For the essence of friendship being that two minds become as one, how can that ever take place if the mind of each of the separate parties to it is not single and uniform, but variable, changeable, and complex?
Cicero poses a rhetorical question in his treatise on friendship, emphasizing the necessity of consistent character for genuine unity between friends.
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But if I am wrong in thinking the human soul immortal, I am glad to be wrong; nor will I allow the mistake which gives me so much pleasure to be wrested from me as long as I live.
Again, is there not the fact that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest cheerfulness, the most unwise with the least?
I don't wish to depreciate life, as many men and good philosophers have often done; nor do I regret having lived, for I have done so in a way that lets me think that I was not born in vain.
But had it not been the case that souls were immortal, it would not have been the souls of all the best men that made the greatest efforts after an immortality of fame.
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