The Old Man by the Sea

One morning I was walking in the covered walks of the Xystus when a man met me, with others in his company. “Greetings, philosopher!” As soon as he had said it he turned and walked along with me, and his friends turned and came too. I greeted him back and said, “What is it you want?” “I was taught in Argos,” he said, “by Corinthus the Socratic, that I should not look down on men who wear this dress, or pass them by, but should be as friendly as I can and get into conversation with them, in case some good comes of the meeting, either to the man himself or to me. It is good for us both even if only one of us gains anything. So whenever I see someone in this dress I go up to him gladly, and that is why I was glad to speak to you just now. These men are following along because they too expect to hear something worthwhile from you.” “And who are you, best of mortal men?” I said, teasing him. He told me his name and his family plainly enough. “Trypho is my name,” he said. “I am a Hebrew of the circumcision. I fled the war that has just been fought, and now I spend most of my time in Greece, and in Corinth.” “And how could philosophy do as much for you,” I said, “as your own lawgiver and the prophets?” “Why not?” he said. “Do not the philosophers make God the whole subject of their talk? Are not their questions always about his sole rule and his providence? Is this not exactly the work of philosophy — to examine what is divine?” [a]

“Yes,” I said, “that is what we too have come to think. But most of them have given no thought even to this — whether there is one god or more than one, and whether they care about each of us or not — as though such knowledge contributed nothing to our happiness. They even try to convince us that God looks after the universe, and after the kinds and species in it, but not after me and you and each single person — or else we would not be praying to him all night and all day.

“Where that ends up for them is not hard to see. Men who hold such opinions get immunity and a free hand — to do and say whatever they like, with no punishment to fear and nothing good to hope for from God. How could they hope for anything? They say the same things will always come around again, and that you and I will live our lives over in just the same way, having become neither better men nor worse. Others suppose the soul to be immortal and without a body, and so they think that even if they do something evil they will pay no penalty, since what has no body cannot suffer; and since the soul is immortal, they think they need nothing further from God.”

And with a courteous smile he said, “Then tell us how you think about these things — what view you hold about God, and what your philosophy is.”

I will tell you, I said, how it looks to me. Philosophy really is the greatest possession, and the most precious in God’s sight; it alone brings us to him and commends us to him, and the men who have given their minds to philosophy are the truly holy ones. But what philosophy is, and why it was sent down to human beings, has escaped most people. If it had not, there would be no Platonists or Stoics or Peripatetics or Theoretics or Pythagoreans, since this knowledge is one thing. [f]

Let me say why it grew so many heads. The first men who took it up became famous for it, and those who came after them followed without making any inquiry into the truth. They were simply struck by the steadfastness and self-control of the earlier men, and by how strange their teachings sounded, and each took to be true whatever he had learned from his own teacher. Then they in turn handed on to those after them these things and others like them, and the whole system came to be called by the name of the man who was called the father of the doctrine.

At the start I wanted to meet one of these men myself, so I put myself in the hands of a Stoic. I spent a good deal of time with him, and when I was getting nowhere about God — he did not know himself, and said that such learning was not necessary — I left him and went to another, a man called a Peripatetic, and a sharp one, in his own opinion. He put up with me for the first few days and then asked me to settle a fee, so that our time together would not be unprofitable. I left him too, for that reason, thinking him no philosopher at all.

But my soul was still aching to hear what is distinctive and choice in philosophy, so I went to a Pythagorean with a great reputation, a man who thought highly of his own wisdom. When I had talked with him and said I wanted to be his student and keep company with him, he said, “Well then — have you studied music, astronomy, and geometry? Do you expect to see anything that leads to happiness if you have not first been taught the things that pull the soul away from what the senses take in and make it fit for what the mind takes in, so that it can see beauty itself and the good itself?”

He praised these studies at length, told me they were necessary, and sent me away when I admitted to him that I did not know them. Naturally I took it hard, since my hope had failed — the more so because I supposed the man really knew something. But when I thought again about how much time I would have to grind away at those studies, I could not bear so long a delay.

Being at a loss, I decided to try the Platonists as well, for their fame too was great. A shrewd man had lately settled in our city, a leading figure among the Platonists, and I spent as much time with him as I could; I made progress, and improved enormously every day. The understanding of things that have no body took hold of me, and the contemplation of the Forms gave wings to my thinking, so that in a short while I thought I had become wise. I was dull enough to expect that I would look on God at once — for that is the goal of Plato’s philosophy.

While I was in that state, I once wanted to be filled with deep quiet and to keep away from the beaten track of men, so I used to go out to a field not far from the sea. One day, as I came near the spot where I meant to be by myself when I arrived, an old man followed a little way behind me — by no means a man to look down on, and with a gentle, dignified manner about him. When I turned toward him I stopped, and fixed my eyes on him rather hard. “Do you know me?” he said. I said I did not. “Why, then, do you study me like that?” “I am surprised,” I said, “that you happen to be here in the same place as I am. I did not expect to see anyone here.” “I am worried about some of my household,” he said. “They are away from home, and I have come out myself to see how matters stand with them, in case they turn up somewhere. But what are you doing here?” “I enjoy walks like this,” I said. “My conversation with myself goes on undisturbed, and places like these are the best help to a love of reasoning.” “So you are a lover of words,” he said, “and no lover of work, and no lover of truth? You are not trying to be a man of action so much as a sophist?” [k]

“What greater work could anyone do,” I said, “than this — to show that reason governs all things, and, having taken hold of it and riding on it, to look down on the straying of everyone else and on the things they busy themselves with, seeing that they do nothing sound and nothing that pleases God? Without philosophy and right reason no one can have good sense. So every person must do philosophy, and count that the greatest and most honorable work, and everything else second-rate and third-rate. Those other things, when they hang on philosophy, are worth a moderate amount and worth accepting; but stripped of it, with philosophy not going along beside them, they are vulgar and crude for the men who handle them.” “Does philosophy, then, produce happiness?” he said, breaking in. “It does,” I said, “and nothing else does.” “Then what is philosophy, and what is the happiness it gives? Tell me, if there is nothing to stop you from saying.” “Philosophy,” I said, “is the knowledge of what really is, and a clear recognition of the truth; and happiness is the prize of that knowledge and that wisdom.” “And what do you call God?” he said. “What always stays the same and in the same way, and is the cause of being for everything else — that is God.” That was my answer to him. He was pleased to hear me, and questioned me again like this: “Is ‘knowledge’ not a name shared by different things? In every craft, the man who knows one of them is called knowledgeable — in generalship, in piloting a ship, in medicine, all alike. But with divine and human things it is not so. Is there a knowledge that gives an understanding of human and divine things themselves, and then a recognition of the divinity and the righteousness in them?” “Certainly,” I said. “What then? Is knowing man and God like knowing music and arithmetic and astronomy, or anything of that kind?” “Not at all,” I said. “Then you have not answered me rightly,” he said. “Some kinds of knowledge come to us by learning or by practice; others give us the knowledge by sight. If someone told you that there is an animal in India unlike all the rest, of such and such a kind, of many shapes and colors, you would not know it before you saw it; and you could give no account of it at all unless you heard it from someone who had seen it.” “No, I could not,” I said. “Then how could the philosophers think rightly about God, or say anything true about him, when they have no knowledge of him, having never seen him or heard him?” “But, father,” I said, “the divine is not visible to the eyes themselves, the way other living creatures are; it can be grasped by the mind alone, as Plato says — and I trust him.”

“Is there such power, then, in our mind, and so much of it?” he said. “Or has it not rather taken hold of what is through the senses? Will a man’s mind ever see God, if it is not adorned with the Holy Spirit?” “Plato says,” I answered, “that the mind’s eye is of just that kind, and was given to us for this: that with it, pure as it is, we may see that very Being which is the cause of everything the mind grasps — having no color, no shape, no size, nothing at all of what the bodily eye looks at. It is something, he says, beyond all being, not to be spoken and not to be described, only beautiful and good, and it comes suddenly into souls that are well made, because they are akin to it and long to see it.” “What kinship, then, do we have with God?” he said. “Is the soul divine and immortal as well, and a part of that royal mind itself? And as that mind sees God, is it within our reach too to take hold of the divine with our own mind, and from then on to be happy?” “Certainly,” I said. “And do the souls of all living creatures take it in?” he asked. “Or is a man’s soul one kind, and a horse’s and a donkey’s another?” “No; the souls in all of them are the same,” I answered. “Then horses and donkeys will see God,” he said, “or have seen him at some time?” “No,” I said. “Neither will most human beings — only someone who lives justly, made clean by righteousness and by every other virtue.” “So it is not because of kinship that a man sees God,” he said, “nor because he has a mind, but because he is temperate and righteous?” “Yes,” I said, “and because he has that by which he perceives God.” “What then? Do goats or sheep wrong anyone?” “No one, in any way,” I said. “Then by your account these animals will see God too,” he said. “No; their body, being what it is, gets in the way.” “If these animals could get a voice,” he answered, “you may be sure they would have far better reason to abuse our body. But let it go at that, and let it be granted to you as you say. Tell me this instead: does the soul see while it is in the body, or after it has been released from it?” “As long as it is in human form,” I said, “this can happen to it by means of the mind; but most of all when it has been set free from the body and has come to be by itself, it gets hold of what it was in love with all along.” “And does it remember this when it comes to be in a man again?” “I do not think so,” I said. “Then what good is it to the souls that have seen? What does the one who has seen have over the one who has not, if he does not even remember the fact that he saw?” “I cannot say,” I answered. “And what happens to the souls judged unworthy of that sight?” he said. “They are bound into the bodies of certain wild animals, and that is their punishment.” “Do they know, then, that this is the reason they are in such bodies, and that they did something wrong?” “I do not think so.” “Then they get no good out of their punishment either, it seems. In fact I would not say they are being punished at all, if they have no grasp of the punishment.” “No indeed.” “Then souls neither see God nor pass into other bodies. If they did, they would know that this is how they are punished, and they would be afraid to commit even a chance sin afterward. But that they can perceive that God exists, and that righteousness and reverence are good — that much I agree with you about,” he said. “You are right,” I said. [o]

“So those philosophers know nothing about these things. They cannot even say what a soul is.” “It does not look as if they can.” “Nor should the soul be called immortal. For if it is immortal, then plainly it is uncreated as well.” “It is both uncreated and immortal, according to some who are called Platonists.” “Do you say the world is uncreated too?” “Some say so. I do not agree with them.” “You do well. For what sense is there in supposing that a body so solid, resisting the touch, put together out of parts, changing, wasting away and coming to be again every day, did not come into being from some beginning? And if the world came into being, then souls must have come into being too, and perhaps at some time were nowhere at all — for they were made for the sake of human beings and the other living creatures, if you really mean to say that they came into being entirely on their own and not along with their own bodies.” “That seems right.” “Then they are not immortal?” “No, since the world has appeared to us to have come into being.” “But I do not say that all souls die; that would truly be a windfall for the wicked. What, then? The souls of the reverent stay somewhere in a better place, and the unrighteous and evil ones in a worse, waiting there for the time of the judgment. So the souls that have shown themselves worthy of God die no more; the others are punished for as long as God wills them both to exist and to be punished.” [r]

“Is what you say like what Plato hints about the world in the Timaeus, when he says that the world is indeed perishable, since it came into being, but that it will not be dissolved and will not meet the fate of death, because God wills it so? Does it seem to you that the same can be said of the soul, and simply of everything? For all things that are after God, or ever will be, have a perishable nature, and can be wiped out and be no more. God alone is uncreated and imperishable, and that is why he is God, while everything else after him has come into being and perishes.

“That is why souls both die and are punished. If they were uncreated they would not sin, or be filled with folly, or be cowardly and then reckless in turn; nor would they ever go willingly into pigs and snakes and dogs; and it would not be right to force them, if they really are uncreated. For what is uncreated is like and equal and identical to what is uncreated, and neither in power nor in honor would one be preferred to the other. So there are not many uncreated things. If there were some difference among them, you could search and never find the cause of the difference; you would send your thought out to infinity and at last, worn out, come to a stop at one Uncreated, and say that this is the cause of all. Or did all this escape Plato and Pythagoras,” I said, “those wise men, who have been for us a wall and a support of philosophy?”