Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Since, then, even the foremost philosophers themselves are caught in such vanity, what should we suppose of their lesser followers? They never seem so wise to themselves as when they boast of their contempt for money. "A brave spirit," they say. But I wait to see what they actually do, and where that contempt leads. They flee and abandon the estates handed down to them by their parents as though they were an evil, and, so as not to suffer shipwreck in a storm, they hurl themselves headlong into calm waters of their own accord — brave not through virtue but through a perverse fear, like men who, fearing to be slain by an enemy, kill themselves first, so as to escape death by death. So these men throw away, without honor and without gratitude, what could have won them the glory of generosity. Democritus is praised for having left his fields and allowed them to become public pasture. I would approve, had he given them as a gift. But nothing is done wisely which, if done by everyone, would be useless and harmful. Still, this negligence is tolerable. What of the man who turned his whole estate into coin and poured it into the sea? I am not sure whether he was sane or mad. "Go," he said, "down to the depths, you wicked desires; I will drown you, lest you drown me." If your contempt for money is so great, turn it into a kindness, turn it into an act of humanity — give it to the poor. With the very wealth you meant to throw away, you could rescue crowds of people from starving, from thirst, from going unclothed. Follow, at the very least, the reckless frenzy Tuditanus showed: throw it to the crowd to be seized. You can both escape from money and still put it to good use, since whatever benefits the many is not truly lost. But who approves Zeno's doctrine that all sins are equal? Let us pass over what everyone has always laughed at; it is enough, to expose the madness of the man's error, that he counts mercy among the vices and diseases. He strips from us the feeling on which nearly the whole conduct of human life depends. For since man's nature is weaker than that of the other animals, which heavenly providence has armed with natural defenses either to endure the assaults of the elements or to ward off attacks with their own bodies, but to man none of these has been given — in place of all of them he has received the feeling of compassion, properly called humanity, by which we look out for one another. For if man grew savage at the sight of another man, as we see happens among creatures whose nature is to wander alone, no human community would exist at all, no impulse or design to build cities, and indeed life itself would not be safe enough, since human weakness would then be exposed both to the other animals and to men themselves raging against one another like beasts. No smaller a madness appears in others. For what can be said of the man who declared that snow is black? How consistent it would have been for him also to say that pitch is white! This is the same man who said he was born for the very purpose of seeing the sky and the sun — he who, with the sun shining, could see nothing on the earth. When the mathematicians claimed the moon's disk exceeded the earth's size eighteenfold, Xenophanes accepted it with the utmost credulity, and — true to such foolishness — he added that inside the moon's hollow curve sat a second earth, home to another race living just as we do here. These moon-dwellers, then, would need a moon of their own to light their nights, the way ours lights us; conceivably our own sphere is nothing but the satellite of some still lower earth. According to Seneca, a certain Stoic once weighed whether the sun, too, deserved a population of its own — foolish indeed even to have hesitated over it. For what would he have lost by granting it? But I suppose the heat deterred him, lest he expose so great a multitude to danger, for fear that, should they perish from excessive heat, so great a disaster would be blamed on him.
What then? Do those who think there are antipodes, people standing with their footprints opposite ours, say anything sensible? Could anyone be foolish enough to think there exist people with feet positioned above their heads? Or that objects lying flat in our world dangle there inverted, with crops and trees sprouting downward, and rain, snow, and hail dropping upward toward the ground? And people marvel that hanging gardens are counted among the seven wonders, when philosophers make hanging fields, hanging cities, hanging seas, and hanging mountains! We must lay bare the source of this error too, for such men are always deceived in the same way. Once they have assumed something false at the outset, led on by a resemblance to the truth, they are bound to run into further error in what follows. Thus they fall into many absurdities, because whatever agrees with false premises must itself be false. But once they have put their trust in the first assumptions, they no longer examine what kind of things follow from them, but defend them by every means, when instead they ought to judge whether those first premises were true or false by what follows from them. What reasoning, then, led them to the antipodes? They observed the courses of the stars moving toward their setting, the sun and moon always setting in the same direction and always rising from the same direction. But since they could not see what mechanism regulated their course, nor how they returned from setting to rising, and since they supposed the sky itself curved downward on every side — which it must appear to do, given its immense breadth — they concluded that the world was round like a ball, and from the movement of the stars they supposed that the sky itself revolves; thus the stars and sun, once set, are carried back around to their rising by the very rotation of the universe. So they even built spheres of bronze in the shape of the world and engraved on them certain fantastic images which they said were the stars. From this roundness of the sky it followed that the earth must be enclosed within its curve. And if that were so, the earth itself would also have to be like a ball; for it could not be otherwise than round, being enclosed within something round. And if the earth were round, it would necessarily present the same appearance on every side of the sky — that is, raise mountains, spread out plains, and lay down seas. And if this were so, that final absurdity followed as well: that there is no part of the earth not inhabited by men and other living things. So the roundness of the sky invented these hanging antipodes. And if you ask those who defend such monstrosities how it is, then, that everything does not fall down into that lower part of the sky, they answer that it is simply the nature of things for weights to be drawn toward the center, and so that everything converges toward the center the way spokes gather in a wheel's hub; while light things, such as mist, smoke, and fire, are carried away from the center, so as to seek the sky. I do not know what to say of such people, who, once they have gone astray, persist stubbornly in their folly and defend empty claims with empty arguments — except that I sometimes think they either philosophize as a joke, or, knowingly and deliberately, take up falsehoods to defend, as if to exercise or display their cleverness on bad material. I could myself demonstrate through numerous arguments that the sky can in no way lie beneath the earth, if this volume were not already nearing its close, and if other topics more essential to what I am now writing did not still await me. Since cataloguing the errors of every philosopher individually is not a job for one single book, let it suffice to have listed a few, from which one may understand the character of the rest.
Now we must say a few things about philosophy in general, so that, having established our case, we may bring it to a close. That greatest imitator of Plato among us judged that philosophy is not for the common people, since only the learned can attain it. "Philosophy," he says, "is content with few judges, deliberately shunning the multitude." But it is not wisdom if it recoils from the company of men, since wisdom, if given to man at all, is given to all without distinction, so that there is no one whatsoever incapable of grasping it. Yet these men embrace the virtue given to the whole human race in such a way that they alone, it seems, wish to enjoy this public good, as jealous as though eager to seal shut or pluck out the eyes of every other person, keeping them from beholding the sun. Denying wisdom to mankind, after all, amounts to nothing less than stripping the genuine, divine light from human minds. Yet if wisdom lies within the reach of human nature, then craftsmen and farmers and women and, in short, everyone who bears human form ought to have been taught, so that they might become wise, and a people of the wise ought to have been formed out of every tongue, condition, sex, and age. So it is the strongest proof that philosophy neither aims at wisdom nor is itself wisdom, that its mystery is celebrated only by a beard and a cloak. Even the Stoics sensed this, for they said that slaves and women too ought to philosophize; so did Epicurus, who invites the wholly uneducated to philosophy; likewise Plato, who wished to compose his ideal state out of the wise. They indeed attempted to do what the truth demanded, but it could go no further than words — first, because many skills are needed before one can even approach philosophy. These common subjects must be learned for the purpose of reading, because amid such variety of matters not everything can be learned by hearing, nor retained in memory. No small effort must also be given to grammar, so as to know the correct manner of speech; that alone must take up many years. Nor can rhetoric be left unlearned, so that what you have learned you may be able to bring forth and express. Geometry too, and music, and astronomy are necessary, since these arts have some kinship with philosophy. All of this cannot be fully learned either by women, who must learn, before reaching maturity, the duties soon needed for household life; nor by slaves, who during those very years must above all serve those from whom they might learn; nor by the poor, or craftsmen, or farmers, who must earn their daily bread by labor. For this reason Cicero says that philosophy shrinks from the multitude. But, one might say, Epicurus will admit the uneducated. How, then, will they understand what is said about the first principles of things, matters so tangled and involved that even cultivated men scarcely grasp them? So amid questions this tangled in darkness, muddled further by differing abilities, and clothed in the ornate language educated speakers favor, where is room left for those without training or learning? In the end, no woman has ever been taught to philosophize, in all of recorded memory, except one — Themista — and no slave except one, Phaedo, who, it is said, they redeemed from his miserable servitude and taught. They also count Plato and Diogenes, who nonetheless were not slaves but fell into servitude — they had been taken captive. Plato, it is said, a certain Anniceris ransomed for eight thousand sesterces. And so Seneca attacked with insults this very man who had ransomed him, for having valued Plato too cheaply — mad, it seems to me, to be angry at a man for not losing more money: as if he ought to have weighed out gold as though for the dead Hector, or piled up more coin than the seller had even asked. And among barbarians, none at all except one, Anacharsis the Scythian, who would never even have dreamed of philosophy had he not first learned the language and letters.
What, then, heavenly teaching accomplishes — which nature itself demanded be done, but which they themselves could neither achieve nor saw achieved by philosophers — it alone can bring about, because it alone is wisdom. Could they possibly have persuaded anyone, who cannot persuade even themselves? Could they suppress anyone's desires, temper anger, restrain lust, when they themselves give way to vice and admit that nature is the stronger power? But because God's precepts are simple and true, everyday experience shows how powerful they are in the souls of men. Hand me a man prone to rage, foul in speech, out of control — a handful of God's words is all it takes for me to turn him gentle as a lamb. Give me one who is greedy, miserly, tight-fisted — I will straightaway give him back to you generous, scattering his own money with open hands. Give me one afraid of pain and death — he will at once scorn crosses and flames and the bull of Perillus. Give me one who is lustful, adulterous, a glutton — you will soon see him sober, chaste, self-controlled. Give me one cruel and thirsting for blood — that very fury will be changed into pure gentleness. Give me one unjust, foolish, sinful — he will at once become fair, prudent, and innocent: for by one washing all wickedness is done away. Such is the strength divine wisdom carries: once it enters a man's heart, one blow banishes folly, that root of every sin — and to accomplish this no payment, no books, no midnight study is required. These things happen freely, easily, quickly — let the ears only lie open and the heart thirst for wisdom. Let no one be afraid: we do not sell water, nor charge a fee for sunlight. God's spring flows richly and without limit, freely accessible to every person, and this light from heaven dawns for anyone who has eyes to see it. Has any philosopher ever accomplished this, or could he, even if he wished? Though they spend their whole lives in the pursuit of philosophy, they cannot make anyone else better, nor even themselves, if nature has stood even slightly in the way. And so their wisdom, at its very best, does not root out the vices but merely conceals them. But God's few precepts so change the whole man, and, having stripped off the old, restore him new, that you would not recognize him as the same person.
What then? Do they teach nothing similar at all? On the contrary, a great deal, and they often come close to the truth, but their precepts carry no weight, because they are human and lack the greater authority — that is, the divine. So no one believes, because the one who hears considers himself as much a man as the one who instructs him. Moreover, nothing among them is certain, nothing that comes from real knowledge, but since everything is done by conjecture, and much that is offered is contradictory and varied, it is the mark of a most foolish man to wish to obey their precepts when it is doubtful whether they are true or false — and so no one obeys, because no one wants to labor toward an uncertain goal. The Stoics say that virtue alone can make life happy. Nothing could be truer. But what if a man is tortured, or afflicted with pain? Can anyone be happy among the executioners? Indeed, pain inflicted on the body is the very material of virtue, and so a man is not miserable even amid torments. Epicurus goes further still, claiming the wise man stays happy always — even enclosed within Phalaris's bronze bull, he will call out: "How sweet this is, and I care nothing for it." Would anyone not mock such a claim, given that a man wholly devoted to pleasure has taken up, absurdly, the pretense of courage? For it cannot be that anyone should count bodily torture among pleasures, when it is enough, for the fulfillment of virtue's duty, simply to endure and bear it. Where does that leave you Stoics, and you, Epicurus? Even under torture, by your account, the wise man remains happy. Should this rest on the glory of having endured, he will never get to savor it, since the torment may well kill him; should it rest instead on future memory, then either he feels nothing at all, assuming the soul dies with the body, or, if something does persist, it brings him no benefit whatsoever. So what fruit, then, does virtue actually yield? What happiness of life? They say he will die with a calm mind. You offer me a good lasting one hour, or perhaps one moment, for the sake of which it is not worthwhile to be worn down by miseries and toils through an entire life. And how much time, after all, does death occupy? When it comes, whether you meet it with a calm mind or an anxious one no longer makes any difference. So it turns out that nothing else is sought from virtue except glory. But this is either useless and short-lived, or else it will not follow, given the corrupt judgments of men. Virtue thus bears no fruit at all if virtue itself dies and decays. Hence those who have written on the subject were gazing merely at virtue's shadow, never at virtue in itself. For their eyes were fixed on the earth, and they did not lift their gaze upward, so as to behold virtue as she truly showed herself from the regions of heaven. This explains why their precepts win no obedience: whenever they champion pleasure they are teaching vice outright, and whenever they champion virtue instead, the only penalty they threaten for wrongdoing is shame, and the only prize they promise for virtue is honor and praise — since, in their view, virtue ought to be pursued purely for itself, with no further motive. The wise man, then, is happy even amid torments — but when he is tortured for the sake of faith, for justice, for God, that endurance of pain will make him truly and supremely happy. For God alone has the power to reward virtue, and his reward is immortality and nothing less. Those who do not seek this, and do not hold to the religion under which eternal life lies, surely know nothing of the true force of virtue, whose reward is unknown to them, nor do they look toward heaven, though they think they do, when they pursue things beyond their reach — for there is no other way of looking toward heaven except either to take up religion or to believe one's own soul is immortal. For whoever understands that God must be worshiped, or holds before himself the hope of immortality, has his mind fixed on heaven, and even though he does not see it with his eyes, he sees it by the light of his soul. But those who do not take up religion are earthbound, because religion comes from heaven; and and those who believe the soul dies together with the body are equally earthbound in their gaze, since past the body — which is merely earth — they perceive nothing further that endures forever. It profits nothing, then, that man has been so formed as to gaze at the sky with upright body, unless with an upright mind he also perceives God, and his whole thought is engaged in the hope of everlasting life.