Against the Manichees 1.19–1.34

Explaining the manner of this uprising, he says: “Those who came from it drove and devoured one another, inflicting terrible and grievous things; and they did not stop rising against one another,” he says in these very words, “until at last they caught sight of the light. For pursued by one another, though ignorant, they nonetheless dared to be carried up as far as the light.” And what could be more implausible or more mythical than this? That those who claim one mother and are united by kinship of nature should attack one another for nothing, devour one another’s limbs, and never stop doing it? Even if it were true, it would be better for them to be consumed by themselves, and the fool calls what was advantageous disorder for nothing. For he defines the disorder before the world chiefly as this, the disorder of evil, and he names it so as though he were grieved for matter, because it was being consumed by itself unfittingly. Like a friend of hers, distressed at the harm she did herself, he calls disorder what she did, to advantage, against herself, when he ought to have called evil’s destruction of itself the highest order.

But he says, “They were in disorder and wronged one another, but when they saw the light they stopped.” Then the light plotted against what was advantageous, if it rescued the wicked from one another and, like a physician’s medicine, did good to the sick. It was not the part of a good being to spare evil so that it remained and was preserved and was not consumed by itself; for if he prevented it from being spent by itself, he plainly preserved it himself. And what he says put an end to the disorder would more truly be disorder.

“When, then,” as the book they use says in these very words, “quarrelling with one another, they came up as far as the borders and saw the light, a most beautiful and comely sight, then, inspired by the motion within them, they took counsel against the light, what they could do to mingle themselves with the better. But they were not able to reason this out; rather, from desire for the better, thinking it would be their own prey, they marched against it, being many.” He fails to notice that he grants the sons of evil the finest qualities of all. For if they looked with love on what was most beautiful and comely, and desiring it thought it their own prey, plainly their judgment was right; so that those who have no share in reason even deliberate how they may mingle themselves with the light. And it would then be envy not to let them enjoy the good. For the madman’s argument does not stand. If they were raging against one another, they ought to have been left to be destroyed by one another; but if they desired the light as people of good taste, it was fitting to allow them to enjoy it (for the desire for the good is in every way of good taste and praiseworthy by nature). They could not enjoy it, desiring it as they did (as the man who writes up the madman’s teaching says), yet they could not destroy it either; for the good is wholly such that it can neither be consumed nor otherwise plotted against by those who share in it.

They all marched together. But how, when they did not know who opposed them? For the Writing itself, from which we have cited the madman’s words, says that they did not know that God dwelt in the light, nor that, having dared to attack the dwelling of God, they would never get away unpunished. If, then, they did not know of the opposing hindrance, it is wholly unreasonable that they should campaign against things from which they did not know they were kept. It would have been likely for them to arm themselves, as he says, with fire and darkness, if they had known beforehand that they were kept from what belonged to others. But since they were entirely ignorant, to describe armour and an army against no one at all expected to oppose them belongs to an argument not only implausible but plainly self-contradictory. No less contradictory is it to say in one place that desire for the light came upon them, and to admit in another that they used warlike preparation against it. For every enemy puts forward warlike arms against the one who opposes him, not against the prize he desires. If, then, in their ignorance there was no opponent, how is desiring not contrary to making war? And how is this too not very contradictory: that those who never agreed with one another in what is natural conspired together? “Together,” he says, “they took counsel against the light.” How did those who fed on one another’s limbs and never ceased raging against one another come to agree in what is against nature, in desire and anger at once against the better? And if the sight of the light did them good, how ought they not, by the good one, to have been led over to a complete change of nature by being allowed full enjoyment of the better? And how did the sight of the light that appeared do good to those who went to war, if it no longer let them exercise their madness, as was fitting, against one another, but turned it, improperly, against itself? There is much drivel in these fictions, and they can be shown to be inexcusable in other ways too. For they speak of a land of the good. What land is this, before creation? Among them the names of things come before their coming into being. For before admitting that God has made it, the most grievously mad man says that what had not yet come into being exists. For if the land came into being, it existed only once made; but if it existed without having come into being, it was co-unbegotten with God. And what need had God of land, when he made no use of land? He unreasonably names a land of God before saying that it came into being; for it was not possible to testify to its coming into being before creation.

Then, the light perceived by the senses is God’s creation, while he himself would be light perceived by the mind, not by the senses. “Evil saw,” he says, “the light of the good.” If it was the light perceived by the senses, there was as yet no world and no coming into being of a world: how did it see what had not yet come into being? For since man, who uses it, did not yet exist, to whom was the light useful? Useful things are akin to those who use them; it was certainly not useful to God, who is free of all share in what is perceived by the senses. But if it saw God himself, who is light for the mind, then it saw its like by likeness of nature; and so it must have seen sensible light. Yet for whose sake did sensible light exist before there were sensible beings? And how, in any case, does darkness see light? If it beheld light, it would not be darkness; for sense has much in common with what it senses, since its grasp is natural, through the likeness of sight to what appears: at once it takes the impress of the object, through the lawful communion of nature. Body sees body, and like grasps like; and what is better and higher in nature, even if it is not opposed, is wholly invisible to what is lower simply because it is incorporeal and the other is bodily. Is the opposite, then, visible to its opposite? If it is not invisible, then they are akin and friendly and in no way opposed. But the barbarian’s fiction is full of ruin. For he says not only “matter saw,” but also “it planned to set foot” on the light, as though making this a serious proof of its communion with the light. Perhaps, too, its offspring regretted that in the boundless ages before they had had no experience of the light. And how does darkness lay claim to light? Or for what reason does it wish to come upon it? To change its nature and become light? Or to be fed by light, a food contrary to its nature? But it wished to set foot on it in ignorance. Yet if it had known, its laying claim would have had a reason; but if it is evil by nature and ignorant, the hypothesis is wholly overturned by its not even fleeing its opposite.

What goes still further into unreason is this: that when matter beheld the power sent by the good, no longer sensible light but, as he would say, an emission of God, it rushes toward it as though in love, attacks it, swallows it, and distributes it among its own powers. And matter, for which it was impossible even to behold what was sent from the nature of the good, he says became able to swallow it. For I shall use the same argument further: if it had merely seen what was emitted from God’s substance, we would need no other argument to overturn the fiction. For it certainly saw its like, being like it; for what is wholly opposite by nature and has gone to the extreme of opposition could neither see its opposite nor come near it, since the account of opposition is entirely destroyed if it merely sees. And he adds something more absurd than what has been said, fighting hard against himself, so that no one else need speak against him. For he says, “it fell in love with the power that appeared,” as though it had wholly forgotten its own nature; not, indeed, matter, which does not exist, but these men have forgotten their own fictions. For if they say that before its uprising it had no knowledge of the good (so as not to dignify with knowledge of the good the nature they have slandered), how is it not unreasonable that what did not have within itself the knowledge that the good exists should be able to see it, and, having beheld it, to desire it? For to behold the substance with the eye is incomparably greater than to know that it exists. Indeed, not only we but also the higher powers of the angels know that the good exists, being nourished toward piety by that knowledge alone, the angels being higher in knowledge as much as in nature; but to see God in his substance belongs neither to us nor to them. Why, we cannot even see the angels themselves, as long as we are clothed with our natural body. For it is plain and clearly agreed that whoever sees something sees what is like himself. And if someone ignorantly thinks this statement unsound (for we look at the sun and the moon and the stars, and also at things beneath us, stones, gold and silver, and in general the sea and all living things, and we are certainly not like these), let him learn that, even if the kinds of the things listed are different, body is the higher genus of them all. For of substance one part is invisible as incorporeal, and the other visible as body; the first division, then, marks off all these things as a genus. Body, then, sees body, and in so far as it is body the one who sees is like and akin to what is seen, even if their kinds differ, for the variety and order of the whole. It would be laughable to deny that the bloom of gold, since it appears most beautiful to the eye, and the dullness of soot are each what each truly is called, a colour; for each is a colour, even if they differ, since the same sight has communion alike with each. So all bodies are visible, even though we say they differ in kind. And if some bodies are better than others, nothing prevents it; still they are all bodies. That is why what is visible is not at all an object of worship for the one who sees it, since it is grasped by him. If, then, matter saw what came from God’s substance, it came to the sight through very great kinship and likeness, and there would be no need to say anything more against this incoherent myth. And if it also desired what appeared, the fool has testified to the best thing of all in it, so that he seems to have given it the name of evil but to have admitted that its substance is good; for what greater proof of nobility is there than to desire the good?

And if (he says) it also seized it and swallowed it, so as to become pregnant with the substance opposite to it, God’s, and distributed it among its own powers: oh, the irrational madness! It not only saw, but also desired; and it not only desired, but also swallowed; and it not only swallowed, but also holds fast. All these things plainly do not define an opposition of nature, but confess the utmost and highest kinship of the two. For whether it swallowed what appeared in indignation (which is a sign of reasoning) or in desire, these things would plainly be a communion of nature. For if they had been utterly opposite, the two would never have come together.

Besides the rest, the barbarian did not see this either: that the power sent by God, if it was incorporeal, would have admitted no division, so that it could in no way be divided in substance among the opposing powers, nor indeed be swallowed; for in what way could the incorporeal be swallowed? But if it was bodily, every body that is cut up and broken into small pieces is in a way destroyed and can no longer live its own life. Therefore either the power sent by the good was incorporeal and was neither swallowed nor divided among many (and so the myth is wholly finished), or it was something bodily and has been entirely destroyed and has perished by evil’s doing; which is worse as an insult to the good, or rather stronger as a refutation of the myth. For a body divided and scattered in itself (a mind is not divided) has what strength to subdue evil, when it has suffered such damage and insult to its own nature that it seems to have vanished and perished? For this is what is proper to a body that is cut up.

Still more unreasonable is that God, wishing to rescue a land from evil, gave up what came from his own nature, naked, to grievous insult and corruption of its very substance, to sit for so long an age dwelling with evil, sharing in it and sinning with it. For God’s substance to suffer even for one hour or one point of time being subjected to evil and sinning with it would be the most unreasonable thing of all. And how much better would it have been to give up the land than for God’s substance to be captured? For if the attack on the land was intolerable, as being matter’s disorder, how much more unbearable is so great a slavery and subjection of God’s nature, and not for the briefest time but for a whole and boundless age, so that evil has not ceased to sin, and God sins with it through the power emitted from him? So it is likely that God would not even have wished to send to evil what was emitted from his substance so as to sin along with it, nor would that power have been persuaded and obeyed so as to come to such ruin and be filled with every lawlessness, injustice and impiety, for the sake of freeing a land (not one already taken, but one about to be taken), as though God could not protect it in some other way.

See how great a weakness the man who raged against God plainly attributes to God, as though he were the guardian of some orphan’s property, whose weakness he must admit in order to make his advocacy complete. For, as if championing the opposite, the evil that has no existence at all, he says that it has done everything against God: that it rose up, wished to set foot on what was his, and finally, the most grievous thing of all against God, became master of his substance for the whole age, cut it up (as cannot happen) into infinite pieces, chokes and crushes it within itself, and has it as its partner in every evil deed and licentiousness; while God was unable either to rescue his own place effectively in some other way, or at least to keep himself sinless, as befits his nature. For the wrongs that what is emitted from him in substance commits together with matter go straight back to him who emitted it. So, testifying that evil has every power against God, he says that God has suffered the most incurable things of all from it.

And he goes on to dare to say that the power sent by God put matter to sleep, as an incantation does a wild beast. Not only does he implausibly mix in his account things utterly opposite, and indulge his own fiction with things that are in no way possible by nature, but here too he establishes the opposite of what he wants. (For he says that God fashioned this universe out of these two, and that of man the body belongs to evil and the soul to the good, whether it is of one kind or compounded of the opposites); and in this too, as we shall show of both points a little later, it has no coherence. A body by itself neither devises nor does any evil: it does not murder, commit adultery, rob, or do any other wrong when the soul is not present to it. Yet it was for the sake of these and such things that the madman devised the existence of the opposite principle and the mixture of opposites, so that their cause might be found. But if the mixing of the soul of the good with the body of evil gave men the occasions for their wrongs (for a body by itself does no wrong), it would have been better for the fabricated power of the good not to be mixed with the evil that does not exist. For then none of the sins among men would have been practised, or existed at all. For what murder would there have been, with no one to be murdered, if the world had not come into being through the mixing of opposites, according to his most ridiculous account? What adultery, with no body, and no body desiring by itself, if the soul of the good had not been sent down? For it is one of two things: either we must say that the opposites came together by the economy of the good, so that a world might come about, as by a good being, and then he himself would be wholly the cause of the evils among men, if he willingly made use of evil against what was to come into being; or he was forced by evil, and evil has already carried off the prize of victory over the good. What murder was there (I say again), if there was neither man nor sword nor any other instrument of murder, unless the world had been framed through the meeting of the opposites? Matter by itself, even if its offspring quarrelled with one another, did not know murder, for it had nothing mortal to murder. It knew nothing of adultery, for betrothals of marriage were not practised among it. Nor was there false accusation in it, for, being irrational, it had no judging at all. Love of money, the root of evils, and love of glory it did not mention even by name; for love of money is found among men because of need, from which matter was free, and love of glory is a passion of reasoning, in which, being irrational, it had no share. Gluttony, sexual immorality and corruption of males had no place in it. And in short, all the evils that appear among men matter did not have at all before the world; so it was not fettered by the mixing, but on the contrary, according to that senseless hypothesis, like a horse that has reached the open plain, it runs freely, carried on toward the injustice of evils. For the evils that did not exist at all before the world have been practised in the world since there has been a world. For even if one grants, as he says, that the beings of matter quarrelled and raged against one another, did countless evils to one another and marched against the light, still no one will imagine that the list of human evils enumerated belonged to them, since human evils could not be done before man came into being. And where is the man who says that evil was chastened by being fettered, when before being fettered it did not even know of the evils among men, and after being fettered it is accused of them? What harm did it do to the good while it was disorderly by itself and had nothing to which to attach its disorder? It was not at all able to turn the good aside. And if it tried to set foot on places not its own, it ought to have been checked from its irrational onrush in some other way. For matter, which before showed a harmless disorder by itself, now seems to have taken on something else, against which, as present with it, it will show a more harmful disorder. So also men who are evildoers, when alone, will wish to do some evil, but having no one to do it against, they would turn out idle; and they would look on one another with goodwill, in agreement about evil. But matter neither willed (for it did not deliberate, being irrational) nor was able, being alone by itself.

So does what the madman calls matter seem to have taken on, through the soul from the good, a truer matter, to its peril, for the working of an evil it did not know? For before the world it was charged with a disorder that is unclear to us and does not appear, but it learned to work evils that are plain and visible. So the incantation woke the beast up, and did not at all put it to sleep, as he says.

And if he should say, “God did not wish the world to come into being,” we must ask: and who was it who wished it? Evil, which did not even know of it? And who is it who fashioned existing things out of both? Matter? Then its working is admirable. Or did God not wish it, but was compelled? Then he was subjected rather than subjecting. And it is superfluous to wonder at that too: that the wisdom of the good was forced into harming the things that were to come into being. For the things that were not evils at all before the opposites came together, of which not even the name was current, blossomed after the world came into being. And how is it not absurd to say that God, wishing to stop matter’s disorder, which cannot be demonstrated to us, became a contributing cause of evils of disorder that can be demonstrated and are plain to men? For the disorder of which he condemned matter he has only been able to bring forward in words, not to show by deeds; but the evils that come from the mythical and impossible mixing of opposites the fool sees with his eyes and is not ashamed. So, wishing to show God not responsible for the injustice among men, he plainly confesses him most responsible, more than he was ever concerned to show him free of it.

Come, then, let us consider truthfully to whom the evils done by men belong. He will perhaps try to introduce a mixture, in the soul too, of what he supposes are opposites. But whether the soul in his view is of one kind, from the good, or compounded of the opposites, it will easily be shown that, on this impious hypothesis, evils come from the portion opposite to evil, that of the good. Now the soul is incorporeal and in no way admits composition in its substance, least of all of opposites. Those who have thought that it is composed of different parts did not introduce a substance that is various and at odds with itself; rather, they described its activities from what it does, being unable to give one simple and comprehensive account of it. For even if by the different qualities it admits it differs from itself at different times, yet in substance, being the work of God, it is unchangeable and not composed of different things, and it is as far from mixtures of opposites as it is from seeming to be a body in itself. But let us grant, following his false account (if he should try to say this too), that the human soul is composed of good and evil. Must not its rational part, in his view, be ascribed to the good, and the irrational to evil? Plainly he could say nothing else. When, then, desire is moved to stumbling, whether from the body alone or also from the part of the soul belonging to evil, does the act come forth of itself? Do not consideration and deliberation come first in man, then judgement and choice of the act, and so desire is carried into deed? And the charge of wickedness arises from the act, not from the desire: if the thought of desire stays where it is and does not go on into deed by the choice of reason, it is, first, quickly snatched away, kindled and quenched at once, and then it would by no means be thought a charge, not only by the common standard but not even if judged by the height of virtue. It appears, then, that sins are reasonably ascribed to the rational part of the soul, and neither to the body nor to any other part of the soul; so that irrational evil is freed from the responsibility for the evils among us, since it does not even exist, and by his own account these evils run the risk of being produced from the portion of the good, unless we use another, truthful account. For if the soul went to the act irrationally without discerning the quality of the desire, one might insist that what is done unreasonably comes from the irrational part. But if reason itself often in one case chooses the desire, willingly yielding to a bad leading, and in another refuses it again, when some fear holds it back or the desire for virtue draws it the other way, plainly reason alone is the one who owns what is done well and what is done otherwise; and here the inquiry goes in the opposite direction to what the madman wrongly tries to prove. For it seems that no sin in our affairs belongs to matter, but to the soul (or to its rational part), which in his view belongs to the portion of the good.

Besides this, if it were the case that in those who practise self-control the disposition toward desire were unmoved, one might free reason from the charges among the licentious, as though desire, which he would say belongs to the portion of evil, carried off the whole of what is done. But if one finds the practice of self-control above all in those who lay claim to it in this way, that by reason they check the desires of nature, it is clearly shown that reason is the one that does wrong and does right, the one that knows both virtue and vice.

Why the desire for sins is implanted in us we shall say in due time, showing that this above all contributes to the admiration of the Creator. But if what is now sought, that our wrongdoings are in no way the work of any matter or evil but on the contrary of reason alone, has not been sufficiently shown, the point can also be established another way. Would he say that anything else is evil but murder, sexual immorality and adultery, theft and lying? Plainly these will be evil above all. What then? If a judge puts the wrongdoer to death, would that be thought murder? Yet the deed of one who kills by violence and of one who puts to death by law is the same; it is the purpose that distinguishes what is done. And again, the act of intercourse with one’s own wife and with another man’s is the same for the man, but reason, by its purpose, separates things done in like manner. Further, if one steals from a madman the tools or poisons he has ready for a plot, how would the deed not seem the same as the theft that is condemned? Yet to reason it is not the same, but wholly different. Besides, if a man who has gone mad demands back a sword that he deposited while sane, so that the one who received it must lie and say he did not receive it, in what would the lie differ in words from real dishonesty, unless it were distinguished by the purpose of what is asserted? It is plain from this, then, that it is not the act that is mostly judged in itself, but the intention and reasoning of the one who undertakes it. The same principle can be found in blameless deeds too. For if someone gives money or food to the poor man not out of love for him but hunting for praise from those who see, is it not plain that the deed is most beautiful and humane, but the purpose very base and blameworthy? And if someone prays long and fasts often, displaying to men both piety and endurance, it is evident that he would not rightly be praised for the deed but blamed for the mind behind what he does. And again, if another man is self-controlled and abstains from most desires, not from longing for virtue but to spare his money, is it not evident that such a man masters some passions by another passion, pursuing in his purpose this very apparent endurance instead of vice? If, then, things thought evil often appear good, or not evil, by the intention of the one who does them, and on the contrary things taken for better are shown to be evil by the choice and purpose of the one who undertakes them, who could still object that in truth it is not mostly the acts that are judged, but the mind behind what is done that is put to the test?