Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 67/87

For it belongs to the office of virtue both to live for one's country, and for the sake of one's country to beget children, neither of which can be done without bodily pleasure; for without it neither is food and drink taken in order that one may live, nor is intercourse engaged in that procreation may be propagated. But when it is preferred to virtue, pleasure itself is sought for its own sake, and virtue is believed to be taken up for its sake—that is, so that virtue should do nothing except for the obtaining or preserving of bodily pleasure; which life is indeed deformed, since there virtue is enslaved to its mistress, pleasure, although in no way ought this to be called virtue; yet even this horrible baseness has had certain philosophers as its patrons and defenders.

Pleasure, furthermore, is joined with virtue when neither of them is sought for the sake of the other, but both are sought for their own sakes. Wherefore, just as pleasure, whether subordinated to, or preferred to, or joined with virtue, makes three sects, so repose, so both together, so the primary things of nature are found to produce three more each. For according to the variety of human opinions they are at one time subordinated to virtue, at another preferred to it, at another joined with it; and thus one arrives at the number of twelve sects. But this number too is doubled by the application of a single difference, namely that of the social life, since whoever follows any one of these twelve sects assuredly does so either for his own sake alone, or also for the sake of his neighbor, to whom he ought to wish that which he wishes for himself.

Wherefore there are twelve sects of those who think that each one is to be held for one's own sake alone, and another twelve of those who decide that one ought to philosophize in this or that way not only for one's own sake, but also for the sake of others, whose good they seek as their own. But these twenty-four sects are again doubled by the addition of the difference drawn from the New Academics, and become forty-eight. For any one of those twenty-four sects a person can hold and defend as certain—in the manner the Stoics defended that the good of man, by which he is blessed, consists in the virtue of the soul alone; or another can hold it as uncertain, as the New Academics defended, because to them it seemed not certain, yet probable.

Twenty-four, therefore, come to be through those who think the sects are to be followed as certain for the sake of truth, and another twenty-four through those who think the same sects, though uncertain, are to be followed for the sake of their resemblance to truth. Again, since any one of these forty-eight sects a person can follow in the garb and manner of the other philosophers, and likewise another can follow it in the garb of the Cynics, from this difference too they are doubled and become ninety-six.

Then, because men can so maintain and follow each single one of them as either to love a life of leisure, like those who wished and were able to devote themselves only to the studies of doctrine; or a life of business, like those who, while they philosophized, were nonetheless most occupied with the administration of the commonwealth and the governance of human affairs; or one tempered from both kinds, like those who apportioned the alternating periods of their life partly to learned leisure, partly to necessary business: on account of these differences this number of sects can also be tripled and brought to two hundred and eighty-eight. These things from Varro's book I have set forth as briefly and clearly as I could, explaining his opinions in my own words.

But how, having refuted the rest, he chooses one which he wishes to be that of the Old Academics (whom, instituted by Plato down to Polemo—who was the fourth after him to hold his school, which was called the Academy—he wishes it to seem held fixed doctrines, and on this account distinguishes them from the New Academics, to whom all things are uncertain, which kind of philosophy began with Arcesilas, the successor of Polemo), and how he judges that sect, that is, of the Old Academics, to be free from all error as well as from doubt: it would be long to demonstrate in every detail; yet the matter is not to be wholly passed over. He first removes, therefore, all those differences which multiplied the number of sects, which he thinks ought to be removed because in them there is no end of good.

For he does not think that any sect of philosophy is to be so called which does not differ from the rest in this, that it has different ends of good and evil. Since indeed there is no cause for a man to philosophize except that he may be blessed; but that which makes him blessed is itself the end of good; there is therefore no cause for philosophizing except the end of good: wherefore that which follows no end of good is to be called no sect of philosophy. When, therefore, the question is asked concerning the social life—whether it is to be held by the wise man, so that he should will and care for the highest good, by which a man is made blessed, in his friend's case just as in his own, or whether he should do whatever he does only for the sake of his own blessedness:

the question is not about the highest good itself, but about taking or not taking a partner into participation in this good, not for one's own sake, but for the sake of that same partner, so that one may rejoice in his good just as one rejoices in one's own. Likewise, when the question is asked concerning the New Academics, to whom all things are uncertain—whether the matters about which one must philosophize are to be regarded thus, or whether, as it pleased other philosophers, we ought to hold them as certain: the question is not what is to be followed in the end of good, but about the truth of the good itself, which seems to be the thing to be followed—whether it is to be doubted or not;

that is, to express it more plainly, whether it is to be followed in such a way that he who follows it says it is true, or in such a way that he who follows it says it seems true to himself—even if perhaps it be false—yet each follows one and the same good. In that difference too, which is drawn from the garb and custom of the Cynics, the question is not what is the end of good, but whether life is to be lived in that garb and custom by him who follows the true good, whatever may seem to him to be true and to be followed. Finally, there have been those who, while they pursued different final goods—some virtue, some pleasure—nonetheless held the same garb and custom, from which they were called Cynics.

Thus that whatever it is, by which the Cynic philosophers are distinguished from the rest, availed nothing at all for choosing and holding the good by which they might become blessed. For if it were of any relevance to this, then assuredly the same garb would have compelled them to pursue the same end, and a different garb would not have allowed them to pursue the same end. CHAPTER II. How, when all the differences which are not sects but questions have been removed, Varro arrives at the threefold definition of the highest good, of which, however, one is to be chosen.

In those three kinds of life also—namely, the one not slothful but devoted to leisure in the contemplation or investigation of truth, the second occupied with business in conducting human affairs, the third tempered from both kinds—when the question is asked which of these is rather to be chosen, it is not the end of good that is in controversy: but which of these three brings difficulty or ease in attaining or retaining the end of good, that is what is in question in this inquiry. For the end of good, when anyone has attained to it, immediately makes him blessed; but in lettered leisure, or in public business, or when each is engaged by turns, a man is not at once thereby blessed.

For many can indeed live in any of these three, and yet err in seeking the end of good by which a man is made blessed. There is therefore one question concerning the ends of good and evil, which makes each sect of the philosophers, and there are other questions—concerning the social life, concerning the hesitation of the Academics, concerning the dress and food of the Cynics, concerning the three kinds of life: the leisured, the active, and that modified from both—none of which is one in which the ends of good and evil are debated. Accordingly, since Marcus Varro, applying these four differences—that is, from the social life, from the New Academics, from the Cynics, from that threefold kind of life—arrives at two hundred and eighty-eight sects, and if any others can similarly be added:

all these being removed, since they introduce no question concerning the pursuit of the highest good and therefore are not, and are not to be called, sects, he returns to those twelve in which it is asked what is the good of man by attaining which he is made blessed, that he may show one of them to be true and the rest false. For when that threefold kind of life is removed, two parts of this number are subtracted, and ninety-six sects remain. But when the difference drawn from the Cynics is removed, they are reduced to half and become forty-eight. Let us also take away what was applied from the New Academics: again half remains, that is, twenty-four. Likewise let what had accrued from the social life be taken away:

twelve remain, which that difference had doubled so that they became twenty-four. Concerning these twelve, then, nothing can be said as to why they should not be reckoned sects. For nothing else is sought in them than the ends of good and evil. And when the ends of good are found, assuredly the ends of evil are their contrary. But that these may become twelve sects, those four are tripled—pleasure, repose, both together, and the primary things of nature, which Varro calls the primigenia.

For these four, while they are severally at one time subordinated to virtue, so that they seem to be sought not for their own sake but for the office of virtue; at another time preferred to it, so that virtue is thought necessary not for its own sake but for the attaining or preserving of these; at another time joined with it, so that both virtue and these are believed to be sought for their own sake—they render the number of four threefold and arrive at twelve sects. But of those four things Varro takes away three, namely pleasure and repose and both together; not because he disapproves of them, but because those primigenia of nature have in themselves both pleasure and repose.

What need is there, then, to make three things out of these two—two, namely, when pleasure or repose is sought individually, and a third when both are sought together—since indeed the primary goods of nature embrace both these and, besides these, many other things as well? Concerning these three schools, therefore, it pleases him to treat diligently which one ought rather to be chosen. For true reasoning does not permit there to be more than one true school, whether it be among these three or somewhere else, which we shall see afterward. Meanwhile, let us discuss, as briefly and clearly as we can, in what manner Varro chooses one of these three.

These three schools indeed come about in this way: when either the primary goods of nature are to be sought for the sake of virtue, or virtue for the sake of the primary goods of nature, or both—that is, both virtue and the primary goods of nature—for their own sake. CHAPTER III. Which of the three schools that seek man's highest good Varro decides ought to be chosen, following the opinion of the Old Academy on the authority of Antiochus. He therefore endeavors to persuade us in this manner as to which of these three is true and to be followed. First, because in philosophy the highest good is sought neither of a tree, nor of a beast, nor of God, but of man, he thinks it must be asked what man himself is. For he perceives that there are in man's nature two things, body and soul.

And of these two he by no means doubts that the soul is the better and by far the more excellent; but he asks whether the soul alone is the man, so that the body is to it as a horse is to a horseman (for the horseman is not the man and the horse, but the man alone; yet he is called a horseman because he stands in a certain relation to the horse), or whether the body alone is the man, standing in some relation to the soul, as the cup to the drink (for it is not the cup and the drink which the cup contains that together are called the goblet, but the cup alone;

yet it is so called because it is fitted to contain the drink), or whether in truth neither the soul alone nor the body alone, but both together are the man, of whom either the soul or the body is one part, while he himself, whole, consists of both, so as to be a man (just as we call two horses yoked together a team, of which either the right-hand or the left-hand one is a part of the team, but one of them, however it may stand in relation to the other, we do not call a team, but only both together). Of these three, then, he chose this third one, and judges that man is neither the soul alone nor the body alone, but the soul and the body together. Accordingly he says that man's highest good, by which he becomes happy, consists of the goods of both things, namely of soul and of body.

And on this account he holds that those primary goods of nature are to be sought for their own sake, and likewise virtue itself, which instruction implants as the art of living, and which is among the goods of the soul the most excellent good. Wherefore this same virtue, that is, the art of conducting life, when it has received the primary goods of nature—which existed apart from it, yet which existed even when instruction was as yet lacking to them—seeks all of them for their own sake, and at the same time also itself, and uses all of them together with itself to this end, that it may delight in and fully enjoy them all, more and less, according as some are greater and some lesser among themselves; yet rejoicing in them all, and despising certain lesser ones, if necessity demands, for the sake of attaining or holding the greater.

But of all goods, whether of soul or of body, virtue sets nothing whatever above itself. For it makes good use both of itself and of the other goods which make a man happy. But where it itself is absent, however many goods there may be, they are not goods of him to whom they belong, and on this account they are not even to be called his goods, since they cannot be useful to one who uses them ill. This life of man, therefore, which enjoys virtue and the other goods of soul and body, without which virtue cannot exist, is called happy; but if it enjoys also others, without which virtue can exist, whether some or many, it is happier; and if it enjoys absolutely all of them, so that no good whatever of soul or body is lacking, it is happiest.

For life is not the same thing as virtue, since not every life, but only a wise life is virtue; and yet a life of whatever sort can exist without any virtue, whereas virtue cannot exist without any life. I would say the same of memory and reason, and of anything else of the kind that is in man. For these exist even before instruction, and without them no instruction can exist, and consequently neither can virtue, which is assuredly learned. But to run well, to be beautiful in body, to excel in immense strength, and other things of this kind are such that virtue can exist without them and they without virtue; yet they are goods, and according to these men virtue itself loves even them for their own sake, and uses and enjoys them, as befits virtue.

This happy life they declare to be also social, which loves the goods of friends for their own sake as its own, and wills for them, for their own sakes, what it wills for itself; whether they be in the household, like a spouse and children and whatever members of the family, or in the place where one's home is, such as a city, like those who are called citizens, or in the whole world, like the nations whom human society joins to one, or in the very universe, which is reckoned under the name of heaven and earth, like those they call gods, whom they would have to be friends to the wise man, whom we more familiarly call angels.

As for the ends of goods and, on the contrary, of evils, they deny that there is any room for doubt, and affirm that this is the difference between themselves and the New Academics; nor does it matter at all to them whether one philosophizes within these ends, which they hold to be true, in the garb and manner of life of a Cynic or of any other you please. Furthermore, of those three kinds of life—the leisurely, the active, and that which is composed of both—they assert that this third pleases them. That the Old Academics thought and taught these things, Varro maintains on the authority of Antiochus, the teacher of Cicero and of himself, whom indeed Cicero wishes to make appear to have been more a Stoic in many points than an Old Academic.

But what is this to us, who ought rather to judge concerning the things themselves than to think it a great matter to know what each man has held concerning men? CHAPTER IIII. What Christians think concerning the highest good and the highest evil, against the philosophers who said that the highest good is in themselves for themselves. If, then, it be asked of us what the City of God, being questioned about these several matters, replies, and first what it thinks concerning the ends of goods and evils: it will reply that eternal life is the highest good, and eternal death the highest evil; and that, in order to attain the one and to shun the other, we must therefore live rightly. On account of which it is written: The just lives by faith;

for we do not yet see our good, whence it is needful that we seek it by believing, nor is it in our own power to live rightly of ourselves, unless he who has also given that very faith help us as we believe and pray—that we may believe we are to be helped by him. But those who supposed that the ends of goods and evils are in this life, placing the highest good either in the body, or in the soul, or in both—and, to express it more explicitly, either in pleasure, or in virtue, or in both; either in repose, or in virtue, or in both; either in pleasure and repose together, or in virtue, or in both; either in the primary goods of nature, or in virtue, or in both—these, with marvelous vanity, wished to be happy here and to be made happy by themselves.

These the Truth derided through the prophet who says: The Lord knows the thoughts of men; or, as the apostle Paul cited this testimony: The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. For who is able, with however great a flood of eloquence, to set forth the miseries of this life? Cicero lamented them in his Consolation on the death of his daughter, as best he could; but how little was it that he could do? For those things which are called the primary goods of nature—when, where, and in what manner can they be so well off in this life that they do not toss about beneath uncertain chances? For what pain contrary to pleasure, what disquiet contrary to repose, cannot fall upon the body of the wise man?

Certainly the amputation or disabling of limbs assails a man's wholeness, deformity his beauty, weakness his health, weariness his strength, numbness or sluggishness his mobility; and which of these is there that cannot break in upon the flesh of the wise man? The posture, too, and movements of the body, when they are seemly and fitting, are numbered among the primary goods of nature; but what if some ill health shakes the limbs with trembling? what if the spine of the back is so bent that the hands must be placed upon the ground, making the man in a manner four-footed? Will it not pervert every form and grace of the body's standing and moving?

What of those things which are called the primary goods of the soul itself, among which they set two foremost, on account of the grasp and perception of truth, namely sense and intellect? But of what sort and how great does sense remain, if—to say nothing of other things—a man becomes deaf and blind? And whither will reason and intelligence withdraw, where will they be lulled to sleep, if a man is made insane by some disease? When the frenzied say or do many absurd things, for the most part alien to their own good purpose and habits—nay, contrary to their own good purpose and habits—whether we ponder or behold them, if we consider worthily, we can scarcely hold back our tears, or perhaps cannot. What shall I say of those who suffer the assaults of demons?

Where do they have their intelligence hidden or buried, when the malignant spirit uses both their soul and their body according to its own will? And who is confident that this evil cannot befall the wise man in this life? Then, of what sort or how great is the perception of truth in this flesh, when—as we read in the truthful book of Wisdom—the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation presses down the mind that ponders many things?

Moreover, the impulse or appetite for action—if that which the Greeks call hormē is rightly called so in Latin in this way, since they too reckon it among the primary goods of nature—is it not the very thing by which even those pitiable movements and deeds of the insane are produced, which we shudder at, when sense is perverted and reason lulled to sleep?

Furthermore, virtue itself, which is not among the primary goods of nature, since it supervenes upon them afterward when instruction introduces it—what does it do here, when it claims for itself the summit of human goods, except wage perpetual wars with vices, and those not external but internal, not another's but plainly our own and proper to us; above all that virtue which in Greek is called sōphrosynē, in Latin temperance, by which the carnal lusts are bridled, lest they drag the consenting mind into any base deeds? For there is no slight vice when, as the apostle says, the flesh lusts against the spirit; to which vice there is a contrary virtue, when, as the same apostle says, the spirit lusts against the flesh. For these, he says, are opposed to one another, so that you do not do the things that you would.

But what do we wish to do, when we wish to be perfected by the end of the highest good, except that the flesh should not lust against the spirit, and that there should not be in us this vice against which the spirit lusts? Which thing, in this life, although we wish it, since we are not able to accomplish it, we do at least with the help of God—that we may not yield to the flesh lusting against the spirit by the spirit succumbing, and be dragged to the perpetrating of sin by our own consent. Far be it from us, then, that, so long as we are in this internal war, we should already believe ourselves to have attained that happiness to which we wish to come by conquering. And who is so wise that he has no conflict at all against the lusts?

What of that virtue which is called prudence? Does it not with all its vigilance discern goods from evils, so that no error may creep in upon us in seeking the former and shunning the latter, and on this very account does it not bear witness that we are among evils, or that evils are within us? For it itself teaches that it is evil to consent to sinning, and good not to consent to lust for the purpose of sinning. Yet that evil, to which prudence teaches us not to consent, temperance does; and neither prudence nor temperance removes it from this life.

What of justice, whose office is to render to each his own (whence there arises in man himself a certain just order of nature, that the soul be subject to God, and the flesh to the soul, and thus both soul and flesh to God)—does it not show that it is still laboring at this work rather than already resting in the end of this work? For the soul is the less subject to God, the less it conceives of God in its very thoughts; and the flesh is the less subject to the soul, the more it lusts against the spirit. So long, then, as this infirmity, this plague, this languor is in us, how shall we dare to call ourselves already saved, and—if not yet saved—how shall we dare to call ourselves already happy with that final blessedness?

And now indeed that virtue whose name is fortitude is, even amid however great a wisdom, the most evident witness of human evils, which it is compelled to bear with patience. These evils the Stoic philosophers contend, I marvel with what effrontery, are not evils—the very evils which they confess, if they should be so great that the wise man either cannot or ought not to endure them, compel him to bring death upon himself and to depart from this life.

But so great is the stupor of pride in these men, who think that here is the end of good and that they are made happy by themselves, that their wise man—that is, such a one as they describe with marvelous vanity—even if he be blinded, deafened, struck dumb, crippled in his limbs, tortured with pains, and if any other such evil can be named or imagined befall him, so that he is compelled to bring death upon himself: they are not ashamed to call this life, set amid such evils, happy. O happy life, which seeks the aid of death to be ended! If it is happy, let one remain in it.

How are those things not evils, which overcome the good of fortitude, and compel that same fortitude not only to yield to itself but even to rave, so that it both calls the same life happy and persuades that it is to be fled from? Who is so blind as not to see that, if it were happy, it would not be to be fled from? But with the open voice of infirmity they confess it is to be fled. What reason, then, is there why they should not also confess it miserable, their neck of pride being broken? Did that famous Cato, I ask, slay himself by patience or rather by impatience? For he would not have done this had he not borne Caesar's victory with impatience. Where is fortitude? Surely it gave way, surely it succumbed, surely it was so overcome that it forsook, abandoned, and fled the happy life.

Or was it then no longer happy? Then it was miserable. How, therefore, were those things not evils, which made his life miserable and to be fled from? Wherefore even those who confessed that these things are evils—as the Peripatetics, as the Old Academics, whose school Varro defends—do indeed speak more tolerably; but theirs too is a marvelous error, in that they contend that, amid these evils, even though they be so grievous that they must be fled from by a self-inflicted death, the life is nevertheless happy for him who suffers them. 'Evils,' he says, 'are the torments and tortures of the body, and they are the worse the greater they can be; to be rid of which you must flee from this life.' From what life, I ask?

'This life,' he says, 'which is weighed down by such great evils.' Surely, then, it is happy amid those very evils on account of which you say it is to be fled from? Or do you call it happy because it is permitted you to depart from these evils by death? But what if you were held in them by some divine judgment, and were neither permitted to die nor ever allowed to be without them? Surely then at least you would call such a life miserable. It is not, therefore, not miserable because it is quickly left behind. Since indeed, if it were everlasting, it would be judged miserable even by yourself; and therefore it ought not, because it is brief, to be deemed no misery at all, or—what is more absurd—because the misery is brief, to be on that account even called blessedness.