Why the World Was Made

Since we are on the subject of the philosophers’ mistakes: the Stoics divide nature into two parts — one that acts, and one that offers itself to be acted on. They say that all the power of perception is contained in the first and the raw material in the second, and that neither can do anything without the other. But how can the thing that handles and the thing that is handled be one and the same? If someone said that the potter is the same as the clay, or the clay the same as the potter, would he not plainly look insane? Yet these men take two things that could hardly be further apart — God and the world, the Maker and the work — and gather them under the single name of nature, and say that neither can do anything without the other, as though God were mixed into nature along with the world. Sometimes they mix them so thoroughly that God himself is the mind of the world and the world is the body of God, as though the world and God began to exist at the same moment and God did not make the world himself. And at other times they admit as much themselves, when they say the world was made for the sake of human beings, and that God could exist without the world if he chose, since God is the divine and eternal mind, separate and free of a body. It was because they could not take in his power and majesty that they mixed him into the world — that is, into his own work. Hence that line of Virgil’s: [a]

What then becomes of their own claim that the world was both made and is governed by divine providence? If he made the world, it follows that he existed without the world. If he governs it, plainly he does not govern it as a mind governs a body, but as a master runs a household, a pilot a ship, a driver a chariot — and none of those men is mixed into the thing he governs. For if all the things we see are limbs of God, then God is left without feeling, since limbs have no feeling of their own, and mortal, since we see that limbs die.

I could list how often land shaken by a sudden shock has split open or dropped sheer away; how often cities and islands have been swallowed by the waves and gone down into the deep; how marshes have flooded fertile plains, and rivers and pools have dried up; how mountains have either collapsed or been leveled into flat ground. Many districts, and the roots of many mountains, are eaten away by hidden fire underground. And it is not enough that God does not spare his own limbs — man too is allowed a certain power over the body of God. Seas are built out, mountains are cut through, and the innermost bowels of the earth are dug open to drag up riches. Why even mention that we cannot plow without tearing the divine body? So we are wicked and irreverent at once, doing violence to the limbs of God. Does God, then, let his body be knocked about? Does he put up with weakening himself, or allow a man to do it to him? Unless perhaps that divine intelligence, mixed with the world and with every part of the world, abandoned the outer face of the earth and plunged into the lowest depths, so as to feel no pain from the endless tearing. But if that is trifling and absurd, then these men were as short of intelligence as the people who never noticed that the divine spirit is spread through everything and that all things are held together by it — though not in such a way that God, who cannot decay, should himself be mixed with heavy and perishable elements. So what they took over from Plato is nearer the mark: that the world was made by God and is also governed by his providence. It was fitting, then, that Plato and the men who agreed with him should teach and explain what the cause was, and what the reasoning was, behind the contriving of so great a work — why he made it, and for whose sake.

The Stoics do say the world was made for the sake of human beings. I grant it. But Epicurus has no idea why human beings themselves were made, or by whom. Lucretius, when he claimed the world was not made by the gods, put it this way:

and then he goes on:

And rightly so. For they brought forward no reason why the human race was created or established by God. It is our business to set out the secret of the world and of man; and having none of it, they could neither reach the shrine of truth nor see it. So, as I said a moment ago, when they had assumed something true — that the world was made by God, and made for the sake of human beings — they were still unable to defend what they had assumed, because their argument failed them when it came to the consequences. Plato, for one, so as not to make God’s work weak and liable to ruin, said the world would last forever. But if it was made for the sake of human beings, and made so as to be eternal, why then are the people it was made for not eternal? If the ones it was made for are mortal, it must be mortal too and liable to come apart, since it is not worth more than those for whose sake it was made. If his reckoning had squared, he would have understood that it must perish because it was made, and that nothing can last forever except what cannot be touched.

But the man who says the world was not made for the sake of human beings has no case at all. If he says the Creator contrived works on this scale on his own account, then why were we produced? Why do we enjoy the world itself? What is the point of making the human race and the other living creatures? Why do we take for ourselves advantages that belong to others? Why, in the end, do we grow, and shrink, and die? What reasoning lies behind our being produced at all, or behind our unending succession of generations? No doubt God wanted us to be seen, and wanted to make little figures of himself, as it were, in all sorts of likenesses, to give himself pleasure by them. Even so, if that were the reason, he would count living creatures as his charge, and man above all, since he made everything subject to man’s command. As for the men who say the world always existed, I let that point go — that it cannot exist without some beginning, a difficulty they cannot work themselves free of — and say this instead. If the world always existed, there can be no plan behind it. What could planning have accomplished in something that never had a beginning? Before anything is done or arranged there has to be deliberation, so that it may be settled how it is to be done, and nothing can be done without the foresight of a settled design. So the design comes before every work. So a thing that was not made has no design. But the world has a design, by which it both exists and is governed. Therefore it was made; and if it was made, it will also be destroyed. Let them assign a reason, then, if they can, why it was made in the beginning, or why it will hereafter be destroyed.

And since Epicurus — or Democritus — could not explain this, he said the world came about of its own accord, the seeds coming together from every direction, and that when they are broken up again, discord and destruction will follow. So he spoiled what he had rightly seen, and by his ignorance of design he overthrew design altogether, and reduced the world and everything done in it to the likeness of a very trivial dream, as though no plan exists in human affairs at all. But the world and all its parts, as we can see, are governed by a wonderful plan. Consider the framing of the sky; the course of the stars and of the heavenly bodies, in tune even in its variety; the fixed and marvelous ordering of the seasons; the varied fruitfulness of the lands; the level plains; the mountains built up like walls and heaped together; the green growth and productiveness of the woods; the healthiest of springs bursting out of the ground; the timely overflowing of rivers; the rich and abundant flooding in of the sea; the opposing and useful breathing of the winds — everything is set with the greatest regularity. Who is so blind as to think all of it was made without a cause, when so wonderful an arrangement of the most far-sighted planning shines out of it? If, then, nothing at all exists or is done without a cause; if the providence of the Supreme God is plain from the arrangement of things, his excellence from their greatness, and his power from his government of them — then the men who have said there is no providence are dull and mad. I would not object if they denied that gods exist in order to affirm that one God exists; but when they did it with the aim of saying that there is none at all, then whoever does not think them senseless is senseless himself.

But I have said enough about providence in the first book. If it exists at all — and the wonderful nature of its works shows that it does — then the same providence must have created man and the other animals. So let us look at what reason there was for creating the human race, since it is clear, as the Stoics say, that the world was made for the sake of men. Even here, though, they make no small mistake, in saying that it was made not for the sake of man but of men; for naming one individual takes in the whole human race. The mistake comes of their not knowing that only one man was made by God. They think men were produced in every land and field like mushrooms. Hermes, though, was not ignorant that man was both made by God and made in the likeness of God. But I return to my subject. There is nothing, as I see it, that was made on its own account; whatever is made at all must necessarily be made for some purpose. Who is so senseless, or so free of concern, as to attempt anything at random, expecting from it no use and no advantage? A man who builds a house does not build it merely so that there will be a house, but so that it may be lived in. A man who builds a ship does not spend his labor so that the ship may be looked at, but so that men may sail in it. In the same way a man who designs and shapes a vessel of any kind does not do it so that he may merely appear to have done it, but so that the finished vessel may hold something needed for use. And so with everything else that is made: it is plainly not made to no purpose, but for some useful end. [k]

It is plain, therefore, that God made the world, but not on the world’s own account; for the world has no feeling, and needs neither the sun’s warmth, nor light, nor the breath of the winds, nor the wet of rain-showers, nor the nourishment of fruit. But neither can it be said that God made the world for his own sake, since he can exist without the world, as he did before it was made, and since God himself makes no use of all the things it contains and produces. Clearly, then, the world was built for the sake of living beings, since living beings enjoy the things it is made of; and so that these may live and continue, everything they need is supplied at set times. And that the other living beings were made for the sake of man is plain from this, that they serve man and were given for his protection and his use; for whether they belong to the land or to the water, they do not perceive the order of the world as man does.

Here I must answer the philosophers, and Cicero above all, who says: “Why should God, when he made everything on our account, have made such a quantity of snakes and vipers? Why should he have scattered so many destructive things over land and sea?” It is a very wide subject for discussion, but it must be touched on briefly, in passing. Man is put together out of different and opposing elements, soul and body — that is, heaven and earth: the one fine and thin, the other open to the senses; the one eternal, the other temporary; the one able to feel, the other without feeling; the one filled with light, the other dark. Reason itself and necessity therefore require that both good things and bad things should be set before man: good things for him to use, and bad things for him to guard against and avoid.

For wisdom was given to him for this very reason: that knowing the nature of good things and bad, he might use the force of his reason in seeking the good and avoiding the bad. Because wisdom was not given to the other animals, they were both defended with natural clothing and armed; but in place of all that, God gave man the one thing that was most excellent — reason, and nothing besides. So he formed him naked and unarmed, so that wisdom might be both his defense and his covering. He placed his defense and his ornament not outside him but within; not in the body but in the heart. So unless there were evils for him to guard against, and to tell apart from what is good and useful, he would have had no need of wisdom. Let Marcus Tullius understand, then, that reason was given to man either so that he might catch fish for his own use and keep clear of snakes and vipers for his own safety, or else that good things and bad were set before him for this reason, that he had been given wisdom, whose whole force is taken up with telling good things and bad apart.

Great, then, and right, and admirable is the force and the reason and the power of man, for whose sake God made the world itself and everything in it, as much of it as exists, and to whom he gave so much honor that he set him over all things, since man alone could admire the works of God. So our own Asclepiades puts it excellently, discussing the providence of the Supreme God in the book he wrote to me: “And for this reason anyone may with good reason think that the divine providence gave the place nearest to itself to the one who was able to understand how it is arranged. Here is the sun: who beholds it in such a way as to understand why it is the sun, and how much influence it has on the other parts of the system? Here is the sky: who looks up at it? Here is the earth: who lives on it? Here is the sea: who sails on it? Here is fire: who makes use of it?” So the Supreme God did not arrange these things on his own account, since he stands in need of nothing, but on man’s account, who could put them to fitting use.