All of them have the care of warding off deadly hunger and of necessity keeping watch for their sustenance; and what else do we do amid such great occupations of life, but seek those things by which the peril of hunger may be avoided and unhappy anxiety laid to rest? They feel diseases and starvation and at the last are dissolved by old age; and what of us? Are we exempt from these evils, and are we not likewise broken by the discomforts of diseases and destroyed by the decay of old age? And if that too is true which is said in the more secret mysteries — that the souls of the wicked pass into cattle and other beasts after they have been separated from human bodies — it is more manifestly proven that we are near of kin and not sundered by any longer intervals.
Since there is one and the same thing in us and in them, by which we are said to be living beings and to carry on vital motion. 'But we are rational, and we surpass the whole race of dumb creatures in intelligence.' — I should believe that this was said most truly, if all men lived with reason and counsel, kept the tenor of their duties, abstained from things unlawful, did not approach base businesses, and if no one, through the depravity of his counsel and the blindness of his ignorance, demanded things contrary and hostile to his very self. Yet I should like to know what this reason is, by which we are superior to all the kinds of animals. Is it because we have made ourselves dwellings, by which we may avoid the winter's cold and the burning heats of summer?
What of it? Do the other living creatures not have foresight for this matter? Do we not behold some building for themselves the dwellings of little nests in the most convenient sites, others covering and fortifying themselves under overhanging rocks and crags, others hollowing out the floors of the earth and preparing for themselves defenses and lairs in diggable pits? And if kindly nature had willed to grant them also serviceable hands, it would be beyond doubt that they too would build the lofty summits of walls and hammer out artful novelties.
Yet in those very things which they make with their beaks and claws, we behold that there is much semblance of reason and of wisdom, which we men could imitate by no meditation, although we have hands that are craftsmen and are artificers of every kind of perfection. 'They know not how to fashion clothing, chairs, ships, and ploughs, nor, in short, the rest of the household furniture which familiar use demands.' — These are not the gifts of knowledge, but the inventions of most abject necessity. Nor did the arts fall together with our souls from the recesses of heaven, but they were all sought out and born here on earth, and, with the passage of the ages, were gradually forged little by little through meditation.
But if souls possessed the sciences — which it is fitting that a divine and immortal kind should possess — from the beginning all men would know all things, nor would there be any age that was ignorant of any art or unprovided by experience of things. But now indeed, life, poor and in need of many things, seeing that certain things turn out conveniently, while it imitates, tries, and tests, while it slips, reshapes, and alters, has out of continual correction both put together the small little sciences of the arts and, over very many periods of time, brought them, corrected, to a single outcome.
But if men either knew themselves thoroughly, or received by any breath of surmise the understanding of God, they would never claim for themselves a divine and immortal nature, nor esteem themselves to be something magnificent, because they have made for themselves gridirons, ladles, and mixing-bowls; because they have made undershirts, wraps, cloaks, little mantles, robes of state, knives, breastplates, and swords; because they have made rakes, little axes, and the ploughshare. Never, I say, would they believe, uplifted by conceit and arrogance, that they are the first divinities and equal to the highest of the Prince, because they have brought forth grammar, music, oratory, and the formulas of geometry;
in which crafts we see nothing so admirable that, from their invention, souls should be believed to be superior both to the sun and to all the stars, and that this whole world, whose members these things are, should be surpassed in dignity and substance. For what else do they promise that they can either impart or hand down, than that we should know the rules of nouns and their differences, the intervals in the sounds of voices, that we should speak persuasively in lawsuits, that we should measure the surfaces of lands? And if souls had brought these things with them from the divine regions, it would be necessary that all should know them, that they should have long since been handled in all the world, nor would any race of men be found that was not equally and uniformly instructed in all these things.
But now indeed, in the world, how few there are who are musicians, dialecticians, and geometers; how few who are orators, poets, and grammarians! From which it appears, as has often been said, that these things were invented by the necessity of places and times, and that learned and divine souls did not fly hither; for neither are all learned, nor can all learn, but among them there are very many of duller and slower keenness, and are compelled to the pursuit of learning by the coercion of blows. But if it were established that the things we learn are recollections, as was held in the ancient opinions, it would be fitting that we all, coming from one truth, should know one thing and recollect one thing, and not have diverse, not many and dissenting opinions;
but now indeed, since each of us asserts one thing and another, it is manifest and plain that we have brought nothing from heaven, but that we learn things born here and claim as our own things gathered together out of surmises. And that we may show you more clearly and more manifestly of what price is that man whom you believe to exist most like to the higher power, conceive in your minds this image, and — since it can be done if we set about it — let us hold to it, by the assumption of a likeness, as though we had set about it.
Let there be for us, then, in the dug-out earth, a habitable place forming the shape of a chamber, closed by roof and walls, neither chilly in the cold nor too fervent in the heat, but so tempered and middling that we suffer neither the sensation of cold nor the strong ardor of summer's burning. Into it let the sound of no voice at all fall — not of a bird, not of a beast, not of a storm, not of a man, nor, in short, of any crash or of the terribly resounding sky. Let us then contrive how it may receive light: not from fire brought in, nor from the sun beheld, but let some spurious thing be made which, with darkness interposed, may counterfeit the image of light;
let there be not one door, nor let the entrance be straight, but let it be approached by winding turns, nor let it ever be opened, except when necessary reason shall demand it. Now, since we have prepared a seat for the image, let us next presently take up someone newly born and place him in the lodging of that place, which is to have no thing in it and to be empty and void — let him be, if you will, of Platonic or Pythagorean stock, or of one of those who are reported to have been of divine keenness or were named most wise from the responses of the gods. And when this has been done, it follows that he must be nourished and reared with suitable nourishments.
Let us therefore also provide a nurse who always approaches him naked, always silent, making no word, nor parting her mouth and lips into the use of any speech; but when she has given the breasts and supplied the consequent offices, let her leave him, once fed, to rest, and let her keep the doors shut day and night without interruption — for the matter for the most part demands that nurse's cares be at hand and that timely motions be observed. But when the infant begins to need to be supported by more solid foods, let them be brought in by the same nurse, with her garment, as we have said, laid aside, and the tenor of silence preserved.
But let the food itself which is brought in be one and the same always, differing in no material nor renewed by various flavors, but let it be either a gruel of millet, or bread of spelt, or — that we may imitate the ancient ages — acorns from hot ashes or berries from the branches of the wild. But let the drinking of wine be utterly unknown, nor let anything else be applied to quench thirst than pure liquor from springs, untouched by the heat of fire and, if it can be done, served up in the hollows of the hands. For a familiar habit will arise from custom, turned into nature, nor will his appetite be stretched further, knowing nothing more that might be sought. To what, then, do these things look?
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Ut, quoniamcreditumestanimasdivinasadeoimmortalesesseetadhominumcorporadiscipliniscumomnibusadvolare, experiamurexistoquemhocgenerevoluimuseducari, capiatneresfidemansitlevitercreditaetfrustrabili | f. 38b | expectationepraesumpta. 2.
It is this: since it has been believed that souls are divine, immortal from God, and fly to the bodies of men together with all their disciplines, let us test from this one, whom we have willed to be reared in this fashion, whether the matter accepts belief, or whether it has been lightly believed and presumed with a frustrable expectation.
Let him then come forth to us, reared in that hidden solitude, having spent as many years as you please — you wish him twenty, you wish him thirty, nay, when he shall have measured out forty years — and let him be brought into the assemblies of mortals; and if it is true that he is a portion of the principal substance, already derived here from the glad fountains of life to spend his time, before he takes cognizance of any thing or is imbued with human speech, let him give answer when asked who he himself is, or of what father, in what regions he was brought forth, in what way or by what means he was reared, celebrating what work or business he has run through the course of time already past.
Will he not thus stand duller and blunter than any beast, log, or stone; will he not, sent forth into new things and never before known to him, be ignorant of his very self above all else? Will he be able, if you ask, to show what the sun is, the earth, the seas, the stars, the clouds, the mist, the rains, the thunders, the snow, the hail? Will he be able to know what trees are, or plants, or grasses, or the bull, the horse, or the ram, the camel, the elephant, or the kite? If you give to one who is hungry a grape, a must-cake, an onion, a thistle, a cucumber, a fig, will he know that hunger can be stilled by all of these, or in what manner each of them ought to be for eating?
If you make a great fire or set poisonous beasts around him, will he not go through the midst of the flames, the vipers, the poisonous spiders, not knowing that they are harmful and being ignorant of what fear itself is? Now indeed, if you place in his midst clothing and furniture, both urban and rustic, will he be able to distinguish and discern the same, for what business each thing is suited, to the use of what office they are fitted? Will he indicate for what wearing a coverlet-cloth has been made, or a turban, a breast-band, a bandage, a cushion, a napkin, a cloak, a woman's head-dress, a hand-towel, a sheepskin garment, low shoes, a sandal, boots? What if you should add to ask what a wheel is, or a threshing-sledge, a winnowing-fan, a large jar, a cask, an oil-press, a ploughshare or a sieve, a mill, a plough-tail or a hoe?
What if you ask what an arched seat is, a needle, a scraper, a wash-basin, a stool, a ladle, a small dish, a candlestick, a drinking-cup, a besom, a goblet, a sack? What of a lyre, a flute, silver, bronze, gold, a whetstone, a weaver's shuttle, a book? What of the other instruments with which human life is girded and held together? Thus, as we have said, will he not, after the manner of an ox or an ass, a pig, or if there is any slower animal, gaze at these things indeed, regarding their various shapes, but not knowing what the several things are and ignorant for what purpose they are possessed? If, forced by some necessity, he must utter a voice — as is customary with the dumb — will he not, with gaping mouth, cry out some inarticulate thing?
What in the Meno, O Plato — do you inquire of a little boy certain things brought to bear by the reasonings of number, and strive from his answers to prove that the things we learn we do not learn, but return to the memory of things which we had known of old? If he truly answers you — for it does not befit us to deny credit to the matters you tell of — he is led not by knowledge of things but by intelligence; and from the fact that he has certain numbers known from his daily uses, it comes about that he follows when questioned, and the very increase of multiplication always leads him on. But if you truly are confident that souls fly hither immortal and full of knowledge, cease to question that stripling, whom you see to be knowing of things and to be established within the bounds of humanity;
call that forty-year-old to you, and question him — not about something abstruse, not something involved, not about triangles, not about squares, not what a cube is or a power, a sesquioctave or an ultimate sesquitertian — but about what lies in the midst: ask how great a little sum twice two, twice three make. We wish to see, we wish to know, what he answers when asked, whether he unfolds the question put to him. Will he thus feel, though his ears lie open to him, whether you say anything, whether you ask anything, whether you require anything to be answered to you by himself? And will he not, like some stump or, as it has been said, a Marpesian
rock, stand tongueless and dumb, ignorant and unaware of this very thing — whether you are conversing rather with yourself or with another, whether you are talking with another or with yourself, whether that speech which you utter is a discourse or the sound of a voice signifying no things but drawn out in an empty continuation? What do you say, O men who bestow upon man more than enough from another's generosity? Is this that learned soul which you speak of — immortal, perfect, divine, holding the fourth place after God the Prince of things and after the twin minds, and flowing forth from the living mixing-bowls? Is this that precious man, endowed with the most august faculties of reasoning, who is called the lesser world and was framed and formed in the semblance of the total likeness:
who, as has appeared, is better than no beast, blunter than a log, than a stone; who knows not men and ever spends his life in dumb solitudes, lingers sluggish, is strong to no purpose, though he live for countless years and is never released from the bodily bonds? But when he has attained the schools and been instructed by the teachings of masters, he is made prudent and learned, and lays aside the inexperience which he had but lately. Yet — I have said it — such an one is the true price of man.
Both the ass and the ox learn, equally by practice and by constant exertion of being driven, to plough and to grind; the horse learns to bear the yoke and to recognize the turnings on the racecourse; the camel to lower itself, whether when it takes up its burdens or when it lays them down; the dove, once set free, to fly back to its master's dwellings; the dog, when it has found its prey, to check itself and restrain its barking; the parrot to repeat words, and the raven to bring out names. But when I hear it said that the soul is something surpassing, akin and near to God, knowing that all things here come to it from higher ages, I do not wish it to learn but to teach, nor from being learned, as they say, to become a beginner, but rather, retaining its own possessions, to bind itself about with earthly bodies.
For unless the matter were so, how could it be distinguished whether the soul recollects what it hears or learns it? Since it is far easier to believe that it learns what it did not know than that it has forgotten what a little before it knew. 'Because of the opposition of the body it loses the recollection of former things,' as Plato says. But then, where is that saying, that incorporeal souls have no substance? For what belongs to no body is not impeded by the opposition of another, nor can it lose anything of its own being, seeing that it cannot sustain the touch of an opposed thing.
For just as number, being constituted without bodies, remains untouched and inviolable, though it be overwhelmed by a thousand bodies, so it is necessary that souls, if they are incorporeal as is asserted, suffer no forgetfulness of former things, however much the most solid bonds of bodies may bind them about. Moreover, the same reasoning not only shows that they are not incorporeal, but even deprives them all of immortality and applies them to those limits by which life is wont to be bounded. For whatever, when some cause presses upon it, is so altered and changed that it cannot retain its own integrity, must of necessity be judged to be by nature passive. And whatever is ready and exposed to suffering, by that very passibility intervening, proclaims itself to be corruptible.
Therefore, if souls too lose all that they knew, being seized by the bonds of the body, they must of necessity suffer something which causes them to put on the blindness of forgetfulness. For neither, having suffered nothing at all or preserving their integrity, can they lay aside the knowledge of things or pass into other states without change in themselves. And yet we hold that what is one, what is immortal, what is simple, in whatever thing it be, must of necessity always retain its own nature, and ought not, nor is able, to suffer anything, if only it means to be perpetual and to abide within the limits of its own immortality. For every suffering is the door of death and destruction, a way leading to death, and bringing upon things an inevitable dissolution:
and if souls feel this and yield to its touch and its assaults, then life is theirs by use, not handed over in full ownership, however differently some may argue and place the assurance of so great a matter upon their own reasonings. Yet lest we depart not more fully instructed from you: how is it that you say souls, when they have been wrapped in earthly bodies, do not have recollection of former things, when, placed in these very bodies and made almost insensible by their commingling, they yet stubbornly and faithfully hold fast those things which, many years before—say eighty or even more, if you will—they either did or suffered or spoke or heard?
For if it is brought about by the obstacle of the body that they do not remember those things which long ago and before becoming man they knew, it is rather to be expected that they should forget the things they did while shut up in bodies than the things done outside, while not yet joined to men. For that which takes away from things that have entered in the recollection of former things ought also to lose by unremembering obliteration the things done within itself. For one cause cannot produce two effects contrary to each other, so as to lull to sleep the memories of some things while allowing the recollection of the doer's own deeds to come back.
But if the souls, which you say are hindered by the obstacle of the limbs from recollecting their arts and their ancient knowledge, yet in these very bodies, in the state in which they are placed, remember and know that they are souls and do not possess corporeal substance, that they have been endowed with the condition of immortality—then what rank do they hold among things, in what order they have been distinguished by God the Father, by what reason they came to these lowest regions of the world, what qualities and from which circles they drew as they glided down into these places? How, I say, do they know that they were most learned and lost through the obstruction of the body the things they knew? For this very thing too they ought to have been ignorant of, if the conjunction of the body had brought upon them any taint:
For to know what you have been and what today you are not is no sign of a memory that has perished, but rather a proof and token of a memory preserved. Since these things are so, cease, I beseech you, cease to value at monstrous prices things small and of trifling name; cease to enroll man—when he is but a proletarian and reckoned by his head—among the first ranks, the classes; when he is destitute, poor in his household and in a poor hovel, and never deserving to be named among the patrician nobility.
For whereas you, being true authors of rectitude and integrity, ought to have broken down pride and arrogance—by whose wings we are all lifted up and puffed out with the vanity of empty things—not only do you judge that these evils fall upon us, but, what is much graver, you have added the causes by which vices grow and incorrigible wickedness endures. For what man is there—even though he be always of a disposition that flees the shameful and disgraceful—who, when he hears it said, chiefly by wise men, that souls are immortal and not subject to the laws of the fates, would not rush headlong into every vileness, would not, careless and undaunted, undertake and set his hand to unlawful deeds,
would not, in fine, grant to his own desires all things that ungoverned lust commands, being moreover fortified by the freedom of impunity? For what will hinder him from doing these things? The fear of a supernal power and divine judgment? And how can he be terrified by the dread of any fear, who has been persuaded that he is as immortal as the first God himself, and that nothing can be judged concerning him by Him, since immortality is one in both, and the one immortality cannot be troubled by any equality with the condition of the other? 'But punishments among the dead are recorded, and manifold with kinds of torments?'
And who will be so stupid and ignorant of the consequences of things as to believe that anything can harm incorruptible souls—whether the darkness of Tartarus, or fiery rivers, or marshes with muddy whirlpools, or the whirling of revolving wheels? For that which is not in contact with anything, and is removed from the laws of dissolution, though it be surrounded by all the flames of burning rivers, though it be rolled in mire, though it be buried by the falling of overhanging rocks and the ruins of enormous mountains, must needs remain unimpaired and untouched, and take on no sense of deadly suffering.
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Quidquodistapersuasionontantumestincitatrixadvitialibertateexipsapeccandi, verumetiamphilosophiaeipsiuscausamtollitetinanitereamsuscipisupervacanei | f. 42 b | operisdifficultatedeclarat. Namsiverumest, animasnulliusesseparticipesfinisetcumomnibussaeculisaevorumperpetuitateprocedere, quidpericulireshabetcontemptispraetermissisquevirtutibus, quibusestcontractioratquehorridiorvita, voluptatibussedareacperomnialibidinumgeneraeflrenatumspargereinmensaecupiditatisardorem? 4. Nedeliciismarceatetcorrumpaturmollitudinevitiorum? - Etquapoteritrationecorrumpiidquodimmortale, quodsemperestetnulliobnoxiumpassioni?
Moreover, this persuasion is not only an incitement to vices by the very freedom of sinning, but it even takes away the reason for philosophy itself, and declares that it is vainly undertaken, by the difficulty of a superfluous labor. For if it is true that souls partake of no end and proceed with all the ages in the perpetuity of the ages, what danger is there in the matter, if, despising and passing over the virtues by which life is made more restricted and rougher, one gives oneself to pleasures and, unbridled, scatters through every kind of lust the ardor of immense desire? Lest one grow flabby with delights and be corrupted by the softness of vices? And by what reasoning can that be corrupted which is immortal, which always is and subject to no suffering?
Lest it grow foul and be polluted by the filthiness of base deeds? And how can that be polluted which does not possess corporeal substance? Or where can the contamination place its seat, where there is no space in which the mark of that very contamination can fix itself? But again, if souls approach the doors of death, as the opinion of Epicurus is defined, not even so is there a sufficient cause why philosophy should be sought, even if it is true that by it souls are purged and rendered pure from all viciousness.
For if souls perish in common and in the very bodies their vital sense fails and is extinguished, it is a mark not only of the greatest error but of stolid blindness to bridle inborn appetites, to confine life within narrow limits, to indulge nothing to nature, to do nothing which desires have bidden and urged, when no rewards of so great a labor await you, once the day of death has come and you have been loosed from the bonds of the body. Therefore a certain middle and doubtful, ambiguous nature of souls has given birth to a place for philosophy and found a reason why it should be sought, since the one, forsooth, dreads danger from evils committed, while the other conceives good hopes, if he does no crime and passes his life with duty and justice.
Hence it is that among learned men, endowed with excellence of talents, there is a contest concerning the quality of souls: and some say they are of a mortal nature and cannot sustain a divine substance, while others say they are everlasting and cannot degenerate into a mortal nature—for the fact that this is so is brought about by the law of the middle state: since arguments are at hand for those who find them passive and perishable, and to these, on the contrary, arguments are not lacking by which they are shown to be divine and immortal.
Since these things are so, and since we hold it handed down by the highest Author that souls are not far removed from the gaping jaws of death, yet can nevertheless be made long-lived by the gift and beneficence of the highest Sovereign, if only they attempt and study to acknowledge Him—for the knowledge of Him is a kind of leaven of life and the glue of a thing that would fall apart—and then, laying aside their ferocity and inhumanity, take up gentler dispositions, that they may be prepared for that which shall be given: what reason is there that we should be judged by you as brute and stolid, if because of these fears we have surrendered and given ourselves over to God the Deliverer? Against noxious blows
and the venomous bites of serpents we often seek out remedies and protect ourselves with amulets, which the Psylli, the Marsi, and other peddlers and quacks sell; and lest the cold and the scorching suns should trouble us, with anxious diligence of caution we prepare the defenses of houses and clothing. When, then, the fear of death—that is, the destruction of souls—is set before us, why should we not, out of that sense of advantage by which we all love ourselves, hold fast and embrace Him who promises to deliver us from such a peril, and prefer Him even to our very souls, if only a just requital exists? You place the salvation of your souls in yourselves, and trust that you become gods by your own inward effort;
but we, on the contrary, promise ourselves nothing from our own weakness, seeing that our nature is of no strength and is overcome by its own affections in every contest of things. You, as soon as you have departed loosed from the knots of the limbs, think that wings will be at hand for you, by which you can proceed to heaven and fly to the stars; we shrink from such great boldness, and do not count it to be placed within our power to seek the things above, since we hold even this very thing uncertain—whether we deserve to receive life and to be led away from the law of mortality. You presume that you will of your own accord, with none forbidding, return to the Lord's court as to your own dwelling; but we do not hope that this can be done without the Lord, nor do we judge that so much power and license is granted to any of men.
Since, then, these things are so, what injustice is so great, that we should seem to you fools in our credulity in these matters, when we see you both believing similar things and being engaged in the same expectation? If we are deemed worthy of derision because we promise ourselves a hope of this kind, the same derision awaits you also, who claim for yourselves a hope of immortality. If, however, you hold and follow reason, grant us also some portion out of that reason.