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ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
But in those same three books of mine it does not please me that I so often invoke fortune—although by that name I did not intend some goddess to be understood, but the chance outcome of things, whether in the goods or evils of our body or in external ones. Hence come also those words which no religion forbids us to utter: perchance, perhaps, maybe, possibly, by chance—all of which, nonetheless, must be referred back to divine providence. This too I did not pass over in silence there, saying: For perhaps what is commonly called fortune is governed by a certain hidden order, and we call nothing in things 'chance' except that whose reason and cause is secret.
I did indeed say this; yet nonetheless I regret having there named fortune in such a way, since I see that men have the very bad habit of saying, where they ought to say 'God willed this,' 'Fortune willed this.' And as for what I said in a certain place: 'It is so arranged, whether by our deserts or by the necessity of nature, that a mind divine cleaving to mortal things is by no means received by the harbor of philosophy,' and the rest—either neither of those two ought to have been said, since even so the sense could be sound, or it was enough to say 'by our deserts,' inasmuch as it is true that our misery is derived from Adam, and not to add 'or by the necessity of nature,' since indeed the harsh necessity of our nature has arisen deservedly from the preceding iniquity. Likewise, as for what I said there:
'Nothing whatsoever ought to be worshipped, and everything must be cast off—whatever is discerned by mortal eyes, whatever any sense reaches'—words ought to have been added, so that it might be said: 'whatever the sense of the mortal body reaches'; for there is also a sense of the mind. But I was then speaking in the manner of those who call nothing 'sense' except that of the body, and nothing 'sensible' except things corporeal. And so, wherever I spoke thus, the ambiguity is too little avoided except among those whose customary way of speaking this is. Likewise I said: 'What else do you suppose it is to live happily, than to live according to that which is best in man?' And explaining a little later what I had said is best in man:
'Who,' said I, 'would doubt that man's best is nothing other than that part of the soul which the rest, and whatever else is in man, ought to obey as their ruler? This part—lest you demand another definition—may be called mind or reason.' This indeed is true—for as far as concerns man's nature, there is nothing in him better than mind and reason—but he who wishes to live happily ought not to live according to it. Otherwise he lives according to man, whereas one ought to live according to God, in order to be able to attain to blessedness; and for the sake of attaining it, our mind ought not to be content with itself, but must be made subject to God. Likewise, answering him with whom the discussion was held, I said: 'Here plainly you do not err;
and that this may be an omen for you as to the rest, I would gladly wish.' Though this was said not in earnest but in jest, yet I should not have wished to use that word. For I do not recall having read 'omen' either in our sacred writings or in the discourse of any ecclesiastical disputant—although 'abomination,' which is derived from it, is constantly found in the divine books. But in the second book, that so-called fable about philocalia and philosophy—that they are sisters born of the same parent—is downright inept and insipid.
For either what is called philocalia exists only in trifles, and on that account is by no reasoning sister to philosophy; or, if this name is to be honored because, translated into Latin, it signifies 'love of beauty,' and there is a true and supreme beauty of wisdom, then that same philocalia, in incorporeal and supreme things, is the very thing that philosophy is, and they are in no way like two sisters. In another place, when I was treating of the soul, I said: 'the more securely to return into heaven.' But I would more safely have said 'to go' rather than 'to return,' on account of those who suppose that human souls, on account of the deserts of their sins, are cast down or thrust from heaven into these bodies.
But I for my part did not hesitate to say it, because I said 'into heaven' just as I would say 'to God,' who is its author and creator; just as the blessed Cyprian did not hesitate to say: 'For since we possess our body from the earth, our spirit from heaven, we ourselves are earth and heaven.' And in the book of Ecclesiastes it is written: 'Let the spirit return to God who gave it.' This assuredly must be so understood that no contradiction is offered to the Apostle who says that those not yet born have done nothing good or evil. Without controversy, then, a certain original region of the soul's blessedness is God himself, who, though he did not indeed beget the soul out of himself, yet created it out of no other thing, just as he created the body out of the earth.
For as concerns its origin, whereby it comes to be in the body—whether it is from that one soul which was first created when man was made into a living soul, or whether individual souls come to be for individuals in like manner—I neither knew then nor do I yet know. In the third book: 'If you ask what seems to me,' I said, 'I judge that man's highest good is in the mind.' I would have spoken more truly had I said: 'in God'; for the mind enjoys him, in order to be blessed, as its highest good. Nor does that please me which I said: 'It is fitting to swear by everything divine.'
Likewise, what I said about the Academics—that they knew the truth, whose likeness they called the 'truthlike' (verisimile), and that I called this very 'truthlike' the false which they approved—was for two reasons not rightly said: either because it would be false, being in some way like something true (since in its own kind this too is true), or because they were approving as false those things which they called 'truthlike,' when in fact they approved nothing and affirmed that the wise man approves nothing. But since they also called this very 'truthlike' the 'probable,' from this it came about that I spoke of them thus. The very praise, too, with which I extolled Plato, or the Platonic or Academic philosophers, more than became impious men—was it not?
—rightly displeased me, especially seeing that against their great errors Christian doctrine must be defended. That also, where in comparison with Cicero's arguments, which he used in his Academic books, I called my own reasonings 'trifles'—by which I refuted those arguments with the most certain reasoning—although it was said in jest and was rather spoken with irony, ought nevertheless not to have been said. This work begins thus: 'O that, Romanianus, a man suited to himself...'