Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
If one asks what it is for the sake of which we are born, and what virtue accomplishes, we can investigate it in this way. Man consists of two parts, soul and body. Many things belong to the soul alone, many to the body alone, and many are common to both, as is virtue itself, which, whenever it is referred to the body, is called by the distinguishing name of fortitude. Since, then, fortitude belongs to both, a struggle is set before both, and from that struggle victory belongs to both: the body, because it is solid and can be grasped, must necessarily clash with solid and graspable things; the soul, however, because it is subtle and invisible, engages with enemies that cannot be seen or touched. And who are the enemies of the soul but desires, vices, and sins? If virtue conquers and puts these to flight, the soul will be spotless and pure. From what, then, can we gather what the fortitude of the soul accomplishes? Surely from its counterpart and equal, that is, from the fortitude of the body: once the body enters into any struggle or contest, victory aims at nothing but survival itself. Whether the opponent is human or beast, what is at stake is staying alive. Therefore, just as the body by conquering achieves this, that it not perish, so too the soul seeks to endure; and just as the body, when conquered by its enemies, is punished with death, so the soul, when overcome by vices, must necessarily die. What difference, then, will there be between the struggle of the soul and that of the body, except that the body seeks a temporal life, the soul an everlasting one? If, then, virtue is not blessed in itself — since, as I said, its whole strength lies in enduring evils, if it disregards all the things that are sought after as goods, if its highest degree opens onto death, since it often rejects the life that others desire and bravely takes up the death that others fear — if it is necessary that it produce from itself some great good, because labors undertaken and endured even to the point of death cannot be without reward, and if no reward worthy of it is found on earth, since it despises everything that is fragile and perishable, what remains but that it produce something heavenly, since it holds all earthly things in contempt and strives toward higher things, since it looks down on what is lowly? And this can be nothing other than immortality. Rightly, then, did Euclid, no obscure figure among the philosophers, who founded the Megarian school and dissented from the rest, say that the highest good is that which is alike and ever the same. He surely understood the nature of the highest good, though he did not spell out what it was; but it is immortality and nothing else at all, since it alone can neither be diminished, nor increased, nor changed. Seneca too, without meaning to, fell into admitting that virtue's reward is nothing else than immortality; in the very book he wrote on untimely death, he praises virtue by saying: it alone can grant us immortality and set us on a level with the gods. The Stoics, whose school he followed, likewise hold that no one can attain blessedness apart from virtue, so virtue's reward is indeed a blessed life, granted that a blessed life is rightly credited to virtue. Virtue, then, is not to be sought for its own sake, as they claim, but for the sake of the blessed life, which necessarily follows virtue. This argument could have taught them what the highest good was. This present life in the body, however, cannot be blessed, since the body leaves it exposed to misfortune. Epicurus, for his part, terms god blessed and incorruptible, on the grounds that god is eternal. Blessedness, after all, must be complete, nothing may disturb, lessen, or alter it, and nothing counts as blessed unless it is beyond corruption. And nothing is incorruptible except what is immortal. Immortality alone, then, is blessed, because it cannot be corrupted or dissolved. But if virtue can belong to man — which no one can deny — then blessedness too can belong to him: for it cannot be that one endowed with virtue is wretched. And if blessedness can belong to man, then immortality too, which is blessed, can belong to man. The highest good, then, is found to be immortality alone, since no other animal attains it, nor does the body, nor can it come to anyone lacking knowledge and virtue, in other words, lacking acquaintance with God and with justice. How right, how true this desire is, is shown by the very longing for this present life, which, though temporal and utterly full of toil, is nevertheless sought and desired by all: for the old desire it no less than the young, kings no less than the lowest of men, and the wise no less than fools. So great a thing is it, as Anaxagoras thought, to contemplate the sky and the light itself, that people are willing to endure whatever miseries may come. Since, then, this toilsome and brief life is judged a great good not only by the consensus of men but even of the other animals, it is clear that this same thing becomes the highest and perfect good if it lacks both an end and every evil. Indeed, no one would ever have arisen who despised this brief life, or who would undergo death, except in hope of a longer life. Consider those who freely gave themselves over to death for their countrymen's safety: Menoeceus in Thebes, Codrus in Athens, Curtius and the two Decii Mures in Rome. None of them would have chosen dying over life's benefits, unless each believed that immortality among his fellow citizens' memory awaited him. And though they did not know the way to immortality, the reality did not deceive them. For if virtue holds riches and wealth in contempt because they are fragile, and pleasures because they are brief, then it likewise holds fragile and brief life in contempt, in order to obtain something solid and everlasting. This very train of thought, then, advancing step by step and considering everything, leads us to that excellent and singular good for whose sake we are born. If the philosophers had done this, and had not preferred stubbornly to defend what they had once seized upon, they would surely have arrived at this truth, just as I have now shown. But even if this was not the case with those who extinguish the heavenly soul along with the body, even those who maintain the soul's immortality should nonetheless have grasped why virtue is placed before us: that once desires are subdued and the pull of earthly things has been overcome, our souls, cleansed and triumphant, may come back to God, the very source from which they came. For this reason we alone among living creatures are raised upright to look upon the sky, so that we may believe our highest good lies in the highest place; for this reason we alone receive religion, so that from this we may know that the human spirit is not mortal, seeing that it both longs for and perceives God, who does not die. So among all the philosophers who took up either knowledge or virtue as the highest good, they indeed held to the path of truth, but did not arrive at the summit. For these are the two things that together bring about what is sought: knowledge provides that we know how and where we must arrive, virtue that we actually arrive. Neither is worth anything without the other: for from knowledge virtue is born, and from virtue the highest good. The blessed life that philosophers have forever pursued and go on pursuing, be it through worshiping the gods or through philosophy, simply does not exist, and for this reason could not be found by them, since they went looking for the highest good in the lowest place instead of the highest. And what stands at the summit, if not heaven and God, the source from which the soul comes? What is the lowest but earth, from which the body comes? And so, though certain philosophers located the highest good in the soul rather than the body, they nevertheless tied it to this present life, which terminates with the body, and thereby dragged it back down to the body after all, to which belongs all this time that is spent on earth. It is therefore not without reason that they failed to grasp the highest good, since whatever pertains to the body and lacks immortality must necessarily be the lowest. Blessedness, then, does not belong to man in the way the philosophers supposed, but it belongs in this way: not that one is blessed while living in the body — which must necessarily be corrupted so that it may be dissolved — but rather when the soul, freed from partnership with the body, lives in spirit alone. In this life we can be blessed only in this one way: if we appear least of all to be blessed, if, fleeing the enticements of pleasures and serving virtue alone, we live amid all miseries and labors, which are the exercises and strengthenings of virtue, and if, in short, we hold to that rough and difficult road which has been opened for us toward blessedness. The highest good, then, which makes men blessed, can exist only in that religion and teaching to which the hope of immortality is joined.
The matter seems to demand at this point that, since we have shown that immortality is the highest good, we now prove this very point — that the soul is immortal. On this subject there is enormous dispute among the philosophers, and yet those who held a true view of the soul were unable to explain or prove anything, since, lacking this divine instruction, they brought forward neither true arguments by which they might win the case nor testimonies by which they might prove it. We will handle this matter more fittingly in the final book, where the blessed life comes up for discussion. What is left is philosophy's third division, the one they term logic, covering the whole of dialectic and every argument concerning speech. Divine teaching requires none of this, for wisdom resides in the heart rather than on the tongue, and the style of speech employed matters not at all. It is things, not words, that are sought. And we are not discussing the grammarian or the orator, whose expertise lies in how one ought to speak, but the wise man, whose teaching concerns how one ought to live. But if that physical reasoning is not necessary, nor this logical reasoning either, since neither can make a man blessed, then philosophy's entire strength must reside in ethics alone, the branch to which Socrates reportedly gave himself, abandoning every other pursuit. But since I have shown that the philosophers erred in this branch as well, failing to grasp the highest good for the sake of attaining which we are born, it is clear that all philosophy is false and empty, since it neither equips one for the duties of justice nor perfects a man's obligation and reason. Let them know, then, that they are mistaken who suppose philosophy to be wisdom; let them not be dragged along by anyone's authority, but rather favor and draw near to truth. There is no room here for recklessness; the penalty of folly must be paid for eternity, if either an empty personality or a false opinion has deceived one. But a man, whoever he is, if he trusts himself — that is, trusts a fellow man — is, not to say a fool who does not see his own error, certainly arrogant in daring to claim for himself what the human condition does not allow. One may see how far the very greatest master of the Roman tongue himself was mistaken, from this one statement of his: having stated in his books on duties that philosophy amounts to nothing but the love of wisdom, and defined wisdom in turn as knowledge encompassing both divine and human matters, he went on to add: whoever finds fault with the pursuit of this, I confess I hardly understand what he thinks worthy of praise. For if one seeks delight of mind and rest from cares, nothing rivals the labors of people perpetually in search of whatever serves and points toward a good, blessed life. Or if one seeks a system of steadiness and virtue, either this is the art by which we attain them, or there is no art at all. Claiming that no skill governs the weightiest matters, when even trivial things require some skill, betrays careless speakers who go badly wrong on what matters most. But if there is some discipline of virtue, where will it be sought once you have abandoned this manner of learning? For my part, though I have taken pains to acquire whatever small skill in speaking I could, out of my zeal for teaching, I have never been eloquent, since I have not so much as set foot in the forum; but the very goodness of the cause must make me eloquent, for the knowledge of divinity and truth itself suffice to defend it fluently and abundantly. I would wish, then, that Cicero might rise for a little while from the dead, so that this most eloquent man might be taught by an unpolished little fellow: first, what he thinks is worthy of praise, he who finds fault with that pursuit called philosophy; next, that this is not, as he assumed, the skill through which one learns virtue and justice, nor is any other discipline; and finally, since there is a discipline of virtue, where it is to be sought once one has abandoned that manner of learning which he himself sought not in order to listen and learn. For from whom could he have learned, when he knew that no one possessed it? But as he was accustomed to do in his legal cases, he wished to press hard by questioning and drive to a confession, as though he were confident that absolutely nothing could be answered that would prevent philosophy from being the mistress of virtue. And this indeed he openly declared in the Tusculan Disputations, turning his speech directly to philosophy itself, as though he were showing off in a declamatory style of speaking. Philosophy, he exclaims, guide of life, hunter of virtue and banisher of vice, without you what would have become not merely of us, but of the entire human race? You are the discoverer of laws, you have been the teacher of morals and discipline — as if she herself perceived anything on her own, and not rather that he who bestowed her ought to be praised. He might just as well have given thanks in the same way to food and drink, since without these things life could not stand, though in them, as in her, there is no consciousness of the benefit; and yet, just as those are nourishment for the body, so wisdom is nourishment for the soul.
Lucretius, then, speaks more correctly when he praises the one who first discovered wisdom, but foolishly in supposing that it was discovered by a man — as if that man he praised had found it lying about somewhere, like pipes found by a spring, as the poets say. But if he praised the discoverer of wisdom as a god — for so he says: no one, I think, will have been born of mortal body. For if, as her own known majesty of things demands, it must be said — he was a god, a god, illustrious Memmius — even so, he ought not to have been praised as a god for having discovered wisdom, but for having made man capable of grasping wisdom; for he who praises a part diminishes the praise of the whole. But he, in praising the man who nevertheless ought for this very reason to be held as a god, for having discovered wisdom, thus says: will it not be fitting that this man be reckoned worthy of a place among the number of the gods? This makes plain that his praise was aimed either at Pythagoras, by my earlier account the first man to adopt the title philosopher, or at Thales of Miletus, credited as the first to examine the nature of things. Thus, while seeking to exalt the man, he brought the matter itself down: for it is not a great thing, if it could be discovered by a man. But this may be forgiven a poet. Yet that same man, the perfect orator, the same supreme philosopher — not to reproach the Greeks, whose fickleness he always condemns and yet follows — praises wisdom herself, whom elsewhere he calls a gift, elsewhere an invention of the gods, poetically figured, praising her to her face. He complains gravely, too, that some have arisen who found fault with her. He asks whether anyone would actually dare condemn the parent of life, fouling himself with such an act of parricide, while showing so little reverence and so much thanklessness. Well then, Marcus Tullius — is it we who deserve the executioner's sack as parricides, simply because we refuse to call philosophy life's parent? Or is the true culprit you, so irreverent and thankless toward God — not toward that statue you kneel before in the Capitol, but toward the one who fashioned the world, brought mankind into being, and lavished wisdom itself among his other heavenly gifts? Is she, in your reckoning, virtue's teacher, or life's own parent? Whoever has approached her must necessarily be far more uncertain than he was before. Even the location of virtue itself remains something the philosophers have never clarified. As for what life philosophy fathers, her own instructors grew old and died without ever settling the question of how one should live. Of what truth can you profess her the seeker-out, you who so often testify that, though there has been so great a multitude of philosophers, not one wise man has yet arisen? So what exactly did this so-called teacher of life instill in you? Slandering a formidable consul and turning him, through venomous rhetoric, into an enemy of his own country? But let us set aside those things that can be excused in the name of fortune. You gave yourself to philosophy with a diligence matched by no one, familiar as you were, by your own frequent boast, with every one of its schools, and you illuminated it in Latin letters and showed yourself an imitator of Plato. Tell me, then, what you learned, or in which school you found truth. In the Academy, of course, which you followed, which you approved. But this teaches nothing except that you know that you know nothing. Your own books, then, convict you of how little can be learned from philosophy for the conduct of life. These are your own words: to me we seem not only blind as regards wisdom, but dull and blunted even as regards those things that seem in some degree perceptible. So if philosophy truly teaches how to live, why did you describe yourself as blind, dull, and blunted, precisely when her instruction should have brought you clear perception and understanding, moving amid the fullest light? Just how much faith you placed in philosophy's truth appears in the counsel you gave your own son: that one should indeed know philosophy's precepts, yet live by the community's customary ways instead. Could anything be more self-contradictory? Granted that philosophy's precepts deserve to be known, they would need knowing precisely so that we might live wisely and well; but if one ought to live according to the customs of the community, then philosophy is not wisdom, since it is better to live by the customs of the community than to live philosophically. For if what is called philosophy is wisdom, then surely whoever does not live according to philosophy will live foolishly; but if one who lives by the customs of the community does not live foolishly, it follows that whoever lives philosophically lives foolishly. By your own judgment, then, philosophy stands condemned of folly and emptiness. In the Consolation, too — that is, in a work not meant as a jest — you pronounced this judgment on philosophy: but I know not what error and pitiable ignorance of the truth holds us fast. Where, then, is the teaching authority of philosophy, or what did that parent of life teach you, if you pitiably do not know the truth? And if this confession of error and ignorance was wrung, almost against your will, from the depths of your own heart, why do you not, for once, confess the truth to yourself: that philosophy, which you extolled to the skies in praise though it teaches nothing, cannot be the teacher of virtue?