CICERO'S RELIGION.
It is difficult to separate Cicero's religion from his philosophy. In both
he was a sceptic, but in the better sense of the word. His search after
truth was in no sneering or incredulous spirit, but in that of a reverent
inquirer. We must remember, in justice to him, that an earnest-minded man
in his day could hardly take higher ground than that of the sceptic. The
old polytheism was dying out in everything but in name, and there was
nothing to take its place.
His religious belief, so far as we can gather it, was rather negative than
positive. In the speculative treatise which he has left us, 'On the Nature
of the Gods', he examines all the current creeds of the day, but leaves
his own quite undefined.
The treatise takes the form, like the rest, of an imaginary conversation.
This is supposed to have taken place at the house of Aurelius Cotta, then
Pontifex Maximus--an office which answered nearly to that of Minister
of religion. The other speakers are Balbus, Velleius, and Cicero
himself,--who acts, however, rather in the character of moderator than
of disputant. The debate is still, as in the more strictly philosophical
dialogues, between the different schools. Velleius first sets forth the
doctrine of his master Epicurus; speaking about the gods, says one of his
opponents, with as much apparent intimate knowledge "as if he had just
come straight down from heaven". All the speculations of previous
philosophers--which he reviews one after the other--are, he assures the
company, palpable errors. The popular mythology is a mere collection of
fables. Plato and the Stoics, with their Soul of the world and their
pervading Providence, are entirely wrong; the disciples of Epicurus alone
are right. There are gods; that much, the universal belief of mankind in
all ages sufficiently establishes. But that they should be the laborious
beings which the common systems of theology would make them,--that they
should employ themselves in the manufacture of worlds,--is manifestly
absurd. Some of this argument is ingenious. "What should induce the Deity
to perform the functions of an Aedile, to light up and decorate the world?
If it was to supply better accommodation for himself, then he must have
dwelt of choice, up to that time, in the darkness of a dungeon. If such
improvements gave him pleasure, why should he have chosen to be without
them so long?"
No--the gods are immortal and happy beings; and these very attributes
imply that they should be wholly free from the cares of business--exempt
from labour, as from pain and death. They are in human form, but of an
ethereal and subtile essence, incapable of our passions or desires. Happy
in their own perfect wisdom and virtue, they
"Sit beside their nectar, careless of mankind".
Cotta--speaking in behalf of the New Academy--controverts these views.
Be these your gods, Epicurus, as well say there are no gods at all. What
reverence, what love, or what fear can men have of beings who neither wish
them, nor can work them, good or ill? Is idleness the divinest life? "Why,
'tis the very heaven of schoolboys; yet the schoolboys, on their holiday,
employ themselves in games". Nay, he concludes, what the Stoic Posidonius
said of your master Epicurus is true--"He believed there were no gods, and
what he said about their nature he said only to avoid popular odium". He
could not believe that the Deity has the outward shape of a man, without
any solid essence; that he has all the members of a man, without the power
to use them; that he is a shadowy transparent being, who shows no favour
and confers no benefits on any, cares for nothing and does nothing; this
is to allow his existence of the gods in word, but to deny it in fact.
Velleius compliments his opponent on his clever argument, but desires that
Balbus would state his views upon the question. The Stoic consents; and,
at some length, proceeds to prove (what neither disputant has at all
denied) the existence of Divine beings of some kind. Universal belief,
well-authenticated instances of their appearance to men, and of the
fulfilment of prophecies and omens, are all evidences of their existence.
He dwells much, too, on the argument from design, of which so much use has
been made by modern theologians. He furnishes Paley with the idea for his
well-known illustration of the man who finds a watch; "when we see a dial
or a water-clock, we believe that the hour is shown thereon by art, and
not by chance".[1] He gives also an illustration from the poet Attius,
which from a poetical imagination has since become an historical incident;
the shepherds who see the ship Argo approaching take the new monster for a
thing of life, as the Mexicans regarded the ships of Cortes. Much more,
he argues, does the harmonious order of the world bespeak an intelligence
within. But his conclusion is that the Universe itself is the Deity; or
that the Deity is the animating Spirit of the Universe; and that the
popular mythology, which gives one god to the Earth, one to the Sea, one
to Fire, and so on, is in fact a distorted version of this truth. The very
form of the universe--the sphere--is the most perfect of all forms, and
therefore suited to embody the Divine.
[Footnote 1: De Nat. Deor. ii. 34. Paley's Nat. Theol. ch. i.]
Then Cotta--who though, as Pontifex, he is a national priest by vocation,
is of that sect in philosophy which makes doubt its creed--resumes his
objections. He is no better satisfied with the tenets of the Stoics than
with those of the Epicureans. He believes that there are gods; but, coming
to the discussion as a dispassionate and philosophical observer, he finds
such proofs as are offered of their existence insufficient. But this third
book is fragmentary, and the continuity of Cotta's argument is broken by
considerable gaps in all the manuscripts. There is a curious tradition,
that these portions were carefully torn out by the early Christians,
because they might prove too formidable weapons in the hands of
unbelievers. Cotta professes throughout only to raise his objections in
the hope that they may be refuted; but his whole reasoning is destructive
of any belief in an overruling Providence. He confesses himself puzzled by
that insoluble mystery--the existence of Evil in a world created and ruled
by a beneficent Power. The gods have given man reason, it is said; but man
abuses the gift to evil ends. "This is the fault", you say, "of men, not
of the gods. As though the physician should complain of the virulence of
the disease, or the pilot of the fury of the tempest! Though these are but
mortal men, even in them it would seem ridiculous. Who would have asked
your help, we should answer, if these difficulties had not arisen? May we
not argue still more strongly in the case of the gods? The fault, you say,
lies in the vices of men. But you should have given men such a rational
faculty as would exclude the possibility of such crimes". He sees, as
David did, "the ungodly in prosperity". The laws of Heaven are mocked,
crimes are committed, and "the thunders of Olympian Jove are silent". He
quotes, as it would always be easy to quote, examples of this from
all history: the most telling and original, perhaps, is the retort of
Diagoras, who was called the Atheist, when they showed him in the temple
at Samothrace the votive tablets (as they may be seen in some foreign
churches now) offered by those shipwrecked seamen who had been saved from
drowning. "Lo, thou that deniest a Providence, behold here how many have
been saved by prayer to the gods!" "Yea", was his reply; "but where are
those commemorated who were drowned?"
The Dialogue ends with no resolution of the difficulties, and no
conclusion as to the points in question. Cicero, who is the narrator of
the imaginary conference, gives it as his opinion that the arguments of
the Stoic seemed to him to have "the greater probability". It was the
great tenet of the school which he most affected, that probability was the
nearest approach that man could make to speculative truth. "We are not
among those", he says, "to whom there seems to be no such thing as truth;
but we say that all truths have some falsehoods attached to them which
have so strong a resemblance to truth, that in such cases there is no
certain note of distinction which can determine our judgment and assent.
The consequence of which is that there are many things probable; and
although they are not subjects of actual perception to our senses, yet
they have so grand and glorious an aspect that a wise man governs his life
thereby".[1] It remained for one of our ablest and most philosophical
Christian writers to prove that in such matters probability was
practically equivalent to demonstration.[2] Cicero's own form of
scepticism in religious matters is perhaps very nearly expressed in the
striking anecdote which he puts, in this dialogue, into the mouth of the
Epicurean.
[Footnote 1: De Nat. Deor. i. 5.]
[Footnote 2: "To us, probability is the very guide of life".--Introd. to
Butler's Analogy.]
"If you ask me what the Deity is, or what his nature and attributes are,
I should follow the example of Simonides, who, when the tyrant Hiero
proposed to him the same question, asked a day to consider of it. When the
king, on the next day, required from him the answer, Simonides requested
two days more; and when he went on continually asking double the time,
instead of giving any answer, Hiero in amazement demanded of him the
reason. 'Because', replied he, 'the longer I meditate on the question, the
more obscure does it appear'".[1]
[Footnote 1: De Nat. Deor. i. 22.]
The position of Cicero as a statesman, and also as a member of the College
of Augurs, no doubt checked any strong expression of opinion on his part
as to the forms of popular worship and many particulars of popular belief.
In the treatise which he intended as in some sort a sequel to this
Dialogue on the 'Nature of the Gods'--that upon 'Divination'--he states
the arguments for and against the national belief in omens, auguries,
dreams, and such intimations of the Divine will.[1] He puts the defence
of the system in the mouth of his brother Quintus, and takes himself the
destructive side of the argument: but whether this was meant to give his
own real views on the subject, we cannot be so certain. The course of
argument employed on both sides would rather lead to the conclusion that
the writer's opinion was very much that which Johnson delivered as to the
reality of ghosts--"All argument is against it, but all belief is for it".
[Footnote 1: There is a third treatise, 'De Fato', apparently a
continuation of the series, of which only a portion has reached us. It is
a discussion of the difficult questions of Fate and Free-will.]
With regard to the great questions of the soul's immortality, and a state
of future rewards and punishments, it would be quite possible to gather
from Cicero's writings passages expressive of entirely contradictory
views. The bent of his mind, as has been sufficiently shown, was towards
doubt, and still more towards discussion; and possibly his opinions were
not so entirely in a state of flux as the remains of his writings seem to
show. In a future state of some kind he must certainly have believed--that
is, with such belief as he would have considered the subject-matter to
admit of--as a strong probability. In a speculative fragment which has
come down to us, known as 'Scipio's Dream', we seem to have the creed of
the man rather than the speculations of the philosopher. Scipio Africanus
the elder appears in a dream to the younger who bore his name (his
grandson by adoption). He shows him a vision of heaven; bids him listen
to the music of the spheres, which, as they move in their order, "by a
modulation of high and low sounds", give forth that harmony which men have
in some poor sort reduced to notation. He bids him look down upon the
earth, contracted to a mere speck in the distance, and draws a lesson of
the poverty of all mere earthly fame and glory. "For all those who have
preserved, or aided, or benefited their country, there is a fixed and
definite place in heaven, where they shall be happy in the enjoyment of
everlasting life". But "the souls of those who have given themselves up to
the pleasures of sense, and made themselves, as it were, the servants of
these,--who at the bidding of the lusts which wait upon pleasure have
violated the laws of gods and men,--they, when they escape from the body,
flit still around the earth, and never attain to these abodes but after
many ages of wandering". We may gather that his creed admitted a Valhalla
for the hero and the patriot, and a long process of expiation for the
wicked.
There is a curious passage preserved by St. Augustin from that one of
Cicero's works which he most admired--the lost treatise on 'Glory'--which
seems to show that so far from being a materialist, he held the body to be
a sort of purgatory for the soul.
"The mistakes and the sufferings of human life make me think sometimes
that those ancient seers, or Interpreters of the secrets of heaven and the
counsels of the Divine mind, had some glimpse of the truth, when they said
that men are born in order to suffer the penalty for some sins committed
in a former life; and that the idea is true which we find in Aristotle,
that we are suffering some such punishment as theirs of old, who fell into
the hands of those Etruscan bandits, and were put to death with a studied
cruelty; their living bodies being tied to dead bodies, face to face, in
closest possible conjunction: that so our souls are coupled to our bodies,
united like the living with the dead".
But whatever might have been the theological side, if one may so express
it, of Cicero's religion, the moral aphorisms which meet us here and there
in his works have often in them a teaching which comes near the tone of
Christian ethics. The words of Petrarch are hardly too strong--"You would
fancy sometimes it was not a Pagan philosopher but a Christian apostle who
was speaking".[1] These are but a few out of many which might be quoted:
"Strive ever for the truth, and so reckon as that not thou art mortal, but
only this thy body, for thou art not that which this outward form of thine
shows forth, but each man's mind, that is the real man--not the shape
which can be traced with the finger".[2] "Yea, rather, they live who have
escaped from the bonds of their flesh as from a prison-house". "Follow
after justice and duty; such a life is the path to heaven, and into yon
assembly of those who have once lived, and now, released from the body,
dwell in that place". Where, in any other heathen writer, shall we
find such noble words as those which close the apostrophe in the
Tusculans?--"One single day well spent, and in accordance with thy
precepts, were better to be chosen than an immortality of sin!"[3] He is
addressing himself, it is true, to Philosophy; but his Philosophy is here
little less than the Wisdom of Scripture: and the spiritual aspiration is
the same--only uttered under greater difficulties--as that of the Psalmist
when he exclaims, "One day in thy courts is better than a thousand!"
We may or may not adopt Erasmus's view of his inspiration--or rather,
inspiration is a word which has more than one definition, and this would
depend upon which definition we take; but we may well sympathise with the
old scholar when he says--"I feel a better man for reading Cicero".
[Footnote 1: "Interdum non Paganum philosophum, sed apostolum loqui
putes".]
[Footnote 2: 'The Dream of Scipio'.]
[Footnote 3: Tusc., v. 2.]
END OF CICERO