The Pleasures of the Senses

It remains for me to speak against the pleasures of the five senses, and to do it briefly, since the length of the book itself now calls for restraint. All of them are corrupting and deadly, so they ought to be mastered and put down by virtue — or, as I said a little earlier about the emotions, called back to the work they were meant for. The other animals have no pleasure except the one that has to do with breeding. They use their senses for what their nature requires. They see in order to look for what keeps them alive. They hear one another and tell one another apart so that they can gather together. They find out by smell, or perceive by taste, what is good for food, and they refuse and reject what is useless. They measure their eating and drinking by a full stomach. But the foresight of the most skillful Creator gave man pleasure without limit, and liable to slide into vice, because he set virtue in front of him — virtue that would always be at odds with pleasure, like an enemy inside the house. Cicero says in the Cato Major: “In fact, debaucheries and adulteries and disgraceful acts are stirred up by no other bait than pleasure. And since nature, or some god, has given man nothing more excellent than the mind, nothing is so hostile to that divine gift and benefit as pleasure. For where lust holds sway there is no room for self-control, and virtue can have no existence where pleasure reigns.” But God gave virtue for this very reason: that it might put pleasure down and defeat it, and that when pleasure went past the boundaries assigned to it, virtue might hold it inside the limits laid down — so that pleasure would not soothe and capture a man with its enjoyments, make him subject to its control, and punish him with everlasting death. [a]

The pleasure that comes through the eyes is of many kinds. It comes from looking at things that please us, whether in company with other people, or in nature, or in craftsmanship. The philosophers were right to take this away. They say it is far finer, and more worthy of a man, to look at the sky than at carved work, and to admire this most beautiful structure, decorated with the twinkling lights of the stars as if with flowers, rather than to admire things painted and molded and picked out with jewels. And yet, after urging us eloquently to think little of earthly things and to look up at the sky, they still do not think little of the public shows. They enjoy them, and are glad to be there. Yet these shows are the strongest incitement to vice; they have enormous power to corrupt our minds; they ought to be taken away from us. They contribute nothing at all to a happy life, and they do the greatest harm.

A man who counts it a pleasure that another man, however justly condemned, should be killed in front of him pollutes his conscience as thoroughly as if he had watched and shared in a murder committed in secret. And they call these things games — games in which human blood is spilled. The feeling of what it is to be human has gone so far out of men that when they destroy the lives of men they think they are amusing themselves with sport, and they are more guilty than any of the men whose bloodshed they count a pleasure. I ask now: can they be just and God-fearing men who, when they see men laid under the stroke of death and begging for mercy, not only let them be put to death but demand it, and cast cruel and inhuman votes for their death, never satisfied with wounds and never content with bloodshed? On top of that they order them, wounded and lying on the ground, to be attacked again and their bodies torn apart with blows, so that no one can cheat them by pretending to be dead. They even get angry with the fighters if one of the two is not killed quickly, and, as though they were thirsty for human blood, they hate delay. They demand that other and fresh fighters be brought out to them, so that their eyes can be satisfied as soon as possible. Soaked in this practice, they have lost their humanity. So they do not spare even the innocent; they practice on everyone what they learned in the slaughter of the guilty. It is not fitting, then, that men who are trying to keep to the path of justice should be companions and sharers in this public murder. For when God forbids us to kill, he is not only banning open violence, which the public laws themselves do not allow. He is warning us against doing the things that men count lawful. So it will not be lawful for a just man to serve as a soldier, since his soldiering is justice itself, nor to accuse anyone on a capital charge, because it makes no difference whether you put a man to death with a word or with a sword; it is the killing itself that is forbidden. So in this command of God there is to be no exception at all. It is always wrong to put to death a man, whom God willed to be a sacred living creature.

So let no one imagine that even this is allowed: to choke newborn children, which is the greatest crime against God. God breathes souls into them for life, not for death. But men, so that there may be no crime they have not stained their hands with, rob souls that are still innocent and simple of a light they did not give them in the first place. Can anyone really expect people to keep their hands off other men’s blood when they will not keep them off their own? These, though, are wicked and unjust beyond argument. What about the ones whom a false sense of duty drives to expose their children? Can they be counted innocent when they throw their own offspring out as prey for dogs, and, as far as it depends on them, kill them more cruelly than if they had choked them? Who can doubt that a man is godless when he leaves his child to other people’s pity? For even if what he wanted for the child does happen, and someone brings it up, he has still handed his own child over either to slavery or to the brothel. And who does not understand — who is ignorant of what can happen, and commonly does happen, to a child of either sex, even by mistake? The one case of Oedipus shows it, tangled as he was in two crimes at once. So it is as wicked to expose a child as to kill it. But of course these murderers of their own kin complain that their means are small, and claim they have not enough to bring up more children — as though their means really were in the power of the people who hold them, or as though God did not make rich men poor and poor men rich every day. So if anyone cannot bring up children because of poverty, it is better to keep away from his wife than to spoil the work of God with wicked hands.

If, then, it is in no way permitted to commit murder, we are not allowed to be present at all, in case the bloodshed should spread over our conscience, since that blood is spilled for the gratification of the people. And I am inclined to think that the corrupting influence of the stage is more polluting still. For the plots of comedies are the dishonoring of unmarried girls, or the love affairs of prostitutes; and the more skillful the men who composed these accounts of disgraceful acts, the more they persuade by the elegance of their lines, and smooth, polished verse stays fixed in the hearers’ memory more readily. In the same way the tragedians’ stories put the murders of kin and the incests of wicked kings in front of the eyes, and act out crimes in the high boot of tragedy. And what do the indecent gestures of the players accomplish, except to teach lust and stir it up? Their bodies are drained of strength and made womanish, they walk and dress like women, and by their disgraceful gestures they counterfeit women who have no shame. Why should I speak of the mime actors, who hold classes in corruption, who teach adultery while they play at it, and by pretended acts train people for the real ones? What are young men and unmarried girls to do when they see these things done without shame and watched willingly by everybody? They are plainly being told what they are free to do. They are set on fire by lust, which is stirred up above all by seeing, and each one, according to his sex, shapes himself in advance by these performances. And they approve of these things while they laugh at them, and they go back to their rooms more corrupt, with the vices clinging to them — and not boys only, who ought not to be broken in to vice before their time, but old men too, whom it does not suit at their age to sin.

And what does the practice of the circus games hold, except frivolity, emptiness, and madness? Their souls are carried away into a frenzy with as much force as the chariots are driven there, so that the people who came for the sake of watching a spectacle now put on more of a spectacle themselves, when they start shouting, going into transports, and leaping up from their seats. So every kind of show ought to be avoided: not only so that no vice may settle in our hearts, which ought to be calm and at peace, but so that getting used to any pleasure may not soothe us and capture us and turn us aside from God and from good work. For the celebrations of the games are festivals in honor of the gods, since they were set up for their birthdays, or for the dedication of new temples. At first the hunts, which are called shows, were in honor of Saturn, the stage games in honor of Liber, and the circus games in honor of Neptune. Little by little, however, the same honor began to be paid to the other gods as well, and separate games were dedicated to their names, as Sisinnius Capito teaches in his book on the games. So if anyone is present at the shows that men gather at for the sake of religion, he has left the worship of God and gone over to those gods whose birthdays and festivals he has been keeping.

Pleasure of the ears is received from the sweetness of voices and tunes, and it breeds vice just as much as that delight of the eyes I have been speaking about. Who would not judge a man self-indulgent and worthless if he kept stage performances going in his own house? But it makes no difference whether you indulge yourself alone at home or with the crowd in the theater. I have already spoken about the shows. One thing is left for us to master: that we are not captured by the things that get in as far as the innermost sense. Everything that has no words in it, that is, the pleasant sounds of wind and strings, can be disregarded easily enough, because it does not stick to us and cannot be written down. But a well-made poem, and a speech that charms with its sweetness, take men’s minds captive and drive them in whatever direction they please. That is why, when educated men have applied themselves to the religion of God, they do not believe unless some skilled teacher has grounded them first. Being used to sweet and polished speeches or poems, they look down on the plain, ordinary language of the sacred writings as common. What they are after is something to soothe the senses. But whatever is pleasant to the ear carries conviction, and while it delights it plants itself deep in the heart. Is God, then, who devised the mind and the voice and the tongue alike, unable to speak eloquently? On the contrary: with the greatest foresight he wanted the things that are divine to be without ornament, so that everyone could understand the things he was saying to everyone. [p]

So the man who cares about the truth, who does not want to deceive himself, must set aside the pleasures that hurt and damage him, the ones that would tie his mind to themselves the way rich food ties the body. True things must be preferred to false, eternal things to short-lived ones, useful things to pleasant ones. Let nothing please your sight but what you see done with reverence for God and with justice. Let nothing be welcome to your hearing but what feeds the soul and makes you a better man. This sense above all ought not to be twisted to vice, since it was given to us for this purpose: that we might come to the knowledge of God. So if it is a pleasure to hear melodies and songs, let it be a pleasure to sing and to hear the praises of God. This is true pleasure, the attendant and companion of virtue. It is not fragile and short, like the pleasures wanted by men who are slaves to the body as cattle are, but lasting, and giving delight without a break. And if anyone goes past its limits and looks for nothing from pleasure except pleasure itself, he is planning his own death; for as there is unending life in virtue, so there is death in pleasure. The man who chooses what belongs to time will go without what is eternal; the man who prefers what is earthly will not have what is heavenly.

As for the pleasures of taste and smell, which are the only two senses that have to do with the body alone, there is nothing for me to argue about — unless by chance someone wants me to say that it is a disgrace to a wise and good man if he is the slave of his appetite, if he walks about smeared with perfumed oil and wearing a garland of flowers. A man who does these things is plainly foolish and senseless; he is worthless, a man whom not even a notion of virtue has reached. Perhaps someone will say: “Then why were these things made at all, if not so that we might enjoy them?” But it has often been said that there would be no virtue unless it had things to overpower. So God made all things to supply a contest between two sides. Those enticements of pleasure, then, are the instruments of the one whose only business is to put virtue down and to shut justice out of men’s lives. With these soothing influences and enjoyments he takes their souls captive, for he knows that pleasure is the contriver of death. Just as God calls a man to life only through virtue and hard work, so the other calls us to death through delights and pleasures; and as men arrive at real good through evils that deceive them, so they arrive at real evil through goods that deceive them. So these enjoyments are to be guarded against like traps or nets, in case, captured by the softness of them, we are brought under the rule of death along with the body itself, to which we have made ourselves slaves. [q]