Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 24/87

and that whereby it is seen, and whereby it is judged whether it be beautiful or deformed, is assuredly better than that which is judged. This is the mind of man and the nature of the rational soul, which is certainly not a body, if indeed that likeness of a body—when in the mind of one thinking it is beheld and judged—is itself not a body. It is therefore neither earth nor water, neither air nor fire, of which four bodies, called the four elements, we see the corporeal world to be compacted. Further, if our soul is not a body, how is God, the creator of the soul, a body? Let these too, then, yield, as has been said, to the Platonists;

let those also yield who indeed were ashamed to say that God is a body, yet thought our souls to be of the same nature as His is; thus the so great mutability of the soul did not move them—a mutability which it is impious to attribute to the nature of God. But they say: "The nature of the soul is changed by the body, for in itself it is unchangeable." These men could likewise say: "The flesh is wounded by some body, for in itself it is unwoundable." Plainly, that which cannot be changed can be changed by nothing, and through this, that which can be changed by a body can be changed by something, and therefore cannot rightly be called unchangeable. CHAPTER VI. On the view of the Platonists in that part of philosophy which is called physics.

These philosophers, then—whom we see, not undeservedly, preferred to the rest in fame and glory—saw that no body is God, and therefore they transcended all bodies in seeking God. They saw that whatever is mutable is not the supreme God, and therefore they transcended every soul and all mutable spirits in seeking the supreme God. Then they saw that every form in any mutable thing, whereby it is whatever it is, in whatever manner and of whatever nature it is, cannot be except from Him who truly is, because He is unchangeably.

And by this, whether the body of the whole world—its figures, qualities, and ordered motion, and the elements disposed from heaven down to earth, and whatever bodies are in them—or every life, whether that which nourishes and sustains, such as is in trees, or that which both has this and feels, such as is in cattle, or that which has both these and understands, such as is in men, or that which does not need a nourishing support but only sustains, feels, understands, such as is in angels—can be only from Him who simply is; because to Him it is not one thing to be and another to live, as though He could be without living; nor to Him is it one thing to live and another to understand, as though He could live without understanding;

nor to Him is it one thing to understand and another to be blessed, as though He could understand without being blessed; but what to Him is to live, to understand, to be blessed, this to Him is to be. On account of this unchangeableness and simplicity, they understood that He made all these things, and that He Himself could be made by none. For they considered that whatever is, is either body or life, and that life is something better than body; and that the form of body is sensible, that of life intelligible. Accordingly they preferred the intelligible form to the sensible. We call sensible those things which can be perceived by the sight and touch of the body; intelligible, those which can be understood by the contemplation of the mind.

For there is no corporeal beauty, whether in the state of the body, such as is figure, or in motion, such as is melody, concerning which the mind does not judge. Which assuredly it could not do, unless there were in it this better form, without the bulk of mass, without the noise of voice, without the space of either place or time. But there too, unless it were mutable, one would not judge better than another concerning a sensible form; the more ingenious better than the slower, the more skilled better than the less skilled, the more practised better than the less practised; and the same one person, when he advances, judges better afterward than before. But that which admits of more and less is, without doubt, mutable.

Whence ingenious and learned men, practised in these matters, easily concluded that the first form is not in those things in which it is convicted of being mutable. Since, therefore, in their view both body and mind were more or less beautiful, and since, if they could lack all form, they would be nothing at all: they saw that there is something in which the first form is unchangeable, and therefore incomparable; and there they most rightly believed the principle of things to be, which had not been made and from which all things had been made. Thus that which is known of God He Himself manifested to them, when His invisible things were understood and beheld by them through the things that have been made: His everlasting power also and divinity; by whom all visible and temporal things also were created.

Let these things have been said concerning that part which they call physics, that is, natural. CHAPTER VII. How much more excellent than the rest the Platonists are to be held in logic, that is, rational philosophy. But as for that doctrine wherein the other part is occupied, which by them is called logic, that is, rational:

far be it that those should seem comparable to them who placed the judgment of truth in the senses of the body, and thought that all things which are learned must be measured by their unfaithful and deceptive rules—such as the Epicureans, and whatever others of that kind, and even the Stoics themselves, who, although they vehemently loved the cleverness of disputing, which they call dialectic, thought that it must be derived from the senses of the body; hence asserting that the mind conceives the notions—which they call ennoiai—namely, of those things which they explain by defining; and that from this is propagated and connected the whole method of learning and teaching.

Whereupon I am wont to marvel greatly that, since they say none are beautiful save the wise, with what senses of the body they beheld that beauty, with what sort of eyes of the flesh they descried the form and comeliness of wisdom. But these men, whom we deservedly set before the rest, distinguished those things which are beheld by the mind from those which are attained by the senses, neither taking away from the senses what they can do, nor giving to them beyond what they can. And they said that the light of minds for learning all things was that same God, by whom all things were made. CHAPTER VIII. That the Platonists hold the primacy in moral philosophy also.

There remains the moral part, which by a Greek word they call ethics, in which inquiry is made concerning the highest good, to which we refer everything we do, which we seek not for the sake of anything else but for its own sake, and which, once attained, we should seek nothing further beyond it in order to be blessed. For this reason indeed it is also called the end, because for its sake we will all other things, but it we will only for its own sake. This blessing-bestowing good, then, some have said belongs to man from the body, some from the soul, and some from both.

For they saw that man himself consists of soul and body, and therefore they believed that he could fare well from one or other of these two, or from both, by a certain final good, in which they would be blessed, to which they might refer all that they did, and beyond which—since it was the thing to which all else was referred—they would seek nothing further. Hence those who are said to have added a third class of goods, called external—such as honour, glory, money, and anything of this kind—did not add them as being final, that is, to be sought for their own sake, but for the sake of something else; this class of goods being good for the good and evil for the evil. Thus those who sought man's good either from the soul or from the body or from both, supposed that it was to be sought from nothing other than man himself;

but those who sought it from the body sought it from the inferior part of man; those who sought it from the soul, from the better part; and those who sought it from both, from the whole man. Whether, therefore, from any single part or from the whole, they sought it from nothing but man. Nor did these differences, because they are three, on that account make only three sects; rather they produced many disagreements and schools of philosophers, because concerning the good of the body, the good of the soul, and the good of both, different men held different opinions. Let all these, then, yield to those philosophers who said that man is blessed not by enjoying the body or enjoying the soul, but by enjoying God:

not as the soul enjoys the body or its own self, or as friend enjoys friend, but as the eye enjoys light—if any likeness is to be drawn from these to those; and of what sort that likeness is, if God Himself shall help, will appear in another place, so far as we are able to make it appear. For now let it suffice to recall that Plato determined the end of good to be to live according to virtue, and that this can befall him only who has the knowledge and imitation of God, and that there is no other cause of his being blessed; and therefore he does not doubt that to philosophize is to love God, whose nature is incorporeal. Whence it surely follows that the lover of wisdom (for that is what 'philosopher' means) will then be blessed, when he shall have begun to enjoy God.

For although he who enjoys what he loves is not at once blessed (for many, by loving things that ought not to be loved, are wretched, and the more wretched when they enjoy them), yet no one is blessed who does not enjoy what he loves. For even those who love things that ought not to be loved do not think themselves blessed by loving, but by enjoying. Whoever, then, enjoys what he loves, and loves the true and highest good, who but the most wretched would deny that he is blessed? But the true and highest good itself Plato says is God; whence he would have the philosopher be a lover of God, so that, since philosophy aims at the blessed life, he who has loved God shall be blessed in enjoying God. CHAPTER 9. Concerning that philosophy which has come nearer to the truth of the Christian faith.

Whatever philosophers, therefore, have thought such things concerning the highest and true God—that He is the maker of created things, the light by which they are known, and the good for whose sake they are to be done; that from Him come to us both the principle of nature, and the truth of doctrine, and the felicity of life—whether they be more fittingly called Platonists, or impose any other name upon their sect; whether only those of the Ionic race, who were the foremost among them, held these views, as did Plato himself and those who well understood him; or whether also the Italics held them, on account of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, and any others perchance of the same opinion from that quarter;

or whether among other nations also there are found some who were held to be wise men or philosophers—Atlantic Libyans, Egyptians, Indians, Persians, Chaldeans, Scythians, Gauls, certain Spaniards—who saw and taught this: all of these we set before the rest, and we confess them to be nearer to ourselves. CHAPTER 10. What excellence the religious Christian has among the philosophic arts. For although a Christian man, instructed only in ecclesiastical letters, may perhaps be ignorant of the name 'Platonists,' and may not know whether two kinds of philosophers existed in the Greek tongue, the Ionic and the Italic, yet he is not so deaf to human affairs as not to know that philosophers profess either the study of wisdom or wisdom itself.

Yet he is on his guard against those who philosophize according to the elements of this world, and not according to God, by whom the world itself was made. For he is admonished by the apostolic precept and faithfully hears what was said: 'Beware lest any man deceive you through philosophy and vain seduction, according to the elements of the world.' Then, lest he should suppose all to be such, he hears the same apostle say concerning certain men: 'Because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God hath manifested it unto them.'

'For the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; His eternal power also and divinity.' And where, speaking to the Athenians, after he had said a great thing about God—one that could be understood by few—namely, that 'in Him we live and move and have our being,' he added and said: 'As certain also of your own have said.' Indeed, he also knows how to guard against these very men in those points wherein they err; for where it is said that God manifested to them, by the things that are made, His invisible things to be beheld by the understanding, there it is also said that they did not rightly worship God Himself, because they offered divine honours—due to Him alone—to other things also, to which they ought not:

'Because, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things.' Here he gave us to understand the Romans, the Greeks, and the Egyptians, who gloried in the name of wisdom. But concerning this we shall dispute with them hereafter.

But in that wherein they agree with us concerning the one God, author of this universe—who is not only above all bodies, being incorporeal, but also above all souls, being incorruptible; our principle, our light, our good—in this we set them before the rest. Nor, if a Christian who is ignorant of their writings does not use, in disputation, words which he has not learned—so as to call that part in which inquiry is made into the investigation of nature 'natural' in Latin or 'physical' in Greek,

and 'rational' or 'logic' in Greek, in which it is asked in what way truth may be perceived, and 'moral' or 'ethics,' in which there is treatment of morals and of the ends of goods to be sought and of evils to be avoided—he does not on that account fail to know that from the one true and best God we have our nature, by which we are made unto His image, and the doctrine by which we may know Him and ourselves, and the grace by which, cleaving to Him, we may be blessed. This, then, is the reason why we prefer these men to the rest: that, whereas other philosophers have worn out their talents and labours in inquiring into the causes of things, and into what was the manner of learning and of living, these, by knowing God, have found where there is both the cause of the established universe, and the light for perceiving truth, and the fountain for drinking in felicity.

Whether, therefore, these Platonists, or any other philosophers of whatever nations, think these things concerning God, they think with us. But for this reason it has pleased us rather to deal with the Platonists in this matter, because their writings are better known. For the Greeks, whose tongue is preeminent among the nations, celebrated them with great commendation; and the Latins, moved either by their excellence or their glory, learned them the more gladly, and by translating them into our speech made them nobler and more illustrious. CHAPTER 11. Whence Plato could have acquired that understanding by which he approached the Christian knowledge.

But some who are joined to us in the grace of Christ marvel, when they hear or read that Plato held such views concerning God, which they recognize to agree much with the truth of our religion. Hence some have supposed that, when he journeyed into Egypt, he had heard the prophet Jeremiah, or read the prophetic Scriptures during that same sojourn; and indeed I have set down their opinion in certain of my books. But the careful reckoning of times, which is contained in chronological history, indicates that Plato was born nearly a hundred years after the time when Jeremiah prophesied;

and since he lived eighty-one years, from the year of his death until that time when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, requested the prophetic Scriptures of the Hebrew nation from Judea, and took care to have them interpreted and possessed through seventy Hebrew men who also knew the Greek tongue, there are found to be nearly sixty years. Wherefore, in that sojourn of his, Plato could neither have seen Jeremiah, who had died so long before, nor have read those same Scriptures, which had not yet been translated into the Greek tongue, in which he was proficient;

unless perhaps, because he was of most ardent zeal, he learned these Scriptures, as he did the Egyptian ones, through an interpreter—not so as to translate them by writing (which Ptolemy is reported to have earned as an immense benefit, he who, by his royal power, could even inspire fear), but so as to learn by conversation, as far as he could grasp, what they contained. That this should be thought so, certain indications seem to persuade: that the book of Genesis begins thus: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth. And the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was upon the deep, and the Spirit of God was borne above the water.' And in the Timaeus, the book which Plato wrote concerning the constitution of the world, he says that God, in that work, first joined earth and fire.

Now it is manifest that he assigns to fire the place of heaven: this opinion, then, has a certain likeness to that wherein it was said: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth.' Then he calls those two middle elements—by whose interposition these two extremes might be coupled to one another—water and air; whence he is thought to have so understood what is written: 'The Spirit of God was borne above the water.' For paying too little heed to the manner in which that Scripture is wont to call something 'the Spirit of God'—since air also is called 'spirit'—he may seem to have supposed that the four elements were mentioned in that place. Then, as to what Plato says, that the philosopher is a lover of God, nothing so glows in those sacred letters;

and most of all that point (which also most of all moves me almost to assent that Plato was not unacquainted with those books): that, whereas the words of God are conveyed through an angel to holy Moses in such wise that, to him who asked what was the name of Him who commanded him to go to the Hebrew people to be delivered out of Egypt, the answer is given: 'I am that I am, and thou shalt say to the children of Israel: He who is hath sent me unto you'—as though, in comparison with Him who truly is because He is unchangeable, the things that have been made mutable have no being—this Plato vehemently held and most diligently commended. And I know not whether this be found anywhere in the books of those who lived before Plato, save where it was said: 'I am that I am, and thou shalt say to them: He who is hath sent me unto you.'

CHAPTER 12. That even the Platonists, although they thought rightly concerning the one true God, nevertheless judged that sacred rites should be performed to many gods. But from whatever source he learned these things—whether from the preceding books of the ancients, or rather, as the apostle says, 'because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God hath manifested it unto them; for the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, His eternal power also and divinity':

now I have set forth sufficiently, as I think, that I have chosen the Platonist philosophers, with whom to deal, not without reason: because in that question which we have just now undertaken, which treats of natural theology—namely, whether for the sake of the felicity that is to be after death, sacred rites ought to be performed to one God or to many—I have, as I judge, expounded enough.

For I have especially chosen these for this reason: because, in proportion as they have thought more nobly concerning the one God who made heaven and earth, in that same proportion they are held more glorious and illustrious than the rest, and are by the judgment of posterity so far preferred to others that, although Aristotle, the disciple of Plato—a man of excellent genius, and in eloquence indeed unequal to Plato, but easily surpassing many—had founded the Peripatetic sect (so called because he was wont to dispute while walking about), and, excelling in renowned fame, had gathered very many disciples into his school of thought while his teacher was yet living; and although, after Plato's death, Speusippus, his sister's son, and Xenocrates, his beloved disciple, had succeeded him in his school, which was called the Academy, and on this account they themselves and their successors were called Academics—nevertheless the more recent and most noble philosophers, to whom it seemed good to follow Plato, were unwilling to be called Peripatetics or Academics, but Platonists.

Among these the Greeks Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Porphyry are very greatly ennobled; while in both tongues—that is, both Greek and Latin—Apuleius the African stood forth as a noble Platonist. But all these, and others of this sort, and Plato himself, judged that sacred rites should be performed to very many gods. CHAPTER 13. Concerning the opinion of Plato, by which he defined the gods to be none other than good beings and friends of the virtues. Although, therefore, they dissent from us in many other and great matters, yet in this point which I have just set down—since it is neither a small matter, and there is now a question about it—I first ask of them, to which gods they think this worship is to be exhibited, whether to good, or to evil, or to both good and evil.

But we have Plato's opinion, who says that all the gods are good, and that there is none at all of the gods that is evil. It follows, therefore, that these rites are to be understood as exhibited to the good; for then they are exhibited to gods, since they would not even be gods if they were not good. If this be so (for what else is fitting to believe concerning the gods?), then that opinion is surely emptied out, by which some suppose that evil gods must be appeased by sacred rites lest they harm, but that good ones must be invoked that they may help. For there are no evil gods; and the due honour of sacred rites, as they say, is to be paid to the good. Who, then, are those who love stage plays and demand that they be joined to divine matters and exhibited in their honour? Their power does not show them to be no gods, but this very affection assuredly shows them to be evil.

For what Plato thought concerning stage plays is well known, since he judged that the poets themselves—because they composed songs so unworthy of the majesty and goodness of the gods—must be driven out of the city. Who, then, are those gods who contend with Plato himself concerning stage plays? For he does not suffer the gods to be defamed by false crimes; but these command that their own honours be celebrated by those very crimes. Finally, these gods, when they commanded that those same plays be instituted, demanding base things, did even malicious deeds: taking away the son of Titus Latinius and sending a disease upon him because he had refused their command, and removing that disease when he had fulfilled their orders. But he thought them not even so evil

as to be feared; rather, most constantly retaining the strength of his own opinion, he does not hesitate to remove from a well-ordered people all the sacrilegious trifles of the poets, in which those gods, by their fellowship in uncleanness, take delight. But this same Plato, as I have already mentioned in the second book, Labeo places among the demigods. Now this Labeo thinks that evil deities are appeased by bloody victims and by supplications of this kind, but good ones by plays and such things as pertain, as it were, to gladness. What is it, then, that the demigod Plato dares so constantly to take away these delights—not from demigods, but from gods, and these good ones—because he judges them to be base? These gods truly refute the opinion of Labeo;

for in the case of Latinius they showed themselves not only wanton and given to sport, but even savage and terrible. Let the Platonists, then, explain these things to us—they who judge that all the gods, according to the opinion of their own author, are good and honourable and associates in the virtues of the wise, and who hold it impious to think otherwise concerning any of the gods. 'We do explain it,' they say. Let us, then, listen attentively. CHAPTER 14. Concerning the opinion of those who said that rational souls are of three kinds—that is, in the celestial gods, in the aerial demons, and in earthly men. 'Of all animals,' they say, 'in which there is a rational soul, there is a threefold division: into gods, men, and demons. The gods hold the highest place, men the lowest, demons the middle.'

'For the seat of the gods is in heaven, of men on earth, of demons in the air. As their dignity of places is diverse, so also is that of their natures. Accordingly, the gods are superior to men and demons; but men are placed below gods and demons, as in the order of the elements, so in the difference of merits. The demons, therefore, being in the middle, even as they are to be ranked after the gods, beneath whom they dwell, so are they to be preferred to men, above whom they dwell. For they have in common with the gods the immortality of their bodies, but with men the passions of their souls.'

'Wherefore it is no wonder,' they say, 'if they are delighted even by the obscenities of plays and the fictions of poets, since indeed they are seized by human affections, from which the gods are far removed and in all ways alien.' From which it is gathered that Plato, in detesting and prohibiting the fictions of poetry, deprived not the gods—who are all good and exalted—of the pleasure of stage plays, but the demons.

If these things are so (which, although they may be found in others also, yet Apuleius the Madauran Platonist wrote one book on this subject alone, the title of which he chose to be 'On the God of Socrates,' where he discusses and expounds from what class of deities Socrates had one joined to him and conciliated by a certain friendship, by whom he is reported to have been wont to be admonished to desist from acting whenever what he wished to do was not going to turn out prosperously;

for he says most plainly and asserts most copiously that that being was not a god, but a demon, treating thoroughly, with diligent disputation, that opinion of Plato concerning the sublimity of the gods, the lowliness of men, and the middle state of demons)—if, then, these things are so, in what way did Plato dare, even if not from the gods (whom he removed from all human contagion), yet certainly from the demons themselves, to take away theatrical pleasures by driving the poets from the city, unless because by this means he admonished the human soul—although still placed in these dying members—for the splendour of honourable conduct to despise the impure commands of demons and to detest their uncleanness? For if Plato most honourably censured and prohibited these things, assuredly the demons most basely demanded and commanded them.

Either, therefore, Apuleius is mistaken and Socrates did not have a friend from this class of deities; or Plato holds contradictory views among themselves—now honouring the demons, now removing their delights from a well-mannered city; or the friendship of a demon is not a thing for Socrates to be congratulated upon, of which Apuleius himself was so far ashamed that he entitled his book 'On the God of Socrates,' whereas, according to his own disputation—by which he so diligently and copiously distinguishes the gods from the demons—he ought to have called it not 'On the God,' but 'On the Demon of Socrates.' But he preferred to put this in the disputation itself rather than in the title of the book.

For so, by the sound doctrine which has shone upon human affairs, all or almost all shudder at the name of demons, so that whoever, before the disputation of Apuleius by which the dignity of the demons is commended, should read the title 'On the Demon of Socrates,' would by no means think that that man had been of sound mind. But what did Apuleius himself find to praise in the demons, besides the subtlety and firmness of their bodies and the higher place of their habitation? For concerning their morals, when he spoke of them all in general, he said not only nothing good, but even very much evil.