Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
I come now to the highest good of true wisdom. Its nature must be defined in this way: first, that it belongs to man alone and falls to no other living creature; second, that it belongs to the soul alone and cannot be shared with the body; finally, that it cannot come to anyone without knowledge and virtue. This boundary excludes and dissolves all their opinions, for nothing they have said fits it. I will now say what it is, so as to teach what I have set out to teach: that all the philosophers were blind and foolish men, who were never able to see, understand, or even suspect what had been appointed as the highest good for man. When Anaxagoras was asked for what purpose he had been born, he answered: to see the sky and the sun. Everyone admires the remark and deems it fit for a philosopher, yet to my mind he simply had nothing better to offer and blurted this out at random rather than stay silent — something he should have worked out and turned over in his own thought beforehand, had he truly been wise, since a man ignorant of his own reason for being can scarcely count as a man. But let us suppose it was not said off the cuff but was a considered utterance. Let us see, in these few words, how many and how great were his errors. His first fault: he made sight the entire measure of what a man owes, crediting the mind with nothing and the body with everything. What then? If he were blind, would he lose his humanity? That cannot occur unless the soul itself has perished. And what of the remaining parts of the body — are they left without any function of their own? What of the fact that more is lodged in the ears than in the eyes, since learning and wisdom can be received by the ears alone, but not by the eyes alone? You were born, you say, to see the sky and the sun: who brought you into this spectacle, or what does the sight of the sky and of nature confer on you? Surely so that you might praise this immense and wonderful work. Confess, then, that all things have a maker — God — who ushered you into this world to witness and to praise so great a work of his own making. You believe it a great thing to see the sky and the sun; why not thank the one responsible for this kindness? Why not weigh, in your own mind, the power, providence, and might of him at whose works you marvel? For it must be that he who accomplished such marvels is far more marvelous still. Suppose a host invited you to a fine dinner and welcomed you splendidly — would anyone call you sane if you prized the pleasure above the one who gave it to you? So it is that the philosophers refer everything to the body, seeing nothing further with the mind, nothing beyond what meets the eye. And yet, once all the functions of the body are set aside, man's reason for being must be located in the mind alone. We are not born, then, in order to look upon the things that have been made, but to contemplate the very maker of all things, that is, to perceive him with the mind. Wherefore if someone should ask a person who is truly wise for what reason he was born, he will answer fearlessly and readily that he was born for the sake of worshipping God — the God who begot us for this very purpose, that we might serve him. And to serve God is nothing other than to guard and preserve righteousness through good works. But that man, ignorant as a man of divine things, reduced so great a matter to almost nothing, choosing only two things as worthy of his gaze. Yet suppose instead he had claimed his birth was meant for beholding the world — even granting that this would encompass everything and ring grander, he still would not have satisfied what duty requires of a man, because just as the soul is worth more than the body, so God is worth more than the world, since God both made the world and governs it. It is not the world, then, that is to be contemplated with the eyes, since both are bodily, but God who is to be contemplated with the mind, because just as God himself is immortal, so he willed the soul to be everlasting. And the contemplation of God consists in venerating and worshiping the common parent of the human race. But since this was absent from the philosophers, and they lay prostrate on the earth in their ignorance of divine things, we must conclude that Anaxagoras, for all the things he said he was born to see, in truth saw neither the sky nor the sun. Man's reasoning, then, is made plain, if only he be wise: what distinguishes him is humanity — and humanity, in turn, amounts to nothing but justice; justice itself is simply piety; and piety, at last, is nothing else than recognizing God as father.
The highest good of man, therefore, lies in religion alone. For the other things, even those thought to be proper to man, are also found in the other animals. When they distinguish and recognize their own cries by particular signals among themselves, they appear to converse. Some semblance of laughter, too, appears in them, when with ears laid back, mouth drawn, and eyes relaxed into playfulness, they sport either with a man or with their own kind. What of their mates and their young? Do they not show something like mutual love and tenderness? Again, those creatures that look ahead and store up food display a kind of foresight. Signs of reason, too, are detected in many: for when they seek out what is useful to them, guard against harm, avoid danger, and prepare for themselves hiding places opening onto several exits, surely they understand something. Can anyone deny that reason is present in them, when they often outwit man himself? For those whose task is the making of honey, when they inhabit their assigned dwellings, fortify their encampments, build their homes with an art beyond description, and serve their king, I do not know whether something like perfect prudence is not present in them. It is uncertain, then, whether the qualities attributed to man are shared with the other living creatures; but they are certainly without religion. My own view is this: every animal possesses some measure of reason, but the mute creatures hold it merely to keep life going, whereas man holds it as well for passing life on. And because in man reason itself is perfected, it is called wisdom, which makes man exceptional in this, that to him alone it has been given to understand divine things. On this point Cicero's judgment is true: he says that among all these many kinds, man alone possesses any notion of the divine, and that no people, however refined or however wild, is ignorant of the fact that some deity ought to be honored, even a people that cannot say what form that deity should take. From this it follows that he who as it were remembers whence he sprang acknowledges God. Those philosophers, then, who wish to free souls from all fear, take away religion as well, and rob man of his own particular and singular good — a thing utterly cut off from right living and from all humanity, since just as God subjected all living things to man, so he subjected man himself to God. For why do those very philosophers argue that the mind should be directed toward that place toward which our face is lifted? For if we are to gaze upon the sky, this is surely for no other reason than religion; strip away religion and our tie to the sky vanishes entirely. So either we must gaze upward or bow down to the earth. To bow down to the earth we cannot do even if we wished, since our posture is upright. We must gaze, then, upon the sky, to which the very nature of our body summons us. But if it is agreed that this must be done, it must be done either so that we may serve religion, or so that we may come to understand the workings of the heavens. But we can in no way come to understand the workings of the heavens, because nothing of that kind can be discovered by mere reasoning, as I taught above. Religion, then, must be served; and whoever does not take it up prostrates himself upon the earth and, following the life of beasts, strips himself of his humanity. Wiser, then, are the uneducated, who, even if they err in choosing their religion, still remember their own nature and condition.
It is agreed, then, by the consent of the whole human race, that religion ought to be embraced. But how error creeps into it must be explained. God shaped man's nature to crave and reach for a pair of things at once, religion together with wisdom. Men go astray, though, because they embrace one at the expense of the other — either seizing religion and letting wisdom slide, or giving themselves over solely to wisdom and letting religion slide — when in truth neither stands as genuine without its partner. So they tumble into a multitude of religions, all false, and precisely because they set aside the wisdom that might have shown them a plurality of gods is impossible; or else they chase after wisdom, but a false one, and precisely because they neglected the one supreme God's religion, the sole thing able to school them in true understanding. So it is that those clinging to just one of the pair wander a crooked road thick with grievous mistakes, for man's duty and the whole of truth alike lie bound up inseparably within this twofold thing. I marvel, therefore, that not a single philosopher ever arose who found the seat and dwelling place of the highest good. For they could have inquired thus: whatever the highest good is, it must necessarily be set before all men alike. Pleasure is what all creatures seek, but this is shared with the beasts, has no power to confer honor, brings satiety, harms in excess, diminishes with advancing age, and is not attained by many — for those who lack means, who are the greater number, must also lack pleasure. Pleasure, then, is not the highest good — indeed it is not a good at all. What of riches? Even less so: they fall to fewer people, most often by chance, often to the sluggish, sometimes even through crime, and are still coveted by those who already possess them. What of kingship itself? Not that either: not all men can reign, and it is necessary that all be capable of the highest good. Let us seek, then, something set before all. Perhaps virtue? No one could dispute that virtue counts as a good — indeed a good belonging to everyone. But if it cannot be blessed, since its very nature and force consist in the endurance of evils, then it is surely not the highest good. Let us seek something else. Yet one finds nothing lovelier than virtue, nothing more fitting for the wise to pursue. Since baseness is reason enough to flee vice, loveliness gives reason enough to chase virtue. So consider this: could something everyone agrees is good and honorable really carry no reward, no recompense at all, so utterly fruitless that it yields no benefit whatsoever? Such great toil, such hardship, such a fight waged against all the evils crowding this life — it has to yield some great good as its fruit. But what shall we say this is? Pleasure? But nothing base can be born of what is honorable. Riches? Power? These are fragile and fleeting things. Glory? Honor? The remembrance of one's name? But all these do not reside in virtue itself but in the estimation and judgment of others; indeed virtue is often hated and afflicted with harm. Rather, the good that is born of virtue ought to be so bound to it that it cannot be torn away or separated from it; nor can the highest good be understood except as belonging to virtue alone, in a form so complete that neither addition nor subtraction could touch it. And is it not the case that the very duties of virtue consist in scorning all these things? For not to desire, not to seek, not to love pleasures, wealth, power, honors, and all the things that are counted as goods — things which everyone else pursues, conquered by desire — this surely is the mark of virtue itself. It achieves, then, something loftier and more splendid, and it does not resist these present goods without cause, except that it longs for things greater and truer. Let us not despair of finding it, only let our thought range over every possibility, for the rewards being sought are no light or trifling matter.