Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
to-morrow," either one or the other must necessarily be admitted;
therefore he absolutely denied the necessity of yes or no. Can anything
show stupidity in a greater degree? Zeno,[89] being pressed by
Arcesilas, who pronounced all things to be false which are perceived by
the senses, said that some things were false, but not all. Epicurus was
afraid that if any one thing seen should be false, nothing could be
true; and therefore he asserted all the senses to be infallible
directors of truth. Nothing can be more rash than this; for by
endeavoring to repel a light stroke, he receives a heavy blow. On the
subject of the nature of the Gods, he falls into the same errors. While
he would avoid the concretion of individual bodies, lest death and
dissolution should be the consequence, he denies that the Gods have
body, but says they have something like body; and says they have no
blood, but something like blood.
XXVI. It seems an unaccountable thing how one soothsayer can refrain
from laughing when he sees another. It is yet a greater wonder that you
can refrain from laughing among yourselves. It is no body, but
something like body! I could understand this if it were applied to
statues made of wax or clay; but in regard to the Deity, I am not able
to discover what is meant by a quasi-body or quasi-blood. Nor indeed
are you, Velleius, though you will not confess so much. For those
precepts are delivered to you as dictates which Epicurus carelessly
blundered out; for he boasted, as we see in his writings, that he had
no instructor, which I could easily believe without his public
declaration of it, for the same reason that I could believe the master
of a very bad edifice if he were to boast that he had no architect but
himself: for there is nothing of the Academy, nothing of the Lyceum, in
his doctrine; nothing but puerilities. He might have been a pupil of
Xenocrates. O ye immortal Gods, what a teacher was he! And there are
those who believe that he actually was his pupil; but he says
otherwise, and I shall give more credit to his word than to another's.
He confesses that he was a pupil of a certain disciple of Plato, one
Pamphilus, at Samos; for he lived there when he was young, with his
father and his brothers. His father, Neocles, was a farmer in those
parts; but as the farm, I suppose, was not sufficient to maintain him,
he turned school-master; yet Epicurus treats this Platonic philosopher
with wonderful contempt, so fearful was he that it should be thought he
had ever had any instruction. But it is well known he had been a pupil
of Nausiphanes, the follower of Democritus; and since he could not deny
it, he loaded him with insults in abundance. If he never heard a
lecture on these Democritean principles, what lectures did he ever
hear? What is there in Epicurus's physics that is not taken from
Democritus? For though he altered some things, as what I mentioned
before of the oblique motions of the atoms, yet most of his doctrines
are the same; his atoms--his vacuum--his images--infinity of
space--innumerable worlds, their rise and decay--and almost every part
of natural learning that he treats of.
Now, do you understand what is meant by quasi-body and quasi-blood? For
I not only acknowledge that you are a better judge of it than I am, but
I can bear it without envy. If any sentiments, indeed, are communicated
without obscurity, what is there that Velleius can understand and Cotta
not? I know what body is, and what blood is; but I cannot possibly find
out the meaning of quasi-body and quasi-blood. Not that you
intentionally conceal your principles from me, as Pythagoras did his
from those who were not his disciples; or that you are intentionally
obscure, like Heraclitus. But the truth is (which I may venture to say
in this company), you do not understand them yourself.
XXVII. This, I perceive, is what you contend for, that the Gods have a
certain figure that has nothing concrete, nothing solid, nothing of
express substance, nothing prominent in it; but that it is pure,
smooth, and transparent. Let us suppose the same with the Venus of Cos,
which is not a body, but the representation of a body; nor is the red,
which is drawn there and mixed with the white, real blood, but a
certain resemblance of blood; so in Epicurus's Deity there is no real
substance, but the resemblance of substance.
Let me take for granted that which is perfectly unintelligible; then
tell me what are the lineaments and figures of these sketched-out
Deities. Here you have plenty of arguments by which you would show the
Gods to be in human form. The first is, that our minds are so
anticipated and prepossessed, that whenever we think of a Deity the
human shape occurs to us. The next is, that as the divine nature excels
all things, so it ought to be of the most beautiful form, and there is
no form more beautiful than the human; and the third is, that reason
cannot reside in any other shape.
First, let us consider each argument separately. You seem to me to
assume a principle, despotically I may say, that has no manner of
probability in it. Who was ever so blind, in contemplating these
subjects, as not to see that the Gods were represented in human form,
either by the particular advice of wise men, who thought by those means
the more easily to turn the minds of the ignorant from a depravity of
manners to the worship of the Gods; or through superstition, which was
the cause of their believing that when they were paying adoration to
these images they were approaching the Gods themselves. These conceits
were not a little improved by the poets, painters, and artificers; for
it would not have been very easy to represent the Gods planning and
executing any work in another form, and perhaps this opinion arose from
the idea which mankind have of their own beauty. But do not you, who
are so great an adept in physics, see what a soothing flatterer, what a
sort of procuress, nature is to herself? Do you think there is any
creature on the land or in the sea that is not highly delighted with
its own form? If it were not so, why would not a bull become enamored
of a mare, or a horse of a cow? Do you believe an eagle, a lion, or a
dolphin prefers any shape to its own? If nature, therefore, has
instructed us in the same manner, that nothing is more beautiful than
man, what wonder is it that we, for that reason, should imagine the
Gods are of the human form? Do you suppose if beasts were endowed with
reason that every one would not give the prize of beauty to his own
species?
XXVIII. Yet, by Hercules (I speak as I think)! though I am fond enough
of myself, I dare not say that I excel in beauty that bull which
carried Europa. For the question here is not concerning our genius and
elocution, but our species and figure. If we could make and assume to
ourselves any form, would you be unwilling to resemble the sea-triton
as he is painted supported swimming on sea-monsters whose bodies are
partly human? Here I touch on a difficult point; for so great is the
force of nature that there is no man who would not choose to be like a
man, nor, indeed, any ant that would not be like an ant. But like what
man? For how few can pretend to beauty! When I was at Athens, the whole
flock of youths afforded scarcely one. You laugh, I see; but what I
tell you is the truth. Nay, to us who, after the examples of ancient
philosophers, delight in boys, defects are often pleasing. Alcaeus was
charmed with a wart on a boy's knuckle; but a wart is a blemish on the
body; yet it seemed a beauty to him. Q. Catulus, my friend and
colleague's father, was enamored with your fellow-citizen Roscius, on
whom he wrote these verses:
As once I stood to hail the rising day,
Roscius appearing on the left I spied:
Forgive me, Gods, if I presume to say
The mortal's beauty with th' immortal vied.
Roscius more beautiful than a God! yet he was then, as he now is,
squint-eyed. But what signifies that, if his defects were beauties to
Catulus?
XXIX. I return to the Gods. Can we suppose any of them to be
squint-eyed, or even to have a cast in the eye? Have they any warts?
Are any of them hook-nosed, flap-eared, beetle-browed, or jolt-headed,
as some of us are? Or are they free from imperfections? Let us grant
you that. Are they all alike in the face? For if they are many, then
one must necessarily be more beautiful than another, and then there
must be some Deity not absolutely most beautiful. Or if their faces are
all alike, there would be an Academy[90] in heaven; for if one God does
not differ from another, there is no possibility of knowing or
distinguishing them.
What if your assertion, Velleius, proves absolutely false, that no form
occurs to us, in our contemplations on the Deity, but the human? Will
you, notwithstanding that, persist in the defence of such an absurdity?
Supposing that form occurs to us, as you say it does, and we know
Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Vulcan, Apollo, and the other Deities,
by the countenance which painters and statuaries have given them, and
not only by their countenances, but by their decorations, their age,
and attire; yet the Egyptians, the Syrians, and almost all barbarous
nations,[91] are without such distinctions. You may see a greater
regard paid by them to certain beasts than by us to the most sacred
temples and images of the Gods; for many shrines have been rifled, and
images of the Deities have been carried from their most sacred places
by us; but we never heard that an Egyptian offered any violence to a
crocodile, an ibis, or a cat. What do you think, then? Do not the
Egyptians esteem their sacred bull, their Apis, as a Deity? Yes, by
Hercules! as certainly as you do our protectress Juno, whom you never
behold, even in your dreams, without a goat-skin, a spear, a shield,
and broad sandals. But the Grecian Juno of Argos and the Roman Juno are
not represented in this manner; so that the Grecians, the Lanuvinians,
and we, ascribe different forms to Juno; and our Capitoline Jupiter is
not the same with the Jupiter Ammon of the Africans.
XXX. Therefore, ought not a natural philosopher--that is, an inquirer
into the secrets of nature--to be ashamed of seeking a testimony to
truth from minds prepossessed by custom? According to the rule you have
laid down, it may be said that Jupiter is always bearded, Apollo always
beardless; that Minerva has gray and Neptune azure eyes; and, indeed,
we must then honor that Vulcan at Athens, made by Alcamenes, whose
lameness through his thin robes appears to be no deformity. Shall we,
therefore, receive a lame Deity because we have such an account of him?
Consider, likewise, that the Gods go by what names we give them. Now,
in the first place, they have as many names as men have languages; for
Vulcan is not called Vulcan in Italy, Africa, or Spain, as you are
called Velleius in all countries. Besides, the Gods are innumerable,
though the list of their names is of no great length even in the
records of our priests. Have they no names? You must necessarily
confess, indeed, they have none; for what occasion is there for
different names if their persons are alike?
How much more laudable would it be, Velleius, to acknowledge that you
do not know what you do not know than to follow a man whom you must
despise! Do you think the Deity is like either me or you? You do not
really think he is like either of us. What is to be done, then? Shall I
call the sun, the moon, or the sky a Deity? If so, they are
consequently happy. But what pleasures can they enjoy? And they are
wise too. But how can wisdom reside in such shapes? These are your own
principles. Therefore, if they are not of human form, as I have proved,
and if you cannot persuade yourself that they are of any other, why are