Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
THE BOOK OF LUCIUS CAECILIUS FIRMIANUS LACTANTIUS ON THE WORKMANSHIP OF GOD.
You may gauge, Demetrianus, how little peace I grant myself even amid the heaviest demands of business, from this modest book I have set down for you, in words scarcely polished, so far as my modest talent allowed, so that you might know of my daily labor and so that I might not fail to be your teacher even now, though now in a more honorable matter and a better branch of learning. If, in studies that shape nothing more than speech, you showed yourself a sufficiently eager pupil, surely you owe far greater readiness to learn where truth and life itself are at stake? Before you I now declare that no pressure of business or of time keeps me from hammering out something by which the philosophers of the school we hold to may become in time better equipped and more learned, even though at present they are poorly spoken of and commonly reproached, because they live otherwise than befits the wise and hide their vices under the cover of the name — vices which they ought either to have healed or else altogether to have fled, so as to present, by a life matching their teaching, the blessed and uncorrupted name of wisdom. Yet I refuse no labor, that I may instruct both myself and others at once. For I cannot forget myself, especially at a time when it is most needful to remember — just as I hope and wish that you too do not forget yourself. For though the demands of public office turn you away from true and just pursuits, still it cannot be that a mind conscious of its own rightness does not from time to time look up toward heaven. And indeed I rejoice that all the things counted as goods flow prosperously for you — but only so, if they change nothing in the state of your mind. For I fear that little by little the habit and pleasure of such things may creep into your soul, as commonly happens, and so I warn you, and warning again and again I will keep warning you, not to believe these amusements of earth to be great or true goods — things which are not only deceptive, because uncertain, but even treacherous, because sweet. For that wrestler and adversary of ours, you know how cunning he is, and often how violent too, as we now see. He holds all these enticing things as snares, and indeed so finely woven that they escape the eyes of the mind, and so cannot be avoided by human foresight. The height of prudence, then, is to advance step by step, since on either side a pitfall lurks and quietly sets stumbling-blocks before the feet. I urge you, therefore, either to despise, if you can, the prosperous things you now enjoy, as befits your character, or at least not to marvel at them overmuch. Remember your true Father, and in what city you were enrolled a citizen, and of what order you were: you surely understand what I mean. Nor do I accuse you of pride — of that there is not even a suspicion in you — but the words I speak concern the mind rather than the flesh, since the whole design of the body exists so that it may obey and be governed by the soul as its master. The body is, so to speak, a clay vessel holding within it the soul — the real human being — and that vessel was shaped not by Prometheus, as the poets tell it, but by that highest founder and craftsman of all things, God, whose divine providence and most perfect power it is impossible either to grasp by sense or to declare in words. Yet I will attempt, since mention has been made of body and soul, to set out an account of each, so far as the smallness of my understanding allows. And I think this task ought all the more to be undertaken because Marcus Tullius, a man of singular genius, when he attempted this in the fourth book of his Republic, bounded a subject of wide scope within narrow limits, lightly skimming only the surface. And lest there be any excuse for saying he did not carry the topic through, he himself testified that neither the will nor the effort had been lacking in him. For in the first book On the Laws, touching on this same matter in summary, he says: this topic, as it seems to me, Scipio has set out well enough in the books you have read. Yet afterward, in the second book On the Nature of the Gods, he tried to pursue this same subject at greater length. But since even there he did not set it out fully enough, I shall take up this task and boldly undertake to explain what that most eloquent man left almost untouched. Perhaps you will object that I am attempting to argue about obscure matters, when you see that men commonly called philosophers have arisen with such rashness as to pry into things that God willed to be utterly hidden and secret, and to search out the nature of things celestial and terrestrial — things far removed from us, which cannot be handled by the eyes, touched by the hand, or grasped by the senses — and yet they argue about the whole account of these things as though they wished what they put forward to be taken as proven and known. What reason, then, could anyone find to begrudge us, if we wish to examine and contemplate the workings of our own body? This is plainly not obscure, since from the very functions and uses of our limbs and the parts of each we may understand with how great a force of providence, and to what end, each was made.
For God, our maker and father, gave to man sense and reason, so that from this it might be clear we are begotten of him, since he himself is understanding, sense, and reason. To the other living creatures, since he did not grant this rational power, he nonetheless took thought beforehand for how their life might still be made secure. All of them he clothes from their own hides, that they may more easily bear the force of frosts and cold. To each kind he assigned its own particular defenses for driving off outside attacks, so that either they might fight back with natural weapons of greater strength, or the weaker among them might withdraw from danger by swiftness in flight, or those lacking both strength and speed might protect themselves by cunning or hedge themselves in with hiding-places. And so some of them are borne aloft on light feathers, some propped on hooves, some furnished with horns; some have weapons in their mouth, teeth, or curved claws on their feet: to none is a means of self-protection lacking. And if some fall as prey to the stronger, still, that their stock might not perish utterly, either they are confined to a region where nothing greater can exist, or they have received an abundant fertility for breeding, so that both the beasts that feed on blood might have sustenance from them, and the loss inflicted might be more than made up by their sheer numbers, preserving the kind. Man, however, having been granted reason and the power of feeling and speaking, he made a stranger to those things given to the other animals, because wisdom could supply what the condition of nature had denied him: he made him naked and unarmed, because he could be armed by intellect and clothed by reason. And it cannot be expressed how wonderfully those very things given to dumb beasts and denied to man serve to make them beautiful. For if God had added to man the teeth or horns or claws or hooves or tail or parti-colored hair of beasts, who would not feel how ugly a creature he would become — just as the dumb animals too, if they were fashioned bare and unarmed? If you strip from them either the natural covering of their body or the weapons with which they arm themselves, they could be neither handsome nor safe — so that, marvelously, considered for usefulness they seem well equipped, and considered for appearance, well adorned: to such a degree does usefulness in a wondrous way agree with beauty. Man, however, since God was fashioning him as an eternal and immortal creature, he armed not on the outside as the others, but within, and placed his defense not in his body but in his soul, since it would have been superfluous, once he had granted him what was greatest, to cover him also with bodily defenses, especially since these would have hindered the beauty of the human body. Hence I am accustomed to marvel at the madness of those philosophers who follow Epicurus, who find fault with the works of nature in order to show that the world is furnished and governed by no providence at all, but assign the origin of things to indivisible and solid bodies, from whose chance collisions the whole universe is born and has been born. I pass over what they find fault with concerning the world itself, in which they rave absurdly: I take up only what pertains to the matter now before us.
They complain that man is born far more feeble and fragile than the other animals are born: for these, as soon as they come forth from the womb, at once rise up on their own feet and are eager to run about, and are immediately fit to endure the open air, because they come into the light already furnished with their natural coverings, whereas man, by contrast, naked and unarmed, is cast out and thrust forth into the miseries of this life as though from a shipwreck — unable even to move himself from the spot where he was set down, unable to seek out the nourishment of milk, unable to bear the harshness of the weather. Thus, as they claim, nature plays not a mother's part toward mankind but a stepmother's, for she has been so lavish toward the mute animals, yet has poured man forth in such a state that, helpless and weak and in need of every aid, he can do nothing but foretell, by wailing and tears, the wretchedness of his own condition — as one for whom so great a passage of evils yet remains in life. When they say these things they are thought to show great wisdom, because each person, without reflection, is discontented with his own lot; but I maintain that they are never so foolish as when they say this. Weighing how matters truly stand, I recognize nothing else could have come about — not that it was impossible, for God can accomplish anything — yet surely that all-foreseeing majesty must have wrought whatever was superior and more fitting. I would like, then, to ask these fault-finders of the divine works what they think man lacks, because he is born weaker: are men therefore less well reared? Are they brought less far toward the full strength of their years? Does weakness at birth hinder either their growth or their well-being, since reason makes up for what is lacking? But, they say, the rearing of man requires the greatest labors — the lot of cattle is surely better, since once they have brought forth their young, they need only look after their own feeding: from which it follows that, their udders swelling of their own accord, milk is supplied to the young, and by nature's compulsion, without any anxious care from the mothers, the young seek it out. What then? Do not the birds, whose way of life is different, undertake the greatest labors in raising their young, so that at times they seem to display something like human intelligence? For they build their nests either of mud or construct them of twigs and leaves; going without food themselves, they sit upon the eggs, and since they cannot feed their nestlings straight from their own flesh, they instead bring food to them and spend whole days running back and forth in this manner, while by night they defend, warm, and shelter them. What more could men do, except perhaps this one thing — that they do not drive out their grown offspring, but keep them bound by a lasting tie and bond of affection? And is it not so that the offspring of birds is far more fragile than that of man, since they do not bring forth the living creature itself, but only that which, warmed by the heat of the mother's body, is made into a living creature? And even once this has been given life by breath, it is still featherless and tender, unable not only to fly but even to walk. Would it not be sheer foolishness, then, to imagine birds are treated unkindly by nature — first, in being born a second time, and then because they are so feeble that they must be fed by their parents with food gained through labor? Yet these men choose out the stronger cases and pass over the weaker ones. So I put this question to those who rank the lot of cattle above their own: given a choice from God, which would they take — human wisdom paired with weakness, or the sturdiness of cattle joined with their nature. Surely they are not so much like cattle themselves that they would not rather have even a far more fragile condition than they now have, so long as it were human, than that irrational sturdiness. But evidently these wise men want neither man's reason joined with fragility, nor the sturdiness of dumb beasts without reason. And indeed nothing is so self-contradictory and inconsistent as this: each and every creature must be furnished either by reason or by the condition of its nature. If it is furnished with natural defenses, reason is superfluous. For what will it devise? What will it do? What will it contrive? Or where would it show that spark of intellect, if nature already freely supplies whatever reasoning might accomplish? But if endowed instead with reason, why would bodily defenses be needed at all, since reason once granted can carry out nature's task on its own? And indeed reason is of such power for adorning and protecting man that nothing greater or better could have been given by God. In short, though man is of no great bulk of body, of modest strength, and of frail health, yet because he has received that which is greater, he is better equipped and better adorned than the other animals. For though he is born frail and weak, he is nevertheless safe from all the dumb beasts, while all those creatures born sturdier, even though they bravely endure the harshness of the sky, still cannot be safe from man. Thus it comes about that reason confers more upon man than nature does upon the dumb beasts, since in the latter neither greatness of strength nor sturdiness of body can prevent their being overpowered by us or made subject to our power. Can anyone, then, seeing even the Lucanian oxen — elephants — with their enormous bodies and strength, made to serve man, complain against God, the maker of things, because he received but modest strength and a small body — and not reckon the divine kindness toward himself according to its worth? That is the sign of a thankless heart, or rather — put plainly — of a deranged one. Plato, I believe to refute such ingrates, gave thanks to nature that he had been born a man. How much better and saner he was, who felt that the condition of man is the better one, than those who would rather have been born beasts! If God should happen to turn them into those very animals whose lot they prefer to their own, they would at once, no doubt, wish to return, and with loud cries demand back their former condition, since strength and sturdiness of body are not worth so much that one should go without the use of speech, nor is the free coursing of birds through the air worth going without hands. Hands achieve more than wings' lightness and function, and the tongue more than the body entire in its strength. What madness, then, is it to prefer things which, if they were given, one would refuse to accept?