Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 25/87

Finally, when that book has been read, no one at all wonders that they wished to have even stage filthiness in divine matters, and that, while they wish to be thought gods, they could be delighted by the crimes of the gods, and that whatever in their sacred rites is either laughed at for obscene solemnity or shuddered at for base cruelty, agrees with their affections. CHAPTER 15. That neither on account of their aerial bodies nor on account of their higher dwellings do the demons excel men. Wherefore, far be it that a soul truly religious and subject to the true God, considering these things, should think the demons to be better than itself because they have better bodies.

Otherwise, it would have to prefer to itself even many beasts, which surpass us both in keenness of senses, in most easy and most swift motion, in strength of powers, and in long-lived firmness of bodies. What man in seeing will be equalled to eagles and vultures? Who in smelling to dogs? Who in swiftness to hares, to deer, to all birds? Who in great strength to lions and elephants? Who in long living to serpents, which are even said, by laying aside their skin, to lay aside old age and return to youth? But just as we are better than all these by reasoning and understanding, so also ought we to be better than the demons by living well and honourably.

For on this account divine providence has given certain superior gifts of bodies to those over whom it is agreed that we are superior, so that even in this way it might be commended to us that the thing in which we surpass them must be cultivated with much greater care than the body, and that we might learn to despise the very bodily excellence which we knew the demons to have, in comparison with the goodness of life by which we are set above them—we who are also to have immortality of bodies, not such as the eternity of torments may torture, but such as the purity of souls may precede. But now, as to the loftiness of place—that the demons dwell in the air, while we dwell on earth—to be so moved by this that hence we should think them to be preferred to us, is altogether ridiculous.

For by this reasoning we prefer to ourselves all flying creatures also. But indeed flying creatures, when they are wearied by flying, or have a body to be refreshed with food, seek the earth again, either for rest or for pasture—which the demons, they say, do not do. Does it therefore please them that flying creatures excel us, but demons excel even flying creatures? But if it is most senseless to suppose this, there is no reason why we should think the demons worthy, on account of the habitation of a higher element, to whom we ought to subject ourselves with the affection of religion. For just as it could come to pass that the aerial birds should be not only not preferred to us earthly beings, but even subjected, on account of the dignity of the rational soul which is in us:

so it could come to pass that the demons, although they are more aerial, should not therefore be better than us earthly beings because the air is higher than the earth; but men should be preferred to them for this reason, because the hope of pious men is by no means to be compared to the despair of those beings. For even that reasoning of Plato, by which he weaves together and orders the four elements in proportion—thus interposing the two middle ones, air and water, between the two extremes, fire (the most mobile) and earth (the immovable), so that, as much as air is above water and fire above air, so much also the waters are higher than the lands—sufficiently admonishes us not to estimate the merits of living beings according to the degrees of the elements.

For Apuleius himself, with the rest, calls man an earthly animal, who nevertheless is far preferred to aquatic animals, although Plato sets the waters themselves above the lands: so that they may understand that the same order is not to be kept, when it is a question of the merits of souls, which appears to be the order in the degrees of bodies; but that it can come to pass that a better soul should inhabit a lower body, and a worse soul a higher one. CHAPTER 16. What Apuleius the Platonist thought concerning the morals and actions of the demons.

When, therefore, this same Platonist spoke concerning the morals of the demons, he said that they are agitated by the same perturbations of soul as men: provoked by injuries, appeased by services and gifts, rejoicing in honours, delighted by diverse rites of sacred things, and disturbed if anything in these has been neglected. Among other things he also says that there pertain to them the divinations of augurs, soothsayers, seers, and dreams; and that from these also come the miracles of the magicians. But defining them briefly, he says that the demons are, in genus, animals; in soul, passive; in mind, rational; in body, aerial; in time, eternal. Now of these five, the three former they have in common with us, the fourth is their own, and the fifth they have in common with the gods.

But I see that, of the three former, which they have in common with us, two they also have in common with the gods. For he says that the gods too are animals; and, distributing to each its own elements, he placed us among the earthly animals, together with the rest that live and have sense on the earth; among the aquatic, fishes and other swimming things; among the aerial, demons; among the ethereal, gods. And by this—that the demons are, in genus, animals—this is common to them not only with men, but also with gods and beasts; that they are, in mind, rational, this is common with gods and men; that they are, in time, eternal, with the gods alone; that they are, in soul, passive, with men alone; that they are, in body, aerial, this they alone are. Accordingly, that they are, in genus, animals, is no great thing, since the beasts also are this;

What is rational in mind is not above us, for we too are rational; what is eternal in time, what good is it if it be not blessed? For a temporal felicity is better than a wretched eternity. What is passive in soul, how is it above us, since we too are this, and would not be so unless we were wretched? What is aerial in body, of what worth is that to be reckoned, since the nature of the soul, of whatsoever sort, is preferred to every body, and therefore the worship of religion, which is owed from the soul, ought by no means to be owed to that which is inferior to the soul? Moreover, if among those things which he says belong to the demons he had numbered virtue, wisdom, and felicity, and had said that they possess these in common with the gods and as eternal, then assuredly he would be saying something to be longed for and greatly prized;

yet even so, on account of these things, we ought not to worship them as God, but rather Him from whom we should know that they had received these things. How much less, then, are these aerial animals now worthy of divine honour—rational only that they may be capable of misery, passive only that they may be miserable, eternal only that they cannot bring their misery to an end! CHAPTER XVII. Whether it be fitting that those spirits be worshipped by man, from whose vices he ought rather to be delivered. Wherefore, to pass over the rest and to treat this one point alone—that which he said the demons have in common with us, namely the passions of the soul—if all four elements are full of their own living creatures, fire and air with immortal ones, water and earth with mortal, I ask why the souls of demons should be agitated by the disturbances and storms of the passions.

For a perturbation is what in Greek is called πάθος; whence he chose to call them 'passive in soul,' because, were the word πάθος rendered word for word, 'passion' would be a movement of the soul contrary to reason. Why then are these things present in the souls of demons, which are not present in beasts? Because if anything similar appears in a beast, it is not a perturbation, since it is not contrary to reason, of which beasts are destitute. But in men it is folly or misery that produces these perturbations; for we are not yet blessed in that perfection of wisdom which is promised to us, freed from this mortality, at the end. But they say the gods do not suffer these perturbations, because they are not only eternal but also blessed.

For they assert that the gods themselves have these same rational souls, but most pure from every stain and plague. Wherefore, if the gods are not perturbed because they are blessed animals, not miserable, and beasts likewise are not perturbed because they are animals which can be neither blessed nor miserable, it remains that the demons, like men, are perturbed for this reason: that they are animals not blessed, but miserable. By what folly, then, or rather by what madness do we subject ourselves to demons through any religion, when through the true religion we are delivered from that very viciousness in which we resemble them?

For since the demons—as even this Apuleius, though he spares them greatly and judges them worthy of divine honours, is nevertheless compelled to confess—are goaded by anger, the true religion enjoins us not to be goaded by anger, but rather to resist it. Since the demons are enticed by gifts, the true religion enjoins us to show no favour to anyone for the receiving of gifts. Since the demons are soothed by honours, the true religion enjoins us to be in no way moved by such things. Since the demons are haters of some men and lovers of others, not by a prudent and tranquil judgement, but by what he himself calls a 'passive soul,' the true religion enjoins us to love even our enemies.

Lastly, every motion of the heart and surge of the mind, all the disturbances and storms of the soul by which he asserts the demons to seethe and toss to and fro—these the true religion bids us lay aside. What cause is there, then, save folly and a marvellous error, that you should make yourself humble in venerating one to whom you desire to be unlike in living, and that you should worship with religion one whom you are unwilling to imitate, when the very sum of religion is to imitate the one you worship? CHAPTER XVIII. Of what sort that religion is, in which it is taught that men, in order to be commended to the good gods, ought to use demons as advocates.

In vain, therefore, did Apuleius, and whoever holds the same opinion, bestow this honour upon them, placing them midway in the air between the ethereal heaven and the earth, so that—since no god mingles with man, which they affirm Plato to have said—these demons might carry up to the gods the prayers of men and bring down thence to men the things they ask, once obtained. For those who believed these things deemed it unworthy that men should mingle with gods and gods with men; but worthy that demons should mingle both with gods and with men—as those who present from this side the petitions sought, and from that side bring back the things granted;

so that, forsooth, a chaste man, a stranger to the crimes of the magical arts, should employ as his patrons those who love the very things which he, by not loving, becomes the worthier—those whom they ought the more easily and willingly to hear. For those demons love the obscenities of the stage, which chastity does not love; they love in the maleficent deeds of magicians 'the thousand arts of harming,' which innocence does not love. Therefore both chastity and innocence, if they wish to obtain anything from the gods, will not be able to do so by their own merits except through the intervention of their own enemies. There is no ground for this man to attempt to justify the fictions of the poets and the mockeries of the theatre.

We have, against these things, their own master, and one of so great authority among them—Plato—if human modesty deserves so ill of itself that it should not only delight in base things, but even reckon them pleasing to the Deity. CHAPTER XIX. Of the impiety of the magical art, which relies upon the patronage of malign spirits. Moreover, against the magical arts—in which certain men, too unhappy and too impious, even take delight in glorying—shall I not summon as witness the very light of day itself? For why are these things so gravely punished by the severity of the laws, if they are the works of deities to be worshipped? Or perhaps Christians established these laws by which the magical arts are punished?

According to what other meaning, save that there is no doubt these sorceries are ruinous to the human race, does the most renowned poet say: 'I call to witness, dear sister, the gods and you, and your sweet life, that against my will I gird myself to the magic arts'? And that other thing too which he says in another place concerning these arts: 'And I have seen crops transported elsewhere from where they were sown'—because by this pestilent and wicked doctrine the fruits of another's land are said to be transferred to other lands—does not Cicero record that it was written in the Twelve Tables, that is, the most ancient laws of the Romans, and that a punishment was appointed for him who should do this? Finally, was not Apuleius himself accused before Christian judges concerning the magical arts?

For these things being charged against him, if he had known them to be divine and pious and conformable to the works of divine powers, he ought not only to have confessed them, but even to have professed them openly, rather blaming the laws by which these things were prohibited and deemed worthy of condemnation—things which ought to be held marvellous and venerable. For thus he would either have persuaded the judges of his own opinion, or, if they had judged according to those iniquitous laws and condemned him to death for proclaiming and praising such things, the demons would have repaid worthy gifts to his soul, for the proclaiming of whose divine works he would not have feared to have his human life taken from him;

just as our martyrs, when the Christian religion—by which they knew they were made saved and most glorious for ever—was charged against them as a crime, did not choose to escape temporal punishments by denying it, but rather, by confessing, professing, proclaiming, and faithfully and bravely enduring all things for it, and by dying with pious security, they compelled the laws by which it was prohibited to blush and made them be changed. But of this Platonic philosopher there exists a most copious and most eloquent oration, by which he defends himself as innocent of the crime of the magical arts, and is willing to seem innocent in no other way than by denying those things which cannot be committed by an innocent man.

But all the miracles of the magicians—whom he rightly judges to be condemned—are wrought by the doctrines and works of demons, whom let him see why he should think worthy of honour, asserting them to be necessary for conveying our prayers to the gods—those whose works we ought to shun, if we wish our prayers to reach the true God. Next, I ask, what kind of prayers of men does he think are conveyed to the good gods through demons—magical or lawful? If magical, the gods do not want such; if lawful, they do not want them through such intermediaries. But if a penitent sinner pours out prayers—especially if he has committed something magical—does he then at length obtain pardon through the intercession of those very ones by whose impelling or favour he laments to have fallen into the fault?

Or do these demons themselves, in order that they may be able to merit indulgence for the penitent, first do penance because they deceived them? No one has ever said this of demons; for, were it so, they would by no means dare to demand divine honours for themselves, who by repenting would desire to attain the grace of pardon. For there is detestable pride, here is pitiable humility. CHAPTER XX. Whether it is to be believed that the good gods mingle more willingly with demons than with men. But, they say, an urgent and most pressing cause compels the demons to act as intermediaries between gods and men, that they may bring from men the things desired, and bring back from the gods the things obtained. What at last is this cause, and how great the necessity? Because, they say, no god mingles with man.

A splendid sanctity of God, indeed, who does not mingle with the man who supplicates, yet mingles with the arrogant demon; does not mingle with the penitent man, yet mingles with the deceiving demon; does not mingle with the man who flees for refuge to the Deity, yet mingles with the demon who feigns deity; does not mingle with the man who seeks indulgence, yet mingles with the demon who counsels wickedness; does not mingle with the man who, by philosophical books, drives the poets out of a well-ordered state, yet mingles with the demon who, through the rulers and pontiffs of the state, demands the mockeries of the poets by means of stage-plays; does not mingle with the man who forbids the inventing of crimes against the gods, yet mingles with the demon who delights himself in the false crimes of the gods;

does not mingle with the man who punishes the crimes of magicians by just laws, yet mingles with the demon who teaches and fulfils the magical arts; does not mingle with the man who flees the imitation of the demon, yet mingles with the demon who lies in wait to deceive man. CHAPTER XXI. Whether the gods use demons as messengers and interpreters, and either are ignorant that they are deceived by them, or wish to be. But forsooth there is a great necessity for this so great absurdity and indignity—namely, that the ethereal gods, who care for human affairs, would assuredly be ignorant of what the earthly men do, unless the aerial demons announced it; since the ether is far from the earth and suspended on high, while the air is contiguous to both the ether and the earth. O marvellous wisdom!

What else do these men think concerning the gods—whom they will to be all best—save that they both care for human affairs, lest they seem unworthy of worship, and, because of the distance of the elements, are ignorant of human affairs, so that the demons may be believed necessary, and that on this account these demons too may be thought to be worshipped, through whom the gods may both learn what is being done in human affairs and where they ought to come to men's aid? If this is so, then the demon, through the neighbouring body, is better known to those good gods than the man through his good soul. O necessity much to be lamented—or rather, vanity to be laughed at or detested, lest the divinity be vain! For if the gods can see our soul, when the soul is free from the obstacle of the body, they do not need demons as messengers for this; but if it is the bodily signs of souls,

such as speech, countenance, and motion, that the ethereal gods perceive through their own body, and from these gather what the demons announce, then they can also be deceived by the lies of the demons. Furthermore, if the divinity of the gods cannot be deceived by the demons, then by that same divinity what we do cannot be unknown.

But I should wish these men to tell me whether the demons announced to the gods, concerning the crimes of the gods, that the poetic fictions displeased Plato, while concealing from them that they themselves were pleased with them; or whether they hid both, and preferred the gods to be ignorant of this whole matter; or whether they disclosed both—both Plato's religious prudence toward the gods, and their own lust injurious to the gods; or whether they willed Plato's opinion—by which he refused that the gods should be defamed by false crimes through the impious license of the poets—to be unknown to the gods, but were neither ashamed nor afraid to betray their own wickedness, by which they love the stage-plays in which those disgraces of the gods are celebrated. Of these four things

which I have set forth by way of question, let them choose whichever they will, and in whichever of them let them mark how much evil they suppose concerning the good gods. For if they choose the first, they will be confessing that the good gods were not permitted to dwell with the good Plato when he forbade their being injured, and dwelt with the evil demons when these exulted in their injuries—since the good gods knew the good man set far from them only through the evil demons, whom, though neighbours, they could not know. But if they choose the second, and say that both were concealed by the demons, so that the gods were wholly ignorant both of Plato's most religious law and of the demons' sacrilegious delight:

what can the gods usefully know in human affairs through the demon-intermediaries, when they are ignorant of those things which are decreed, in honour of the good gods, by the religion of good men against the lust of the evil demons? But if they choose the third, and answer that not only Plato's opinion forbidding injuries to the gods, but also the wickedness of the demons exulting in injuries to the gods, became known to the gods through those same demon-messengers—is this to announce, or to insult? And do the gods so hear both, and so recognize both, that they not only do not bar from their approach the malign demons who desire and do things contrary to the dignity of the gods and the religion of Plato, but even, through those evil neighbours, transmit gifts to the good Plato who is far off?

For thus, they say, the chain-like series of the elements bound them together, so that they can be joined to those by whom they are accused, but cannot be joined to him by whom they are defended—knowing both, but not having power to transmute the weights of air and earth. Now, as for what remains, if they choose the fourth, it is worse than the rest. For who could bear it, if the demons announced to the gods the criminous fictions of the poets concerning the immortal gods, and the unworthy mockeries of the theatres, and their own most ardent lust and sweetest pleasure in all these things, but were silent about the fact that Plato, with philosophical gravity, judged that all these things should be removed from the best republic;

so that now the good gods are compelled, through such messengers, to know the evils of the worst beings—evils not foreign, but belonging to those very messengers—and are not allowed to know the things contrary to these, the good things of the philosophers, since those former things are to the injury, and these to the honour, of the gods themselves? CHAPTER XXII. Of casting off the worship of demons, against Apuleius. Since, therefore, none of these four things is to be chosen—lest in any of them so ill a thing be supposed concerning the gods—it remains that it is by no means to be believed, what Apuleius strives to persuade, and whatever other philosophers there are of the same opinion, that the demons are intermediaries between gods and men as go-betweens and interpreters, who carry our petitions from this side, and bring back from that side the aid of the gods;

but rather that they are spirits most greedy to do harm, utterly estranged from justice, swollen with pride, livid with envy, crafty in deceit—who dwell indeed in this air, because, cast down from the height of the upper heaven, they have been condemned in advance, by the desert of their irreversible transgression, to this as it were a prison suited to them; nor yet, because the place of the air is above the lands and waters, are they on that account superior in merits to men, who most easily surpass them—not by an earthly body, but by a mind that has chosen the true God as their helper—with a pious mind. But they domineer over many, plainly unworthy of partaking in the true religion, as over captives and subjects, the greatest part of whom they have persuaded that they are gods, by marvellous and deceptive signs, whether of deeds or of predictions.

But to certain others, who looked upon their vices somewhat more attentively and carefully, they could not persuade that they are gods, and so they feigned themselves to be intermediaries between gods and men, and obtainers of benefits—if indeed men should think that at least this honour ought to be paid to them, men who did not believe them to be gods, because they saw them to be evil, yet wished all the gods to be good, and yet did not dare to call them wholly unworthy of divine honour, chiefly lest they offend the peoples, by whom they perceived these beings to be served, through inveterate superstition, by means of so many sacred rites and temples. CHAPTER XXIII. What Hermes Trismegistus thought concerning idolatry, and whence he could know that the Egyptian superstitions were to be done away.

For Hermes the Egyptian, whom they call Trismegistus, thought and wrote differently concerning them. For Apuleius indeed denies that they are gods; but when he says that they so move in a certain middle station between gods and men, that they seem necessary to men in relation to the gods themselves, he does not separate their worship from the religion of the supernal gods. But that Egyptian says that some gods were made by the supreme God, others by men. Whoever hears this, as it has been stated by me, thinks it is said of images, because they are the works of men's hands; but he asserts that the visible and tangible images are as it were the bodies of the gods;

and that there are within them certain invited spirits, which have power either to harm or to fulfil some desires of those by whom divine honours and the homage of worship are paid to them. To couple, therefore, these invisible spirits, by a certain art, to visible things of corporeal matter, so that they may be as it were animated bodies, images dedicated and made subject to those spirits—this, he says, is to make gods; and that men have received this great and marvellous power of making gods. I will set down the words of this Egyptian, as they have been translated into our tongue: 'And since, he says, a discourse is set before us concerning the kinship and fellowship of men and gods, learn, O Asclepius, the power and force of man.

The Lord, he says, and Father, or that which is highest, God, even as He is the maker of the heavenly gods, so is man the fashioner of the gods who are in the temples, content with human proximity.' And a little after: 'Thus humanity, he says, ever mindful of its nature and origin, perseveres in that imitation of divinity, so that, just as the Father and Lord made the gods eternal, that they might be like Himself, so humanity fashions its own gods after the likeness of its own countenance.' Here, when Asclepius, to whom he was chiefly speaking, had answered him and said: 'Do you mean statues, O Trismegistus?'—then he: 'Statues, he says, O Asclepius—you see how far you yourself distrust;

statues animated, full of sense and spirit, and doing such great and such mighty things—statues foreknowing of things to come, and foretelling them by lot, by prophet, by dreams, and by many other things; bringing infirmities upon men and curing them; bestowing sorrow and gladness according to deserts. Or do you not know, O Asclepius, that Egypt is the image of heaven, or, what is more true, the translation or descent of all things which are governed and exercised in heaven? And if it is to be said more truly, our land is the temple of the whole world. And yet, since it befits the prudent man to foreknow all things, it is not lawful for you to be ignorant of this:

There will be a time when it shall appear that the Egyptians have, in vain, with pious mind and diligent religion, preserved the divinity.' Then with many words Hermes pursues this passage, in which he seems to foretell this time, when the Christian religion, by how much it is truer and holier, by so much the more vehemently and freely overthrows all the deceitful fictions, so that by the grace of the most true Saviour it may free man from those gods whom man makes, and may make him subject to that God by whom man was made.

But Hermes, when he predicts these things, speaks as a friend of those same delusions of the demons, and does not clearly express the name of Christ, but, as though those things were to be taken away and abolished—by the observance of which the heavenly likeness was kept in Egypt—he thus bewails these future things, attesting them with a kind of mournful prophecy. For he was of those of whom the apostle says that, knowing God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor give thanks, but became vain in their imaginings, and their foolish heart was darkened; for, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and the rest, which it were long to recount.