These men's conception therefore of time is not unlike the grasping of

water, which, the harder it is held, all the more slides and runs away.

As to actions and motions, all evidence is utterly confounded. For if

NOW is divided into past and future, it is of necessity that what is now

moved partly has been moved and partly shall be moved, that the end and

beginning of motion have been taken away, that nothing of any work

has been done first, nor shall anything be last, the actions being

distributed with time. For as they say that of present time, part is

past and part to come; so of that which is doing, it will be said that

part is done and part shall be done. When therefore had TO DINE, TO

WRITE, TO WALK, a beginning, and when shall they have an end, if every

one who is dining has dined and shall dine, and every one who is

walking has walked and shall walk? But this is, as it is said, of all

absurdities the most absurd, that if he who now lives has already lived

and shall live, then to live neither had beginning nor shall have end;

but every one of us, as it seems, was born without commencing to live,

and shall die without ceasing to live. For if there is no last part,

but he who lives has something of the present still remaining for the

future, to say "Socrates shall live" will never be false so long as it

shall be true to say "Socrates lives"; and so long also will it be false

to say "Socrates is dead." So that, if "Socrates shall live" is true

in infinite parts of time, it will in no part of time be true to say

"Socrates is dead." And verily what end will there be of a work, and

where will you terminate an action, if, as often as it is true to say

"This is doing," it is likewise true to say "This shall be doing"? For

he will lie who shall say, there will be an end of Plato's writing and

disputing; since Plato will never give over writing and disputing, if it

is never false to say of him who disputes that he shall dispute, and of

him who writes that he shall write. Moreover, there will be no part of

that which now is, but either has been or is to be, and is either past

or future; but of what has been and is to be, of past and future, there

is no sense; wherefore there is absolutely no sense of anything. For we

neither see what is past and future, nor do we hear or have any other

sense of what has been or is to be. Nothing, then, even what is present,

is to be perceived by sense, if of the present, part is always future

and part past,--if part has been and part is to be.

Now they indeed say, that Epicurus does intolerable things and violates

the conceptions, in moving all bodies with equal celerity, and admitting

none of them to be swifter than another. And yet it is much more

intolerable and farther remote from sense, that nothing can be overtaken

by another:--

Not though Adrastus's swift-footed steed

Should chase the tortoise slow,

as the proverb has it. Now this must of necessity fall out, if things

move according to PRIUS and POSTERIUS, and the intervals through which

they pass are (as these men's tenet is) divisible IN INFINITUM; for if

the tortoise is but a furlong before the horse, they who divide

this furlong in infinitum, and move them both according to PRIUS and

POSTERIUS, will never bring the swiftest to the slowest; the slower

always adding some interval divisible into infinite spaces. Now to

affirm that, water being poured from a bowl or cup, it will never be all

poured out, is it not both against common sense, and a consequence of

what these men say? For no man can understand the motion according to

PRIUS of things infinitely divisible to be consummated; but leaving

always somewhat divisible, it will make all the effusion, all the

running and flux of a liquid, motion of a solid, and fall of an heavy

thing imperfect.

I pass by many absurdities of theirs, touching only such as are against

sense. The dispute concerning increase is indeed ancient; for the

question, as Chrysippus says, was put by Epicharmus. Now, whereas those

of the Academy think that the doubt is not very easy and ready all of

a sudden to be cleared, these men have mightily exclaimed against them,

and accused them of taking away the fixed ideas, and yet themselves are

so far from preserving the common notions, that they pervert even

sense itself. For the discourse is simple, and these men grant the

suppositions,--that all particular substances flow and are carried, some

of them emitting forth somewhat from themselves, and others receiving

things coming from elsewhere; and that the things to which there is

made an accession or from which there is a decession by numbers and

multitudes, do not remain the same, but become others by the said

accessions, the substance receiving a change; and that these changes

are not rightly called by custom increasings or diminutions, but it is

fitter they should be styled generations and corruptions, because they

drive by force from one state to another, whereas to increase and be

diminished are passions of a body that is subject and permanent. These

things being thus in a manner said and delivered, what would these

defenders of evidence and canonical masters of common conceptions have?

Every one of us (they say) is double, twin-like, and composed of a

double nature; not as the poets feigned of the Molionidae, that they in

some parts grow together and in some parts are separated,--but every one

of us has two bodies, having the same color, the same figure, the same

weight and place.... These things were never before seen by any man;

but these men alone have discerned this composition, doubleness, and

ambiguity, how every one of us is two subjects, the one substance, the

other quality; and the one is in perpetual flux and motion, neither

increasing nor being diminished nor remaining altogether; the other

remains and increases and is diminished, and suffers all things contrary

to the former, with which it is so concorporated, conjoined, and

confounded, that it exhibits not any difference to be perceived by

sense. Indeed, Lynceus is said to have penetrated stones and oaks with

his sight; and a certain man sitting on a watch-tower in Sicily beheld

the ships of the Carthaginians setting forth from their harbor, which

was a day and a night's sail from thence. Callicrates and Myrmecides

are said to have made chariots that might be covered with the wings of

a fly, and to have engraved verses of Homer on a sesame seed. But none

ever discerned or discovered this diversity in us; nor have we perceived

ourselves to be double, in one part always flowing, and in the other

remaining the same from our birth even to our death. But I make the

discourse more simple, since they make four subjects in every one, or

rather every one of us to be four. But two are sufficient to show their

absurdity. For if, when we hear Pentheus in the tragedy affirm that he

sees two suns and two cities of Thebes, (Euripides, "Bacchae," 918.)

we say that he does not see, but that his sight is dazzled, he being

transported and troubled in his head; why do we not bid those farewell,

who assert not one city alone, but all men and animals, and all trees,

vessels, instruments, and clothes, to be double and composed of two,

as men who constrain us to dote rather than to understand? But this

feigning other natures of subjects must perhaps be pardoned them; for

there appears no other invention by which they can maintain and uphold

the augmentations of which they are so fond.

But by what cause moved, or for the adorning of what other suppositions,

they frame in a manner innumerable differences and forms of bodies

in the soul, there is none can say, unless it be that they remove, or

rather wholly abdicate and destroy, the common and usual notions, to

introduce other foreign and strange ones. For it is very absurd that,

making all virtues and vices--and with them all arts, memories, fancies,

passions, impulses, and assents--to be bodies, they should affirm that

they neither lie nor subsist in any subject, leaving them for a place

one only hole, like a prick in the heart, where they crowd the principal

part of the soul, enclosed with so many bodies, that a very great number

of them lie hid even from those who think they can spare and distinguish

them one from another. Nay that they should not only make them bodies,

but also intelligent beings, and even a swarm of such creatures, not

friendly or mild, but a multitude rebellious and having a hostile mind,

and should so make of each one of us a park or menagerie or Trojan

horse, or whatever else we may call their inventions,--this is the very

height of contempt and contradiction to evidence and custom. But they

say, that not only the virtues and vices, not only the passions, as

anger, envy, grief, and maliciousness, not only comprehensions, fancies,

and ignorances, not only arts, as shoemaking and working in brass, are

animals; but besides these, also they make even the operations bodies

and animals, saying that walking is an animal, as also dancing,

supposing, saluting, and railing. The consequence of this is that

laughing and weeping are also animals; and if so, then also are

coughing, sneezing, groaning, spitting, blowing the nose, and other such

like things sufficiently known. Neither have they any cause to take it

ill that they are by reason, proceeding leisurely, reduced to this, if

they shall call to mind how Chrysippus, in his First Book of Natural

Questions, argues thus: "Is not night a body? And are not then the

evening, dawning, and midnight bodies? Or is not a day a body? Is not

then the first day of the month a body? And the tenth, the fifteenth,

and the thirtieth, are they not bodies? Is not a month a body? Summer,

autumn, and the year, are they not bodies?"

These things they maintain against the common conceptions; but those

which follow they hold also against their own, engendering that which

is most hot by refrigeration, and that which is most subtile by

condensation. For the soul, to wit, is a substance most hot and most

subtile. But this they make by the refrigeration and condensation of

the body, changing, as it were, by induration the spirit, which of

vegetative is made animal. Moreover, they say that the sun became

animated, his moisture changing into intellectual fire. Behold how the

sun is imagined to be engendered by refrigeration! Xenophanes indeed,

when one told him that he had seen eels living in hot water, answered,

We will boil them then in cold. But if these men engender heat by

refrigeration and lightness by condensation, it follows, they must also

generate cold things by heat, thick things by dissolution, and heavy

things by rarefaction, that so they may keep some proportion in their

absurdity.

And do they not also determine the substance and generation of

conception itself, even against the common conceptions? For conception

is a certain imagination, and imagination an impression in the soul. Now

the nature of the soul is an exhalation, in which it is difficult for

an impression to be made because of its tenuity, and for which it is

impossible to keep an impression it may have received. For its nutriment

and generation, consisting of moist things, have continual accession and

consumption. And the mixture of respiration with the air always makes

some new exhalation which is altered and changed by the flux of the air

coming from abroad and again going out. For one may more easily imagine

that a stream of running water can retain figures, impressions, and

images, than that a spirit can be carried in vapors and humors, and

continually mingled with another idle and strange breath from without.

But these men so far forget themselves, that, having defined the

conceptions to be certain stored-up intelligences, and memoirs to be

constant and habitual impressions, and having wholly fixed the sciences,

as having stability and firmness, they presently place under them a

basis and seat of a slippery substance, easy to be dissipated and in

perpetual flux and motion.

Now the common conception of an element and principle, naturally

imprinted in almost all men, is this, that it is simple, unmixed, and

uncompounded. For that is not an element or principle which is mixed;

but those things are so of which it is mixed. But these men, making God,

who is the principle of all things, to be an intellectual body and

a mind seated in matter, pronounce him to be neither simple nor

uncompounded, but to be composed of and by another; matter being

of itself indeed without reason and void of quality, and yet having

simplicity and the propertv of a principle. If, then, God is not

incorporeal and immaterial, he participates of matter as a principle.

For if matter and reason are one and the same thing, they have not

rightly defined matter to be reasonless; but if they are different

things, then is God constituted of them both, and is not a simple but

compound thing, having to the intellectual taken the corporeal from

matter.

Moreover, calling these four bodies, earth, water, air, and fire, the

first elements, they do (I know not how) make some of them simple and

pure, and others compound and mixed. For they maintain that earth and

water hold together neither themselves nor other things, but preserve

their unity by the participation of air and force of fire; but that

air and fire do both fortify themselves by their own strength, or being

mixed with the other two, give them force, permanence, and subsistence.

How, then, is either earth or water an element, if neither of them

is either simple, or first or self-sufficient, but if each one wants

somewhat from without to contain and keep it in its being? For they have

not left so much as a thought of their substance; but this discourse

concerning the earth has much confusion and uncertainty, when they say

that it subsists of itself; for if the earth is of itself, how has it

need of the air to fix and contain it? But neither the earth nor water

can any more be said to be of itself; but the air, drawing together

and thickening the matter, has made the earth, and again dissolving

and mollifying it, has produced the water. Neither of these then is an

element, since something else has contributed being and generation to

them both.

Moreover, they say that subsistence and matter are subject to qualities,

and do so in a manner define them; and again, they make the qualities to

be also bodies. But these things have much perplexity. For if qualities

have a peculiar substance, for which they both are and are called

bodies, they need no other substance; for they have one of their own.

But if they have under them in common only that which the Stoic school

calls essence and matter, it is manifest they do but participate of the

body; for they are not bodies. But the subject and recipient must of

necessity differ from those things which it receives and to which it is

subject. But these men see by halves; for they say indeed that matter

is void of quality, but they will not call qualities immaterial. Now how

can they make a body without quality, who understand no quality without

a body? For the reason which joins a body to all quality suffers not

the understanding to comprehend any body without some quality. Either,

therefore, he who oppugns incorporeal quality seems also to oppugn

unqualified matter; or separating the one from the other, he mutually

parts them both. As for the reason which some pretend, that matter is

called unqualified not because it is void of all quality, but because

it has all qualities, it is most of all against sense. For no man calls

that unqualified which is capable of every quality, nor that impassible

which is by nature always apt to suffer all things, nor that immovable

which is moved every way. And this doubt is not solved, that, however

matter is always understood with quality, yet it is understood to be

another thing and differing from quality.

END OF SIX-------------

CONTRADICTIONS OF THE STOICS.

I first lay this down for an axiom, that there ought to be seen in men's

lives an agreement with their doctrines. For it is not so necessary that

the pleader (as Aeschines has it) and the law speak one and the same

thing, as that the life of a philosopher be consonant to his speech. For

the speech of a philosopher is a law of his own and voluntarily imposed

on himself, unless they esteem philosophy to be a game, or an acuteness

in disputing invented for the gaining of applause, and not--what it

really is--a thing deserving our greatest study.

Since, then, there are in their discourses many things written by Zeno

himself, many by Cleanthes, and most of all by Chrysippus, concerning

policy, governing, and being governed, concerning judging and pleading,

and yet there is not to be found in any of their lives either leading of

armies, making of laws, going to parliament, pleading before the judges,

fighting for their country, travelling on embassies, or making of public

gifts, but they have all, feeding (if I may so say) on rest as on the

lotus, led their whole lives, and those not short but very long ones,

in foreign countries, amongst disputations, books, and walkings; it

is manifest that they have lived rather according to the writings and

sayings of others than their own professions, having spent all their

days in that repose which Epicurus and Hieronymus so much commend.

Chrysippus indeed himself, in his Fourth Book of Lives, thinks there is

no difference between a scholastic life and a voluptuous one. I will

set down here his very words: "They who are of opinion that a scholastic

life is from the very beginning most suitable to philosophers seem to me

to be in an error, thinking that men ought to follow this for the sake

of some recreation or some other thing like to it, and in that manner

to spin out the whole course of their life; that is, if it may be

explained, to live at ease. For this opinion of theirs is not to be

concealed, many of them delivering it clearly, and not a few more

obscurely." Who therefore did more grow old in this scholastic life than

Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Diogenes, Zeno, and Antipater, who left their

countries not out of any discontent but that they might quietly enjoy

their delight, studying, and disputing at their leisure. To verify

which, Aristocreon, the disciple and intimate friend of Chrysippus,

having erected his statue of brass upon a pillar, engraved on it these

verses:--

This brazen statue Aristocreon

To's friend Chrysippus newly here has put,

Whose sharp-edged wit, like sword of champion,

Did Academic knots in sunder cut.

Such a one then was Chrysippus, an old man, a philosopher, one who

praised the regal and civil life, and thought there was no difference

between a scholastic and voluptuous one.

But those others of them who intermeddle in state affairs act yet more

contradictorily to their own doctrines. For they govern, judge, consult,

make laws, punish, and honor, as if those were indeed cities in the

government of which they concern themselves, those truly counsellors and

judges who are at any time allotted to such offices, those generals who

are chosen by suffrages, and those laws which were made by Clisthenes,

Lycurgus, and Solon, whom they affirm to have been vicious men and

fools. Thus even over the management of state affairs are they at

variance with themselves.

Indeed Antipater, in his writings concerning the difference between

Cleanthes and Chrysippus, has related that Zeno and Cleanthes would not

be made citizens of Athens, lest they might seem to injure their own

countries. I shall not much insist upon it, that, if they did well,

Chrysippus acted amiss in suffering himself to be enrolled as a member

of that city. But this is very contradictory and absurd, that, removing

their persons and their lives so far off amongst strangers, they

reserved their names for their countries; which is the same thing as if

a man, leaving his wife, and cohabiting and bedding with another, and

getting children on her, should yet refuse to contract marriage with the

second, lest he might seem to wrong the former.

Again, Chrysippus, writing in his treatise of Rhetoric, that a wise

man will so plead and so act in the management of a commonwealth, as if

riches, glory, and health were really good, confesses that his speeches

are inextricable and impolitic, and his doctrines unsuitable for the

uses and actions of human life.

It is moreover a doctrine of Zeno's, that temples are not to be built to

the gods; for that a temple is neither a thing of much value nor holy;

since no work of carpenters and handicrafts-men can be of much value.

And yet they who praise these things as well and wisely said are

initiated in the sacred mysteries, go up to the Citadel (where

Minerva's temple stands), adore the shrines, and adorn with garlands the

sacraries, being the works of carpenters and mechanical persons. Again,

they think that the Epicureans, who sacrifice to the gods and yet deny

them to meddle with the government of the world, do thereby refute

themselves; whereas they themselves are more contrary to themselves,

sacrificing on altars and in temples, which they affirm ought not to

stand nor to have been built.

Moreover, Zeno admits (as Plato does) several virtues having various

distinctions--to wit, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice--as

being indeed inseparable, but yet divers and different from one another.

But again, defining every one of them, he says that fortitude is

prudence in executing, justice prudence in distributing, as being one

and the same virtue, but seeming to differ in its relation to different

affairs when it comes to action. Nor does Zeno alone seem to contradict

himself in these matters; but Chrysippus also, who blames Ariston for

saying that the other virtues are different habits of one and the same

virtue, and yet defends Zeno, who in this manner defines every one of

the virtues. And Cleanthes, having in his Commentaries concerning Nature

said, that vigor is the striking of fire, which, if it is sufficient

in the soul to perform the duties presented to it, is called force and

strength; subjoins these very words: "Now this force and strength, when

it is in things apparent and to be persisted in, is continence; when

in things to be endured, it is fortitude; when about worthiness, it is

justice; and when about choosing or refusing, it is temperance." Against

him, who said,

Give not thy judgment till both sides are heard,

(In the "Pseudo-Phocylidea," vs. 87 (Bergk).)

Zeno on the contrary made use of such an argument as this: "If he who

spake first has plainly proved his cause, the second is not to be heard,

for the question is at an end; and if he has not proved it, it is the

same case as if being cited he did not appear, or appearing did nothing

but wrangle; so that, whether he has proved or not proved his cause, the

second is not to be heard." And yet he who made this dilemma has

written against Plato's Commonweal, dissolved sophisms, and exhorted his

scholars to learn logic, as enabling them to do the same. Now Plato

has either proved or not proved those things which he writ in his

Commonweal; but in neither case was it necessary to write against

him, but wholly superfluous and vain. The same may be said concerning

sophisms.

Chrysippus is of opinion, that young students should first learn logic,

secondly, ethics, and after these, physics, and likewise in this to

meddle last of all with the disputes concerning the gods. Now these

things having been often said by him, it will suffice to set down what

is found in his Fourth Book of Lives, being thus word for word: "First,

then, it seems to me, according as it has been rightly said by the

ancients, that there are three kinds of philosophical speculations,

logical, ethical, and physical, and that of these, the logical ought to

be placed first, the ethical second, and the physical third, and that

of the physical, the discourse concerning the gods ought to be the last;

wherefore also the traditions concerning this have been styled [Greek

omitted], or the ENDINGS." But that very discourse concerning the gods,

which he says ought to be placed the last, he usually places first and

sets before every moral question. For he is seen not to say anything

concerning the ends, or concerning justice, or concerning good and evil,

or concerning marriage and the education of children, or concerning the

law and the commonwealth; but, as those who propose decrees to states

set before them the words To Good Fortune, so he also premises something

of Jupiter, Fate, Providence, and of the world's being one and finite

and maintained by one power. None of which any one can be persuaded to

believe, who has not penetrated deeply into the discourses of natural

philosophy. Hear what he says of this in his Third Book of the

Gods: "For there is not to be found any other beginning or any other

generation of Justice, but what is from Jupiter and common Nature. From

thence must every such thing have its beginning, if we will say anything

concerning good and evil." And again, in his Natural Positions he says:

"For one cannot otherwise or more properly come to the discourse of good

and evil, to the virtues, or to felicity, than from common Nature and

the administration of the world." And going farther on, he adds: "For to

these we must annex the discourse concerning good and evil, there being

no other better beginning or relation thereof, and the speculation of

Nature being learned for nothing else, but to understand the difference

between good and evil." According to Chrysippus, therefore, the

natural science is both before and after the moral; or rather, it is an

inversion of order altogether absurd, if this must be put after

those things none of which can be comprehended without this; and his

contradicting himself is manifest, when he asserts the discourse of

Nature to be the beginning of that concerning good and evil, and yet

commands it to be delivered, not before, but after it.

Now, if any one shall say that Chrysippus in his book concerning the Use

of Speech has written, that he who applies himself to logic first needs

not absolutely to abstain from the rest, but should take as much of them

as shall fall in his way, he will indeed say the truth, but will withal

confirm the fault. For he oppugns himself, one while commanding that

the science concerning God should be taken last and for a conclusion,

as being therefore also called [Greek omitted], and again, another while

saying that this is to be learned together with the very first. For

order is at an end, if all things must be used at all times. But this is

more, that having made the science concerning the gods the beginning of

that concerning good and evil, he bids not those who apply themselves to

the ethics to begin with that; but learning these, to take of that

also as it shall come in their way, and then to go from these to that,

without which, he says, there is no beginning or entrance upon these.

As for disputing on both sides, he says, that he does not universally

reject it, but exhorts us to use it with caution, as is done in

pleadings, not with the aim really to disprove, but to dissolve their

probability. "For to those," says he, "who endeavor a suspension of

assent concerning all things, it is convenient to do this, and it

co-operates to what they desire; but as for those who would work

and constitute in us a certain science according to which we shall

professedly live, they ought, on the contrary, to state the first

principles, and to direct their novices who are entered from the

beginning to the end; and where there is occasion to make mention

of contrary discourses, to dissolve their probability, as is done in

pleadings." For this he hath said in express words. Now that it is

absurd for philosophers to think that they ought to set down the

contrary opinion, not with all its reasons, but like pleaders, disabling

it, as if they contended not for truth but victory, we have elsewhere

spoken against him. But that he himself has, not in one or two places

in his disputations, but frequently, confirmed the discourses which

are contrary to his own opinions, and that stoutly, and with so much

earnestness and contention that it was not for every one to understand

what he liked,--the Stoics themselves affirm, who admire the man's

acuteness, and think that Carneades said nothing of his own, but that

catching hold of those arguments which Chrysippus alleged for the

contrary opinion, he assaulted with them his positions, and often cried

out,

Wretch, thy own strength will thee undo,

("Iliad", vi. 407.)

as if Chrysippus had given great advantages against himself to those who

would disturb and calumniate his doctrines.

But of those things which he has written against Custom they are so

proud and boastful, that they fear not to affirm, that all the sayings

of all the Academics together, if they were collected into one body,

are not comparable to what Chrysippus has writ in disparagement of the

senses. Which is an evident sign of the ignorance or self-love of the

speakers; but this indeed is true, that being afterwards desirous to

defend custom and the senses, he was inferior to himself, and the

latter treatise was much weaker than the former. So that he contradicts

himself; for having always directed the proposing of an adversary's

opinions not with approbation, but with a demonstration of their

falsity, he has showed himself more acute in opposing than defending

his own doctrines; and having admonished others to take heed of contrary

arguments, as withdrawing comprehension, he has been more sedulous in

framing such proofs as take away comprehension, than such as confirm it.

And yet he plainly shows that he himself feared this, writing thus in

his Fourth Book of Lives: "Repugnant arguments and probabilities on the

contrary side are not rashly to be proposed, but with caution, lest the

hearers distracted by them should let go their conceptions, not being

able sufficiently to apprehend the solutions, but so weakly that their

comprehensions may easily be shaken. For even those who have, according

to custom, preconceived both sensible phenomena and other things

depending on the senses quickly forego them, being distracted by

Megarian interrogatories and by others more numerous and forcible."

I would willingly therefore ask the Stoics, whether they think these

Megarian interrogatories to be more forcible than those which Chrysippus

has written in six books against custom; or rather this should be

asked of Chrysippus himself. For observe what he has written about the

Megarian reason, in his book concerning the Use of Speech, thus: "Some

such things fell out in the discourse of Stilpo and Menedemus; for,

whereas they were renowned for wisdom, their disputing has turned to

their reproach, their arguments being part clumsy, and the rest plainly

sophistical." And yet, good sir, you fear lest those arguments which you

deride and term the disgrace of their proposers, as having a manifest

faultiness, should divert some from comprehension. And did not you

yourself, writing so many books against custom, in which you have added

whatever you could invent, ambitiously striving to exceed Arcesilaus,

expect that you should perplex some of your readers? For neither does

he use slender arguments against custom; but as if he were pleading, he

with some passion in himself stirs up the affections of others, telling

his opponent that he talks foolishly and labors in vain. And that he

may leave no room to deny his speaking of contradictions, he has in

his Natural Positions written thus: "It may be lawful for those who

comprehend a thing to argue on the contrary side, applying to it that

kind of defence which the subject itself affords; and sometimes, when

they comprehend neither, to discourse what is alleged for either." And

having said in his book concerning the Use of Speech, that we ought no

more to use the force of reason than of arms for such things as are not

fitting, he subjoins this: "For they are to be employed for the finding

out of truths and for the alliance of them, and not for the contrary,

though many men do it." By "many" perhaps he means those who withhold

their assent. But these teachers, understanding neither, dispute on

both sides, believing that, if anything is comprehensible, thus only or

chiefly does truth afford a comprehension of itself. But you, who

accuse them, and do yourself write contrary to those things which you

understood concerning custom, and exhort others under your authority to

do the same, confess that you wantonly use the faculty of disputing, out

of vain ambition, even on useless and hurtful things.

They say, that a good deed is the command, and sin the prohibition of

the law; and therefore that the law forbids the wicked many things, but

commands them nothing, because they cannot do a good deed. But who is

ignorant that he who cannot do a good deed cannot also sin? Therefore

they make the law to contradict itself, commanding men those things

which they cannot perform, and forbidding them those things from which

they cannot abstain. For a man who cannot be temperate cannot but act

intemperately; and he who cannot be wise cannot but act foolishly. And

they themselves affirm, that those who forbid say one thing, forbid

another and command another. For he who says "Thou shalt not steal" at

the same time that he says these words, "Thou shalt not steal, forbids

also to steal and directs not to steal. The law therefor bids the wicked

nothing, unless it also commands them something. And they say, that the

physician bids his disciple to cut and cauterize, omitting to add

these words, 'seasonably and moderately'; and the musician commands his

scholar to play on the harp and sing, omitting 'tunably' and 'keeping

time'." Wherefore also they punish those who do these things unskilfully

and faultily; for that they were commanded to do them well, and they

have done them ill. If therefore a wise man commands his servant to say

or do something, and punishes him for doing it unseasonably or not as he

ought, is it not manifest that he commanded him to do a good action and

not an indifferent one? But if wise men command wicked ones indifferent

things, what hinders but the commands of the law may be also such?

Moreover, the impulse (called [Greek omitted]) is, according to him, the

reason of a man commanding him to do something, as he has written in

his book of the law. Is not therefore also the aversion (called [Greek

omitted]) a prohibiting reason, and a disinclination, a disinclination

agreeable to reason? Caution therefore is also reason prohibiting a w

cautious is proper only to the wise, and not to the wicked. If, then,

the reason of a wise man is one thing and the law another, wise men

have caution contrary to the law; but if the law is nothing else but the

reason of a wise man, the law is found to forbid wise men the doing of

those things of which they are cautious.

Chrysippus says, that nothing is profitable to the wicked, that the

wicked have neither use nor need of anything. Having said this in his

First Book of Good Deeds, he says again, that both commodiousness and

grace pertain to mean or indifferent things, none of which according to

them, is profitable. In the same place he affirms, that there is nothing

proper, nothing convenient for a vicious man, in these words: "On the

same principle we declare that there is nothing foreign or strange to

the good man, and nothing proper or rightfully belonging to the bad man,

since the one is good and the other bad." Why, then, does he break our

heads, writing particularly in every one of his books, as well natural

as moral, that as soon as we are born we are appropriated to ourselves,

our parts, and our offspring? And why in his First Book of Justice does

he say that the very brutes, proportionably to the necessity of

their young, are appropriated to them, except fishes, whose young are

nourished by themselves? For neither have they sense who have

nothing sensible, nor they appropriation who have nothing proper; for

appropriation seems to be the sense and perception of what is proper.

And this opinion is consequent to their principal ones. It is moreover

manifest that Chrysippus, though he has also written many things to the

contrary, lays this for a position, that there is not any vice greater

or any sin more grievous than another, nor any virtue more excellent or

any good deed better than another; so that he says in his Third Book of

Nature: "As it well beseems Jupiter to glory in himself and his life,

to magnify himself, and (if we may so say) to bear up his head, have an

high conceit of himself, and speak big, for that he leads a life worthy

of lofty speech; so the same things do not misbeseem all good men, since

they are in nothing exceeded by Jupiter." And yet himself, in his Third

Book of Justice, says, that they who make pleasure the end destroy

justice, but they who say it is only a good do not destroy it. These are

his very words: "For perhaps, if we leave this to pleasure, that it is a

good but not the end, and that honesty is one of those things which are

eligible for themselves, we may preserve justice, making the honest and

the just a greater good than pleasure." But if that only is good which

is honest, he who affirms pleasure to be a good is in an error, but

he errs less than he who makes it also the end; for the one destroys

justice, the other preserves it; and by the one human society is

overthrown, but the other leaves a place to goodness and humanity. Now

I let pass his saying farther in his book concerning Jupiter, that the

virtues increase and go on, lest I may seem to catch at words; though

Chrysippus is indeed in this kind very sharp upon Plato and others. But

when he forbids the praising of everything that is done according to

virtue, he shows that there is some difference between good deeds. Now

he says thus in his book concerning Jupiter: "For since each virtue has

its own proper effects, there are some of these that are to be praised

more highly than others; for he would show himself to be very frigid,

that should undertake to praise and extol any man for holding out the

finger stoutly, for abstaining continently from an old woman ready to

drop into the grave, and patiently hearing it said that three are not

exactly four." What he says in his Third Book of the Gods is not unlike

to this: "For I moreover think that the praises of such things as to

abstain from an old woman who has one foot in the grave, and to endure

the sting of a fly, though proceeding from virtue, would be very

impertinent." What other reprehender of his doctrines does this man

then expect? For if he who praises such things is frigid, he who asserts

every one of them to be a great--nay, a very great good deed--is much

more frigid. For if to endure a fly is equal to being valiant, and to

abstain from an old woman now at the edge of the grave is equal to being

temperate, there is, I think, no difference whether a virtuous man

is prized for these or for those. Moreover, in his Second Book of

Friendship, teaching that friendships are not for every fault to be

dissolved, he has these very expressions: "For it is meet that some

faults should be wholly passed by, others lightly reprehended,

others more severely, and others deemed worthy a total dissolution of

friendship." And which is more, he says in the same book, that we will

converse with some more and some less, so that some shall be more and

some less friends; and this diversity extending very far, some are

worthy of such an amity, others of a greater; and these will deserve to

be so far trusted, those not so far, and the like. For what else has

he done in these places, but shown the great diversity there is between

these things? Moreover, in his book concerning Honesty, to demonstrate

that only to be good which is honest, he uses these words: "What is

good is eligible; what is eligible is acceptable; what is acceptable is

laudable; and what is laudable is honest." And again: "What is good is

joyous; what is joyous is venerable; what is venerable is honest."

But these speeches are repugnant to himself; for either all good is

commendable, and then the abstaining chastely from an old woman is

also commendable; or all good is neither venerable nor joyous, and his

reasoning falls to the ground. For how can it possibly be frigid in

others to praise any for such things, and not ridiculous for him to

rejoice and glory in them?

Such indeed he frequently is; but in his disputations against others he

takes not the least care of speaking things contrary and dissonant to

himself. For in his books of Exhorting, reprehending Plato, who

said, that to him who has neither learned nor knows how to live it is

profitable not to live, he speaks in this manner: "For this speech

is both repugnant to itself, and not at all conclusive. For first

insinuating that it is best for us not to live, and in a sort

counselling us to die, he will excite us rather to anything else than to

be philosophers; for neither can he who does not live philosophize, nor

he who shall live long wickedly and ignorantly become wise." And going

on, he says that it is convenient for the wicked also to continue in

life. And afterwards thus, word for word: "First, as virtue, barely

taken, has nothing towards our living, so neither has vice anything to

oblige us to depart." Nor is it necessary to turn over other books,

that we may show Chrysippus's contradictoriness to himself; but in

these same, he sometimes with commendation brings forth this saying of

Antisthenes, that either understanding or a halter is to be provided, as

also that of Tyrtaeus,

Come nigh the bounds of virtue or of death.

Now what else will this show, but that to wicked men and fools not to

live is more profitable than to live? And sometimes correcting Theognis,

he says, that the poet should not have written,

From poverty to fly;--

but rather thus,

From wickedness to fly, into the deep

Throw thyself, Cyrnus, or from rocks so steep.

(See "Theognis," vs. 175.)

What therefore else does he seem to do, but to set down himself those

things and doctrines which, when others write them, he expunges;

condemning, indeed, Plato for showing that not to live is better than

to live viciously and ignorantly; and yet advising Theognis to let a man

break his neck or throw himself into the sea, that he may avoid vice?

For having praised Antisthenes for directing fools to an halter, he

again blames him, saying that vice has nothing that should oblige us to

depart out of life.

Moreover, in his books against the same Plato, concerning Justice, he

immediately at the very beginning leaps into a discourse touching the

gods, and says, that Cephalus did not rightly avert men from injustice

by the fear of the gods, and that his teaching is easily refuted,

and that it affords to the contrary many arguments and probabilities

impugning the discourse concerning divine punishments, as nothing

differing from the tales of Acco and Alphito (or Raw-Head and

Bloody-Bones), with which women are wont to frighten little children

from their unlucky pranks. Having thus traduced Plato, he in other

places again praises him, and often alleges this saying of Euripides:--

Howe'er you may deride it, there's a Jove,

With other gods, who sees men's ills above.

And likewise, in his First Book of Justice citing these verses of

Hesiod,

Then Jove from heaven punishments did send,

And plague and famine brought them to their end,

("Works and Days," 242.)

he says, the gods do these things, that the wicked being punished,

others admonished by these examples may less dare to attempt the doing

of such things.

Again, in his book of Justice, subjoining, that it is possible for those

who make pleasure a good but not the end to preserve also justice, he

said in express terms: "For perhaps if we leave this to pleasure, that

it is a good but not the end, and that honesty is one of those things

which are eligible for themselves, we may preserve justice, making the

honest and the just a greater good than pleasure." So much he says in

this place concerning pleasure. But in his book against Plato, accus

temperance, and all the other virtues will be taken away, if we make

pleasure, health, or anything else which is not honest, to be a good.

What therefore is to be said for Plato, we have elsewhere written

against him. But here his contradicting himself is manifest, when he

says in one place, that if a man supposes that with honesty pleasure

also is a good, justice is preserved, and in another, accuses those

who make anything besides honesty to be a good of taking away all the

virtues. But that he may not leave any means of making an apology for

his contradictions, writing against Aristotle concerning justice, he

affirms him not to have spoken rightly when he said, that pleasure being

made the end, justice is taken away, and together with justice, every

one also of the other virtues. For justice (he says) will indeed be

taken away; but there is nothing to hinder the other virtues from

remaining and being, though not eligible for themselves, yet good and

virtues. Then he reckons up every one of them by name. But it will be

better to set down his own words. "For pleasure," says he, "appearing

according to this discourse to be made the end, yet all this seems not

to me to be contained in it. Wherefore we must say, that neither any of

the virtues is eligible nor any of the vices to be avoided for itself,

but that all these things are to be referred to the proposed scope. Yet

nothing, according to their opinion, will hinder but that fortitude,

prudence, continence, and patience may be good, and their contraries

to be avoided." Has there ever then been any man more peevish in his

disputes than he, who has blamed two of the principal philosophers, the

one for taking away all virtue, by not making that only to be good which

is honest, and the other for not thinking all the virtues except justice

to be preserved, though pleasure is made the end? For it is a wonderful

licentiousness that, discoursing of the same matters, he should when

accusing Plato take away again those very things which himself sets down

when reprehending Aristotle. Moreover, in his demonstrations concerning

justice, he says expressly, that every good deed is both a lawful action

and a just operation; but that everything which is done according

to continence, patience, prudence, or fortitude is a good deed, and

therefore also a just operation. Why, then, does he not also leave

justice to them to whom he leaves prudence, fortitude, and continence;

since whatever they do well according to the said virtue, they do also

justly?

Moreover, Plato having said, that injustice, as being the corruption

and sedition of the soul, loses not its power even in those who have it

within them, but sets the wicked man against himself, and molests and

disturbs him; Chrysippus, blaming this, affirms that it is absurdly

said, "A man injures himself"; for that injustice is to another, and not

to one's self. But forgetting this, he again says, in his demonstrations

concerning justice, that the unjust man is injured by himself and

injures himself when he injures another, becoming to himself the cause

of transgressing, and undeservedly hurting himself. In his books indeed

against Plato, contending that we cannot talk of injustice against one's

self, but as concerns another, he has these words: "For men cannot be

unjust by themselves; injustice requires several on different sides,

speaking contrary one unto another and the injustice must be taken in

different ways. But no such thing extends to one alone, except inasmuch

as he is affected towards his neighbor." But in his demonstrations

he has such discourses as these, concerning the unjust man's being

injurious also to himself: "The law forbids the being any way the

author of transgression, and to act unjustly will be transgression. He

therefore who is to himself the author of acting unjustly transgresses

against himself. Now he that transgresses against any one also injures

him; therefore he who is injurious to any one whomsoever is injurious

also to himself." Again: "Sin is a hurt, and every one who sins

sins against himself; every one therefore who sins hurts himself

undeservedly, and if so, is also unjust to himself." And farther thus:

"He who is hurt by another hurts himself, and that undeservedly. Now

that is to be unjust. Every one therefore that is injured, by whomsoever

it is, is unjust also to himself."

He says, that the doctrine concerning good and evil which himself

introduces and approves is most agreeable to life, and does most of all

reach the inbred prenotions; for this he has affirmed in his Third Book

of Exhortations. But in his First Book he says, that this doctrine

takes a man off from all other things, as being nothing to us, nor

co-operating anything towards felicity. See, now, how consonant he is

to himself, when he asserts a doctrine which takes us off from life,

health, indolence, and integrity of the senses, and says that those

things we beg of the gods are nothing to us, though most agreeable to

life and to the common presumptions. But that there may be no denial of

his speaking contradictions, in his Third Book of Justice he has said

thus: "Wherefore also, from the excellence of their greatness and

beauty, we seem to speak things like to fictions, and not according to

man or human nature." Is it then possible that any one can more plainly

confess his speaking things contrary to himself than this man does, who

affirms those things which (he says) for their excellency seem to be

fictions and to be spoken above man and human nature, to be agreeable to

life, and most of all to reach the inbred prenotions?

In every one of his natural and ethical books, he asserts vice to be

the very essence of unhappiness; writing and contending that to live

viciously is the same thing as to live unhappily. But in his Third Book

of Nature, having said that it is profitable for a fool to live rather

than to die, though he is never to become wise, he subjoins: "For such

is the nature of good things among mortals, that evil things are in some

sort chosen before indifferent ones." I let pass therefore, that having

elsewhere said that nothing is profitable to fools, he here says that

to live foolishly is profitable to them. Now those things being by them

called indifferent which are neither bad nor good, when he says that bad

things precede them, he says nothing else but that evil things precede

those that are not evil, and that to be unhappy is more profitable than

not to be unhappy; and if so, he esteems not to be unhappy to be

more unprofitable--and if more unprofitable, more hurtful--than to

be unhappy. Desiring therefore to mitigate this absurdity, he adds

concerning evils: "But it is not these evils that have precedence, but

reason; with which it is more convenient to live, though we shall be

fools." First therefore he says that vice and things participating

of vice are evil, and that nothing else is so. Now vice is something

reasonable, or rather depraved reason. For those therefore who are fools

to live with reason, is nothing else but to live with vice. Thence to

live being fools is to live being unhappy. In what then is this to be

preferred to indifferent things? For he surely will not say that with

regard to happiness unhappiness is to be preferred. But neither, say

they, does Chrysippus altogether think that the remaining in life is to

be reckoned amongst good things, or the going out of it amongst bad; but

both of them amongst indifferent ones, according to Nature. Wherefore

also it sometimes becomes meet for the happy to make themselves

away, and again for the unhappy to continue in life. Now what greater

repugnance can there be than this in the choice and avoiding of things,

if it is convenient for those who are in the highest degree happy to

forsake those good things that are present, for the want of some one

indifferent thing? And yet they esteem none of the indifferent things

either desirable or to be avoided; but only good desirable, and only

evil to be avoided. So that it comes to pass, according to them, that

the reasoning about actions regards neither things desirable nor things

refusable; but that aiming at other things, which they neither shun nor

choose, they make life and death to depend on these.

Chrysippus confesses that good things are totally different from bad;

and it must of necessity be so, if these make them with whom they are

present miserable to the very utmost point, and those render their

possessors in the highest degree happy. Now he says, that good and evil

things are sensible, writing thus in his First Book of the End: "That

good and evil things are perceptible by sense, we are by these reasons

forced to say; for not only the passions, with their species, as sorrow,

fear, and such others, are sensible; but we may also have a sense of

theft, adultery, and the like, and generally, of folly, cowardice, and

other vices not a few; and again, not only of joy, beneficence, and many

other dependences on good deeds, but also of prudence, fortitude,

and the other virtues." Let us pass by the other absurdities of these

things; but that they are repugnant to those things which are delivered

by him concerning "the wise man that knows nothing of his being so," who

does not confess? For good, when present, being sensible and having a

great difference from evil, is it not most absurd, that he who is of

bad become good should be ignorant of it, and not perceive virtue when

present, but think that vice is still within him? For either none who

has all virtues can be ignorant and doubt of his having them; or the

difference of virtue from vice, of happiness from misery, and of a most

honest life from a most shameful one, is little and altogether difficult

to be discerned, if he who has taken the one in exchange for the other

does not perceive it.

He has written one volume of lives divided into four books; in the

fourth of these he says, that a wise man meddles with no business but

his own, and is employed about his own affairs. His words are these:

"For I am of opinion, that a prudent man shuns affairs, meddles little,

and at the same time minds his own occasions; civil persons being both

minders of their own affairs and meddlers with little else." He has said

almost the same in his book of Things eligible for Themselves, in these

very words: "For indeed a quiet life seems to have in it a certain

security and freedom from danger, though there are not very many who

can comprehend it." It is manifest that he does not much dissent from

Epicurus, who takes away Providence that he may leave God in repose.

But the same Chrysippus in his First Book of Lives says, that a wise man

willingly takes upon him a kingdom, making his profit by it; and if he

cannot reign himself, will dwell with a king, and go to the wars with

a king like Hydanthyrsus the Scythian or Leucon the Pontic. But I will

here also set down his very discourse, that we may see whether, as from

the treble and the base strings there arises a symphony in music, so

the life of a man who chooses quietness and meddling with little accords

with him who, upon any necessity, rides along with the Scythians and

manages the affairs of the tyrants in the Bosphorus: "For that a wise

man will both go to the wars and live with potentates, we will again

consider this hereafter; some indeed upon the like arguments not so much

as suspecting this, and we for semblable reasons admitting it." And

a little after: "Not only with those who have proceeded well, and are

become proficients in discipline and good manners, as with Leucon and

Hydanthyrsus."

Some there are who blame Callisthenes for sailing to Alexander in hopes

to obtain the rebuilding of Olynthus, as Aristotle had procured that of

Stagira; and commend Ephorus, Xenocrates, and Menedemus, who rejected

Alexander's solicitation. But Chrysippus thrusts his wise man

headforwards for the sake of gain, as far as Panticapaeum and the desert

of the Scythians. And that he does this for the sake of profit and gain,

he has showed before, supposing three ways of gaining most suitable for

a wise man,--the first by a kingdom, the second by his friends, and the

third, besides these, by teaching philosophy. And yet he frequently even

tires us with his praises of this saying:--

What need have men of more than these two things?

And in his books of Nature he says, that a wise man, if he has lost the

greatest wealth imaginable, seems to have lost but a single groat. But

having there thus elevated and puffed him up, he again here throws him

down to mercenariness and sophistry; nay, to asking money and even to

receiving it beforehand, sometimes at the very entrance of his scholar,

and otherwhiles after some time past. The last, he says indeed, is the

more polite, but to receive beforehand the more sure; delay allowing

of injuries. Now he says thus: "All who are well advised do not require

their salary in the same manner, but differently; a multitude of them,

as opportunity offers, not promising to make their scholars good men,

and that within a year, but to do this, as far as in them lies, within

a time agreed on." And again going on, he says: "But he will know his

opportunity, whether he ought to receive his recompense presently at

the very entrance (as many have done), or to give them time, this manner

being more liable to injuries, but withal, seeming the more courteous."

And how is the wise man a contemner of wealth, who upon a contract

delivers virtue for money, and if he has not delivered it, yet requires

his reward, as having done what is in him? Or how is he above being

endamaged, when he is so cautious lest he be wronged of his recompense?

For no man is wronged who is not endamaged. Therefore, though he has

elsewhere asserted that a wise man cannot be injured, he here says, that

this manner of dealing is liable to injury.

In his book of a Commonweal he says, that his citizens will neither act

nor prepare anything for the sake of pleasure, and praises Euripides for

having uttered this sentence:--

What need have men of more than these two things,

The fruits of Ceres, and thirst-quenching springs?

And yet a little after this, going on, he commends Diogenes, who forced

his nature to pass from himself in public, and said to those that were

present: I wish I could in the same manner drive hunger also out of my

belly. What reason then is there to praise in the same books him who

rejects all pleasure, and withal, him who for the sake of pleasure does

such things, and proceeds to such a degree of filthiness? Moreover,

having in his book of Nature written, that Nature has produced many

creatures for the sake of beauty, delighting in pulchritude and pleasing

herself with variety, and having added a most absurd expression, that

the peacock was made for the sake of his tail and for the beauty of it;

he has, in his treatise of a Commonweal, sharply reprehended those who

bred peacocks and nightingales, as if he were making laws contrary to

the lawgiver of the world, and deriding Nature for pleasing herself in

the beauty of animals to which a wise man would not give a place in

his city. For how can it but be absurd to blame those who nourish these

creatures, if he commends Providence which created them? In his Fifth

Book of Nature, having said, that bugs profitably awaken us out of our

sleep, that mice make us cautious not to lay up everything negligently,

and that it is probable that Nature, rejoicing in variety, takes delight

in the production of fair creatures, he adds these words: "The evidence

of this is chiefly shown in the peacock's tail; for here she manifests

that this animal was made for the sake of his tail, and not the

contrary; so, the male being made, the female follows." In his book of

a Commonweal, having said that we are ready to paint even dunghills,

a little after he adds, that some beautify their cornfields with vines

climbing up trees, and myrtles set in rows, and keep peacocks, doves,

and partridges, that they may hear them cry and coo, and nightingales.

Now I would gladly ask him, what he thinks of bees and honey? For it

was of consequence, that he who said bugs were created profitably should

also say that bees were created unprofitably. But if he allows these a

place in his city, why does he drive away his citizens from things that

are pleasing and delight the ear? To be brief,--as he would be very

absurd who should blame the guests for eating sweetmeats and other

delicacies and drinking of wine, and at the same time commend him who

invited them and prepared such things for them; so he that praises

Providence, which has afforded fishes, birds, honey, and wine, and at

the same time finds fault with those who reject not these things, nor

content themselves with

The fruits of Ceres and thirst-quenching springs,

which are present and sufficient to nourish us, seems to make no scruple

of speaking things contradictory to himself.

Moreover, having said in his book of Exhortations, that the having

carnal commerce with our mothers, daughters, or sisters, the eating

forbidden food, and the going from a woman's bed or a dead carcass to

the temple, have been without reason blamed, he affirms, that we ought

for these things to have a regard to the brute beasts, and from what

is done by them conclude that none of these is absurd or contrary to

Nature; for that the comparisons of other animals are fitly made for

this purpose, to show that neither their coupling, bringing-forth, nor

dying in the temples pollutes the Divinity. Yet he again in his Fifth

Book of Nature says, that Hesiod rightly forbids urinating into rivers

and fountains, and that we should rather abstain from doing this against

any altar, or statue of the gods; and that it is not to be admitted for

an argument, that dogs, asses, and young children do it, who have no

discretion or consideration of such things. It is therefore absurd to

say in one place, that the savage example of irrational animals is fit

to be considered, and in another, that it is unreasonable to allege it.

To give a solution to the inclinations, when a man seems to be

necessitated by exterior causes, some philosophers place in the

principal faculty of the soul a certain adventitious motion, which is

chiefly manifested in things differing in no way from one another. For

when, with two things altogether alike and of equal importance, there is

a necessity to choose the one, there being no cause inclining to either,

for that neither of them differs from the other, this adventitious

power of the soul, seizing on its inclination, determines the doubt.

Chrysippus, discoursing against these men, as offering violence to

Nature by imagining an effect without a cause, in many places alleges

the die and the balance, and several other things, which cannot fall or

incline either one way or the other without some cause or difference,

either wholly within them or coming to them from without; for that

what is causeless (he says) is wholly insubsistent, as also what

is fortuitous; and in those motions devised by some and called

adventitious, there occur certain obscure causes, which, being concealed

from us, move our inclinations to one side or other. These are some of

those things which are most evidently known to have been frequently said

by him; but what he has said contrary to this, not lying so exposed to

every one's sight, I will set down in his own words. For in his book

of Judging, having supposed two running for a wager to have exactly

finished their race together, he examines what is fit for the judge in

this case to do. "Whether," says he, "may the judge give the palm to

which of them he will, since they both happen to be so familiar to him,

that he would in some sort appear to bestow on them somewhat of his own?

Or rather, since the palm is common to both, may it be, as if lots had

been cast, given to either, according to the inclination he chances

to have? I say the inclination he chances to have, as when two groats,

every way else alike, being presented to us, we incline to one of them

and take it." And in his Sixth Book of Duties, having said that there

are some things not worthy of much study or attention, he thinks we

ought, as if we had cast lots, to commit the choice of those things to

the casual inclination of the mind: "As if," says he, "of those who

try the same two drams in a certain time, some should approve this and

others that, and there being no more cause for the taking of one than

the other, we should leave off making any farther investigation and

take that which chances to come first; thus casting the lot (as it were)

according to some uncertain principle, and being in danger of choosing

the worse of them." For in these passages, the casting of lots and the

casual inclining of the mind, which is without any cause, introduce the

choice of indifferent things.

In his Third Book of Dialectics, having said that Plato, Aristotle, and

those who came after them, even to Polemon and Straton, but especially

Socrates, diligently studied dialectics, and having cried out that one

would even choose to err with such and so great men as these, he brings

in these words: "For if they had spoken of these things cursorily,

one might perhaps have cavilled at this place; but having treated of

dialectic skill as one of the greatest and most necessary faculties, it

is not probable they should have been so much mistaken, having been such

in all the parts of philosophy as we esteem them." Why, then (might some

one say to him), do you never cease to oppose and argue against such

and so great men, as if you thought them to err in the principal and

greatest matters? For it is not probable that they writ seriously of

dialectics, and only transitorily and in sport of the beginning, end,

gods, and justice, in which you affirm their discourse to be blind and

contradictory to itself, and to have a thousand other faults.

In one place he says, that the vice called [Greek omitted], or the

rejoicing at other men's harms, has no being; since no good man ever

rejoiced at another's evils. But in his Second Book of Good, having

declared envy to be a sorrow at other men's good,--to wit, in such as

desire the depression of their neighbors that themselves may excel, he

joins to it this rejoicing at other men's harms, saying thus: "To this

is contiguous the rejoicing at other men's harms, in such as for like

causes desire to have their neighbors low; but in those that are

turned according to other natural motions, is engendered mercy." For he

manifestly admits the joy at other men's harms to be subsistent, as

well as envy and mercy; though in other places he affirms it to have no

subsistence; as he does also the hatred of wickedness, and the desire of

dishonest gain.

Having in many places said, that those who have a long time been happy

are nothing more so, but equally and in like manner with those who have

but a moment been partakers of felicity, he has again in many other

places affirmed, that it is not fit to stretch out so much as a finger

for the obtaining momentary prudence, which flies away like a flash of

lightning. It will be sufficient to set down what is to this purpose

written by him in his Sixth Book of Moral Questions. For having said,

that neither does every good thing equally cause joy, nor every good

deed the like glorying, he subjoins these words: "For if a man should

have wisdom only for a moment of time or the final minute of life, he

ought not so much as to stretch out his finger for such a shortlived

prudence." And yet men are neither more happy for being longer so, nor

is eternal felicity more eligible than that which lasts but a moment.

If he had indeed held prudence to be a good, producing felicity, as

Epicurus thought, one should have blamed only the absurdity and the

paradoxicalness of this opinion; but since prudence of itself is not

another thing differing from felicity, but felicity itself, how is

it not a contradiction to say, that momentary happiness is equally

desirable with eternal, and yet that momentary happiness is nothing

worth?

Chrysippus also says, that the virtues follow one another, and that not

only he who has one has all, but also that he who acts according to any

one of them acts according to them all; and he affirms, that there is

not any man perfect who is not possessed of all the virtues, nor any

action perfect to the doing of which all the virtues do not concur. But

yet in his Sixth Book of Moral Questions he says, that a good man

does not always act valiantly, nor a vicious man always fearfully; for

certain objects being presented to the fancies, the one must persist in

his judgments, and the other depart from them; and he says that it is

not probable a wicked man should be always indulging his lust. If then

to act valiantly is the same thing as to use fortitude; and to act

timorously as to yield to fear, they cannot but speak contradictions who

say, that he who is possessed of either virtue or vice acts at she

same time according to all the virtues or all the vices, and yet that a

valiant man does not always act valiantly nor a vicious man timorously.

He defines Rhetoric to be an art concerning the ornament and the

ordering of a discourse that is pronounced. And farther in his First

Book he has written thus: "And I am of opinion not only that a regard

ought to be had to a liberal and simple adorning of words, but also that

care is to be taken for proper delivery, as regards the right elevation

of the voice and the compositions of the countenance and hands." Yet

he, who is in this place so curious and exact, again in the same book,

speaking of the collision of the vowels, says: "We ought not only to let

these things pass, minding somewhat that is better, but also to neglect

certain obscurities and defects, nay, solecisms also, of which others,

and those not a few, would be ashamed." Certainly, in one place to allow

those who would speak eloquently so carefully to dispose their speech

as even to observe a decorum in the very composition of their mouth and

hands, and in another place to forbid the taking care of defects and

inelegancies, and the being ashamed even of committing solecisms, is

the property of a man who little cares what he says, but rashly utters

whatever comes first into his mouth.

Moreover, in his Natural Positions having warned us not to trouble

ourselves but to be at quiet about such things as require experience

and scientific investigation, he says: "Let us not think after the same

manner with Plato, that liquid nourishment is conveyed to the lungs, and

dry to the stomach; nor let us embrace other errors like to these." Now

it is my opinion, that to reprehend others, and then not to keep one's

self from falling into those things which one has reprehended, is the

greatest of contradictions and shamefullest of errors. But he says, that

the connections made by ten axioms amount to above a million in number,

having neither searched diligently into it by himself nor attained to

the truth by men experienced in it. Yet Plato had to testify for him the

most renowned of the physicians, Hippocrates, Philistion, and Dioxippus

the disciple of Hippocrates; and of the poets, Euripides, Aleaeus,

Eupolis, and Eratosthenes, who all say that the drink passes through the

lungs. But all the arithmeticians refute Chrysippus, amongst whom also

is Hipparchus, demonstrating that the error of his computation is very

great; since the affirmative makes of the ten axioms one hundred and

three thousand forty and nine connections, and the negative three

hundred and ten thousand nine hundred fifty and two.

Some of the ancients have said, that the same befell Zeno which befalls

him who has sour wine which he can sell neither for vinegar nor wine;

for his "things preferable," as he called them, cannot be disposed of,

either as good or as indifferent. But Chrysippus has made the matter yet

far more intricate; for he sometimes says, that they are mad who make no

account of riches, health, freedom from pain, and integrity of the body,

nor take any care to attain them; and having cited that sentence of

Hesiod,

Work hard, O God-born Perses,

("Works and Days," 299.)

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 preferable things good and their contraries

evil, in these very words: "Any one who likes, according to these

permutations, may call one thing good and another evil, if he has a

regard to the things themselves, not wandering elsewhere, not failing in

the understanding of the thing signified, and in the rest accommodating

himself to custom in the denomination." Having thus in this place set

his things preferable 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.

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 can 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 outside of virtue nothing is good and advantageous. 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 laws, and in the most 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 only one 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.

(Euripides, "Hercules Furens," 1245.)

Now who can imagine any assertions more repugnant to one another than

chat 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?

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 Saviour and Creator, the father

of justice, equity, and peace, in his Third Book of the Gods: "As cities

overcharged 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 inquire 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

earnages, 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 Deiotarus, 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.

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 anything 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;

(From the "Bellerophontes" of Euripides, Frag. 294;

and the "Archelaus," Frag. 256.)

as if we were now doing anything else than setting down such words and

sentences of his as are repugnant to one another. 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 in the Stoic

system; and Chrysippus affirms that Homer said very well,

Jove's purposes were ripening,

("Iliad," i. 5.)

having respect to Fate and the Nature of the universe, according to

which everything is governed. How then do these agree, both that God is

no way the cause of any dishonest thing, and again, that not even the

least thing imaginable can be otherwise done than according to common

Nature and its reason? For amongst all things that are done, there must

of necessity be also evil things attributed to the gods. And though

Epicurus indeed turns himself every way, and studies artifices, devising

how to deliver and set loose our voluntary free will from this eternal

motion, that he may not leave vice irreprehensible; yet Chrysippus gives

vice a most absolute liberty, as being done not only of necessity or

according to Fate, but also according to the reason of God and

best Nature. And these things are yet farther seen in what he says

afterwards, being thus word for word: "For common Nature extending to

all things, it will be of necessity that everything, howsoever done in

the whole or in any one soever of its parts, must be done according to

this common Nature and its reason, proceeding on regularly without

any impediment. For there is nothing without that can hinder the

administration, nor is there any of the parts that can be moved or

habituated otherwise than according to common Nature." What, then, are

these habits and motions of the parts? It is manifest, that the habits

are vices and diseases, covetousness, luxury, ambition, cowardice,

injustice; and that the motions are adulteries, thefts, treasons,

murders, parricides. Of these Chrysippus thinks, that no one, either

little or great, is contrary to the reason of Jupiter, or to his law,

justice, and providence; so neither is the transgressing of the law

done against the law, nor the acting unjustly against justice, nor the

committing of sin against Providence.

And yet he says, that God punishes vice, and does many things for the

chastising of the wicked. And in his Second Book of the Gods he says,

that many adversities sometimes befall the good, not as they do the

wicked, for punishment, but according to another dispensation, as it

is in cities. And again in these words: "First we are to understand of

evils in like manner as has been said before: then that these things are

distributed according to the reason of Jupiter, whether for punishment,

or according to some other dispensation, having in some sort respect to

the universe." This therefore is indeed severe, that wickedness is both

done and punished according to the reason of Jupiter. But he aggravates

this contradiction in his Second Book of Nature, writing thus: "Vice in

reference to grievous accidents, has a certain reason of its own. For it

is also in some sort according to the reason of Nature, and, as I may

so say, is not wholly useless in respect of the universe. For otherwise

also there would not be any good." Thus does he reprehend those that

dispute indifferently on both sides, who, out of a desire to say

something wholly singular and more exquisite concerning everything,

affirms, that men do not unprofitably cut purses, calumniate, and play

madmen, and that it is not unprofitable there should be unprofitable,

hurtful, and unhappy persons. What manner of god then is Jupiter,--I

mean Chrysippus's Jupiter,--who punishes an act done neither willingly

nor unprofitably? For vice is indeed, according to Chrysippus's

discourse, wholly reprehensible; but Jupiter is to be blamed, whether

he has made vice which is an unprofitable thing, or, having made it not

unprofitable, punishes it.

Again, in his First Book of Justice, having spoken of the gods as

resisting the injustices of some, he says: "But wholly to take away

vice is neither possible nor expedient." Whether it were not better

that law-breaking, injustice, and folly should be taken away, is not the

design of this present discourse to inquire. But he himself, as much

as in him lies, by his philosophy taking away vice, which it is not

expedient to take away, does something repugnant both to reason and God.

Besides this, saying that God resists some injustices, he again makes

plain the impiety of sins.

Having often written that there is nothing reprehensible, nothing to

be complained of in the world, all things being finished according to a

most excellent nature, he again elsewhere leaves certain negligences

to be reprehended, and those not concerning small or base matters. For

having in his Third Book of Substance related that some such things

befall honest and good men, he says: "May it not be that some things are

not regarded, as in great families some bran--yea, and some grains

of corn also--are scattered, the generality being nevertheless well

ordered; or maybe there are evil Genii set over those things in which

there are real and faulty negligence?" And he also affirms that there

is much necessity intermixed. I let pass, how inconsiderate it is

to compare such accidents befalling honest and good men, as were the

condemnation of Socrates, the burning of Pythagoras, whilst he was

yet living, by the Cyloneans, the putting to death--and that with

torture--of Zeno by the tyrant Demylus, and of Antiphon by Dionysius,

with the letting of bran fall. But that there should be evil Genii

placed by Providence over such charges,--how can it but be a reproach

to God, as it would be to a king, to commit the administration of his

provinces to evil and rash governors and captains, and suffer the best

of his subjects to be despised and ill-treated by them? And furthermore,

if there is much necessity mixed amongst affairs, then God has not power

over them all, nor are they all administered according to his reason.

He contends much against Epicurus and those that take away providence

from the conceptions we have of the gods, whom we esteem beneficial and

gracious to men. And these things being frequently said by them, there

is no necessity of setting down the words. Yet all do not conceive the

gods to be good and favorable to us. For see what the Jews and Syrians

think of the gods; consider also with how much superstition the poets

are filled. But there is not any one, in a manner to speak of, that

imagines God to be corruptible or to have been born. And to omit all

others, Antipater the Tarsian, in his book of the gods writes thus, word

for word: "At the opening of our discourse we will briefly repeat the

opinion we have concerning God. We understand therefore God to be an

animal, blessed and incorruptible, and beneficial to men." And then

expounding every one of these terms he says: "And indeed all men esteem

the gods to be incorruptible." Chrysippus therefore is, according to

Antipater, not one of "all men"; for he thinks none of the gods, except

Fire, to be incorruptible, but that they all equally were born and will

die. These things are, in a manner, everywhere said by him. But I will

set down his words out of his Third Book of the Gods: "It is otherwise

with the gods. For some of them are born and corruptible, but others not

born. And to demonstrate these things from the beginning will be more

fit for a treatise of Nature. For the Sun, the Moon, and other gods who

are of a like nature, were begotten; but Jupiter is eternal." And again

going on: "But the like will be said concerning dying and being

born, both concerning the other gods and Jupiter. For they indeed are

corruptible, but his past incorruptible." With these I compare a few of

the things said by Antipater: "Whosoever they are that take away from

the gods beneficence, they affect in some part our conception of them;

and according to the same reason they also do this, who think they

participate of generation and corruption." If, then, he who esteems the

gods corruptible is equally absurd with him who thinks them not to be

provident and gracious to men, Chrysippus is no less in an error than

Epicurus. For one of them deprives the gods of beneficence, the other

of incorruptibility. ============ And moreover, Chrysippus, in his Third

Book of the Gods treating of the other gods being nourished, says thus:

"The other gods indeed use nourishment, being equally sustained by it;

but Jupiter and the World are maintained after another manner from those

who are consumed and were engendered by fire." Here indeed he declares,

that all the other gods are nourished except the World and Jupiter; but

in his First Book of Providence he says: "Jupiter increases till he has

consumed all things into himself. For since death is the separation

of the soul from the body, and the soul of the World is not indeed

separated, but increases continually till it has consumed all matter

into itself, it is not to be said that the World dies." Who can

therefore appear to speak things more contradictory to himself than he

who says that the same god is now nourished and again not nourished? Nor

is there any need of gathering this by argument: for himself has

plainly written in the same place: "But the World alone is said to be

self-sufficient, because it alone has in itself all things it stands in

need of, and is nourished and augmented of itself, the other parts being

mutually changed into one another." He is then repugnant to himself, not

only by declaring in one place that all the gods are nourished except

the World and Jupiter, and saying in another, that the World also is

nourished; but much more, when he affirms that the World increases by

nourishing itself. Now the contrary had been much more probable, to wit,

that the World alone does not increase, having its own destruction for

its food; but that addition and increase are incident to the other gods,

who are nourished from without, and the World is rather consumed into

them, if so it is that the World feeds on itself, and they always

receive something and are nourished from that.

Secondly, the conception of the gods contains in it felicity,

blessedness, and self-perfection. Wherefore also Euripides is commanded

for saying:--

For God, if truly God, does nothing want,

So all these speeches are the poets' cant.

("Hercules Furens," 1345.)

But Chrysippus in the places I have alleged says, that the World only is

self-sufficient, because this alone has in itself all things it needs.

What then follows from this, that the World alone is self-sufficient?

That neither the Sun, Moon, nor any other of the gods is

self-sufficient, and not being self-sufficient, they cannot be happy or

blessed.

He says, that the infant in the womb is nourished by Nature, like a

plant; but when it is brought forth, being cooled and hardened by the

air, it changes its spirit and becomes an animal; whence the soul is not

unfitly named Psyche because of this refrigeration [Greek omitted]. But

again he esteems the soul the more subtile and fine spirit of Nature,

therein contradicting himself; for how can a subtile thing be made of a

gross one, and be rarefied by refrigeration and condensation? And what

is more, how does he, declaring an animal to be made by refrigeration,

think the sun to be animated, which is of fire and made of an exhalation

changed into fire? For he says in his Third Book of Nature: "Now the

change of fire is such, that it is turned by the air into water; and the

earth subsiding from this, the air exhales; the air being subtilized,

the ether is produced round about it; and the stars are, with the

sun, kindled from the sea." Now what is more contrary to kindling than

refrigeration, or to rarefaction than condensation? For the one makes

water and earth of fire and air, and the other changes that which

is moist and earthy into fire and air. But yet in one place he makes

kindling, in another cooling, to be the beginning of animation. And he

moreover says, that when the inflammation is throughout, it lives and

is an animal, but being again extinct and thickened, it is turned into

water and earth and corporeity. Now in his First Book of Providence he

says: "For the world, indeed, being wholly set on fire, is presently

also the soul and guide of itself; but when it is changed into moisture,

and has altered the soul remaining within it by some method into a body

and soul, so as to consist of these two it exists then after another

manner." Here, forsooth, he plainly says, that the inanimate parts of

the world are by inflammation turned into an animated thing, and that

again by extinction the soul is relaxed and moistened, being changed

into corporeity. He seems therefore very absurd, one while by

refrigeration making animals of senseless things, and again, by the

same changing the greatest part of the world's soul into senseless and

inanimate things.

But besides this, his discourse concerning the generation of the soul

has a demonstration contrary to his own opinion; or he says, that the

soul is generated when the infant is already brought forth, the spirit

being changed by refrigeration, as by hardening. Now for the soul's

being engendered, and that after the birth, he chiefly uses this

demonstration, that the children are for the most part in manners and

inclinations like to their parents. Now the repugnancy of these things

is evident. For it is not possible that the soul, which is not generated

till after the birth, should have its inclination before the birth; or

it will fall out that the soul is like before it is generated; that is,

it will be in likeness, and yet not be, because it is not yet generated.

But if any one says that, the likeness being bred in the tempers of the

bodies, the souls are changed when they are generated, he destroys the

argument of the soul's being generated. For thus it may come to pass,

that the soul, though not generated, may at its entrance into the body

be changed by the mixture of likeness.

He says sometimes, that the air is light and mounts upwards, and

sometimes, that it is neither heavy nor light. For in his Second Book of

Motion he says, that the fire, being without gravity, ascends upwards,

and the air like to that; the water approaching more to the earth, and

the air to the fire. But in his Physical Arts he inclines to the other

opinion, that the air of itself has neither gravity nor levity.

He says that the air is by nature dark, and uses this as an argument of

its being also the first cold; for that its darkness is opposite to the

brightness, and its coldness to the heat of fire. Moving this in his

First Book of Natural Questions, he again in his treatise of Habits

says, that habits are nothing else but airs; for bodies are contained by

these, and the cause that every one of the bodies contained in any

habit is such as it is, is the containing air, which they call in iron

hardness, in stone solidness, in silver whiteness. These words have in

them much absurdity and contradiction. For if the air remains such as it

is of its own nature, how comes black, in that which is not white, to

be made whiteness; and soft, in that which is not hard, to be made

hardness; and rare, in that which is not thick, to be made thickness?

But if, being mixed with these, it is altered and made like to them, how

is it a habit or power or cause of these things by which it is subdued?

For such a change, by which it loses its own qualities, is the property

of a patient, not of an agent, and not of a thing containing, but of a

thing languishing. Yet they everywhere affirm, that matter, being of its

own nature idle and motionless, is subjected to qualities, and that the

qualities are spirits, which, being also aerial tensions, give a form

and figure to every part of matter to which they adhere. These things

they cannot rationally say, supposing the air to be such as they affirm

it. For if it is a habit and tension, it will assimilate every body to

itself, so that it shall be black and soft. But if by the mixture with

these things it receives forms contrary to those it has, it will be in

some sort the matter, and not the cause or power of matter.

It is often said by Chrysippus, that there is without the world an

infinite vacuum, and that this infinity has neither beginning, middle,

nor end. And by this the Stoics chiefly refute that spontaneous motion

of the atoms downward, which is taught by Epicurus; there not being in

infinity any difference according to which one thing is thought to be

above, another below. But in his Fourth Book of Things Possible, having

supposed a certain middle place and middle region, he says that the

world is situated there. The words are these: "Wherefore, if it is to be

said of the world that it is corruptible, this seems to want proof; yet

nevertheless it rather appears to me to be so. However, its occupation

of the place wherein it stands cooperates very much towards its immunity

from corruption, because it is in the midst; since if it were conceived

to be anywhere else, corruption would absolutely happen to it." And

again, a little after: "For so also in a manner has essence happened

eternally to possess the middle place, being immediately from the

beginning such as it is; so that both by another manner and through this

chance it admits not any corruption, and is therefore eternal." These

words have one apparent and visible contradiction, to wit, his admitting

a certain middle place and middle region infinity. They have also a

second, more obscure indeed, but withal more absurd than this. For

thinking that the world would not have remained incorruptible if its

situation had happened to have been in any other part of the vacuum,

he manifestly appears to have feared lest, the parts of essence moving

towards the middle, there should be a dissolution and corruption of the

world. Now this he would not have feared, had he not thought that bodies

do by nature tend from every place towards the middle, not of essence,

but of the region containing essence; of which also he has frequently

spoken, as of a thing impossible and contrary to Nature; for that (as

he says) there is not in the vacuum any difference by which bodies are

drawn rather this way than that way, but the construction of the world

is the cause of motion, bodies inclining and being carried from every

side to the centre and middle of it. It is sufficient to this purpose,

to set down the text out of his Second Book of Motion; for having

discoursed, that the world indeed is a perfect body, but that the parts

of the world are not perfect, because they have in some sort respect to

the whole and are not of themselves; and going forward concerning its

motion, as having been framed by Nature to be moved by all its parts

towards compaction and cohesion, and not towards dissolution and

breaking, he says thus: "But the universe thus tending and being moved

to the same point, and the arts having the same motion from the nature

of the body, it is probable that all bodies have this first motion

according to Nature towards the centre of the world,--the world being

thus moved as concerns itself, and the parts being moved as being its

parts." What, then, ailed you, good sir (might some one say to him),

that you have so far forgotten those words, as to affirm that the world,

if it had not casually possessed the middle place, would have been

dissoluble and corruptible? For if it is by nature so framed as always

to incline towards the middle, and its parts from every side tend to

the same, into what place soever of the vacuum it should have been

transposed,--thus containing and (as it were) embracing itself,--it

would have remained incorruptible and without danger of breaking. For

things that are broken and dissipated suffer this by the separation and

dissolution of their parts, every one of them hasting to its own place

from that which it had contrary to Nature. But you, being of opinion

that, if the world should have been seated in any other place of the

vacuum, it would have been wholly liable to corruption, and affirming

the same, and therefore asserting a middle in that which naturally

can have no middle,--to wit, in that which is infinite,--have indeed

dismissed these tensions, coherences, and inclinations, as having

nothing available to its preservation, and attributed all the cause of

its permanency to the possession of place. And, as if you were ambitious

to confute yourself, to the things you have said before you join this

also: "In whatsoever manner every one of the parts moves, being coherent

to the rest, it is agreeable to reason that in the same also the whole

should move by itself; yea, though we should, for argument's sake,

imagine and suppose it to be in some vacuity of this world; for as,

being kept in on every side, it would move towards the middle, so it

would continue in the same motion, though by way of disputation we

should admit that there were on a sudden a vacuum round about it."

No part then whatsoever, though encompassed by a vacuum, loses its

inclination moving it towards the middle of the world; but the world

itself, if chance had not prepared it a place in the middle, would have

lost its containing vigor, the parts of its essence being carried some

one way, some another.

And these things indeed contain great contradictions to natural

reason; but this is also repugnant to the doctrine concerning God and

Providence, that assigning to them the least causes, he takes from them

the most principal and greatest. For what is more principal than the

permanency of the world, or that its essence, united in its parts, is

contained in itself? But this, as Chrysippus says, fell out casually.

For if the possession of place is the cause of incorruptibility, and

this was the production of chance, it is manifest that the preservation

of the universe is a work of chance, and not of Fate and Providence.

Now, as for his doctrine of possibles, how can it but be repugnant to

his doctrine of Fate? For if that is not possible which either is true

or shall be true, as Diodorus has it, but everything which is capable of

being, though it never shall be, is possible, there will be many things

possible which will never be according to invincible, inviolable, and

all-conquering Fate. And thus either Fate will lose its power; or if

that, as Chrysippus thinks, has existence, that which is susceptible of

being will often fall out to be impossible. And everything indeed which

is true will be necessary, being comprehended by the principal of all

necessities; and everything that is false will be impossible, having

the greatest cause to oppose its ever being true. For how is it possible

that he should be susceptible of dying on the land, who is destined to

die at sea? And how is it possible for him who is at Megara to come to

Athens, if he is prohibited by Fate?

But moreover, the things that are boldly asserted by him concerning

fantasies or imaginations are very opposite to Fate. For desiring to

show that fantasy is not of itself a perfect cause of consent, he says,

that the Sages will prejudice us by imprinting false imaginations in our

minds, if fantasies do of themselves absolutely cause consent; for

wise men often make use of falsity against the wicked, representing a

probable imagination,--which is yet not the cause of consent, for

then it would be also a cause of false apprehension and error. Any one

therefore, transferring these things from the wise man to Fate, may say,

that consents are not caused by Fate; for if they were, false consents

and opinions and deceptions would also be by Fate. Thus the reason which

exempts the wise man from doing hurt also demonstrates at the same time

that Fate is not the cause of all things. For if men neither opine

nor are prejudiced by Fate, it is manifest also that they neither

act rightly nor are wise nor remain firm in their sentiments nor have

utility by Fate, but that there is an end of Fate's being the cause of

all things. Now if any one shall say that Chrysippus makes not Fate the

absolute cause of all things, but only a PROCATARCLICAL (or antecedent)

one, he will again show that he is contradictory to himself, since he

excessively praises Homer for saying of Jupiter,

Receive whatever good or ill

He sends to each of you;

as also Euripides for these words,

O Jove, how can I say that wretched we,

Poor mortals, aught do understand? On thee

We all depend, and nothing can transact,

But as thy sacred wisdom shall enact.

(Euripides, "Suppliants," 734.)

And himself writes many things agreeable to these. In fine, he says that

nothing, be it never so little, either rests or is moved otherwise than

according to the reason of Jupiter, which is the same thing with Fate.

Moreover, the antecedent cause is weaker than the absolute one, and

attains not to its effect when it is subdued by others that rise

up against it. But he himself declaring Fate to be an invincible,

unimpeachable, and inflexible cause, calls it Atropos, (That is,

Unchangeable.) Adrasteia, (That is, Unavoidable.) Necessity, and

Pepromene (as putting a limit to all things). Whether then shall we say,

that neither consents nor virtues nor vices nor doing well nor doing

ill is in our power? Or shall we affirm, that Fate is deficient, that

terminating destiny is unable to determine, and that the motions

and habits of Jupiter cannot be effective? For the one of these two

consequences will follow from Fate's being an absolute, the other from

its being only an antecedent cause. For if it is an absolute cause, it

takes away our free will and leaves nothing in our control; and if it is

only antecedent, it loses its being unimpeachable and effectual. For

not once or ten times, but everywhere, especially in his Physics, he

has written, that there are many obstacles and impediments to particular

natures and motions, but none to that of the universe. And how can the

motion of the universe, extending as it does to particular ones, be

undisturbed and unimpeached, if these are stopped and hindered? For

neither can the nature of man be free from impediment, if that of the

foot or hand is not so; nor can the motion of a ship but be hindered, if

there are any obstacles about the sails or the operation of the oars.

Besides all this, if the fantasies are not according to Fate, neither

are they causes of consents; but if, because it imprints fantasies

leading to consent, the consents are said to be according to Fate,

how is it not contrary to itself, imprinting in the greatest matters

different imaginations and such as draw the understanding contrary ways?

For (they say) those who adhere to one of them, and withhold not their

consent, do amiss: if they yield to obscure things, they stumble; if to

false, they are deceived; if to such as are not commonly comprehended,

they opine. And yet one of these three is of necessity,--either that

every fantasy is not the work of Fate, or that every receipt and consent

of fantasy is faultless, or that Fate itself is not irreprehensible. For

I do not know how it can be blameless, proposing to us such fantasies

that not the resisting or going against them, but the following and

yielding to them, is blamable. Moreover, both Chrysippus and Antipater,

in their disputes against the Academics, take not a little pains to

prove that we neither act nor are incited without consent, saying, that

they build on fictions and false suppositions who think that, a proper

fantasy being presented, we are presently incited, without having either

yielded or consented. Again, Chrysippus says, that God imprints in us

false imaginations, as does also the wise man; not that they would have

us consent or yield to them, but only that we should act and be incited

with regard to that which appears; but we, being evil, do through

infirmity consent to such fantasies. Now, the perplexity and discrepancy

of these discourses among themselves are not very difficult to be

discerned. For he that would not have men consent but only act according

to the fantasies which he offers unto them--whether he be God or a

wise man--knows that the fantasies are sufficient for acting, and that

consents are superfluous. For if, knowing that the imagination gives us

not an instinct to work without consent, he ministers to us false and

probable fantasies, he is the voluntary cause of our falling and erring

by assenting to incomprehensible things.

END OF SEVEN-----------

THE EATING OF FLESH.

TRACT I. You ask of me then for what reason it was that Pythagoras

abstained from eating of flesh. I for my part do much wonder in what

humor, with what soul or reason, the first man with his mouth touched

slaughter, and reached to his lips the flesh of a dead animal, and

having set before people courses of ghastly corpses and ghosts, could

give those parts the names of meat and victuals, that but a little

before lowed, cried, moved, and saw; how his sight could endure the

blood of slaughtered, flayed, and mangled bodies; how his smell could

bear their scent; and how the very nastiness happened not to offend the

taste, while it chewed the sores of others, and participated of the saps

and juices of deadly wounds.

Crept the raw hides, and with a bellowing sound

Roared the dead limbs; the burning entrails groaned.

("Odyssey," xii. 395.)

This indeed is but a fiction and fancy; but the fare itself is truly

monstrous and prodigious,--that a man should have a stomach to creatures

while they yet bellow, and that he should be giving directions which of

things yet alive and speaking is fittest to make food of, and ordering

the several kinds of the seasoning and dressing them and serving them up

to tables. You ought rather, in my opinion, to have inquired who first

began this practice, than who of late times left it off.

And truly, as for those people who first ventured upon eating of flesh,

it is very probable that the whole reason of their so doing was scarcity

and want of other food; for it is not likely that their living together

in lawless and extravagant lusts, or their growing wanton and capricious

through the excessive variety of provisions then among them, brought

them to such unsociable pleasures as these, against Nature. Yea, had

they at this instant but their sense and voice restored to them, I am

persuaded they would express themselves to this purpose:

"Oh! happy you, and highly favored of the gods, who now live! Into what

an age of the world are you fallen, who share and enjoy among you a

plentiful portion of good things! What abundance of things spring up for

your use! What fruitful vineyards you enjoy! What wealth you gather from

the fields! What delicacies from trees and plants, which you may gather!

You may glut and fill yourselves without being polluted. As for us, we

fell upon the most dismal and affrighting part of time, in which we

were exposed by our production to manifold and inextricable wants and

necessities. As yet the thickened air concealed the heaven from our

view, and the stars were as yet confused with a disorderly huddle of

fire and moisture and violent fluxions of winds. As yet the sun was not

fixed to a regular and certain course, so as to separate morning and

evening, nor did the seasons return in order crowned with wreaths from

the fruitful harvest. The land was also spoiled by the inundations of

disorderly rivers; and a great part of it was deformed with marshes, and

utterly wild by reason of deep quagmires, unfertile forests, and woods.

There was then no production of tame fruits, nor any instruments of art

or invention of wit. And hunger gave no time, nor did seed-time then

stay for the yearly season. What wonder is it if we made use of the

flesh of beasts contrary to Nature, when mud was eaten and the bark of

wood, and when it was thought a happy thing to find either a sprouting

grass or a root of any plant! But when they had by chance tasted of

or eaten an acorn, they danced for very joy about some oak or esculus,

calling it by the names of life-giver, mother, and nourisher. And this

was the only festival that those times were acquainted with; upon all

other occasions, all things were full of anguish and dismal sadness. But

whence is it that a certain ravenousness and frenzy drives you in these

happy days to pollute yourselves with blood, since you have such an

abundance of things necessary for your subsistence? Why do you belie the

earth as unable to maintain you? Why do you profane the lawgiver Ceres,

and shame the mild and gentle Bacchus, as not furnishing you with

sufficiency? Are you not ashamed to mix tame fruits with blood and

slaughter? You are indeed wont to call serpents, leopards, and lions

savage creatures; but yet yourselves are defiled with blood, and

come nothing behind them in cruelty. What they kill is their ordinary

nourishment, but what you kill is your better fare."

For we eat not lions and wolves by way of revenge; but we let those go,

and catch the harmless and tame sort, and such as have neither stings

nor teeth to bite with, and slay them; which, so may Jove help us,

Nature seems to us to have produced for their beauty and comeliness

only. [Just as if one seeing the river Nilus overflowing its banks,

and thereby filling the whole country with genial and fertile moisture,

should not at all admire that secret power in it that produces plants

and plenteousness of most sweet and useful fruits, but beholding

somewhere a crocodile swimming in it, or an asp crawling along, or mice

(savage and filthy creatures), should presently affirm these to be the

occasion of all that is amiss, or of any want or defect that may happen.

Or as if indeed one contemplating this land or ground, how full it is

of tame fruits, and how heavy with ears of corn, should afterwards espy

somewhere in these same cornfields an ear of darnel or a wild vetch, and

thereupon neglect to reap and gather in the corn, and fall a complaining

of these. Such another thing it would be, if one--listening to the

harangue of some advocate at some bar or pleading, swelling and

enlarging and hastening towards the relief of some impending danger, or

else, by Jupiter, in the impeaching and charging of certain audacious

villanies or indictments, flowing and rolling along, and that not in a

simple and poor strain, but with many sorts of passions all at once, or

rather indeed with all sorts, in one and the same manner, into the many

and various and differing minds of either hearers or judges that he is

either to turn and change, or else, by Jupiter, to soften, appease, and

quiet--should overlook all this business, and never consider or reckon

upon the labor or struggle he had undergone, but pick up certain loose

expressions, which the rapid motion of the discourse had carried along

with it, as by the current of its course, and so had slipped and escaped

the rest of the oration, and, hereupon undervalue the orator.]

But we are nothing put out of countenance, either by the beauteous

gayety of the colors, or by the charmingness of the musical voices,

or by the rare sagacity of the intellects, or by the cleanliness and

neatness of diet, or by the rare discretion and prudence of these poor

unfortunate animals; but for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh,

we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life

and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. And then we fancy

that the voices it utters and screams forth to us are nothing else

but certain inarticulate sounds and noises, and not the several

deprecations, entreaties, and pleadings of each of them, as it were

saying thus to us: "I deprecate not thy necessity (if such there be),

but thy wantonness. Kill me for thy feeding, but do not take me off for

thy better feeding." O horrible cruelty! It is truly an affecting sight

to see the very table of rich people laid before them, who keep them

cooks and caterers to furnish them with dead corpses for their daily

fare; but it is yet more affecting to see it taken away, for the

mammocks remaining are more than that which was eaten. These therefore

were slain to no purpose. Others there are, who are so offended by what

is set before them that they will not suffer it to be cut or sliced;

thus abstaining from them when dead, while they would not spare them

when alive.

Well, then, we understand that that sort of men are used to say, that

in eating of flesh they follow the conduct and direction of Nature.

But that it is not natural to mankind to feed on flesh, we first of all

demonstrate from the very shape and figure of the body. For a human

body no ways resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no

hawk's bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of

stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter

such heavy and fleshy fare. But even from hence, that is, from the

smoothness of the tongue, and the slowness of the stomach to digest,

Nature seems to disclaim all pretence to fleshy victuals. But if you

will contend that yourself was born to an inclination to such food as

you have now a mind to eat, do you then yourself kill what you would

eat. But do it yourself, without the help of a chopping-knife, mallet,

or axe,--as wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at once. Rend

an ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a lamb or a hare

in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do. But if thou hadst

rather stay until what thou greatest is become dead, and if thou art

loath to force a soul out of its body, why then dost thou against Nature

eat an animate thing? Nay, there is nobody that is willing to eat even a

lifeless and a dead thing as it is; but they boil it, and roast it, and

alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the

slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being

thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare. It was indeed a witty

expression of a Lacedaemonian, who, having purchased a small fish in

a certain inn, delivered it to his landlord to be dressed; and as he

demanded cheese, and vinegar, and oil to make sauce, he replied, if I

had had those, I would not have bought the fish. But we are grown so

wanton in our bloody luxury, that we have bestowed upon flesh the name

of meat [Greek omitted], and then require another seasoning [Greek

omitted], to this same flesh, mixing oil, wine, honey, pickle, and

vinegar, with Syrian and Arabian spices, as though we really meant to

embalm it after its disease. Indeed when things are dissolved and

made thus tender and soft, and are as it were turned into a sort of a

carrionly corruption, it must needs be a great difficulty for concoction

to master them, and when it hath mastered them, they must needs cause

grievous oppressions and qualmy indigestions.

Diogenes ventured once to eat a raw pourcontrel, that he might disuse

himself from meat dressed by fire; and as several priests and other

people stood round him, he wrapped his head in his cassock, and so

putting the fish to his mouth, he thus said unto them: It is for your

sake, sirs, that I undergo this danger, and run this risk. A noble and

gallant risk, by Jupiter! For far otherwise than as Pelopidas ventured

his life for the liberty of the Thebans, and Harmodius and Aristogiton

for that of the Athenians, did this philosopher encounter with a raw

pourcontrel, to the end he might make human life more brutish. Moreover,

these same flesh-eatings not only are preternatural to men's bodies,

but also by clogging and cloying them, they render their very minds

and intellects gross. For it is well known to most, that wine and much

flesh-eating make the body indeed strong and lusty, but the mind weak

and feeble. And that I may not offend the wrestlers, I will make use

of examples out of my own country. The Athenians are wont to call us

Boeotians gross, senseless, and stupid fellows, for no other reason but

our over-much eating; by Pindar we are called hogs, for the same reason.

Menander the comedian calls us "fellows with long jaws." It is observed

also that, according to the saying of Heraclitus, "the wisest soul is

like a dry light." Earthen jars, if you strike them, will sound; but if

they be full, they perceive not the strokes that are given them. Copper

vessels also that are thin communicate the sound round about them,

unless some one stop and dull the ambient stroke with his fingers.

Moreover, the eye, when seized with an over-great plenitude of humors,

grows dim and feeble for its ordinary work. When we behold the sun

through a humid air and a great quantity of gross and indigested

vapors, we see it not clear and bright, but obscure and cloudy, and with

glimmering beams. Just so in a muddy and clogged body, that is swagged

down with heavy and unnatural nourishments; it must needs happen that

the gayety and splendor of the mind be confused and dulled, and that it

ramble and roll after little and scarce discernible objects, since it

wants clearness and vigor for higher things.

But to pass by these considerations, is not accustoming one's self to

mildness and a human temper of mind an admirable thing? For who would

wrong or injure a man that is so sweetly and humanly disposed with

respect to the ills of strangers that are not of his kind? I remember

that three days ago, as I was discoursing, I made mention of a saying

of Xenocrates, and how the Athenians gave judgment upon a certain person

who had flayed a living ram. For my part I cannot think him a worse

criminal that torments a poor creature while living, than a man that

shall take away its life and murder it. But (as it seems) we are more

sensible of what is done against custom than against Nature. There,

however, I discussed these matters in a more popular style. But as

for that grand and mysterious principle which (as Plato speaks) is

incredible to base minds and to such as affect only mortal things, I

as little care to move it in this discourse as a pilot doth a ship in

a storm, or a comedian his machine while the scenes are moving; but

perhaps it would not be amiss, by way of introduction and preface,

to repeat certain verses of Empedocles.... For in these, by way of

allegory, he hints at men's souls, as that they are tied to mortal

bodies, to be punished for murders, eating of flesh and of one another,

although this doctrine seems much, ancienter than his time. For the

fables that are storied and related about the discerption of Bacchus,

and the attempts of the Titans upon him, and of their tasting of

his slain body, and of their several punishments and fulminations

afterwards, are but a representation of the regeneration. For what in

us is unreasonable, disorderly, and boisterous, being not divine but

demoniac, the ancients termed Titans, that is, TORMENTED and PUNISHED

(from [Greek omitted])....

TRACT II. Reason persuades us now to return with fresh cogitations

and dispositions to what we left cold yesterday of our discourse about

flesh-eating. It is indeed a hard and a difficult task to undertake (as

Cato once said) to dispute with men's bellies, that have no ears; since

most have already drunk that draught of custom, which is like that of

Ciree,

Of groans and frauds and sorcery replete.

("Odyssey," x. 234.)

And it is no easy task to pull out the hook of flesh-eating from the

jaws of such as have gorged themselves with luxury and are (as it

were) nailed down with it. It would indeed be a good action, if as

the Egyptians draw out the stomach of a dead body, and cut it open and

expose it to the sun, as the only cause of all its evil actions, so

we could, by cutting out our gluttony and blood-shedding, purify and

cleanse the remainder of our lives. For the stomach itself is not guilty

of bloodshed, but is involuntarily polluted by our intemperance. But

if this may not be, and we are ashamed by reason of custom to live

unblamably, let us at least sin with discretion. Let us eat flesh; but

let it be for hunger and not for wantonness. Let us kill an animal; but

let us do it with sorrow and pity, and not abusing and tormenting it, as

many nowadays are used to do, while some run red-hot spits through the

bodies of swine, that by the tincture of the quenched iron the blood may

be to that degree mortified, that it may sweeten and soften the flesh in

its circulation; others jump and stamp upon the udders of sows that are

ready to pig, that so they may crush into one mass (O Piacular Jupiter!)

in the very pangs of delivery, blood, milk, and the corruption of the

mashed and mangled young ones, and so eat the most inflamed part of the

animal; others sew up the eyes of cranes and swans, and so shut them up

in darkness to be fattened, and then souse up their flesh with certain

monstrous mixtures and pickles.

By all which it is most manifest, that it is not for nourishment,

or want, or any necessity, but for mere gluttony, wantonness, and

expensiveness, that they make a pleasure of villany. Just as it happens

in persons who cannot satiate their passion upon women, and having made

trial of everything else and falling into vagaries, at last attempt

things not to be mentioned; even so inordinateness in feeding, when it

hath once passed the bounds of nature and necessity, studies at last to

diversify the lusts of its intemperate appetite by cruelty and villany.

For the senses, when they once quit their natural measures, sympathize

with each other in their distempers, and are enticed by each other

to the same consent and intemperance. Thus a distempered ear first

debauched music, the soft and effeminate notes of which provoke immodest

touches and lascivious tickling. These things first taught the eye

not to delight in Pyrrhic dances, gesticulations of hands, or elegant

pantomimes, nor in statues and fine paintings; but to reckon the

slaughtering and death of mankind and wounds and duels the most

sumptuous of shows and spectacles. Thus unlawful tables are accompanied

with intemperate copulations, with unmusicianlike balls, and theatres

become monstrous through shameful songs and rehearsals; and barbarous

and brutish shows are again accompanied with an unrelenting temper and

savage cruelty towards mankind. Hence it was that the divine Lycurgus in

his Three Books of Laws gave orders that the doors and ridges of

men's houses should be made with a saw and an axe, and that no other

instrument should so much as be brought to any house. Not that he

did hereby intend to declare war against augers and planes and other

instruments of finer work; but because he very well knew that with such

tools as these you will never bring into your house a gilded couch,

and that you will never attempt to bring into a slender cottage either

silver tables, purple carpets, or costly stones; but that a plain supper

and a homely dinner must accompany such a house, couch table, and cup.

The beginning of a vicious diet is presently followed by all sorts of

luxury and expensiveness,

Ev'n as a mare is by her thirsty colt.

============= And what meal is not expensive? One for which no animal is

put to death. Shall we reckon a soul to be a small expense? I will not

say perhaps of a mother, or a father, or of some friend, or child, as

Empedocles did; but one participating of feeling, of seeing, of hearing,

of imagination, and of intellection; which each animal hath received

from Nature for the acquiring of what is agreeable to it, and the

avoiding what is disagreeable. Do but consider this with yourself now,

which sort of philosophers render us most tame and civil, they who bid

people to feed on their children, friends, fathers, and wives, when they

are dead; or Pythagoras and Empedocles, that accustom men to be just

towards even the other members of the creation. You laugh at a man that

will not eat a sheep: but we (they will say again)--when we see you

cutting off the parts of your dead father or mother, and sending it to

your absent friends, and calling upon and inviting your present

friends to eat the rest freely and heartily--shall we not smile? Nay,

peradventure we offend at this instant time while we touch these books,

without having first cleansed our hands, eyes, feet, and ears; if it be

not (by Jupiter) a sufficient purgation of them to have discoursed of

these matters in potable and fresh language (as Plato speaketh), thereby

washing off the brackishness of hearing. Now if a man should set these

books and discourses in opposition to each other, he will find that

the philosophy of the one sort suits with the Seythians, Sogdians, and

Melanchlaenians, of whom Herodotus's relation is scarce believed; but

the sentiments of Pythagoras and Empedocles were the laws and customs of

the ancients Grecians.

Who, then, were the first authors of this opinion, that we owe no

justice to dumb animals?

Who first beat out accursed steel,

And made the lab'ring ox a knife to feel.

In the very same manner oppressors and tyrants begin first to shed

blood. For example, the first man that the Athenians ever put to death

was one of the basest of all knaves, who had the reputation of deserving

it; after him they put to death a second and a third. After this, being

now accustomed to blood, they patiently saw Niceratus the son of Nicias,

and their own general Theramenes, and Polemarchus the philosopher suffer

death. Even so, in the beginning, some wild and mischievous beast was

killed and eaten, and then some little bird or fish was entrapped.

And the desire of slaughter, being first experimented and exercised

in these, at last passed even to the laboring ox, and the sheep that

clothes us, and to the poor cock that keeps the house; until by little

and little, unsatiableness, being strengthened by use, men came to

the slaughter of men, to bloodshed and wars. Now even if one cannot

demonstrate and make out, that souls in their regenerations make a

promiscuous use of all bodies, and that that which is now rational

will at another time be irrational, and that again tame which is now

wild,--for that Nature changes and transmutes everything,

With different fleshy coats new clothing all,--

this thing should be sufficient to change and show men, that it is a

savage and intemperate habit, that it brings sickness and heaviness upon

the body, and that it inclines the mind the more brutishly to bloodshed

and destruction, when we have once accustomed ourselves neither to

entertain a guest nor keep a wedding nor to treat our friends without

blood and slaughter.

And if what is argued about the return of souls into bodies is not of

force enough to beget faith, yet methinks the very uncertainty of the

thing should fill us with apprehension and fear. Suppose, for instance,

one should in some night-engagement run on with his drawn sword upon one

that had fallen down and covered his body with his arms, and should

in the meantime hear one say, that he was not very sure, but that

he fancied and believed, that the party lying there was his own son,

brother, father, or tent-companion; which were more advisable, think

you,--to hearken to a false suggestion, and so to let go an enemy under

the notion of a friend, or to slight an authority not sufficient to

beget faith, and to slay a friend instead of a foe? This you will all

say would be insupportable. Do but consider the famous Merope in the

tragedy, who taking up a hatchet, and lifting it at her son's head, whom

she took for her son's murderer, speaks thus as she was ready to give

the fatal blow,

Villain, this holy blow shall cleave thy head;

(Euripides, "Cresphontes," Frag. 457.)

what a bustle she raises in the whole theatre while she raises herself

to give the blow, and what a fear they are all in, lest she should

prevent the old man that comes to stop her hand, and should wound the

youth. Now if another old man should stand by her and say, "Strike, it

is thy enemy," and this, "Hold, it is thy son"; which, think you, would

be the greater injustice, to omit the punishing of an enemy for the sake

of one's child, or to suffer one's self to be so carried away with anger

at an enemy as to slay one's child? Since then neither hatred nor wrath

nor any revenge nor fear for ourselves carries us to the slaughter of

a beast, but the poor sacrifice stands with an inclined neck, only to

satisfy thy lust and pleasure, and then one philosopher stands by

and tells thee, "Cut him down, it is but an unreasonable animal," and

another cries, "Hold, what if there should be the soul of some kinsman

or god enclosed in him?"--good gods! is there the like danger if I

refuse to eat flesh, as if I for want of faith murder my child or some

other friend?

The Stoics' way of reasoning upon this subject of flesh-eating is no

way equal nor consonant with themselves. Who is this that hath so many

mouths for his belly and the kitchen? Whence comes it to pass, that they

so very much womanize and reproach pleasure, as a thing that they will

not allow to be either good or preferable, or so much as agreeable, and

yet all on a sudden become so zealous advocates for pleasures? It were

indeed but a reasonable consequence of their doctrine, that, since they

banish perfumes and cakes from their banquets, they should be much more

averse to blood and to flesh. But now, just as if they would reduce

their philosophy to their account-books, they lessen the expenses of

their suppers in certain unnecessary and needless matters, but the

untamed and murderous part of their expense they nothing boggle at.

"Well! What then?" say they. "We have nothing to do with brute beasts."

Nor have you any with perfumes, nor with foreign sauces, may some one

answer; therefore leave these out of your banquets, if you are driving

out everything that is both useless and needless.

Let us therefore in the next place consider, whether we owe any justice

to the brute beasts. Neither shall we handle this point artificially, or

like subtle sophisters, but by casting our eye into our own breasts, and

conversing with ourselves as men, we will weigh and examine the whole

matter....

END OF EIGHT-----------

CONCERNING FATE.

("This little Treatise is so pitiously torne, maimed, and dismembred

thorowout, that a man may sooner divine and guess thereat (as I have

done) than translate it."--HOLLAND.)

I will endeavor, my dearest Piso, to send you my opinion concerning

Fate, written with all the clearness and compendiousness I am capable

of; since you, who are not ignorant how cautious I am of writing, have

thought fit to make it the subject of your request.

You are first, then, to know that this word Fate is spoken and

understood two manner of ways; the one as it is an energy, the other

as it is a substance. First, therefore, as it is an action, Plato (See

Plato, "Phaedrus," p. 248 C; "Timaeus," p.41 E; "Republic," x. p.617

D.) has under a type described it, saying thus in his dialogue entitled

Phaedrus: "And this is a sanction of Adrastea (or an inevitable

ordinance), that whatever soul being an attendant on God," &c. And in

his treatise called Timaeus: "The laws which God in the nature of the

universe has established for immortal souls." And in his book of a

Commonweal he entitles Fate "the speech of the virgin Lachesis, who is

the daughter of Necessity." By which sentences he not tragically but

theologically shows us what his sentiments are in this matter. Now if

any one, paraphrasing the fore-cited passages, would have them expressed

in more familiar terms, the description in Phaedrus may be thus

explained: That Fate is a divine sentence, intransgressible since its

cause cannot be divested or hindered. And according to what he has

said in his Timaeus, it is a law ensuing on the nature of the universe,

according to which all things that are done are transacted. For this

does Lachesis effect, who is indeed the daughter of Necessity,--as we

have both already related, and shall yet better understand by that which

will be said in the progress of our discourse. Thus you see what Fate

is, when it is taken for an action.

But as it is a substance, it seems to be the universal soul of the

world, and admits of a threefold distribution; the first destiny being

that which errs not; the second, that which is thought to err; and the

third that which, being under the heaven, is conversant about the

earth. Of these, the highest is called Clotho, the next Atropos, and the

lowest, Lachesis; who, receiving the celestial influences and efficacies

of her sisters, transmits and fastens them to the terrestrial things

which are under her government. Thus have we declared briefly what is to

be said of Fate, taken as a substance; what it is, what are its parts,

after what manner it is, how it is ordained, and how it stands, both

in respect to itself and to us. But as to the particularities of these

things, there is another fable in his Commonweal, by which they are in

some measure covertly insinuated, and we ourselves have, in the best

manner we can, endeavored to explain them to you.

But we now once again turn our discourse to Fate, as it is an energy.

For concerning this it is that there are so many natural, moral, and

logical questions. Having therefore already in some sort sufficiently

defined what it is, we are now in the next place to say something of

its quality, although it may to many seem absurd. I say then that Fate,

though comprehending as it were in a circle the infinity of all those

things which are and have been from infinite times and shall be to

infinite ages, is not in itself infinite, but determinate and finite;

for neither law, reason, nor any other divine thing can be infinite.

And this you will the better understand, if you consider the total

revolution and the total time in which the revolutions of the eight

circles (that is, of the eight spheres of the fixed stars, sun, moon,

and five planets), having (as Timaeus (Plato, "Timaeus," p.39 D.) says)

finished their course, return to one and the same point, being measured

by the circle of the Same, which goes always after one manner. For in

this order, which is finite and determinate, shall all things (which, as

well in heaven as in earth, consist by necessity from above) be reduced

to the same situation, and restored again to their first beginning.

Wherefore the habitude of heaven alone, being thus ordained in all

things, as well in regard of itself as of the earth and all terrestrial

matters, shall again (after long revolutions) one day return; and

those things that in order follow after, and being linked together in

a continuity are maintained in their course, shall follow, every one of

them by necessity bringing what is its own. But for the better clearing

of this matter, let us understand that whatever is in us or about us

is not wrought by the course of the heavens and heavenly influences, as

being entirely the efficient cause both of my writing what I now write,

and of your doing also what you at present do, and in the same manner as

you do it. Hereafter, then, when the same cause shall return, we shall

do the same things we now do and in the same manner, and shall again

become the same men; and so it will be with all others. And that which

follows after shall also happen by the following cause; and in brief,

all things that shall happen in the whole and in every one of these

universal revolutions shall again become the same. By this it appears

(as we have said before) that Fate, being in some sort infinite, is

nevertheless determinate and finite; and it may be also in some sort

seen and comprehended, as we have farther said, that it is as it were

a circle. For as a motion of a circle is a circle, and the time that

measures it is also a circle; so the order of things which are done and

happen in a circle may be justly esteemed and called a circle.