Water, Number, and Fire

These are the contents of the first book of the Refutation of All Heresies.

We intend to give an account of what the natural philosophers held and who they were; then what the moral philosophers held and who they were; and third, what the logicians held and who those logicians are.

Among the natural philosophers may be counted Thales, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Parmenides, Leucippus, Democritus, Xenophanes, Ecphantus, and Hippo. Among the moral philosophers are Socrates, the pupil of Archelaus the physicist, and Plato, the pupil of Socrates. Plato combined all three kinds of philosophy in one. Among the logicians is Aristotle, the pupil of Plato; he put the art of debate in order. Among the Stoic logicians were Chrysippus and Zeno. Epicurus, though, advanced an opinion almost opposite to that of every other philosopher. Pyrrho was an Academic; he taught that nothing at all can be grasped. The Brahmins among the Indians, the Druids among the Celts, and Hesiod took up philosophy as well.

We must not pass over any invention of the men called philosophers among the Greeks. Even their incoherent opinions have to be taken seriously, because of the sheer madness of the heretics, who by keeping silence and hiding their own unspeakable mysteries have been thought by many to be worshippers of God. On an earlier occasion we set out their teachings briefly. We did not go into any detail, but refuted them in a rough summary, since we did not think it necessary then to bring their secret teachings to light. We explained their views in riddles instead, so that they would be ashamed — afraid that if we published their mysteries we would convict them of atheism — and would give up at least something of their unreasonable opinion and their profane attempt.

But I see that they have not been shamed by our restraint, and have taken no account of how patient God is with them though they blaspheme him — patient so that they may either repent out of shame or, if they persist, be justly condemned. So I am forced to go on with what I intended, and to expose those secret mysteries of theirs, which they hand on to the initiated with a great show of plausibility. They are not in the habit of disclosing anything at first. They keep the man in suspense through a period of preparation, and by making him blasphemous toward the true God they gain complete control of him, and then they see him panting after the disclosure they have promised. And when they have tested him and found him a slave to sin, they initiate him, putting him in possession of the perfection of wicked things. Before that, though, they bind him with an oath: he is not to divulge the mysteries, and not to speak with anyone at all who has not first undergone the same subjection — although once the teaching has simply been handed over there was no longer any need of an oath. For a man who was content to submit to the required cleansing and so receive these men’s perfect mysteries will feel himself bound, by the act itself and by his own conscience, not to tell anyone else. If he once disclosed wickedness of this kind to another man, he would not be counted among human beings, nor be thought fit to look at the daylight, since not even animals without reason would attempt such an outrage — as we will explain when we come to those subjects.

But since reason forces us to plunge into the very depth of the story, we think we should not keep silent. We will set out the teachings of the several schools in detail and hold nothing back. It seems worth doing, even at the cost of a longer inquiry, not to shrink from the labor; for we will leave behind us no small help to human life against the return of error, once everyone can see plainly the secret rites of these men, and the hidden ceremonies which they keep under their own management and hand on to the initiated only. But no one will refute these except the Holy Spirit given to the church, whom the apostles received first and passed on to those who have believed rightly. And we are their successors, sharing in the same grace, high priesthood, and office of teaching, and are reckoned guardians of the church; so we must not be found slack in watchfulness, or willing to suppress sound teaching. Even when we labor with every energy of body and soul we do not tire in the attempt to make a fitting return to our divine Benefactor — and even so we do not repay him as we should, unless we are careful in discharging the trust committed to us, and fill out the measure of the opportunity that is ours, and share with everyone, without grudging, whatever the Holy Spirit supplies. That means not only bringing to light, by our refutation, what is foreign, but also everything the truth has received by the grace of the Father and supplied to men. These too we will proclaim unashamed, showing them by argument and putting the evidence down in writing.

So then, as we have already said, our aim is to prove them atheists — in their opinions, in the way they handle a question, and in what they actually do — and to show where their attempted theories came to them from. They took nothing from the holy Scriptures in trying to establish their views, and it is not by keeping the succession from any holy man that they rushed headlong into these opinions. Their teachings began instead in the wisdom of the Greeks, in the conclusions of men who built systems of philosophy, in would-be mysteries, and in the wanderings of astrologers. It seems best, then, first to explain the opinions the Greek philosophers advanced, and so satisfy our readers that these are older than the heresies and more deserving of respect in what they say about the divine; and next to compare each heresy with the system of each thinker, so as to show that the man who first championed the heresy made use of these attempted theories, turned them to his own advantage by taking over their principles, and, driven by them into something worse, built his own doctrine out of them. The undertaking is admittedly full of labor, and it takes long research. But we will not fail for want of effort. Afterward it will be a source of joy — like an athlete who wins the crown after much toil, or a merchant who makes his profit after a great swell at sea, or a farmer enjoying the fruit after the sweat of his brow, or a prophet who sees his predictions come true after insults and abuse. At the beginning, then, we will declare who among the Greeks first pointed out the principles of natural philosophy. It is mainly from these men that the people who first put forward these heresies have secretly taken their views, as we will prove later when we come to compare the two side by side. By assigning to each of the leading philosophers his own particular teaching, we will exhibit these heresy-leaders in public, naked and unseemly.

They say that Thales of Miletus, one of the seven wise men, was the first to attempt a system of natural philosophy. He said that water is the beginning of the universe, and its end as well; for out of water, solidified and then dissolved again, all things are made, and all things rest on it. From it come earthquakes, and shifts of the winds, and movements of the stars; and all things are produced, and are in a state of flux, in keeping with the nature of the first author of their coming to be. And the divine, he said, is that which has neither beginning nor end. This man occupied himself with theories and inquiry about the stars, and so became the earliest teacher of that kind of learning among the Greeks. And once, looking up at the sky and saying that he was carefully examining the things above, he fell into a well; and a servant girl named Thratta mocked him for it, saying that while he was intent on seeing the things in the sky he did not know what was at his feet. He lived about the time of Croesus. [g]

But there was also, not far from these times, another philosophy, which Pythagoras began — some say he came from Samos. They have called it Italian, because Pythagoras fled from Polycrates the ruler of Samos, settled in a city in Italy, and spent the rest of his life there. And those who received his teaching in succession did not differ much from his own opinion. This man took up the investigation of nature, and combined astronomy, geometry, and music. And so he declared that the divine is a monad; and studying carefully the nature of number, he said that the world sings, and that its whole order matches a harmony, and he was the first to resolve the motion of the seven stars into rhythm and melody. Astonished at the management of the whole fabric, he required his pupils at first to keep silence, as men coming into the world initiated into the secrets of the universe; then, when they seemed to have taken in his way of teaching well enough, and could argue forcefully about the stars and about nature, he judged them pure and told them to speak. He divided his pupils into two orders and called the one esoteric and the other exoteric. To the first he entrusted the more advanced doctrines, and to the second a more moderate amount of instruction. [i]

He also touched on magic, they say, and himself discovered the art of reading a man’s nature from his body. He laid down as a basis certain numbers and measures, saying that these contained the principle of the philosophy of arithmetic, put together in this way. The first number became an originating principle: it is one, indefinable, incomprehensible, holding in itself all the numbers that can go on without limit in multitude. And the primary monad became the principle of numbers in respect of substance: it is a male monad, and like a father it begets all the rest of the numbers. Second, the dyad is a female number, and arithmeticians also call it even. Third, the triad is a male number, and arithmeticians have classed it under the name odd. And besides all these is the tetrad, a female number, also called even, because it is female. So all the numbers derived from the genus are four; but number is the indefinite genus, out of which, on their account, the perfect number was made up, namely the decade. For one, two, three, and four become ten, if each of the numbers keeps its own proper name in essence. Pythagoras said this was a sacred quaternion, the source of everlasting nature, having roots, as it were, in itself; and that from this number all the numbers get their originating principle. For eleven and twelve and the rest take their share of existence from ten. Of this decade, the perfect number, there are said to be four divisions: number, monad, square, and cube. The joining and blending of these are carried out, according to nature, for the generation of growth, completing the productive number. For when the square itself is multiplied into itself, the result is a fourth power. But when the square is multiplied into the cube, the result is the product of a square and a cube; and when the cube is multiplied into the cube, the product of two cubes is the result. So all the numbers from which the production of existing numbers arises are seven: number, monad, square, cube, fourth power, square-cube, and cube-cube.

This philosopher also said that the soul is immortal, and that it lives on in one body after another. So he claimed that before the Trojan war he was Aethalides, and in the days of Troy Euphorbus, and after that Hermotimus of Samos, and after him Pyrrhus of Delos, and fifth Pythagoras. And Diodorus of Eretria and Aristoxenus the musician say that Pythagoras went to Zaratas the Chaldean, and that Zaratas explained to him that there are two original causes of things, a father and a mother; that the father is light and the mother darkness; that the parts of light are hot, dry, light in weight, and swift, while those of darkness are cold, moist, heavy, and slow; and that the world is made out of all of these, from female and male. And the world, he says, is a musical harmony, which is why the sun makes its circuit in accordance with harmony. As for the things produced out of the earth and the ordered universe, they hold that Zaratas makes these statements: that there are two spirits, one heavenly and one belonging to the earth; that the one belonging to the earth sends up a product out of the earth, and this is water; and that the heavenly one is a fire that shares the nature of air, hot and cold. And so he says that none of these destroys or stains the soul, since these make up the substance of all things.

He is reported to have ordered his followers not to eat beans, because Zaratas said that at the origin and coagulation of all things, when the earth was still hardening and rotting had set in, the bean was produced. He mentions this as a sign of it: if anyone chews a bean to a pulp and puts it in front of the sun for a while — the sun helps the result along at once — it gives off the smell of human seed. And he mentions another, clearer instance: if we take a bean and its flower while the bean is in bloom, put them in a jar, seal it over, and bury it in the ground, and uncover it a few days later, we will see it wearing the appearance first of a woman’s genitals, and after that, on close examination, of the head of a child growing along with it. This man perished when he was burned along with his disciples in Croton, a town in Italy. And this was his practice: whenever anyone came to him wanting to become his follower, the candidate had to sell his possessions and deposit the money with Pythagoras under seal; and he went on in silence, undergoing instruction, sometimes for three years and sometimes for five. Then, on being released, he was allowed to associate with the rest, remained as a disciple, and took his meals with them. If it went otherwise, he received his property back and was rejected. These men were called Esoteric Pythagoreans; the rest were called Pythagorists. Among his followers who escaped the fire were Lysis and Archippus, and Pythagoras’ servant Zamolxis, who is also said to have taught the Celtic Druids to practice the philosophy of Pythagoras. And they say that Pythagoras learned his system of numbers and measures from the Egyptians; and, struck by the plausible, imaginative, and not easily uncovered wisdom of their priests, he too, in imitation of them, commanded silence, and made his disciples live a solitary life in underground chapels.

But Empedocles, who was born after these men, also made many statements about the nature of the spirits: that they are very many, and pass their time managing the affairs of earth. He said that the originating principle of the universe is strife and love, and that the intelligible fire of the monad is the divine, and that all things are made of fire and will be resolved into fire — with which opinion the Stoics too almost agree, since they expect a general conflagration. But most of all he agrees with the doctrine that souls pass from body to body. He puts it this way: [q]

This philosopher maintained that all souls change into any kind of animal at all. For Pythagoras, the teacher of these men, claimed that he himself had been Euphorbus, who served in the campaign against Ilium, and said that he recognized his own shield. These are the teachings of Empedocles.

But Heraclitus, a natural philosopher of Ephesus, gave himself over to grief for everything, condemning the ignorance of the whole of life and of all men; he even pitied mortals for existing at all, for he asserted that he himself knew everything and the rest of mankind nothing. But he also advanced statements almost in concert with Empedocles, saying that the originating principle of all things is strife and love, and that the divine is a fire endowed with intelligence, and that all things are carried along, one upon another, and never stand still. And just like Empedocles, he said that the whole region around us is full of evil things, and that these evils reach as far as the moon, stretching up from the area around the earth, and go no further, since the whole space above the moon is purer. That is how it seemed to Heraclitus as well. After these men other natural philosophers arose, whose opinions we have not thought it necessary to state, since they present nothing different from those already given. But since on the whole a considerable school has sprung from them, and many natural philosophers have arisen from them since, each giving a different account of the nature of the universe, it seems best to us as well, after explaining the philosophy that has come down in succession from Pythagoras, to go back to the opinions held by those who lived after the time of Thales; and, giving an account of these, to come to the moral and logical philosophy that Socrates and Aristotle began — Socrates the moral, Aristotle the logical. [t]