of the greatest good and the dissolution of the evil." Or, as DeWitt translates it: "The same span of time includes both the beginning and termination of the greatest good." (p 219)

All this appears to mean that the greatest good has to be experienceable by humans in a way that humans can understand, and humans can't understand anything which is not understandable in terms of sensation. And what better way is there to convey anything than to describe by analogy how a thing "feels" to us?

Torquatus again in On Ends: "Further, every mental presentation has its origin in sensation: so that no certain knowledge will be possible, unless all sensations are true, as the theory of Epicurus teaches that they are. Those who deny the validity of sensation and say that nothing can be perceived, having excluded the evidence of the senses, are unable even to expound their own argument. Besides, by abolishing knowledge and science they abolish all possibility of rational life and action."

Also, and even more to the point from Diogenes Laertius: " For all our notions are derived from perceptions, either by actual contact or by analogy, or resemblance, or composition, with some slight aid from reasoning.

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So in my view, do we have to convey the meaning of godhood with a picture of Zeus? No. But we have to convey the image of godhood with something, and in the absence of better alternatives in the form of images that mean more to us, then I would think continuing to use Zeus and the rest makes as much sense for at least some of us today as it did for ancient Epicureans.

LD let me ask you that question I am discussing -- If you were trying to visualize the highest and best life you could live, what kind of imagery would you visualize?

I think this is a good question for anyone studying Epicurus. The Epicurean world is real - it's this one, between birth and death - and whatever goal we set for ourselves also has to be real, and therefore should be something we can visualize.

Thanks for the detailed commentary. I've been thinking about this recently too, and incorporating some of the imagery in several graphics more as a discussion starter than anything else.

As you know LD from my prior posting, I am one who takes the position that Epicurus was serious about "gods" as he defined them existing. But for the moment that is not the part on which I would like to focus.

The reason I am comfortable incorporating Greek imagery into my graphics is that regardless of the "real" angle, I believe that Epicurus thought that the gods were useful as images of perfect happiness toward which to aspire. Certainly he rejected the myths about them doing all sorts of crazy things, but I suspect that even after rejecting that aspect he still found it useful to discuss the issue of how gods would be perfectly happy by personifying them. I am not aware that Epicurus spoke about "god" or in generic terms, rather than using the standard names - but of course I know the record is difficult to assess.

There is of course the call to live as "gods among men," and it is apparent that he embraced the public festivals, and did not argue at all (to my understanding) that they were disembodied spirits.

It appears to me, consistent with the reference to using the Phaeacian imagery from Homer as an example of the best life, that Epicurus believed it was useful to visualize the best life as one not altogether unlike the Greeks pictured the gods as living on Olympus, without all the childish melodrama.

To take this further, as you also know I believe that it is worse than useless to define the best life as "absence of pain." I believe that description applies only to the "limit of quantity" for the reasons discussed elsewhere. I also believe that anyone challenged to visualize what "absence of pain" means in realistic terms will end up visualizing an experience that any ordinary human being can understand in sensual terms, and not as a non-sensual abstraction.

Therefore I believe that Epicurus intended that his students incorporate godlike imagery as visualizations of the best life, such as described by Torquatus:

"The truth of the position that pleasure is the ultimate good will most readily appear from the following illustration. Let us imagine a man living in the continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures alike of body and of mind, undisturbed either by the presence or by the prospect of pain: what possible state of existence could we describe as being more excellent or more desirable? One so situated must possess in the first place a strength of mind that is proof against all fear of death or of pain; he will know that death means complete unconsciousness, and that pain is generally light if long and short if strong, so that its intensity is compensated by brief duration and its continuance by diminishing severity. Let such a man moreover have no dread of any supernatural power; let him never suffer the pleasures of the past to fade away, but constantly renew their enjoyment in recollection, and his lot will be one which will not admit of further improvement."

To me, there is nothing wrong, and much that is right, and perhaps a lot that is inevitable, in visualizing this picture in human form much as Zeus or any other idealized Greek god might appear. Of course I don't mean to particularize this to Greece or Rome and to exclude other nations and ethnicity, as they will likely have their own equivalents that is perfectly appropriate for them to use.

But Epicurus spoke of the "enemies of Hellas," and I do not believe he would think it appropriate to abstract out to ideal form a "human" stripped of all background, family, friends, and culture. So use of the Greek/Roman imagery among those of us who follow in that heritage (which very likely includes everyone reading this, no matter what nation they may currently reside) seems very appropriate to me.

This is an excellent thing to discuss and I have an open mind as to the basic point.

DeWitt's commentary, which cites the section from Cicero above:

It's not clear to me that the cite in Tusculan Disputations is quite as specific as this comment from DeWitt suggests, but it's clearly relevant. You'd probably need a study of the original text from Cicero to sort out exactly what specifically Cicero was talking about.

For comparison and for future study, here is the part of Tusculan Disputations where Cicero criticizes Plato in particular, and seemingly the Stoics, and seems to praise Epicurus' position:

https://archive.org/details/cicero…ceuoft/page/156

Thank you Elli for correcting me! Strike what I said above about "impossible - Epicurus . net is wrong - the word is DIFFICULT according to this source -- https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3…rOWsEsRSQzQNUvK

Substituting difficult for impossible helps a lot - we would still need to be careful with whether the issue is "sex" or "too prone" or "leans most keenly" -- in other words whether the issue is sex itself, or excessive / imprudent ways of indulgence in it.

“You tell me that the stimulus of the flesh makes you too prone to the pleasures of love." Also, if this is a correct translation, note the "too prone." That doesn't seem to be an absolute prohibition either, but a reference to *excessive* indulgence.

Epicurus' Warning To the Young Man Who Was "Too Prone To The Pleasures Of Love"

Looking further at the conclusion of this quote (Vatican Saying 51) , I see that it says that " it is impossible not to come up against one or other of these barriers" << I would particularly scrutinize any attribution to Epicurus where he allegedly says that something in human affairs is "impossible." Given that there is no "fate," and that humans have "free will," can anyone cite another instance besides this where Epicurus says that something is "impossible"? Remember we are talking **ethics** here - not something like death that derives from the unchanging properties and qualities of the elements. Death (except for the gods) is impossible to avoid for elemental reasons, because all bodies that come together eventually break apart. But is there any reason that it should be "impossible" to prevail over the dangers of sex? Remember - is there any backup beyond Vatican Saying 51 to confirm this phrasing? Do we even have a copy of the original text of the Vatican list to confirm it?

G: What about that one mention to the young fellow by epicurus' about sex? I think it went something like not to break any customs or hurt others and if you can do this then do it if not they don't. Do you know what I am referring to?

Cassius:

"“You tell me that the stimulus of the flesh makes you too prone to the pleasures of love. Provided that you do not break the laws or good customs and do not distress any of your neighbors or do harm to your body or squander your pittance, you may indulge your inclination as you please. Yet it is impossible not to come up against one or other of these barriers, for the pleasures of love never profited a man and he is lucky if they do him no harm.”"

That one can be explained in large part, as Epicurus says, by presuming it was written to someone who was in intoxicated overdrive and taking risks that were not warranted by the potential gain. If you do approach sex prudently, then you can greatly reduce or eliminate those potential pains that Epicurus was warning about.

Now as to the last part about "never profited" I think we would want to scrutinize the translation and the context (which we probably don't have). "Never profited" cannot mean "never pleasured" or "was never desirable" because we know that all pleasure is desirable from other Epicurean texts. Was he referring to intoxicated pursuit of "the pleasures of love" - maybe so and that would be consistent, if that is what the context shows. We know from other texts that Epicurus advised the daughter of Metrodorus to get married, and the texts also seem to say that he recommended marriage when appropriate. If he had advised against all marriage and all sex you can be sure we would have more clear texts on that point.

So I think this is one of those texts that has to be weighed against the rest, and if you do then you don't let this one overrule the rest, which are more consistent with the whole. Was it Epicurus or this text that appears to have a problem. My bet is that this text has a problem that would be explained if we had the original or more context or both.

And of course there is the lengthy discussion of all this in Lucretius.

In general Epicurus doesn't say that you can eliminate all risk or all pain, but you can't do that in the rest of life either. Just like in any pleasurable activity, you can reduce risks and pain to a manageable level if you act prudently in pursuing that pleasure. Some particular choices in pursuing pleasure cost more in pain than they are worth, but at the same time (1) pleasure is the goal of living, and (2) even if the worst happens, pain that is intense doesn't last long, and pain that is less intense is manageable.

No one can make particular choices for you -- and it is impossible that they could, because if they could that would mean there is fate and/or some kind of mechanical determinism, which there is not in these issues.

You might find this prior discussion interesting https://newepicurean.com/love-marriage-…e-modern-world/

Epicurus Principal Doctrine Two: “Death is nothing to us; for that is dissolved is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.”

If there is any one doctrine that is absolutely clear and which distinguishes Epicurus from most other philosophers, it is that death is the end of “us” as we know it. Epicurus held that this single present lifetime is the only one that we will ever have, and the ethical implications of this are expanded in numerous sayings.

Leaving aside the extended implications, even the fundamental point of what Epicurus meant by “death is nothing to us” is not without controversy. (1) Does this mean that “dying” is of no relevance to us? Or does it mean that “the state of being dead” after we depart from life is nothing to us? (2) Does this doctrine mean that it makes no difference how long we live? Or is it perfectly sound Epicurean doctrine to want to live as long as we can continue to live happily?

My personal answers to these questions are: (1) The doctrine is focused on the state of being dead, not on the act of dying. We will not exist after death to have any concerns at all, but we certainly are concerned **during life** both by our manner of death (how much pain we will encounter in dying, as well as by the thought of what will happen to those we leave behind after we die. (2) This doctrine does *not* mean that we are unconcerned with how long we live. Life is desirable (and Epicurus clearly says so in the letter to Menoeceus). Even though we are not “gods” who can life forever, it is desirable for us to experience as much happiness as we can during this life, our only opportunity to experience pleasure. All other things being equal, it seems to me that an Epicurean should prefer to live fifty years of happiness rather than five.

Questions like this deserve a lot of thought. Please comment on the text and consider sharing the thread. Lucretius gives us many word pictures from which to prepare graphics, but can you compose a graphic that would better illustrate this Epicurean point? Please add your own version to this thread, and we will use these in the future to help spread the ideas of Epicurus on the internet.

Epicurus in his letter to Menoeceus: "Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer."

Lucretius mirroring Epicurean doctrine in “De Rerum Natura”:

Death, then, is naught to us, nor does it concern us a whit, inasmuch as the nature of the mind is but a mortal possession. And even as in the time gone by we felt no ill, when the Poeni came from all sides to the shock of battle, when all the world, shaken by the hurrying turmoil of war, shuddered and reeled beneath the high coasts of heaven, in doubt to which people’s sway must fall all human power by land and sea; so, when we shall be no more, when there shall have come the parting of body and soul, by whose union we are made one, you may know that nothing at all will be able to happen to us, who then will be no more, or stir our feeling; no, not if earth shall be mingled with sea, and sea with sky.

And even if the nature of mind and the power of soul has feeling, after it has been rent asunder from our body, yet it is naught to us, who are made one by the mating and marriage of body and soul. Nor, if time should gather together our substance after our decease and bring it back again as it is now placed, if once more the light of life should be vouchsafed to us, yet, even were that done, it would not concern us at all, when once the remembrance of our former selves were snapped in twain. And even now we care not at all for the selves that we once were, not at all are we touched by any torturing pain for them. For when you look back over all the lapse of immeasurable time that now is gone, and think how manifold are the motions of matter, you could easily believe this too, that these same seeds, whereof we now are made, have often been placed in the same order as they are now; and yet we cannot recall that in our mind’s memory; for in between lies a break in life, and all the motions have wandered everywhere far astray from sense. For, if by chance there is to be grief and pain for a man, he must needs himself too exist at that time, that ill may befall him. Since death forestalls this, and prevents the being of him, on whom these misfortunes might crowd, we may know that we have naught to fear in death, and that he who is no more cannot be wretched, and that it were no whit different if he had never at any time been born, when once immortal death hath stolen away mortal life.

And so, when you see a man chafing at his lot, that after death he will either rot away with his body laid in earth, or be destroyed by flames, or the jaws of wild beasts, you may be sure that his words do not ring true, and that deep in his heart lies some secret pang, however much he deny himself that he believes that he will have any feeling in death. For he does not, I trow, grant what he professes, nor the grounds of his profession, nor does he remove and cast himself root and branch out of life, but all unwitting supposes something of himself to live on. For when in life each man pictures to himself that it will come to pass that birds and wild beasts will mangle his body in death, he pities himself; for neither does he separate himself from the corpse, nor withdraw himself enough from the outcast body, but thinks that it is he, and, as he stands watching, taints it with his own feeling. Hence he chafes that he was born mortal, and sees not that in real death there will be no second self, to live and mourn to himself his own loss, or to stand there and be pained that he lies mangled or burning. For if it is an evil in death to be mauled by the jaws and teeth of wild beasts, I cannot see how it is not sharp pain to be laid upon hot flames and cremated, or to be placed in honey and stifled, and to grow stiff with cold, lying on the surface on the top of an icy rock, or to be crushed and ground by a weight of earth above. “

And this is only the beginning of the section! The full extended discussion of death can be found at the end of book three of Lucretius: https://epicureanfriends.com/wiki/doku.php?id=bailey_3

The current gallery of graphics for PD2 is here: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/wcf/gallery/in…e-list/189-pd2/

This post is currently in the General Discussion forum here: Visualizing Principal Doctrine Two

Jefferson's statement there was probably informed partially by the arguments Thomas Cooper later included in The Scripture Doctrine of Materialism"

Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, December 11, 1823.

TO DR. THOMAS COOPER

MONTECELLO, DEC. 11, 1823.

DEAR SIR:

I duly received your favor of the 23rd old ult. as also the two pamphlets you were so kind as to send me. That on the tariff, I observed, was soon reprinted in Ritchie’s Enquirer. I was only sorry he did not postpone it to the meeting of Congress, when it would have got into the hands of all the members, and could not fail to have great effect, perhaps a decisive one. It is really an extraordinary proposition that the agricultural, mercantile, and navigating classes should be taxed to maintain that of manufacturers.

That the doctrine of Materialism was that of Jesus himself was a new idea to me. Yet it is proved unquestionably. We all know it was that of some of the early Fathers. I hope the physiological part will follow; in spite of the prevailing fanaticism, reason will make its way. I confess that its reign at present is appalling. General education is the true remedy, and that most happily is now generally encouraged. The story you mention as gotten up by your opponents, of my having advised the Trustees of our University to turn you out as Professor, is quite in their style of barefaced mendacity. They find it so easy to obliterate the reason of mankind that they think they may enterprise safely on his memory also; for it was the winter before the last only, that our annual report to the Legislature, printed in the newspapers, stated the precise ground on which we relinquished your engagement with our Central College. And, if my memory does not deceive me, it was own your own proposition, that the time of our setting into operation being postponed indefinitely, it was important to you not to lose an opportunity of fixing yourself permanently; and that they should father on me too, the motion for this dismission, than whom no man living cherishes a higher estimation of your worth, talents, and information. But so the world goes. Man is fed with fables through life, leaves it in the belief that he has known something of what has been passing, when in truth he has known nothing but what has passed under his own eye. And who are the great deceivers? Those who solemnly pretend to be the depositories of the sacred truths of God himself! I will not believe that the liberality of the State to which you are rendering services of science which no other man in the Union is qualified to render it will suffer you to be in danger from a set of conjurers.

I note what you say of Mr. Finch; but the moment of our Commencement is as indefinite as it ever was. Affectionately and respectfully,

Yours,

TH. JEFFERSON

Poster: I don't think my personal spirit lives past death. But we all live as if we have spirits. What else is willpower and taste?

Cassius Amicus Nobody in Epicurean texts said that you did not have a spirit - they simply denied that the spirit is immortal or "divine."

Cassius Amicus

On this point, Frances Wright reconsructs the Epicurean position in her chapter 15:

Metrodorus: “Mind or thought I consider a quality of that matter constituting the existence we call a man, which quality we find in a varying degree in other existences; many, perhaps all animals, possessing it. Life is another quality, or combination of qualities, of matter, inherent in — we know not how many existences. We find it in vegetables; we might perceive it even in stones, could we watch their formation, growth, and decay. We may call that active principle, pervading the elements of all things, which approaches and separates the component particles of the ever-changing, and yet ever-enduring world — life. Until you discover some substance, which undergoes no change, you cannot speak of inert matter: it can only be so, at least, relatively, — that is, as compared with other substances.”

Theon: “The classing of thought and life among the qualities of matter is new to me.”

Metrodorus: “What is in a substance cannot be separate from it. And is not all matter a compound of qualities? Hardness, extension, form, color, motion, rest — take away all these, and where is matter? To conceive of mind independent of matter, is as if we should conceive of color independent of a substance colored: What is form, if not a body of a particular shape? What is thought, if not something which thinks? Destroy the substance, and you destroy its properties; and so equally — destroy the properties, and you destroy the substance. To suppose the possibility of retaining the one, without the other, is an evident absurdity.”

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%…lrs9ElwQN_JhH0S

Cassius Amicus Further as to spirit being material, Thomas Jefferson to John Adams: Jefferson to John Adams, August 15, 1820:

. But enough of criticism: let me turn to your puzzling letter of May 12. on matter, spirit, motion etc. It’s crowd of scepticisms kept me from sleep. I read it, and laid it down: read it, and laid it down, again and again: and to give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, ‘I feel: therefore I exist.’ I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need. I can conceive thought to be an action of a particular organisation of matter, formed for that purpose by it’s creator, as well as that attraction in an action of matter, or magnetism of loadstone. When he who denies to the Creator the power of endowing matter with the mode of action called thinking shall shew how he could endow the Sun with the mode of action called attraction, which reins the planets in the tract of their orbits, or how an absence of matter can have a will, and, by that will, put matter into motion, then the materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercises the faculty of thinking. When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart.

At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus taught nothing of it. He told us indeed that `God is a spirit,’ but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the ancient fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter. Origen says `Deus reapse corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum corporum ratione, incorporeus.’ Tertullian `quid enim deus nisi corpus?’ and again `quis negabit deumesse corpus? Etsi deus spiritus, spiritus etiam corpus est, sui generis, in sua effigie.’ St. Justin Martyr `{to Theion phamen einai asomaton oyk oti asomaton—epeide de to me krateisthai ypo tinos, toy krateisthai timioteron esti, dia toyto kaloymen ayton asomaton.}’ And St. Macarius, speaking of angels says `quamvis enim subtilia sint, tamen in substantia, forma et figura, secundum tenuitatem naturae eorum, corpora sunt tenuia.’ And St. Austin, St. Basil, Lactantius, Tatian, Athenagoras and others, with whose writings I pretend not a familiarity, are said by those who are, to deliver the same doctrine. Turn to your Ocellus d’Argens 97. 105. and to his Timaeus 17. for these quotations. In England these Immaterialists might have been burnt until the 29. Car. 2. when the writ de haeretico comburendo was abolished: and here until the revolution, that statute not having extended to us. All heresies being now done away with us, these schismatists are merely atheists, differing from the material Atheist only in their belief that `nothing made something,’ and from the material deist who believes that matter alone can operate on matter.

Rejecting all organs of information therefore but my senses, I rid myself of the Pyrrhonisms with which an indulgence in speculations hyperphysical and antiphysical so uselessly occupy and disquiet the mind. A single sense may indeed be sometimes deceived, but rarely: and never all our senses together, with their faculty of reasoning. They evidence realities; and there are enough of these for all the purposes of life, without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence. I am sure that I really know many, many, things, and none more surely than that I love you with all my heart, and pray for the continuance of your life until you shall be tired of it yourself.

I am not sure whether I immediately can say that it was "unfortunate" other than out of an extremely general preference to let people live as they like. To me this ambiguity is very much like the Roman civil war - it looks like we can make some general observations about the issues motivating both sides, but I have a very strong impression that our information is so incomplete that our description might be totally different from what people at the time thought was going on. Lots of people take Caesar's side today, but at the time very many (including Cassius and Brutus, who I gather were very honorable people too) were on the side of the Senate. I'm no longer confident which side I would argue to be "right" or even which side I would most identify myself.