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If Plato in the Phaedrus, or another from this chorus, had promised us these joys—that is, the way of escaping death—and had been able to furnish it and to bring the promises to fulfillment, it would have been fitting for us to take up the worship of Him from whom we should expect so great a gift and boon. Now, since Christ has not only promised it but has also shown by such great powers that it can be accomplished, what strange thing do we do, or by what reasonings do we sustain the charge of folly, if we bow ourselves before His name and majesty, from whom we hope for both—to escape a torturous death and to be endowed with the eternity of life? 'But if souls,' they say, 'are mortal and of a middle quality, how can they become immortal from a middle quality?'
If we should say that we do not know this, and have only believed what we heard from One more powerful, where will our credulity seem to have gone astray, if we have believed the almighty King that nothing is difficult, nothing hard, that what is impossible for us to do is possible for Him and ready at the nod of His command? For is there anything that can stand in the way of His will, or, when He has willed a thing to be, does it not necessarily follow that it comes to pass? Or shall we, forsooth, gather from our own divisions what can or cannot be done, and not consider that our reasonings are as mortal as we ourselves are, and of no name before the Sovereign?
And yet, O you who do not believe that souls are of a middle quality and contained within the middle boundary of life and destruction—are not all whatsoever whom opinion supposes to exist, gods, angels, demons, or by whatever other name they are called, are not they themselves also of a middle quality and wavering in the condition of an uncertain lot? For if we all concede that there is one Father of things, alone immortal and unbegotten, and that nothing at all is found before Him that was of any name, it follows that all these whom opinion has believed to be gods of mortals were either begotten by Him or brought forth at His bidding. If they have been brought forth and begotten, they are also of a later order and time;
if of a later order and time, they must of necessity have a beginning and the commencements of birth and life: but that which has an entrance and the beginning of a commencing life necessarily follows that it must have also an end. 'But the gods are said to be immortal.' Not, then, by nature, but by the will and gift of God the Father. In what way, therefore, did He bestow the gift of immortality upon gods brought forth on a fixed day, and will He in this way deign to endow souls with immortality, although cruel death may seem able to extinguish them and, reduced to nothing, to blot them out with an irreversible abolition?
That divine Plato, thinking many things worthy of God and not common to the multitude, in that discourse and book which is entitled the Timaeus, says that the gods and the world are of a corruptible nature and not at all exempt from dissolution, but are held in perpetual bond by the will of God the King and Sovereign. For that which has been rightly bound and tied with the most perfect knots is preserved by the goodness of God; nor can it be dissolved by any other than by Him who bound it, if the matter should require it, and be granted the gift of a saving command.
Therefore, if the matter is so, and it is not fitting either to think or to believe otherwise, why do you marvel that souls are said by us to be of a middle quality, when Plato says that the deities themselves are of middle natures, but that a continuous and unsetting life is granted them by the sovereign benevolence?
For if perchance you do not know, and it was before unknown to you because of the novelty of the matter, learn it now, late though it be, and be taught by Him who knows and brought it forth into the open—by Christ—that souls are not the daughters of the Most High King, nor did they begin, as is said, to know themselves as begotten by Him and to be proclaimed in the essence of His name, but that some other one is their begetter, separated from the Emperor by very many grades of dignity and power, yet noble from His court and by the sublimity of a birth among the eminent.
But if, as report has it, souls were the offspring of the Lord and the generation of the sovereign power, nothing would have been lacking to them for perfection, being begotten by the most perfect virtue; they would all have had one understanding and one consent, they would always inhabit the royal court, nor, forsaking the seats of blessedness in which they knew and retained the most august doctrines, would they imprudently seek out these earthly regions, that, wrapped in dark bodies, they might dwell amid phlegm and blood, amid these bladders of dung and the most obscene vessels of the paunch. 'But it was fitting that these parts too should be inhabited, and therefore God the omnipotent sent souls hither as into certain colonies.'
And what profit are men to the world, or for the sake of what necessity of things are they needful, so that they should be believed not to have been placed in this part in vain and to be tenants of an earthly body? Do they contribute some portion to the completing of the integrity of this mass, and unless they had been added, is this sum of the universe imperfect and lame? What then, if there were no men, will the world cease from its offices, will the stars not accomplish their courses, will there be no summers and winters, will the blasts of the winds be silenced, and will the rains not fall to the earth from gathered and hanging clouds, to bring tempering to the dry places?
Nay, it is necessary that all things go through their courses and do not depart from the continuation of their appointed order, even though no name of man be heard in the world, and this globe of the earth grow silent in the silence of empty solitude. How, then, is it asserted that an inhabitant ought to have been added to these regions, when it is clear that nothing comes back from man to the perfection of the world, and that all his pursuits ever look to private convenience and do not depart from the limits of his own advantage? For what does it profit the world—to begin with serious things—that there are here the greatest kings? What tyrants, what lords, what innumerable other and most ample powers?
What most experienced generals of military affairs, skilled in taking cities, soldiers immovable and most invincible in cavalry battles or in infantry combat? What orators, grammarians, poets? What writers, dialecticians, musicians? What pantomimes, what little mimes, actors, singers who blow upon the trumpet, the pipes, and the reed? What runners, what boxers, charioteers, trick-riders, stilt-walkers, tightrope-walkers, jugglers? What pitch-makers, salt-workers, fishmongers, perfumers, goldsmiths, fowlers, weavers of winnowing-baskets and rush-baskets? What fullers, wool-workers, embroiderers, cooks, confectioners, muleteers, pimps, butchers, harlots?
What other kinds of peddlers, what professors and craftsmen—to enumerate whom a whole lifetime is too narrow—do they contribute to the reckonings and constitutions of the world, so that it should be believed that it could not have been founded without men, nor would obtain its own integrity unless the striving of a wretched and superfluous animal were joined to it? Unless perhaps the King of the world—He whom it is a matter of the greatest rashness to bring forth out of a human mouth—
therefore sent souls begotten of Himself hither, so that they who had been goddesses with Him, free from bodily touch and from temporal circumscription, should be plunged into human seed, should leap forth from the genitals of women, should utter and continue most inept wailings, should suck the teats as they nurse, should smear and wet themselves with their own filth, and then be brought to silence by the movements and rattles of a frightened nurse, once heard.
Did He therefore send souls, so that they who had been simple and but lately innocent in their goodness should learn among men to pretend, to dissemble, to lie, to deceive, to cheat, to entrap by flattering humility, to revolve one thing in the mind and promise another on the face, to ensnare, to deceive the unwary by wiles and treacheries, through countless arts of malice to seek out poisons and be fashioned to the use of the moment by a nimbleness of guile?
Did He therefore send souls, so that they who were living in peaceful and placid tranquillity should take from bodies causes by which they became wild and savage, should carry on enmities and hostilities, should wage wars among themselves, should storm and overthrow cities, should oppress others with slavery and enslave them to the yoke, and at last become one the property of another, the condition of their birth changed? Did He therefore send souls, so that, made forgetful of truth and oblivious of what God is, they should supplicate lifeless images, should address wood, bronze, and stones as divine, as deities, should seek help from the blood of slain animals, should make no mention of Him, nay rather, out of these
some of them should even doubt that they themselves exist, or should utterly deny that anything at all exists? Did He therefore send souls, so that they who in their proper seats had been of one mind, equal in understanding and knowledge, after they had put on mortal forms, should differ in the divergences of opinions, should hold one thing just, another useful and right, should contend about things to be sought and shunned, should set up, some these, others those, as the ends of evils and goods, should have obscurity set against them as they desired to know the truth of things, and, as if bereft of the light of their eyes, should see nothing certain and be led through the doubtful paths of suspicions by error?
Did He therefore send souls, so that, whereas the other living creatures were nourished by things sprung up of their own accord and brought forth without any sowing, and sought for themselves neither the protections of houses nor the coverings of clothing, a wretched necessity should be added to these—that with the greatest expenses and perpetual sweat they should build houses for themselves, fashion coverings for their limbs, gather various furniture for the poverty of their daily needs, borrow aids for their weakness from dumb animals, do violence to the lands so that these should not suffice with their own grasses but should raise up the crops commanded, and, when they had poured out all their blood in subduing the soil, should lose the hope of their labor through blight, hail, and drought, and at last, by the force of hunger, should brood over human corpses and, sundered apart, be estranged from the forms of men by wasting emaciation?
so that they who, dwelling with Him, had never had any love of any possession, should here become most avaricious and should burn with an insatiable appetite of the breast for the passion of having—should dig out deep mountains and turn the unknown bowels of the earth into materials of another's name and use, should penetrate hidden nations at the peril of their life and, by transferring wares, ever hunt after dearness and cheapness, should ply greedy and most unjust usury and increase their sleeplessness by reckoning up thousands out of the blood of wretched men, should ever extend the boundaries of their possessions and, though they made whole provinces into a single estate, for a single tree, for a furrow, should wear away the forum with lawsuits, and should take up implacable enmities with friends and brothers?
Did He therefore send souls, so that they who once had been gentle and knew not to be stirred by feelings of ferocity should build for themselves shambles and amphitheaters, places of blood and public impiety, in one of which they might behold men devoured and torn apart by the mangling of beasts, and men slay others for the sake of no desert, but for the favor and pleasure of the spectators, and should reckon those very days on which so great a wickedness was committed among common rejoicings and hallow them with festal mirth; while in the other they might tear apart the entrails of wretched animals, some snatching these portions, others those, as is the way with dogs and vultures, should grind them with their teeth and give them to a most cruel belly, and amid manners so savage and horrid should bewail their lot—the souls whom the straits of poverty vindicated from such tables
should be counted as blessed and happy, though such cruel preparations polluted their mouths and faces. Did He therefore send souls, so that, forgetful of their divine weight and gravity, they should procure gems, little stones, and pearls at the cost of chastity, should twine these about their necks, pierce the lobes of their ears, diminish their foreheads with fillets, should seek out paints for bodies to be gazed upon, should shade their eyes with soot, and should not blush, even in the forms of men, to curl their hair with curling-irons, to smooth the skin of the body, to walk with bare knees, and, with every other adornment, both to lay aside the vigor of manhood and to be softened into the habit and dainties of women?
Was it for this that he sent souls—that some might infest the passages of the roads as highwaymen, others circumvent the unwary, forge false wills, brew poisoned potions, break into houses by night, solicit, kidnap, prevaricate and betray; that they might shake off the palate's loathing of dull flavors, that in cooking fatted fowl they might know how to retain the melting fat, that they might make twisted pastries and blood-puddings, forcemeats, confections, and Lucanian sausages, and take the meat prepared along with these, and preserved meats iced with seasoning?
Was it for this that he sent souls—things of a holy and most august name—that they should ply here the arts of concerted music and pipe-playing, that they should puff out their cheeks to blow flutes, lead off in obscene songs, and rhythmically stir up sounds by the clatter of the foot-clappers, by which another wanton crowd of souls should dissolve into disordered movements of their bodies, dance and sing, whirl in dancing circles, and finally, with buttocks and hips raised, undulate with a wriggling of the loins?
Was it for this that he sent souls—that among males they should become catamites, among females become prostitutes, sambuca-players and harpists, that they should prostitute their bodies for sale, publish their own cheapness to the people, ready in brothels, met with in the stews, refusing to endure nothing, and made ready for the defilement of a sacred mouth? What do you say, O offspring and first progeny of the deity? Did those wise souls, brought forth from the primal causes, know these kinds of vileness, of crime, and of wickedness, and were they ordered to depart and dwell in these regions and be clothed in the wrapping of a human body, in order to practice, to carry on, and to make widely common these evils?
And is there any mortal receiving the sense of any reason who would suppose that the world is set in order by these souls, and not rather that a seat and dwelling has been established in which every impiety might daily be perpetrated, all evil deeds be committed—ambushes, frauds, deceits, greed, robberies, violence, crime, recklessness, obscenity, baseness, disgrace, and all the other evils which men throughout the whole world produce with a mind bent on harm, and contrive one another's ruin? 'But they came,' you say, 'by their own will, not by the king's sending.' —And where was the almighty Father, where the authority of royal sublimity, to forbid them to depart and not permit them to slip headlong into pleasures?
For if he knew that they would become degenerate through their changes of place—and as the establisher of all causes he ought to have known—or that something would come to them from without which would make them forget their dignity and honor—may he pardon me a thousand times as I pray—then he and no other is the cause of all evils: since he allowed those whom he foresaw would not keep the condition of their integrity to have the free right of wandering; and thus it comes about that it makes no difference at all whether they came voluntarily or obeyed his command, since by not forbidding what ought to have been forbidden he made the crime his own by his inaction, and by dissembling his power of restraint he permitted it beforehand.
But far be this monstrousness of wicked opinion—that almighty God, the sower and founder and procreator of great and invisible things, should be believed to have begotten souls so unstable, of no gravity, weight, or constancy, prone to vices, inclined to every kind of sin, and, though he knew them to be such and of this sort, to have ordered them to go into bodies, so that, clothed in whose prisons, they might daily pass their lives under the storms and tempests of fortune,
and now do base things, now suffer obscene ones; that they should perish by shipwrecks, by collapses, by conflagrations of fires; that poverty should press some, beggary others; that some should suffer the mangling of wild beasts, others perish by the venom of little insects; that some should walk lame, others lose their sight, others sit with their joints bound fast, and finally be exposed to all the diseases which unhappy and pitiable mortality endures amid the rending of its various punishments; and then, forgetting that they are of one source, of one begetter and head, of one kinship,
should rend and break asunder the bonds of kinship, overturn their own cities, ravage lands like enemies, make slaves out of free men, outrage virgins and others' marriages, hate one another, envy the joys and good fortunes of others, and then finally curse one another all, carp at and tear one another with the biting of savage teeth.
But far be it—that we may say the same thing again and more often—far be so monstrous and wicked a conviction, that that God who is the salvation of all things, the head of all virtues and the pillar of kindness, and (that we may extol him with human praises) most wise, just, making all things perfect and preserving the measures of his own integrity—that he should have made anything lame and falling short of what is right, or been the cause of any misery or peril to anything, or should have ordained, commanded, and prescribed that those very acts by which human life is passed and made notorious flow from his own ordinance.
These things are beneath him and destroy the power of his greatness; and so far is it from being credible that he is the author of such things, that whoever conceives that man was begotten by him falls into the crime of sacrilegious impiety—man, an unhappy and wretched creature, who grieves that he exists, who detests and mourns his own condition, who understands himself to have been procreated for no other reason than that evils might not lack material through which to spread themselves, and that there might always be wretches on whose torments some hidden power and some cruelty hostile to humanity might feed. 'But if God,' you say, 'is not the parent and begetter of souls, by what author were they begotten, and by what means were they brought forth?'
—If you wish to hear things unvarnished and not drawn out with any ostentation of speech, we likewise confess that we are ignorant of this, that we do not know it, and we hold that the knowledge of so great a matter surpasses not only our own weakness and frailty, but also that of all the powers which are in the world and which have usurped, in the opinions of mortals, the claim to be deities. But if we deny that they are God's, must we show whose they are? By no means does that necessarily follow. For if we deny that flies, beetles, and bugs, dormice, weevils, and moths are the work of the omnipotent King, it does not consequently follow that we must be required to say who made and established them:
for we can, without any blame, be ignorant of who gave origin to them too, and yet maintain that things so superfluous, so vain, so pertaining to no purpose—indeed, sometimes even harmful and bringing injuries to necessary things—were not brought forth by God from on high. So likewise here too, when we refuse to admit that souls are the offspring of God the sovereign, it does not immediately follow that we must explain by what parent they were produced and by what causes procreated. For what forbids us either to be ignorant of whence they were born and came forth, or to know that they are not the progeny of God? 'By what reasoning,' you say, 'by what way?'
—Because it is truest of all that is true and most certain of all that is certain, that nothing among things is done, made, or established by the Sovereign, as has often been said, except what ought and is fitting to be done—except what is full and whole and finished in the perfection of its own nature and integrity. But furthermore we observe that men—that is, souls themselves (for what are men but souls bound to bodies?)—by the innumerable perversity of their vices show themselves to be not of patrician stock, but procreated from middling families.
For we see some men savage, criminal, bold, rash, headlong, blind, false, dissemblers, liars, proud, arrogant, greedy, covetous, lustful, inconstant, weak, and unable to keep even their own resolutions: which surely they would not be, if a sovereign nobility claimed them and they drew the distinctions of their birth from the head of all things. 'But there are also good men,' you will say, 'in human affairs—wise, just, of blameless and most correct character.' —We raise no question whether there ever were any such in whom that very integrity of which we speak would find nothing at all lacking.
Granted they may be most honorable and have been praiseworthy, may have held the highest summit of perfection, and their life never limped in any lapse: yet we demand to hear how many they are or were in number, so that from the magnitude of the multitude we may measure whether a just comparison has been made and whether it is balanced by an equal compensation. One, two, three, four, ten, twenty, a hundred—certainly limited in number and perhaps bounded by the compass of their names. But the human race ought to be estimated and weighed not from a few good men but from all the rest. For the part is in the whole, not the whole in the part, and the totality ought to draw the portions to itself, not the totality be applied to the portions.
For what if you should say that a man crippled in all his limbs and howling from harsh torments is healthy, because he suffers no pain in a single little nail; or that a plot of earth is golden, because in the little wart of one hillock there are tiny specks from which, when melted, gold is produced and gathered with more careful collecting? The totality of the element proves the quality of the material, not the blowaway bits of dust; nor is the sea straightway sweet if you add and mix in some drops of milder water in any number: for that tiny amount is consumed by the immensity; and it is to be reckoned not only of small but of no account, which, diffused through the whole, perishes and is swallowed up in the vastness of a great body.
You keep asserting that there are good men in the human race—men whom perhaps the comparison of the worst may cause to be believed good. Who are these? Tell us. Philosophers, I suppose, who claim to be the only most wise, and by the force of this name have raised their eyebrows: namely, those who daily fight with their own desires and strive with the stubborn struggle of the virtues to drive out and expel the passions implanted in their souls, who, that they may not be provoked into vices by the instigation of some faculty, flee patrimonies and riches and take away from themselves the occasions of falling: which, when they do it and take care to do it, they show most plainly that souls are unstable and, by their weakness, prone to vices.
But in our view, what is good by nature demands neither to be amended nor corrected—rather, it ought not even to know what evil is, if the form of each kind thinks to persist in its own integrity: for a contrary cannot be implanted in its contrary, nor equality in inequality, nor sweetness be contained in bitterness. Whoever, then, struggles to correct the inborn depravities of souls, shows most plainly that he is imperfect and reprovable, however much he strives with every effort and persistence. But our answer is a matter of laughter to you, because, when we deny that souls are royal offspring, we do not state in return from what causes and origins they were procreated.
—For what kind of crime is it, either to be ignorant of some thing, or to profess without any dissembling that you do not know what you do not know? Or which seems to you more worthy of mockery: he who assumes to himself no knowledge of some obscure matter, or he who thinks that he knows plainly of himself that which surpasses human comprehension and is wrapped in blind obscurities? If the nature of each thing be thoroughly examined, you too are in a like case to that which you reproach in us. For because you say that souls descend from the King himself and pass into human forms, you do not say anything ascertained and set in the light of most manifest truth. For you conjecture, you do not know; you suspect, you do not hold as certain:
for if to know is to hold in the mind that which you yourself have seen or come to know, you can say that you have never at any time seen any of the things you assert—that is, that souls descend from the seat and region on high. Therefore you use suspicion, not the assurance of express knowledge. But what is suspicion, but an uncertain opinion of things and a casting of the mind hurled forth upon nothing definite? Therefore he who suspects does not hold certainty, nor does he walk set in the light of knowledge. And if this is true and fixed, then before upright and most wise judges that suspicion of yours, in which you trust, is to be reckoned as ignorance.
And yet, lest you think that it is permitted only to you to use conjectures and suspicions, we too can use the same, since what you ask is common to us both to set forth. 'Whence,' you say, 'come men, and what or whence are the souls of men themselves?' —Whence come elephants, bulls, stags, mules, asses? whence lions, horses, dogs, wolves, panthers, and what or whence are the souls of the things that live? For the matter does not bear credence, that souls should have come from that Platonic bowl which Timaeus fashions and mixes—
—or that the souls of these creatures should have come thence, or that the locust, mouse, shrew, cockroach, frog, and centipede should be believed to be animated and to live from it: indeed the cause and origin of their being born is from the elements themselves, if hidden and most obscure principles lie within for begetting the animals which live in each of these elements. For we also see some of the wise say that the earth is the mother of men, others that it is water, others join to these the airy breath, and some say that the sun is the maker of these, and that beings animated from its fires are moved by its vital agitation. What then? if these too are not the cause, and there is some other thing, another cause, another principle, another power in fine of a name unheard and unknown to us, which has fashioned the human race and applied it to the constitutions of things?