Chap. XXVIII.—Of True Religion and of Nature. Whether Fortune is a Goddess, and of Philosophy.

Wherefore there is nothing else in life on which our plan and condition can depend but the knowledge of God who created us, and the religious and pious worship of Him; and since the philosophers have wandered from this, it is plain that they were not wise. They sought wisdom, indeed; but because they did not seek it in a right manner, they sunk down to a greater distance, and fell into such great errors, that they did not even possess common wisdom. For they were not only unwilling to maintain religion, but they even took it away; while, led on by the appearance of false virtue, they endeavour to free the mind from all fear: and this overturning of religion gains the name of nature. For they, either being ignorant by whom the world was made, or wishing to persuade men that nothing was completed by divine intelligence, said that nature was the mother of all things, as though they should say that all things were produced of their own accord: by which word they altogether confess their own ignorance. For nature, apart from divine providence and power, is absolutely nothing. But if they call God nature, what perverseness is it, to use the name of nature rather than of God!463    [Quod si Deum naturam vocant quæ perversitas est naturam potius quam Deum nominare. Observe this terse maxim of our author. It rebukes the teachers and scientists of our day, who seem afraid to “look through nature up to nature’s God,” in their barren instruction. They go back to Lucretius, and call it progress!]   But if nature is the plan, or necessity, or condition of birth, it is not by itself capable of sensation; but there must necessarily be a divine mind, which by its foresight furnishes the beginning of their existence to all things. Or if nature is heaven and earth, and everything which is created, nature is not God, but the work of God.  

By a similar error they believe in the existence of fortune, as a goddess mocking the affairs of then with various casualties, because they know not from what source things good and evil happen to them. They think that they are brought together to do battle with her; nor do they assign any reason by whom and on what account they are thus matched; but they only boast that they are every moment carrying on a contest for life and death with fortune. Now, as many as have consoled any persons on account of the death and removal of friends, have censured the name of fortune with the most severe accusations; nor is there any disputation of theirs on the subject of virtue, in which fortune is not harassed. M. Tullius, in his Consolation, says that he has always fought against fortune, and that she was always overpowered by him when he had valiantly beaten back the attacks of his enemies; that he was not subdued by her even then, when he was driven from his home and deprived of his country; but then, when he lost his dearest daughter, he shamefully confesses that he is overcome by fortune. I yield, he says, and raise my hand.464    To raise or stretch out the hand was an acknowledgment of defeat.   What is more wretched than this man, who thus lies prostrate? He acts foolishly, he says; but it is one who professes that he is wise. What, then, does the assumption of the name imply? What that contempt of things which is laid claim to with magnificent words? What that dress, so different from others? Or why do you give precepts of wisdom at all, if no one has yet been found who is wise? And does any one bear ill-will to us because we deny that philosophers are wise, when they themselves confess that they neither have knowledge nor wisdom? For if at any time they have so failed that they are not even able to feign anything, as their practice is in other cases, then in truth they are reminded of their ignorance; and, as though in madness, they spring up and exclaim that they are blind and foolish. Anaxagoras pronounces that all things are overspread with darkness. Empedocles complains that the paths of the senses are narrow, as though for his reflections he had need of a chariot and four horses. Democritus says that the truth lies sunk in a well so deep that it has no bottom; foolishly, indeed, as he says other things. For the truth is not, as it were, sunk in a well to which it was permitted him to descend, or even to fall, but, as it were, placed on the highest top of a lofty mountain, or in heaven, which is most true. For what reason is there why he should say that it is sunk below rather than that it is raised aloft? unless by chance he preferred to place the mind also in the feet, or in the bottom of the heels, rather than in the breast or in the head.  

So widely removed were they from the truth itself, that even the posture of their own body did not admonish them, that the truth must be sought for by them in the highest place.465    [See p. 91, note 3, supra, and sparsim in this work.]   From this despair arose that confession of Socrates, in which he said that he knew nothing but this one thing alone, that he knew nothing. From this flowed the system of the Academy, if that is to be called a system in which ignorance is both learnt and taught. But not even those who claimed for themselves knowledge were able consistently to defend that very thing which they thought that they knew. For since they were not in agreement466    Literally, “their accounts did not square.”   with one another, through their ignorance of divine things they were so inconsistent and uncertain, and often asserting things contrary to one another, that you are unable to determine and decide what their meaning was. Why therefore should you fight against those men who perish by their own sword? Why should you labour to refute those whom their own speech refutes and presses?467    Afficit, “presses and harasses.” Another reading is affligit, “casts to the ground.”  Aristotle, says Cicero, accusing the ancient philosophers, declares that they are either most foolish or most vainglorious, since they thought that philosophy was perfected by their talents; but that he saw, because a great addition had been made in a few years, that philosophy would be complete in a short time. What, then, was that time? In what manner, when, or by whom, was philosophy completed? For that which he said, that they were most foolish in supposing that philosophy was made perfect by their talents, is true; but he did not even himself speak with sufficient discretion, who thought that it had either been begun by the ancients, or increased by those who were more recent, or that it would shortly be brought to perfection by those of later times. For that can never be investigated which is not sought by its own way.  

0436B CAPUT XXVIII. De vera religione, deque natura; fortuna num sit dea; et de philosophia.

Quapropter nihil aliud est in vita, quo ratio, quo conditio nostra nitatur, nisi Dei, qui nos genuit, agnitio et religiosus ac pius cultus: unde quoniam philosophi aberraverunt, sapientes utique non fuerunt. Quaesierunt illi quidem sapientiam: sed quia non rite quaerebant, prolapsi sunt longius; et in tantos errores inciderunt, ut etiam communem sapientiam non tenerent. Non enim tantum religionem asserere noluerunt: verum etiam sustulerunt; dum specie falsae virtutis inducti, conantur animos omni metu liberare: 0436C quae religionis eversio naturae nomen invenit. Illi 0437A enim, cum aut ignorarent, a quo esset effectus mundus, aut persuadere vellent, nihil esse divina mente perfectum, naturam esse dixerunt rerum omnium matrem, quasi dicerent, omnia sua sponte esse nata: quo verbo plane imprudentiam suam confitentur. Natura enim, remota providentia et potestate divina, prorsus nihil est. Quod si Deum naturam vocent, 0437A quae perversitas est, naturam potius quam Deum nominare? Si autem natura ratio est, vel necessitas, vel conditio nascendi, non est per seipsam sensibilis: sed necesse est mentem esse divinam, quae sua providentia nascendi principium rebus omnibus praebeat. Aut si natura est coelum atque terra, et omne, quod natum est, non est Deus natura, sed Dei opus.

Non dissimili errore credunt esse fortunam, quasi 0437B deam quamdam res humanas variis casibus illudentem; quia nesciunt, unde sibi bona, et mala eveniant. Cum hac se compositos ad praeliandum putant; nec ullam tamen rationem reddunt, a quo et quam ob causam: sed tantum cum fortuna se digladiari momentis omnibus gloriantur. Jam quicumque aliquos consolati sunt ob interitum amissionemque charorum, fortunae nomen acerrimis accusationibus prosciderunt; 0438A nec omnino ulla eorum disputatio de virtute est, in qua non fortuna vexetur. M. Tullius in sua Consolatione pugnasse se semper contra fortunam loquitur, eamque a se esse superatam, cum fortiter inimicorum impetus retudisset; ne tum quidem se ab ea fractum, cum domo pulsus patria caruit: tum autem, cum amiserit charissimam filiam, victum se a fortuna turpiter confitetur. Cedo, inquit, et manum tollo. Quid hoc homine miserius, qui sic jaceat? Insipienter, inquit: sed qui profitetur se esse sapientem. Quid ergo sibi vult assumptio nominis? Quid contemptus ille rerum, qui magnificis verbis praetenditur? Quid dispar caeteris habitus? Aut cur omnino praecepta sapientiae datis, si nemo, qui sapiat, adhuc inventus est? Et quisquam nobis invidiam facit, quia 0438B philosophos negamus esse sapientes? cum ipsi nec scire se quidquam, nec sapere fateantur. Nam si quando ita defecerint, ut ne affingere quidem quidquam possint, quod faciunt in rebus caeteris: tum vero ignorantiae admonentur, et quasi furibundi exiliunt, et exclamant se caecos esse et excordes. Anaxagoras pronuntiat circumfusa esse tenebris omnia. Empedocles angustas esse sensuum semitas queritur, 0439A tamquam illi ad cogitandum rheda et quadrigis opus esset. Democritus quasi in puteo (Vid. Cic. Acad. cap. 12) quodam sic alto, ut fundus sit nullus, veritatem jacere demersam; nimirum stulte, ut caetera. Non enim tamquam in puteo demersa veritas est, 0439A quo vel descendere, vel etiam cadere illi licebat, sed tamquam in summo montis excelsi vertice, vel potius in coelo, quod est verissimum. Quid enim est, cur eam potius in imum depressam diceret, quam in summum levatam? nisi forte mentem quoque in pedibus, aut in imis calcibus constituere malebat potius, quam in pectore, aut in capite.

Adeo remotissimi fuerunt ab ipsa veritate, ut eos ne status quidem sui corporis admoneret, veritatem in summo illis esse quaerendam. Ex hac desperatione 0439B confessio illa Socratis nata est, qua se nihil scire dixit, nisi hoc unum, quod nihil sciat. Hinc Academiae disciplina manavit; si tamen disciplina dici potest, in qua ignoratio et discitur et docetur. Sed ne illi quidem, qui scientiam sibi assumpserunt, id ipsum, quod se scire putabant, constanter defendere potuerunt. Qui, quoniam ratio illis non quadrabat, per ignorantiam rerum divinarum tam varii, tam incerti fuerunt, sibique saepe contraria disserentes, ut quid sentirent, quid vellent, statuere ac dijudicare non possis. Quid igitur pugnes adversus 0440A eos homines, qui suo sibi gladio pereunt? Quid labores, ut eos destruas, quos sua ipsos destruit atque afficit oratio? Aristoteles, inquit Cicero (III Tusc.), veteres philosophos accusans, ait eos aut stultissimos, aut gloriosissimos fuisse, qui existimassent philosophiam suis ingeniis perfectam: sed se videre, quod paucis annis magna accessio facta esset, brevi tempore philosophiam plane absolutam fore. Quod igitur fuit illud tempus? quo more? quando est aut a quibus absoluta? Nam quod ait stultissimos fuisse, qui putassent ingeniis suis perfectam esse sapientiam, verum est: sed ne ipse quidem satis prudenter, qui aut a veteribus coeptam, aut a novis auctam, aut mox a posterioribus perfectum iri putavit. Nunquam enim potest investigari, quod non per 0440B viam suam quaeritur.