and in order to confirm this, he denied the foreknowledge of future things; and thus, while he wishes to make men free, he made them sacrilegious. But the religious mind chooses both, confesses both, and by the faith of piety confirms both. How so? he says; for if there is foreknowledge of future things, all those things will follow which are linked together, until we arrive at the point where nothing is in our will. Further, if there is something in our will, by the same steps retraced we arrive at the point where there is no foreknowledge of future things. For through all those steps the argument runs back thus: if there is choice of the will, not all things come to pass by fate; if not all things come to pass by fate, there is not a certain order of all causes;
if there is no certain order of causes, neither is there a certain order of things to the foreknowing God, since things cannot happen except through preceding and efficient causes; if the order of things is not certain to the foreknowing God, not all things come to pass as he foreknew they would come; further, if not all things come to pass as they were foreknown by him to come, there is not, he says, in God foreknowledge of all future things. But we, against these sacrilegious and impious presumptions, say both that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we do by will whatever we feel and know is done by us only when we are willing. Yet we do not say that all things come to pass by fate; nay, we say that nothing comes to pass by fate;
since we show that the name of fate, where it is usually placed by those who speak of it, that is, in the position of the stars when anyone is conceived or born, avails nothing, because the thing itself is asserted vainly. But the order of causes, in which the will of God has the greatest power, we neither deny, nor do we designate by the name of fate—unless perhaps we understand 'fatum' (fate) as derived from 'fari' (to speak), that is, from speaking. For we cannot deny that it is written in the holy Scriptures: 'God has spoken once; these two things have I heard: that power belongs to God, and to you, O Lord, belongs mercy; for you render to each one according to his works.' For what is said,
'He has spoken once,' is understood as 'immovably,' that is, unchangeably 'he speaks,' just as he knows unchangeably all things that are to be and that he himself is going to do. In this sense, then, we might call fate 'from speaking,' were it not that this name is already accustomed to be understood in another matter, toward which we do not wish the hearts of men to be inclined. But it does not follow that, if to God the order of all causes is certain, therefore nothing is in the choice of our will. For our very wills are themselves in the order of causes, which is certain to God and contained in his foreknowledge, since human wills too are causes of human works;
and thus he who foreknew all the causes of things could surely not, among those causes, be ignorant of our wills, which he foreknew to be the causes of our works. For even that which Cicero himself concedes, that nothing happens unless an efficient cause precedes, suffices to refute him in this question. For what does it help him that he says that nothing indeed happens without a cause, but that not every cause is fatal, because there is a fortuitous cause, there is a natural one, there is a voluntary one? It is enough that he confesses that everything which happens can happen only when a cause precedes.
For as to those causes which are called fortuitous, whence also fortune has received its name, we do not say that they are nothing, but that they are hidden; and we attribute them to the will either of the true God or of some spirits whatsoever; and the natural causes themselves we by no means sever from the will of him who is the author and founder of all nature. But the voluntary causes are either of God, or of angels, or of men, or of any animals whatsoever—if indeed those motions of souls devoid of reason, by which they do certain things according to their nature, when they either desire or avoid something, are to be called wills. And by the wills of angels I mean both of good ones, whom we call the angels of God, and of evil ones, whom we call the angels of the devil, or even demons:
so also the wills of men, both of the good, that is, and of the evil. And by this it is gathered that there are no efficient causes of all things which happen except voluntary ones, namely of that nature which is the spirit of life. For this air too, or wind, is called 'spirit'; but since it is a body, it is not the spirit of life. The Spirit of life, therefore, which quickens all things and is the creator of every body and of every created spirit, is himself God, a Spirit indeed uncreated. In his will is the supreme power, which aids the good wills of created spirits, judges the evil ones, orders all, and grants power to some, to others does not grant it. For just as he is the creator of all natures, so he is the giver of all powers, but not of wills.
For evil wills are not from him, since they are contrary to nature, which is from him. Bodies, therefore, are more subject to wills—some to our wills, that is, to those of all mortal living beings, and more to men's than to beasts'; but some to the wills of angels; yet all are most of all subject to the will of God, to whom all wills too are subjected, since they have no power except what he grants. The cause of things, therefore, which makes and is not made, is God; but the other causes both make and are made, such as are all created spirits, especially the rational ones. But corporeal causes, which are made rather than make, are not to be numbered among efficient causes, since they can do only what the wills of spirits do out of them.
In what way, then, does the order of causes, which is certain to the foreknowing God, bring it about that nothing is in our will, when our wills have a great place in that very order of causes? Let Cicero, then, contend with those who call this order of causes fatal, or rather who designate it by the name of fate—which we especially abhor on account of the word, which is not wont to be understood in the true sense. But as for the fact that he denies that the order of all causes is most certain and most fully known to the foreknowledge of God, we detest him more than the Stoics do. For either he denies that God exists—which indeed he attempted to do in the books On the Nature of the Gods under the introduced person of another;
or if he confesses that God exists, whom yet he denies to foreknow future things, even so he says nothing else than what that fool said in his heart: 'There is no God.' For he who is not foreknowing of all future things is assuredly not God. Wherefore our wills too have as much power as God willed and foreknew them to have; and therefore whatever power they have, they have most certainly, and what they are going to do, they themselves will altogether do, because he foreknew that they would have power and would do it, whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived.
Wherefore, if it pleased me to apply the name of fate to anything, I would rather say that fate belongs to the weaker, being the will of the stronger who has him in his power, than that by that order of causes—which the Stoics call fate not in the customary sense, but in their own—the choice of our will is taken away. Whence neither is that necessity to be dreaded, in dreading which the Stoics labored to distinguish the causes of things so that they might withdraw some from necessity and subject others to it, and among those which they did not wish to be under necessity they placed our wills too, lest, forsooth, they should not be free if they were subjected to necessity.
For if that is to be called our necessity which is not in our power, but which accomplishes what it can even though we be unwilling—such as is the necessity of death—it is manifest that our wills, by which we live rightly or wrongly, are not under such a necessity. For we do many things which, if we were unwilling, we would certainly not do. To this belongs, first of all, the very act of willing; for if we will, it is; if we will not, it is not; for we would not will if we were unwilling. But if that be defined as necessity, according to which we say that it is necessary that something be so or come to pass so, I know not why we should fear it, lest it take away from us the liberty of the will.
For we do not place either the life of God or the foreknowledge of God under necessity, if we say that it is necessary for God always to live and to foreknow all things; just as neither is his power diminished when it is said that he cannot die or be deceived. For this he cannot do in such a way that, if he could, he would surely be of less power. For he is rightly called almighty, who nevertheless cannot die and cannot be deceived. For he is called almighty by doing what he wills, not by suffering what he does not will; which, if it happened to him, he would by no means be almighty. Hence, for this very reason, he cannot do certain things, because he is almighty. So likewise, when we say that it is necessary that, when we will, we will by free choice:
we both say what is without doubt true, and yet we do not on that account subject free choice itself to a necessity which takes away liberty. Our wills, therefore, exist, and they themselves accomplish whatever we do by willing, which would not come to pass if we were unwilling. But whatever anyone suffers unwillingly by the will of other men, even so the will avails—if not that man's will, yet a man's will; but the power is God's. (For if there were only a will and it could not do what it willed, it would be hindered by a more powerful will;
yet even so a will would not be anything but a will, nor another's, but the will of him who willed, even though he could not fulfill what he willed.) Whence whatever a man suffers contrary to his own will, he ought not to attribute to the wills of men or of angels or of any created spirit whatsoever, but rather to his who gives power to those who will. It is not, therefore, for this reason that there is nothing in our will, because God foreknew what was to be in our will. For he who foreknew this did not foreknow nothing. Further, if he who foreknew what was to be in our will foreknew, not indeed nothing, but something: assuredly, even with him foreknowing, there is something in our will.
Wherefore we are in no way compelled either, while retaining the foreknowledge of God, to take away the choice of the will, or, while retaining the choice of the will, to deny (which is impious) that God is foreknowing of future things; but we embrace both, we faithfully and truly confess both—the one, that we may believe well; the other, that we may live well. But one lives ill if one does not believe well concerning God. Wherefore far be it from us to deny his foreknowledge in order that we may will freely, by whose aid we are or shall be free.
Accordingly, laws, reproaches, exhortations, praises, and blames are not in vain, since he foreknew that these too would be; and they avail very greatly, as much as he foreknew that they would avail; and prayers avail to obtain those things which he foreknew that he would grant to those who pray; and justly have rewards been established for good deeds and punishments for sins. For a man does not sin because God foreknew that he would sin; nay rather, it is not doubted that the man himself sins when he sins, precisely because he, whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived, foreknew that not fate, not fortune, not anything else, but that man himself would sin. And if he is unwilling, he assuredly does not sin; but if he shall have been unwilling to sin, this too God foreknew.
God, therefore, the most high and true, together with his Word and the Holy Spirit—which three are one—the one almighty God, creator and maker of every soul and of every body; by participation in whom are happy all who are happy by truth and not by vanity; who made man a rational animal of soul and body; who, when man sinned, neither permitted him to go unpunished nor abandoned him without mercy; who gave to the good and to the evil being even in common with stones, seminal life in common with trees, sensitive life in common with beasts, intellectual life in common with angels alone; from whom is every mode, every species, every order; from whom is measure, number, weight;
from whom is whatever exists naturally, of whatever kind it is, of whatever value it is; from whom are the seeds of forms, the forms of seeds, the motions of seeds and of forms; who gave to the flesh also origin, beauty, health, fruitfulness of propagation, arrangement of members, the welfare of concord; who gave to the irrational soul too memory, sense, appetite, but to the rational soul in addition mind, intelligence, will; who left not only heaven and earth, not only angel and man, but not even the entrails of a tiny and contemptible living creature, nor the little feather of a bird, nor the little flower of a plant, nor the little leaf of a tree, without a harmony of their parts and a certain, as it were, peace:
in no way is he to be believed to have willed that the kingdoms of men, and their dominions and servitudes, should be foreign to the laws of his providence. Accordingly, let us see what were the morals of the Romans, and for what cause the true God—in whose power are earthly kingdoms too—deigned to aid them in enlarging their empire.
And that we might be able to discuss this more fully, we composed the preceding book too, as pertaining to this matter—namely, that in this affair there is no power belonging to those gods whom they thought should be worshiped even for trifling things—and also the earlier portions of the present volume, which we have brought thus far, concerning the removal of the question of fate, lest anyone to whom it had already been persuaded that the Roman empire was not spread and preserved by the worship of those gods should attribute it rather to some fate or other than to the most powerful will of the most high God.
The ancient and earliest Romans, therefore, as far as their history teaches and commends, although like other nations—except the one people of the Hebrews—they worshiped false gods and sacrificed victims not to God but to demons, nevertheless were 'greedy of praise, generous with money; they desired vast glory and honorable riches'; this they most ardently loved, for this they wished to live, for this they did not hesitate to die; all other desires they suppressed by this one immense desire. In short, their own fatherland, since to serve seemed inglorious but to rule and command glorious, they first with all zeal longed to be free, and then to be mistress.
由此便有這樣的情形：他們不堪王權的統治，「就為自己設立每年一任的職權和成對的統帥，這些人因『商議』（consulendo）而被稱為執政官（consules），而非因『稱王作主』（regnando atque dominando）而被稱為王或主」；儘管王（reges）其實似乎更宜於因「治理」（regendo）而得名，以致「王國」（regnum）出於「諸王」（reges），而諸王如前所述則出於「治理」（regendo）；然而王者的傲慢，被視為並非治理者的規範，也非商議者的仁慈，而是稱王作主者的驕橫。於是，塔奎尼烏斯王被逐、執政官設立之後，便隨之發生同一位作者在稱讚羅馬人時所記下的事，即「難以置信地可述說：國家一旦贏得自由，在短時間內成長了何等之多；
Hence it is that, not enduring kingly domination, 'they made for themselves annual commands and pairs of commanders, who were called consuls from consulting (consulendo), not kings or lords from reigning and lording it (regnando atque dominando)'; although kings too indeed seem better named from ruling (regendo), so that 'regnum' (kingdom) comes from 'reges' (kings), but kings, as has been said, from ruling (regendo); yet kingly pride was reckoned not the discipline of one ruling or the benevolence of one consulting, but the arrogance of one lording it. And so, with king Tarquin expelled and consuls established, there followed what the same author set down among the praises of the Romans, that 'it is incredible to relate how much the state, once liberty had been won, grew in a short time;
so great a desire of glory had come upon them.' This eagerness for praise, therefore, and desire of glory accomplished those many things to be marveled at—praiseworthy, that is, and glorious according to the estimation of men. The same Sallust praises great and illustrious men of his own times, Marcus Cato and Gaius Caesar, saying that for a long time that republic had no one great in virtue, but within his memory there had been those two men of immense virtue, though of differing characters. But among the praises of Caesar he set down that he longed for himself a great command, an army, a new war, where his virtue might shine forth. Thus it came to pass that in the prayers of men great in virtue it was wished that Bellona should rouse wretched nations to war and lash them with her bloody scourge, so that there might be a place where their virtue could shine forth.
This assuredly was what that eagerness for praise and desire of glory brought about. And so, first by love of liberty, and afterward also of domination and by desire of praise and glory, they did many great things. Their own distinguished poet renders testimony to both of these things; for thence he says: 'And Porsenna too was bidding them receive the ejected Tarquin, and was pressing the city with a mighty siege; the sons of Aeneas were rushing upon the sword for liberty.' Then, accordingly, it was a great thing for them either to die bravely or to live free. But when liberty had been won, so great a desire of glory had come upon them that liberty alone was too little unless domination too were sought, since it was held a great thing which, as if Jupiter were speaking, the same poet says:
'Nay, harsh Juno, who now wearies sea and lands and heaven with fear, shall change her counsels for the better, and together with me shall cherish the Romans, lords of the world and the toga-clad nation. So it is decreed. There shall come an age, as the lustra glide by, when the house of Assaracus shall crush Phthia and famous Mycenae in servitude, and shall rule over conquered Argos.' These things indeed Virgil, bringing in Jupiter as foretelling as it were future events, was himself already recalling as accomplished and beholding as present; but I wished to mention them for this reason—to show that the Romans so held domination after liberty that it was placed among their great praises.
Hence too comes that saying of the same poet, who, when he set the Romans' own proper arts of reigning and commanding and subjugating and warring down peoples above the arts of other nations, said: 'Others shall hammer out the breathing bronze more delicately—I grant it indeed—shall draw living countenances from the marble, shall plead causes better, and shall describe with the rod the courses of the sky and tell the rising stars: but you, O Roman, remember to rule the peoples with your sway (these shall be your arts), and to impose the custom of peace, to spare the subjected and to war down the proud.'
These arts they exercised the more skillfully in proportion as they gave themselves the less to pleasures and to the enervation of mind and body in coveting and increasing riches, and through riches to the corruption of morals, by plundering wretched citizens and lavishing upon base stage-players. Hence those who by now surpassed and abounded in the taint of such morals, when Sallust was writing these things and Virgil was singing them, sought after honors and glory not by those arts, but by tricks and deceptions. Whence the same author says: 'But at first ambition rather than avarice exercised the minds of men, which vice nevertheless was nearer to virtue. For the good man and the sluggard alike long for glory, honor, and command for themselves;
but the former,' he says, 'strives by the true way; the latter, because good arts are lacking to him, contends by tricks and deceptions.' These are those good arts—namely, to arrive at honor and glory and command through virtue, not through deceitful ambition; which nevertheless the good man and the sluggard alike long for themselves; but the former, that is, the good man, strives by the true way. Virtue is the way by which he strives, as toward the end of possession, that is, toward glory, honor, command. That the Romans had this implanted in them, even the temples of their gods indicate, which they established most closely joined together—of Virtue and of Honor—holding as gods the things that are given by God. Whence it can be understood what end they wished virtue to have, and to what those who were good referred it—namely, to honor;
for the wicked did not have it, although they desired to have the honor which they tried to obtain by evil arts, that is, by tricks and deceptions. Better praised was Cato. For of him he says: 'The less he sought glory, the more it followed him.' Since indeed glory, with desire of which those men were aflame, is the judgment of men thinking well of men; and therefore better is the virtue which is content with no human testimony except that of its own conscience. Whence the Apostle says: 'For our glory is this: the testimony of our conscience'; and in another place: 'But let each one prove his own work, and then he shall have glory in himself alone and not in another.'
Glory, therefore, and honor and command, which they longed for themselves and to which the good strove to attain by good arts, virtue ought not to follow, but virtue itself ought to be followed. For there is no true virtue except that which tends toward that end where is the good of man, than which there is none better. Whence even the honors which Cato sought he ought not to have sought, but the state, on account of his virtue, ought to have given them to him unsought. But since in that memory there were two Romans great in virtue, Caesar and Cato, the virtue of Cato seems to have been by far nearer to the truth than that of Caesar. Accordingly, of what sort the state then was, and of what sort it had formerly been, let us see in the very sentiment of Cato: 'Do not,' he says, 'suppose that our ancestors made the republic great from small by arms.
If it were so, we should possess it as far more beautiful. For indeed we have a greater abundance of allies and citizens, and moreover of arms and horses, than they had. But there were other things that made them great, which we have none of: at home industry, abroad a just rule, a mind free in deliberating, enslaved neither to wrongdoing nor to lust. In place of these we have luxury and greed, poverty in public and opulence in private; we praise riches, we pursue idleness; between the good and the bad there is no distinction; ambition seizes all the rewards of virtue. Nor is this to be wondered at:
for when each of you takes counsel separately for himself, when at home you are slaves to pleasures, and here to money or to favour, the result is that an assault is made upon a commonwealth left defenceless." Whoever hears these words of Cato, or of Sallust, supposes that all, or the greater part, of the ancient Romans who are praised were then such as these. It is not so; otherwise those things would not be true which the same writer himself likewise records, which I mentioned in the second book of this work, where he says that from the very beginning the injustices of the more powerful, and on account of them the secession of the plebs from the fathers, and other dissensions at home, existed, and that things were carried on with equitable and moderate right no longer than while, after the kings had been expelled and so long as there was fear of Tarquin, a grievous war which had been undertaken against Etruria on his account was being brought to an end;
but afterwards the fathers ruled over the plebs with a servile domination, flogged them after the manner of kings, drove them from their land, and, to the exclusion of all the rest, held sole power in the state; and that of these discords—while the one party wished to dominate and the other refused to serve—the end came in the Second Punic War, because once more a grievous fear began to press upon them and to restrain their restless spirits from those disturbances by another and greater care, and to recall them to civil concord. But great things were administered by means of a certain few who were good after their own measure; and, those evils being tolerated and tempered, that state grew great through the providence of a few good men;
just as the same historian says that, as he read and heard of the many glorious deeds which the Roman people had done at home and in war, by sea and by land, it pleased him to consider what above all had sustained such great enterprises; since he knew that the Romans had often contended with small bands against great legions of the enemy, and had learned that wars had been waged with slender forces against wealthy kings; and, as he turned many things over in his mind, he said it was clear to him that the outstanding virtue of a few citizens had accomplished everything, and that thereby it came about that poverty overcame riches, and fewness the multitude.
"But after the state had been corrupted by luxury and idleness," he says, "the commonwealth in turn upheld by its own greatness the vices of its generals and magistrates." Therefore the virtue of the few who strove by the true way, that is, by virtue itself, towards glory, honour, and dominion, was praised even by Cato. Hence came that industry at home which Cato mentioned, whereby the public treasury was rich while private means were slender. Whence, when morals were corrupted, he set the opposite vice: poverty in public, opulence in private.
[XIII] For this reason, when the kingdoms of the East had long been illustrious, God willed that a Western kingdom should also arise, which, though later in time, should be more illustrious by the breadth and greatness of its empire; and this He granted especially to such men as these, for the subduing of the grievous evils of many nations—men who for the sake of honour, praise, and glory took thought for their fatherland, in which they sought that very glory, and did not hesitate to prefer its safety to their own, suppressing, for the sake of this one vice—that is, the love of praise—their greed for money and many other vices. For he sees more soundly who recognizes that even the love of praise is a vice, which did not escape the poet Horace, who says: 'You swell with love of praise: there are sure remedies which, read through three times purely, could restore you by their little book.'
And the same poet, in a lyric song, thus sang to check the lust for domination: 'You would reign more widely by taming a greedy spirit than if you should join Libya to distant Gades and both the Carthaginians should serve one master.' Yet nevertheless those who do not restrain their baser lusts by the faith of piety, through the Holy Spirit obtained and by the love of intelligible beauty, are at least less base—though not indeed already holy—by the desire of human praise and glory. Even Cicero could not dissemble on this point in those same books which he wrote concerning the commonwealth, where he speaks of forming the prince of the state, whom he says must be nourished by glory; and consequently he records that his forefathers had done many marvellous and illustrious things out of desire for glory.
To this vice, therefore, they not only offered no resistance, but even judged that it ought to be stirred up and kindled, thinking this to be useful to the commonwealth. Yet not even in his very books of philosophy does Cicero dissemble about this plague, where he confesses it more clearly than the light. For when he was speaking of such pursuits as ought surely to be followed with the aim of the true good, not for the windiness of human praise, he introduced this universal and general maxim: "Honour nourishes the arts, and all are kindled to their studies by glory; and those things always lie neglected which are disapproved by each and every one." [XIV] To this desire, therefore, it is without doubt better to offer resistance than to yield. For each one is the more like to God, the more he is cleansed from this uncleanness.
Although in this life it is not utterly rooted out of the heart, because it does not cease to tempt even souls that are making good progress: yet let the desire of glory at least be overcome by the love of righteousness, so that, if anywhere those things lie neglected which are disapproved by each and every one—if they are good, if they are right—then even the very love of human praise may blush and yield to the love of truth. For so hostile is this vice to godly faith, if there be in the heart a greater desire of glory than the fear or love of God, that the Lord said: 'How can you believe, who expect glory from one another, and do not seek the glory which is from God alone?' Likewise, concerning certain men who had believed in Him yet were afraid to confess Him openly, the evangelist says: 'They loved the glory of men more than the glory of God.'