Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 13 part 3/4

For if you consider it, you find nothing that holds you back: since you can neither say that the land of light which you describe is this which God is — lest the foulness of that square be crammed into the very nature of God; nor that it was begotten of him — lest none the less it be compelled to be understood as this which God is, and return to the same deformity; nor that it is alien from him — lest we press you to say that he placed his kingdoms in another's domain, and to speak not of two but of three natures; nor that it was made by him out of an alien substance — lest either there be another good besides God, or an evil besides the race of darkness. It remains, therefore, for you to confess that God made the land of light out of nothing — and you are unwilling to believe it.

But if God could make out of nothing some great good, which nevertheless would be inferior to himself, he could also — because he is good and envies no good — make another good which would be inferior to that former one; he could make a third too, to which the second would be preferred; and then he could lead the order of created natures down to the lowest good, until the universe of them should not flow away uncertain with an indefinite number, but stand fixed, bounded by a certain limit. But if you are unwilling to confess that God made even this land of light out of nothing, there will be no way out by which you may escape such basenesses and such sacrilegious opinions.

Or at least see — since it is free for carnal thought to imagine phantasms of whatever kind it pleases — whether perhaps you can find some other figure for this conjunction of the two lands, lest so detestable and abominable an appearance of things present itself to the mind: namely, that the land of God — whether it be of the same nature as God, or of a different one, in which nevertheless the kingdoms of God are founded — lies with so vast a mass through the immeasurable, that it lies with limbs stretched out and laid open through the infinite, by which, most foully and most basely, it receives from the lower part even that crammed-in wedge of the land of darkness, itself of immeasurable magnitude. But whatever other figure you may find,

by which these two lands may be joined to each other, you certainly cannot blot out the writings of Manichaeus — I do not say others in which he described these things more expressly (for perhaps, because they are known to fewer, they may seem to have less danger) — but these very ones now under discussion, of the Epistle of the Foundation, which is wont to be most well known to nearly all who among you are called the enlightened. For here it is written thus: "But alongside one part and side of that illustrious and holy land was the land of darkness, deep and of immeasurable magnitude." What do we wait for further? For we hold what was alongside the side.

Now feign figures however you please and describe outlines of whatever sort; that immeasurable mass of the land of darkness was assuredly joined to the land of light either by a straight side, or by a curved, or by a crooked one. But if by a crooked one, then that holy land too has a crooked side; for if it has a straight side and is touched by the crooked side of this one, then certain deep caverns lie open between, empty through the infinite, and there was no longer emptiness only above the land of darkness, as we used to hear. But if it is so, how much better would it have been that the land of light should remove itself somewhat farther off, and that so great an emptiness should lie between, so that it could not be touched at all in any part by the land of darkness!

Nay rather, so great a space of empty depth might lie open that, if any wickedness of that race should arise — even if the princes of darkness should rashly wish to leap across into that land (since bodies cannot fly unless they are borne up by corporeal air) — being cast headlong through that void and, because it would be infinite downward, never at any time reaching any bottom, then, even if they could always live, yet, while they are always borne downward, they could never do harm. But if it was joined by a curved side, then the land of light too received it misshapenly in a curved bosom. Or if this one was curved inward as it were in the shape of a theatre, it embraced the curved part of the land of light, received in such a bosom, with a coupling no less misshapen.

Or if this one had a curved side and that one a straight, it did not touch it with its whole side. And it would surely have been better, as I said above, that it should touch in no part, and that so great a void should lie between, so as both to separate the two lands by a just interval, and to permit the rash and wicked, cast headlong through the infinite, to do no harm. But if a straight side touched a straight side, I do not indeed see any receptacles or gaping openings, but I plainly see so great a peace and so great a concord of each land with itself, that a greater conjunction could not be.

For what is more beautiful, what more fitting, than that straight should be so coupled to straight, that no bosom or bend on any part should break apart or sever a natural and stable jointure of place through infinite space and from infinite eternity? And these straight sides of each land, even if they were separated by an interposed void, would not only be beautiful in themselves, because they were so straight, but even with an interval interposed between they would so agree together, that on this side and on that the equal straightnesses, even with no conjunction, yet by their very likeness would come together into one beauty.

But when this conjunction is added, what more concordant and more peaceful than each of these two lands, and what indeed more beautiful even than that very coupling of two straight sides could be said or thought — I do not find. What am I to do with minds most wretched, perverted by error and entangled by habit? For these men do not know what they say, when they say these things; for they do not attend. I beg you: no one presses you, no one drives you into a contest, no one insults past errors — except one who has not experienced the divine mercy so as to be free of errors. Let us only work at this, that they be at some time ended. Look a little, without animosity and bitterness — we are all men; let us hate not ourselves, but errors and falsehoods — I beg you, look a little.

God of mercies, help those who look, and to those who seek the truth kindle an inward light. For what do we understand, if we do not understand that the straight is better than the crooked? I ask you therefore, if you receive it calmly and modestly: the straight side of the land of darkness, which is joined to the straight side of the land of light — if someone were to deprave it, would he take away no beauty from it? You must needs confess, if you are unwilling to bark, that not only would beauty be taken from it if it were depraved, but even that beauty which it was able to have in common with the straight side of the land of light. Taking this away, then, and making from straight what is crooked, so that what agreed should be at variance and what was congruous should recoil — would he thereby take away any substance?

So then learn that evil is not a substance, but that, just as in a body by a change of form for the worse the beauty is lost, or rather diminished, and what before was called beautiful is called foul, and the body which before had pleased displeases: so in the soul the grace of a right will, by which one lives piously and justly, is depraved by a will changed for the worse; and by this sin the soul is made wretched, which by the honourableness of a right will used to obtain blessedness — with no substance added or taken away. Then consider this also: that even if we grant, for other causes, that the side of the land of darkness is evil — because it is obscure, because it is dark, or whatever else can be said — yet in that which is straight it is not evil.

As therefore I grant that there is something of evil in its colour, so it is necessary that you too grant that there is something of good in its straightness. It is therefore impious to alienate this good, however much of it there is, from God the Artificer, from whom, unless we believe that all good which is in any nature whatever comes, we err most perniciously. How, then, does he both say that this land is the supreme evil — in the straightness of whose side I find, so far as pertains to body, a good of no small beauty — and wills it to be utterly alien from the Almighty and best God, when that very good which we find in it, to whom else is it to be ascribed but to the Author of all good things, if we are not to find one? "But it was evil," he says, "even that side." Suppose it to be evil:

it would certainly be worse if it were not straight, but distorted. How then is it the supreme evil, than which something worse can be conceived? Then there must necessarily be something of good, by the lack of which any thing whatever becomes worse; and by the lack of straightness that side would become worse: there is therefore in it something of good — straightness. And you will never tell me whence it is in it, unless you betake yourself to Him from whom, be they great or small, we must confess that all things nevertheless are good. But let us now pass from the consideration of this side to other matters. "There dwelt," he says, "in that land fiery bodies, namely pestilential kinds." When he says "dwelt," he wishes them certainly to be understood as animate and living.

But lest we seem to wish to cavil over a word, let us attend to how he distributes all those inhabitants of that land into five living kinds. "Here," he says, "were infinite darknesses, flowing from the same nature, inestimable, with their own offspring; beyond which were waters, muddy and turbid, with their inhabitants; more inward than which were winds horrible and violent, with their prince and progenitors. Again a region fiery and corruptible, with its leaders and nations. In like manner, further inward, a race full of gloom and smoke, in which dwelt the monstrous prince of all and leader, having about him innumerable princes, of all of whom he himself was the mind and origin: and these were the five natures of the pestilential land."

We observe five natures as it were parts of one nature, which he calls the pestilential land. These are: darkness, waters, winds, fire, smoke; which five natures he so orders, that darkness, from which he begins to count, is outermost of the rest. Within the darkness he places the waters; within the waters, the winds; within the winds, the fire; within the fire, the smoke. And these five natures each had their own kinds of inhabitants, which are none the less five. For I ask whether there was one kind of dwellers in all five natures, or diverse kinds, as the natures themselves are diverse. They answer that they were diverse, and teach thus from other books: that the darknesses had serpents; the waters, swimming things, such as fishes are;

the winds, flying things, such as birds are; the fire, four-footed things, such as horses, lions, and the rest of this kind; the smoke, two-footed things, such as men are. Who then ordered these things? Who distributed and distinguished them? Who gave number, quality, forms, life? For all these things are good in themselves, nor is it found whence they should be assigned to each nature except by God, the Author of all good things.

For it is not as when the poets are wont to describe chaos, or in some way to introduce a certain formless matter without form, without quality, without measures, without number and weight, without order and distinction — some confused I-know-not-what, and altogether devoid of every quality (whence certain Greek teachers call it apoion, "quality-less") — it is not thus, then, that these men try to introduce what they call the land of darkness, but altogether otherwise, and far diversely and contrariwise they join side to side and align them:

they number five natures, distinguish, order, set them forth by their proper qualities, nor do they permit them to be deserted and unfruitful, but fill them with their own inhabitants and assign to these very ones forms suited to them and accommodated to their dwellings, and — what excels all — life. To enumerate such great goods and to say that they are alien from God, the Author of all good things, is neither to recognize in things so great a good of order, nor in oneself so great an evil of error. "But," he says, "those five kinds inhabiting those natures were savage and pestilential." As if I had praised the savagery and pestilence in them! Behold, I with you censure the things which you charge to be evil in them; do you with me praise the things which you yourself recall as good in them:

thus you will see that you wish to set up, as the supreme and utmost evil, goods mingled with evils. There I censure the pestilence with you; there I praise the health with you — for those kinds could not have been born, nor nourished, nor have inhabited that land without some health. There I censure the darkness with you; there I praise the fecundity with you — for you call the darknesses "inestimable," and yet you add "with their own offspring," although darkness is not corporeal, and this whole name is the absence of light, just as nakedness is to lack clothing and emptiness is to be void of the fullness of body; and therefore the darknesses could beget nothing, although a dark land — that is, a land lacking light — could beget something. But for the present let us pass this over.

Yet where offspring come to be, there is also a balance suited to well-being, and a certain rhythmic harmony orders the limbs of the newborn and builds them up into a unity, so that they answer to one another by the peace of proper measure. Who would not understand that all these things deserve greater praise than the darkness deserves blame? Blame there with me the turbid mire of the waters, but praise there with me the very form and quality of the waters, and the well-matched limbs of the swimming creatures that dwell in them, the life that contains and governs the body, and every balance fitted to the health of its own kind.

For however much you censure the muddy and turbid waters, still, by the very fact that you say such waters were able both to beget and to sustain their living things, you cannot take away from them the form of a body of whatever sort and the correspondence of parts by which they are shaped and made peaceful into a single quality; for if you took this away, there would be no body at all — and all these things, if you are a man, you perceive to be praiseworthy. And however much you exaggerate the savagery of those inhabitants and their onslaughts of tearing and devastation upon one another, still you do not strip from them the rhythmic bounds of their forms, by which each of their bodies is made peaceful through the symmetry of its limbs, nor the balance of health, nor the governance of the soul that draws the parts of its own body together into a unity of friendship and concord;

if you look upon these things with human perception, you see that more is worthy of praise than is worthy of the blame given to what displeases. Blame there with me the terror of the winds, but praise there with me the breathable and nourishing nature of those very winds, and the form of a body of parts joined together and diffused in mutual fittingness — by all which things they were able to beget their inhabitants, to nourish them, and to sustain them in health; and in these inhabitants, besides all else that has been praised in all living creatures by the higher reasoning, praise too what is properly theirs: swift and easy passages wherever they will and to whatever place they will, and the concordant effort of their wings in flight, and their evenly matched motion.

Blame there with me the corruptive power of fire, but praise there with me the generative fire and its vigorous, timely tempering for the newborn — that they might grow together, be perfected in their proper numbers and outlines, and be able to live and dwell there; all which things you recognize to be wondrous and praiseworthy not only in the habitation of fire, but also in the very inhabitants. Blame there with me the obscurity of smoke and the monstrousness of the prince who, as you say, dwelt within it; but praise there with me the fact that even in the smoke itself you find no part unlike the rest, whereby within its own kind it keeps the correspondence and measure of its parts among themselves, so that by a certain unity it is what it is — a thing no one considers soberly without praising it with wonder. What then?

You even attribute to the smoke a force and power of generating, since you assign to it likewise inhabitant-princes, so that — a thing we have never seen here — there the smoke is fruitful and provides a wholesome dwelling for its inhabitants. And when in the very prince of the smoke you noticed his monstrousness alone, which you might blame, ought you not to have attended to the rest, which would compel you to praise his nature? For he had a soul and a body, the soul giving life, the body inspired with life; while the soul governed, the body obeyed; the soul went before, the body followed; the soul held together, the body did not dissolve; the soul moved it into rhythmic numbers, the body was made stable by the rhythmic framework of its limbs. Does not, in this one prince, either an ordered peace or a peaceful order move you to praise?

But what has been said of one, this may be understood of the rest. Yet, you say, he was fierce and monstrous toward others. I do not praise this, but rather those great things which you refuse to attend to. And whoever has rashly believed the Manichaean, if he but looks upon and considers these things when admonished, recognizes without doubt that, when he speaks of these natures, he speaks of certain good things — but not of the highest and unmade goods, such as is God the one Trinity, nor of those made goods that are sublimely ordered, such as the holy angels and the most blessed powers, but of the lowest goods, ordered according to the measure of their kind at the bottom of things:

which, when compared with higher things, are judged blameworthy by the unskilled; and while it is considered how much of the good that belongs to those higher things is lacking to these, the very absence of that good bears the name of evil. And I, for my part, discuss these natures in this way because those things are named which are known to us in this world. For we know darkness, waters, winds, fire, smoke; we know also creeping animals, swimming, flying, four-footed, two-footed — among which,

with the exception of darkness — which, as I said, is nothing else than the absence of light, discerned by the eyes through not-seeing, just as silence is discerned by the ears through not-hearing; not because darkness is something, but because light is not there, just as it is not because silence is something, but because sound is not there — darkness, then, excepted from this enumeration, the rest are natures and known to all, whose form, since it is praiseworthy and good insofar as it exists, no prudent man alienates from God the author of all good things. For that Manichaean, in that he wished to arrange the natures he learned of here within his phantasms as though in a race of darkness, is proved to be wholly false: first, because darkness can beget nothing, as has been said.

But, he says, that darkness was not such as you know here. Whence then do you teach me about it? Or does so wordy a promiser of doctrine perhaps force me to believe? But grant that I believe you. Yet this I know: that if those things had no form of any kind, as these here do not, they could beget nothing; but if they had form, they were better. You, however, when you say they were not such, wish, as it were, that some worse things be believed. You could equally say that silence — which is to the ears as darkness is to the eyes — begot there some deaf or dumb animals, so that, when someone told you that silence is no nature, you might answer, 「But not silence such as you know here,」 in order to say to those whom you had once deceived into believing you whatever you pleased.

Although that which led him to feign that creeping things were born in the darkness could indeed have been rightly observed in the very first beginnings of things being born. But there are serpents that see so keenly and so rejoice in the presence of light that they seem to give the weightiest testimony against him. Then it was easy for him to discern the swimming things in the waters here and transfer them to those phantasms; and likewise the flying things in the winds, since the pushing of this thicker air, in which birds fly, is called wind. But how it came into his mind to feign four-footed animals in fire, I do not know. And yet he did not say this without reason, but attended too little and erred exceedingly.

For they are wont to give this reason: that four-footed animals are gluttonous and burn much for mating. But many men surpass any four-footed beast in their gluttony — men who are certainly two-footed, whom he says are sons not of fire but of smoke. And nothing is easily found more gluttonous than geese; and these, whether he places them in smoke because they are two-footed, or in waters because they love to swim, or in winds because they are feathered and sometimes fly, certainly do not, by his own distinction, belong to fire. As for what pertains to the heat of mating, I believe he had noticed neighing horses, often carried off to the mares with the reins bitten through:

but while, having noticed this, he wished to write it down quickly, he did not attend to the wall-sparrow, in comparison with which any stallion is found to be most frigid. But when they are asked why he arranged the two-footed in the smoke, they answer that the two-footed kind is haughty and proud; for from this, they say, men draw their origin; and since smoke, globular and as it were swollen, rises into the air, they observed, not absurdly, that it is like the proud. This observation ought to have sufficed for supplying some likeness concerning proud men, for either forming or understanding an allegory; not, however, for it to be believed that two-footed animals are born in smoke and from smoke.

For they ought equally to be born in dust, since often it rises into the sky with no less sweep and elevation; and in mists, since these are frequently exhaled from the earth in such a way that they even make it uncertain to those looking from afar whether they be smoke or mists. Finally, why in the case of waters and winds was the argument drawn from the endurance of dwelling to the inhabitants? Because we see that both the swimming things live in the waters and the flying things in the winds. But fire and smoke did not deter the lying man, so that he should be ashamed to establish there such inhabitants than which nothing more absurd could be established. For fire burns and destroys the four-footed, and smoke suffocates and kills the two-footed.

Or from this at least he is compelled to admit that he says these natures were better in the race of darkness — the very place where he wishes all things to be believed worse. For indeed there fire begot the four-footed and nourished it and sustained it harmlessly, or even most conveniently. Likewise smoke had brought forth its two-footed offspring in a most gentle bosom, and had reared them and sustained them not only without harm but life-givingly and indulgently, right up to that supreme rule. Thus these lies are shown, by the observation of the things seen in the world — but observation conceived with too little diligence and too little skill by carnal sense, brought forth from phantasms, and issued and set down in rashness — to have increased the number of heretics.

But they must rather be pressed by that other line of argument, that they may understand, if they can, how truly it is said in the Catholic Church that God is the author of all natures. Of which kind I was treating above, when I said: I blame with you plague, blindness, turbid muddiness, horrible violence, corruptibility, the monstrousness of princes, and the like; but praise you with me the form, the distinction, the ordering, the peace, the unity of forms, the correspondences of limbs and the rhythmic symmetries, the vital breathings and nourishments, the balance of health, the rule and governance of the soul and the service of bodies, the likeness and concord of parts in the several natures — whether those that dwelt or those that were dwelt in — and other things of this sort.

For so they understand, if only they will attend without obstinacy, that they are now mingling both good and evil when they speak of that land where they believed the sole and highest evil to have been; and thus, if those things enumerated as evils be taken away, those goods which have been praised remain without any blame; but if the goods themselves be taken away, no nature remains. From which he now sees, who can see, that every nature, insofar as it is a nature, is good — because out of one and the same thing, in which both I found what to praise and he what to blame, if the things that are good be taken away, no nature will exist; but if the things that displease be taken away, the nature will remain uncorrupted.

Take away from the waters that they be muddy and turbid, and there remain pure and tranquil waters; take away from the waters the concord of parts, and there will be no waters. If, then, when that evil is removed a purer nature remains, but when the good is withdrawn no nature at all remains, then that which it has of good is what makes the nature there; whereas that which is evil is not nature, but against nature. Take away from the winds the terror and excessive force that displeases you, and you can conceive gentle and moderate winds; take away from the winds the likeness of parts by which their body is joined into unity and made peaceful with itself so as to be a body, and there will be no nature underlying that you might conceive. It would be long to pursue the rest;

but it is manifest to those who judge with no partisan bias that, when these natures are recalled to mind, certain things are joined to them by which they displease; and when we withdraw these, the natures remain better. Whence it is understood that they, insofar as they are natures, are good, because when you have withdrawn from them in turn all that they have of good, no natures will remain. Consider also, you who wish to judge rightly, that monstrous prince too; from whom, if his monstrousness be taken away, mark how many praiseworthy things will remain: the framework of the body, the correspondence of limbs on this side and that, the unity of form and the peace of the parts woven together with one another, the order and disposition of the ruling and quickening and serving soul, and of the quickened and serving body.

If all these things be taken away, and any others I may perhaps have enumerated too little, absolutely no nature will subsist. But perhaps you will say that those evils cannot be taken away from such natures, and that therefore they must be accepted as natural. It is not now asked what can or cannot be taken away, but it is surely no small light for understanding that all natures, insofar as they are natures, are good — that those goods can be conceived without those evils, whereas without those goods no nature can be conceived. For without the disturbance of mud I can conceive waters, but without the peace of joined-together parts no form of body occurs to the mind, nor can it in any way be perceived.