Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 27/87

'these they make to prosper and exalt, those, on the contrary, to oppose and afflict; and so to pity and be indignant, to be anguished and to rejoice, and to suffer every aspect of the human mind, to be tossed by a like motion of the heart and surge of mind through all the tides of thought. All which turmoils and tempests are banished far from the tranquillity of the heavenly gods.' Is there in these words any doubt that he said, not some lower parts of their souls, but the very minds of the demons, by which they are rational animals, were troubled as it were by a stormy surge of the tempest of the passions — so that they are not to be compared even with wise men,

who, by perturbations of this kind of the soul, from which human weakness is not immune, even when by the condition of this life they suffer them, resist with an unperturbed mind, not yielding to them so as to approve or perpetrate anything that strays from the path of wisdom and the law of justice; whereas the demons, like to foolish and unjust mortals not in body but in morals (not to say worse, in that they are older and incurable by deserved punishment), float about by the surge, as he called it, of the mind itself, and stand fast in no part of the soul in truth and virtue, by which turbulent and depraved affections are resisted. CHAPTER IV. Concerning the perturbations which befall the soul: what is the opinion of the Peripatetics and the Stoics.

There are two opinions of the philosophers concerning these motions of the soul, which the Greeks call pathe, but among ours some, like Cicero, call perturbations, some affections or affects, and some, like this man more expressly from the Greek, call passions. These perturbations, then, or affections, or passions, some philosophers say fall even upon the wise man, but moderated and made subject to reason, so that the dominion of the mind imposes upon them laws, as it were, by which they are reduced to a necessary measure. Those who hold this are the Platonists or the Aristotelians, since Aristotle, the disciple of Plato, founded the Peripatetic sect. But to others, such as the Stoics, it does not seem good that any passions of this kind at all should fall upon the wise man.

But these, that is, the Stoics, Cicero in his books On the Ends of Goods and Evils convicts of contending against the Platonists or Peripatetics rather in words than in things; since indeed the Stoics will not call good things, but advantages, the goods of the body and external things, on the ground that they will have no good of man besides virtue — as it were the art of living well — which is only in the mind. But these others call these things, simply and from the common usage of speaking, goods; yet in comparison with virtue, by which one lives rightly, small and slight. From which it comes about that, by whichever name they be called by either party, whether goods or advantages, they are nevertheless weighed at an equal estimation, nor are the Stoics in this question delighted save by the novelty of words.

It seems to me, therefore, that even in this — where it is asked whether the passions of the soul befall the wise man, or whether he is wholly a stranger to them — they make a controversy of words rather than of things. For I reckon that they too perceive nothing else herein than the Platonists and Peripatetics, as far as concerns the force of the things, not the sound of the words. To omit other things by which I might show this, lest I be long, let me say one thing that is most evident. In the books entitled Attic Nights, Aulus Gellius, a man of most elegant eloquence and of much knowledge from every quarter, writes that he once sailed with a certain noble Stoic philosopher. That philosopher, as Aulus Gellius narrates more fully and richly, which I shall touch on briefly —

when that vessel was being most perilously tossed under a horrible sky and sea, grew pale with the force of fear. This was noticed by those who were present, though most curiously attentive in the nearness of death, whether the philosopher would be troubled in mind. Then, the storm being over, as soon as security afforded place for conversing or even for chattering, a certain one of those whom that ship carried, a rich and luxurious Asiatic, taunts the philosopher with mockery, because he had been afraid and had grown pale, whereas he himself had remained undaunted in that destruction which threatened.

But the philosopher reported the answer of Aristippus the Socratic, who, when in a like situation he had heard the same words from a like man, replied that the other had rightly not been anxious for the soul of a most worthless rascal, but that he himself had had to fear for the soul of an Aristippus. That rich man being repelled by this reply, Aulus Gellius afterward asked the philosopher, not with a mind to provoke, but to learn, what that reason of his fear had been. And he, that he might teach the man eagerly kindled with the desire of knowing, drew forth at once from his little bag the book of the Stoic Epictetus, in which were written those things which agreed with the decrees of Zeno and Chrysippus, whom we know to have been the chief of the Stoics. In that book Aulus Gellius says he read —

that this pleased the Stoics: that the impressions of the soul, which they call phantasies, and over which it is not in one's power whether and when they fall upon the soul, when they come from terrible and formidable things, must of necessity move even the mind of the wise man, so that for a little while he either is frightened with fear or contracted with sadness, as though these passions forestall the office of the mind and reason; nor yet on that account is there formed in the mind an opinion of evil, nor are these things approved nor consented to. For this they will have to be in one's power, and they judge that herein is the difference between the mind of the wise man and the foolish man — that the mind of the foolish man yields to these same passions and accommodates to them the assent of the mind;

but the wise, although they suffer these passions of necessity, yet retain, concerning the things they ought rationally to desire or to flee, a true and stable judgement with an unshaken mind. These things I have set forth, as I could, not indeed more conveniently than Aulus Gellius, but certainly more briefly and, as I think, more plainly — the things which he records that he read in the book of Epictetus, who, he says, spoke and held them from the decrees of the Stoics. And if these things are so, there is either no difference, or almost none, between the opinion of the Stoics and of other philosophers concerning the passions and perturbations of the soul; for both defend the mind and reason of the wise man from their dominion.

And therefore perhaps the Stoics say that these do not fall upon the wise man, because they in no way becloud with any error or subvert with any blemish his wisdom, by which he is indeed wise. But they befall the mind of the wise man, with the serenity of his wisdom preserved, on account of those things which they call advantages or disadvantages, although they are unwilling to call them goods or evils. For surely, if that philosopher had set no value upon those things which he perceived he would lose by shipwreck — such as is this life and the safety of the body — he would not so have shuddered at that peril as to be betrayed even by the testimony of his pallor.

Yet he could both feel that disturbance and still hold fixed in his mind the judgment that the life and bodily safety, whose loss the violence of the storm was threatening, are not those goods which make good the men in whom they reside, as justice does. As for their saying that these things ought not to be called goods but advantages, that is a matter to be assigned to a contest of words, not to an examination of realities. For what difference does it make whether they are more fittingly called goods or advantages, so long as the Stoic, no less than the Peripatetic, trembles and turns pale lest he be deprived of them — naming them unequally, yet valuing them equally?

Both indeed, if by the perils to these goods or advantages they were driven to disgrace or crime, so that they could not otherwise retain them, declare that they would rather lose these things by which the body's nature is kept safe and whole than commit those deeds by which justice is violated. Thus the mind, where this judgment is fixed, permits no perturbations — even if they arise in the lower parts of the soul — to prevail within it against reason; rather, it itself rules over them, and by not consenting but instead resisting, it exercises the reign of virtue. Such an Aeneas does Virgil also describe, when he says: 'The mind remains unmoved; the tears roll down in vain.' CHAPTER V.

That the passions which affect Christian souls do not drag them into vice, but exercise virtue. There is no need now to show fully and carefully what Divine Scripture, in which Christian instruction is contained, teaches about these passions. For it subjects the mind itself to God to be governed and aided, and the passions it subjects to the mind to be so moderated and bridled that they may be turned to the use of justice. In short, in our discipline it is asked not so much whether a devout soul is angry, but why it is angry; nor whether it is sad, but from what it is sad; nor whether it fears, but what it fears.

For to be angry at one who sins so that he may be corrected, to grieve for one afflicted that he may be set free, to fear for one in peril lest he perish — I know not whether anyone with sound consideration would reprehend these. For it is the Stoics' custom to find fault even with mercy; yet how much more honourably would that Stoic have been perturbed by mercy for a man to be saved than by fear of shipwreck. Far better, more humanely, and more suited to the feelings of the devout did Cicero speak in praise of Caesar, when he said: 'Of your virtues none is more admirable or more pleasing than your mercy.' But what is mercy except a certain compassion of our heart for another's misery, by which indeed, if we can, we are impelled to give aid?

And this movement serves reason when mercy is so shown that justice is preserved — whether when something is bestowed on the needy, or when the penitent is pardoned. This Cicero, that excellent orator, did not hesitate to call a virtue, which the Stoics are not ashamed to number among the vices — though they too, as the book of Epictetus, a most noble Stoic, has taught, following the decrees of Zeno and Chrysippus, who held the first place in this sect, admit passions of this kind into the soul of the wise man, whom they wish to be free of all vices.

Whence it follows that they do not reckon these very things as vices when they so befall the wise man that they can do nothing against the virtue and reason of his mind; and that one and the same opinion belongs to the Peripatetics, or even the Platonists, and to the Stoics themselves — but, as Tully says, a controversy of words has long tormented these little Greeks, who are more eager for contention than for truth. Yet it may still rightly be asked whether it belongs to the weakness of the present life to undergo affections of this kind even amid good offices; whereas the holy angels both punish without anger those whom they receive as appointed for punishment by the eternal law of God, and aid the wretched without the compassion of misery, and succour without fear those in peril whom they love;

and yet the names of these passions are applied even to them in the custom of human speech, by reason of a certain similarity of works, not by reason of any weakness of affection — just as God Himself, according to the Scriptures, is angry, yet is troubled by no passion. For here the word has expressed the effect of vengeance, not the turbulent affection of it. CHAPTER VI. By what passions, according to Apuleius's confession, the demons are agitated — by whose aid he asserts that men are helped before the gods. Setting aside for the present this question about the holy angels, let us see how the Platonists say that the intermediate demons, set between gods and men, are tossed by these surges of the passions.

For if, with their mind free from these passions and ruling over them, they underwent movements of this kind, Apuleius would not say that they are tossed, like men, with a like movement of heart and surge of mind, through every tide of thoughts. Their very mind, then — that is, the higher part of the soul, by which they are rational, in which are virtue and wisdom, if any were in them, by which they would rule and moderate the turbulent passions of the lower parts of the soul — their very mind, I say, as this Platonist confesses, is tossed by the surge of perturbations. The mind of demons, therefore, is subject to the passions of lusts, fears, angers, and the rest of this kind.

What part, then, in them is free and possessed of wisdom, by which they might please the gods and counsel men toward the likeness of good morals, when their mind, subjugated and oppressed by the vices of the passions, directs whatever of reason it naturally has all the more keenly to deceiving and beguiling, the more it is possessed by the lust to do harm? CHAPTER VII. That the Platonists assert the gods are defamed by the fictions of the poets concerning a contest of opposing zeals, whereas these are the affairs of demons, not of gods.

But if anyone says that those whom the poets, not far from the truth, feign to be gods, partisans and lovers of certain men, are not from the number of all demons but only of the evil ones (for these Apuleius said are tossed by the surge of mind through every tide of thoughts): how shall we be able to understand this, when, in saying this, he was describing the intermediate position between gods and men — on account of their airy bodies — not of certain demons, that is the evil, but of all demons?

For he says that the poets feign this: that out of the number of these demons they make gods, and impose on them the names of gods, and by the unpunished license of fictitious verse assign from among them friends and foes to whatever men they please — while he maintains that the gods are removed from these demonic ways, from any earthly place, and in the abundance of their blessedness. This, then, is the fiction of the poets: to call gods those who are not gods, and to make them contend among themselves under the names of gods on account of men, whom they love or hate out of zeal for their respective parties. And he says this fiction is not far from the truth, because, though called by the titles of gods who are not gods, demons are nevertheless described as being such as they really are.

In short, he says that from this source comes that Homeric Minerva, 'who in the midst of the assemblies of the Greeks intervened to restrain Achilles.' That it should have been Minerva, then, he holds to be a poetic fiction; for he reckons Minerva a goddess, and sets her among the gods — whom he believes to be all good and blessed — in a lofty ethereal seat, far from the intercourse of mortals.

But that some demon should have been favouring the Greeks and opposing the Trojans, just as another, an aider of the Trojans against the Greeks, whom the same poet commemorates under the name of Venus or Mars — those whom he, as not doing such things, places in heavenly dwellings — and that these demons should have contended among themselves on behalf of those they loved against those they hated: this, he has confessed, the poets said not far from the truth. For of these they spoke such things, whom he testifies to be tossed, with a like movement of heart and surge of mind, through every tide of thoughts, that they might exercise loves and hatreds not according to justice, but as a populace like them does over hunters and charioteers — for some against others, according to the zeals of their parties.

For the Platonic philosopher seems to have taken care of this: that, when these things were sung by the poets, they should not be believed to be done by the gods themselves — whose names the poets impose in their fiction — but by the intermediate demons. CHAPTER VIII. Concerning the celestial gods and the aerial demons and the earthly men, by the definition of Apuleius the Platonist. What? Is that very definition of demons too little to be considered (in which surely he has embraced them all by his determination), when he says that demons are, in genus, living beings; in soul, passive; in mind, rational; in body, aerial; in time, eternal? In these five things he mentioned, he said nothing at all by which demons might seem to have in common with even good men anything that was not also in the evil.

For when he was embracing men themselves by a somewhat broader description, speaking of them in their place as of the lowest and earthly beings — after he had first spoken of the celestial gods, so that, having commended the two parts at the extremes, from the highest and the lowest, he might in the third place speak of the intermediate demons:

'Therefore,' he says, 'men, renowned for reason, mighty in speech, with immortal souls, with dying members, with fickle and anxious minds, with dull and frail bodies, with dissimilar manners, with similar errors, with obstinate audacity, with persistent hope, with fruitless labour, with fleeting fortune — individually mortal, yet all together perpetual in their universal kind, changeable by the succession of offspring to be supplied in turn, with flying time, slow wisdom, swift death, querulous life — inhabit the earth.' When he was saying here so many things that pertain to most men, did he by any chance also pass over in silence that which he knew to be of few, where he says 'slow wisdom'?

But if he had omitted it, in no way would he rightly have bounded the human race with such intent diligence of this description. But when he was commending the excellence of the gods, he affirmed that very blessedness, to which men wish to attain through wisdom, to be pre-eminent in them. Accordingly, if he had wished any demons to be understood as good, he would have set something also in their description, from which they might be thought to have in common either some part of blessedness with the gods, or some wisdom of whatever kind with men. But now he commemorated no good of theirs by which the good are distinguished from the evil. Although he spared the freer expression even of their malice — not so much lest he offend them, as lest he offend their worshippers, before whom he was speaking:

yet he signified to the prudent what they ought to feel about them, when indeed he separated the gods — whom he wished to be believed all good and blessed — utterly from their passions and, as he himself says, their disturbances, joining those gods to them only by the eternity of bodies; while in soul he most plainly inculcated that the demons are like, not the gods, but men — and this not by the good of wisdom, of which men too can be partakers, but by the perturbation of passions, which dominates the foolish and the wicked, but is so ruled by the wise and good that they would rather not have it than conquer it.

For if he wished demons to be understood as having in common with the gods not the eternity of bodies, but of souls, surely he would not separate men from a share in this matter, since beyond doubt, as a Platonist, he holds that men's souls too are eternal. Therefore, when he described this kind of living being, he said that men are 'with immortal souls, with dying members.' And by this, if for this reason men do not have eternity in common with the gods — because they are mortal in body — then for this reason demons do have it, because they are immortal in body. CHAPTER IX. Whether the friendship of the celestial gods can be procured for man through the intercession of demons.

What kind of mediators, then, are these between men and the gods, through whom men should seek the friendships of the gods, who have this worse in common with men, which is the better thing in a living being, that is, the soul; but have this better in common with the gods, which is the worse thing in a living being, that is, the body? For since a living being — that is, an animal — consists of soul and body, of which two the soul is assuredly better than the body, even if it be vicious and infirm, certainly better than even the soundest and firmest body, since its nature is more excellent and is not, by the stain of vices, set below the body — just as gold, even when soiled, is valued more dearly than silver or lead, however pure:

these mediators of gods and men, through whose interposition divine things are joined to human, have an eternal body in common with the gods, but a vicious soul in common with men: as if the religion by which they wish men to be joined to the gods through demons were situated in the body, not constituted in the soul. What wickedness, then, or what penalty has hung up these false and fallacious mediators, as it were head downward, so that they have the lower part of the living being, that is the body, in common with the higher beings, but the higher part, that is the soul, in common with the lower; and, joined to the celestial gods in their serving part, are wretched with earthly men in their dominant part? For the body is a servant, as Sallust also says:

'We use rather the command of the soul, the servitude of the body.' And he added: 'The one is common to us with the gods, the other with the beasts,' since he was speaking of men, who, like the beasts, have a mortal body. But these, whom the philosophers have provided to us as mediators between us and the gods, can indeed say of soul and body: the one is common to us with the gods, the other with men; but, as I have said, as though perversely bound and hung up, having a servile body in common with the blessed gods, a lordly soul in common with the wretched men, they are exalted in the lower part, cast down in the higher.

Whence, even if anyone supposes for this reason that they have eternity in common with the gods, because their souls are not loosed from the body by any death, as those of earthly animals are: not even thus is their body to be esteemed as the eternal chariot of the honoured, but rather as the eternal chain of the condemned. CHAPTER X. That, according to the opinion of Plotinus, men in a mortal body are less wretched than demons in an eternal one. Plotinus, certainly, of times near our own memory, is praised for having understood Plato more excellently than the rest. When he was treating of human souls:

'The Father,' he says, 'in His mercy, made their bonds mortal.' Thus he judged that this very thing, that men are mortal in body, pertains to the mercy of God the Father, lest they should be held forever by the misery of this life. Of this mercy the iniquity of the demons was judged unworthy, which, in the misery of a passive soul, received not a mortal body, like men, but an eternal one. They would indeed be happier than men, if they had a mortal body in common with them and a blessed soul in common with the gods. And they would be equal to men, if, with a wretched soul, they had at least deserved to have a mortal body in common with them — provided that they acquired some piety, so that they might rest from their toils even in death.

But now, with their wretched soul, they are not only not happier than men, but are even more wretched by the perpetual chain of the body. For he did not wish it to be understood that, by some discipline of piety and wisdom making progress, gods come to be made out of demons, since he most plainly said that the demons are eternal. CHAPTER XI. On the opinion of the Platonists, by which they think that the souls of men become demons after the body. He says, indeed, that the souls of men too are demons, and that out of men become Lares, if they are of good merit; Lemures, if evil, or Larvae; but that Manes are called gods, if it is uncertain whether they be of good or evil merits. In which opinion, how great an abyss they open up for the pursuit of corrupt morals, who would not see, if he but slightly attended?

Since, however wicked men may have been, while they imagine either that they become Larvae, or while they become Manes-gods, they become so much the worse the more eager they are to do harm, so that they suppose themselves to be invited even by certain sacrifices, as by divine honours, after death, in order that they may do harm. For he says that Larvae are noxious demons made out of men. But hence arises another question. Moreover, he reports that the blessed are called in Greek eudaimones, because they are of good soul, that is, good demons — affirming that the souls of men too are demons. CHAPTER XII. On the three pairs of contraries by which, according to the Platonists, the nature of demons and of men is distinguished.

But now we are dealing with those whom, in their proper nature, he described as being, between gods and men: in genus, living beings; in mind, rational; in soul, passive; in body, aerial; in time, eternal. For after he had first separated the gods in the lofty heaven, and men on the lowest earth, distinguished by their places and the dignity of their nature, he thus concluded: 'You have,' he says, 'meanwhile two kinds of living beings:'

'gods, differing very greatly from men by the loftiness of place, the perpetuity of life, the perfection of nature, with no near communication between them, since so great an interval of height separates the highest dwellings from the lowest, and life there is eternal and undefeated, here perishable and intermittent, and those natures are exalted to blessedness, these abased to miseries.' Here I see three contraries mentioned concerning the two extreme parts of nature, that is, the highest and the lowest. For the three praiseworthy things he proposed concerning the gods, these same he repeated — though in other words — so as to render against them three others from the side of men. The three of the gods are these: loftiness of place, perpetuity of life, perfection of nature.

These he repeated in other words, so as to set against them three contraries of the human condition. 'Since,' he says, 'so great an interval of height separates the highest dwellings from the lowest,' because he had said loftiness of place; 'and life,' he says, 'there is eternal and undefeated, here perishable and intermittent,' because he had said perpetuity of life; 'and those natures,' he says, 'are exalted to blessedness, these abased to miseries,' because he had said perfection of nature. Three things, therefore, were posited by him concerning the gods, that is: lofty place, eternity, blessedness; and against these three of men, that is: lowly place, mortality, misery. CHAPTER XIII.

How demons, if they are neither blessed with the gods nor wretched with men, can be intermediate between either part without communion with either. Among these three pairs of gods and men, since he placed demons in the middle, concerning place there is no controversy; for a middle place is most fittingly held and called between the highest and the lowest. The remaining two pairs remain, to which more attentive care must be applied — as to how either they may be shown to be alien from the demons, or, if they be assigned to them, as the middle position seems to demand. But they cannot be alien from them.

For not as we say that a middle place is neither highest nor lowest, can we rightly say that demons — since they are rational living beings — are neither blessed nor wretched, as are shrubs or cattle, which are devoid of sense or reason. For those in whose minds reason is present must necessarily be either wretched or blessed. Likewise we cannot rightly say that demons are neither mortal nor eternal. For all living things either live forever, or end by death what they live. But now he has said that demons are eternal in time. What, then, remains, except that these intermediate beings should have one of the two highest things and one of the two lowest?