Against the Pagans 2

If any opportunity could be granted me at this point, I would wish, making a slight digression from the defense I had principally undertaken, to exchange such words as these with all those to whom the name of Christ is hateful: "If you count it no affront to answer something when questioned, expound to us and tell us: what matter, what cause is there, that you assail Christ with such grievous wars, or what offenses of his do you hold, that at the mere mention of his name you boil over with the ardors of your raging hearts? Has he, claiming for himself royal power, occupied the whole circle of the earth with most hostile legions, and destroyed some nations peaceful from their origin, and compelled others to obey him with subjugated necks?

Did he, blazing with the fires of avarice, claim by right of ownership all those riches with which the human race so zealously strives to be filled? Did he, exulting in the cravings of lusts, break by force the barriers of chastity, or stealthily lie in wait for the marriages of others? Did he, swollen with the haughtiness of arrogance, inflict injuries and insults everywhere without distinction of any person?" "And did he not hold forth to all both the light of life and remove the peril of ignorance?" Even if he had not been worthy of your listening and believing, on this very account he ought not to have been spurned by you—that he showed you saving things, that he chose for you the ways to heaven and the vows of immortality.

"But indeed he is worthy of hatred, because he drove religions from the world, because he forbade access to the worship of the gods." Is he then charged as the extinguisher of religion and the author of impiety—he who introduced the true religion into the world, who opened the gates of piety to men who were blind and truly living in impiety, and showed them to whom they should submit themselves? Or is there any religion truer, more dutiful, more powerful, more just, than to know the supreme God, to know how to make supplication to the supreme God, who alone is the head and fount of all good things, the Father, founder, and creator of everlasting things, from whom all things earthly and all things heavenly

are animated by movement and watered with vital force, and who, if he did not exist, there would surely be nothing at all that could bear any name or substance. Unless perhaps you doubt whether he of whom we speak is the Ruler, and believe rather that it is Apollo, Diana, Mercury, or Mars. Give a true judgment, and, looking around at all these things which we see, one will sooner doubt whether the rest are gods than he will hesitate about God, whom we all naturally know—whether when we cry out "O God," or when we set up that God as witness of the wicked, and, as though he beheld us, lift our faces to heaven. "But he forbade men to make supplication to the lesser gods." For do you know who or where the lesser gods are?

Has any suspicion or mention of them ever touched you, that you should with reason take it ill that their cults were abrogated and that they were bereaved of the bestowal of honor? But if the elation of mind and the vanity which the Greeks call 'typhus' did not stand in your way and hinder you, you might long since have known what he forbade to be done, and why, within what bounds he willed the true religion to stand, and how great a danger was arising for you from what you supposed to be obedience, or from what evils you would have emerged, had you renounced the treacherous error. But all these things will be recalled more clearly and plainly when we have been carried somewhat further forward.

For we shall show that Christ did not teach the nations impiety, but delivered the ignorance of wretched men from most wicked robbers. "We do not believe," you say, "that the things he says are true." What then? Do the things which you deny to be true stand clear among you, since things impending and not yet suffered can by no reasonings be refuted? "But he himself does not prove what he promises." So it is: for there can be, as I said, no verification of things to come. Since, then, this is the condition of future things, that they can be grasped and comprehended by no touch of anticipation, is it not the purer course, out of two uncertain things hanging in doubtful expectation, rather to believe that which offers some hope than that which offers none at all?

For in the one there is no peril, since what is said to be impending is void and empty if it should come to pass; but in the other there is the greatest loss—that is, the loss of salvation—if, when the time has come, it should be laid open that it was no lie. What do you say, O ignorant ones, most worthy even of weeping and pity? Do you thus not dread that these things may perhaps be true which are objects of contempt to you and furnish matter for laughter? Do you not at least revolve within yourselves, under secret thoughts, lest that which on this day you with obstinate perversity refuse to believe, a late time should confute and an irrevocable repentance chastise? Do not even these at least produce in you the proofs for believing—that already through all lands, in so brief a span of time, the sacraments of this immense name have been spread abroad;

that there is now no nation so barbarous in its ways and ignorant of gentleness, which, turned by love of him, has not softened its harshness and, taking on tranquillity, passed over into placid feelings; that orators, grammarians, rhetoricians, jurisconsults, and physicians, endowed with such great talents, and even those who probe the secrets of philosophy, seek after these things, spurning those in which a little before they trusted; that slaves choose rather to be tormented by their masters with whatever punishments they may decree, wives to be divorced, children to be disinherited by their parents, than to break the Christian faith and lay down the sacraments of the saving warfare;

that although such great kinds of punishment have been set forth by you against those who follow the laws of this religion, the cause grows all the more, and against all threats and prohibitions of terrors the people more courageously strives on, and is roused to the zeal of believing by the very goads of the prohibition itself? Do you perchance believe that these things come to pass everywhere and to no purpose, that these minds are taken over by chance assaults? Is not this then divine and sacred? Or that such great conversions of souls come to pass without God, so that, though the executioner's hooks and countless other tortures (as we have said) hang over those about to believe, as if seized by a kind of sweetness and by love of all the virtues, they receive the doctrines made known to them and set the friendships of Christ above all things in the world?

Unless perhaps these men seem to you dull and foolish—men who through the whole world now conspire and come together into assent to this belief. What then? Do you alone, steeped in wisdom and by the sheer force of intelligence, see some other thing, I know not what, and something profound? Do you alone understand that all these things are trifles; do you alone reckon as words and childish absurdities those things which we promise ourselves will come from the sovereign King? Whence, I ask, has so much wisdom been handed to you, whence so much acuteness and vivacity, or from what disciplines of knowledge were you able to draw so much of heart, to imbibe so much of divination?

Is it because you know how to decline verbs and nouns through cases and tenses; because you know how to avoid barbarisms and solecisms; because you know how to bring forth speech that is rhythmical, well-structured, and composed, or to recognize it when it is uncouth; because you hold in memory the Fornix of Lucilius and the Marsyas of Pomponius, sealed and delivered; because you know what are the issues in lawsuits, how many kinds of cases, how many of pleadings, what genus is, what species, by what reasonings the opposite is distinguished from the contrary—do you therefore imagine that you know what is false, what is true, what can or cannot be, what the nature of the lowest and highest things is? Has that common saying never brushed your ears, that the wisdom of man is foolishness with the supreme God?

(cf. 1 Cor. 3:19). And you yourselves inwardly perceive, when at any time you dispute about obscure matters and proceed to unlock natural secrets, that the very things you say, which you assert, which for the most part you defend with a life-and-death contention, you do not know, and that each one guards his own suppositions, as though proved and comprehended, with stubborn struggle. For what, if I discern the truth, can we know through ourselves—even if all the ages be spent in the investigation of things—we whom some circumstance and contrived envy has brought forth so blind and proud that, though we know nothing at all, we nevertheless deceive ourselves and are lifted up into the opinion of knowledge under the swelling of an inflated breast?

For, to pass over things divine and matters plunged in natural obscurity, can any mortal explain that which the famous Socrates in the Phaedrus [Pl. Phaedr. 230] cannot comprehend—what man is, or whence he is, doubtful, changeable, shifting, deceitful, manifold, of many forms; for what uses he has been brought forth, by whose genius he was devised, what he does in the world, why he undergoes so great swarms of ills; whether the earth, turned by the rottenness of some slime, animated him, as it does worms, as it does mice, or whether by the hand of some maker and fashioner he received these lineaments of body and the shape of a face?

Can one know, I say, these things set in our midst and placed among common perceptions—by what causes we are plunged into sleep, by what we awaken, in what manners dreams and visions come to be; nay rather, what Plato ponders in the Theaetetus [Plat. Theaet. 158b], whether we are ever awake, or whether that very thing called being awake is a portion of a perpetual sleep, and what we seem to be doing is a dream; whether, when we say that we see, we see by the straining of rays and light, or whether images of things fly to us and settle in our pupils; whether flavor is in things or comes to be by the contact of the palate; from what causes hairs lay aside their inborn blackness—not all alike, but by little and little, growing gray by addition?

What is it that all liquids, when mixed, make one body, while oil alone refuses to suffer immersion into itself, but, ever impenetrable to its own nature, gathers itself together transparently? And finally, the mind itself, which is declared by you to be immortal and a god—why in the sick is it sick, in infants dull, in old age worn out, babbling delirious and mad things? The infirmity and ignorance of these matters is the more pitiable in that, though it may happen that we sometimes say something true, this very thing itself is uncertain to us—whether we have said anything true.

And since you are accustomed to laugh at our faith and to mangle our very credulity with facetious jests, tell me, O merry ones, steeped and sated with the draught of unmixed wisdom: is there any kind of business in life, occupied and active, which its performers undertake, take up, and set about without faith going before? You travel abroad, you sail—do you not believe that, your business transacted, you will return home? You cleave the earth with iron and fill it with variety of seeds—not believing that you will receive the crop in the seasonal turns? You couple the partnerships of marriage—not believing that they will be chaste and of dutiful covenant toward husbands?

You take up offspring of children—not believing that they will be safe and, through the stages of age, come to the goals of old age? You commit the ailments of your bodies to the hands of physicians—not believing that diseases can be soothed and their harshness relieved? You wage wars with enemies—not believing that you will bring back victory by the successes of battles? You venerate and worship the gods—not believing that they exist and lend propitious ears to your supplications? And what of those things concerning matters set apart from human knowledge, which you yourselves write and constantly read—did you behold them with ocular inspection and hold them handled by your hands? Does not whoever of you there is believe this or that author?

Does he not maintain, by a kind of guarantee of faith, that what is said by another has been persuaded to be true—not that he himself has ascertained it? He who says that the origin of all things is fire or water—does he not believe Thales or Heraclitus? He who places the cause in numbers—does he not believe Pythagoras of Samos, or Archytas? He who divides the soul and constitutes incorporeal forms—does he not believe the Socratic Plato? He who applies a fifth element to the principal causes—does he not believe Aristotle, the father of the Peripatetics? He who threatens the world with fire, and that a time will come when it shall burn—does he not believe Panaetius, Chrysippus, Zeno? He who ever fashions and destroys worlds out of indivisible bodies—does he not believe Epicurus, Democritus, Metrodorus?

He who affirms that nothing can be comprehended by man, and that all things are wrapped in blind obscurities—does he not believe Arcesilaus, Carneades, or, in short, some devotee of the older or more recent Academy? And let us grant that the very leaders and fathers of the aforesaid opinions—do they not say the things they say as things entrusted to their own suppositions? For Heraclitus saw that things come to be by conversions of fire; Thales, by the concretion of waters; Pythagoras, that numbers come together; Plato, the incorporeal forms; Democritus, the concourses of indivisibles? Or those who affirm that nothing at all can be comprehended—do they know whether what they say is true, so that they understand that the very thing they define is a pronouncement of truth?

Since, therefore, you have nothing ascertained and known, and assert all those things which you write and comprise in thousands of books with credulity as your guide, what sort of judgment is this, so unjust, that you should deride our faith—which you perceive that you hold in common with us in your own credulity? "But you believe wise men and men instructed in every kind of discipline." No doubt those men who determine nothing and pronounce nothing as one, who wage wars with their opponents on behalf of their own opinions and ever fight with hostile obstinacy, who, when the one overturns, destroys, and tears down the decrees of the other, have made all things uncertain and have shown, by their very dissension, that nothing can be known.

But suppose these things are no hindrance and pose no obstacle to your obligation to believe and give ear to them: what is it, then, that in this matter gives you the greater advantage, or us the less? You believe Plato, you believe Cronius, you believe Numenius, or whomever you please; we believe and rest content in Christ. How great is this injustice, that, when both of us stand upon authorities, and it is common to us and to you alike to believe upon another's word, you wish it granted to you to accept what those men have said, yet are unwilling to hear and to regard the things which are set forth by Christ? And yet, if we should choose to weigh cause against cause and part against part, we are the better able to show what we have followed in Christ than you what you have followed in the philosophers.

And indeed we followed these things in Him: His magnificent works and His most mighty powers, which He put forth and displayed in manifold miracles, whereby anyone could be brought to the compulsion of belief and could faithfully judge that the things which were being done were not those of a man, but of some divine and unknown power. Have you followed such powers in the philosophers, that it should have been more fitting for you to believe them than for us to believe Christ? Was any one of them ever able, by a single word or by the command of a single order, to check and to still — I do not say the ragings of the sea or the furies of storms — nor to restore sight to the blind, nor to give it to those born without eyes, nor to recall the dead to life, nor to break up long-standing diseases;

but what is far slighter — to heal by a single word of interdiction a boil, the itch, or a little thorn clinging in the callus of the skin? Not that we deny that they are either praiseworthy for the integrity of their character, or well furnished with every kind of study and discipline; for we know that they speak in the most brilliant words and flow in polished compositions, that they conclude syllogisms most acutely, arrange inductions in orderly sequence, render the formulae proper to their definitions, distinguish and divide, say much concerning the kinds of numbers, much concerning music, and even expound matters of geometry by their own maxims and precepts. But what is that to the point? Do enthymemes,

syllogisms, and other like things guarantee that those men know the truth, or that on that account they are worthy that we should of necessity believe them concerning the most obscure matters? A contest between persons is not to be weighed by the powers of eloquence, but by the excellence of deeds accomplished. He is not to be called a good authority who has set forth a discourse elegantly, but he who follows up what he promises with the surety of divine works. You may bring forward against us your arguments and the subtleties of your conjectures:

if Christ Himself — let me say this with His peace and by His leave — had used these in the assemblies of the peoples, who would have acquiesced, who would have listened, who would have judged that He was openly promising anything, or who would have followed one who boasted of empty and bare things, however imprudent he were and of foolish credulity? It was the powers set before their eyes and that unheard-of force of things — both what was done by Himself openly and what was celebrated throughout the whole world by His heralds — that kindled those flames of longing, and made nations and peoples run together with one mind to the assent of one faith, and made nations most unlike in their customs.

For those things can be enumerated and reckoned in the account, which were done in India, among the Seres, the Persians, and the Medes; in Arabia, Egypt, in Asia, Syria; among the Galatians, Parthians, and Phrygians; in Achaia, Macedonia, Epirus; in the islands and in all the provinces which the rising and the setting sun surveys; and finally in Rome herself, the mistress of the world, in which, although men were engaged in the arts of King Numa and in ancient superstitions, they nevertheless did not delay to forsake their ancestral rites and to grow together with the Christian truth. For they had seen the chariot of Simon Magus and his fiery four-horsed cars blown apart by the mouth of Peter and vanished at the naming of Christ;

they had seen, I say, that man who trusted in false gods, and who was betrayed by those very gods when he began to fear them, hurled down by his own weight and lying with his legs shattered; and afterwards, when he had been carried to Brundisium and was worn out with tortures and shame, cast himself down again headlong from the very summit of a lofty roof-top.

All these things you neither know were done, nor have you wished to know them, nor have you ever judged them necessary for you; and while you trust in your own hearts and call what is mere conceit by the name of wisdom, you have given place to deceivers — to those, I say, harmful ones, whose interest it is that the Christian name should be blotted out — for pouring their darkness over such great matters and obscuring them, for snatching away your faith and subjecting you to contempt; so that, because they foresee that their end is at hand in proportion to their deserts, they might also send upon you a cause whereby you too could come into peril and be bereft of the divine kindness.

Meanwhile, however, O you who admire, who are astonished at the maxims of the learned and of philosophy — do you not thus think it most unjust to ride roughshod over us and to mock us, as though we were saying foolish and brutish things, when you are found to say the very same or such like things which you laugh at us for saying and pronouncing? Nor is my discourse with those who, scattered through the various by-ways of the sects, have made these and those parties by the diversity of their opinions: you, you I address, who follow Mercury, who follow Plato and Pythagoras, and you others who are of one mind and advance by the same paths of tenets in unity. Do you dare to laugh at us, because we venerate and worship the Father and Lord of things, and because we commit and entrust our hopes to Him?

What of your Plato in the Theaetetus — that I may name him above all — does he not counsel the soul to flee from the earth, and, as far as it is possible, always to dwell in thought and mind about that Supreme One? Do you dare to laugh at us, because we say that there will be a resurrection of the dead — which indeed we confess that we say, but which is heard by you otherwise than as we mean it? What does the same Plato say in the Statesman? Does he not write that, when the world begins to rise from the western regions and to incline toward that pole which belongs to the rising sun, men will again burst forth from the bosom of the earth as grey-haired, decrepit old men, and, when the years begin to grow longer, will pass back through the same stages by which growth now takes place, and cease at the cradles of infancy?

Do you dare to laugh at us, because we provide for the salvation of our souls — that is, for our very selves? For what are we men, if not souls shut up in bodies? Do you not all bear cares for their preservation? Is it not that fear which holds you, lest you cling fast, fastened as if with driven nails to your bodies, that you abstain from all vices and lusts? What do those rites of secret arts mean for themselves, by which you address I know not what powers, that they may be favorable to you and place no obstacles of hindrance before you as you return to your ancestral seats? Do you dare to laugh at us, when we speak of hells and of certain inextinguishable fires, into which we have learned that souls are cast down by their foes and enemies?

What of the same Plato of yours, in that volume which he composed on the immortality of the soul — does he not name Acheron, Styx, Cocytus, and the rivers, and Pyriphlegethon, in which he asserts that souls are rolled, plunged, and burned up? And a man of no crooked prudence and of weighed and pondered judgment undertakes an inextricable position: that, while he says souls are immortal, everlasting, and freed from bodily solidity, he yet says they are punished and affected with the sensation of pain. But which of men does not see that whatever is immortal, whatever is simple, can admit no pain, while whatever feels pain cannot possess immortality? Nor yet does his authority decline very far from the truth.

For although, being a man of gentle and benevolent will, he thought it inhuman to condemn souls with a capital sentence, he nevertheless did not without reason conjecture that they are cast into rushing rivers, foul with globes of flame and miry whirlpools. For they are cast in, and, reduced to nothing, they vanish away in the frustration of everlasting extinction. For they are of a middle quality, as has been ascertained on Christ's authority, and are able to perish if they have not known God, and to be delivered from life and from destruction if they have applied themselves to His threats and His indulgences — and what is unknown is laid open.

This is man's true death, this the one that leaves nothing remaining — for that which is discerned before our eyes is the separation of souls from bodies, not the last end of abolition — this, I say, is man's true death, when souls that know not God shall be consumed through the torment of a most lengthy time by a fierce fire, into which certain cruelly savage beings, unknown before Christ and disclosed by Him alone who knows, shall cast them.

Wherefore there is nothing that should deceive us, nothing that should promise us empty hopes — that which is said by certain new men, puffed up with an immoderate opinion of themselves: namely, that souls are immortal, next in rank of dignity to the Lord and Prince of things, brought forth by that Begetter and Father, divine, wise, learned, and no longer touched by any contact of the body. Because this is true and certain, and we have been brought forth from a perfect One with an unamendable perfection, we live blameless and therefore beyond reproach, good, just, and upright, of no viciousness; no cupidity conquers us, no lust dishonors us, and we keep and preserve intact the tenor of all the virtues.

And because from one fountain the souls of us all flow down, therefore we feel one and the same accord; we differ not in morals, not in opinions; we all know the same things, and — as many men as there are in the world — there are not just as many sentiments, nor are they distinguished by infinite variety. But while we slip and hasten down toward human bodies, from the circles of the world there follow us the causes by which we become evil and most wicked, seethe with cupidities and wrath, spend our life in disgraceful deeds, and are condemned to public lust by the prostitution of venal bodies. And how can bodies join themselves to incorporeal things, or how can things made by God the Prince be led over by weaker causes to the dishonorings of vices?

Are you willing, O men, to lay aside your ingrained conceit and haughtiness, you who claim God as your Father and contend that you have one and the same immortality with Him? Are you willing to seek, to investigate, to search out what you yourselves are, whose you are, from what Father you are reckoned, what you are doing in the world, by what manner you are born, in what way you leap forth into life? Are you willing, with favor laid aside, in silent reflections to perceive clearly that we are living beings either like all the rest or not distant by very much difference? For what is it that would indicate that we differ from their likeness? Or what eminence is there in us so great that we should disdain to be enrolled in the number of living beings? From those bones their bodies are founded and bound fast by the binding-together of sinews;

and our bodies too, by a like arrangement, are founded from bones and bound fast by the binding-together of sinews. They take in air through their nostrils and give it back, drawn to and fro through their breathing; and we likewise draw in and breathe out the spirit in frequent passages. They are distinguished into female and male kinds; into just as many sexes are we too formed by our Author. They bring forth their young through the womb and procreate by bodily unions; and we too are born from the couplings of bodies and are poured forth and sent out from the wombs of our mothers. They are sustained by food and drink and discharge and cast off their superfluous filth by the lower and hinder parts; and we too are sustained by food and drink, and pour out through the same channels what nature has now rejected.

All of them have the care of warding off deadly hunger and of necessity keeping watch for their sustenance; and what else do we do amid such great occupations of life, but seek those things by which the peril of hunger may be avoided and unhappy anxiety laid to rest? They feel diseases and starvation and at the last are dissolved by old age; and what of us? Are we exempt from these evils, and are we not likewise broken by the discomforts of diseases and destroyed by the decay of old age? And if that too is true which is said in the more secret mysteries — that the souls of the wicked pass into cattle and other beasts after they have been separated from human bodies — it is more manifestly proven that we are near of kin and not sundered by any longer intervals.

Since there is one and the same thing in us and in them, by which we are said to be living beings and to carry on vital motion. 'But we are rational, and we surpass the whole race of dumb creatures in intelligence.' — I should believe that this was said most truly, if all men lived with reason and counsel, kept the tenor of their duties, abstained from things unlawful, did not approach base businesses, and if no one, through the depravity of his counsel and the blindness of his ignorance, demanded things contrary and hostile to his very self. Yet I should like to know what this reason is, by which we are superior to all the kinds of animals. Is it because we have made ourselves dwellings, by which we may avoid the winter's cold and the burning heats of summer?

What of it? Do the other living creatures not have foresight for this matter? Do we not behold some building for themselves the dwellings of little nests in the most convenient sites, others covering and fortifying themselves under overhanging rocks and crags, others hollowing out the floors of the earth and preparing for themselves defenses and lairs in diggable pits? And if kindly nature had willed to grant them also serviceable hands, it would be beyond doubt that they too would build the lofty summits of walls and hammer out artful novelties.

Yet in those very things which they make with their beaks and claws, we behold that there is much semblance of reason and of wisdom, which we men could imitate by no meditation, although we have hands that are craftsmen and are artificers of every kind of perfection. 'They know not how to fashion clothing, chairs, ships, and ploughs, nor, in short, the rest of the household furniture which familiar use demands.' — These are not the gifts of knowledge, but the inventions of most abject necessity. Nor did the arts fall together with our souls from the recesses of heaven, but they were all sought out and born here on earth, and, with the passage of the ages, were gradually forged little by little through meditation.

But if souls possessed the sciences — which it is fitting that a divine and immortal kind should possess — from the beginning all men would know all things, nor would there be any age that was ignorant of any art or unprovided by experience of things. But now indeed, life, poor and in need of many things, seeing that certain things turn out conveniently, while it imitates, tries, and tests, while it slips, reshapes, and alters, has out of continual correction both put together the small little sciences of the arts and, over very many periods of time, brought them, corrected, to a single outcome.

But if men either knew themselves thoroughly, or received by any breath of surmise the understanding of God, they would never claim for themselves a divine and immortal nature, nor esteem themselves to be something magnificent, because they have made for themselves gridirons, ladles, and mixing-bowls; because they have made undershirts, wraps, cloaks, little mantles, robes of state, knives, breastplates, and swords; because they have made rakes, little axes, and the ploughshare. Never, I say, would they believe, uplifted by conceit and arrogance, that they are the first divinities and equal to the highest of the Prince, because they have brought forth grammar, music, oratory, and the formulas of geometry;

in which crafts we see nothing so admirable that, from their invention, souls should be believed to be superior both to the sun and to all the stars, and that this whole world, whose members these things are, should be surpassed in dignity and substance. For what else do they promise that they can either impart or hand down, than that we should know the rules of nouns and their differences, the intervals in the sounds of voices, that we should speak persuasively in lawsuits, that we should measure the surfaces of lands? And if souls had brought these things with them from the divine regions, it would be necessary that all should know them, that they should have long since been handled in all the world, nor would any race of men be found that was not equally and uniformly instructed in all these things.

But now indeed, in the world, how few there are who are musicians, dialecticians, and geometers; how few who are orators, poets, and grammarians! From which it appears, as has often been said, that these things were invented by the necessity of places and times, and that learned and divine souls did not fly hither; for neither are all learned, nor can all learn, but among them there are very many of duller and slower keenness, and are compelled to the pursuit of learning by the coercion of blows. But if it were established that the things we learn are recollections, as was held in the ancient opinions, it would be fitting that we all, coming from one truth, should know one thing and recollect one thing, and not have diverse, not many and dissenting opinions;

but now indeed, since each of us asserts one thing and another, it is manifest and plain that we have brought nothing from heaven, but that we learn things born here and claim as our own things gathered together out of surmises. And that we may show you more clearly and more manifestly of what price is that man whom you believe to exist most like to the higher power, conceive in your minds this image, and — since it can be done if we set about it — let us hold to it, by the assumption of a likeness, as though we had set about it.

Let there be for us, then, in the dug-out earth, a habitable place forming the shape of a chamber, closed by roof and walls, neither chilly in the cold nor too fervent in the heat, but so tempered and middling that we suffer neither the sensation of cold nor the strong ardor of summer's burning. Into it let the sound of no voice at all fall — not of a bird, not of a beast, not of a storm, not of a man, nor, in short, of any crash or of the terribly resounding sky. Let us then contrive how it may receive light: not from fire brought in, nor from the sun beheld, but let some spurious thing be made which, with darkness interposed, may counterfeit the image of light;

let there be not one door, nor let the entrance be straight, but let it be approached by winding turns, nor let it ever be opened, except when necessary reason shall demand it. Now, since we have prepared a seat for the image, let us next presently take up someone newly born and place him in the lodging of that place, which is to have no thing in it and to be empty and void — let him be, if you will, of Platonic or Pythagorean stock, or of one of those who are reported to have been of divine keenness or were named most wise from the responses of the gods. And when this has been done, it follows that he must be nourished and reared with suitable nourishments.

Let us therefore also provide a nurse who always approaches him naked, always silent, making no word, nor parting her mouth and lips into the use of any speech; but when she has given the breasts and supplied the consequent offices, let her leave him, once fed, to rest, and let her keep the doors shut day and night without interruption — for the matter for the most part demands that nurse's cares be at hand and that timely motions be observed. But when the infant begins to need to be supported by more solid foods, let them be brought in by the same nurse, with her garment, as we have said, laid aside, and the tenor of silence preserved.

But let the food itself which is brought in be one and the same always, differing in no material nor renewed by various flavors, but let it be either a gruel of millet, or bread of spelt, or — that we may imitate the ancient ages — acorns from hot ashes or berries from the branches of the wild. But let the drinking of wine be utterly unknown, nor let anything else be applied to quench thirst than pure liquor from springs, untouched by the heat of fire and, if it can be done, served up in the hollows of the hands. For a familiar habit will arise from custom, turned into nature, nor will his appetite be stretched further, knowing nothing more that might be sought. To what, then, do these things look?

It is this: since it has been believed that souls are divine, immortal from God, and fly to the bodies of men together with all their disciplines, let us test from this one, whom we have willed to be reared in this fashion, whether the matter accepts belief, or whether it has been lightly believed and presumed with a frustrable expectation.

Let him then come forth to us, reared in that hidden solitude, having spent as many years as you please — you wish him twenty, you wish him thirty, nay, when he shall have measured out forty years — and let him be brought into the assemblies of mortals; and if it is true that he is a portion of the principal substance, already derived here from the glad fountains of life to spend his time, before he takes cognizance of any thing or is imbued with human speech, let him give answer when asked who he himself is, or of what father, in what regions he was brought forth, in what way or by what means he was reared, celebrating what work or business he has run through the course of time already past.

Will he not thus stand duller and blunter than any beast, log, or stone; will he not, sent forth into new things and never before known to him, be ignorant of his very self above all else? Will he be able, if you ask, to show what the sun is, the earth, the seas, the stars, the clouds, the mist, the rains, the thunders, the snow, the hail? Will he be able to know what trees are, or plants, or grasses, or the bull, the horse, or the ram, the camel, the elephant, or the kite? If you give to one who is hungry a grape, a must-cake, an onion, a thistle, a cucumber, a fig, will he know that hunger can be stilled by all of these, or in what manner each of them ought to be for eating?

If you make a great fire or set poisonous beasts around him, will he not go through the midst of the flames, the vipers, the poisonous spiders, not knowing that they are harmful and being ignorant of what fear itself is? Now indeed, if you place in his midst clothing and furniture, both urban and rustic, will he be able to distinguish and discern the same, for what business each thing is suited, to the use of what office they are fitted? Will he indicate for what wearing a coverlet-cloth has been made, or a turban, a breast-band, a bandage, a cushion, a napkin, a cloak, a woman's head-dress, a hand-towel, a sheepskin garment, low shoes, a sandal, boots? What if you should add to ask what a wheel is, or a threshing-sledge, a winnowing-fan, a large jar, a cask, an oil-press, a ploughshare or a sieve, a mill, a plough-tail or a hoe?

What if you ask what an arched seat is, a needle, a scraper, a wash-basin, a stool, a ladle, a small dish, a candlestick, a drinking-cup, a besom, a goblet, a sack? What of a lyre, a flute, silver, bronze, gold, a whetstone, a weaver's shuttle, a book? What of the other instruments with which human life is girded and held together? Thus, as we have said, will he not, after the manner of an ox or an ass, a pig, or if there is any slower animal, gaze at these things indeed, regarding their various shapes, but not knowing what the several things are and ignorant for what purpose they are possessed? If, forced by some necessity, he must utter a voice — as is customary with the dumb — will he not, with gaping mouth, cry out some inarticulate thing?

What in the Meno, O Plato — do you inquire of a little boy certain things brought to bear by the reasonings of number, and strive from his answers to prove that the things we learn we do not learn, but return to the memory of things which we had known of old? If he truly answers you — for it does not befit us to deny credit to the matters you tell of — he is led not by knowledge of things but by intelligence; and from the fact that he has certain numbers known from his daily uses, it comes about that he follows when questioned, and the very increase of multiplication always leads him on. But if you truly are confident that souls fly hither immortal and full of knowledge, cease to question that stripling, whom you see to be knowing of things and to be established within the bounds of humanity;

call that forty-year-old to you, and question him — not about something abstruse, not something involved, not about triangles, not about squares, not what a cube is or a power, a sesquioctave or an ultimate sesquitertian — but about what lies in the midst: ask how great a little sum twice two, twice three make. We wish to see, we wish to know, what he answers when asked, whether he unfolds the question put to him. Will he thus feel, though his ears lie open to him, whether you say anything, whether you ask anything, whether you require anything to be answered to you by himself? And will he not, like some stump or, as it has been said, a Marpesian

rock, stand tongueless and dumb, ignorant and unaware of this very thing — whether you are conversing rather with yourself or with another, whether you are talking with another or with yourself, whether that speech which you utter is a discourse or the sound of a voice signifying no things but drawn out in an empty continuation? What do you say, O men who bestow upon man more than enough from another's generosity? Is this that learned soul which you speak of — immortal, perfect, divine, holding the fourth place after God the Prince of things and after the twin minds, and flowing forth from the living mixing-bowls? Is this that precious man, endowed with the most august faculties of reasoning, who is called the lesser world and was framed and formed in the semblance of the total likeness:

who, as has appeared, is better than no beast, blunter than a log, than a stone; who knows not men and ever spends his life in dumb solitudes, lingers sluggish, is strong to no purpose, though he live for countless years and is never released from the bodily bonds? But when he has attained the schools and been instructed by the teachings of masters, he is made prudent and learned, and lays aside the inexperience which he had but lately. Yet — I have said it — such an one is the true price of man.

Both the ass and the ox learn, equally by practice and by constant exertion of being driven, to plough and to grind; the horse learns to bear the yoke and to recognize the turnings on the racecourse; the camel to lower itself, whether when it takes up its burdens or when it lays them down; the dove, once set free, to fly back to its master's dwellings; the dog, when it has found its prey, to check itself and restrain its barking; the parrot to repeat words, and the raven to bring out names. But when I hear it said that the soul is something surpassing, akin and near to God, knowing that all things here come to it from higher ages, I do not wish it to learn but to teach, nor from being learned, as they say, to become a beginner, but rather, retaining its own possessions, to bind itself about with earthly bodies.

For unless the matter were so, how could it be distinguished whether the soul recollects what it hears or learns it? Since it is far easier to believe that it learns what it did not know than that it has forgotten what a little before it knew. 'Because of the opposition of the body it loses the recollection of former things,' as Plato says. But then, where is that saying, that incorporeal souls have no substance? For what belongs to no body is not impeded by the opposition of another, nor can it lose anything of its own being, seeing that it cannot sustain the touch of an opposed thing.

For just as number, being constituted without bodies, remains untouched and inviolable, though it be overwhelmed by a thousand bodies, so it is necessary that souls, if they are incorporeal as is asserted, suffer no forgetfulness of former things, however much the most solid bonds of bodies may bind them about. Moreover, the same reasoning not only shows that they are not incorporeal, but even deprives them all of immortality and applies them to those limits by which life is wont to be bounded. For whatever, when some cause presses upon it, is so altered and changed that it cannot retain its own integrity, must of necessity be judged to be by nature passive. And whatever is ready and exposed to suffering, by that very passibility intervening, proclaims itself to be corruptible.

Therefore, if souls too lose all that they knew, being seized by the bonds of the body, they must of necessity suffer something which causes them to put on the blindness of forgetfulness. For neither, having suffered nothing at all or preserving their integrity, can they lay aside the knowledge of things or pass into other states without change in themselves. And yet we hold that what is one, what is immortal, what is simple, in whatever thing it be, must of necessity always retain its own nature, and ought not, nor is able, to suffer anything, if only it means to be perpetual and to abide within the limits of its own immortality. For every suffering is the door of death and destruction, a way leading to death, and bringing upon things an inevitable dissolution:

and if souls feel this and yield to its touch and its assaults, then life is theirs by use, not handed over in full ownership, however differently some may argue and place the assurance of so great a matter upon their own reasonings. Yet lest we depart not more fully instructed from you: how is it that you say souls, when they have been wrapped in earthly bodies, do not have recollection of former things, when, placed in these very bodies and made almost insensible by their commingling, they yet stubbornly and faithfully hold fast those things which, many years before—say eighty or even more, if you will—they either did or suffered or spoke or heard?

For if it is brought about by the obstacle of the body that they do not remember those things which long ago and before becoming man they knew, it is rather to be expected that they should forget the things they did while shut up in bodies than the things done outside, while not yet joined to men. For that which takes away from things that have entered in the recollection of former things ought also to lose by unremembering obliteration the things done within itself. For one cause cannot produce two effects contrary to each other, so as to lull to sleep the memories of some things while allowing the recollection of the doer's own deeds to come back.

But if the souls, which you say are hindered by the obstacle of the limbs from recollecting their arts and their ancient knowledge, yet in these very bodies, in the state in which they are placed, remember and know that they are souls and do not possess corporeal substance, that they have been endowed with the condition of immortality—then what rank do they hold among things, in what order they have been distinguished by God the Father, by what reason they came to these lowest regions of the world, what qualities and from which circles they drew as they glided down into these places? How, I say, do they know that they were most learned and lost through the obstruction of the body the things they knew? For this very thing too they ought to have been ignorant of, if the conjunction of the body had brought upon them any taint:

For to know what you have been and what today you are not is no sign of a memory that has perished, but rather a proof and token of a memory preserved. Since these things are so, cease, I beseech you, cease to value at monstrous prices things small and of trifling name; cease to enroll man—when he is but a proletarian and reckoned by his head—among the first ranks, the classes; when he is destitute, poor in his household and in a poor hovel, and never deserving to be named among the patrician nobility.

For whereas you, being true authors of rectitude and integrity, ought to have broken down pride and arrogance—by whose wings we are all lifted up and puffed out with the vanity of empty things—not only do you judge that these evils fall upon us, but, what is much graver, you have added the causes by which vices grow and incorrigible wickedness endures. For what man is there—even though he be always of a disposition that flees the shameful and disgraceful—who, when he hears it said, chiefly by wise men, that souls are immortal and not subject to the laws of the fates, would not rush headlong into every vileness, would not, careless and undaunted, undertake and set his hand to unlawful deeds,

would not, in fine, grant to his own desires all things that ungoverned lust commands, being moreover fortified by the freedom of impunity? For what will hinder him from doing these things? The fear of a supernal power and divine judgment? And how can he be terrified by the dread of any fear, who has been persuaded that he is as immortal as the first God himself, and that nothing can be judged concerning him by Him, since immortality is one in both, and the one immortality cannot be troubled by any equality with the condition of the other? 'But punishments among the dead are recorded, and manifold with kinds of torments?'

And who will be so stupid and ignorant of the consequences of things as to believe that anything can harm incorruptible souls—whether the darkness of Tartarus, or fiery rivers, or marshes with muddy whirlpools, or the whirling of revolving wheels? For that which is not in contact with anything, and is removed from the laws of dissolution, though it be surrounded by all the flames of burning rivers, though it be rolled in mire, though it be buried by the falling of overhanging rocks and the ruins of enormous mountains, must needs remain unimpaired and untouched, and take on no sense of deadly suffering.

Moreover, this persuasion is not only an incitement to vices by the very freedom of sinning, but it even takes away the reason for philosophy itself, and declares that it is vainly undertaken, by the difficulty of a superfluous labor. For if it is true that souls partake of no end and proceed with all the ages in the perpetuity of the ages, what danger is there in the matter, if, despising and passing over the virtues by which life is made more restricted and rougher, one gives oneself to pleasures and, unbridled, scatters through every kind of lust the ardor of immense desire? Lest one grow flabby with delights and be corrupted by the softness of vices? And by what reasoning can that be corrupted which is immortal, which always is and subject to no suffering?

Lest it grow foul and be polluted by the filthiness of base deeds? And how can that be polluted which does not possess corporeal substance? Or where can the contamination place its seat, where there is no space in which the mark of that very contamination can fix itself? But again, if souls approach the doors of death, as the opinion of Epicurus is defined, not even so is there a sufficient cause why philosophy should be sought, even if it is true that by it souls are purged and rendered pure from all viciousness.

For if souls perish in common and in the very bodies their vital sense fails and is extinguished, it is a mark not only of the greatest error but of stolid blindness to bridle inborn appetites, to confine life within narrow limits, to indulge nothing to nature, to do nothing which desires have bidden and urged, when no rewards of so great a labor await you, once the day of death has come and you have been loosed from the bonds of the body. Therefore a certain middle and doubtful, ambiguous nature of souls has given birth to a place for philosophy and found a reason why it should be sought, since the one, forsooth, dreads danger from evils committed, while the other conceives good hopes, if he does no crime and passes his life with duty and justice.

Hence it is that among learned men, endowed with excellence of talents, there is a contest concerning the quality of souls: and some say they are of a mortal nature and cannot sustain a divine substance, while others say they are everlasting and cannot degenerate into a mortal nature—for the fact that this is so is brought about by the law of the middle state: since arguments are at hand for those who find them passive and perishable, and to these, on the contrary, arguments are not lacking by which they are shown to be divine and immortal.

Since these things are so, and since we hold it handed down by the highest Author that souls are not far removed from the gaping jaws of death, yet can nevertheless be made long-lived by the gift and beneficence of the highest Sovereign, if only they attempt and study to acknowledge Him—for the knowledge of Him is a kind of leaven of life and the glue of a thing that would fall apart—and then, laying aside their ferocity and inhumanity, take up gentler dispositions, that they may be prepared for that which shall be given: what reason is there that we should be judged by you as brute and stolid, if because of these fears we have surrendered and given ourselves over to God the Deliverer? Against noxious blows

and the venomous bites of serpents we often seek out remedies and protect ourselves with amulets, which the Psylli, the Marsi, and other peddlers and quacks sell; and lest the cold and the scorching suns should trouble us, with anxious diligence of caution we prepare the defenses of houses and clothing. When, then, the fear of death—that is, the destruction of souls—is set before us, why should we not, out of that sense of advantage by which we all love ourselves, hold fast and embrace Him who promises to deliver us from such a peril, and prefer Him even to our very souls, if only a just requital exists? You place the salvation of your souls in yourselves, and trust that you become gods by your own inward effort;

but we, on the contrary, promise ourselves nothing from our own weakness, seeing that our nature is of no strength and is overcome by its own affections in every contest of things. You, as soon as you have departed loosed from the knots of the limbs, think that wings will be at hand for you, by which you can proceed to heaven and fly to the stars; we shrink from such great boldness, and do not count it to be placed within our power to seek the things above, since we hold even this very thing uncertain—whether we deserve to receive life and to be led away from the law of mortality. You presume that you will of your own accord, with none forbidding, return to the Lord's court as to your own dwelling; but we do not hope that this can be done without the Lord, nor do we judge that so much power and license is granted to any of men.

Since, then, these things are so, what injustice is so great, that we should seem to you fools in our credulity in these matters, when we see you both believing similar things and being engaged in the same expectation? If we are deemed worthy of derision because we promise ourselves a hope of this kind, the same derision awaits you also, who claim for yourselves a hope of immortality. If, however, you hold and follow reason, grant us also some portion out of that reason.

If Plato in the Phaedrus, or another from this chorus, had promised us these joys—that is, the way of escaping death—and had been able to furnish it and to bring the promises to fulfillment, it would have been fitting for us to take up the worship of Him from whom we should expect so great a gift and boon. Now, since Christ has not only promised it but has also shown by such great powers that it can be accomplished, what strange thing do we do, or by what reasonings do we sustain the charge of folly, if we bow ourselves before His name and majesty, from whom we hope for both—to escape a torturous death and to be endowed with the eternity of life? 'But if souls,' they say, 'are mortal and of a middle quality, how can they become immortal from a middle quality?'

If we should say that we do not know this, and have only believed what we heard from One more powerful, where will our credulity seem to have gone astray, if we have believed the almighty King that nothing is difficult, nothing hard, that what is impossible for us to do is possible for Him and ready at the nod of His command? For is there anything that can stand in the way of His will, or, when He has willed a thing to be, does it not necessarily follow that it comes to pass? Or shall we, forsooth, gather from our own divisions what can or cannot be done, and not consider that our reasonings are as mortal as we ourselves are, and of no name before the Sovereign?

And yet, O you who do not believe that souls are of a middle quality and contained within the middle boundary of life and destruction—are not all whatsoever whom opinion supposes to exist, gods, angels, demons, or by whatever other name they are called, are not they themselves also of a middle quality and wavering in the condition of an uncertain lot? For if we all concede that there is one Father of things, alone immortal and unbegotten, and that nothing at all is found before Him that was of any name, it follows that all these whom opinion has believed to be gods of mortals were either begotten by Him or brought forth at His bidding. If they have been brought forth and begotten, they are also of a later order and time;

if of a later order and time, they must of necessity have a beginning and the commencements of birth and life: but that which has an entrance and the beginning of a commencing life necessarily follows that it must have also an end. 'But the gods are said to be immortal.' Not, then, by nature, but by the will and gift of God the Father. In what way, therefore, did He bestow the gift of immortality upon gods brought forth on a fixed day, and will He in this way deign to endow souls with immortality, although cruel death may seem able to extinguish them and, reduced to nothing, to blot them out with an irreversible abolition?

That divine Plato, thinking many things worthy of God and not common to the multitude, in that discourse and book which is entitled the Timaeus, says that the gods and the world are of a corruptible nature and not at all exempt from dissolution, but are held in perpetual bond by the will of God the King and Sovereign. For that which has been rightly bound and tied with the most perfect knots is preserved by the goodness of God; nor can it be dissolved by any other than by Him who bound it, if the matter should require it, and be granted the gift of a saving command.

Therefore, if the matter is so, and it is not fitting either to think or to believe otherwise, why do you marvel that souls are said by us to be of a middle quality, when Plato says that the deities themselves are of middle natures, but that a continuous and unsetting life is granted them by the sovereign benevolence?

For if perchance you do not know, and it was before unknown to you because of the novelty of the matter, learn it now, late though it be, and be taught by Him who knows and brought it forth into the open—by Christ—that souls are not the daughters of the Most High King, nor did they begin, as is said, to know themselves as begotten by Him and to be proclaimed in the essence of His name, but that some other one is their begetter, separated from the Emperor by very many grades of dignity and power, yet noble from His court and by the sublimity of a birth among the eminent.

But if, as report has it, souls were the offspring of the Lord and the generation of the sovereign power, nothing would have been lacking to them for perfection, being begotten by the most perfect virtue; they would all have had one understanding and one consent, they would always inhabit the royal court, nor, forsaking the seats of blessedness in which they knew and retained the most august doctrines, would they imprudently seek out these earthly regions, that, wrapped in dark bodies, they might dwell amid phlegm and blood, amid these bladders of dung and the most obscene vessels of the paunch. 'But it was fitting that these parts too should be inhabited, and therefore God the omnipotent sent souls hither as into certain colonies.'

And what profit are men to the world, or for the sake of what necessity of things are they needful, so that they should be believed not to have been placed in this part in vain and to be tenants of an earthly body? Do they contribute some portion to the completing of the integrity of this mass, and unless they had been added, is this sum of the universe imperfect and lame? What then, if there were no men, will the world cease from its offices, will the stars not accomplish their courses, will there be no summers and winters, will the blasts of the winds be silenced, and will the rains not fall to the earth from gathered and hanging clouds, to bring tempering to the dry places?

Nay, it is necessary that all things go through their courses and do not depart from the continuation of their appointed order, even though no name of man be heard in the world, and this globe of the earth grow silent in the silence of empty solitude. How, then, is it asserted that an inhabitant ought to have been added to these regions, when it is clear that nothing comes back from man to the perfection of the world, and that all his pursuits ever look to private convenience and do not depart from the limits of his own advantage? For what does it profit the world—to begin with serious things—that there are here the greatest kings? What tyrants, what lords, what innumerable other and most ample powers?

What most experienced generals of military affairs, skilled in taking cities, soldiers immovable and most invincible in cavalry battles or in infantry combat? What orators, grammarians, poets? What writers, dialecticians, musicians? What pantomimes, what little mimes, actors, singers who blow upon the trumpet, the pipes, and the reed? What runners, what boxers, charioteers, trick-riders, stilt-walkers, tightrope-walkers, jugglers? What pitch-makers, salt-workers, fishmongers, perfumers, goldsmiths, fowlers, weavers of winnowing-baskets and rush-baskets? What fullers, wool-workers, embroiderers, cooks, confectioners, muleteers, pimps, butchers, harlots?

What other kinds of peddlers, what professors and craftsmen—to enumerate whom a whole lifetime is too narrow—do they contribute to the reckonings and constitutions of the world, so that it should be believed that it could not have been founded without men, nor would obtain its own integrity unless the striving of a wretched and superfluous animal were joined to it? Unless perhaps the King of the world—He whom it is a matter of the greatest rashness to bring forth out of a human mouth—

therefore sent souls begotten of Himself hither, so that they who had been goddesses with Him, free from bodily touch and from temporal circumscription, should be plunged into human seed, should leap forth from the genitals of women, should utter and continue most inept wailings, should suck the teats as they nurse, should smear and wet themselves with their own filth, and then be brought to silence by the movements and rattles of a frightened nurse, once heard.