Cicero Part 10

[Footnote 1: De Nat. Deor. ii. 34. Paley's Nat. Theol. ch. i.]

Then Cotta--who though, as Pontifex, he is a national priest by vocation, is of that sect in philosophy which makes doubt its creed--resumes his objections. He is no better satisfied with the tenets of the Stoics than with those of the Epicureans. He believes that there are G.o.ds; but, coming to the discussion as a dispa.s.sionate and philosophical observer, he finds such proofs as are offered of their existence insufficient. But this third book is fragmentary, and the continuity of Cotta's argument is broken by considerable gaps in all the ma.n.u.scripts. There is a curious tradition, that these portions were carefully torn out by the early Christians, because they might prove too formidable weapons in the hands of unbelievers. Cotta professes throughout only to raise his objections in the hope that they may be refuted; but his whole reasoning is destructive of any belief in an overruling Providence. He confesses himself puzzled by that insoluble mystery--the existence of Evil in a world created and ruled by a beneficent Power. The G.o.ds have given man reason, it is said; but man abuses the gift to evil ends. "This is the fault", you say, "of men, not of the G.o.ds. As though the physician should complain of the virulence of the disease, or the pilot of the fury of the tempest! Though these are but mortal men, even in them it would seem ridiculous. Who would have asked your help, we should answer, if these difficulties had not arisen? May we not argue still more strongly in the case of the G.o.ds? The fault, you say, lies in the vices of men. But you should have given men such a rational faculty as would exclude the possibility of such crimes". He sees, as David did, "the unG.o.dly in prosperity". The laws of Heaven are mocked, crimes are committed, and "the thunders of Olympian Jove are silent". He quotes, as it would always be easy to quote, examples of this from all history: the most telling and original, perhaps, is the retort of Diagoras, who was called the Atheist, when they showed him in the temple at Samothrace the votive tablets (as they may be seen in some foreign churches now) offered by those shipwrecked seamen who had been saved from drowning. "Lo, thou that deniest a Providence, behold here how many have been saved by prayer to the G.o.ds!" "Yea", was his reply; "but where are those commemorated who were drowned?"

The Dialogue ends with no resolution of the difficulties, and no conclusion as to the points in question. Cicero, who is the narrator of the imaginary conference, gives it as his opinion that the arguments of the Stoic seemed to him to have "the greater probability". It was the great tenet of the school which he most affected, that probability was the nearest approach that man could make to speculative truth. "We are not among those", he says, "to whom there seems to be no such thing as truth; but we say that all truths have some falsehoods attached to them which have so strong a resemblance to truth, that in such cases there is no certain note of distinction which can determine our judgment and a.s.sent.

The consequence of which is that there are many things probable; and although they are not subjects of actual perception to our senses, yet they have so grand and glorious an aspect that a wise man governs his life thereby".[1] It remained for one of our ablest and most philosophical Christian writers to prove that in such matters probability was practically equivalent to demonstration.[2] Cicero's own form of scepticism in religious matters is perhaps very nearly expressed in the striking anecdote which he puts, in this dialogue, into the mouth of the Epicurean.

[Footnote 1: De Nat. Deor. i. 5.]

[Footnote 2: "To us, probability is the very guide of life".--Introd. to Butler's a.n.a.logy.]

"If you ask me what the Deity is, or what his nature and attributes are, I should follow the example of Simonides, who, when the tyrant Hiero proposed to him the same question, asked a day to consider of it. When the king, on the next day, required from him the answer, Simonides requested two days more; and when he went on continually asking double the time, instead of giving any answer, Hiero in amazement demanded of him the reason. 'Because', replied he, 'the longer I meditate on the question, the more obscure does it appear'".[1]

[Footnote 1: De Nat. Deor. i. 22.]

The position of Cicero as a statesman, and also as a member of the College of Augurs, no doubt checked any strong expression of opinion on his part as to the forms of popular worship and many particulars of popular belief.

In the treatise which he intended as in some sort a sequel to this Dialogue on the 'Nature of the G.o.ds'--that upon 'Divination'--he states the arguments for and against the national belief in omens, auguries, dreams, and such intimations of the Divine will.[1] He puts the defence of the system in the mouth of his brother Quintus, and takes himself the destructive side of the argument: but whether this was meant to give his own real views on the subject, we cannot be so certain. The course of argument employed on both sides would rather lead to the conclusion that the writer's opinion was very much that which Johnson delivered as to the reality of ghosts--"All argument is against it, but all belief is for it".

[Footnote 1: There is a third treatise, 'De Fato', apparently a continuation of the series, of which only a portion has reached us. It is a discussion of the difficult questions of Fate and Free-will.]

With regard to the great questions of the soul's immortality, and a state of future rewards and punishments, it would be quite possible to gather from Cicero's writings pa.s.sages expressive of entirely contradictory views. The bent of his mind, as has been sufficiently shown, was towards doubt, and still more towards discussion; and possibly his opinions were not so entirely in a state of flux as the remains of his writings seem to show. In a future state of some kind he must certainly have believed--that is, with such belief as he would have considered the subject-matter to admit of--as a strong probability. In a speculative fragment which has come down to us, known as 'Scipio's Dream', we seem to have the creed of the man rather than the speculations of the philosopher. Scipio Africa.n.u.s the elder appears in a dream to the younger who bore his name (his grandson by adoption). He shows him a vision of heaven; bids him listen to the music of the spheres, which, as they move in their order, "by a modulation of high and low sounds", give forth that harmony which men have in some poor sort reduced to notation. He bids him look down upon the earth, contracted to a mere speck in the distance, and draws a lesson of the poverty of all mere earthly fame and glory. "For all those who have preserved, or aided, or benefited their country, there is a fixed and definite place in heaven, where they shall be happy in the enjoyment of everlasting life". But "the souls of those who have given themselves up to the pleasures of sense, and made themselves, as it were, the servants of these,--who at the bidding of the l.u.s.ts which wait upon pleasure have violated the laws of G.o.ds and men,--they, when they escape from the body, flit still around the earth, and never attain to these abodes but after many ages of wandering". We may gather that his creed admitted a Valhalla for the hero and the patriot, and a long process of expiation for the wicked.

There is a curious pa.s.sage preserved by St. Augustin from that one of Cicero's works which he most admired--the lost treatise on 'Glory'--which seems to show that so far from being a materialist, he held the body to be a sort of purgatory for the soul.

"The mistakes and the sufferings of human life make me think sometimes that those ancient seers, or Interpreters of the secrets of heaven and the counsels of the Divine mind, had some glimpse of the truth, when they said that men are born in order to suffer the penalty for some sins committed in a former life; and that the idea is true which we find in Aristotle, that we are suffering some such punishment as theirs of old, who fell into the hands of those Etruscan bandits, and were put to death with a studied cruelty; their living bodies being tied to dead bodies, face to face, in closest possible conjunction: that so our souls are coupled to our bodies, united like the living with the dead".

But whatever might have been the theological side, if one may so express it, of Cicero's religion, the moral aphorisms which meet us here and there in his works have often in them a teaching which comes near the tone of Christian ethics. The words of Petrarch are hardly too strong--"You would fancy sometimes it was not a Pagan philosopher but a Christian apostle who was speaking".[1] These are but a few out of many which might be quoted: "Strive ever for the truth, and so reckon as that not thou art mortal, but only this thy body, for thou art not that which this outward form of thine shows forth, but each man's mind, that is the real man--not the shape which can be traced with the finger".[2] "Yea, rather, they live who have escaped from the bonds of their flesh as from a prison-house". "Follow after justice and duty; such a life is the path to heaven, and into yon a.s.sembly of those who have once lived, and now, released from the body, dwell in that place". Where, in any other heathen writer, shall we find such n.o.ble words as those which close the apostrophe in the Tusculans?--"One single day well spent, and in accordance with thy precepts, were better to be chosen than an immortality of sin!"[3] He is addressing himself, it is true, to Philosophy; but his Philosophy is here little less than the Wisdom of Scripture: and the spiritual aspiration is the same--only uttered under greater difficulties--as that of the Psalmist when he exclaims, "One day in thy courts is better than a thousand!"

We may or may not adopt Erasmus's view of his inspiration--or rather, inspiration is a word which has more than one definition, and this would depend upon which definition we take; but we may well sympathise with the old scholar when he says--"I feel a better man for reading Cicero".

[Footnote 1: "Interdum non Paganum philosophum, sed apostolum loqui putes".]

[Footnote 2: 'The Dream of Scipio'.]

[Footnote 3: Tusc., v. 2.]

END OF CICERO