Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
Does Europe from the Libyan coast divide?
The same appears on the Spanish and British coasts. Must we conclude
that some Deity appoints and directs these ebbings and flowings to
certain fixed times? Consider, I pray, if everything which is regular
in its motion is deemed divine, whether it will not follow that tertian
and quartan agues must likewise be so, as their returns have the
greatest regularity. These effects are to be explained by reason; but,
because you are unable to assign any, you have recourse to a Deity as
your last refuge.
The arguments of Chrysippus appeared to you of great weight; a man
undoubtedly of great quickness and subtlety (I call those quick who
have a sprightly turn of thought, and those subtle whose minds are
seasoned by use as their hands are by labor): "If," says he, "there is
anything which is beyond the power of man to produce, the being who
produces it is better than man. Man is unable to make what is in the
world; the being, therefore, that could do it is superior to man. What
being is there but a God superior to man? Therefore there is a God."
These arguments are founded on the same erroneous principles as Zeno's,
for he does not define what is meant by being better or more excellent,
or distinguish between an intelligent cause and a natural cause.
Chrysippus adds, "If there are no Gods, there is nothing better than
man; but we cannot, without the highest arrogance, have this idea of
ourselves." Let us grant that it is arrogance in man to think himself
better than the world; but to comprehend that he has understanding and
reason, and that in Orion and Canicula there is neither, is no
arrogance, but an indication of good sense. "Since we suppose,"
continues he, "when we see a beautiful house, that it was built for the
master, and not for mice, we should likewise judge that the world is
the mansion of the Gods." Yes, if I believed that the Gods built the
world; but not if, as I believe, and intend to prove, it is the work of
nature.
XI. Socrates, in Xenophon, asks, "Whence had man his understanding, if
there was none in the world?" And I ask, Whence had we speech, harmony,
singing; unless we think it is the sun conversing with the moon when
she approaches near it, or that the world forms an harmonious concert,
as Pythagoras imagines? This, Balbus, is the effect of nature; not of
that nature which proceeds artificially, as Zeno says, and the
character of which I shall presently examine into, but a nature which,
by its own proper motions and mutations, modifies everything.
For I readily agree to what you said about the harmony and general
agreement of nature, which you pronounced to be firmly bound and united
together, as it were, by ties of blood; but I do not approve of what
you added, that "it could not possibly be so, unless it were so united
by one divine spirit." On the contrary, the whole subsists by the power
of nature, independently of the Gods, and there is a kind of sympathy
(as the Greeks call it) which joins together all the parts of the
universe; and the greater that is in its own power, the less is it
necessary to have recourse to a divine intelligence.
XII. But how will you get rid of the objections which Carneades made?
"If," says he, "there is no body immortal, there is none eternal; but
there is no body immortal, nor even indivisible, or that cannot be
separated and disunited; and as every animal is in its nature passive,
so there is not one which is not subject to the impressions of
extraneous bodies; none, that is to say, which can avoid the necessity
of enduring and suffering: and if every animal is mortal, there is none
immortal; so, likewise, if every animal may be cut up and divided,
there is none indivisible, none eternal, but all are liable to be
affected by, and compelled to submit to, external power. Every animal,
therefore, is necessarily mortal, dissoluble, and divisible."
For as there is no wax, no silver, no brass which cannot be converted
into something else, whatever is composed of wax, or silver, or brass
may cease to be what it is. By the same reason, if all the elements are
mutable, every body is mutable.
Now, according to your doctrine, all the elements are mutable; all
bodies, therefore, are mutable. But if there were any body immortal,
then all bodies would not be mutable. Every body, then, is mortal; for
every body is either water, air, fire, or earth, or composed of the
four elements together, or of some of them. Now, there is not one of
all these elements that does not perish; for earthly bodies are
fragile: water is so soft that the least shock will separate its parts,
and fire and air yield to the least impulse, and are subject to
dissolution; besides, any of these elements perish when converted into
another nature, as when water is formed from earth, the air from water,
and the sky from air, and when they change in the same manner back
again. Therefore, if there is nothing but what is perishable in the
composition of all animals, there is no animal eternal.
XIII. But, not to insist on these arguments, there is no animal to be
found that had not a beginning, and will not have an end; for every
animal being sensitive, they are consequently all sensible of cold and
heat, sweet and bitter; nor can they have pleasing sensations without
being subject to the contrary. As, therefore, they receive pleasure,
they likewise receive pain; and whatever being is subject to pain must
necessarily be subject to death. It must be allowed, therefore, that
every animal is mortal.
Besides, a being that is not sensible of pleasure or pain cannot have
the essence of an animal; if, then, on the one hand, every animal must
be sensible of pleasure and pain, and if, on the other, every being
that has these sensations cannot be immortal, we may conclude that as
there is no animal insensible, there is none immortal. Besides, there
is no animal without inclination and aversion--an inclination to that
which is agreeable to nature, and an aversion to the contrary: there
are in the case of every animal some things which they covet, and
others they reject. What they reject are repugnant to their nature, and
consequently would destroy them. Every animal, therefore, is inevitably
subject to be destroyed. There are innumerable arguments to prove that
whatever is sensitive is perishable; for cold, heat, pleasure, pain,
and all that affects the sense, when they become excessive, cause
destruction. Since, then, there is no animal that is not sensitive,
there is none immortal.
XIV. The substance of an animal is either simple or compound; simple,
if it is composed only of earth, of fire, of air, or of water (and of
such a sort of being we can form no idea); compound, if it is formed of
different elements, which have each their proper situation, and have a
natural tendency to it--this element tending towards the highest parts,
that towards the lowest, and another towards the middle. This
conjunction may for some time subsist, but not forever; for every
element must return to its first situation. No animal, therefore, is
eternal.
But your school, Balbus, allows fire only to be the sole active
principle; an opinion which I believe you derive from Heraclitus, whom
some men understand in one sense, some in another: but since he seems
unwilling to be understood, we will pass him by. You Stoics, then, say
that fire is the universal principle of all things; that all living
bodies cease to live on the extinction of that heat; and that
throughout all nature whatever is sensible of that heat lives and
flourishes. Now, I cannot conceive that bodies should perish for want
of heat, rather than for want of moisture or air, especially as they
even die through excess of heat; so that the life of animals does not
depend more on fire than on the other elements.
However, air and water have this quality in common with fire and heat.
But let us see to what this tends. If I am not mistaken, you believe
that in all nature there is nothing but fire, which is self-animated.
Why fire rather than air, of which the life of animals consists, and
which is called from thence _anima_,[248] the soul? But how is it that
you take it for granted that life is nothing but fire? It seems more
probable that it is a compound of fire and air. But if fire is
self-animated, unmixed with any other element, it must be sensitive,
because it renders our bodies sensitive; and the same objection which I
just now made will arise, that whatever is sensitive must necessarily
be susceptible of pleasure and pain, and whatever is sensible of pain
is likewise subject to the approach of death; therefore you cannot
prove fire to be eternal.
You Stoics hold that all fire has need of nourishment, without which it
cannot possibly subsist; that the sun, moon, and all the stars are fed
either with fresh or salt waters; and the reason that Cleanthes gives
why the sun is retrograde, and does not go beyond the tropics in the
summer or winter, is that he may not be too far from his sustenance.
This I shall fully examine hereafter; but at present we may conclude
that whatever may cease to be cannot of its own nature be eternal; that
if fire wants sustenance, it will cease to be, and that, therefore,
fire is not of its own nature eternal.
XV. After all, what kind of a Deity must that be who is not graced with
one single virtue, if we should succeed in forming this idea of such a
one? Must we not attribute prudence to a Deity? a virtue which consists
in the knowledge of things good, bad, and indifferent. Yet what need
has a being for the discernment of good and ill who neither has nor can
have any ill? Of what use is reason to him? of what use is
understanding? We men, indeed, find them useful to aid us in finding
out things which are obscure by those which are clear to us; but
nothing can be obscure to a Deity. As to justice, which gives to every
one his own, it is not the concern of the Gods; since that virtue,
according to your doctrine, received its birth from men and from civil
society. Temperance consists in abstinence from corporeal pleasures,
and if such abstinence hath a place in heaven, so also must the
pleasures abstained from. Lastly, if fortitude is ascribed to the
Deity, how does it appear? In afflictions, in labor, in danger? None of
these things can affect a God. How, then, can we conceive this to be a
Deity that makes no use of reason, and is not endowed with any virtue?
However, when I consider what is advanced by the Stoics, my contempt
for the ignorant multitude vanishes. For these are their divinities.
The Syrians worshipped a fish. The Egyptians consecrated beasts of
almost every kind. The Greeks deified many men; as Alabandus[249] at
Alabandae, Tenes at Tenedos; and all Greece pay divine honors to
Leucothea (who was before called Ino), to her son Palaemon, to Hercules,
to AEsculapius, and to the Tyndaridae; our own people to Romulus, and to
many others, who, as citizens newly admitted into the ancient body,
they imagine have been received into heaven.
These are the Gods of the illiterate.
XVI. What are the notions of you philosophers? In what respect are they
superior to these ideas? I shall pass them over; for they are certainly
very admirable. Let the world, then, be a Deity, for that, I conceive,
is what you mean by
The refulgent heaven above,
Which all men call, unanimously, Jove.
But why are we to add many more Gods? What a multitude of them there
is! At least, it seems so to me; for every constellation, according to
you, is a Deity: to some you give the name of beasts, as the goat, the
scorpion, the bull, the lion; to others the names of inanimate things,
as the ship, the altar, the crown.