Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
without it so long.
Or were these things made, as you almost assert, by God for the sake of
men? Was it for the wise? If so, then this great design was adopted for
the sake of a very small number. Or for the sake of fools? First of
all, there was no reason why God should consult the advantage of the
wicked; and, further, what could be his object in doing so, since all
fools are, without doubt, the most miserable of men, chiefly because
they are fools? For what can we pronounce more deplorable than folly?
Besides, there are many inconveniences in life which the wise can learn
to think lightly of by dwelling rather on the advantages which they
receive; but which fools are unable to avoid when they are coming, or
to bear when they are come.
X. They who affirm the world to be an animated and intelligent being
have by no means discovered the nature of the mind, nor are able to
conceive in what form that essence can exist; but of that I shall speak
more hereafter. At present I must express my surprise at the weakness
of those who endeavor to make it out to be not only animated and
immortal, but likewise happy, and round, because Plato says that is the
most beautiful form; whereas I think a cylinder, a square, a cone, or a
pyramid more beautiful. But what life do they attribute to that round
Deity? Truly it is a being whirled about with a celerity to which
nothing can be even conceived by the imagination as equal; nor can I
imagine how a settled mind and happy life can consist in such motion,
the least degree of which would be troublesome to us. Why, therefore,
should it not be considered troublesome also to the Deity? For the
earth itself, as it is part of the world, is part also of the Deity. We
see vast tracts of land barren and uninhabitable; some, because they
are scorched by the too near approach of the sun; others, because they
are bound up with frost and snow, through the great distance which the
sun is from them. Therefore, if the world is a Deity, as these are
parts of the world, some of the Deity's limbs must be said to be
scorched, and some frozen.
These are your doctrines, Lucilius; but what those of others are I will
endeavor to ascertain by tracing them back from the earliest of ancient
philosophers. Thales the Milesian, who first inquired after such
subjects, asserted water to be the origin of things, and that God was
that mind which formed all things from water. If the Gods can exist
without corporeal sense, and if there can be a mind without a body, why
did he annex a mind to water?
It was Anaximander's opinion that the Gods were born; that after a
great length of time they died; and that they are innumerable worlds.
But what conception can we possibly have of a Deity who is not eternal?
Anaximenes, after him, taught that the air is God, and that he was
generated, and that he is immense, infinite, and always in motion; as
if air, which has no form, could possibly be God; for the Deity must
necessarily be not only of some form or other, but of the most
beautiful form. Besides, is not everything that had a beginning subject
to mortality?
XI. Anaxagoras, who received his learning from Anaximenes, was the
first who affirmed the system and disposition of all things to be
contrived and perfected by the power and reason of an infinite mind; in
which infinity he did not perceive that there could be no conjunction
of sense and motion, nor any sense in the least degree, where nature
herself could feel no impulse. If he would have this mind to be a sort
of animal, then there must be some more internal principle from whence
that animal should receive its appellation. But what can be more
internal than the mind? Let it, therefore, be clothed with an external
body. But this is not agreeable to his doctrine; but we are utterly
unable to conceive how a pure simple mind can exist without any
substance annexed to it.
Alcmaeon of Crotona, in attributing a divinity to the sun, the moon, and
the rest of the stars, and also to the mind, did not perceive that he
was ascribing immortality to mortal beings.
Pythagoras, who supposed the Deity to be one soul, mixing with and
pervading all nature, from which our souls are taken, did not consider
that the Deity himself must, in consequence of this doctrine, be maimed
and torn with the rending every human soul from it; nor that, when the
human mind is afflicted (as is the case in many instances), that part
of the Deity must likewise be afflicted, which cannot be. If the human
mind were a Deity, how could it be ignorant of any thing? Besides, how
could that Deity, if it is nothing but soul, be mixed with, or infused
into, the world?
Then Xenophanes, who said that everything in the world which had any
existence, with the addition of intellect, was God, is as liable to
exception as the rest, especially in relation to the infinity of it, in
which there can be nothing sentient, nothing composite.
Parmenides formed a conceit to himself of something circular like a
crown. (He names it Stephane.) It is an orb of constant light and heat
around the heavens; this he calls God; in which there is no room to
imagine any divine form or sense. And he uttered many other absurdities
on the same subject; for he ascribed a divinity to war, to discord, to
lust, and other passions of the same kind, which are destroyed by
disease, or sleep, or oblivion, or age. The same honor he gives to the
stars; but I shall forbear making any objections to his system here,
having already done it in another place.
XII. Empedocles, who erred in many things, is most grossly mistaken in
his notion of the Gods. He lays down four natures[84] as divine, from
which he thinks that all things were made. Yet it is evident that they
have a beginning, that they decay, and that they are void of all sense.
Protagoras did not seem to have any idea of the real nature of the
Gods; for he acknowledged that he was altogether ignorant whether there
are or are not any, or what they are.
What shall I say of Democritus, who classes our images of objects, and
their orbs, in the number of the Gods; as he does that principle
through which those images appear and have their influence? He deifies
likewise our knowledge and understanding. Is he not involved in a very
great error? And because nothing continues always in the same state, he
denies that anything is everlasting, does he not thereby entirely
destroy the Deity, and make it impossible to form any opinion of him?
Diogenes of Apollonia looks upon the air to be a Deity. But what sense
can the air have? or what divine form can be attributed to it?
It would be tedious to show the uncertainty of Plato's opinion; for, in
his Timaeus, he denies the propriety of asserting that there is one
great father or creator of the world; and, in his book of Laws, he
thinks we ought not to make too strict an inquiry into the nature of
the Deity. And as for his statement when he asserts that God is a being
without any body--what the Greeks call [Greek: asomatos]--it is
certainly quite unintelligible how that theory can possibly be true;
for such a God must then necessarily be destitute of sense, prudence,
and pleasure; all which things are comprehended in our notion of the
Gods. He likewise asserts in his Timaeus, and in his Laws, that the
world, the heavens, the stars, the mind, and those Gods which are
delivered down to us from our ancestors, constitute the Deity. These
opinions, taken separately, are apparently false; and, together, are
directly inconsistent with each other.
Xenophon has committed almost the same mistakes, but in fewer words. In
those sayings which he has related of Socrates, he introduces him
disputing the lawfulness of inquiring into the form of the Deity, and
makes him assert the sun and the mind to be Deities: he represents him
likewise as affirming the being of one God only, and at another time of
many; which are errors of almost the same kind which I before took
notice of in Plato.
XIII. Antisthenes, in his book called the Natural Philosopher, says
that there are many national and one natural Deity; but by this saying
he destroys the power and nature of the Gods. Speusippus is not much
less in the wrong; who, following his uncle Plato, says that a certain
incorporeal power governs everything; by which he endeavors to root out
of our minds the knowledge of the Gods.
Aristotle, in his third book of Philosophy, confounds many things
together, as the rest have done; but he does not differ from his master
Plato. At one time he attributes all divinity to the mind, at another
he asserts that the world is God. Soon afterward he makes some other
essence preside over the world, and gives it those faculties by which,
with certain revolutions, he may govern and preserve the motion of it.
Then he asserts the heat of the firmament to be God; not perceiving the
firmament to be part of the world, which in another place he had
described as God. How can that divine sense of the firmament be
preserved in so rapid a motion? And where do the multitude of Gods
dwell, if heaven itself is a Deity? But when this philosopher says that
God is without a body, he makes him an irrational and insensible being.
Besides, how can the world move itself, if it wants a body? Or how, if
it is in perpetual self-motion, can it be easy and happy?
Xenocrates, his fellow-pupil, does not appear much wiser on this head,
for in his books concerning the nature of the Gods no divine form is
described; but he says the number of them is eight. Five are moving
planets;[85] the sixth is contained in all the fixed stars; which,
dispersed, are so many several members, but, considered together, are
one single Deity; the seventh is the sun; and the eighth the moon. But
in what sense they can possibly be happy is not easy to be understood.
From the same school of Plato, Heraclides of Pontus stuffed his books
with puerile tales. Sometimes he thinks the world a Deity, at other
times the mind. He attributes divinity likewise to the wandering stars.
He deprives the Deity of sense, and makes his form mutable; and, in the
same book again, he makes earth and heaven Deities.
The unsteadiness of Theophrastus is equally intolerable. At one time he
attributes a divine prerogative to the mind; at another, to the
firmament; at another, to the stars and celestial constellations.
Nor is his disciple Strato, who is called the naturalist, any more
worthy to be regarded; for he thinks that the divine power is diffused
through nature, which is the cause of birth, increase, and diminution,
but that it has no sense nor form.
XIV. Zeno (to come to your sect, Balbus) thinks the law of nature to be
the divinity, and that it has the power to force us to what is right,
and to restrain us from what is wrong. How this law can be an animated
being I cannot conceive; but that God is so we would certainly
maintain. The same person says, in another place, that the sky is God;
but can we possibly conceive that God is a being insensible, deaf to
our prayers, our wishes, and our vows, and wholly unconnected with us?
In other books he thinks there is a certain rational essence pervading
all nature, indued with divine efficacy. He attributes the same power
to the stars, to the years, to the months, and to the seasons. In his
interpretation of Hesiod's Theogony,[86] he entirely destroys the
established notions of the Gods; for he excludes Jupiter, Juno, and
Vesta, and those esteemed divine, from the number of them; but his
doctrine is that these are names which by some kind of allusion are
given to mute and inanimate beings. The sentiments of his disciple
Aristo are not less erroneous. He thought it impossible to conceive the
form of the Deity, and asserts that the Gods are destitute of sense;