What Belongs to Man Alone

What is left, then, but to leave these raving, stubborn arguers behind and come to the judge — the one who truly gives a wisdom that is plain and quiet? That wisdom can not only shape us and set us on the road; it can also deliver a verdict on the disputes of those men. It teaches us what the true and highest good of a human being is. But before I begin on that subject, all those opinions have to be refuted, so that it becomes clear that not one of those philosophers was wise. [a]

Since the question is about the duty proper to a human being, the highest good of the highest of the animals ought to be placed in something he cannot hold in common with the other animals. Teeth belong to wild beasts, horns to cattle, wings to birds; in the same way something of his own ought to be assigned to a human being, without which he would lose the settled plan of his condition. What is given to every creature for living or for breeding is certainly a natural good, but it is still not the greatest good unless it belongs to one kind alone. So the man who thought that pleasure of the mind is the highest good was not wise, since that pleasure — whether it is freedom from worry or joy — is common to them all. Aristippus I do not think worth answering at all. He is forever rushing into bodily pleasures and is nothing but a slave to his own indulgence, and no one can count him a man; he lived in such a way that there was no difference between him and an animal except this one, that he could speak.

But suppose the power of speech were given to the donkey, the dog and the pig, and you asked them why they chase the females so furiously that they can hardly be pulled away from them, and even neglect their food and drink; why they either drive off the other males or will not give up the chase even when they are beaten, and often, bruised by stronger animals, come back at it harder; why they fear neither rain nor cold; why they take on hard labor and do not shrink from danger. What answer would they give, except that the highest good is bodily pleasure? That they go after it eagerly so as to be touched by the most agreeable sensations; and that these matter so much that, to get them, they think no work, no wounds, not even death itself ought to be refused. Are we then to look for rules of living from men whose feelings are no different from those of the animals that have no reason?

The Cyrenaics say that virtue itself deserves praise on this ground, that it produces pleasure. Quite right, says the filthy dog, or the pig wallowing in the mud: “This is exactly why I fight my rival with every ounce of strength I have — so that my courage may get me pleasure, which I would certainly lose if I came off beaten.” Are we to learn wisdom, then, from creatures who differ from cattle and the beasts not in what they feel but in what they can say?

To make the absence of pain the highest good is the work not of a Peripatetic or a Stoic but of a bedridden philosopher. Who would not suppose that the discussion was being carried on by men who were ill and in the grip of some pain? What is more ridiculous than to rate as the highest good the thing a doctor is able to give you? On this reckoning we have to feel pain in order to enjoy the good — and feel it hard and often, so that afterwards the absence of it may come with greater pleasure. So the man who has never felt pain is the most wretched of all, because he is without what is good; whereas we used to think him the happiest of all, because he was without what is evil.

Not far from this folly was the man who said that a complete freedom from pain is the highest good. Quite apart from the fact that every animal avoids pain, who can bestow that good on himself, when all we can do toward getting it is wish for it? The highest good cannot make anyone happy unless it is always in his own power, and it is not virtue or learning or effort that supplies this to a man; nature herself hands it out to every living creature. Those who joined pleasure to what is honorable wanted to escape this lumping of man in with everything else, but the good they made contradicts itself: a man given over to pleasure must be without honor, and a man who aims at honor must be without pleasure.

The highest good of the Peripatetics may well strike you as overloaded and mixed, and — apart from the goods that belong to the mind, and what those are is much disputed — as shared by man with the beasts. For the goods of the body, that is, safety, freedom from pain and health, are no less necessary to the animals that cannot speak than they are to man; and I am not sure they are not more necessary to them, since a man can be helped by remedies and by attention, and the speechless animals cannot. The same holds for what they call the goods of fortune: as a man needs resources to keep life going, so wild beasts need prey and tame animals need pasture. So by bringing in a good that is not in a man’s own power, they put man altogether in the power of something else.

Let us hear Zeno too, for now and then he dreams of virtue. “The highest good,” he says, “is to live in agreement with nature.” Then we must live the way the animals do. Everything that ought to be absent from a human being is found in them: they are greedy for pleasures, they are afraid, they deceive, they lie in wait, they kill — and, most to the point, they have no knowledge of God. Why, then, does he teach me to live according to nature, when nature by itself leans toward the worse course and, coaxed by whatever flatters it most, throws itself headlong into vice? Or if he says that the nature of animals is one thing and the nature of man another, because man is born for virtue, then he is saying something to the purpose. But it still will not do as a definition of the highest good, because there is no animal that does not live according to its own nature.

The man who made knowledge the highest good did give man something of his own; but men want knowledge for the sake of something else, not for its own sake. Who is content with knowing and looks for no advantage from what he knows? The arts are learned in order to be practiced, and they are practiced either to keep life going, or for pleasure, or for reputation. So a thing that is not sought for its own sake is not the highest good. What difference does it make, then, whether we call knowledge the highest good, or call it the very things knowledge produces out of itself — a living, reputation, pleasure? And these are not man’s alone, so they are not the highest goods; the desire for pleasure and for food is not in man only but in the beasts as well.

And what about the desire for glory? Is it not found in horses, since they exult when they win and grieve when they are beaten? “So great is their love of praise, so great their passion for victory.” And that finest of poets has good reason to say that we should test “what grief each one feels when it is beaten, and what glory it takes in the palm.” But if the things knowledge produces are common to man with the other animals, it follows that knowledge is not the highest good.

There is another fault in this definition, and no small one: it puts forward bare knowledge. On that showing everyone who has the knowledge of any skill will begin to look happy, even those who know harmful subjects — so that the man who has learned to mix poisons is as happy as the man who has learned to apply remedies. I ask, then, what the knowledge is to be about. If it is about the causes of natural things, what happiness is being held out to me if I know the sources of the Nile, or the empty dreams of the natural philosophers about the sky? And why mention that in these matters there is no knowledge at all, only guesswork, which shifts with each man’s ability?

It only remains that the knowledge of good and evil is the highest good. Why, then, did he call the highest good knowledge rather than wisdom, when the two words carry the same sense and meaning? But no one has yet said that the highest good is wisdom, though that would have been the better thing to say. For knowledge is not enough for taking up what is good and avoiding what is evil, unless virtue is added as well. Many of the philosophers discussed the nature of good and evil things, and yet, under the pressure of their own nature, lived a life at odds with their talk, because they had no virtue. But virtue joined to knowledge is wisdom.

It remains to refute those as well who judged that virtue itself is the highest good — Marcus Tullius Cicero was of this opinion too — and here they had thought too little about it. Virtue itself is not the highest good; it is the maker and the mother of the highest good, since the highest good cannot be reached without virtue. Both points are easy to see. I ask whether they suppose that this outstanding good is easy to arrive at, or that it is reached only with difficulty and labor. Let them use their cleverness and defend the mistake. If it is easily reached, and without labor, it cannot be the highest good; for why should we torment ourselves, why wear ourselves out striving night and day, if the thing we are chasing is so close at hand that anyone who likes may take hold of it without any effort of mind?

But if we do not arrive even at a common and middling good except by labor — since good things by their nature lie up a steep climb, and evil things run downhill — then it follows that the greatest labor is needed to reach the greatest good. And if that is perfectly true, another virtue will be needed to get us to the virtue that is called the highest good; which is inconsistent and absurd, that virtue should arrive at itself by means of itself. If no good can be reached except by labor, plainly it is virtue that reaches it, since the whole force and business of virtue lies in taking up labors and carrying them through. So the highest good cannot be the thing by which you have to arrive at something else.

But because they did not know what virtue accomplishes or what it is for, and could find nothing more honorable, they stopped at the bare name of virtue and said that it ought to be pursued although no advantage was held out from it; and so they set up for themselves a good that itself stood in need of a good. Aristotle was not far from these men. He thought the highest good was virtue together with honor — as though any virtue could exist that was not honorable, and as though it would not stop being virtue if it had any share of disgrace in it. But he saw that a warped judgment can think badly of virtue, and so he held that deference must be paid to what men reckon a departure from what is right and good, since it is not in our power that virtue should be honored simply on its own merits.

For what is honorable standing, except lasting honor conferred on someone by the good word of the people? What will happen, then, if through men’s error and perversity a bad reputation follows instead? Are we to throw virtue away because fools judge it low and disgraceful? And since virtue can be pressed and harried, then, in order to be a good that is its own and lasting, it ought to need no help from outside; it should rest by itself on its own strength and stand firm. And so it is to hope for no good from any man, and to refuse no evil.

Now I come to the highest good of true wisdom, and it must be determined this way. First, it must belong to man alone and to no other animal. Second, it must belong to the soul only, and not be shared with the body. Last, it cannot fall to anyone without knowledge and virtue. This definition shuts out and cancels every one of the opinions I have listed, since there is nothing of this kind in anything they say. I will now say what the highest good is, so that I may show, as I set out to do, that all the philosophers were blind and foolish, since not one of them could see, or understand, or even guess what was appointed as the highest good for man. [o]

Anaxagoras, when he was asked what he had been born for, answered: to look at the sky and the sun. Everyone admires the remark and judges it worthy of a philosopher. But I think that, having no answer ready, he threw this out at random so as not to stand there silent. Had he been wise, he ought to have thought it over and reflected with himself; for a man who does not know his own condition is not even a man. But let us grant that the saying was not struck off on the spur of the moment. Let us see how many and how great are the errors he committed in three words.

First, he went wrong by putting the whole duty of a human being in the eyes alone, referring nothing to the mind and everything to the body. But if he had been blind, would he have lost the duty of a human being? That cannot happen without the ruin of the soul. And what of the other parts of the body? Will each of them be left with no duty of its own? Why should I say that more depends on the ears than on the eyes, since learning and wisdom can be got by the ears alone but not by the eyes alone?

Were you born for the sake of seeing the sky and the sun? Who brought you in to this spectacle? What does your looking contribute to the sky and to the nature of things? No doubt the answer is: so that you may praise this vast and marvelous work. Then admit that God is the maker of all things, who brought you into this world as a witness of his great work and a man to praise it. You believe it is a great thing to look at the sky and the sun; why, then, do you not give thanks to the one who is the author of the benefit? Why do you not take the measure with your mind of the excellence, the foresight and the power of the one whose works you admire? For it must be that the one who made objects worth admiring is himself far more to be admired. If someone had invited you to dinner and you had been well looked after, would you seem to be in your right mind if you valued the pleasure itself above the man who gave it? That is how completely the philosophers refer everything to the body and nothing at all to the mind; they see no further than what falls under their eyes.

But once all the duties of the body are set aside, the business of a human being has to be placed in the mind alone. We are not born, then, to see the things that have been made, but to contemplate — that is, to look at with the mind — the maker of all things himself. So if anyone asks a truly wise man what he was born for, he will answer without fear or hesitation that he was born to worship God, who brought us into being for this very purpose, that we should serve him. And to serve God is nothing other than to uphold and preserve justice by good works.

But Anaxagoras, a man ignorant of divine things, reduced a matter of the greatest size to the smallest, by picking out two things only as the things he was to look at. Even if he had said that he was born to look at the world — and though he would take in everything by saying that, and would be using a grander-sounding word — he still would not have filled out the duty of a human being. For as far as the soul surpasses the body, so far does God surpass the world, since God made the world and governs it. It is therefore not the world that is to be contemplated with the eye, for the world and the eye are both bodies; it is God who is to be contemplated with the soul. God, being himself immortal, willed that the soul too should last forever. And to contemplate God is to reverence and worship the common Parent of the human race. If the philosophers had none of this, and in their ignorance of divine things threw themselves down flat on the ground, then we must conclude that Anaxagoras looked at neither the sky nor the sun, though he said that he had been born to look at them.

So the object set before a human being is clear and unobstructed, if he is wise; and humanity belongs to it above all. For what is humanity itself, except justice? What is justice, except piety? And piety is nothing other than recognizing God as a parent.