City of God 8.8–8.17

Chapter 8. That the Platonists hold the first place in moral philosophy too.

There remains the moral part, which they call by the Greek word ethics, in which the question is about the supreme good: that to which we refer all that we do, and which we seek not for the sake of anything else but for its own sake, and having obtained which we seek nothing further to make us happy. For it is called the end precisely because we will other things for its sake, but it only for its own sake. Some said that this beatifying good comes to man from the body, others from the mind, others from both. For they saw that man himself consists of mind and body, and so they believed that it could be well with them from one or other of these two or from both, by a certain final good by which they might be happy, to which they might refer all that they did, and beyond which they would not seek anything to which it should be referred. Hence those who are said to have added a third kind of goods, called external, such as honor, glory, money, and anything of this kind, did not add it as final, that is, to be sought for its own sake, but for the sake of something else; and they said that this kind is good for the good and bad for the bad. So those who sought man's good from the mind or from the body or from both thought that it was to be sought from nothing but man: those who sought it from the body, from the worse part of man; those who sought it from the mind, from the better part; those who sought it from both, from the whole man. Whether from any part or from the whole, then, it was from man alone. Nor did these differences, because they are three, make only three dissensions and sects of philosophers, but many, because different men held different opinions about the good of the body, the good of the mind, and the good of both. Let all these, then, yield to those philosophers who said that man is happy not in enjoying the body or in enjoying the mind, but in enjoying God — not as the mind enjoys the body or itself, or as a friend enjoys a friend, but as the eye enjoys light, if any likeness is to be drawn from these things to that; and what this is like will appear in another place, if God himself helps, as far as we are able. For now it is enough to mention that Plato determined that the final good is to live according to virtue, and that this can happen only to one who has knowledge of God and imitates him, and that there is no other cause of happiness; and therefore he does not doubt that to philosophize is this: to love God, whose nature is incorporeal. From this it certainly follows that the student of wisdom (for that is what a philosopher is) will be happy when he has begun to enjoy God. For though one who enjoys what he loves is not at once happy (for many are wretched by loving what ought not to be loved, and more wretched when they enjoy it), yet no one is happy who does not enjoy what he loves. For even those who love things not to be loved do not think themselves happy by loving but by enjoying. Whoever, then, enjoys what he loves, and loves the true and supreme good, who but the most wretched would deny that he is happy? And Plato says that this true and supreme good is God; and so he wants the philosopher to be a lover of God, so that, since philosophy tends toward the happy life, he who has loved God may be happy in enjoying God.

Chapter 9. On that philosophy which has come nearer to the truth of the Christian faith.

Whatever philosophers, then, have held these views about the supreme and true God — that he is the maker of created things, the light by which things are known, and the good for which things are to be done; that from him we have the principle of nature, the truth of teaching, and the happiness of life — whether they are more fittingly called Platonists or give their school some other name; whether only the chief men of the Ionian school held these views, like Plato himself and those who understood him well, or also those of the Italian school, on account of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans and any others of the same opinion from there; or whether some are found among other nations too, who were held to be wise men or philosophers — Atlantic Libyans, Egyptians, Indians, Persians, Chaldeans, Scythians, Gauls, Spaniards — who saw and taught this: all these we place before the rest, and we acknowledge them to be nearer to us.

Chapter 10. What is the excellence of the religious Christian among the philosophical arts.

For though a Christian educated only in the writings of the church may perhaps not know the name of the Platonists, nor know whether there have been two schools of philosophers in the Greek language, the Ionian and the Italian, yet he is not so deaf in human affairs as not to know that philosophers profess either the pursuit of wisdom or wisdom itself. He is wary, however, of those who philosophize according to the elements of this world, not according to God, by whom the world itself was made. For he is warned by the apostle's precept and listens faithfully to what was said: “Beware lest anyone deceive you through philosophy and empty seduction according to the elements of the world.” Then, lest he think that all are such, he hears the same apostle say of some: “For what is known of God is manifest among them; for God has manifested it to them. For his invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, his eternal power also and divinity.” And when he spoke to the Athenians, after he had said a great thing about God, which can be understood by few, that “in him we live and move and have our being,” he added: “as some of your own have also said.” He knows, of course, to be wary of them too in the points on which they err. For where it was said that God has manifested to them through the things that are made his invisible things, to be seen by the understanding, there it was also said that they did not rightly worship God himself, because they paid to other things also, to which it was not fitting, the divine honors due to him alone: “Because, knowing God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. For, claiming to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, and of birds and four-footed beasts and serpents.” There he made us understand the Romans and the Greeks and the Egyptians, who gloried in the name of wisdom. But about this we shall argue with them later. In so far as they agree with us about the one God, the author of this universe, who is not only incorporeal above all bodies but also incorruptible above all souls — our principle, our light, our good — in this we place them before the rest. Nor, if a Christian who does not know their writings does not use in discussion words he has not learned — calling that part in which the investigation of nature is treated natural in Latin or physics in Greek; and the part in which it is asked how truth can be perceived, rational or logic; and the part in which morals are treated, and the ends of goods to be sought and of evils to be avoided, moral or ethics — does he therefore not know that from the one true and supremely good God we have the nature by which we were made in his image, the teaching by which we know him and ourselves, and the grace by which, cleaving to him, we are happy. This, then, is the reason why we prefer these to the rest: whereas other philosophers wore out their talents and studies in seeking the causes of things and the right way of learning and living, these, having known God, found where the cause of the established universe, the light for perceiving truth, and the fountain for drinking happiness are to be found. Whether, then, these Platonists or any other philosophers of any nations hold these views about God, they agree with us. But I have chosen to argue this case rather with the Platonists because their writings are better known. For the Greeks, whose language is pre-eminent among the nations, have celebrated them with great praise; and the Latins, moved by their excellence or their glory, have studied them more willingly and, by translating them into our tongue, have made them more renowned and illustrious.

Chapter 11. How Plato could have acquired that understanding by which he came near to Christian knowledge.

Some who are joined with us in the grace of Christ are amazed when they hear or read that Plato held views about God which they recognize to agree closely with the truth of our religion. Hence some have thought that when he went to Egypt he heard the prophet Jeremiah, or read the prophetic Scriptures on that same journey; and I myself set down their opinion in certain of my books. But a careful calculation of dates, contained in chronological history, shows that Plato was born about a hundred years after the time when Jeremiah prophesied; and since he lived eighty-one years, from the year of his death to the time when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, asked for the prophetic Scriptures of the Hebrew people from Judea, and had them translated and kept by seventy Hebrew men who also knew the Greek language, about sixty years are found. Therefore on that journey Plato could neither have seen Jeremiah, who had died so long before, nor read those Scriptures, which had not yet been translated into the Greek language in which he excelled — unless perhaps, being of most eager study, he learned them through an interpreter, as he did the Egyptian writings; not so as to translate them in writing (which Ptolemy, who could even be feared for his royal power, is said to have earned as a great favor), but so as to learn by conversation, as far as he could grasp it, what they contained. That this should be thought, some indications seem to suggest. The book of Genesis begins thus: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth. But the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne over the water.” And in the Timaeus, the book Plato wrote on the formation of the world, he says that God in that work first joined earth and fire. It is plain that he assigns to fire the place of heaven; so this opinion has a certain likeness to what was said, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” Then he says that the two means, by whose interposition these extremes were joined to each other, are water and air; from which he is thought to have understood thus what is written, “the Spirit of God was borne over the water.” For, paying little attention to the way in which that Scripture usually speaks of the Spirit of God, since air too is called spirit, he may seem to have thought that the four elements were mentioned in that place. Then, as for Plato's saying that the philosopher is a lover of God, nothing burns so brightly in those sacred writings. And above all there is this (which most of all leads me almost to agree that Plato was not unacquainted with those books): when the words of God are brought by an angel to holy Moses, and to him, asking the name of the one who commanded him to go and free the Hebrew people from Egypt, the answer is given, “I am who am; and you shall say to the children of Israel, He who is has sent me to you” — as though, in comparison with him who truly is because he is unchangeable, the things made changeable do not exist — Plato held this vehemently and commended it most diligently. And I do not know whether this is found anywhere in the books of those who were before Plato, except where it was said, “I am who am; and you shall say to them, He who is has sent me to you.”

Chapter 12. That even the Platonists, though they thought rightly about the one true God, nevertheless judged that sacrifices should be offered to many gods.

But wherever he learned these things — whether from the books of the ancients who preceded him, or rather, as the apostle says, because “what is known of God is manifest among them; for God has manifested it to them; for his invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, his eternal power also and divinity” — I think I have now sufficiently shown that I have not undeservedly chosen the Platonic philosophers to deal with, since in this question which we have just taken up, the matter at issue is natural theology: whether, for the sake of the happiness that is to come after death, sacrifice ought to be offered to one God or to many. I chose these above all because, the better they thought of the one God who made heaven and earth, the more glorious and illustrious they are held to be than the rest. They are preferred to the others by the judgment of posterity to such a degree that, although Aristotle, Plato's disciple, a man of excellent talent, unequal to Plato in eloquence but easily surpassing many, founded the Peripatetic school — so named because he was accustomed to dispute while walking about — and, being outstanding in fame, gathered very many disciples into his sect while his teacher was still living; and although after Plato's death Speusippus, his sister's son, and Xenocrates, his beloved disciple, succeeded him in his school, which was called the Academy, and for this reason they and their successors were called Academics — yet the more recent and most noted philosophers who chose to follow Plato did not wish to be called Peripatetics or Academics, but Platonists. Among these the Greeks Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Porphyry are highly renowned; and in both languages, that is, Greek and Latin, Apuleius the African was a noted Platonist. But all these and others of this kind, and Plato himself, thought that sacrifices should be offered to many gods.

Chapter 13. On the opinion of Plato, by which he defined the gods to be only good and friends of the virtues.

Although they disagree with us in many other great matters too, yet on this point which I have just stated — since it is no small matter and the question now turns on it — I first ask them to which gods they think this worship should be offered: to good ones, to bad ones, or to both good and bad. But we have the opinion of Plato, who says that all the gods are good and that there is no bad god at all. It follows, then, that these things are to be understood as offered to good gods; for then they are offered to gods, since they will not be gods if they are not good. If this is so (and what else is it fitting to believe about gods?), then the opinion is surely emptied by which some think that bad gods must be appeased with sacrifices, so that they may not harm, and good gods invoked, so that they may help. For there are no bad gods; and to the good, as they say, the due honor of sacrifices is to be paid. Who, then, are those who love the stage plays and demand that they be joined to divine rites and exhibited in their honor? Their power shows that they are not nothing; but this taste of theirs surely shows that they are bad. For what Plato thought of stage plays is well known, since he judges that the poets themselves should be driven out of the city for having composed poems so unworthy of the majesty and goodness of the gods. Who, then, are these gods who contend with Plato himself over the stage plays? He does not allow the gods to be defamed with false crimes; they order their honors to be celebrated with those same crimes. Indeed, when they commanded that those same plays be renewed, they demanded shameful things and also did malicious ones, taking away the son of Titus Latinius and sending a disease on him because he had refused their command, and withdrawing the disease when he had carried out their orders. But Plato does not think that they, however bad, are to be feared; holding most steadfastly to the strength of his opinion, he does not hesitate to remove from a well-ordered people all the sacrilegious trifles of the poets, in which those gods delight through their fellowship in uncleanness. And this Plato, as I mentioned already in the second book, Labeo places among the demigods. Labeo thinks that bad deities are appeased with bloody victims and supplications of that kind, but good ones with plays and such things as pertain, as it were, to gladness. Why is it, then, that the demigod Plato so steadfastly dares to take away these delights, because he judges them shameful, not from demigods but from gods, and good ones at that? These gods indeed refute Labeo's opinion; for in the case of Latinius they showed themselves not only wanton and playful but also cruel and terrible. Let the Platonists, then, explain these things to us, who, following the opinion of their founder, think all the gods good and honorable and companions of the virtues of the wise, and hold it wicked to think otherwise of any of the gods. “We explain,” they say. Let us listen attentively, then.

Chapter 14. On the opinion of those who said that rational souls are of three kinds: in the heavenly gods, in the aerial demons, and in earthly men.

“Of all living beings,” they say, “in which there is a rational soul, there is a threefold division: into gods, men, and demons. The gods hold the highest place, men the lowest, demons the middle. For the seat of the gods is in heaven, that of men on earth, that of demons in the air. As the dignity of their places differs, so does that of their natures. Accordingly the gods are superior to men and demons; men are placed below gods and demons, in the order of the elements as in the difference of their merits. The demons, then, being in the middle, are to be ranked below the gods, beneath whom they dwell, and above men, above whom they dwell. For they have in common with the gods immortality of body, and with men the passions of the mind. Therefore,” they say, “it is not surprising if they delight even in the obscenities of plays and the fictions of poets, since they are captured by human feelings, from which the gods are far removed and wholly alien.” From this it is concluded that Plato, by detesting and forbidding poetic fictions, deprived not the gods, who are all good and exalted, of the pleasure of stage plays, but the demons. If these things are so — and though they are found in other writers too, Apuleius the Platonist of Madaura wrote a whole book on this subject alone, whose title he chose to be On the God of Socrates. In it he discusses and explains to what class of deities belonged the being that was joined to Socrates and bound to him by a kind of friendship, by whom he is said to have been usually warned to desist from acting when what he wanted to do was not going to turn out well. For he says most plainly, and asserts at great length, that it was not a god but a demon, treating with careful argument this opinion of Plato's about the exaltation of the gods, the lowliness of men, and the middle position of demons. If these things are so, then, how did Plato dare, by expelling the poets from the city, to take away theatrical pleasures, if not from the gods, whom he removed from all human contact, then certainly from the demons themselves — unless it was that in this way he warned the human mind, though still placed in these dying members, to despise the impure commands of the demons for the sake of the splendor of honor, and to detest their uncleanness? For if Plato most honorably censured and forbade these things, then surely the demons most shamefully demanded and commanded them. Either, then, Apuleius is mistaken and Socrates did not have a friend of this class of deities; or Plato holds contradictory views, now honoring the demons, now removing their delights from a well-ordered city; or Socrates is not to be congratulated on the friendship of a demon — about which even Apuleius himself was so ashamed that he entitled his book On the God of Socrates, when according to his own argument, by which he distinguishes gods from demons so carefully and fully, he ought to have called it not On the God but On the Demon of Socrates. But he preferred to put this in the discussion itself rather than in the title of the book. For through the sound teaching that has shone on human affairs, all or nearly all shudder at the name of demons, so that whoever, before reading Apuleius's argument commending the dignity of demons, read the title of a book On the Demon of Socrates would think that the man was by no means sane. And what did Apuleius himself find to praise in demons, except the subtlety and firmness of their bodies and the higher place of their dwelling? For of their morals, when he spoke of all of them in general, he not only said nothing good but a great deal that was bad. In short, when that book has been read, no one at all is surprised that they wished to have even the shamefulness of the stage among divine rites, and that, wishing to be thought gods, they could be delighted by the crimes of the gods; and that whatever in their rites is laughed at or shuddered at, whether obscene solemnity or shameful cruelty, suits their passions.

Chapter 15. That demons do not excel men either because of their aerial bodies or because of their higher dwelling places.

Therefore, far be it that a truly religious mind, subject to the true God, considering these things, should think that demons are better than itself because they have better bodies. Otherwise it will also prefer to itself many beasts, which surpass us in keenness of senses, in the easiest and swiftest motion, in strength, and in the long-lasting firmness of their bodies. What man will equal eagles and vultures in seeing? Dogs in smelling? Hares, deer, and all birds in speed? Lions and elephants in strength? Serpents in long life, which are said even to put off old age with their cast skin and return to youth? But as we are better than all these by reasoning and understanding, so we ought also to be better than demons by living well and honorably. For this reason divine providence gave certain superior bodily gifts to those to whom we are plainly superior, so that what makes us superior to them might in this way too be commended to us as something to be cultivated with far greater care than the body, and that we might learn to despise, in comparison with the goodness of life by which we are placed above them, the very bodily excellence which we know the demons have — we who also shall have immortality of body, not one which an eternity of punishment tortures, but one which purity of soul precedes. And to be so impressed by the height of their place — that demons live in the air and we on the earth — as to think that they are to be placed above us is altogether ridiculous. For in this way we would place all birds above us too. “But birds,” they say, “when they are tired from flying, or have bodies to be refreshed with food, return to the earth either to rest or to feed, which demons do not do.” Do they wish, then, that birds should excel us, and demons excel even the birds? If it is utterly mad to think this, there is no reason to think demons worthy, because they dwell in a higher element, to have us subject ourselves to them in the affection of religion. For as it could be that the birds of the air are not only not preferred to us who are earthly, but even subject to us, because of the dignity of the rational soul that is in us, so it could be that the demons, though they are more aerial, are not better than us earthly beings merely because air is higher than earth; rather, men are to be preferred to them, because the despair of the demons is in no way to be compared with the hope of devout men. For that reasoning of Plato too, by which he weaves together and orders the four elements in proportion, inserting between the two extremes, the most mobile fire and the immobile earth, the two means, air and water, so that as far as air is above water and fire above air, so far water is above earth — this sufficiently warns us not to judge the merits of living beings by the grades of the elements. And Apuleius himself, with the rest, calls man an earthly animal, who is nevertheless far preferred to the animals of the water, although Plato places the waters themselves above the earth. So let them understand that the same order is not to be kept when the merits of souls are in question as seems to be the order in the grades of bodies, but that it can happen that a better soul inhabits a lower body and a worse soul a higher one.

Chapter 16. What the Platonist Apuleius thought about the morals and actions of demons.

When the same Platonist spoke of the morals of demons, he said that they are agitated by the same disturbances of mind as men, are provoked by injuries, appeased by services and gifts, rejoice in honors, are delighted by various rites of worship, and are upset if anything in them is neglected. Among other things he also says that the divinations of augurs, soothsayers, seers, and dreams belong to them, and that the wonders of magicians too come from them. And defining them briefly, he says that demons are “in kind, animals; in soul, subject to passion; in mind, rational; in body, aerial; in time, eternal”; and that of these five, the first three they have in common with us, the fourth is proper to them, and the fifth they have in common with the gods. But I see that of the first three, which they have in common with us, they have two in common with the gods too. For he says that the gods also are animals; and, assigning to each their own element, he placed us among the earthly animals with the others that live and feel on the earth, the fish and other swimming creatures among the aquatic, the demons among the aerial, the gods among the ethereal. And so, that demons are animals in kind is common to them not only with men but also with the gods and with beasts; that they are rational in mind, with gods and men; that they are eternal in time, with the gods alone; that they are subject to passion in soul, with men alone; that they are aerial in body, they alone are. Accordingly, that they are animals in kind is nothing great, for beasts are this too; that they are rational in mind is not above us, for we are so too; that they are eternal in time — what good is it, if not happy? For temporal happiness is better than wretched eternity. That they are subject to passion in soul — how is this above us, since we are so too, and would not be so if we were not wretched? That they are aerial in body — how highly is this to be valued, when the nature of any soul whatever is preferred to every body, and therefore the worship of religion, which is owed from the soul, is in no way owed to a thing that is inferior to the soul? Now if among the things he says belong to demons he had counted virtue, wisdom, and happiness, and said that they had these eternal and in common with the gods, he would surely be saying something to be desired and highly valued; yet not even so ought we to worship them as God for these things, but rather him from whom we knew they had received them. How much less, then, are these aerial animals worthy of divine honor as things stand: rational so that they can be wretched, subject to passion so that they are wretched, eternal so that they cannot end their wretchedness!

Chapter 17. Whether it is fitting that man should worship spirits from whose vices he ought to be set free.

Therefore, to pass over the rest and deal only with what he said demons have in common with us, that is, passions of the mind: if all four elements are full of their own animals, fire and air of immortal ones, water and earth of mortal ones, I ask why the minds of demons are tossed by the turmoil and storms of passions. For perturbation is what in Greek is called pathos; hence he chose to call them “subject to passion in mind,” because the word pathos, rendered word for word as passio, meant a movement of the mind contrary to reason. Why, then, are these things in the minds of demons which are not in beasts? For if anything like this appears in a beast, it is not a perturbation, because it is not contrary to reason, which beasts lack. In men, that there are these perturbations is caused by folly or wretchedness; for we are not yet happy in that perfection of wisdom which is promised us at the end, when we are freed from this mortality. But they say that the gods do not suffer these perturbations because they are not only eternal but also happy. For they say that the gods too have the same rational souls, but most pure from every stain and plague. Therefore, if the gods are not disturbed because they are happy, not wretched, animals, and beasts are not disturbed because they are animals that can be neither happy nor wretched, it remains that demons, like men, are disturbed because they are animals that are not happy but wretched. By what folly, then, or rather madness, do we subject ourselves to demons through some religion, when through the true religion we are set free from that viciousness in which we are like them? For while the demons are driven by anger — as even this Apuleius, though he spares them very much and judges them worthy of divine honors, is compelled to confess — the true religion commands us not to be driven by anger but rather to resist it. While demons are enticed by gifts, the true religion commands us not to favor anyone because we have received gifts. While demons are soothed by honors, the true religion commands us not to be moved by such things in any way. While demons hate some men and love others, not by a prudent and calm judgment but with a mind “subject to passion,” as he calls it, the true religion commands us to love even our enemies. Finally, every movement of the heart and surge of the mind, all the turmoil and storms of the soul by which he asserts that demons seethe and are tossed, the true religion bids us lay aside. What reason is there, then, except folly and astonishing error, for making yourself humble in venerating one whom you would wish to be unlike in your life, and worshipping in religion one whom you do not wish to imitate, when the sum of religion is to imitate the one you worship?