Mockery of the Pagan Philosophers (complete)

Paul, the blessed apostle, writing to the Corinthians who live in Greece bordering on Laconia, declared, beloved, saying: “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God”; and he did not say it without purpose. For it seems to me to have taken its beginning from the apostasy of the angels; and for this reason the philosophers set out their doctrines saying things neither consistent nor in agreement with one another. For some of them say that the soul is fire, as Democritus; others, air, as the Stoics; others, mind; others, motion, as Heraclitus; others, exhalation; others, a power flowing from the stars; others, number with power of motion, as Pythagoras; others, generative water, as Hippo; others, an element from elements; others, harmony, as Dinarchus; others, blood, as Critias; others, breath; others, the monad, as Pythagoras; and the ancients, the opposites. How many arguments about these things! How many attempts! And how many of sophists contending rather than finding the truth!

But let it be: they quarrel about the soul, but declared the rest in agreement about it. And others … one calls it good, another evil, another midway between good and evil. As to its nature, some say it is immortal, others mortal, others that it lasts for a short while; others turn it into a beast, others dissolve it into atoms, others give it a body three times, others fix for it periods of three thousand years. And indeed men who do not live even a hundred years promise what will come after three thousand years. What then should one call these things? As it seems to me, a prodigy, or folly, or madness, or all of them together. If they have found some truth, … I will gladly be persuaded by them. But if they drag the soul about and pull it, one into one nature and another into another substance, matter from matter … of things. Now I am immortal, and I rejoice; now again I become mortal, and I weep; now I am dissolved into atoms; I become water, I become air, I become fire; then after a little I am neither air nor fire; one makes me a beast, one makes me a fish. Again, then, I have dolphins as brothers. But when I look at myself, I am afraid of my body, and do not know what to call it, man or dog or wolf or bull or bird or serpent or dragon or chimaera. I am changed by the philosophers into all the beasts, of land, of water, of the air, many-shaped, wild, tame, dumb, voiced, irrational, rational; I swim, I fly, I soar, I creep, I run, I sit. And then comes Empedocles and makes me a bush. [3] Where, then, the philosophers cannot find the human soul in agreement, they could hardly declare the truth about the gods or about the world. For they have such courage (or should I call it stupidity?) that, being unable to find their own soul, they search out the nature of the gods themselves; and not knowing their own body, they busy themselves about the nature of the world. At least concerning the principles of nature they are wholly opposed to one another. When Anaxagoras takes me aside, he teaches me this: “Mind is the principle of all things, and it is the cause and lord of the universe, and gives order to things without order, motion to things unmoved, distinction to things mixed, and adornment to things unadorned.” When Anaxagoras says this he is my friend, and I am persuaded by his doctrine. But Melissus and Parmenides stand against him. Parmenides indeed proclaims, in poetic verses too, that being is one, eternal, infinite, immovable and alike in every part. Again, then, I am shifted, I know not how, to this doctrine; Parmenides has driven Anaxagoras out of my mind. But when I think I hold an unmoved doctrine, … I say, the universe is air, and this, condensed and thickened, becomes water and [earth], but rarefied and diffused, ether and fire; and returning to its own nature, rarefied air. And if it is condensed, he says, it is changed. And again I shift to this man, and I love Anaximenes. [4] But Empedocles stands opposite, roaring and shouting from Etna: “The principles of all things are hatred and love, the one bringing together, the other separating; and their strife makes all things. I define them as both like and unlike, infinite and limited, eternal and coming to be.” Well done, Empedocles! I follow you even to the craters of fire. But on the other side Protagoras stands and draws me back, saying: “The limit and judge of things is man; and the things that fall under the senses are things, but those that do not fall under them do not exist among the forms of being.” Flattered by Protagoras with this argument, I am delighted that the whole, or most of it, remains with man. But from another side Thales nods the truth to me, defining water as the principle of the universe: from the moist all things are composed and into the moist they are dissolved, and the earth rides on water. Why, then, should I not believe Thales, the oldest of the Ionians? But his fellow citizen Anaximander says that eternal motion is a principle older than the moist, and by it some things come to be and others perish. So then Anaximander is to be believed. [5] And is not Archelaus well regarded, declaring hot and cold the principles of all things? But again the grand-voiced Plato does not agree with him, saying that the principles are God and matter and pattern. Now at last I am persuaded. For how should I not believe the philosopher who built the chariot of Zeus? But behind him stands his pupil Aristotle, jealous of his teacher's chariot-building. … the active is impassible, the ether; and the passive has four qualities, dryness, moisture, heat and coldness; for by the change of these into one another all things come to be and perish. … I will take my stand on [his] opinion, and let no argument any longer …

But what is to become of me? For older men than these cut the sinews of my soul: Pherecydes, saying that the principles are Zen and Chthonie and Cronos: Zen the ether, Chthonie the earth, Cronos time; the ether the active, the earth the passive, time that in which things come to be. The old men, then, are jealous of one another. For Leucippus, thinking all these things nonsense, says that the principles are infinite, unmoved and smallest bodies; and that the fine-particled went upward … and settled, water and earth. How long shall I be taught so many things and learn nothing true? Unless indeed Democritus will free me from error, declaring the principles to be being and non-being; being is the full and non-being the empty; and the full in the empty makes all things by turning or shape. Perhaps I would [be persuaded] by the good Democritus, and would like to laugh with him, if Heraclitus did not win me over, weeping and saying: “The principle of all things is fire; and it has two affections, rarity and density, the one active, the other passive; the one combining, the other separating.” I have enough already, and I am drunk with so many principles. But from that side Epicurus exhorts me by no means to insult his fine doctrine of the atoms and the void; for by their manifold and many-shaped interweaving all things come to be and perish. [7] I do not contradict you, Epicurus, best of men; but Cleanthes, raising his head from the well, laughs at your doctrine, and draws up himself the true principles, God and matter: that earth changes into water, water into air, air is borne upward, and fire goes to the regions about the earth; and that the soul pervades the whole world, and by sharing a part of it we are ensouled. These being so many, another crowd comes upon me from Libya … their followers, trampling on all the doctrines of others, and themselves declaring outright that all things are incomprehensible, and that a false impression always lies beside the true. What, then, is to become of me, after toiling so long? How shall I pour so many doctrines out of my mind? For if nothing is comprehensible, truth departs from men, and …

Others from the ancient tribe, Pythagoras and his fellow tribesmen, solemn and silent, hand on to me other doctrines, like mysteries, and this great and unspeakable “He said”: “The principle of all things is the monad; and from its figures and from the numbers the elements come to be.” And of each of these he declares the number, the figure and the measure thus: fire is made up of twenty-four right-angled triangles … each equilateral consisting of six triangles; whence they liken it to a pyramid. Air is made up of forty-eight triangles … [likened to an oc]tahedron, which is enclosed by eight equilateral triangles, each of which is divided into six right-angled ones, so that there are forty-eight in all. Water is enclosed by a hundred and twenty; it is likened to an icosahedron, which consists of twenty equal and equilateral triangles … The ether is like a dodecahedron. The earth is made up of forty-eight triangles and is enclosed by six equilateral squares; it is like a cube. For the cube is enclosed by six squares, each of which [is divided] into four triangles, so that there are twenty-four in all.

Pythagoras, then, measures the world. But I, inspired once more, despise my house and country, my wife and children, and no longer care for them; but I go up myself into the ether, and taking the cubit from Pythagoras I begin to measure the fire. For Zeus's measuring is not enough; but unless I too, the great animal, the great body, the great soul, go up to heaven and measure the ether, the rule of Zeus is gone. And when I have measured, and Zeus has learned from me how many angles fire has, I come down again from heaven, and having eaten olives and figs and vegetables, I set off with all speed to the water, and by cubit and finger and half-finger I measure the moist substance and its depth, that I may teach Poseidon too how great a sea he rules. The whole earth I traverse in one day, collecting its number and measure and figures. For I am persuaded that of the world … I will not pass over even a span, being so great and so mighty. I know also the number of the stars and of the fishes and of the beasts, and setting the world on a balance I can easily learn its weight. Hitherto my soul has been bent on these things, to rule the universe.

But Epicurus, peeping in, says to me: “You have measured one world, my friend; but there are many worlds, infinite in number.” Again, then, I am compelled to speak of many heavens, other ethers, and many of them. Come then, delaying no longer, having taken provisions for a few days, [I set off] to the Epicurean … I easily fly over Ocean. And entering a new world, as into another city, I measure everything in a few days. And from there I pass over again into a [third] world; then into a fourth, and a fifth, and a tenth, and a hundredth, and a thousandth; and how far? For already everything is to me darkness of ignorance, black deceit, endless wandering, imperfect fancy and incomprehensible ignorance; unless I am to count the very atoms from which so many worlds have come to be, so as to leave nothing unexamined, especially of things so necessary and useful, by which house and city prosper. I have gone through these things, then, wishing to show the contradiction in their doctrines, and how their inquiry into things proceeds without end or limit, and their goal is unascertainable and useless, confirmed by no evident deed and no clear reasoning.