_A._ Perhaps I do not express what I mean, for I look upon this very circumstance, not to exist after having existed, to be very miserable.
_M._ What, more so than not to have existed at all? Therefore, those who are not yet born are miserable because they are not; and we ourselves, if we are to be miserable after death, were miserable before we were born: but I do not remember that I was miserable before I was born; and I should be glad to know, if your memory is better, what you recollect of yourself before you were born.
VII. _A._ You are pleasant: as if I had said that those men are miserable who are not born, and not that they are so who are dead.
_A._ Yes; I say that because they no longer exist after having existed they are miserable.
_M._ You do not perceive that you are asserting contradictions; for what is a greater contradiction, than that that should be not only miserable, but should have any existence at all, which does not exist? When you go out at the Capene gate and see the tombs of the Calatini, the Scipios, Servilii, and Metelli, do you look on them as miserable?
_A._ Because you press me with a word, henceforward I will not say they are miserable absolutely, but miserable on this account, because they have no existence.
_M._ You do not say, then, "M. Crassus is miserable," but only "Miserable M. Crassus."
_M._ As if it did not follow that whatever you speak of in that manner either is or is not. Are you not acquainted with the first principles of logic? For this is the first thing they lay down, Whatever is asserted (for that is the best way that occurs to me, at the moment, of rendering the Greek term [Greek: axiôma]; if I can think of a more accurate expression hereafter, I will use it), is asserted as being either true or false. When, therefore, you say, "Miserable M. Crassus," you either say this, "M. Crassus is miserable," so that some judgment may be made whether it is true or false, or you say nothing at all.
_A._ Well, then, I now own that the dead are not miserable, since you have drawn from me a concession that they who do not exist at all can not be miserable. What then? We that are alive, are we not wretched, seeing we must die? for what is there agreeable in life, when we must night and day reflect that, at some time or other, we must die?