醫治希臘病 第 1 章 第 6/16 段

Perceiving this, Socrates bade farewell to the astronomers and natural philosophers, and embraced the teaching of ethics.

And this Xenophon has made plain in his Memorabilia, speaking thus:

...he contrives, he used to dissuade men from being preoccupied with such matters.

For he did not think such things could be discovered by men, nor did he believe that one who inquired into matters which the gods had been unwilling to make clear was rendering the gods any favor;

indeed, he held that the one who busied himself over such things ran the risk of losing his mind, no less than Anaxagoras lost his—he who took the greatest pride in expounding the contrivances of the gods. And the same author again wrote the following on the same subject:

No one ever saw Socrates do anything impious or unholy, nor heard him say any such thing.

For he did not, like most others, discourse about the nature of all things or about other such matters—examining how what the sophists call the cosmos is constituted, and by what necessities each of the heavenly bodies comes to be—but instead he showed that those who concerned themselves with such things were playing the fool.

And first he would inquire of them this: whether it was because they thought they already had sufficient knowledge of human affairs that they turned to thinking about such matters, or whether, neglecting human affairs and examining things divine, they supposed they were doing what was fitting.

And he marveled that it was not evident to them that these things cannot be discovered by men;

for even those who took the greatest pride in speaking about such matters did not hold the same opinions as one another, but in their dealings with each other behaved like madmen.

For of madmen, some do not even fear what is dreadful, while others fear even what is not frightening;

and to some it seems no shame to say or do anything whatever even in a crowd, while others think they ought not even go out among people;

and some honor neither temple nor altar nor anything else divine, while others revere even stones and pieces of wood that happen to be there, and wild beasts.

And of those who busy themselves about the nature of all things: to some it seems that being is one alone, to others that they are infinite in number; to some that all things are ever in motion, to others that nothing could ever be moved; to some that all things come to be and perish, to others that nothing could ever come to be or perish. And he runs through many other such things, refuting their great babble.

It was not any of us who indicted these idle speculators about the heavens, but Xenophon and Socrates, the best of the Greeks.

And it is very easy for anyone who wishes to consult the Memorabilia of Xenophon and to know clearly that he wrote these very things about those much-vaunted philosophers.

But if anyone supposes that I too have slandered these men in exposing their very great discord, let him read Aëtius's Collection of Doctrines, and let him read Plutarch's Epitome of the Opinions Held by the Philosophers;

and Porphyry's Philosophical History also teaches many such things.

But it is enough that the works of Xenophon, which we just mentioned, bear witness to the truth of what we have said;

for he most thoroughly held up to ridicule both their great ignorance and the contention they have had against one another.

But I shall pass over all the others, and as for Plato, some things I shall praise, while others, as not being well, I shall refute;

for those things of his are exceedingly praiseworthy which he wrote in the Timaeus:

"Let us state, then, for what cause he who constituted it constituted becoming and this universe." Then he added that best and admirable answer:

"He was good, and in one who is good no envy ever arises about anything;

being free from this, he willed that all things should become as much as possible like himself." But by "like" he did not mean according to nature, but only in respect of being itself.

For just as he himself exists, so he willed that the things which were not should also come to be and exist;

but he himself exists, having received being from no one, whereas to the things that have come to be he himself has granted being.

Akin to what has been said are these words also:

"For God did not make the world out of need, that he might reap honors from men and from other gods and daemons, gathering as it were some revenue from creation—from us smoke, and from gods and daemons their proper ministrations." Here again he declared God to be without need, and to have made all things solely out of goodness;

...we call them, and these too he said were ministers of the God of all.

He also composed praiseworthy things in the Republic:

For he says that to the things which have come to be, not only does being-brought-into-existence belong from the Good, but also their existence and their substance are present to them from him—the Good not being substance, but beyond substance, surpassing it in dignity and power. "For not only," he says, "has he implanted in them a common form, as a coppersmith or goldsmith does, but he has fashioned and given them their very substance as well, not himself having the same nature as the things that have come to be;

for he is above substance and beyond substance, surpassing his works not by eternity alone but also by power."

And through these words he has clearly shown that God made all things not out of some pre-existing matter, but brought into being the things that were not, as he willed.

Admirable too, and worthy of wonder, are those words of his:

"Was it ever, having no beginning of becoming, or has it come to be, beginning from some beginning?" Then he answers and says:

"It has come to be." And he furnishes the proof:

"For it is visible," he says, "and is tangible;

and being tangible, it also has a body;

and all such things are perceptible;

and the perceptible things have proved to be apprehensible by opinion and to have come into being."

"And of that which has come to be, again, we say it is necessary that it have come to be by some cause." Having said these things about created things—the very things one ought to think about the Maker—he taught most wisely.

"Now to find the maker and fashioner of this universe is a task, and having found him, to declare him to all is impossible;"

for these things too he learned from the Scripture of the Hebrews, and he cries aloud, saying:

"Out of the reason and design of God, then, for the generation of time, in order that time might come to be, there came to be sun and moon and five other stars, surnamed planets, for the determination and guarding of the numbers of time."

"And God, having made their bodies, set them in their orbits." In these words he taught us that God made the creation not only through the Word, but also that the sun and the moon and the stars are bodies that have come to be and have received their being from God.

But none of such things is God, even according to Plato's own argument;

for they have come into being for the use of men.

And this Euripides too has made plain in the Phoenician Women, speaking thus:

"Then sun and night are servants to mortals—and will you not endure to hold an equal share of the house?" But Euripides said that the sun and the moon serve mortals;

yet you put up with serving your own slaves and render to them the worship due to the divine.

But I shall once more turn back to Plato.

For I praise him also when he speaks, concerning the consummation of the universe, in terms close to ours.

"If indeed this world is beautiful and its fashioner good, it is clear that he looked to the eternal," and concerning the heaven he added:

"For the one is the most beautiful of things that have come to be, the other the best of causes," and again, going on:

"He constituted a heaven that is visible and tangible," and a little after he added:

"Time, then, came to be along with the heaven, so that, having come into being together, they might also be dissolved together, if ever any dissolution of them should occur." And in the Statesman too he said such things:

"To be always in the same state and in the same way, and to be altogether the same, belongs only to the most divine things; the nature of body is not of such an order."

"And indeed that which we have named heaven and cosmos has partaken of many blessed gifts from its Maker, yet it has also shared in body;

wherefore it is impossible for it to remain forever without share in change." And again these words of his:

"Then the pilot of the universe, letting go as it were the handles of the rudder, withdrew to his own watchtower, and fate and innate desire turned the cosmos back again."

"All the gods, then, who ruled over their regions together with the greatest daemon, having now perceived what was happening, in turn relinquished the parts of the cosmos that were under their care;"

"...acting thus, it wrought a different destruction of living creatures of every kind." In these passages he agrees with us where he speaks of the change of the universe, and that, when God let go the rudder, those invisible powers which had been commanded to administer certain parts of creation withdraw, while the visible things undergo alteration;

but the rest he held to be a leftover of the error then prevailing—that the innate desire of matter turned the cosmos back, according to the destiny allotted to it from the beginning.

For these are the very things which, in his discourses on creation, we blame in the philosopher;

for he too declared that matter co-exists with God, just as did Pythagoras and Aristotle and those named after the Painted Porch.

And sometimes he even calls matter evil.

For we hear him saying about the cosmos:

"From the one who composed it, it has acquired all things beautiful;

but from its former condition, whatever harsh and unjust things occur in heaven, these it both has of itself from that condition and works into living creatures." And he added these words also:

"And the cause of these very things is the corporeal element, the foster-companion of its ancient nature, because it partook of much disorder before it came into the present cosmos." At these things, I think, every man of sound mind must be indignant.

And thus he calls its evil exceedingly strong and unconquerable, so that not even the Maker was able to change it for the better;

and that, having received form from God, it did not cast off its former wickedness.

For which reason, not only on earth but also in heaven, it does harsh and unjust things and works them into living creatures.

These things are unworthy of what was said before, alien to that lofty discourse and theology, and the offspring of low and earthbound reasonings.

For to say that disorder persists even in heaven—as though certain harsh and unjust things are ventured even there—prepares one to surmise that matter is most strong, but the Maker weak.

And yet he says that God fashioned heaven itself after the intelligible paradigm.

He speaks thus in the Timaeus:

"Were we then right in speaking of one heaven, or would it have been more correct to speak of many and infinite? One—if indeed it is to be fashioned according to the paradigm." And by "paradigm" I suppose he means either God as one, or the Idea, which he says is a thought of God, or the intelligible heaven, which the divine Scripture says is higher than this one.

But whether he means this or that as the paradigm, the doing of harsh and unjust things in no way befits heaven.

But such is the great conflict among the doctrines of the so-called philosophers;

and it is now time to display the nobility of the divine Scripture and the truth of its account of the world's origin.

For the myths about matter it cast off into the Chaos of Hesiod;

and it declared that God fashioned all things—not as house-builders and shipwrights and coppersmiths and goldsmiths, and indeed weavers and shoemakers and the other craftsmen, who gather these materials and shape them and carve them, borrowing their tools from one another—but that he both willed and at once brought forth the things that in no way at all existed.

For the God of all is without need;

but the human arts have need of one another.

And the Maker of the universe had need neither of tools nor of matter;

and what time and toil and knowledge and care are to us, the will is this to the God of all;

for "Whatever the Lord willed, he did, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and in all the deeps," as the sacred words say.

But he willed not as much as he was able, but only as much as he judged to be sufficient.

For it would have been easy for him to fashion even ten thousand and twenty thousand worlds, if indeed the willing is the easiest of all things to be done.

For with us too, the willing is of all things the most effortless, but the power does not keep pace with our will;

but for the God of all, whatever is willed is possible;

for in him power is united with will;

yet nevertheless he measured creation not by his power, but fashioned only as much as he willed.

And since of the things that have come to be, some are perceptible and some intelligible, and some earthly and some supra-celestial, necessarily he also made living creatures, some perceptible and some intelligible;

and to the intelligible ones he allotted the aether and the heaven, while to the perceptible ones he gave the earth and the sea as a dwelling-place.

But since certain of the intelligible beings inclined toward wickedness, they were fittingly driven out of the heavenly regions, and he allotted to them a sojourn in the air and on the earth—not that they might accomplish whatever they attempt in plotting against men (for the guard of the angels surely restrains them from doing this), but that by their removal they might learn how great are the evils of which wickedness is the procurer.

And since he distinguished the perceptible kinds in two, making some rational and some irrational, he subjected the nature of the irrational to the rational living creature.

Yet some of these nonetheless play the tyrant, rebel against the rule, and attempt to plot against it;

and since the rulers of these do this same thing—and, having been honored with reason, rage against their Maker—for this very reason they too are made to rebel, in order that through what they suffer they may learn how wretched and utterly evil a thing it is to transgress the order and to overstep without fear the appointed bounds.

And one can see that these bounds are kept even by the inanimate elements.

For the sea also, when fanned and stirred up by the storm-winds and driven toward the dry land, is ashamed before the sand and will not endure to pass the fixed bounds;

but just as a horse rushing forward is reined back by the bit, so it, beholding on the shores the unwritten law of God, retreats backward, as though checked by some reins.

Thus the rivers run as they were ordered from the beginning, and the springs gush up, and the wells supply men with what they need, and the seasons of the year succeed one another in good rhythm, and honoring equality, they do not reach out for more.

This law the days and the nights also keep continually, and neither do they boast when lengthened nor are they vexed when shortened, but borrowing time from one another, they again indisputably repay the debt, not wrangling with one another, but, apart from strife, both giving and receiving.

And those things likewise display the wisdom and power of the Maker.

For neither has the earth—through so many thousands of years being plowed and sown and planted, nourishing the crops, being trodden and mined and rained upon and snowed upon and scorched—suffered any diminution or yielded fewer crops to the farmers; nor has the sea, though the clouds perpetually draw up from it the substance of the waters and travail with the rain and supply it to the earth, ever been seen to grow less or to become more hollow or to leave bare the shores it once hid, nor again has it grown greater, though it receives the rivers that flow in from every side.

And I do not even say from where, then, the streams of the rivers are borne—for this account too is altogether unspeakable to me;

but how the sun too is by nature able to consume the moist substance is very easy for anyone who wishes to learn thoroughly.

For indeed it dries up the marshes and consumes the masses of waters and parches our own bodies, and moreover one can see the rivers growing smaller whenever it, leaving the southern regions, runs toward the northern parts and brings about summer.

...they say that [the Nile] floods not at the same season as the other rivers, but inundates Egypt in the middle of summer, since the sun then traverses the more northerly zone and troubles the other rivers, while being farthest distant from this one.

But if some say there are also other causes of this river's flooding, I have judged that the present discourse does not suit me.

For indeed I exhort the others not to busy themselves with the causes of the divine economy, but to marvel at the things that come to pass and to hymn the Maker.

But indeed the wonder is beyond wonder;

and I am almost inclined to say that the wonder is not even a wonder.

For when God is the fashioner, it is fitting to marvel least, but to hymn most;

for all things are easy for him to make, as many as are suitable to him.

And he has deposited in the things he has fashioned a power sufficient for as long a time as he wishes them to hold together.

For each thing has preserved the lot which it received from the beginning.

For the contrary natures of moist and dry, and again of cold and hot, the Maker has brought together into friendship.

When, therefore, we see each of these things—the sun now traversing the northern, now the southern, and at other times the middle parts of heaven, and the moon waxing and waning, and the stars rising and setting in their season and signaling the time of harvest and of sowing, and indicating to seafarers storm and calm—let us not, O friends, deify these things, but let us hymn their Maker and Fashioner and Pilot, and through the things seen let us journey toward the Unseen.

But indeed we have need not of journeying but of faith;

for through this alone are we able to behold that One.

"How magnified are your works, O Lord!

In wisdom you have made all things." When we hear songbirds singing their varied and diverse songs, and the cicadas chirping, let us bid farewell to the Sirens and the Muses, and let us worship the all-wise and all-mighty God, who has bestowed on even the small winged creatures so great a harmony of melody, and who through all things nourishes and delights and charms the race of men.

Set these things, O friends, beside the opinions of the philosophers, and consider, using a right and just verdict, which of these is fitting and suitable to say about God: that the universe is uncreated, or that it arose of its own accord, or that it was fitted together out of atoms and the void, or that it came to be by God but out of matter—or that to say each of these about God is impious, but that this is both probable and true: that God is the Maker of all, not having fashioned all things out of matter like the other craftsmen, but himself having brought forth all things that were not, and having willed to grant being to the things that were not.

For it is easy for him to fashion both out of nothing and out of existing things;

long ago he made, and, so to speak, each day he makes.

For he both forms the bodies of living creatures out of underlying bodies and fashions souls out of nothing—not for all living creatures, but for men alone;

and through the winged creatures he fashions the winged, and through the swimming the swimming, and each of the other kinds he forms through those of the same kind.

Thus also he provides the fruits of the earth to men through the things sown and planted;

but long ago the earth, even unsown and unplowed, brought forth every kind of plant and seed, and the kinds of creeping things and four-footed beasts;

and the nature of the waters brought forth, as it was commanded, both the living creatures that dwell in the waters and those that are by nature able to traverse the air.

The earth itself, however, and the heaven and the air and the nature of the waters and fire and light, he did not command matter to yield up, but brought them forth though they were not, being himself both the planter;

and having become the shipwright of that greatest vessel of creation, he himself also pilots and steers the vessel which he most wisely constructed.

These things not only the evangelists and apostles teach us, but also the prophets, and the chief of the prophets, Moses, who wrote down the account of the world's origin, and before these, Abraham and Melchizedek and the whole choir of the patriarchs.

For each of these acknowledged as God not many, but the one Maker of the universe.

And this you will know, if you consult the divine oracles.

Having learned, then, by comparison how far the teachings of the divine Scripture surpass human reasonings, flee, O beloved, the deceiver, and embrace the truth brighter than the sun, that, being led by its light, you may both contemplate the meaning of the divine oracles and admire their teachers, and, falling on your face, to speak apostolically, may worship God, saying that truly God is among you.

There is a kind of stone which they call magnetite, which, leaving all other matter unmoved, draws iron alone toward itself;

and there are times when it even shows it [the iron] suspended in mid-air, neither propped up by anything from below nor bound to anything visible from above, but invisibly dependent on that overlying or overarching energy.

One might see something of this sort happening in the case of the divine oracles.

For many of these, or rather all men, so to speak, hear them;

but only the nurslings of faith are caught, being neither drawn from below by any good fortune nor bound to anything seen from above, but having fitted their mind to the unseen hopes alone.

Wherefore the divine apostle too said that the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to those who are being saved the power of God.

But while that stone, by the property of its nature, forces the iron to run to it;

the grace of the divine oracles does not itself admit some and send others away (for it pours forth its streams to all who wish to drink their fill), but the free choice of the hearers draws some, who are thirsting, near, and puts others far off, who least of all wish to have this longing.

But the physician of souls does not force the will of those who do not wish to enjoy the cure;

for having fashioned the rational nature as self-determining and possessing free will, by exhortations and laws he both turns it away from the worse and urges it on toward the better,

Wherefore also through the prophets he cries aloud:

"If you are willing and listen to me, you shall eat the good things of the land." And again:

"Who is the man that desires life, that loves to see good days?" Then, turning him from the worse, he shows what must be done:

"...[keep your tongue] from evil and your lips from speaking deceit;

turn away from evil and do good."

And since fear too is fitting for those under training, of necessity he also frightens with threats those who live in ease, and says:

"But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth." And the one who offered this admonition through the prophet, in the holy Gospels, using no other minister, but himself speaking through the flesh which he had assumed, said:

"If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink." And again:

For which reason I too, O men, offer you this fifth admonition;

not merely deeming it worthy, but even exceedingly entreating and beseeching you not to let slip the season for healing nor to put off salvation until tomorrow—which we do not know whether we shall ever see at all—but to call to mind the admonition of the poet of Ascra:

"Do not put off till the morrow or the day after," and to attend carefully also to the other maxim of this poet, which sounds in unison:

"The man who is ever a procrastinator wrestles with ruin."

Since, then, we have learned what one ought to think concerning the cosmos and matter, and how great the gulf is between the divine and the philosophical doctrines, come now, let us examine what the divine Scripture has taught us to think about the nature of man, and what those have offered who, adorning their discourses with fine speech and decked out with the bloom of words and elegant phrasing, have offered up falsehood.

All that the poets, then, recount in myth about this, must be left aside for the present—not anointing these with perfume, as Plato would have it, but rather walling off our senses against the stench that wafts from them.

For they say that men were begotten not only earth-born but even sown, and sprang up out of a dragon's teeth.

But whatever the philosophers and historians prate of, these things alone must be set beside the teaching of the truth.

And before all else it must be said how great a strife and conflict they have had concerning the constitution of this race.

For some have said that the nature of men is eternal and that the earth has always been full of this race; others that men first arose in Attica; others that this happened first in Arcadia; and yet others in Egypt; and in other cities too there has been much rivalry about this.

In addition to what has been said, some have called this living creature blessed, others wretched and thrice-miserable.

And Homer names it feeble and woeful;

and Theognis the Sicilian, the Megarian, cries aloud:

"Of all things, not to be born at all is best for those upon the earth, nor to look upon the rays of the piercing sun;

but once born, to pass as quickly as may be through the gates of Hades."

In unison with these are also the iambic lines of the tragedy of Euripides:

"For we ought, gathering in assembly, to lament the one who is born, for all the evils he comes into; but the one who has died and ceased from toils, we should, rejoicing and speaking well of him, send forth from his house."

And Solon the Athenian, the lawgiver, Herodotus said spoke to Croesus thus:

"O Croesus, every man is a calamity." And Pythagoras and Plato introduce a certain people of incorporeal souls, and say that those which have fallen into some sin are sent down into bodies for the sake of punishment.

Wherefore Plato in the Cratylus called the body a tomb [sēma], as the soul being as it were buried in it.

And Philolaus the Pythagorean said things consonant with this:

"The ancient theologians and seers also bear witness that, on account of certain punishments, the soul is yoked to the body and, as it were, buried in this tomb." But Plato, forgetting these words, indicates the contrary in the third book of the Republic:

"...for the sake of harmony, through which it is possible to live and to live rightly, proclaiming the message of the truth."

But if the soul lives and lives rightly through the body, then it was not at all in existence before the body;

but if it was before the body, then surely it also lived and had life;

for it has a nature immortal and rational.

But if it existed long ago, yet did not live rightly while separated from the body, but having come into the body and having trained it most excellently, achieved the right life, then it is through the body that it has obtained the good things in which it had no share before the body.

But that we may learn the great strife among them, come, let us again show what the much-vaunted philosophers held concerning the soul, and how, as the Timaeus says, vain opinion set them at strife to contend with one another.

And what I shall say, with God's help, I shall draw from the writings of Plutarch and Porphyry, and indeed also of Aëtius.

Thales, then, called the soul an ever-moving nature;

Alcman said it was self-moving;

while Pythagoras [called it] a number moving itself;

and Xenocrates concurred with this account;

and Plato [called it] an intelligible substance moved of itself;