Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
It remains for me to speak briefly against the pleasures of the five senses, for the scale of this book itself now demands a limit. Since all of these are vicious and death-bearing, they must be overcome and suppressed by virtue, or else, as I said a little before concerning the passions, they must be recalled to their proper measure. All other living creatures feel no pleasure except the one that pertains to procreation. They use their senses only for the necessities of their nature: they see, so as to seek out what they need to sustain life; they hear one another and recognize each other, so that they can gather together; whatever nourishment is useful they discover by scent or taste, rejecting whatever is useless; how much they eat or drink is gauged simply by a full stomach. But to man the providence of that most skillful craftsman gave a pleasure without limit and prone to fall into vice, because he set virtue over against it, so that virtue might forever fight with pleasure as with an enemy in its own household. Cicero, in his Cato the Elder, says that fornications and adulteries and every disgraceful act are stirred up by no other enticement than that of pleasure. And since nature, or whatever deity it was, gave humankind nothing finer than the mind, no enemy threatens this divine endowment more than pleasure does; wherever lust holds sway, self-control finds no room, and virtue cannot hold its ground once pleasure rules. But god, on the contrary, gave virtue for this very reason, that it might storm and conquer pleasure and hold it back, as it tried to overstep the bounds set for it, within its prescribed limits, lest pleasure, having softened and captured man with its sweetness, bring him under its own dominion and condemn him to death everlasting. As for the eyes, their pleasure is varied and manifold: it is that which is drawn from the sight of things which delight men, whether by nature or by craftsmanship. This pleasure the philosophers have most rightly rejected. They argue it suits a human being far better, and shows far greater distinction, to look up at the sky than at carvings and engravings—to wonder at this loveliest of works, its starlight scattered like blossoms across the heavens, rather than at painted images or gem-studded ornaments. But although they have eloquently exhorted us to scorn earthly things and have roused us to gaze upon the spectacle of heaven, they nevertheless do not scorn these public spectacles. And so they take delight in them and gladly attend them; but since these are the greatest incitements to vice and have the greatest power to corrupt souls, they must be done away with by us, because they contribute nothing to the blessed life, but rather do great harm. For whoever counts it a pleasure to watch a man slaughtered before his eyes, however justly condemned for his crimes, defiles his own conscience just as much as if he were a spectator and a participant in a murder committed in secret. Yet they call these things games, in which human blood is poured out. Humanity has withdrawn so far from human beings that, while they are killing the souls of men, they think they are only playing, and are more guilty than all those whose blood they hold as their pleasure. I ask now whether men can be pious and just who, when others are placed under the stroke of death and beg for mercy, not only allow them to be killed but even demand it, and cast cruel and inhuman votes for death, never satisfied with wounds nor content with blood. Indeed they order that the fallen and wounded be struck again and that the corpses be torn apart by further blows, lest anyone deceive them with a feigned death. They even grow angry at the fighters unless one of the two is quickly killed, and, as if thirsting for human blood, they hate delay. They demand that fresh pairs be given to replace them, so that their eyes may be satisfied as soon as possible. Steeped in this custom, they have lost their humanity. And so they do not even spare the innocent, but practice on everyone what they have learned in the butchering of the guilty. Anyone laboring to walk justice's road, then, has no business joining or sharing in this public bloodshed as companion or accomplice. For when god forbids killing, he does not merely prohibit us from banditry, which is not even permitted by the public laws; he warns us also against those things which men regard as lawful. Thus it will not be lawful for the just man to serve as a soldier, since his very soldiery is justice itself, nor indeed to accuse anyone on a capital charge, since it makes no difference whether you kill by the sword or rather by a word, since killing itself is what is forbidden. And so in this precept of god no exception at all ought to be made: killing a human being is always wicked, since god willed man to be a sacred and inviolable creature. Therefore let no one think that even this may be allowed, that newborn children may be crushed to death, which is the very worst impiety; for god breathes souls into life, not into death. Yet human beings, so as to have some crime by which they do not stain their own hands, deny to still-rough and simple souls a light that was not given by themselves. Can anyone expect those who do not spare their own blood to spare another's? But these are without any dispute wicked and unjust. What of those whom a false piety drives to expose their children? Can those be thought innocent who throw their own flesh and blood as prey to dogs, and, so far as it is in their power, kill more cruelly than if they had strangled them outright? Who could doubt that whoever leaves room for another's pity is impious? For even if it should happen to him as he wished, that the child be raised, he has certainly consigned his own blood either to slavery or to the brothel. And as for what can or usually does happen to either sex through such mistaken exposure, who does not understand it, who is ignorant of it? The single example of Oedipus, entangled in a twofold crime, makes it plain. To expose a child, then, is as wicked as to kill it outright. But those who commit this murder complain of the narrowness of their means and claim they cannot support the raising of more children—as though wealth were in anyone's own power to possess, as if it were not god who, day after day, turns the wealthy into paupers and paupers into the wealthy. Wherefore, if anyone is unable to raise children because of poverty, it is better that he refrain from intercourse with his wife than that he corrupt the works of god with wicked hands. Therefore, if it is in no way lawful to commit murder, it is not even permitted to be present at one, lest any blood pollute the conscience, since indeed that blood is provided for the pleasure of the people. As for the stage too, I do not know whether it is not an even more vicious corruption. For comic plays speak of the seduction of virgins or the love affairs of prostitutes, and the more eloquent those are who have invented such disgraceful things, the more persuasively their elegance of expression works, and the more easily their rhythmic and polished verses cling to the memory of the hearers. In the same way, tragedies put on stage, before our very eyes, wicked kings guilty of murdering kin and incest, showcasing such crimes in buskined grandeur. The most shameless movements of actors, too, teach and provoke nothing other than lust; their bodies, weakened and softened into a womanish gait and bearing, counterfeit shameless women through disgraceful gestures. What shall I say of mimes, which put on display a curriculum of corruption, teaching adulteries even as they pretend them, and training people for real ones through their imitations? What are young men or girls to do when they see these things performed without shame and gladly watched by everyone? They are, without doubt, being schooled in what they might do, and lust—most strongly kindled through the eyes—catches fire in them; each pictures himself or herself, according to sex, within those very scenes, and they approve of what they laugh at, and, more corrupted by the vices that cling to them, they return to their bedchambers—not only the young, who ought not to be steeped in premature vices, but even the old, for whom it is no longer fitting to sin. As for the circus races, what do they amount to except triviality, emptiness, and frenzy? For minds are stirred into a frenzy in proportion to the frenzy of the racing itself, so that those who come to watch end up putting on more of a spectacle than the race itself, once they begin to shout and be carried away and leap up. All spectacles, then, are to be avoided, not only lest some vice settle into hearts that ought to be calm and at peace, but lest the habit of any such pleasure soften us and turn us away from god and from good works. For the celebrations of these games are festivals of the gods, since indeed they were established for the birthdays of the gods or the dedications of new temples. And in the beginning the beast-hunts, which are called shows, were assigned to Saturn, the theatrical games to Liber, and the circus races to Neptune. Gradually, however, the same honor began to be granted to the other gods as well, and individual games were consecrated to their names, as Sinnius Capito teaches in his books on spectacles. So then, whoever shows up at spectacles that draw crowds in the name of religious devotion has abandoned worship of the true god, giving himself instead to whatever deity's birthday or festival he has just observed.
The pleasure of the ears is drawn from the sweetness of voices and songs, which is, of course, just as vicious as that delight of the eyes we have spoken of. For who would not think a man wanton and worthless who keeps theatrical arts in his own house? Yet it makes no difference whether you indulge your extravagance alone at home or with the crowd in the theater. But enough has already been said about spectacles. One thing remains for us to conquer, lest we be captured by what penetrates to the innermost sense. For all those things which lack words—that is, the sweet sounds of wind and string instruments—can easily be resisted, because they do not cling to us and cannot be written down. But a composed song, and speech that flows along with sweetness, captures minds and drives them wherever it wishes. As a result, literate people, encountering the religion of god as laid out by some untrained teacher, are slower to believe. Having grown used to elegant, finely turned speeches and verse, they look down on the scriptures' plain, everyday style as beneath them. They look for what soothes the senses, and whatever is sweet persuades and settles deep into the mind while it delights. Is god, then, the craftsman of mind and voice and tongue, unable to speak eloquently? No—rather, in his highest providence, he wished the things that are divine to lack ornament, so that all might understand what he himself was speaking to all. Therefore whoever pursues truth, whoever does not wish to cast himself down, should throw off hostile and harmful pleasures, which corrupt the soul just as sweet foods corrupt the body: let the true be preferred to the false, the eternal to the brief, the useful to the pleasant. Let nothing be pleasing to sight except what you see done justly and piously; let nothing be sweet to hearing except what nourishes the soul and makes you better; and this sense above all must not be twisted toward vice, since it was given to us precisely so that we might grasp the teaching of god. So then, if hearing songs and poems can please us, let praising god in song bring us that same delight, both singing it and hearing it sung. That is the true pleasure, which is the companion and ally of virtue; it is not fleeting and brief like those pleasures sought by those who serve the body as cattle do, but lasting and delighting without any interruption. Whoever oversteps its bounds and seeks nothing else from pleasure but pleasure itself is meditating on death, for just as perpetual life lies in virtue, so death lies in pleasure. Whoever prefers temporal things will be without the eternal; whoever prefers earthly things will not have the heavenly.
As for the pleasures of taste and smell, two senses that pertain to the body alone, there is nothing that needs to be argued by us, unless perhaps someone demands that we say it is shameful for a wise and good man to be a slave to his belly and his palate, or to go about smeared with perfumes or crowned with flowers—whoever does this is certainly foolish and silly and worthless, a man whom not even the scent of virtue has ever touched. Perhaps someone will say, 'Why, then, were these things made, if not for us to enjoy?' But it has already often been said that virtue would never have come to be, had it not something to overcome. And so god made all things in order to set up a contest between two opposing things. These enticements of pleasures, then, are the weapons of that one whose single task is to storm virtue and to shut justice out from mankind. With these blandishments and sweetnesses he tickles souls, for he knows that pleasure is the crafter of death. Just as it is only through virtue and effort that god summons a person toward life, so that other power summons him toward death through delight and pleasure; and just as one arrives at true good by way of deceptive evils, one arrives at true evil by way of deceptive goods. These delights, then, must be guarded against as snares and traps, lest, captured by the softness of their sweetness, we be reduced under the dominion of death along with the very body to which we have enslaved ourselves.