書信與論戰集（CSEL） 第 5 章 第 43/118 段

But if you go further and learn this same thing about the soul as about the body, what else will now present itself save God, in whom the supreme good of man is established — not because there are no other goods, but that is called supreme to which all things are referred? For each is blessed by enjoying that for the sake of which he wishes to have the rest, since that is now loved not for the sake of another but for its own sake; and therefore it is there called the end, because now there is found nothing to which it may run out or be referred. There is the rest of desiring, there the security of enjoying, there the most tranquil joy of a most excellent will. Grant me, then, one who quickly sees that the body is not the good of the soul, but rather the soul is the good of the body;

then one will already withdraw from inquiring whether that supreme good, or any part of it, is in the body. For, as is most foolishly denied, the soul is better than the body; likewise it is most foolishly denied that he who gives the blessed life, or any part of the blessed life, is better than he who receives it. The soul therefore does not receive from the body either the supreme good or any part of the supreme good. Those who do not see this are blinded by the sweetness of carnal pleasures, and do not perceive that this comes to the soul from a lack of health — but the perfect health of the body will be that final immortality of the whole man;

for God made the soul of so powerful a nature that from its most full beatitude — which is promised to the saints at the end of time — there should overflow even into the lower nature, which is the body, not indeed the beatitude that is proper to one enjoying and understanding, but a fullness of health, that is, the vigour of incorruption. And those who do not see this, as I said, wage war with restless wranglings, each variously according to his own capacity establishing the supreme good of man in the body, and stirring up mobs of carnal seditious folk; among whom the Epicureans flourished with a more excelling authority among the unlearned multitude.

Grant me likewise one who quickly sees that the soul itself too is not blessed by its own good, when it is blessed — otherwise it would never be wretched — and one will withdraw from asking whether in the soul lies that supreme and, so to speak, beatifying good, or any part of it. For when the soul rejoices in itself as though in its own good, it is proud. But when it perceives that it is mutable — even by this one thing at least, that from foolish it is made wise — and discerns that wisdom is immutable, then it must at the same time discern that wisdom is above its own nature, and that by participation and illumination of it, it rejoices more richly and surely than in itself.

Thus, ceasing and subsiding from its own boasting and swelling, it strives to cleave to God and to be refreshed and reformed by that unchangeable One, from whom it now receives its being — not only every form of all things, whether those attained by bodily sense or those attained by the understanding of the mind, but even the very capacity for being formed, prior to its formation, when something is called formless which yet can be formed. And so it feels itself to be the less stable, the less it clings to God, who supremely is; and Him to be supremely, because by no mutability does He advance or fail; whereas to itself that change is expedient by which it advances, so as to cleave perfectly to Him, but that change which lies in defect is vicious;

and every defect tends toward destruction. Whether any thing arrives at this, though it does not appear, yet it appears to all that destruction leads to this: that what was should cease to be. Whence it gathers that things fail, or can fail, for no other cause than that they were made from nothing; so that whatever is in them — that they are, and abide, and, even for their very defects, are ordered toward the embrace of the universe — pertains to the goodness and omnipotence of Him who supremely is and is the founder, who is mighty to make out of nothing not merely something, but even something great. But the first sin — that is, the first voluntary defect — is to rejoice toward one's own power; for one rejoices at less than if he should rejoice toward the power of God, which is assuredly greater.

Not seeing this, and beholding the powers of the human mind and the great beauty of its deeds and words, those who — even if they were ashamed to place the supreme good in the body — nevertheless place it in the mind itself, have surely placed it lower than where, by the purest reason, it must be placed. Among these who think thus among the Greek philosophers, both in number and in subtlety of disputation the Stoics prevailed, who nevertheless, judging all things in nature to be corporeal, were able to turn the mind away from flesh rather than from body.

Now among those who say that our one and highest good is to enjoy God, by whom both we and all things were made, the Platonists stood pre-eminent; and they judged, not without reason, that it belonged to their office to resist the Stoics and Epicureans above all others, and indeed almost alone. For the Academics are the very same as the Platonists, as the very succession of their teachers shows. For Arcesilaus, who was the first to conceal his own opinion and to resolve to do nothing but refute those men, if you ask whom he succeeded, you will find Polemo; ask whom Polemo succeeded, Xenocrates; and to his disciple Xenocrates, Plato left the Academy, his own school.

So far therefore as concerns the question of man's highest good, remove the persons of the men and set up the dispute itself: you will surely find two errors clashing head-on against one another, the one placing the highest good in the body, the other in the soul, while the reasoning of truth—by which it is understood that our highest good is God—resists both, yet does not teach the true before it has unlearned the false. Set up the same matter again with the persons attached: you will find the Epicureans and Stoics contending most fiercely between themselves, but the Platonists trying to adjudicate their quarrel, concealing the opinion of the truth, and convicting and refuting the vain confidence of both parties in falsehood.

But the Platonists could not fill the role of true reasoning as those others filled the role of their errors. For all of them lacked the example of divine humility, which was made manifest at the most opportune time through our Lord Jesus Christ; to this one example, in the soul of anyone however fiercely arrogant, all pride yields and is broken and dies away.

And therefore, being unable by their authority to lead to the faith of invisible things the crowds blinded by love of earthly things, since they saw that these crowds were stirred up especially by Epicurean disputes not only to drink in—to which they were of their own accord inclined—but even to defend bodily pleasure, so that in it the highest good of man should be placed; while those who were moved against this pleasure by praise of virtue could less easily contemplate that in the souls of men from which the good deeds proceeded, concerning which they were somehow able to judge—they saw at the same time that, if they attempted to introduce to them some divine thing, above all things and unchangeable, which is touched by no bodily sense but understood by the mind alone, which nevertheless surpasses even the nature of the

mind—and that this is God, set before the human soul to be enjoyed once it has been purged of every stain of human desires, in whom alone all longing for blessedness may find rest, and in whom alone would be for us the end of all goods—these people would not understand it, and with either the Epicureans or the Stoics resisting, they would much more readily award the palm to those than to themselves, so that the true and wholesome opinion—which is most pernicious to the human race—would grow sordid through the mockery of ignorant peoples.

And this in matters of morals. But in questions of nature, if these men said that the maker of all natures was incorporeal wisdom, while those others never withdrew from body—since some assigned atoms, others the four elements (among which fire prevailed for producing all things) as the first principles of things—who would not see to which side the abundance of the foolish, given over to body, would rather be swept, since it could by no means behold the incorporeal power that founds things? There remained the class of rational questions. For you know that whatever is sought for the attaining of wisdom has its question either about morals, or about nature, or about reasoning.

Since therefore the Epicureans said that the bodily senses are never deceived, while the Stoics conceded that they are sometimes deceived, yet both placed the rule for grasping truth in the senses—who, when these men spoke against them, would have listened to the Platonists? Who would have thought them to be reckoned not only in the number of the wise but even in the number of men at all, if they had readily declared that there exists something which can be perceived neither by the touch of the body nor by smell nor by taste nor by these ears or eyes, nor at all thought of by any image of such things as are so perceived, but that this alone truly is and this alone can be perceived, because it is unchangeable and everlasting, and is perceived by the intellect alone, by which alone truth—insofar as it can be reached—is reached?

Since therefore the Platonists perceived such things, which they could neither teach to men given over to the flesh, nor were they of such great authority among the peoples as to persuade them to be believed, until the soul should be brought to that disposition by which such things are grasped—they chose to conceal their opinion and to argue against those who boasted that they had found the truth, since they placed the very discovery of the true in the senses of the flesh. And what their counsel in this may have been, what does it matter to inquire? It certainly was not divine, nor endowed with any divine authority.

Only attend to this: that Plato is shown by Cicero in many ways most plainly to have placed the end of good, the causes of things, and the confidence of reasoning in a wisdom not human but plainly divine—from which the human is in some way kindled—that is, in that wisdom altogether immutable and truth ever abiding in the same manner; but that under the name of the Epicureans and Stoics those men were assailed by the Platonists who placed the end of good, the causes of things, and the confidence of reasoning in the nature of body or of soul; and that the matter came, by the succession of the ages, to such a point that at the very beginning of the Christian age, when the faith of things invisible and eternal was being wholesomely preached to men through visible miracles—men who could neither see nor think of anything besides bodies—these same Epicureans and Stoics are found in the Acts of the Apostles to have contradicted the blessed apostle Paul, who was sowing that same faith beforehand among the nations.

In which matter it seems to me sufficiently demonstrated that the errors of the nations—whether concerning morals, or concerning the nature of things, or concerning the method of investigating truth—though they were many and manifold, nevertheless stood out chiefly in these two sects, and, though assailed by the learned and overthrown with so great subtlety and abundance of argument, yet lasted right up to Christian times. And these we now indeed see to have grown so silent in our age that scarcely is any mention now made even in the schools of the rhetoricians of what their opinions were; while the disputes have been rooted out and suppressed even from the most talkative gymnasia of the Greeks.

So that, if now any sect of error should arise against the truth—that is, against the Church of Christ—it would not dare to leap forth to fight unless it were covered with the Christian name. From which it is understood that the philosophers even of the Platonic race, with a few things changed which Christian teaching disapproves, ought to bow their pious necks to the one most invincible King, Christ, and to understand the Word of God clothed with man, who commanded, and it was believed—that which they were afraid even to utter. To Him, my Dioscorus, I would have you submit yourself with all piety, and fortify for yourself no other way to seize and hold the truth than that which has been fortified by Him who, as God, saw the weakness of our steps.

Now the first way is humility, the second is humility, the third is humility; and however often you should ask, this I would say—not because there are no other precepts that may be spoken, but because unless humility precedes and accompanies and follows all things whatsoever we do well, and is set before us that we may gaze upon it, and set beside us that we may cling to it, and set upon us that we may be restrained by it, then, while we are already rejoicing over some good deed done, pride wrests the whole from our hand. For the other vices are to be feared in sins, but pride is to be feared even in right deeds, lest those things which were done in praiseworthy manner be lost through the very desire of praise.

And so, just as that most noble rhetorician, when he was asked what seemed to him ought first to be observed in the precepts of eloquence, is said to have answered 'delivery'; and when it was asked what second, the same 'delivery'; what third, said nothing other than 'delivery'—so, if you were to ask, and however often you should ask, about the precepts of the Christian religion, it would please me to answer nothing other than humility, even though perhaps necessity might compel me to say other things.

To this most wholesome humility, which our Lord Jesus Christ was humbled in order to teach—to this, I say, there is especially opposed a certain, so to speak, most unlearned learning, while we rejoice to know what Anaximenes, what Anaxagoras, what Pythagoras, what Democritus held, and other things of this kind, that we may seem learned and erudite, whereas this is far from true doctrine and erudition. For he who has learned that God is not stretched out or diffused through places whether finite or infinite, as if in one part He were greater and in another less, but is wholly present everywhere,

present just as truth is—of which no one soberly says that part is in this place and part in that, since truth surely is God—such a man will in no way be moved by what someone, whoever he was, thought about infinite air, namely that it was itself God. What is it to him, if he does not know what these men call the 'form' of body—for they call it that which is bounded on every side—and whether Cicero, as an Academic, for the sake of refutation objected to Anaximenes that God ought to have form and beauty, thinking as it were of a corporeal appearance, because that man had said that God was corporeal, for air is a body;

or whether he himself perceived that there is a form and beauty incorporeal belonging to truth, by which the mind itself is given form, and through which we judge all the deeds of the wise man to be beautiful, so that he said, not only for the sake of refutation but even most truly, that it befits God to be of a most beautiful appearance, because nothing is more beautiful than that intelligible and unchangeable truth itself? But as for what that man says, that air is begotten, which nevertheless he judged to be God, this in no way moves this man, who understands that the Word of God was not begotten as air is begotten—that is, effected by some cause so that it may exist, since it is not at all God—but was begotten in a far different way, God with God, which no one will understand except him to whom God Himself has breathed it in.

But who does not see that that man is foolish even in bodies themselves, when he says that air is begotten and yet wants it to be God, but does not call God that from which air is begotten—for it cannot be begotten from nothing? And when it is said that air is always in motion, this will by no means throw into confusion the man who knows that the motion of every body is lower than the motion of the soul, and that the motion of the soul is far more sluggish than the motion of the highest and unchangeable wisdom—so as to make him think that thing to be God on that account. Likewise Anaxagoras, or whoever it may be, if he says that Mind is truth itself and wisdom, what is it to me to strive with a man over a word?

For it is manifest that the ordering and measure of all things is made by that Wisdom, and that it is not incongruously called infinite, not through spaces of place but through a power that cannot be comprehended by human thought; nor is Wisdom itself anything formless—for this belongs to bodies, that whatever things are infinite are also formless. But Cicero, in his zeal for refutation, as it appears, on account of adversaries who think corporeally, denies that anything could be joined to the infinite, because on that side by which each thing is joined there must, in bodies, be some limit.

Therefore he says that that man did not see 'that no motion joined to sense and continuous'—that is, adhering by continuous connection—'can belong to the infinite'—that is, to an infinite thing—as if he were dealing with bodies, to which nothing can be joined except through the limits of places. And he added thus: 'Nor any sense at all, by which the whole nature might feel when struck'—as if that man had said that that Mind, the orderer and governor of all things, has sense such as the soul has through the body. For it is manifest that the whole soul feels, when it feels something through the body; for whatever it is that is felt, it surely does not lie hidden from the whole. But he said that the whole nature feels, in order as it were to take away from that man what he says, that the Mind is infinite.

For how does the whole feel, if it is infinite? For the sense of the body begins from some place and does not run through the whole, except up to the point at whose limit it has arrived, which cannot be said of the infinite. But that man had said nothing about the sense of the body, and 'whole' is said in another way of that which is incorporeal, because it is understood without limits of places, so that it can be called both whole and infinite: whole on account of its integrity, infinite because it is not encompassed by limits of places. 'Then,' he says, 'if he wished the Mind itself to be as it were some living creature, there will be something more inward, from which that creature may be named, so that this Mind would be as it were a body and have a soul within, whence it may be called a living creature.'

See in what manner he speaks according to bodily habit, in the way that living creatures are wont to be seen—on account of the gross sense, as I suppose, of those against whom he argues; and yet he said a thing which, if they could awake, would sufficiently admonish them: that everything which, like a living body, presents itself to the mind, ought rather to be thought of as having a soul and being a living creature, than as being a soul. For this is what he says: 'There will be something more inward, from which that creature may be named.' But he adds: 'What, however, is more inward than mind?' Therefore mind cannot have a more inward soul, so as to be a living creature, because it is itself the inmost. Therefore let it have a body outwardly, to which it may be inward, that it may be a living creature! For this is what he says:

'Let it therefore be girded with an external body'—as if Anaxagoras had said that Mind could not exist unless it were the mind of some living creature—if he perceived that Mind itself is the highest wisdom, which is proper to no living being as it were, because truth is present in common to all souls able to enjoy it. And therefore see how wittily he concludes: 'Which, since it is not pleasing,' he says—that is, it is not pleasing to Anaxagoras that that Mind, which he calls God, should be girded with an external body by which it might be a living creature—'an open and simple mind, joined to nothing by which it could feel'—that is, with no body attached through which it could feel—'seems to escape the force and notion of our understanding.'

Nothing is truer than that this escapes the force and notion of the understanding of the Stoics and Epicureans, who cannot think of anything except corporeal things. But when he says 'our,' he wished it to be understood as 'human'; and he well says, not 'it escapes,' but 'it seems to escape'; for this seems to them, that no one can understand this, and therefore they judge that no such thing exists. But the understanding of certain men, so far as is granted to man, does not fail to grasp that there is an open and simple wisdom and truth, which is proper to no living being, but by which in common every soul that can attain it is made wise and truthful.

And if Anaxagoras perceived this to exist, and saw it to be God, and called it Mind, then not only does the name of Anaxagoras—which, on account of its literary antiquity, all little men of letters, to speak in soldierly fashion, gladly puff up—not make us learned and wise, but neither does his very knowledge, by which he knew this to be true. For truth ought not to be dear to me on that account, because it did not lie hidden from Anaxagoras, but because it is truth, even if none of those men had known it.

If therefore not even the knowledge of that man, who perhaps saw the truth, ought to puff us up, so that we may seem as it were learned by it, but the very truth ought to make us solid, by which we can be truly learned—how much less can the names and dogmas of those men who perceived false things aid our learning and make hidden things known, since, if we are men, it would rather befit us to be saddened by the errors of so many and so renowned men, should we happen to hear them, than for that reason to seek them out zealously, that we may be tossed about among those who are ignorant of them by a most empty boasting!

For how much better it would have been that I had not even heard the name of Democritus, than that I should with grief think how someone deemed great in his own times supposed that the gods are images which flow off from solid bodies and are not themselves solid, and that these, by their own motion moving round hither and thither and gliding into the minds of men, cause a divine power to be conceived—whereas surely that body from which the image flowed off, by how much more solid it is, would by so much be judged the more excellent!

And therefore his opinion, as these men say, wavered and vacillated, so that at one time he said that a certain nature, from which the images flowed, was God—which nevertheless could not be conceived except through those images which it pours out and sends forth; that is, which were borne, as by a continuous emanation like that of vapor, from that nature, which he supposes to be I know not how corporeal and everlasting and thereby also divine, and came and entered into our minds, so that we might be able to conceive of God or the gods.

For these men suppose no other cause of any thought of ours, except that when images come and enter into our minds from those bodies which we think about—as if many things, indeed almost innumerable things, were not thought of incorporeally and intelligibly by those who have learned to think of such things, like Wisdom and Truth themselves. And if these men do not think of that Truth, I wonder how they dispute about it at all; but if they do think of it, I would wish them to tell me, from what body, or of what sort, the image of truth comes into their minds.

Although Democritus is said also to differ from Epicurus in this respect in natural questions, that the latter holds there is in the concourse of atoms a certain animate and breathing force, by which force I believe he says that 'the images themselves are endowed with divinity'—not all the images of all things, but those of gods—and that there are 'principles of mind in the universe,' to which he attributes divinity, and 'animate images, which are wont either to profit us or to harm us.' But Epicurus places nothing in the principles of things except atoms, that is, certain little bodies so minute that they can neither be divided nor perceived either by sight or by touch.

By the chance concourse of these little bodies he says that both innumerable worlds, and living creatures, and the very souls, come into being, and the gods, whom he sets in human form not in any world but outside the worlds and between the worlds; and he is unwilling to think of anything at all except bodies, which nevertheless, in order to think of them, he says that images flow off from the very things—which he supposes to be formed of atoms—and enter into the mind, more subtle than are those images which come to the eyes (for he says this too is the cause of seeing); but that there are 'certain huge images, so as to embrace the whole universe from outside.' For now, I think, you understand what sort of images these men suppose.

I wonder that it did not warn Democritus, by this very fact, that the things he says are false, because such great images coming into our so brief a mind—if it is corporeal, as they will have it, and is enclosed in so small a body—cannot touch it whole. For when a small body is touched by a great body, it can in no way be touched by the whole at once. How then are they thought of whole at once, if they are thought of only insofar as, coming and entering, they touch the mind—images which can neither enter whole through so small a body, nor touch so small a mind whole?

Remember that I say these things according to them—for I do not perceive the soul to be such—or, if Democritus thinks the soul incorporeal, then Epicurus alone indeed can be pressed by this reasoning; but why did even he not see that it is neither necessary nor possible that an incorporeal soul should think by the arrival and contact of corporeal images? Concerning the sight of the eyes certainly both are equally refuted; for eyes so brief can in no way touch whole the so great bodies of the images.

But when it is asked of them why one image of some body is seen, from which images flow off innumerably, they answer that it comes about by this very fact, that images flow and pass over frequently, so that by a certain condensation and density of them it happens that out of many one is seen. Which vanity Cicero so refutes that by this very fact he denies that their god can be conceived as eternal, since he is conceived by images flowing and gliding away innumerably.

And since they say that the everlasting forms of the gods come into being from the supply furnished by the innumerability of atoms—inasmuch as certain little bodies depart from the divine body in such a way that others succeed them and by that same succession do not allow that nature to be dissolved—'therefore all things,' he says, 'would be eternal, because this innumerability of atoms, which continually replenishes the perpetual collapses, is lacking to none.' Then, 'how does that god of theirs not fear lest he perish, since he is struck and agitated without any intermission by the everlasting incursion of atoms?' For he says that that body is struck which is battered by the rushing-in atoms, and agitated because it is penetrated.

Then, 'since from that same god images'—concerning which enough has already been said—'always flow forth, how can he be confident of immortality?' In all which ravings of those who hold such opinions, this is especially to be lamented: that it does not suffice to narrate them, so that they may be rejected without any adversary's disputation, but the talents of the sharpest men have even undertaken this task, to refute at length these things which, as soon as they were spoken, ought to have been derided and cast away even by the dullest men.