駁異教徒 第 7 章 第 1/4 段

'What then,' someone will say, 'do you hold that no sacrifices at all ought to be made?' — That we may answer you not with our own opinion, but with that of your own Varro: 'None.' 'Why so?' 'Because,' he says, 'the true gods neither desire nor demand them; while those made of bronze, earthenware, gypsum, or marble care for these far less, for they lack sense; and no fault is incurred if you fail to offer them, nor any favor gained if you offer them.' — No opinion sounder or truer can be found, nor one which anyone — however perverse and difficult he be — could better seize upon.

For who is of so dull a heart as either to slay victims and sacrifices to things having no sense, or to think that they must be given to those who are far separated from these by nature and by blessedness? 'Who,' you ask, 'are the true gods?' — That we may answer you with a common and simple word: we do not know. For how can we know who those are whom we have never seen? From you we have been accustomed to hear that the gods are very many and are reckoned in a series of divinities:

If they exist, as you say, somewhere, and are true, as Terence believes, it follows that they are consistent with their own name — that is, such as we all perceive they ought to be, and worthy to be called by the appellation of this name; or rather, to conclude briefly, such as is the Lord of all things and the Almighty himself, whom we all know and understand to be the true God when we come to the mention of his name. For God differs in no respect from another in that whereby he is God; nor, being one in kind, can he be less or more in his parts, the uniformity of his proper quality being preserved.

And since this is not doubtful, it follows that they must be unbegotten and everlasting, seeking nothing from outside nor plucking any earthly pleasures from the resources of matter. Therefore, if these things are so, first we desire to learn from you what is the cause, what the reason, that you perform these sacrifices; and next, what profit from this reaches the gods themselves and settles into their advantage. For whatever is done ought to have a cause of itself, and not be so severed from reason that it is carried on in empty works and sports in the vain errors of emptiness. Are the heavenly gods perchance fed by these rites, and is there need of some supply of matter to maintain their frame?

And who among men is so utterly ignorant of God as to suppose that they are sustained by some kind of nourishment, and that it is the gift of food which makes them live and endure through boundless eternity? For whatever is propped up by external causes and things must needs be mortal and have a ready road to peril, when something whereby life is sustained begins to fail. Then, too, because we see nothing from these things that are brought to the altars pass over and reach the substances of the divinities. For either incense is offered and, melted upon the coals, vanishes; or the victim is an animal, and its blood is licked up by dogs; or if some entrail has been delivered to the altars, it burns in like manner and, dissolved, sinks into ash.

Unless perchance the god devours the souls of the victims, or from the burning altars pursues the savour and the smoke, and feeds upon the reeking fumes which the blazing entrails vomit forth, still wet with blood and moist with their former juices. But if God, as is said, is of no body and untouched by any contact, how can it come to pass that the incorporeal is nourished by corporeal things — that what is mortal should sustain what is immortal, and confer welfare upon a thing it cannot even touch, and supply it with the motions of life? This reasoning for the rites therefore falls away, as is plain; nor can it be said by anyone that sacrifices are celebrated for this cause, that the divinities are fed by them and sustained by their nourishment.

But if perhaps this is not so, are victims slain for the gods and cast upon the kindled altars for the sake of some pleasure of mind, as is said? And is there any man who would persuade himself that the gods grow soft with the outpouring of pleasures, exult in the joy of lust, and, like some base animal, are affected by soothing sensations and stroked by the flitting titillation of fleeting sweetness? For what is relaxed by pleasure must needs be contracted by its opposite, sadness; nor can that be free from the anxiety of grief which trembles with joy and is lifted up by the fickleness of delights. But the gods ought to be free from both affections, if we would have them everlasting and deprived of mortal frailty.

Moreover, since every pleasure is, as it were, a certain flattery of the body, and is taken in through those five well-known senses — if the gods above feel it, they too must needs partake of bodies, through which is the way for the senses and the door for receiving pleasures. Finally, what joy is it to delight in the slaughter of harmless creatures, often to hear their piteous lowings, to behold streams of blood, and souls fleeing with the gore, and, the hidden parts laid open, the entrails rolling out with the dung, and the hearts still throbbing with the remnant of breath, and the veins quivering in the palpitating flesh?

We half-savage men — nay rather, to declare more openly what is truer and fitter to say, savage men — whom unhappy necessity and evil custom have taught to take these creatures for food, are yet at times moved with pity for them; we ourselves find fault, and, when the deed has been seen and examined to the depths, we condemn it, because, having laid aside the law of humanity, we have broken the fellowship of our natural origin. Will anyone believe that the gods, pious, beneficent, and gentle, delight in the slaughter of cattle and are filled with gladness, whenever the beasts fall beneath the knife and piteously yield up their breath? And so, as we perceive, there is no cause of pleasure in sacrifices, nor is there any reason why they should be made, since there is none at all; and if perchance there be some, it has been shown that by no reasoning can it fall upon the gods.

It follows that we should also examine that view which we hear commonly bandied about and current in popular belief: that these sacrifices are made to the gods above for this cause, that they may lay aside their wrath and anger and be rendered gentle and calm, the indignation of their seething breasts being appeased. But if we hold to that definition which it behoves us ever steadfastly to remember — that all affections of the mind are unknown to the gods — it is consistent to believe that the gods never grow angry; nay rather, that no affection is farther from them than that which, being next to wild beasts and brutes, disturbs those who suffer it with storms and leads them to the danger of destruction. For whatever is troubled by the motion of anything is agreed to be passible and frail;

and what is subject to passion and frailty must needs be mortal; but anger troubles, and dissolves those who suffer it; therefore what is subject to the passions of anger must be called mortal. And yet we know that the gods must be everlasting and hold the nature of immortality; and if this is agreed and clear, anger is far from them and disjoined from their condition. By no reasoning, then, is it fitting to wish to appease in the gods above that which you cannot see to accord with their blessedness. But let us grant, as you will, that a disturbance of this kind is familiar to the gods, and that for the sake of appeasing it divine rites are performed and the solemn sacrifices celebrated: when, then, is it fitting to apply these offices, or at what time to present them?

Before they are angered and roused, or when they have been stirred and set in the very midst of their indignation? If it is that they may not take on anger, and we must forestall them beforehand, you are setting before us wild beasts, not gods — beasts before whom, lest they rage when incited and shatter the bars of their cages, it is the custom to throw food upon which they may savagely vent their rage and turn aside their craving to torment. But if this satisfaction of sacrifices is offered when they are already seething and blazing with indignation, I do not ask, I do not demand, whether that happy and lofty magnanimity of the divinities is moved by the offence of poor little men, and counts it as a wound if some blind creature, ever walking in the clouds of ignorance, has committed or said something whereby their authority might be diminished.

But neither do I demand that it be said or heard what causes of anger against men the gods have, that they should need to be soothed by sacrifices when offence has been incurred. Have they ever sanctioned any laws for mortals, or was it ever laid down by them what it befitted men to do or not to do, what to pursue, what to shun, or at least by what modes they wished to be worshipped — so that they should pursue with the vengeance of their wrath deeds done otherwise than they had commanded, and, being held in contempt, should wish to avenge themselves on the bold and the transgressors? In my opinion, nothing has ever been either established or sanctioned by them, since they have never been seen, nor, if any exist, could they be discerned by any clear knowledge.

What justice, then, is it that the heavenly gods should be angry, for any causes, with those to whom they have never deigned to show themselves, nor given nor imposed any laws which they wished to be observed by them and kept with inviolable obedience? But this, as I said, I pass over, and suffer to depart, granted in silence. This one thing above all I ask: what is the cause that, if I slay a pig, the god should change his disposition and mind and lay aside his fury; and if I burn up a little hen or a calf before his eyes and upon his altars, he should be brought to forgetfulness of the injury and wholly withdraw from all sense of offence?

What passes over to his grief from this deed, or of what healing is a goose, a he-goat, or a peacock, that by their blood a medicine should be applied to the angry god? Do the gods, then, sell their injuries, and, like tiny babes who, to spare their tempers and to refrain from wailing, are given little sparrows, dolls, toy horses, and cakes with which to be distracted — do the immortal gods thus take these appeasements, whereby they may lay aside their wrath and anger and return into favour with those who have offended them? And yet I supposed that the gods — if indeed it is right to believe that they are stirred by the motions of anger — would lay aside their wrath and anger without any rewards and without any fees, and pardon sinners their offences. For this is proper to divinities: to grant liberal pardons and gratuitous indulgences.

But if that cannot be, it is far wiser for them to persist stubbornly in their offence than to grow gentle through the corruption of gifts. For the multitude of sinners grows when hope of redeeming sin is given, and men go readily to their faults where the favour of those who pardon is for sale. Behold, if some ox, or any of those animals that are slain to appease and soften the fury of the divinities, should take on a human voice and speak in these words: 'So then, O Jupiter, or whoever else you are that are a god, is this a human and righteous thing, or to be reckoned in the estimation of any equity — that when another has sinned, I should be slain, and you should suffer satisfaction to be made to you from my blood,

I who have never harmed you, never knowingly or unknowingly violated your divinity and majesty — a dumb animal, as you know, following the simplicity of my nature and not slippery with the varieties of manifold manners? Have I ever performed your games less reverently and diligently? Have I ever paraded forth some presiding officer who offended your divinity? Have I sworn falsely by you? Have I by sacrilegious thefts seized and despoiled your offerings? Have I torn up your most sacred groves, or profaned and defiled certain hallowed places with private buildings? What cause is there, then, that another's crime should be atoned by my blood, and that my life and innocence should be brought forth for a stranger's wickedness?

Is it because I am a base animal, sharing neither in reason nor in counsel, as those declare who call themselves men and yet in ferocity outleap the brutes? Did not the same nature beget and form me too from the same beginnings? Is there not one breath of life that governs both them and me? Do I not breathe by a like process, and see, and am affected by the other senses? They have livers, lungs, hearts, intestines, and bellies: is not the same number of members assigned to me too? They love their offspring and come together to beget children: have not I too care for progeny and for its renewal, and sweetness when it has been begotten? But they, you say, are rational and utter articulate speech.

And how is it known to them whether I too do what I do by my own reasonings, and whether these words which I utter are the speech of my kind and understood by us alone? Ask Piety whether it is more just that I should be slain and destroyed, and that man should be granted pardon and impunity for what he has committed. Who forged iron into the sword? Was it not man? Who imposed slaughter upon peoples, who servitude upon nations? Was it not man? Who administered and mingled deadly draughts for parents, for brothers, for wives, for friends? Was it not man? Who devised or contrived crimes so great that they could not be unfolded in ten thousand years of annals or of days? Was it not man?

Is this, then, not brutal, not monstrous, not cruel — does it not seem to you, O Jupiter, unjust and barbarous, that I should be slain and butchered, so that you may be made calm and impunity may fall to the wicked?' Therefore it has been established that for this cause — namely, that the angered divinities may be appeased — sacrifices are made in vain; since reason has taught us both that the gods are never angry, and that they do not wish one to be destroyed for another, nor that by the blood of the guiltless the abolition of misdeeds should be procured. But perhaps someone will say:

'For this reason we expend victims and the other gifts upon the gods, that, being made in a manner friendly to our supplications, they may grant us prosperous things and turn evils away from us, may make us pass our days ever in joys, and may drive off sorrows and the things that threaten from chance mishaps.' — This point demands no small consideration, nor is what is said so customary as to be easily heard or believed. For at once that whole chorus of the most learned will fly to the attack, who, asserting and proving that whatever happens comes to pass by fate, would snatch this opinion from our hands and convict us of trusting in empty persuasions.

'Whatever in the world has been done, is done, and shall be done,' he will say, 'was long ago defined and fixed, and has immovable causes, by which things are bound to one another and weave an unconquerable necessity, linking things past with those that impend.' — If it is defined and fixed, what evil or good ought to befall each individual is already certain. And if it is certain and fixed, all the aids of the gods are idle, idle their hatreds, idle their kindnesses. For they can no more grant that which cannot come to pass than prevent that which must needs occur; save that, if they wished, they would be able to press this opinion still more forcibly, so as even to say that the gods themselves are worshipped by you in vain and adored with superfluous supplications.

For since they can neither reverse the order of things nor change the appointments of fate, what point, what reason is there in wishing to weary and deafen the ears of those on whose aids you cannot rely in your utmost necessities? Finally, if the gods drive away sorrowful and troublesome things, if they lavish those that are glad and friendly: whence come there in the world so many and so innumerable wretched folk, whence so many unhappy people dragging out a tearful life in the extremity of their lot? Why are they not immune from calamities who at every moment, at every instant, load and heap the altars with sacrifices?

'Do we not see,' they say, 'that some of them are the dwelling-places of diseases, their eyes put out and their ears stopped, deprived of the use of their feet, living maimed and without hands; drowned, overwhelmed, and destroyed by fires, shipwrecks, and collapses; rolled out of vast patrimonies and propping themselves up by hireling toil, begging their last pittances, banished, proscribed, ever in mourning, broken by the loss of their children, and harried by all the other misfortunes whose kinds and forms no enumeration can define?' — Which surely would not happen, if the gods, bound by the merits of the sacred rites, could ward off or turn aside these evils.

But now, because there is no place for chance in these things, but all are accomplished by inescapable necessity, the prescribed order runs its course and carries out what has once been decreed. Or else the heavenly ones must be called ungrateful, if, though they have the power of prevention, they suffer the unhappy race to be entangled in so many punishments and calamities. But perhaps they may say something great, and not to be received with deceived, careless, and scornful ears.

These points, however, since the matter is one of too long and much discourse, we run past unexplained and untouched, content to have laid down only this: that you attach dishonourable reports to your gods, if you deny that they otherwise bestow what is good and turn aside what is hostile, unless they have first been bought with the blood of she-goats and sheep and the other things that are brought to the altars. For it is unworthy, first, that that power of the divinities and the sublimity of the heavenly ones should be believed to hold their benefits for sale — first to receive, and only so to bestow; and then, what is far fouler, that unless they have received, they should profit no one, and should suffer the most wretched to undergo the fortunes of their perils, when they could prevent them and come to their aid.

If, of two men performing sacred rites, one is guilty and rich, the other of a narrow household but praiseworthy for innocence and probity; if the former slays a hundred oxen and as many mother-ewes with their little lambs, while the poor man burns a little incense and one small lump of some perfume: will it not follow that we must believe — if indeed the divinities bestow nothing except upon antecedent rewards — that they lend their favour to the rich man and turn their eyes away from the poor little one, whom not his disposition but the necessity of his household means has made frugal?

For where the giver is venal and mercenary, there favour must needs be granted in proportion to the greatness of the gift, and the vote must incline to that side from which far more of reward and unseemly corruption has flowed to him who bestows it. 'What then? If again two peoples, at variance in hostile arms, should enrich the altars of the gods above with equal sacrifices, and each should demand that strength and aid be lent to itself against the other: is it not again necessary to believe — if they are solicited by rewards to give help — that they must waver between the two sides, be at a standstill and unable to find what to do, since they perceive their favours bound by the acceptance of the sacred offerings? For either they will grant aid on this side and on that, which cannot be done;

for they will then be fighting against their very selves, and striving against their own favours and wills; or else they will cease to furnish help to both peoples — which, after the outlay and acceptance of the fee, is a great crime.' Therefore this whole infamy is to be driven far from the gods, nor is it at all to be said that they are enticed by rewards and fees to confer good things and remove their contraries — if indeed they are true gods and to be placed within the reserve of this name. For either whatever happens comes to pass by fate, and there is no place among the gods for canvassing and favour; or, if fate is shut out and cast forth, it is not consistent with their supernal dignity to put up for sale the favours of a good deed and the bounties they bestow.

We have, I think, sufficiently shown that in vain are victims, together with the things that accompany them, brought to the immortal gods; since they are neither fed by them, nor receive any pleasure, nor lay aside wrath or anger, nor grant favourable things, nor drive away and avert their contraries. It follows that we should also examine that view which is wont to be asserted by some and applied to the causes of the ceremonies. For they say that these rites were instituted for the honouring of the heavenly ones, and that what they do, they do for honour's sake, and thereby increase the powers of the divinities. — What then? If they should likewise say that they wake and sleep, walk about and stand still, write something and read, in order to render honour to the gods and make them ampler in their dignities?

For what is added to these beings from the blood of cattle, what from the rest of the performance of the rites — what power is set upon them and superadded? For all honour that is said to be paid to anyone and attributed as a mark of higher reverence is of a relative kind, referred to another, and consists of two parts: the yielding of the one who gives, and the aggrandizement of the one who receives. As when someone, at the sight of a man of most powerful name and authority, steps aside from the road, presses close, bares his head and leaps down from his carriage, and then, bowing low, salutes him, imitating the trembling servility of a little slave: I see what is done in an act of honouring of this kind:

by the submission of the one, much is given to the other, and it is brought about that he seems great whom the deference of the lesser has exalted and set above his own concerns. But all this yielding, and the attribution of honour of which we speak, has its seat in men alone, whom natural weakness and the love of standing above others teach to rejoice in eminences and to be preferred in comparison with others. But I ask, among the gods above, where is there place for honour, or what pre-eminences are found to be added to them by these performances of the rites? Do they become more august, more powerful, when cattle are slain? Is anything of this added to them, or do they begin to be gods more amply in divinity?

And yet I judge it to be next to an insult — nay rather, to be a full insult — when a god is said to be honoured by a man and gratified by the offering of some gift. For if honour increases and heaps up the dignity of him to whom it has been attributed, it follows that a god is made greater by a man, from whom he has received the gift and the conferral of honour; and thus the matter is brought to this pass, that he is the inferior god who is regaled with human honours, while the man is the more sublime who increases the power of the divinity. 'What then,' someone will say, 'do you hold that no honour at all is to be given to the gods?' — If you set before us gods such as, if they exist, they ought to be, and such as we all mean in the utterance of this name:

how can we fail to hold them in honour, even the greatest honour, since we have received it as a duty to reverence even men set in more powerful commands, of whatever rank they may be, of whatever fortune? 'Who then is this greatest one?' — One far more dutiful than is reckoned by you, and established in a more powerful kind. 'Tell us,' you say, 'what opinion about the gods is worthy, right, and honourable, and not blameworthy through the deformity of any baseness.'

— First, that you believe them to have nothing resembling a man, nor to expect anything that comes to them from without and from outside; then — as has been said more than once — that they do not blaze with the flames of anger, do not exult in bodily pleasure, are not canvassed with rewards to do good nor provoked to do harm, do not hold their kindness and favour for sale, do not rejoice in honour conferred nor grow indignant and take offence at honour withheld, but — what is proper to a divine being — know themselves by their own power, and do not value themselves by the flatteries of others. And yet, that we may see what sort of thing this is that is spoken of — what kind of honour is this, to bind a wether, a ram, a bull beneath the god's face and to slay it in his sight?

What kind of honour is it to invite a god to blood, which you may see him share and hold in common with dogs? What kind of honour is it, by the burning of piled-up wood, to overspread the sky with smoke, and to darken the images of the divinities with deadly blackness? But if the things that are done are to be weighed by their own worth, and not appraised by opinions taken up beforehand, then those altars of yours, and these fair shrines, are but the burning-places of the most wretched kind of animals — pyres and graveyards, built for a most foul work and fashioned into a seat of stenches. What say you, O men? Is that stench, then, which rises from the burning hides and breathes forth as they blaze,

and which rises from the bones, from the bristles, from the wool of lambs and the feathers of hens — is that a god's gift and honour, and are these offered to those whose temples, when you prepare to approach them, you present yourselves pure of every stain, elegant and most chaste? And what can be more defiled, more wretched, more filthy than these beings, if they are so made by the nature of their perception that they hold such cruel things among their loves, and stenches are for them a pleasure — stenches which neither the sacrificers themselves can bear, nor can a free-born nostril endure when they are drawn in through the breath? But if you suppose that the minds of the gods above are honoured and gratified by the blood of living creatures, why do you not slay for them mules and elephants and asses too? Why not dogs also, and bears and foxes, camels and beasts and lions?

And since you reckon birds too among the numbers of your victims, why not vultures, eagles, storks, ospreys, buzzards, ravens, hawks, and owls, and along with them salamanders, water-snakes, vipers, and venomous spiders? For surely these too have blood beneath them, and are stirred by a vital breath in like manner. What greater workmanship or skill is there in the former, what less in the latter, that these should not increase, while those enhance, the dignity of the gods above? 'Because it is fitting,' he says, 'to honour the heavenly gods with those things by which we ourselves are fed, sustained, and live, and which they have deigned in their kindness to bestow upon us for our sustenance by their divine will.'

— But the same gods have also bestowed upon you cumin, cress, turnips, bulbs, celery, thistles, roots, gourds, rue, mint, basil, pennyroyal, and cut leeks, and have ordained that these be among your uses as part of your nourishment. Why then do you fail to give these too upon the altars, and to sprinkle over all these things savory of the meadow, and to mingle in the sharpness of onions? Behold —