Against the Nations 2.8–2.27

And since you are accustomed to laugh at our faith and to tear our very belief with jokes and jests, tell us, you witty people, steeped in and filled with the pure wine of wisdom: is there any busy and active kind of work in life which its agents do not take up, undertake, and begin with faith leading the way? Do you travel and sail without believing that you will return home when your business is done? Do you cut the earth with iron and fill it with various seeds without believing that you will gather the crop at the turn of the seasons? Do you join in the partnership of marriage without believing that it will be chaste and a dutiful bond toward the husband? Do you take up the offspring of children without believing that it will be safe and come through the stages of life to the goal of old age? Do you entrust the sicknesses of your bodies to the hands of physicians without believing that diseases can be relieved when their severity is lessened? Do you wage wars with enemies without believing that you will bring back victory by successful battles? Do you worship and revere the gods without believing that they exist and lend a favorable ear to your prayers?

What of this? Those things about matters removed from human knowledge which you yourselves write and read, have you seen them with your own eyes and held them handled in your hands? Does not each of you believe this author or that? Does not each defend, as by a kind of pledge of faith, what he has persuaded himself is truly said by another? He who says that fire or water is the origin of all things, does he not believe Thales or Heraclitus? He who puts the cause in numbers, does he not believe Pythagoras of Samos and Archytas? He who divides the soul and establishes incorporeal forms, does he not believe Plato the Socratic? He who adds a fifth element to the first causes, does he not believe Aristotle, father of the Peripatetics? He who threatens the world with fire, that it will burn when the time comes, does he not believe Panaetius, Chrysippus, Zeno? He who is forever building and destroying worlds from indivisible bodies, does he not believe Epicurus, Democritus, Metrodorus? He who says that nothing is grasped by man and all things are wrapped in blind obscurity, does he not believe Arcesilaus, Carneades, or some follower of the Old or the New Academy?

Finally, do not the very founders and fathers of the opinions just mentioned say what they say because they believe their own guesses? For did Heraclitus see things come to be by conversions of fire, Thales by the condensation of water, Pythagoras numbers combine, Plato incorporeal forms, Democritus the collisions of atoms? Or do those who assert that nothing at all can be grasped know whether what they say is true, so that they understand that the very thing they define is a statement of truth? Since, then, you have nothing ascertained or known, and assert all that you write and contain in thousands of books with belief as your guide, what is this so unjust judgment, that you mock our faith, though you see that you share our belief? 'But you believe wise men instructed in all kinds of learning.' Yes, those who know nothing and do not declare one thing, who wage wars with their opponents for their opinions and always fight with hostile obstinacy; who, while one undermines, destroys, and tears up the doctrines of another, have made everything uncertain and have shown by their very disagreement that nothing can be known.

But let these things be no hindrance or obstacle at all to your believing and listening to them: what is there in this respect that you have more of, or we less? You believe Plato, Cronius, Numenius, or whomever you please; we believe and rest in Christ. How great an injustice this is, that when both of us stand by authors, and believing is one and shared by both, you want it granted to you to accept what is said by them, but will not have us hear and regard what is set forth by Christ! Yet if we are willing to match causes with causes and parts with parts, we can show better what we have followed in Christ than you can show what you have followed in the philosophers. And we have followed this in him: his magnificent works and most powerful mighty deeds, which he displayed and set forth in various miracles, by which anyone could be brought to the necessity of belief and judge faithfully that the things done were not of a man but of some divine and unknown power. What mighty works have you followed in the philosophers, that you should have more reason to believe them than we to believe Christ? Was any of them ever able by one word or the command of a single order, I will not say to restrain and check the madness of the sea or the fury of storms, nor to restore sight to the blind or give it to those born without eyes, nor to call back the dead to life, nor to dissolve sufferings of many years, but, what is much slighter, to heal a boil, a scab, or a little thorn stuck in the skin with a single prohibition? Not that we deny that they are praiseworthy for integrity of character or that they are not equipped with every kind of study and learning; for we know that they speak in most brilliant words and flow in polished compositions, draw syllogisms most acutely, arrange inductions in logical sequence, give their formulas to definitions, divide and distinguish, say much about the kinds of numbers, much about music, and explain even geometrical matters with their theorems and rules. But what has this to do with the case? Do enthymemes, syllogisms, and other such things guarantee that they know the truth, or make them worthy to be necessarily believed about the most obscure matters? A contest between persons is to be weighed not by the powers of eloquence but by the power of deeds and works. He is not to be called a good authority who has spoken elegantly, but he who follows up what he promises with the pledge of divine works.

You bring forward to us arguments and the subtleties of conjectures. If Christ himself (let me say it with his peace and pardon) had used these in the assemblies of the peoples, who would have assented, who would have listened, who would have judged that he was promising anything clearly, or who would have followed one boasting of empty and bare things, however imprudent and foolishly credulous he might be? The mighty works placed before their eyes, and that unheard-of power of deeds, whether done openly by himself or proclaimed by his heralds in the whole world, kindled such flames of longing and made tribes and peoples and nations most unlike in their customs run together with one mind to the assent of a single belief. For one could enumerate and bring into account what was done in India, among the Seres, Persians, and Medes, in Arabia, Egypt, Asia, Syria, among the Galatians, Parthians, and Phrygians, in Achaia, Macedonia, and Epirus, in the islands and all the provinces which the rising and setting sun surveys, and finally in Rome herself, the mistress of the world, where, though people were occupied with the arts of King Numa and ancient superstitions, they did not delay to abandon their ancestral ways and grow into one with Christian truth. For they had seen the chariot of Simon Magus and his fiery four-horse car blown away by the mouth of Peter and vanish when Christ was named. They had seen, I say, the man who trusted in false gods, betrayed by those same gods in their fear, fall headlong by his own weight and lie with his legs broken; and then, carried to Brunda, worn out by pain and shame, he threw himself down again from the top of a very high roof. All these deeds you neither know nor have wished to know, nor ever judged necessary for you; and while you trust your own hearts and call wisdom what is mere vanity, you have given room to deceivers, to those harmful ones, I say, whose interest it is that the Christian name be made to fade, to pour darkness over such great things and obscure them, to snatch faith from you and put contempt in its place, so that, since they foresee that the end due to their deserts is coming upon them, they might also bring on us a cause through which you might incur danger and be deprived of the divine kindness.

Meanwhile, you who admire and are dazzled by the teachings of the learned and of philosophy, do you not think it most unjust to ride roughshod over us and mock us as though we said foolish and brutish things, when you are found to say the same things, or things like those which you laugh at when we say and declare them? And my discussion is not with those who, scattered through the various byways of the sects, have formed these and those parties by the diversity of their opinions: you, you I address, who follow Mercury, Plato, and Pythagoras, and you others who are of one mind and walk the same paths of doctrine in unity. Do you dare to laugh at us because we worship and revere the Father and Lord of things, and give over and entrust our hopes to him? What of your Plato in the Theaetetus, to name him above all: does he not urge the soul to flee from the earth and to dwell always, as far as possible, in thought and mind around God? Do you dare to laugh at us because we say there will be a resurrection of the dead, which we confess we do say, but which you hear otherwise than we mean it? What of the same Plato in the Statesman? Does he not write that when the world begins to rise from the west and turn toward the point where the sun rises, people will again burst forth from the bosom of the earth, old, gray, and decrepit, and, when the years begin to come on, will come down through the same stages by which people now grow up to the cradle of infancy? Do you dare to laugh at us because we provide for the salvation of our souls, that is, of ourselves? For what are we human beings but souls shut up in bodies? Do you not all take care for their safety? Is it not because that fear holds you, lest you stick fast to your bodies as though fixed with beam-nails, that you abstain from all vices and desires? What do those rites of secret arts mean, by which you address I know not what powers, so that they may be gentle to you and not set obstacles in your way as you return to your fatherland?

Do you dare to laugh at us when we speak of Gehennas and certain unquenchable fires, into which we have learned that souls are cast by their foes and enemies? What of your same Plato, in the book he wrote on the immortality of the soul: does he not name the rivers Acheron, Styx, Cocytus, and Pyriphlegethon, in which he asserts that souls are rolled, plunged, and burned? And a man of no small wisdom and of careful judgment takes up an insoluble problem: while he says souls are immortal, everlasting, and without bodily solidity, he still says they are punished and gives them the sense of pain. But who does not see that what is immortal, what is simple, can admit no pain, and that what feels pain cannot have immortality? Yet his authority does not depart very far from the truth. For though, being a gentle man of kindly will, he believed it inhuman to condemn souls to capital sentence, he nevertheless guessed not unreasonably that they are thrown into rivers rushing with balls of flame and foul with muddy whirlpools. For they are thrown in, and, reduced to nothing, vanish in the frustration of everlasting destruction. For they are of a middle quality, as has been learned from Christ as our authority, and can perish if they do not know God, and be freed from destruction if they apply themselves to his mercy and forgiveness, so that what is unknown may be made plain. This is the true death of man, this which leaves nothing remaining (for that death which is seen with the eyes is a separation of souls from bodies, not the last end of annihilation); this, I say, is the true death of man, when souls that do not know God are consumed through a torment of very long duration by a savage fire, into which certain cruel and savage beings will cast them, beings unknown before Christ and exposed by him alone who knows.

So there is nothing to deceive us, nothing to promise us empty hopes in what is said by certain new men, carried away by an immoderate opinion of themselves: that souls are immortal, next in rank of dignity to the Lord and Ruler of things, brought forth by that Begetter and Father, divine, wise, learned, and touched by no contact with the body. Since this is true and certain, we were brought forth by the Perfect with a perfection that cannot be improved: we live blameless and therefore beyond reproach, good, just, and upright, guilty of no vice; no desire conquers us, no lust dishonors us; we keep and maintain unbroken the course of all virtues. And because the souls of all of us flow down from one source, we therefore all think one and the same thing; we do not differ in character or in opinions; we all know the same things, and we do not have as many opinions as there are people in the world, divided by infinite variety.

'But while we slip down and hasten to human bodies, causes follow us from the circles of the world by which we become bad and very bad, boil with desires and anger, spend our life in shameful deeds, and are condemned to public lust by the prostitution of bodies for sale.' And how can bodies join themselves to incorporeal things, or things made by God the Ruler be led by weaker causes into the disgrace of vices? Will you, men, lay aside the inborn conceit and arrogance with which you claim God as your father and contend that you share one immortality with him? Will you seek, investigate, and examine what you yourselves are, whose you are, from what father you are reckoned, what you do in the world, in what way we are born, how we spring into life? Will you, setting partiality aside, see clearly in silent thought that we are living creatures either like the rest or not separated from them by very great difference? For what is there that shows we differ from their likeness? Or what eminence is there in us so great that we disdain to be counted among the animals? Their bodies are founded on bones and bound by the tying of sinews: our bodies too are founded on bones in the same way and bound by the tying of sinews. They take in air through their nostrils and give it back in breathing out: we likewise draw breath and breathe out in frequent passages. They are distinguished into feminine and masculine kinds: we too were formed by our author into as many sexes. They bring forth young from their wombs and beget by bodily union: we too are born of the joining of bodies and poured out and sent forth from our mothers' bellies. They are sustained by food and drink and discharge their superfluous filth by the lower passages: we too are sustained by food and drink and pour out what nature rejects by the same paths. All of them take care to ward off deadly hunger and must be watchful for their food: what else do we do in the great business of life but seek the means to avoid the danger of hunger and lay aside wretched anxiety? They feel diseases and starvation and at last are dissolved by old age: what then? Are we exempt from these evils, and are we not broken in the same way by the troubles of diseases and destroyed by the wasting of old age? But if that also is true which is said in the more secret mysteries, that the souls of the wicked, after they are stripped of human bodies, go into cattle and other beasts, it is proved still more clearly that we are neighbors to them and not separated by any long intervals, since one and the same thing is in us and in them, through which they are called living creatures and exercise vital motion.

'But we are rational, and surpass the whole race of dumb animals in intelligence.' I would believe that this is said most truly if all people lived by reason and counsel, kept to the course of their duties, abstained from unlawful things, did not undertake shameful business, and no one, through perversity of judgment and the blindness of ignorance, demanded things contrary and hostile to himself. Still, I would like to know what this reason is by which we are superior to all kinds of animals. Is it because we have made ourselves houses in which we can escape the cold of winter and the heat of summer? What, do the other animals not have foresight in this matter? Do we not see some building themselves nests in the most suitable places, others roofing and fortifying dwellings in rocks and overhanging cliffs, others hollowing out the soil of the earth and preparing shelters and lairs for themselves in dug-out holes? And if mother nature had chosen to give them serving hands as well, there would be no doubt that they too would build lofty walls and hammer out ingenious novelties. Even in the things they make with beaks and claws we see many images of reason and wisdom which we human beings could not imitate by any study, though we have craftsmen's hands and are skilled in every kind of accomplishment.

'They do not know how to make clothing, chairs, ships, and plows, nor the rest of the furniture that household use requires.' These are not gifts of knowledge but inventions of the barest necessity. The arts did not fall from the inner recesses of heaven along with souls; they were all sought out and born here on earth, and gradually put together by reflection with the passing of time. If souls had knowledge, as a divine and immortal race would fittingly have, all people from the beginning would have known everything, and there would be no age ignorant of any art or unprovided with experience of things. But in fact life, needy and lacking many things, seeing certain things turn out conveniently by chance, while it imitates, experiments, and tries, while it slips, reshapes, and changes, has by constant correction put together small bits of the arts' knowledge, and brought them, improved over very many ages, to a single result.

But if people knew themselves thoroughly, or received even a breath of some notion of God, they would never claim a divine and immortal nature for themselves, nor think themselves something magnificent because they have made gridirons, ladles, and mixing bowls; because they have made undershirts, cloaks, mantles, capes, robes of state, knives, breastplates, and swords; because they have made rakes, little axes, and the plowshare. Never, I say, would they, lifted up by conceit and arrogance, believe themselves to be first deities and equal to the supreme height of the Ruler because they gave birth to grammar, music, oratory, and geometrical formulas. We do not see what is so admirable in these arts that because of their invention souls should be believed superior to the sun and all the stars, and to surpass in dignity and substance this whole world of which these are the members. For what else do they promise to be able to impart or teach but that we may know the rules of nouns and their differences, the intervals in the sounds of voices, how to speak persuasively in lawsuits, how to measure the extent of lands? If souls had brought these things with them from the divine regions, all would necessarily know them, all over the world people would long since have been practicing them, and no race of people would be found that was not equally and uniformly learned in all of them. But in fact, how few in the world are musicians, logicians, and geometers, how few orators, poets, grammarians! From this it appears, as has often been said, that these things were discovered by the need of places and times, and that souls did not fly here divine and learned, since not all are learned, nor can all learn; and among them very many are of duller wit and slow, and must be compelled to the pursuit of learning by the discipline of blows. But if it were established that what we learn is recollection, as was held in ancient opinions, we would all, coming from one truth, have to know one thing and recollect one thing, not hold diverse, numerous, and conflicting opinions. But now, since each of us asserts one thing or another, it is plain and obvious that we brought nothing from heaven, but learn what was born here and defend what has grown together out of guesses.

And to show you more clearly and plainly what value man has, whom you believe to be very like the higher power, conceive this picture in your minds, and, since it could be done if we attempted it, let us treat it as though we had attempted it and hold it by way of comparison. Let there be for us, then, a dwelling place dug out in the earth, shaped like a chamber, enclosed by roof and walls, not chill in cold weather nor too hot in heat, but so tempered and moderate that we suffer neither the sense of cold nor the strong heat of summer. Into it let no sound whatever of any voice come, not of bird, nor of beast, nor of storm, nor of man, nor finally of any crash or of the sky thundering terribly. Next let us contrive how it receives light: not from fire brought in, nor from the sight of the sun, but let there be some borrowed light that counterfeits an image of light with gloom interposed. Let there be not one door, nor a straight entrance; let it be approached by winding turns, and never opened except when necessity requires.

Now, since we have prepared a place for our picture, let us next take someone just born and ... into the lodging of that place, which has nothing in it and is empty and void, even if he is of the stock of Plato or Pythagoras, or of one of those who are said to have been of divine insight or were called wisest by the oracles of the gods. When this is done, it follows that he must be nourished and brought up with suitable food. Let us provide a nurse, then, who always comes to him naked and always silent, uttering no word, nor opening her mouth and lips in the likeness of any speech, but who, when she has given the breast and fulfilled the duties that follow, leaves him to rest and stays day and night before the closed doors; for the matter usually requires a nurse's care to be at hand and watch his passing movements. And when the infant begins to need to be supported by more solid food, let it be brought by the same nurse, clothing laid aside as we said and the rule of silence kept. And let the food itself that is brought be always one and the same, not differing in material nor renewed with various flavors, but either millet porridge, or bread of spelt, or, to imitate the ancient ages, acorns roasted in hot ashes, or berries from wild branches. Let the drink of wine be wholly unknown, and let nothing else be offered to quench thirst but pure water from springs, untouched by the heat of fire, and, if it can be done, given by the hand. For familiar habit, turned into nature by custom, will occur, and desire will not stretch further, not knowing that there is anything more to seek. What, then, is the point of all this?

So that, since it has been believed that souls are divine and immortal and fly to human bodies with all their learning, we may test from this person whom we have chosen to bring up in this way whether the matter deserves belief, or has been lightly believed and taken for granted with a deceptive expectation. Let him come forth to us, then, reared in hidden solitude, of as many years as you like. Do you want him twenty years old? Do you want him thirty? Rather, when he has measured forty years, let him be brought into the company of mortals; and if it is true that he is a portion of the principal substance and lives here derived from the ... fountains of life, before he gains knowledge of anything or is imbued with human speech, let him give an answer when asked who he is, of what father, in what regions he was born, how or in what way he was brought up, what work or business he pursued as he ran through the course of his past time. Will he not stand there duller and more stupid than any beast, log, or stone? Sent into new things never known to him before, will he not be ignorant above all of himself? Will he be able, if you ask, to show what the sun is, the earth, seas, stars, clouds, mist, rains, thunder, snow, hail? Will he be able to know what trees are, herbs or grasses, a bull, a horse, or a ram, a camel, an elephant, or a kite?

If you give him when he is hungry grapes, a must-cake, an onion, a thistle, a cucumber, a fig, will he know that his hunger can be satisfied by all of these, or in what way each must be eaten? If you make a big fire, or set venomous creatures around him, will he not go through the midst of flames, vipers, and poisonous spiders, not knowing they are harmful and ignorant of what fear itself is? And if you set in front of him clothing and furniture, both town and country kinds, will he be able to distinguish and discern what task each thing suits, for what service each is fitted? Let him show for what dress each coverlet was made: a headband, a breast-band, a fillet, a cushion, a handkerchief, a cloak, a hood, a towel, a sheepskin, a slipper, a sandal, a shoe. What if you go on to ask what a wheel is, or a threshing sledge, a winnowing fan, a jar, a vat, an olive press, a plowshare, or a sieve, a mill, a plow-tail, or a hoe? What if a folding stool, a needle, a scraper, a washbasin, an armchair, a ladle, a small dish, a lampstand, a bowl, a broom, a cup, a sack? What if a lyre, a flute, silver, bronze, gold, a codex, a shuttle, a book? What if all the other tools by which human life is equipped and maintained? Will he not, as we said, like an ox or an ass, a pig, or any slower animal there may be, look at these things, observing their various shapes, but not knowing what each one is, and ignorant for what purpose they are possessed? If he is forced by some need to utter a sound, will he not, as the dumb usually do, cry out with open mouth something inarticulate?

What about you, Plato, in the Meno, questioning a little boy on points related to the reckoning of number, and trying to prove from his answers that what we learn we do not learn, but return to the memory of what we knew of old? If he answers you truly (for it is not fitting for us to deny credit to what you say), he is led not by knowledge of the matters but by intelligence; and because he knows some numbers from daily use, it happens that he follows when asked, and the very addition of multiplying always leads him on. But if you truly trust that immortal souls full of knowledge fly here, stop asking this young lad, whom you see to be acquainted with things and placed within the bounds of human society; call to you this forty-year-old man, and ask him not something abstruse, not something involved, not about triangles or squares, what a cube or a power is, what the ratio of nine to eight or four to three ..., but ask something that lies open to all: what sum twice two or twice three make. We want to see, we want to know what he answers when asked, whether he solves the question put to him. Will he even perceive, though his ears are open, whether you are saying anything, whether you are asking anything, whether you require any answer from him? Will he not stand speechless and dumb like a log, or, as the saying goes, a Marpesian rock, ignorant and unaware of this very thing, whether you are talking to yourself or to another, conversing with another or with yourself, whether what you utter is speech or a sound of the voice signifying nothing, drawn out in empty sequence?

What do you say, you men who attribute to yourselves more than is right from another's nobility? Is this that learned soul you speak of, immortal, perfect, divine, holding the fourth place after God the Ruler of things and after the demons and genii, and flowing from living mixing bowls? Is this that precious man endowed with most august reason, who is called a smaller world, fashioned and formed in the appearance and likeness of the whole world, but who, as has appeared, is no better than any beast, duller than a log or a stone? Who does not know people, and would live and linger always in dumb solitudes, inert ..., though he lived for countless years and was never released from the knots of the body. 'But when he has gone to school and been instructed by the teaching of masters, he becomes prudent and learned and lays aside the ignorance he had shortly before.' The ass and the ox too, by practice and constant compulsion, learn to plow and grind; the horse to go under the yoke and to know the turns in the race; the camel to kneel down both when it takes up loads and when it sets them down; the dove, let loose, to fly back to its master's house; the dog, when it finds game, to hold and check its barking; the parrot to form words and utter names with its beak.

But when I hear the soul called something excellent, near and next to God, coming here from higher ages knowing everything, I want it not to learn but to teach, and not, as they say, to become a beginner after being learned, but to keep its own knowledge while it binds itself to earthly bodies. For unless this is the case, how can one distinguish whether it recollects what it hears or learns it, when it is much easier to believe that it learns what it does not know than that it has forgotten what it knew a little before? 'It loses the recollection of former things because of the obstruction of the body.' And where then is that saying, ... that souls, being incorporeal, have no substance? For what has no body is not hindered by the obstruction of another, nor can that lose anything of its power which cannot receive the touch of an opposing thing. For as number, which exists without bodies, remains untouched and inviolable though it is buried under a thousand bodies, so souls, if they are incorporeal as is claimed, must suffer no forgetting of former things, however tightly the most solid bonds of bodies bind them. What of this, that the same reasoning not only shows that they are not incorporeal, but also deprives them all of immortality and brings them to the bounds by which life is usually ended? For whatever, when some cause falls upon it, is so changed and altered that it cannot keep its integrity, must be judged by nature to be subject to suffering. And what is open and exposed to suffering is declared to be corruptible by that very capacity for suffering.

Therefore, if souls too lose all that they knew when they are taken up by bodily bonds, they must suffer something that makes them put on the blindness of forgetfulness. For neither, having suffered nothing at all and keeping their integrity, can they lay aside their knowledge of things, nor pass into other states without change in themselves. Yet we think that what is one, what is immortal, what is simple, in whatever situation it may be, must always keep its own nature, and ought not and cannot suffer anything, if indeed it means to be everlasting and to keep within the bounds of its own immortality. For all suffering is the door of death and destruction, a road leading to death, bringing to things an inevitable end. If souls feel it and yield to its touch and assaults, then life has been given them for use, not as a possession, though some argue otherwise and place the credit of so great a matter in their own