The Sirens and the Seed

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

What the opinion of Basilides is, and that he was struck by the doctrines of Aristotle and framed his heresy out of them. And what the statements of Saturninus are, who flourished at about the same time as Basilides. And how Menander advanced the claim that the world was made by angels. What the folly of Marcion is, and that his tenet is not new, and not taken out of the holy Scriptures, but got from Empedocles. How Carpocrates behaves foolishly, alleging, he too, that the things that exist were made by angels. That Cerinthus owed nothing to the Scriptures, and formed his opinion not out of them but out of the teachings of the Egyptians. What the opinions are that the Ebionites put forward, and that they prefer to hold to Jewish customs. How Theodotus has been the victim of error, drawing what he contributed to his system partly from the Ebionites and partly from Cerinthus. And what the opinions of Cerdo were, who both announced the doctrines of Empedocles and wickedly induced Marcion to step forward. And how Lucian, once he had become Marcion’s disciple, stripped himself of all shame and blasphemed God in the same way. And Apelles too, who became this man’s disciple and was not in the habit of putting forward the same opinions as his teacher, but who, moved by the tenets of the natural philosophers, took the substance of the universe as the founding principle of things.

When hearers see that the doctrines of the heretics are like the sea when the violence of the winds has thrown it into waves, they ought to sail on past in search of the quiet harbor. For a sea of that kind is both infested with wild beasts and hard to sail — like the Sicilian sea, we might say, where the legend puts the Cyclops, and Charybdis, and Scylla, and the rock of the Sirens. The Greek poets say that Odysseus sailed through that channel, and turned the terror of these strange monsters cleverly to his own account; for the savage cruelty in the look of them toward the men sailing through was remarkable. The Sirens, though, sang sweetly and in tune, and beguiled the voyagers, luring those who heard the melody of their voices to steer their ships toward the headland. Odysseus, the poets report, found this out, smeared his companions’ ears with wax, lashed himself to the wood, and sailed past the Sirens out of danger, hearing their chant distinctly. [e]

My advice to my readers is to use the same device. Either — because they are not strong enough for it — let them smear their ears with wax and sail straight on through the tenets of the heretics, not so much as listening to doctrines that can so easily entice a man into pleasure, like the luscious song of the Sirens; or else let a man bind himself to the wood of Christ and listen faithfully, and not be thrown into confusion, since he trusts in what he is bound fast to. And I urge that man to stand fast.

Now that we have explained the earlier opinions in the six books before this one, it seems right not to be silent about the doctrines of Basilides, which are the tenets of Aristotle of Stagira, not of Christ. Even though the opinions Aristotle put forward have been set out on an earlier occasion, we will not hesitate even now to lay them down beforehand in a kind of summary, so that my readers, by holding the two systems nearer together, may see easily that the doctrines Basilides advances are in fact Aristotle’s clever quibbles. [i]

Aristotle, then, divides substance three ways. One part of it is a genus, another a species — that is how the philosopher puts it — and a third an individual. What is individual is individual not because the body is small, but because by its nature it cannot admit of division at all. The genus, on the other hand, is a kind of aggregate made up of many different seeds, and out of this genus, as out of a heap, all the species of the things that exist take their distinctions. And the genus is a sufficient cause for all the entities that come to be. But so that what I have said may be clear, I will prove my point by an example; and by means of it we will be able to retrace our steps over the whole speculation of the Peripatetic. [k] We speak of the existence of animal absolutely — not of some animal. And this animal is neither ox nor horse nor man nor god; it does not signify any of these at all, but is animal absolutely. From this animal the species of all particular animals take their subsistence. And this animality, itself the highest genus, is the originating principle for all the animals produced in those particular species, and is yet not itself any one of the things generated. For man is an animal that takes his principle of existence from that animality, and horse is an animal that takes its principle of existence from that animality. Horse, and ox, and dog, and each of the rest of the animals take their principle of existence from the absolute animal, while animality itself is none of these. [l]

But if this animality is not any one of these species, then, according to Aristotle, the subsistence of the things that are generated got its reality from things that do not exist. For animality, from which these things severally derive, is not any one of them; and though it is not any one of them, it has still become an originating principle of the things that exist. But who it is that has set up this substance as an originating cause of what is produced afterward, we will declare when we come to the proper place for a discussion of that sort.

Since, as I have said, substance is threefold — genus, species, individual — and since we have set down animality as the genus and man as the species (man being already marked off from the majority of animals, but still undifferentiated, not yet shaped into a species of substance that subsists on its own), it follows that when I impart form under a name to a man derived from the genus, I call him Socrates, or Diogenes, or one of the many names in use. And since in this way I take in under a name the man who makes up a species generated out of the genus, I call a substance of this kind an individual. For genus has been divided into species, and species into individual. But as for the individual, since it has been taken in under a name, it is not possible, according to its own nature, for it to be divided into anything further, as we divided each of the two just mentioned. [m]

Aristotle calls this — substance — primarily and especially and pre-eminently, in that it can neither be predicated of any subject nor exist in a subject. By “predicated of a subject” he means, for instance, the genus: what I called animality is predicated by a common name of all the particular animals, ox and horse and the rest that are placed under this genus. For it is true to say that man is an animal, and horse an animal, and that ox is an animal, and so with each of the rest. Now the meaning of the phrase “predicated of a subject” is this: that being one, it can be predicated in the same way of many particulars, even if these happen to differ in species. For neither horse nor ox differs from man so far as he is an animal, since the definition of animal is said to suit all animals alike. For what is an animal? If we define it, one general definition will take in all animals. An animal is an animated substance endowed with sensation. Such are ox, and man, and horse, and each of the rest of them.

But the meaning of the phrase “in a subject” is this: what is inherent in something, and not as a part of it, cannot possibly exist apart from the thing it is in. And this is what each of the accidents resident in substance is, and it is what is called quality. According to this we say that certain people are of such and such a quality — white, gray, black, just, unjust, temperate, and other characteristics like these. But it is impossible for any one of these to subsist by itself; it must inhere in something else. Now if neither animal, which I predicate of all individual animals, nor the accidents, which are found in all the things of which they are non-essential qualities, can subsist by themselves — and if individuals are formed out of these — then it follows that the threefold-divided substance, which is not made up out of other things, consists of things that do not exist. And if what is primarily and pre-eminently and particularly called substance consists of these, then, according to Aristotle, it derives its existence from things that do not exist.

About substance, what has now been said will be enough. But substance is called not only genus, species, and individual; it is also called matter, and form, and privation. As regards the substance there is no difference in these, even if the division is allowed to stand. Now, since substance is of this kind, the arrangement of the world has come about along some such plan as this. The world is divided, according to Aristotle, into a great many different parts. The portion of the world that reaches from the earth to the moon has no foresight in it and no guide, and is under the sway of the nature that belongs to it and nothing else. But another part, which lies beyond the moon and reaches to the surface of heaven, is arranged in the midst of all order and foresight and government. Now that celestial surface makes up a certain fifth substance, and it is remote from all those natural elements out of which the ordered world holds together. This, according to Aristotle, is a certain fifth substance — a kind of essence above the world. And to match this division of the world, his philosophy too has been divided. For there is in circulation a certain treatise of his called A Lecture on Natural Phenomena, in which he has worked out at length the operations that are carried on by nature and not by providence, in the region reaching from the earth as far as the moon. And there is in circulation another treatise of his own on the principles of things in the region beyond the moon, and it bears this title: Metaphysics. And another separate work has been written by him called Concerning a Fifth Substance, and in it Aristotle unfolds his opinions about God. [o]

There is some such division of the universe as we have now tried to sketch in outline, and the division of the Aristotelian philosophy corresponds to it. His work Concerning the Soul, however, is obscure. In the whole three books where he treats the subject it is not possible to say clearly what Aristotle’s opinion about the soul is. As for the definition he furnishes of soul, that is easy enough to state; but what the definition means is hard to find out. For soul, he says, is an entelecheia of a natural organic body — and to explain what that even is would take a great many arguments and a long inquiry. But as for the Deity, the Originator of all those glorious objects in creation, this is harder to know than the soul itself, even for a man carrying on his speculations by a longer inquiry than the one about the soul. The definition Aristotle furnishes of the Deity is, I admit, not hard to make out, but it is impossible to grasp its meaning. For God, he says, is “a thinking of thinking” — and that is altogether a non-existent thing.

The world, though, is according to Aristotle incorruptible and eternal, for it has nothing in it out of tune, since it is directed by providence and nature. And Aristotle has laid down doctrines not only about nature, and an ordered world, and providence, and God; he has written more than that, for there is in circulation a treatise of his on ethical subjects as well, which he entitles Books of Ethics. All through them he aims at making the habits of his hearers excellent instead of worthless. So then, since Basilides has been caught transferring the tenets of Aristotle into the good news that saves us — and not in spirit only, but in the actual expressions and names — what remains but that, by restoring what he has appropriated from others, we should prove to this man’s disciples that Christ will do them no good at all, since they belong to the nations?

Basilides, then, and Isidorus, the true son and disciple of Basilides, say that Matthias passed on to them secret discourses, which he heard from the Savior when he was taught privately. So let us see how plainly Basilides, along with Isidorus and the whole band of these men, misrepresents not only Matthias but the Savior himself. “There was a time, he says, when there was nothing. And that nothing was not any one of the things that exist either; to say it openly and plainly, without quibbling, it is altogether nothing. But when I use the word ‘was,’ he says, I am not saying that it was; I speak this way in order to signify the sense of what I want to bring out. I say, then, he says, that it was ‘altogether nothing.’ For what is named unsayable, he says, is not absolutely unsayable — though we certainly do call it unsayable; it is rather the ‘not-unsayable.’ For what is ‘not-unsayable’ is not called unsayable at all, but is, he says, above every name that is named. For the names we have, he says, are nowhere near enough for the world; its divisions are so many that names run short. And I do not take it on myself, he says, to find the proper names for everything. What one ought to do is to grasp in the mind, in an unsayable way and not by means of names, the peculiar character of the things that are named. For a terminology that uses one word for two things has created for the pupils confusion, and a source of error about the objects themselves.” The Basilideans, laying hold in the first place on this doctrine borrowed and quietly lifted from the Peripatetic, play on the folly of the people who herd together with them. For Aristotle, born many generations before Basilides, was the first to lay down a system about homonymous words, in the Categories. And these heretics bring it out into the light as if it were peculiarly their own, and as if it were something new, and some secret disclosure out of the discourses of Matthias. [v]

Since, then, “nothing” existed — no matter, no substance, nothing insubstantial, nothing simple, nothing composite, nothing inconceivable, nothing devoid of senses, no man, no angel, no god; in short, none of those objects that have names, or are apprehended by sense, or are known by the mind, but everything swept away, and more minutely still than this — since, I say, “nothing” existed, God, the “non-existent” (whom Aristotle calls “a thinking of thinking,” but these men call “non-existent”), inconceivably, insensibly, without determining anything, without willing, without feeling, and unmoved by any desire, willed to make a world. “Now I use the word ‘willed,’ he says, for the purpose of signifying that he did so without willing, and inconceivably, and insensibly. And by the word ‘world’ I do not mean the world that was formed afterward according to breadth and division, and that stood apart — far from it; I mean the seed of a world. And the seed of the world had all things in itself, just as the grain of mustard holds all things together at once within the very smallest compass: roots, stem, branches, leaves, and the countless grains produced from the plant, which are seeds again of other plants, and often of others produced from them.” In this way the “non-existent” God made a non-existent world out of things that do not exist, casting down and depositing one single Seed that held in itself a whole conglomeration of the seeds of the world. But so that I may make clearer what these men affirm, here is an illustration of theirs. As an egg of some variegated and many-colored bird — a peacock, say, or some other bird still more manifold and many-colored — is one thing in reality, and yet holds in itself numerous forms of manifold and many-colored and much-compounded substances, so, he says, the non-existent seed of the world, which has been deposited by the non-existent God, is at one and the same time the seed of a multitude of forms and a multitude of substances. [aa]