No Victory Without an Enemy

These are the demons the poets speak of again and again in their poems — the ones Hesiod calls the guardians of men. By their coaxing and their tricks they so worked on people that people believed they were gods. Socrates, in fact, used to give out that he had a demon as the guardian and director of his life from his earliest childhood, and that he could do nothing without its assent and command. So they attach themselves to individuals, and they take over houses under the name of Genii or Penates. Temples are built to them; libations are poured out to them day after day, as to the Lares; honor is paid to them as to the powers that turn evils away. [a]

From the beginning, in order to turn people away from the knowledge of the true God, these were the ones who brought in new superstitions and new worship of gods. These were the ones who taught that the memory of dead kings should be consecrated, that temples should be built and images made — not so that they might cut down God’s honor or add to their own, which they lost by sinning, but so that they might take life away from people and rob them of the hope of the true light, in case people should reach that heavenly reward of immortality which they themselves fell from.

They also brought astrology and augury and divination to light. These things are false in themselves; but the demons, who are the authors of the evils, so manage and steer them that they are believed to be true. They invented the tricks of the magic art as well, to deceive the eyes. It is by their doing that what is there appears not to be, and what is not there appears to be. They themselves invented necromancy, and the answers given at shrines, and oracles, to fool people’s minds with a lying divination whose outcome can be read either way.

They are present in the temples and at every sacrifice. By putting on some lying marvel, to the astonishment of everyone standing there, they take people in so far that people believe a divine power is present in images and statues. They even slip secretly into bodies, being slight spirits, and stir up diseases in limbs that are already damaged — diseases they can take away again once they have been appeased with sacrifices and vows. They send dreams, either full of terror, so that they themselves may be called on, or dreams whose outcome matches the truth, so that the reverence paid to them may grow. Sometimes, too, they put on a show of vengeance against those who commit sacrilege, so that anyone who sees it may become more fearful and more superstitious. And so by their frauds they have drawn a darkness over the human race, so that truth might be crushed and the name of the supreme and matchless God be forgotten.

But someone says: “Why, then, does the true God allow these things to be done? Why does he not remove or destroy the wicked instead? And why in fact did he from the beginning give power to the demon, so that there would be one who could corrupt and destroy everything?” I will say briefly why he willed it to be so. I ask whether virtue is a good or an evil. It cannot be denied that it is a good. If virtue is a good, then vice, on the other side, is an evil. And if vice is an evil for this reason, that it opposes virtue, and virtue is a good for this reason, that it overthrows vice, then it follows that virtue cannot exist without vice; and if you take vice away, what makes virtue worth anything is taken away too. For there can be no victory without an enemy. And so it comes about that good cannot exist without an evil. [f]

Chrysippus, a man of an active mind, saw this when he was discussing providence, and he charges with folly those who think that good is caused by God but say that evil is not. Aulus Gellius has set out his opinion in his books of Attic Nights. He writes:

“People to whom it does not appear that the world was made for the sake of God and men, and who do not think that human affairs are governed by providence, believe they are using a weighty argument when they say this: if there were a providence, there would be no evils. For they say that nothing agrees less with providence than that in this world — the world on account of which God is said to have made men — the power of troubles and evils should be so great. In reply to this, Chrysippus, arguing in his fourth book on providence, said: ‘Nothing can be more foolish than the people who think that good things could have existed if there were no evils in the same place. For since good things are the contraries of evil ones, the two must of necessity stand opposed to each other, propped up, as it were, on a mutual and opposite pressure. Thus there is no contrary without another contrary. For how could there be any perception of justice, unless there were injuries? Or what else is justice but the removal of injustice? In the same way the nature of courage cannot be understood except by setting cowardice beside it, nor the nature of self-control except by intemperance. And in what way would there be prudence, unless there were its contrary, imprudence? On the same principle, he says, why do these foolish men not demand this as well, that there should be truth and no falsehood? For good and evil things exist together, prosperity and trouble, pleasure and pain. The one is bound to the other at opposite ends, as Plato says; take one away, and you take away both.’” You see, then, what I have often said: good and evil are so tied to each other that neither can exist without the other. God therefore acted with the greatest foresight in placing the raw material of virtue in evils, which he made for this very purpose — to set up a contest for us, in which he would crown the winners with the reward of immortality.

I have taught, I imagine, that the honors paid to gods are not only irreverent but empty. Either because they were men whose memory was consecrated after they died; or because the images themselves are senseless and deaf, seeing that they are made out of earth, and it is not right for a man, who ought to look up at heavenly things, to put himself under earthly ones; or because the spirits who claim these acts of worship for themselves are unholy and unclean, and for that reason, condemned by the sentence of God, fell to the earth — and it is not lawful to submit to the power of beings you stand above, if you want to be a follower of the true God. [m]

What is left is this: as we have spoken about false religion, we should take up the subject of false wisdom as well, which the philosophers profess. They are men endowed with the greatest learning and eloquence, but a long way from the truth, because they know neither God nor the wisdom of God. And although they are clever and learned, still, because their wisdom is a human thing, I will not be afraid to take them on — so that it may be plain that falsehood is easily beaten by truth, and earthly things by heavenly.

This is how they define the nature of philosophy: philosophy is the love, or the pursuit, of wisdom. So it is not wisdom itself, since the thing that loves must be different from the thing that is loved. And if it is the pursuit of wisdom, not even so is philosophy the same thing as wisdom. For wisdom is the object being looked for, and the pursuit is the looking. So the very definition, the meaning of the word itself, plainly shows that philosophy is not wisdom.

I will say that philosophy is not even the pursuit of wisdom, since wisdom is not contained in it. For who can be said to devote himself to pursuing a thing he has no way at all of reaching? A man who gives himself to the pursuit of medicine, or grammar, or public speaking can be called a student of the art he is learning; but once he has learned it, he is now called a physician, a grammarian, an orator. In the same way those who are students of wisdom, once they had learned it, ought to have been called wise. But since they are called students of wisdom as long as they live, it is clear that this is not a pursuit at all — because it is impossible to arrive at the very object the pursuit is looking for, unless perhaps those who pursue wisdom to the end of life are going to be wise in some other world. Now every pursuit is bound up with some end. A pursuit that has no end, therefore, is not a right pursuit.

Beyond this, there are two things that appear to fall under the subject of philosophy — knowledge and supposition — and if these are taken away, philosophy collapses altogether. But the chief of the philosophers themselves have taken both of them away from philosophy. Socrates took away knowledge; Zeno took away supposition. Let us see whether they were right to do so. [p]

Wisdom is, as Cicero defined it, the knowledge of things divine and human. Now if that definition is true, wisdom does not come within a man’s power. For which mortal can claim this for himself, to profess that he knows things divine and human? I say nothing about human affairs; for although they are bound up with divine ones, still, since they belong to man, let us grant that a man is able to know them. But he certainly cannot know divine things by himself, since he is a man; whereas the one who knows them must be divine, and therefore God. But man is neither divine nor God. Man, therefore, cannot thoroughly know divine things by himself. No one, then, is wise but God — or certainly the man whom God has taught. And since these men are neither gods nor taught by God, they cannot be wise, that is, acquainted with things divine and human. Knowledge, therefore, is rightly taken away by Socrates and the Academics.

Supposition does not suit the wise man either. For everyone supposes what he does not know; and to suppose you know a thing you do not know is recklessness and folly. Supposition, therefore, was rightly taken away by Zeno. If, then, there is no knowledge in man, and there ought to be no supposition, philosophy is cut up by the roots.

Add to this that philosophy is not one thing. It is split into sects and scattered into many opinions that clash with each other, and it has no settled state. For since they all separately attack and harass one another, and there is not one of them that is not convicted of folly in the judgment of the rest, the limbs are plainly at odds with one another, and the whole body of philosophy is brought to ruin. [s]

This is where the Academy afterwards came from. When the leading men of that school saw that philosophy was being altogether overthrown by philosophers set against each other, they took up war against them all, so as to demolish everyone’s arguments — while asserting nothing themselves except this one thing, that nothing can be known. And so, having taken knowledge away, they overturned the older philosophy. But they did not even keep the name of philosophers for themselves, since they admitted their own ignorance; for to be ignorant of everything is not only not the part of a philosopher, it is not even the part of a man.

So the philosophers, having no defense, are bound to destroy one another with mutual wounds, and philosophy itself is bound to eat itself up and make an end of itself with its own weapons. But they say it is only natural philosophy that gives way like this. How does it stand with moral philosophy? Does that rest on any firm foundation? Let us see whether the philosophers are agreed at least in this part of the subject, the part that has to do with how life is lived.

What the chief good is must be a matter of inquiry, so that our whole life and everything we do may be aimed at it. When the inquiry is made about the chief good of man, it ought to be settled as being of this kind: first, that it has to do with man alone; next, that it belongs particularly to the mind; last, that it is reached by way of virtue. So let us see whether the chief good the philosophers mark out is of that kind — having to do neither with a speechless animal nor with the body, and not able to be attained without virtue. [u]

Aristippus, the founder of the Cyrenaic school, who thought that bodily pleasure was the chief good, ought to be struck off the list of philosophers and out of human society, because he compared himself to a beast. The chief good of Hieronymus is to be without pain; that of Diodorus, to stop being in pain. But the other animals avoid pain too, and when they are without it, or have stopped being in it, they are glad. What mark of distinction, then, will be given to man, if his chief good is judged to be shared with the beasts? Zeno thought the chief good was to live in agreement with nature. But that definition is a general one. All animals live in agreement with nature, and each has a nature of its own.

Epicurus maintained that it was pleasure of the soul. And what is pleasure of the soul but joy, in which the soul for the most part luxuriates and lets itself go, either to play or to laughter? But this good falls even to animals that cannot speak, which, when they have had their fill of pasture, relax into joy and friskiness. Dinomachus and Callipho approved of honorable pleasure; but either they said the same thing Epicurus did, that bodily pleasure is dishonorable, or, if they held that bodily pleasures are partly base and partly honorable, then what is assigned to the body is not the chief good.

The Peripatetics make up the chief good out of the goods of the soul, of the body and of fortune. The goods of the soul may be approved; but if they need help to complete happiness, they are plainly weak. And the goods of the body and of fortune are not in man’s power. Nor is what is assigned to the body, or to things placed outside us, the chief good, because this double good extends even to the cattle, which need to be well and to have a proper supply of food. The Stoics are believed to have taken a much better view, saying that virtue was the chief good. But virtue cannot be the chief good, since, if it is the endurance of evils and of hard labor, it is not happy in itself; it ought rather to bring about and produce the chief good, because it cannot be attained without the greatest difficulty and toil. But Aristotle, in truth, wandered far from reason: he joined honor to virtue, as though virtue could ever be separated from honor, or joined to what is base.

Herillus the Pyrrhonist made knowledge the chief good. This does indeed belong to man, and to the soul only, but it can come to him without virtue. For a man is not to be counted happy because he has learned something by listening, or has picked up the knowledge of it by a little reading. Nor is it a definition of the chief good, because there can be a knowledge of bad things, or at any rate of useless ones. And if it is the knowledge of good and useful things that you have got by hard work, even so it is not the chief good, because knowledge is not sought on its own account but on account of something else. For the arts are learned for this reason, that they may be to us the means of a living, or a source of glory, or even of pleasure; and it is plain that these things cannot be the chief goods.

So the philosophers do not keep to the rule even in moral philosophy, since they are at odds with one another on the very hinge of the matter, that is, in the discussion by which life is shaped. Their rules cannot be equal, or even like one another, when some train men toward pleasure, others toward honor, others toward nature, others toward knowledge; some toward the chasing of riches, others toward the avoiding of them; some toward feeling no pain at all, others toward the endurance of evils. In all of this, as I have shown before, they turn aside from reason, because they do not know God.

Let us now see what is set before the wise man as the chief good. That men are born for justice is not only taught by the sacred writings, but is sometimes acknowledged even by these same philosophers. Thus Cicero says: “Of all the things that come up for discussion among learned men, surely nothing is better worth having than a clear understanding that we are born for justice.” This is perfectly true. For we are not born for wickedness, since we are a social animal, made for living with others. The wild beasts are produced to exercise their fierceness, for they are unable to live in any other way than by prey and bloodshed. Yet even these, though pressed by extreme hunger, hold back from animals of their own kind. Birds do the same — the ones that have to feed on the carcasses of others. How much more fitting it is, then, that man, who is joined to man both by the exchange of speech and by the sharing of feeling, should spare man and love him. For this is justice. [ac]

But since wisdom has been given to man alone, so that he may understand God, and since this alone makes the difference between man and the animals that cannot speak, justice itself is bound up in two duties. He owes the one to God as to a father, the other to man as to a brother; for we are produced by the same God. So it has been deservedly and rightly said that wisdom is the knowledge of things divine and human. For it is right that we should know what we owe to God and what we owe to man — to God, religion; to man, affection. But the first belongs to wisdom, the second to virtue, and justice takes in both.

If, then, it is clear that man is born for justice, the just man must necessarily be subject to evils, so that he may exercise the virtue he has been endowed with. For virtue is the enduring of evils. He will avoid pleasures as an evil. He will look down on riches, because they are fragile; and if he has them, he will hand them out freely, to keep the wretched alive. He will not be eager for honors, because they are short and passing. He will do no one an injury. If he suffers one, he will not pay it back, and he will take no vengeance on the man who plunders his property, for he will judge it unlawful to injure a man. And if there is anyone who would force him to leave God, he will refuse neither tortures nor death. So it will come about that he must live in poverty and lowliness, in insults, or even under torture.