Justice Called Folly

So once those two springs of justice have been altered, all virtue and all truth are carried off with them, and justice herself goes back to heaven. That is why the philosophers never found the true good: they knew neither where it comes from nor what it does. It has been disclosed to no one but our own people. Someone will say: “Are there not some poor among you and others rich, some slaves and others masters? Is there no difference between one person and another?” There is none. There is no other reason why we give one another the name of brothers than that we believe we are equals. Since we measure everything human by the spirit and not by the body, then although their bodily condition is different, we have no slaves. We regard them and speak of them as brothers in spirit, and in religion as fellow slaves. Riches do not make a man distinguished either, except that they put it in his power to stand out by good works. Men are rich not because they own wealth but because they spend it on works of justice; and those who look poor are rich for this reason, that they lack nothing and want nothing. [a]

So although in lowliness of mind we stand on a level — free with slaves, rich with poor — in God’s sight we are still told apart by virtue, and each is the higher in proportion as he is more just. If it is justice to put yourself on a level even with people of lower rank, and a man already excels in this very thing, that he has made himself equal to those beneath him, then if he has behaved not merely as their equal but as their inferior, he will plainly gain a far higher rank of dignity in God’s judgment. For although everything in this temporary life is frail and liable to decay, men still put themselves ahead of others and fight over rank. Nothing is fouler than that, nothing more arrogant, nothing further from the conduct of a wise man; for these earthly things are altogether opposed to heavenly ones. Just as human wisdom is the greatest foolishness in God’s eyes, and foolishness, as I have shown, the greatest wisdom, so the man who has been prominent and lifted high on earth is low and worthless in God’s sight. Set aside the fact that these present earthly goods, to which such great honor is paid, are contrary to virtue and sap the vigor of the mind: what noble birth, I ask, can be so secure, what wealth, what power, when God is able to make kings themselves lower than the lowest?

And so God has looked after our interest by putting this in particular among the divine commands: “Whoever lifts himself up will be brought low, and whoever brings himself low will be lifted up.” The soundness of that command teaches that the man who simply puts himself on a level with other people and carries himself humbly is reckoned excellent and distinguished in God’s sight. For the line brought forward in Euripides to this effect is not false:

I have explained why the philosophers could neither find justice nor defend it. Now I go back to what I had set out to do. Since the philosophers’ arguments were weak, Carneades took on the bold task of demolishing them, because he understood that they could be demolished. The substance of his argument was this: “Men make laws for themselves with an eye to their own advantage. The laws differ according to people’s characters, and among the same people they are often changed as the times change. There is no law of nature. All creatures, human and animal alike, are carried by nature’s guidance toward their own advantage. So there is no justice; or if there is any, it is the greatest folly, since it damages itself by promoting the interests of others.” [k]

And he brought these arguments forward: “Every nation that has ever flourished by ruling others — the Romans included, who are masters of the whole world — would have to go back to living in huts and lie down in want and misery, if they wanted to be just; that is, if they wanted to give back what belongs to other people.” Then he left the general ground and came to particular cases. “Suppose a good man has a slave who runs away, or a house that is unhealthy and infected, and he alone knows these faults, and that is why he is offering it for sale. Will he announce that the slave is a runaway and the house he is selling is infected, or will he keep it from the buyer? If he announces it, he is a good man, because he will not deceive anyone; but he will still be judged a fool, because he will sell cheap or not sell at all. If he keeps quiet, he will be wise, because he is looking after his own interest; but he will also be wicked, because he is deceiving. Or again, suppose he finds a man who thinks he is selling copper ore when it is gold, or lead when it is silver. Will he say nothing, so as to buy it at a small price? Or will he tell him, so as to buy it at a great price? It plainly looks foolish to choose to buy it at a great price.”

From this he wanted it understood both that the man who is just and good is a fool, and that the man who is wise is wicked — and yet that it is still possible, without ruin, for people to be content with poverty. So he moved on to greater matters, where no one could be just without risking his life. He said: “Justice certainly means not putting a man to death and not taking what belongs to another. What, then, will the just man do if he happens to have been shipwrecked and someone weaker than himself has got hold of a plank? Will he not push him off it, so that he can get on it himself and be carried to safety — especially since out in the middle of the sea there is no witness? If he is wise, he will do it; he must drown otherwise. But if he would rather die than use violence on another, then he is just, and a fool, for not sparing his own life while he spares another man’s. So too, if the army of his own people has been routed and the enemy have begun to press hard, and this just man comes upon a wounded man on a horse: will he spare him and be killed himself, or throw him off the horse so that he can escape the enemy? If he does it, he will be wise, and also wicked. If he does not, he will be just, and necessarily a fool.”

So, having divided justice into two parts, calling the one civil and the other natural, he overturned both: the civil part is wisdom but not justice, and the natural part is justice but not wisdom. These arguments are keen, every one of them, and poisonous, and Marcus Tullius was unable to refute them. When he brings Laelius on to answer Furius and to speak for justice, he stepped around them like a pit in the road and left them unrefuted. So the same Laelius appears to have defended not natural justice, which had fallen under the charge of folly, but that civil justice which Furius had granted was wisdom, though unjust.

As far as our present discussion goes, I have shown how justice bears the resemblance of folly — so that it may be clear that people are not mistaken without cause when they think that men of our religion are fools for appearing to do the very things he described. Now I see that a greater undertaking is required of me: to show why God chose to shut justice up under the appearance of folly and to take it out of people’s sight. But first I must answer Furius, since Laelius did not answer him well enough. Wise as Laelius was — for that is what men called him — he could not be the advocate of true justice, because he did not possess justice’s source and spring. The defense is easier for us, to whom heaven’s generosity has made this justice familiar and well known, and who know it not by name but in fact. Plato and Aristotle wanted honestly to defend justice, and would have achieved something if their good efforts, their eloquence and their force of mind had been helped by a knowledge of divine things as well. As it was, their work was empty and useless and was neglected, and they could not persuade anyone to live by their rule, because that system had no foundation from heaven. Our work must be surer, since we are taught by God. They set justice out in words and drew a picture of something that was not in sight, and they could not confirm their claims by examples anyone could point to. Their hearers could always answer that it was impossible to live as their argument prescribed, since no one so far had ever followed that course of life. But we show that what we say is true not only by words but by examples drawn from the truth itself. [o]

So Carneades understood what the nature of justice is; he only failed to see clearly enough that it is not folly — although I think I understand what he intended by it. He did not really think that the just man is a fool. He knew that he is not; but since he could not grasp the reason why he appears to be one, he wanted to show that the truth lies hidden, so as to keep up the doctrine of his own school, whose chief opinion is that nothing can be fully known.

So let us see whether justice has anything in common with folly. “The just man is a fool if he does not take the horse from the wounded man and the plank from the shipwrecked man in order to keep his own life.” First of all, I deny that it can happen at all that a truly just man should be in a situation of this kind. The just man is at enmity with no human being and wants nothing whatever that belongs to someone else. Why would he take a sea voyage? What would he be seeking from another country, when his own is enough for him? Why would he carry on war and mix himself up in other people’s rages, when his mind is settled in unbroken peace with everyone? No doubt he will take great delight in foreign merchandise, or in human blood — a man who does not know how to chase a profit, who is satisfied with the way he lives, and who thinks it forbidden not only to commit slaughter himself but even to be present with those who do it and to watch. But I leave that aside, since a man may be forced into such circumstances even against his will.

Do you really think, then, Furius — or rather Carneades, since the whole speech is his — that justice is so useless, so superfluous, so despised by God that it has no power and no weight of its own that could serve to keep it safe? But plainly those who do not know the secret of what man is, and who therefore refer everything to this present life, cannot know how great the force of justice is. When they discuss virtue, they understand well enough that it is full of hard work and misery, and yet they say it is to be sought for its own sake — because they do not see its rewards at all, which are eternal and undying. So by referring everything to this present life they reduce virtue altogether to folly, since it undergoes such heavy labors here in vain and to no purpose. But more on this subject at another time.

Meanwhile let us speak of justice, as we began — whose power is so great that once it has lifted its eyes to heaven it deserves everything from God. So Horace was right to say that innocence has such power that wherever it travels it needs neither weapons nor strength to protect it:

So it is impossible that in the dangers of storms and of wars the just man should be left without heaven’s guardianship. Even if he is at sea in the company of murderers and guilty men, either the wicked will be spared as well, so that this one just and innocent soul may be brought out of danger, or else he alone will be preserved while the rest perish. But let us grant that the case the philosopher puts is possible. What, then, will the just man do if he meets a wounded man on a horse, or a shipwrecked man on a plank? I am quite willing to admit it: he will die rather than put another to death. And justice, which is man’s chief good, will not on that account be given the name of folly. What ought to be better or dearer to a man than innocence? And innocence must be the more complete the further you carry it to the extreme, choosing to die rather than take anything away from it. “It is folly to spare another man’s life in a case that involves the destruction of your own.” Then do you think it folly to die even for friendship?

Why, then, do you people praise those two Pythagorean friends, one of whom handed himself over to the tyrant as security for the other’s life, while the other, when the appointed day came and his guarantor was already being led out to die, presented himself and rescued him by stepping in? Their virtue would not be held in such glory — the one willing to die for his friend, the other even for the word he had pledged — if they were reckoned fools. In the end it was for this very virtue that the tyrant rewarded them by sparing them both, and so the temper of a most cruel man was changed. It is even said that he begged them to admit him into their friendship as a third; from which it is plain that he took them not for fools but for good and wise men. So I do not see why, when dying for friendship and for one’s pledged word is reckoned the highest glory, it should not also be glorious for a man to die for his innocence. It is the greatest folly, then, to charge it against us as a crime that we are willing to die for God, when the same people extol to the heavens with the highest praises a man who was willing to die for a man.

In short, to bring this argument to a close: reason itself teaches that it is impossible for the same man to be just and foolish at once, or wise and unjust. The fool does not know what is just and good, and so he always goes wrong. He is led off captive, so to speak, by his vices, and cannot resist them at all, because he has none of the virtue he knows nothing about. But the just man abstains from every fault, because he cannot do otherwise, since he has the knowledge of good and evil. And who is able to tell right from wrong except the wise man? So it turns out that a man who is foolish can never be just, nor a man who is unjust wise. And if that is perfectly true, then plainly the man who has not taken a plank from a shipwrecked man, or a horse from a wounded one, is not a fool; because doing those things is a sin, and the wise man abstains from sin.

All the same, I admit myself that it has this appearance, through the mistake of people who do not know what belongs properly to each thing. And so this whole inquiry is answered not so much by arguments as by a definition. Folly, then, is going wrong in deeds and words through ignorance of what is right and good. So the man who does not even spare himself in order to prevent an injury to another, which is an evil, is no fool. This is what reason and truth themselves lay down. For we see that in all animals, since they have no wisdom, nature is the provider that looks after its own. So they injure others in order to benefit themselves, because they do not understand that doing an injury is evil. But a man, who has the knowledge of good and evil, abstains from doing an injury even at his own cost, which an animal without reason is unable to do; and it is for this reason that innocence is reckoned among the chief virtues of a human being.

From all this it appears that the wisest man is the one who chooses to perish rather than to commit an injury, so as to keep that sense of duty which marks him off from the dumb animals. For the man who does not point out the mistake of someone offering gold for sale as something less, in order to buy it for a small sum, or who does not declare that what he is offering for sale is a runaway slave or an infected house, with an eye on his own gain or advantage, is not a wise man, as Carneades wanted it to appear, but sly and cunning. Slyness and cunning are found in the dumb animals too — either when they lie in wait for others and take them by deceit in order to devour them, or when they dodge the traps of others in one way or another. But wisdom falls to man alone. Wisdom is understanding, either for the purpose of doing what is good and right, or for abstaining from improper words and deeds. And a wise man never gives himself to the pursuit of gain, because he despises these earthly advantages; nor does he let anyone be deceived, because it is the duty of a good man to correct people’s mistakes and to bring them back to the right road. For the nature of man is social and does good, and it is in that alone that he bears any relation to God.