Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 9 part 1/4

[I] Now we have need of a mind more intent by far than was required in the resolution of the foregoing questions and the explanation of the earlier books. For concerning the theology which they call natural, the discussion is to be held, not with any and every sort of men (for it is not the fabulous or the civil — that is, either the theatrical or the urban; of which the one flaunts the crimes of the gods, the other discloses the still more criminal desires of the gods, and through this shows them to belong to malignant demons rather than to gods) — but with the philosophers, whose very name, if we interpret it in Latin, professes the love of wisdom. And further, if wisdom is God, through whom all things were made, as the divine authority and truth has shown, then the true philosopher is a lover of God.

But since the very thing of which this is the name is not present in all who glory in this name (for not all who are called philosophers are forthwith lovers of true wisdom), assuredly out of all those whose opinions we have been able to know through their writings, there are to be chosen those with whom this question may not unworthily be treated. For in this work I have not undertaken to refute all the vain opinions of all the philosophers, but only those which pertain to theology — by which Greek word we understand to be signified reasoning or discourse concerning divinity;

and not the opinions of all such men, but only of those who, while they agree both that there is a divinity and that it cares for human affairs, nevertheless hold that the worship of the one unchangeable God does not suffice for attaining a life blessed even after death, but think that many gods, founded and established by that one God indeed, are to be worshipped for that reason. These already surpass even the opinion of Varro by their nearness to the truth;

for while he was able to extend the whole of natural theology only as far as this world or its soul, these men confess a God above every nature of soul — a God who made not only this visible world, which is often called by the name of heaven and earth, but also absolutely every soul; and who, by participation in His own unchangeable and incorporeal light, makes blessed the rational and intellectual soul, of which kind the human soul is. That these philosophers were called Platonists, from Plato their teacher, by a name derived from him, no one is ignorant who has heard even slightly of these matters.

Concerning this Plato, then, I shall briefly touch on what I judge necessary to the present question, first mentioning those who preceded him in the same kind of literature in point of time. [II] For as far as concerns Greek letters — a language held to be more illustrious among the rest of the nations — two kinds of philosophers are handed down: the one Italic, from that part of Italy which was once called Magna Graecia; the other Ionic, in those lands where even now it is named Greece. The Italic kind had as its founder Pythagoras of Samos, from whom they say the very name of philosophy also arose. For whereas before this, those were called 'sages' who seemed to excel others by a certain praiseworthy manner of life;

this man, being asked what he professed, answered that he was a philosopher — that is, a student or lover of wisdom; since to profess oneself wise seemed most arrogant. The prince of the Ionic kind, however, was Thales of Miletus, one of those seven who were called sages. But those six were distinguished by their manner of life and by certain precepts adapted to living well; whereas this Thales, that he might also propagate successors, examined the nature of things and, committing his disputations to writing, became eminent and stood out as most admirable, in that, having grasped the calculations of astronomy, he was able even to foretell eclipses of the sun and moon.

Yet he supposed water to be the principle of things, and that from it all the elements of the world, and the world itself, and whatever is generated in it, come into being. But over this work — which, when we consider the world, we behold as so marvellous — he set nothing derived from a divine mind. To him succeeded Anaximander, his hearer, and he changed the opinion concerning the nature of things. For he supposed that individual things are born, not from one thing, as Thales from moisture, but from their own proper principles. These principles of individual things he believed to be infinite, and to generate innumerable worlds and whatever arises in them; and he judged that these worlds are now dissolved, now again generated, according to how long each could endure in its own age — nor did he himself attribute anything to a divine mind in these works of things.

This man left as his disciple and successor Anaximenes, who assigned all the causes of things to the infinite air; nor did he deny or pass over the gods in silence — yet he believed that the air was not made by them, but that they themselves arose from the air. Anaxagoras, however, his hearer, perceived and declared that a divine mind was the maker of all these things which we see, out of an infinite matter that consisted of particles, like to one another, of all things; and that individual things are made from their own proper particles, but with a divine mind doing the making. Diogenes too, another hearer of Anaximenes, said indeed that air was the matter of things, from which all things came to be; but that it was possessed of a divine reason, without which nothing could be made from it. To Anaxagoras succeeded his hearer Archelaus.

He too supposed all things to consist of particles like to one another, from which each individual thing came to be, in such a way that he said there was even a mind present within, which by joining and separating the eternal bodies — that is, those particles — brought about all things. Socrates is reported to have been his disciple, the master of Plato, for whose sake I have briefly reviewed all these matters. [III] Socrates, then, is recorded to have been the first to turn the whole of philosophy toward the correcting and ordering of morals, whereas before him all had expended their greatest effort rather upon investigating physical — that is, natural — things.

But it does not seem to me possible to gather with certainty whether Socrates did this out of weariness of obscure and uncertain matters, directing his mind toward finding something plain and certain that would be necessary for the blessed life — for the sake of which alone the industry of all philosophers seems to have watched and laboured — or whether, as some more kindly suspect concerning him, he was unwilling that minds unclean with earthly desires should stretch themselves to strive after divine things. For he saw that they were inquiring into the causes of things, which he believed to be first and highest in nothing but the will of the one and highest God; and hence he thought that these could not be comprehended save by a purified mind;

and therefore he judged that one must press on to purify life by good morals, so that the mind, unburdened of the passions that press it down, might raise itself by its natural vigour into things eternal, and by purity of understanding behold the nature of the incorporeal and unchangeable light, wherein the causes of all created natures abide steadfastly. Yet it is agreed that, even in those very moral questions to which he seemed to have bent his whole mind, he did — with wondrous charm of discourse and most keen urbanity — stir up and turn about the folly of the ignorant, who imagined that they knew something, whether by professing his own ignorance or by dissembling his knowledge. Whence, having roused enmities against himself, he was condemned by a slanderous accusation and punished with death.

But afterwards the city of the Athenians publicly mourned that very man whom it had publicly condemned, the people's indignation being turned upon his two accusers to such a degree that one of them perished, overwhelmed by the violence of the multitude, while the other escaped a like penalty only by voluntary and perpetual exile. By so illustrious a fame, then, of his life and death, Socrates left behind very many followers of his philosophy, whose zeal it was to vie with one another in the discussion of moral questions, wherein the matter treated is the supreme good, by which a man can become blessed. And since in the disputations of Socrates — while he moves all things, asserts, destroys — this did not evidently appear, each took from thence what pleased him, and set up the end of good wherever it seemed good to him.

Now the end of good is that which, when one has reached it, he is blessed. But the Socratics held opinions concerning this end so diverse among themselves that — a thing scarcely credible, that the followers of one master could have done it — some said the supreme good was pleasure, as Aristippus; some, virtue, as Antisthenes. Thus one and another opined this and that, whom it would be long to enumerate. [IV] But among the disciples of Socrates, not indeed undeservedly, Plato shone with a most excellent glory, by which he altogether eclipsed the rest.

Since he was an Athenian, born in an honourable station among his own people, and by a marvellous natural gift far outstripped his fellow-disciples, yet judging that he himself and the Socratic discipline were too little to suffice for perfecting philosophy, he travelled far and wide, wherever the fame of some renowned knowledge to be acquired hurried him. And so, in Egypt he learned whatever great things were there held and taught; and coming thence into those parts of Italy where the fame of the Pythagoreans was celebrated, he most readily grasped whatever of Italic philosophy then flourished, having heard the more eminent teachers therein.

And because he singularly loved his master Socrates, making him speak in almost all his dialogues, he tempered even those things which he had either learned from others or himself perceived with as much understanding as he could, with Socrates' charm and moral disputations. And so, since the pursuit of wisdom is engaged in action and contemplation — whence one part of it may be called active, the other contemplative (of which the active pertains to the conduct of life, that is, to the establishing of morals; the contemplative, however, to the beholding of the causes of nature and the purest truth): Socrates is recorded to have excelled in the active, Pythagoras rather to have devoted himself to the contemplative, with such powers of understanding as he could.

Accordingly Plato is praised for having perfected philosophy by joining both together, and he divided it into three parts: one moral, which is chiefly engaged in action; another natural, which is assigned to contemplation; a third rational, by which the true is distinguished from the false. And although this rational part is necessary to both — that is, to action and contemplation — yet it is contemplation chiefly that claims for itself the perception of truth. Therefore this threefold division is not contrary to that distinction by which it is understood that the whole pursuit of wisdom consists in action and contemplation.

But what Plato thought concerning these several parts, or about them — that is, where he recognized or believed the end of all actions to be, where the cause of all natures, where the light of all reasonings — I judge it both a long matter to unfold by discussion, and I judge that it must not be rashly affirmed. For since he affects to preserve the well-known manner of his master Socrates, whom he presents disputing in his volumes — the manner of dissembling his knowledge or his own opinion, because that very manner pleased him too — it has come about that even Plato's own judgments on great matters cannot easily be discerned.

Yet out of those things which are read in him — whether what he himself said, or what he narrated and wrote down as having been said by others — those which seemed approved by him, some ought to be mentioned by us and inserted into this work: either where he supports the true religion which our faith embraces and defends, or where he seems contrary to it, insofar as concerns this question of the one God and of many, on account of the life which is to be after death, truly blessed.

For perhaps those who are praised, by a more celebrated fame, for having understood Plato — far and rightly preferred to the other philosophers of the nations — more acutely and more truly, and for having followed him, hold some such view concerning God: that in Him is found both the cause of subsisting, and the reason of understanding, and the order of living; of which three, the one is understood to pertain to the natural part, the second to the rational, the third to the moral. For if man was so created that through that which is most excellent in him he might attain to that which excels all things — that is, the one true and best God, without whom no nature subsists, no doctrine instructs, no practice profits — let Him be sought, in whom all things are secure for us; let Him be discerned, in whom all things are certain for us;

let Him be loved, in whom all things are right for us. [V] If, then, Plato said that the wise man is the imitator, knower, and lover of this God, by participation in whom he is blessed, what need is there to examine the others? None have come nearer to us than these. Let there yield to them, therefore, not only that fabulous theology which delights the minds of the impious with the crimes of the gods.

Let there yield to them not only that fabulous theology, but also that civil theology, wherein the impure demons, seducing under the name of the gods the peoples given over to earthly joys, wished to have human errors as their own divine honours — stirring up their worshippers, by most filthy zeal, to behold the games of their own crimes, as though to their own worship, and exhibiting more delightful games to themselves out of those very spectators (where, if anything seemingly honourable is performed in the temples, it is defiled by being joined to the obscenity of the theatres; and whatever base things are performed in the theatres are praised by comparison with the foulness of the temples); and let there yield also those things which Varro interpreted out of these sacred rites as referring, so to speak, to heaven and earth and the seeds and acts of mortal things (since not even those things which he himself tries to insinuate are signified by those rites, and therefore the truth does not follow him as he strives;

and even if those things were so, nevertheless to the rational soul those things which are, in the order of nature, set beneath it, ought not to be worshipped as its god, nor ought it to prefer to itself as gods those things above which the true God set it) — and let there yield also those things which Numa Pompilius, in reality pertaining to sacred rites of this kind, took care to hide by burying them with himself, and which, dug up by the plough, the senate ordered to be burned.

(In this kind belong also those things — that we may suspect something milder concerning Numa — which Alexander of Macedon writes were disclosed to him, in a letter to his mother, by a certain Leo, a great high priest of the Egyptian rites; where not only Picus and Faunus and Aeneas and Romulus, or even Hercules and Aesculapius and Liber the son of Semele and the Tyndarid brothers, and any others whom they hold to be gods out of mortal men, but even the very gods of the greater nations themselves — whom Cicero in the Tusculans seems to touch upon under unspoken names — Jupiter, Juno, Saturn, Vulcan, Vesta, and very many others, whom Varro tries to transfer to the parts or elements of the world, are betrayed to have been men.

For that Leo too, being afraid, and as it were begging on account of the mysteries revealed, admonishes Alexander that, when he has communicated these things written to his mother, he should command them to be burned in the flames.) Not only, therefore, those things which the two theologies, the fabulous and the civil, contain, let them yield to the Platonic philosophers, who said that the true God is both the author of things, and the illuminator of truth, and the bestower of blessedness;

but let those other philosophers also yield to these men, great knowers of so great a God — those who, with minds given over to the body, supposed the principles of nature to be corporeal: as Thales in moisture, Anaximenes in air, the Stoics in fire, Epicurus in atoms, that is, in the most minute little bodies which can neither be divided nor perceived, and whatever others there are (upon the enumeration of whom there is no need to dwell) who said that bodies — whether simple or compounded, whether lacking life or living, but bodies nonetheless — are the cause and principle of things. For some of them believed that living things could come to be from non-living things, as the Epicureans; while some believed that both living and non-living things come from a living thing, but nevertheless that bodies come from a body.

For the Stoics supposed fire — that is, one body out of these four elements, of which this visible world consists — to be both living and wise and the fabricator of the world itself and of all things that are in it, and that this fire was altogether God. These men and others like them were able to think only that which their hearts, bound fast by the senses of the flesh, fabricated along with them. For they had within themselves that which they did not see, and they imagined within themselves that which they had seen without, even when they did not see it but only thought of it. But this, in the view of such thinking, is now no longer a body, but the likeness of a body; and that whereby this likeness of a body is seen in the mind is neither a body nor the likeness of a body;

and that whereby it is seen, and whereby it is judged whether it be beautiful or misshapen, is assuredly better than that which is judged. This is the mind of man and the nature of the rational soul, which is certainly not a body, if indeed that likeness of a body, when it is beheld and judged in the mind of the one thinking, is not itself a body. It is therefore neither earth nor water, neither air nor fire, of which four bodies — which are called the four elements — we see the corporeal world to be compacted. Moreover, if our mind is not a body, how is God, the creator of the mind, a body? Let these too, then, as has been said, yield to the Platonists;

and let those also yield who were indeed ashamed to say that God is a body, but nevertheless supposed our souls to be of the same nature as He is; so little were they moved by the so great mutability of the soul, which it is impious to attribute to the nature of God. But they say: 'It is by a body that the nature of the soul is changed, for in itself it is unchangeable.' These men might as well say: 'It is by some body that the flesh is wounded, for in itself it is invulnerable.' Assuredly, that which cannot be changed can be changed by nothing; and accordingly, that which can be changed by a body can be changed by something, and therefore cannot rightly be called unchangeable.

[VI] These philosophers, then, whom we see not undeservedly preferred to the rest in fame and glory, saw that no body is God, and therefore they transcended all bodies in seeking God. They saw that whatever is mutable is not the supreme God, and therefore they transcended every soul and all mutable spirits in seeking the supreme God.

Then they saw that every form in any mutable thing — whereby it is whatever it is, in whatever way and of whatever nature it is — cannot exist except from Him who truly is, because He is unchangeably; and hence, whether it be the body of the whole world with its figures, qualities, and ordered motion, and the elements arranged from heaven down to earth, and whatever bodies are in them, or whether it be every life, either that which nourishes and sustains, such as is in trees, or that which both has this and has sense, such as is in beasts, or that which has these and also understands, such as is in men, or that which needs no nutritive support but only sustains, senses, and understands, such as is in angels — none of these can be except from Him who simply is;

because for Him to be is not one thing, and to live another, as though He could be while not living; nor is to live for Him one thing, and to understand another, as though He could live while not understanding; nor is to understand for Him one thing, and to be blessed another, as though He could understand while not blessed; but what it is for Him to live, to understand, to be blessed — this it is for Him to be. On account of this unchangeableness and simplicity they understood both that He made all these things, and that He Himself could be made by no one. For they considered that whatever is, is either body or life, and that life is something better than body; and that the form of the body is sensible, that of life intelligible. Accordingly they preferred the intelligible form to the sensible.

We call those things sensible which can be perceived by the sight and touch of the body; those intelligible which can be understood by the gaze of the mind. For there is no corporeal beauty, whether in the state of a body, as is its figure, or in motion, as is a melody, concerning which the mind does not judge. But this it assuredly could not do, unless there were in it a better form of this — without the mass of bulk, without the din of the voice, without any extent of place or time. But there too, unless it were mutable, one man would not judge better than another concerning sensible form: the more gifted better than the duller, the more skilled better than the less skilled, the more practised better than the less practised; and the same one man, when he makes progress, judges better afterward than before.

But whatever admits of more and less is beyond doubt mutable. Hence men of ability and learning, practised in these matters, readily concluded that the primal form is not present in those things wherein it is shown to be mutable. Since therefore, in their view, both body and soul were more or less shapely, and since, if they could be wholly without form, they would be nothing at all, they saw that there is something in which the first form is unchangeable and therefore not to be compared with any other; and there, most rightly, they believed the origin of things to reside — that which was not made, and from which all things were made. Thus what may be known of God, He Himself made manifest to them, since His invisible things were understood and beheld by them through the things that are made;

His everlasting power also and divinity; by whom likewise all visible and temporal things were created. Let this suffice concerning that part which they call physics, that is, natural philosophy. [VII] But as regards the discipline in which the second part is engaged, which they call logic, that is, rational philosophy:

far be it that those men should seem worthy to be compared with these, who placed the criterion of truth in the bodily senses and judged that all things which are learned must be measured by their unfaithful and deceptive rules — such as the Epicureans and whatever others of like mind, and even the Stoics themselves, who, though they ardently loved the skill of disputation which they call dialectic, held that it must be derived from the senses of the body, thence maintaining that the mind conceives notions — which they call *ennoiai* — namely of those things which they explicate by defining; and that from this source the whole method of learning and teaching is propagated and connected.

Here I am wont to marvel greatly: when they say that none are beautiful except the wise, with what senses of the body did they behold that beauty, with what eyes of the flesh did they gaze upon the form and comeliness of wisdom? But these men, whom we rightly set above the rest, distinguished the things that are beheld by the mind from those that are perceived by the senses, neither taking from the senses what they can do, nor granting them beyond what they can. And they declared that the light of minds for the learning of all things is that same God by whom all things were made.

[VIII] There remains the moral part, which they call by the Greek term ethics, wherein inquiry is made concerning the supreme good, to which we refer all that we do, and which we seek not for the sake of anything else but for its own sake; and having attained it, we require nothing further whereby we may be blessed. For this reason it is also called the end, because for the sake of it we will all other things, but it itself only for its own sake. This beatific good, then, some said belonged to man from the body, some from the soul, some from both.

For they saw that man himself is composed of soul and body, and therefore they believed that from one or other of these two, or from both, well-being could come to him — by a certain final good whereby they might be blessed, to which they might refer all that they did, and beyond which they would not seek that to which it should be referred. Hence those who are said to have added a third kind of goods, which is called external — such as honour, glory, money, and the like — did not so add it as to make it final, that is, to be sought for its own sake, but for the sake of something else; and this kind of thing is good to the good, but evil to the evil. Thus those who sought man's good either from the soul or from the body or from both, held that it was to be sought from nothing other than man;

but those who sought it from the body sought it from the inferior part of man; those from the soul, from the better part; those from both, from the whole man. Whether therefore from any part or from the whole, it was still from nothing but man. Nor did these differences, because they are three, on that account produce only three, but many dissensions and sects of philosophers, because concerning the good of the body, the good of the soul, and the good of both, diverse men held diverse opinions. Let all these therefore yield to those philosophers who said that man is blessed not by enjoying the body nor by enjoying the soul, but by enjoying God;

not as a soul enjoys the body or itself, nor as friend enjoys friend, but as the eye enjoys light — if indeed any likeness may be brought from these lower things to those higher; and of what sort that likeness is, if God Himself shall help, will appear, as far as we are able, in another place. For now let it suffice to recall that Plato determined the end of good to be to live according to virtue, and that this can befall him alone who has the knowledge and imitation of God, nor is there any other cause of blessedness; and therefore he does not hesitate to say that to philosophise is to love God, whose nature is incorporeal. Whence it is surely gathered that the lover of wisdom (for that is what a philosopher is) will then be blessed, when he shall have begun to enjoy God.

For although he who enjoys what he loves is not straightway blessed (since many, by loving things not to be loved, are wretched, and yet more wretched when they enjoy them): yet no one is blessed who does not enjoy that which he loves. For even those who love things not to be loved do not think themselves blessed by loving, but by enjoying. Whoever therefore enjoys that which he loves, and loves the true and supreme good — who but the most wretched of men would deny him to be blessed? But Plato says that the very true and supreme good is God; whence he would have the philosopher to be a lover of God, so that, since philosophy tends toward the blessed life, he who has loved God should, in enjoying God, be blessed.

[IX] Whatever philosophers, therefore, have held these views concerning the supreme and true God — that He is the maker of created things, the light for knowing them, and the good for doing them; that from Him come to us both the principle of nature and the truth of doctrine and the felicity of life — whether they be more fittingly called Platonists, or impose upon their sect any other name whatsoever; whether only those of the Ionic race, who were foremost among them, held these views, as did Plato himself and those who well understood him; or the Italics also, on account of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans and any others perchance of the same opinion from that quarter;