Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Part 23

But what delight do you take in the explication of fables, and in the etymology of names?--that Coelus was castrated by his son, and that Saturn was bound in chains by his son! By your defence of these and such like fictions you would make the authors of them appear not only not to be madmen, but to have been even very wise. But the pains which you take with your etymologies deserve our pity. That Saturn is so called because _se saturat annis_, he is full of years; Mavors, Mars, because _magna vort.i.t_, he brings about mighty changes; Minerva, because _minuit_, she diminishes, or because _minatur_, she threatens; Venus, because _venit ad omnia_, she comes to all; Ceres, _a gerendo_, from bearing. How dangerous is this method! for there are many names would puzzle you. From what would you derive Vejupiter and Vulcan?

Though, indeed, if you can derive Neptune _a nando_, from swimming, in which you seem to me to flounder about yourself more than Neptune, you may easily find the origin of all names, since it is founded only upon the conformity of some one letter. Zeno first, and after him Cleanthes and Chrysippus, are put to the unnecessary trouble of explaining mere fables, and giving reasons for the several appellations of every Deity; which is really owning that those whom we call G.o.ds are not the representations of deities, but natural things, and that to judge otherwise is an error.

XXV. Yet this error has so much prevailed that even pernicious things have not only the t.i.tle of divinity ascribed to them, but have also sacrifices offered to them; for Fever has a temple on the Palatine hill, and Orbona another near that of the Lares, and we see on the Esquiline hill an altar consecrated to Ill-fortune. Let all such errors be banished from philosophy, if we would advance, in our dispute concerning the immortal G.o.ds, nothing unworthy of immortal beings. I know myself what I ought to believe; which is far different from what you have said. You take Neptune for an intelligence pervading the sea.

You have the same opinion of Ceres with regard to the earth. I cannot, I own, find out, or in the least conjecture, what that intelligence of the sea or the earth is. To learn, therefore, the existence of the G.o.ds, and of what description and character they are, I must apply elsewhere, not to the Stoics.

Let us proceed to the two other parts of our dispute: first, "whether there is a divine providence which governs the world;" and lastly, "whether that providence particularly regards mankind;" for these are the remaining propositions of your discourse; and I think that, if you approve of it, we should examine these more accurately. With all my heart, says Velleius, for I readily agree to what you have hitherto said, and expect still greater things from you.

I am unwilling to interrupt you, says Balbus to Cotta, but we shall take another opportunity, and I shall effectually convince you.

But[272] * * *

XXVI.

Shall I adore, and bend the suppliant knee, Who scorn their power and doubt their deity?

Does not Niobe here seem to reason, and by that reasoning to bring all her misfortunes upon herself? But what a subtle expression is the following!

On strength of will alone depends success;

a maxim capable of leading us into all that is bad.

Though I'm confined, his malice yet is vain, His tortured heart shall answer pain for pain; His ruin soothe my soul with soft content, Lighten my chains, and welcome banishment!

This, now, is reason; that reason which you say the divine goodness has denied to the brute creation, kindly to bestow it on men alone. How great, how immense the favor! Observe the same Medea flying from her father and her country:

The guilty wretch from her pursuer flies.

By her own hands the young Absyrtus slain, His mangled limbs she scatters o'er the plain, That the fond sire might sink beneath his woe, And she to parricide her safety owe.

Reflection, as well as wickedness, must have been necessary to the preparation of such a fact; and did he too, who prepared that fatal repast for his brother, do it without reflection?

Revenge as great as Atreus' injury Shall sink his soul and crown his misery.

XXVII. Did not Thyestes himself, not content with having defiled his brother's bed (of which Atreus with great justice thus complains,

When faithless comforts, in the lewd embrace, With vile adultery stain a royal race, The blood thus mix'd in fouler currents flows, Taints the rich soil, and breeds unnumber'd woes)--

did he not, I say, by that adultery, aim at the possession of the crown? Atreus thus continues:

A lamb, fair gift of heaven, with golden fleece, Promised in vain to fix my crown in peace; But base Thyestes, eager for the prey, Crept to my bed, and stole the gem away.

Do you not perceive that Thyestes must have had a share of reason proportionable to the greatness of his crimes--such crimes as are not only represented to us on the stage, but such as we see committed, nay, often exceeded, in the common course of life? The private houses of individual citizens, the public courts, the senate, the camp, our allies, our provinces, all agree that reason is the author of all the ill, as well as of all the good, which is done; that it makes few act well, and that but seldom, but many act ill, and that frequently; and that, in short, the G.o.ds would have shown greater benevolence in denying us any reason at all than in sending us that which is accompanied with so much mischief; for as wine is seldom wholesome, but often hurtful in diseases, we think it more prudent to deny it to the patient than to run the risk of so uncertain a remedy; so I do not know whether it would not be better for mankind to be deprived of wit, thought, and penetration, or what we call reason, since it is a thing pernicious to many and very useful to few, than to have it bestowed upon them with so much liberality and in such abundance. But if the divine will has really consulted the good of man in this gift of reason, the good of those men only was consulted on whom a well-regulated one is bestowed: how few those are, if any, is very apparent. We cannot admit, therefore, that the G.o.ds consulted the good of a few only; the conclusion must be that they consulted the good of none.

XXVIII. You answer that the ill use which a great part of mankind make of reason no more takes away the goodness of the G.o.ds, who bestow it as a present of the greatest benefit to them, than the ill use which children make of their patrimony diminishes the obligation which they have to their parents for it. We grant you this; but where is the similitude? It was far from Deianira's design to injure Hercules when she made him a present of the shirt dipped in the blood of the Centaurs. Nor was it a regard to the welfare of Jason of Pherae that influenced the man who with his sword opened his imposthume, which the physicians had in vain attempted to cure. For it has often happened that people have served a man whom they intended to injure, and have injured one whom they designed to serve; so that the effect of the gift is by no means always a proof of the intention of the giver; neither does the benefit which may accrue from it prove that it came from the hands of a benefactor. For, in short, what debauchery, what avarice, what crime among men is there which does not owe its birth to thought and reflection, that is, to reason? For all opinion is reason: right reason, if men's thoughts are conformable to truth; wrong reason, if they are not. The G.o.ds only give us the mere faculty of reason, if we have any; the use or abuse of it depends entirely upon ourselves; so that the comparison is not just between the present of reason given us by the G.o.ds, and a patrimony left to a son by his father; for, after all, if the injury of mankind had been the end proposed by the G.o.ds, what could they have given them more pernicious than reason? for what seed could there be of injustice, intemperance, and cowardice, if reason were not laid as the foundation of these vices?

XXIX. I mentioned just now Medea and Atreus, persons celebrated in heroic poems, who had used this reason only for the contrivance and practice of the most flagitious crimes; but even the trifling characters which appear in comedies supply us with the like instances of this reasoning faculty; for example, does not he, in the Eunuch, reason with some subtlety?--

What, then, must I resolve upon?

She turn'd me out-of-doors; she sends for me back again; Shall I go? no, not if she were to beg it of me.

Another, in the Twins, making no scruple of opposing a received maxim, after the manner of the Academics, a.s.serts that when a man is in love and in want, it is pleasant

To have a father covetous, crabbed, and pa.s.sionate, Who has no love or affection for his children.

This unaccountable opinion he strengthens thus:

You may defraud him of his profits, or forge letters in his name, Or fright him by your servant into compliance; And what you take from such an old hunks, How much more pleasantly do you spend it!

On the contrary, he says that an easy, generous father is an inconvenience to a son in love; for, says he,

I can't tell how to abuse so good, so prudent a parent, Who always foreruns my desires, and meets me purse in hand, To support me in my pleasures: this easy goodness and generosity Quite defeat all my frauds, tricks, and stratagems.[273]

What are these frauds, tricks, and stratagems but the effects of reason? O excellent gift of the G.o.ds! Without this Phormio could not have said,

Find me out the old man: I have something hatching for him in my head.

x.x.x. But let us pa.s.s from the stage to the bar. The praetor[274] takes his seat. To judge whom? The man who set fire to our archives. How secretly was that villany conducted! Q. Sosius, an ill.u.s.trious Roman knight, of the Picene field,[275] confessed the fact. Who else is to be tried? He who forged the public registers--Alenus, an artful fellow, who counterfeited the handwriting of the six officers.[276] Let us call to mind other trials: that on the subject of the gold of Tolosa, or the conspiracy of Jugurtha. Let us trace back the informations laid against Tubulus for bribery in his judicial office; and, since that, the proceedings of the tribune Peduceus concerning the incest of the vestals. Let us reflect upon the trials which daily happen for a.s.sa.s.sinations, poisonings, embezzlement of public money, frauds in wills, against which we have a new law; then that action against the advisers or a.s.sisters of any theft; the many laws concerning frauds in guardianship, breaches of trust in partnerships and commissions in trade, and other violations of faith in buying, selling, borrowing, or lending; the public decree on a private affair by the Laetorian Law;[277] and, lastly, that scourge of all dishonesty, the law against fraud, proposed by our friend Aquillius; that sort of fraud, he says, by which one thing is pretended and another done. Can we, then, think that this plentiful fountain of evil sprung from the immortal G.o.ds? If they have given reason to man, they have likewise given him subtlety, for subtlety is only a deceitful manner of applying reason to do mischief. To them likewise we must owe deceit, and every other crime, which, without the help of reason, would neither have been thought of nor committed. As the old woman wished

That to the fir which on Mount Pelion grew The axe had ne'er been laid,[278]

so we should wish that the G.o.ds had never bestowed this ability on man, the abuse of which is so general that the small number of those who make a good use of it are often oppressed by those who make a bad use of it; so that it seems to be given rather to help vice than to promote virtue among us.

x.x.xI. This, you insist on it, is the fault of man, and not of the G.o.ds.

But should we not laugh at a physician or pilot, though they are weak mortals, if they were to lay the blame of their ill success on the violence of the disease or the fury of the tempest? Had there not been danger, we should say, who would have applied to you? This reasoning has still greater force against the Deity. The fault, you say, is in man, if he commits crimes. But why was not man endued with a reason incapable of producing any crimes? How could the G.o.ds err? When we leave our effects to our children, it is in hopes that they may be well bestowed; in which we may be deceived, but how can the Deity be deceived? As Phoebus when he trusted his chariot to his son Phaethon, or as Neptune when he indulged his son Theseus in granting him three wishes, the consequence of which was the destruction of Hippolitus?

These are poetical fictions; but truth, and not fables, ought to proceed from philosophers. Yet if those poetical Deities had foreseen that their indulgence would have proved fatal to their sons, they must have been thought blamable for it.

Aristo of Chios used often to say that the philosophers do hurt to such of their disciples as take their good doctrine in a wrong sense; thus the lectures of Aristippus might produce debauchees, and those of Zeno pedants. If this be true, it were better that philosophers should be silent than that their disciples should be corrupted by a misapprehension of their master's meaning; so if reason, which was bestowed on mankind by the G.o.ds with a good design, tends only to make men more subtle and fraudulent, it had been better for them never to have received it. There could be no excuse for a physician who prescribes wine to a patient, knowing that he will drink it and immediately expire. Your Providence is no less blamable in giving reason to man, who, it foresaw, would make a bad use of it. Will you say that it did not foresee it? Nothing could please me more than such an acknowledgment. But you dare not. I know what a sublime idea you entertain of her.

x.x.xII. But to conclude. If folly, by the unanimous consent of philosophers, is allowed to be the greatest of all evils, and if no one ever attained to true wisdom, we, whom they say the immortal G.o.ds take care of, are consequently in a state of the utmost misery. For that n.o.body is well, or that n.o.body can be well, is in effect the same thing; and, in my opinion, that no man is truly wise, or that no man can be truly wise, is likewise the same thing. But I will insist no further on so self-evident a point. Telamon in one verse decides the question. If, says he, there is a Divine Providence,

Good men would be happy, bad men miserable.

But it is not so. If the G.o.ds had regarded mankind, they should have made them all virtuous; but if they did not regard the welfare of all mankind, at least they ought to have provided for the happiness of the virtuous. Why, therefore, was the Carthaginian in Spain suffered to destroy those best and bravest men, the two Scipios? Why did Maximus[279] lose his son, the consul? Why did Hannibal kill Marcellus?

Why did Cannae deprive us of Paulus? Why was the body of Regulus delivered up to the cruelty of the Carthaginians? Why was not Africa.n.u.s protected from violence in his own house? To these, and many more ancient instances, let us add some of later date. Why is Rutilius, my uncle, a man of the greatest virtue and learning, now in banishment?

Why was my own friend and companion Drusus a.s.sa.s.sinated in his own house? Why was Scaevola, the high-priest, that pattern of moderation and prudence, ma.s.sacred before the statue of Vesta? Why, before that, were so many ill.u.s.trious citizens put to death by Cinna? Why had Marius, the most perfidious of men, the power to cause the death of Catulus, a man of the greatest dignity? But there would be no end of enumerating examples of good men made miserable and wicked men prosperous. Why did that Marius live to an old age, and die so happily at his own house in his seventh consulship? Why was that inhuman wretch Cinna permitted to enjoy so long a reign?

x.x.xIII. He, indeed, met with deserved punishment at last. But would it not have been better that these inhumanities had been prevented than that the author of them should be punished afterward? Varius, a most impious wretch, was tortured and put to death. If this was his punishment for the murdering Drusus by the sword, and Metellus by poison, would it not have been better to have preserved their lives than to have their deaths avenged on Varius? Dionysius was thirty-eight years a tyrant over the most opulent and flourishing city; and, before him, how many years did Pisistratus tyrannize in the very flower of Greece! Phalaris and Apollodorus met with the fate they deserved, but not till after they had tortured and put to death mult.i.tudes. Many robbers have been executed; but the number of those who have suffered for their crimes is short of those whom they have robbed and murdered.

Anaxarchus,[280] a scholar of Democritus, was cut to pieces by command of the tyrant of Cyprus; and Zeno of Elea[281] ended his life in tortures. What shall I say of Socrates,[282] whose death, as often as I read of it in Plato, draws fresh tears from my eyes? If, therefore, the G.o.ds really see everything that happens to men, you must acknowledge they make no distinction between the good and the bad.

x.x.xIV. Diogenes the Cynic used to say of Harpalus, one of the most fortunate villains of his time, that the constant prosperity of such a man was a kind of witness against the G.o.ds. Dionysius, of whom we have before spoken, after he had pillaged the temple of Proserpine at Locris, set sail for Syracuse, and, having a fair wind during his voyage, said, with a smile, "See, my friends, what favorable winds the immortal G.o.ds bestow upon church-robbers." Encouraged by this prosperous event, he proceeded in his impiety. When he landed at Peloponnesus, he went into the temple of Jupiter Olympius, and disrobed his statue of a golden mantle of great weight, an ornament which the tyrant Gelo[283] had given out of the spoils of the Carthaginians, and at the same time, in a jesting manner, he said "that a golden mantle was too heavy in summer and too cold in winter;" and then, throwing a woollen cloak over the statue, added, "This will serve for all seasons." At another time, he ordered the golden beard of aesculapius of Epidaurus to be taken away, saying that "it was absurd for the son to have a beard, when his father had none." He likewise robbed the temples of the silver tables, which, according to the ancient custom of Greece, bore this inscription, "To the good G.o.ds," saying "he was willing to make use of their goodness;" and, without the least scruple, took away the little golden emblems of victory, the cups and coronets, which were in the stretched-out hands of the statues, saying "he did not take, but receive them; for it would be folly not to accept good things from the G.o.ds, to whom we are constantly praying for favors, when they stretch out their hands towards us." And, last of all, all the things which he had thus pillaged from the temples were, by his order, brought to the market-place and sold by the common crier; and, after he had received the money for them, he commanded every purchaser to restore what he had bought, within a limited time, to the temples from whence they came.

Thus to his impiety towards the G.o.ds he added injustice to man.

x.x.xV. Yet neither did Olympian Jove strike him with his thunder, nor did aesculapius cause him to die by tedious diseases and a lingering death. He died in his bed, had funeral honors[284] paid to him, and left his power, which he had wickedly obtained, as a just and lawful inheritance to his son.

It is not without concern that I maintain a doctrine which seems to authorize evil, and which might probably give a sanction to it, if conscience, without any divine a.s.sistance, did not point out, in the clearest manner, the difference between virtue and vice. Without conscience man is contemptible. For as no family or state can be supposed to be formed with any reason or discipline if there are no rewards for good actions nor punishment for crimes, so we cannot believe that a Divine Providence regulates the world if there is no distinction between the honest and the wicked.

But the G.o.ds, you say, neglect trifling things: the little fields or vineyards of particular men are not worthy their attention; and if blasts or hail destroy their product, Jupiter does not regard it, nor do kings extend their care to the lower offices of government. This argument might have some weight if, in bringing Rutilius as an instance, I had only complained of the loss of his farm at Formiae; but I spoke of a personal misfortune, his banishment.[285]

x.x.xVI. All men agree that external benefits, such as vineyards, corn, olives, plenty of fruit and grain, and, in short, every convenience and property of life, are derived from the G.o.ds; and, indeed, with reason, since by our virtue we claim applause, and in virtue we justly glory, which we could have no right to do if it was the gift of the G.o.ds, and not a personal merit. When we are honored with new dignities, or blessed with increase of riches; when we are favored by fortune beyond our expectation, or luckily delivered from any approaching evil, we return thanks for it to the G.o.ds, and a.s.sume no praise to ourselves.

But who ever thanked the G.o.ds that he was a good man? We thank them, indeed, for riches, health, and honor. For these we invoke the all-good and all-powerful Jupiter; but not for wisdom, temperance, and justice.

No one ever offered a tenth of his estate to Hercules to be made wise.