Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Seneca was led astray by the same error - for how could anyone hold to the true path once Cicero himself had gone astray? - when he says that philosophy is nothing other than the correct reasoning about how to live, or the knowledge of living honorably, or the art of conducting a right life. We will not be mistaken, he says, if we call philosophy the law of living well and honorably, and whoever has called it the rule of life has given it its proper due. But here he plainly failed to consider what the word 'philosophy' commonly means. Since it is scattered among so many sects and schools of thought, and possesses nothing certain — nothing, in short, that all its followers accept in common and speak of with a single voice — what could be more false than calling it the rule of life, when the clashing of its own precepts blocks and confuses the straight path? Either it is a law of living well whose principal tenets are wildly discordant with one another, or it is a knowledge of conducting life in which nothing is achieved by all this arguing on opposite sides except that no one knows anything. For I ask: does he think the Academy counts as philosophy or not? I do not suppose he would deny it. But if it does, then none of what he says applies to philosophy at all - for the Academy, in order to render everything uncertain, abolishes law, denies that there is any art, overturns reason, corrupts the rule, and does away with knowledge altogether. All those claims of his, then, are false, because they cannot apply to a thing that is forever uncertain and that to this day explains nothing. There is, therefore, no reasoning or knowledge or law of living well established except in that one true heavenly wisdom, which had remained unknown to the philosophers. For that earthly wisdom, being false, is varied, manifold, and wholly at odds with itself. And just as this world has a single maker and ruler, God, and a single truth, wisdom too must be one thing, undivided, since nothing true and good can reach perfection unless it stands alone. But if philosophy could truly shape a life, then no one but philosophers would be good, and everyone who had not studied it would always be wicked. Yet since there have always existed - and still exist - countless people who are or were good without any formal teaching, while among philosophers it has been exceedingly rare to find one who did anything in life worthy of praise, who, in the end, fails to see that these men are not teachers of the very virtue they themselves lack? For if one examines their characters closely, one finds them irritable, greedy, lustful, arrogant, insolent, hiding their own vices under the pretense of wisdom, and doing at home the very things they had condemned in the lecture hall. Perhaps I exaggerate for the sake of accusation - but does not Cicero himself admit and lament this very thing? How rare, he says, is the philosopher found to be so disciplined in character, so ordered in mind and life, as reason demands - one who treats his own teaching not as a display of learning but as the law of his life, who obeys himself and abides by his own decrees? One can see some so frivolous and boastful that it would have been better for them never to have studied at all; others slaves to money, others to glory, many slaves to their lusts, so that their manner of life is astonishingly at war with their own speeches. Cornelius Nepos, too, writes to that same Cicero in these terms: so far am I from thinking philosophy the mistress of life and the perfecter of the happy life, that I judge no one has more need of teachers of how to live than the very people who spend their time debating it. For I see that a great many of those who lecture in the schools most eloquently on modesty and self-restraint live themselves immersed in every kind of lustful desire. Likewise Seneca, in his Exhortations, says: most philosophers are of this sort - eloquent in denouncing their own faults. If you listen to them declaiming against greed, against lust, against ambition, you would think they were confessing their own indictment - so thoroughly do the curses they hurl in public rebound upon themselves. One ought to view them the way one views doctors, whose labels promise remedies while their boxes hold poisons. Some of them, indeed, feel no shame at all for their vices, but instead fabricate excuses for their own disgrace, so that they may even seem to sin honorably. The wise man, this same Seneca says, will do even things of which he does not approve, so that he may find a passage to greater things; he will not abandon good conduct, but will adapt it to the occasion, and the very things others use for glory or pleasure, he will use for the sake of getting things done. And a little further on: the wise man will do all the things the extravagant do and all the things the ignorant do, but not in the same manner or with the same purpose. And yet whatever purpose lies behind an act that is wrong in itself changes nothing, for actions are visible while motives remain hidden. Aristippus, the master of the Cyrenaics, kept company with the notorious courtesan Lais. This scandal the grave teacher of philosophy defended by claiming that there was a great difference between himself and Lais's other lovers - namely, that he possessed Lais, while the others were possessed by her. What a splendid wisdom, worthy of imitation by good men! Would you really entrust your children to his instruction, so that they might learn how to keep a mistress? He said there was a difference between himself and the profligate, namely that they squandered their own fortunes while he indulged himself for free. Yet in this the courtesan proved the wiser one, for she had turned the philosopher into her procurer, so that, corrupted by the example and authority of so great a teacher, all the young men flocked to her without any shame whatsoever. What difference did it make, then, with what intention the philosopher visited so notorious a courtesan, when the people and his own rivals saw him more depraved than the most dissolute of men? Nor was it enough for him to live this way - he began to teach his lusts as well, and carried his own habits from the brothel into the lecture hall, arguing that bodily pleasure is the highest good. Such an execrable and shameful doctrine was not born in the heart of a philosopher, but in the bosom of a courtesan. And why should I speak of the Cynics, among whom it was customary to have intercourse with their wives in the open street? Is it any wonder that from dogs, whose way of life they imitate, they also took their very name? There is, then, no mastery of virtue in this discipline, since even those who teach the more honorable precepts either fail to practice what they urge, or, if they do practice it - which happens rarely - it is not their teaching but their nature that leads them to what is right, for nature often drives even the untaught toward praiseworthy conduct.
But in fact, since they hand themselves over to perpetual idleness, take up no virtue at all, and spend their whole lives doing nothing but talking, what else should they be considered but idle? For wisdom, unless it expresses itself in some action through which it exerts its power, is empty and false, and Cicero is right to rank statesmen - who govern the republic, who found cities or preserve those already founded through justice, who safeguard the safety and freedom of citizens through good laws, wholesome counsel, or weighty judgments - above the teachers of philosophy. For it is better to make men good than to sit shut up in some corner prescribing things to be done which not even the ones speaking them actually do; and since they have removed themselves from real action, it is clear that they invented this art called philosophy merely to exercise their tongues or to distract their minds. Those who only teach and do not practice strip their own precepts of weight. For who would obey, when the very teachers instruct that one need not obey? It is good, certainly, to prescribe right and honorable things, but unless you also do them, it is a lie, and it is absurd and unfitting to keep goodness not in one's heart but merely on one's lips. They seek from philosophy, then, not usefulness but amusement. And Cicero himself attested to exactly this. Assuredly, he says, all their disputation - though it contains the richest springs of virtue and knowledge - nevertheless, when compared with their deeds and accomplished works, I fear may be found to have brought less benefit to the practical affairs of men than amusement to their leisure hours. Yet he need not have feared, since he was speaking the truth; but as though afraid of being charged by the philosophers with betraying some mystery, he did not dare declare outright what was true - namely, that they do not argue in order to teach, but to amuse themselves in their idleness. Since they claim authority over how affairs should be conducted, yet themselves conduct nothing, they ought to be counted as mere chatterers. But clearly, because they contributed nothing of good to actual life, they neither obeyed their own decrees themselves, nor has anyone through so many ages been found who lived by their laws. All philosophy, therefore, must be thrown away, because wisdom is not something to be pursued endlessly without limit or measure, but something to be actually possessed - and possessed promptly. For we are not granted a second life, in which, having sought wisdom in this one, we might then be wise in the other; in this life both must happen. It ought to be found quickly, so that it can be taken up quickly, lest anything be lost from a life whose end is uncertain. Cicero's Hortensius, arguing against philosophy, gets caught in its own clever trap: for in maintaining that one ought not to philosophize, he nevertheless appeared to be philosophizing, since it is the business of a philosopher to debate what should or should not be done in life. We ourselves are free of this charge, untouched by it, for we do away with philosophy, since it is a human invention, while we defend wisdom, since it is a divine tradition, and we affirm that it ought to be embraced by everyone. When Hortensius abolished philosophy without offering anything better in its place, he was thought to be abolishing wisdom itself, and was the more easily driven from his position, since it is agreed that man is born not for folly but for wisdom. Besides, there is another argument against philosophy of great force, one that this same Hortensius used - namely, that one can tell philosophy is not wisdom from the fact that its beginning and origin can be pinpointed. When, he asks, did men begin to be philosophers? Thales, I suppose, was the first. This is, indeed, a recent age - so where, then, among the ancients before him, was this love of investigating truth hiding? Lucretius says the same thing: this understanding and reasoning about nature was discovered only recently, and I myself, the very first among the first, am now able to render it into the speech of my own country. And Seneca states that the origins of wisdom took shape less than a thousand years ago. For many ages, then, the human race lived without reason - which Persius mocks when he says that wisdom came to the city along with pepper and dates, as though wisdom had been imported along with spices and merchandise. But if wisdom accords with human nature, it must necessarily have begun along with man himself; and if it does not, then human nature could not even grasp it at all. But since human nature does receive it, wisdom must necessarily have existed from the beginning; philosophy, therefore, since it did not exist from the beginning, is not the same thing as true wisdom. But since the Greeks had never had contact with the sacred writings of truth, they plainly failed to grasp how wisdom had been corrupted; believing, then, that human existence lacked wisdom altogether, they fabricated philosophy - a project in which they tried, through argument, to unearth a truth hidden from and unknown to them, mistaking this pursuit, out of sheer ignorance of the truth, for wisdom itself.