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"All duty which tends to protect the society of man with men is to be preferred to that of which science is the simple object." His belief in a conscience is shown in the law he lays down against suicide: "Vetat enim dominans ille in nobis deus, injussu hinc nos suo demigrare." "That God within us forbids us to depart hence without his permission."
Indeed, he even says that the land "is erected into a legal or fictitious person, and is styled 'praedium dominans." /3/ But if this means anything more than to explain what is implied by the Roman metaphors, it goes too far.
Had he declared that he would write three treatises to show the ideas which different men had taken up about the gods he would be nearer to the truth. We have an idea of what was Cicero's real notion of that "dominans in nobis deus" that god which reigns within us and which he declares in Scipio's dream to have forbidden us to commit suicide.
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