of Cicero's lectures is to fortify the mind with practical and philosophical lessons adapted to the circumstances of life, to elevate us above the influence of all its passions and pains. In each of the dialogues, one of the guests, who is called the Auditor, sets up a topic for discussion. Each dialogue begins with an introduction on the excellence of philosophy, and the advantage of adopting the wisdom of the Greeks into the Latin language. Book 1 In the first dialogue the auditor asserts that death is an evil, which Cicero proceeds to refute: Cicero offers largely Platonist arguments for the soul's immortality, and its ascent to the celestial regions where it will traverse all space—receiving, in its boundless flight, infinite enjoyment. He dismisses the gloomy myths concerning the Greek underworld. But even if death is to be considered as the total extinction of sense and feeling, Cicero still denies that it should be accounted an evil. This view he supports from a consideration of the insignificance of the pleasures of which we are deprived. He illustrates this with the fate of many historical characters, who, by an earlier death, would have avoided the greatest ills of life. Book 2 In the second dialogue the same guest announces that pain is an evil. Cicero argues that its sufferings may be overcome, not by the use of Epicurean maxims,—"Short if severe, and light if long," but by fortitude and patience; and he censures those philosophers who have represented pain in too formidable colours, and reproaches those poets who have described their heroes as yielding to its influence. Pain can be neutralized only when moral evil is regarded as the sole evil, or as the greatest of evils that the ills of body and of fortune are held to be infinitesimally small in comparison with it. Book 3 In the third book, Cicero treats of the best alleviations of sorrow. Cicero's treatment of this is closely parallel to that of pain. He observes that grief is postponed or omitted in times of stress or peril, and he notes that grief is often put on or continued solely because the world expects it. People have a false estimate of the causes of grief: deficiencies in wisdom and virtue, which ought to be the objects of the profoundest sorrow, occasioning less regret than is produced by comparatively slight disappointments or losses. To foresee