Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Therefore nothing else in this life gives our reason, or our whole condition, anything to rest upon, except acknowledging the God who begot us, together with devoted, religious worship of him. Since the philosophers wandered from this, they were certainly not wise. They did indeed seek wisdom, but since their search went about it wrongly, they slipped far off course and fell into errors so deep that they failed to hold even the common sense that ordinary people have. For they were not content merely to refuse to affirm true religion; they actually tore it down, while under the guise of a false virtue they tried to free men's minds from all fear. This overthrow of religion found itself a name: nature. For these men, either because they did not know by whom the world had been made, or because they wanted to persuade others that nothing had been brought to perfection by a divine mind, claimed nature was mother to everything that is—as though declaring that all things arose spontaneously, on their own. By that very word they plainly confess their own thoughtlessness. For nature, once you take away providence and divine power, is simply nothing at all. But if by 'nature' they mean God, what perversity it is to call it nature rather than God! If, on the other hand, nature is the principle or necessity or condition of coming-to-be, then it is not perceptible by itself, and there must instead be a divine mind that by its own providence supplies to all things the beginning of their coming-to-be; or if by nature they mean the sky and the earth and everything that has been born, then nature is not God but God's handiwork. By a similar error they believe there is a kind of goddess called Fortune, who toys with human affairs through various chances, simply because they do not know where their good and bad fortunes come from. They imagine themselves squared off to do battle with her, yet they give no account of why or for what reason, but only boast that at every moment they are locked in combat with Fortune. Indeed, whenever they have tried to console others for the death and loss of loved ones, they have torn the name of Fortune to pieces with the sharpest accusations, and there is scarcely any discussion of theirs about virtue in which Fortune is not battered. Marcus Tullius, in his Consolation, says that he had always fought against Fortune and had overcome her, since he had bravely beaten back the assaults of his enemies; that even being driven into exile from his own country, stripped of home and homeland, had not broken him under her blows; yet losing his dearest daughter left him, by his own shameful admission, defeated by Fortune. 'I yield,' he says, 'and I raise my hand.' What could be more pitiable than a man who collapses like this? 'Foolishly,' he says—yet this is a man who professes to be wise! What, then, is the point of taking on the name of wisdom? What is the point of that lofty contempt for worldly things, paraded in such grand language? What is the point of a bearing set apart from everyone else's? Or why dispense any teachings of wisdom whatsoever, when no wise man has ever actually turned up? And does anyone blame us for denying wisdom to philosophers, when they themselves admit to knowing nothing and being wise about nothing? For whenever they fail so completely that they cannot even get a grip on anything—as they do in everything else—it is then, when reminded of their ignorance, that they leap up as if possessed and cry out that they are blind and senseless. Anaxagoras declares that all things are wrapped in darkness; Empedocles complains that the pathways of the senses are too narrow, as though thought needed a chariot and a team of four; Democritus says that truth lies sunk as if in some well so deep it has no bottom—foolishly, as in everything else. For truth is not sunk as in a well, where a man might either climb down or simply fall in, but rather set as on the very peak of a lofty mountain, or better, in the sky itself—which is the truest thing of all. For why should he have said it was pressed down to the depths rather than raised to the heights? Unless, that is, he'd rather situate the mind down in the feet, in the soles of the heels, than up in the chest or skull. So far were they removed from truth itself that not even the posture of their own bodies reminded them that truth was to be sought on high. Out of this despair was born that famous confession of Socrates, that he knew nothing except this one thing—that he knew nothing. From this arose the Academy as a school—if "school" is the right word for a place where not-knowing is both taught and absorbed. Yet even the ones who did claim to possess knowledge could not consistently hold on to what they believed they knew. Because their reasoning could not hold together, owing to their ignorance of divine matters, they were so inconsistent, so uncertain, so often contradicting themselves, that one could not tell or judge what they actually thought or wanted. Why, then, take up arms against men already dying on the point of their own blade? Why labor to tear down those whom their own speech tears down and destroys? Cicero says that Aristotle, attacking the ancient philosophers, called them either utter fools or the most boastful of men for supposing that philosophy had been brought to perfection by their own talents; but that he himself could see that, since so much progress had been made in a few years, philosophy would soon be entirely complete. Well then, when was that time? When was it completed, or by whom? For as to his saying that those were the greatest fools who thought wisdom had been perfected by their own talents—that is true; but he himself was not sensible enough either, supposing philosophy to have been founded by earlier generations, built up further by his contemporaries, and destined for completion by those still to come. For what is never sought along its true path can never be found.
But let us return to what we set aside. Fortune, then, is nothing in itself, and must not be treated as though it possessed any kind of consciousness, since Fortune is simply the sudden and unexpected outcome of chance events. Yet the philosophers, so as never to be wrong about anything, insist on being wise even about something foolish: they change Fortune's sex and say she is not a goddess, as the common people think, but a god. Yet the same men sometimes call her Nature, sometimes Fortune, because—as the same Cicero says—she brings about many things unexpected to us on account of the obscurity and our ignorance of their causes. Since, then, they do not know the causes by which something happens, they necessarily do not know who brings it about either. That same Cicero, in a markedly weighty work meant to hand his son philosophy's lessons for living, writes: 'Who does not know how great Fortune's power is in both directions?' For when we enjoy her favoring breeze, we arrive at the outcomes we wished for, and when she blows against us, we are struck down. First of all, a man who says nothing can be known has said this as though both he and everyone else knew it. Then, a man who tries to render doubtful even things that are clear has here supposed something to be clear which ought, above all, to have been doubtful to him—since, for anyone wise, the claim is simply untrue. 'Who does not know?' he asks — well, I do not. Let him instruct me, supposing he's able, as to what this power amounts to, what this favoring gust is, and what its opposite might be. It is shameful, then, for a clever man to state something he could not prove if it were denied. Finally, since it is he who says that assent ought to be withheld, because it is the mark of a foolish man to give rash assent to things unknown, he has here plainly trusted the opinions of the crowd and the untaught, who think that Fortune is the one who hands out good and bad to men. For they fashion her image with a horn of plenty and a rudder, as though she both bestows wealth and holds the steering of human affairs. Vergil agrees with this opinion, calling Fortune all-powerful, and so does the historian who says: 'But indeed Fortune rules over everything.' What place, then, remains for any other god? Why isn't she declared sole ruler, given her greater power, or given exclusive worship, given total power? Or if she only sends evils, let them offer some reason why, if she is a goddess, she should be envious toward men and wish them ruined, when she is worshipped religiously by them; why she should be kinder to the wicked and harsher to the good; why she should lay ambushes, strike men down, deceive them, drive them out; who appointed her the eternal tormentor of the human race; and finally, why she should have drawn so evil a lot of power that she conducts and obscures everything more by whim than by truth. These are the questions, I say, that philosophers ought to have investigated, rather than rashly accusing an innocent Fortune, who, even granting she exists at all, cannot on their own showing be proved so hostile to men as is supposed. And so all those speeches in which they tear apart the injustice of Fortune and, in the most arrogant terms, boast of their own virtues set against her, are nothing but the ravings of a thoughtless frivolity. Let them, then, not envy us, to whom God has laid open the truth—we who know, just as we know that Fortune is nothing, that there does exist a wicked and treacherous spirit, hostile to the good and an enemy of justice, who does the opposite of what God does, whose reason for envy we explained in the second book. This spirit, then, lies in ambush against everyone: those who do not know God he hinders with error, buries under folly, wraps in darkness, so that no one manages to reach that knowledge of God's name where wisdom and everlasting life alone reside; but those who do know God he attacks with cunning and guile, so as to entangle them through desire or lust, so as to drive them, corrupted by flattering sins, toward death; or, if his deceit gains nothing, he tries to strike them down by force and violence. This is why, at the very beginning of the transgression, he was not immediately thrust down by God into punishment—so that he might train man, through his own malice, toward virtue; for virtue, unless it is exercised, unless it is strengthened by continual struggle, cannot become perfect, since virtue is the brave and unconquered endurance of evils to be borne. From this it follows that there would be no virtue at all if there were no adversary. And so, since men felt the force of this perverse power resisting virtue but did not know its name, they invented for themselves the empty word 'Fortune'—how far removed this is from wisdom, Juvenal declares in these lines: 'You have no divine power, if there is good sense: it is we, Fortune, we who make you and set you in heaven as a goddess.' So it was foolishness, error, and blindness—or, in Cicero's phrase, sheer ignorance of things and their causes—that gave rise to the names Nature and Fortune. Yet just as men fail to recognize their true adversary, they likewise fail to recognize virtue, whose recognition follows from recognizing that adversary. And if virtue is joined to wisdom, or, as they themselves say, is itself the very same thing as wisdom, then they must necessarily be ignorant of what it consists in. No one can arm himself with genuine weapons without knowing which foe he must arm against, and no one can defeat an adversary while striking, mid-combat, at a mere shadow instead of the enemy in front of him. For he who, intent on something else, neither foresees nor guards against the blow aimed at his vitals will be laid low.
I have shown, as far as my modest ability allowed, that the philosophers kept to a path far astray from the truth; yet I am aware how much I have passed over, since my proper task was not a full disputation against the philosophers. But it was necessary to turn aside in this direction, in order to show that so many great minds were spent on falsehoods, lest anyone shut out from corrupt religions should think of turning to them instead, as if he would find something certain there. There is, then, one hope for man, one salvation, and it lies in this teaching which we defend; the whole of man's wisdom consists in this one thing, that he should know God and worship him. This is our doctrine, this is our conviction. As loud as my voice can carry, I bear witness, I announce, I state plainly: this—this right here—is the very thing every philosopher spent a whole lifetime hunting for and never managed to seize, hold, or pin down, since each one either preserved a corrupted religion or ripped it out entirely, roots included. So let those depart who bring confusion into human life rather than guidance. After all, what could they possibly teach, and who could they possibly guide, given that they have never yet guided themselves? What sick man can the sick heal, what blind man can the blind lead? Let all of us, then, who care for wisdom, turn ourselves this way instead. Or shall we wait until Socrates comes to know something, or Anaxagoras finds a light in the darkness, or Democritus drags truth up out of his well, or Empedocles widens the pathways of his mind, or Arcesilaus and Carneades come to see, to perceive, to grasp? Behold: a voice out of heaven, instructing us in truth and revealing a light brighter even than the sun. Why are we so unjust to ourselves that we hesitate to take up the wisdom which learned men, wearing out their lives in the search, were never able to find? Whoever wishes to be wise and happy, let him listen to the voice of God, let him learn justice, let him come to know the mystery of his own birth, let him hold cheap what is human and take up what is divine, so that he may attain that highest good for which he was born. Now that all false religions have been dismantled and everything that used to be, or could be, said in their defense has been refuted, and now that the schools of philosophy have likewise been shown wanting, we must come to the true religion and the true wisdom—since, as I shall show, the two are joined together—so that we may establish it by arguments, by examples, and by fitting witnesses, and may show that the folly which these worshippers of the gods never tire of throwing in our faces belongs not to us at all, but wholly to themselves. And although in the earlier books, in refuting false religions, and here, in demolishing false wisdom, I have already indicated where the truth lies, the next book will show more clearly still what true religion and true wisdom are.