he cries out, that it would be a madness to advise the contrary and say.
Work not, O God-born Perses.
And in his book of Lives he affirms, that a wise man will for the sake
of gain live with kings, and teach for money, receiving from some of
his scholars his reward beforehand, and making contract with others
of them; and in his Seventh Book of Duties he says, that he will not
scruple to turn his heels thrice over his head, if for so doing he may
have a talent. In his First Book of Good Things, he yields and grants
to those that desire it to call these preferred things good and their
contraries evil, in these very words: “Any one who will, according to
these permutations, may call one thing good and another evil, having
a regard to the things themselves, and not wandering elsewhere, not
failing in the understanding of the things signified, and in the rest
accommodating himself to custom in the denomination.” Having thus in
this place set his preferred things so near to good, and mixed them
therewith, he again says, that none of these things belongs at all to
us, but that reason withdraws and averts us from all such things; for
he has written thus in his First Book of Exhortations. And in his Third
Book of Nature he says, that some esteem those happy who reign and are
rich, which is all one as if those should be reputed happy who make
water in golden chamber-pots and wear golden fringes; but to a good man
the losing of his whole estate is but as the losing of one groat, and
the being sick no more than if he had stumbled. Wherefore he has not
filled virtue only, but Providence also, with these contradictions.
For virtue would seem to the utmost degree sordid and foolish, if it
should busy itself about such matters, and enjoin a wise man for their
sake to sail to Bosphorus or tumble with his heels over his head. And
Jupiter would be very ridiculous to be styled Ctesius, Epicarpius, and
Charitodotes, because forsooth he gives the wicked golden chamber-pots
and golden fringes, and the good such things as are hardly worth a
groat, when through Jupiter’s providence they become rich. And yet
much more ridiculous is Apollo, if he sits to give oracles concerning
golden fringes and chamber-pots and the recovering of a stumble.
31. But they make this repugnancy yet more evident by their
demonstration. For they say, that what may be used both well and
ill, the same is neither good nor bad; but fools make an ill use of
riches, health, and strength of body; therefore none of these is good.
If therefore God gives not virtue to men,—but honesty is eligible of
itself,—and yet bestows on them riches and health without virtue, he
confers them on those who will use them not well but ill, that is
hurtfully, shamefully, and perniciously. Now, if the Gods can bestow
virtue and do not, they are not good; but if they cannot make men good,
neither can they help them, for except virtue nothing is good and
helpful. Now to judge those who are otherwise made good according to
virtue and strength ... is nothing to the purpose, for good men also
judge the Gods according to virtue and strength; so that they do no
more aid men than they are aided by them.
Now Chrysippus neither professes himself nor any one of his disciples
and teachers to be virtuous. What then do they think of others, but
those things which they say,—that they are all mad, fools, impious,
transgressors of the laws, and in the utmost degree of misery and
unhappiness? And yet they say that our affairs, though we act thus
miserably, are governed by the providence of the Gods. Now if the Gods,
changing their minds, should desire to hurt, afflict, overthrow, and
quite crush us, they could not put us in a worse condition than we
already are; as Chrysippus demonstrates that life can admit no greater
degree either of misery or of unhappiness; so that if it had a voice,
it would pronounce these words of Hercules:
I am so full of miseries, there is
No place to stow them in.[198]
Now who can imagine any assertions more repugnant to one another than
that of Chrysippus concerning the Gods and that concerning men; when he
says, that the Gods do in the best manner possible provide for men, and
yet men are in the worst condition imaginable?
32. Some of the Pythagoreans blame him for having in his book of
Justice written concerning cocks, that they are usefully procreated,
because they awaken us from our sleep, hunt out scorpions, and animate
us to battle, breeding in us a certain emulation to show courage;
and yet that we must eat them, lest the number of chickens should be
greater than were expedient. But he so derides those who blame him
for this, that he has written thus concerning Jupiter the Savior and
Creator, the father of justice, equity, and peace, in his Third Book of
the Gods: “As cities over-charged with too great a number of citizens
send forth colonies into other places and make war upon some, so does
God give the beginnings of corruption.” And he brings in Euripides for
a witness, with others who say, that the Trojan war was caused by the
Gods, to exhaust the multitude of men.
But letting pass their other absurdities (for our design is not to
enquire what they have said amiss, but only what they have said
dissonantly to themselves), consider how he always attributes to the
Gods specious and kind appellations, but at the same time cruel,
barbarous, and Galatian deeds. For those so great slaughters and
carnages, as were the productions of the Trojan war and again of
the Persian and Peloponnesian, were no way like to colonies unless
these men know of some cities built in hell and under the earth. But
Chrysippus makes God like to Deïotarus, the Galatian king, who having
many sons, and being desirous to leave his kingdom and house to one
of them, killed all the rest; as he that cuts and prunes away all the
other branches from the vine, that one which he leaves remaining may
grow strong and great. And yet the vine-dresser does this, the sprigs
being slender and weak; and we, to favor a bitch, take from her many of
her new-born puppies, whilst they are yet blind. But Jupiter, having
not only suffered and seen men to grow up, but having also both created
and increased them, plagues them afterwards, devising occasions of
their destruction and corruption; whereas he should rather not have
given them any causes and beginnings of generation.
33. However this is but a small matter; but that which follows is
greater. For there is no war amongst men without vice. But sometimes
the love of pleasure, sometimes the love of money, and sometimes the
love of glory and rule is the cause of it. If therefore God is the
author of wars, he must be also of sins, provoking and perverting men.
And yet himself says in his treatise of Judgment and his Second Book
of the Gods, that it is no way rational to say that the Divinity is in
any respect the cause of dishonesty. For as the law can in no way be
the cause of transgression, so neither can the Gods of being impious;
therefore neither is it rational that they should be the causes of any
thing that is filthy. What therefore can be more filthy to men than the
mutual killing of one another?—to which Chrysippus says that God gives
beginnings. But some one perhaps will say, that he elsewhere praises
Euripides for saying.
If Gods do aught dishonest, they’re no Gods;
and again,
’Tis a most easy thing t’ accuse the Gods;[199]
as if we were now doing any thing else than setting down such words and
sentences of his as are repugnant to one another.
34. Yet that very thing which is now praised may be objected, not once
or twice or thrice, but even ten thousand times, against Chrysippus:
’Tis a most easy thing t’ accuse the Gods.
For first having in his book of Nature compared the eternity of motion
to a drink made of divers species confusedly mixed together, turning
and jumbling the things that are made, some this way, others that way,
he goes on thus. “Now the administration of the universe proceeding in
this manner, it is of necessity we should be in the condition we are,
whether contrary to our own nature we are sick or maimed, or whether we
are grammarians or musicians.” And again a little after, “According to
this reason we shall say the like of our virtue and vice, and generally
of arts or the ignorance of arts, as I have said.” And a little after,
taking away all ambiguity, he says: “For no particular thing, not even
the least, can be otherwise than according to common Nature and its
reason.” But that common Nature and the common reason of Nature are
with him Fate and Providence and Jupiter, is not unknown even to the
antipodes. For these things are everywhere inculcated by the Stoics;
and Chrysippus affirms that Homer said very well,