A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

Cicero's Tusculan Disputations by Marcus Tullius Cicero

M >> Marcus Tullius Cicero >> Cicero\'s Tusculan Disputations




For the superior and excellent nature of the Gods requires a pious
adoration from men, because it is possessed of immortality and the most
exalted felicity; for whatever excels has a right to veneration, and
all fear of the power and anger of the Gods should be banished; for we
must understand that anger and affection are inconsistent with the
nature of a happy and immortal being. These apprehensions being
removed, no dread of the superior powers remains. To confirm this
opinion, our curiosity leads us to inquire into the form and life and
action of the intellect and spirit of the Deity.

XVIII. With regard to his form, we are directed partly by nature and
partly by reason. All men are told by nature that none but a human form
can be ascribed to the Gods; for under what other image did it ever
appear to any one either sleeping or waking? and, without having
recourse to our first notions,[87] reason itself declares the same; for
as it is easy to conceive that the most excellent nature, either
because of its happiness or immortality, should be the most beautiful,
what composition of limbs, what conformation of lineaments, what form,
what aspect, can be more beautiful than the human? Your sect, Lucilius
(not like my friend Cotta, who sometimes says one thing and sometimes
another), when they represent the divine art and workmanship in the
human body, are used to describe how very completely each member is
formed, not only for convenience, but also for beauty. Therefore, if
the human form excels that of all other animal beings, as God himself
is an animated being, he must surely be of that form which is the most
beautiful. Besides, the Gods are granted to be perfectly happy; and
nobody can be happy without virtue, nor can virtue exist where reason
is not; and reason can reside in none but the human form; the Gods,
therefore, must be acknowledged to be of human form; yet that form is
not body, but something like body; nor does it contain any blood, but
something like blood. Though these distinctions were more acutely
devised and more artfully expressed by Epicurus than any common
capacity can comprehend; yet, depending on your understanding, I shall
be more brief on the subject than otherwise I should be. Epicurus, who
not only discovered and understood the occult and almost hidden secrets
of nature, but explained them with ease, teaches that the power and
nature of the Gods is not to be discerned by the senses, but by the
mind; nor are they to be considered as bodies of any solidity, or
reducible to number, like those things which, because of their
firmness, he calls [Greek: Steremnia];[88] but as images, perceived by
similitude and transition. As infinite kinds of those images result
from innumerable individuals, and centre in the Gods, our minds and
understanding are directed towards and fixed with the greatest delight
on them, in order to comprehend what that happy and eternal essence is.

XIX. Surely the mighty power of the Infinite Being is most worthy our
great and earnest contemplation; the nature of which we must
necessarily understand to be such that everything in it is made to
correspond completely to some other answering part. This is called by
Epicurus [Greek: isonomia]; that is to say, an equal distribution or
even disposition of things. From hence he draws this inference, that,
as there is such a vast multitude of mortals, there cannot be a less
number of immortals; and if those which perish are innumerable, those
which are preserved ought also to be countless. Your sect, Balbus,
frequently ask us how the Gods live, and how they pass their time?
Their life is the most happy, and the most abounding with all kinds of
blessings, which can be conceived. They do nothing. They are
embarrassed with no business; nor do they perform any work. They
rejoice in the possession of their own wisdom and virtue. They are
satisfied that they shall ever enjoy the fulness of eternal pleasures.

XX. Such a Deity may properly be called happy; but yours is a most
laborious God. For let us suppose the world a Deity--what can be a more
uneasy state than, without the least cessation, to be whirled about the
axle-tree of heaven with a surprising celerity? But nothing can be
happy that is not at ease. Or let us suppose a Deity residing in the
world, who directs and governs it, who preserves the courses of the
stars, the changes of the seasons, and the vicissitudes and orders of
things, surveying the earth and the sea, and accommodating them to the
advantage and necessities of man. Truly this Deity is embarrassed with
a very troublesome and laborious office. We make a happy life to
consist in a tranquillity of mind, a perfect freedom from care, and an
exemption from all employment. The philosopher from whom we received
all our knowledge has taught us that the world was made by nature; that
there was no occasion for a workhouse to frame it in; and that, though
you deny the possibility of such a work without divine skill, it is so
easy to her, that she has made, does make, and will make innumerable
worlds. But, because you do not conceive that nature is able to produce
such effects without some rational aid, you are forced, like the tragic
poets, when you cannot wind up your argument in any other way, to have
recourse to a Deity, whose assistance you would not seek, if you could
view that vast and unbounded magnitude of regions in all parts; where
the mind, extending and spreading itself, travels so far and wide that
it can find no end, no extremity to stop at. In this immensity of
breadth, length, and height, a most boundless company of innumerable
atoms are fluttering about, which, notwithstanding the interposition of
a void space, meet and cohere, and continue clinging to one another;
and by this union these modifications and forms of things arise, which,
in your opinions, could not possibly be made without the help of
bellows and anvils. Thus you have imposed on us an eternal master, whom
we must dread day and night. For who can be free from fear of a Deity
who foresees, regards, and takes notice of everything; one who thinks
all things his own; a curious, ever-busy God?

Hence first arose your [Greek: Heimarmene], as you call it, your fatal
necessity; so that, whatever happens, you affirm that it flows from an
eternal chain and continuance of causes. Of what value is this
philosophy, which, like old women and illiterate men, attributes
everything to fate? Then follows your [Greek: mantike], in Latin called
_divinatio_, divination; which, if we would listen to you, would plunge
us into such superstition that we should fall down and worship your
inspectors into sacrifices, your augurs, your soothsayers, your
prophets, and your fortune-tellers.

Epicurus having freed us from these terrors and restored us to liberty,
we have no dread of those beings whom we have reason to think entirely
free from all trouble themselves, and who do not impose any on others.
We pay our adoration, indeed, with piety and reverence to that essence
which is above all excellence and perfection. But I fear my zeal for
this doctrine has made me too prolix. However, I could not easily leave
so eminent and important a subject unfinished, though I must confess I
should rather endeavor to hear than speak so long.

XXI. Cotta, with his usual courtesy, then began. Velleius, says he,
were it not for something which you have advanced, I should have
remained silent; for I have often observed, as I did just now upon
hearing you, that I cannot so easily conceive why a proposition is true
as why it is false. Should you ask me what I take the nature of the
Gods to be, I should perhaps make no answer. But if you should ask
whether I think it to be of that nature which you have described, I
should answer that I was as far as possible from agreeing with you.
However, before I enter on the subject of your discourse and what you
have advanced upon it, I will give you my opinion of yourself. Your
intimate friend, L. Crassus, has been often heard by me to say that you
were beyond all question superior to all our learned Romans; and that
few Epicureans in Greece were to be compared to you. But as I knew what
a wonderful esteem he had for you, I imagined that might make him the
more lavish in commendation of you. Now, however, though I do not
choose to praise any one when present, yet I must confess that I think
you have delivered your thoughts clearly on an obscure and very
intricate subject; that you are not only copious in your sentiments,
but more elegant in your language than your sect generally are. When I
was at Athens, I went often to hear Zeno, by the advice of Philo, who
used to call him the chief of the Epicureans; partly, probably, in
order to judge more easily how completely those principles could be
refuted after I had heard them stated by the most learned of the
Epicureans. And, indeed, he did not speak in any ordinary manner; but,
like you, with clearness, gravity, and elegance; yet what frequently
gave me great uneasiness when I heard him, as it did while I attended
to you, was to see so excellent a genius falling into such frivolous
(excuse my freedom), not to say foolish, doctrines. However, I shall
not at present offer anything better; for, as I said before, we can in
most subjects, especially in physics, sooner discover what is not true
than what is.

XXII. If you should ask me what God is, or what his character and
nature are, I should follow the example of Simonides, who, when Hiero
the tyrant proposed the same question to him, desired a day to consider
of it. When he required his answer the next day, Simonides begged two
days more; and as he kept constantly desiring double the number which
he had required before instead of giving his answer, Hiero, with
surprise, asked him his meaning in doing so: "Because," says he, "the
longer I meditate on it, the more obscure it appears to me." Simonides,
who was not only a delightful poet, but reputed a wise and learned man
in other branches of knowledge, found, I suppose, so many acute and
refined arguments occurring to him, that he was doubtful which was the
truest, and therefore despaired of discovering any truth.

But does your Epicurus (for I had rather contend with him than with
you) say anything that is worthy the name of philosophy, or even of
common-sense?

In the question concerning the nature of the Gods, his first inquiry
is, whether there are Gods or not. It would be dangerous, I believe, to
take the negative side before a public auditory; but it is very safe in
a discourse of this kind, and in this company. I, who am a priest, and
who think that religions and ceremonies ought sacredly to be
maintained, am certainly desirous to have the existence of the Gods,
which is the principal point in debate, not only fixed in opinion, but
proved to a demonstration; for many notions flow into and disturb the
mind which sometimes seem to convince us that there are none. But see
how candidly I will behave to you: as I shall not touch upon those
tenets you hold in common with other philosophers, consequently I shall
not dispute the existence of the Gods, for that doctrine is agreeable
to almost all men, and to myself in particular; but I am still at
liberty to find fault with the reasons you give for it, which I think
are very insufficient.

XXIII. You have said that the general assent of men of all nations and
all degrees is an argument strong enough to induce us to acknowledge
the being of the Gods. This is not only a weak, but a false, argument;
for, first of all, how do you know the opinions of all nations? I
really believe there are many people so savage that they have no
thoughts of a Deity. What think you of Diagoras, who was called the
atheist; and of Theodorus after him? Did not they plainly deny the very
essence of a Deity? Protagoras of Abdera, whom you just now mentioned,
the greatest sophist of his age, was banished by order of the Athenians
from their city and territories, and his books were publicly burned,
because these words were in the beginning of his treatise concerning
the Gods: "I am unable to arrive at any knowledge whether there are, or
are not, any Gods." This treatment of him, I imagine, restrained many
from professing their disbelief of a Deity, since the doubt of it only
could not escape punishment. What shall we say of the sacrilegious, the
impious, and the perjured? If Tubulus Lucius, Lupus, or Carbo the son
of Neptune, as Lucilius says, had believed that there were Gods, would
either of them have carried his perjuries and impieties to such excess?
Your reasoning, therefore, to confirm your assertion is not so
conclusive as you think it is. But as this is the manner in which other
philosophers have argued on the same subject, I will take no further
notice of it at present; I rather choose to proceed to what is properly
your own.

I allow that there are Gods. Instruct me, then, concerning their
origin; inform me where they are, what sort of body, what mind, they
have, and what is their course of life; for these I am desirous of
knowing. You attribute the most absolute power and efficacy to atoms.
Out of them you pretend that everything is made. But there are no
atoms, for there is nothing without body; every place is occupied by
body, therefore there can be no such thing as a vacuum or an atom.

XXIV. I advance these principles of the naturalists without knowing
whether they are true or false; yet they are more like truth than those
statements of yours; for they are the absurdities in which Democritus,
or before him Leucippus, used to indulge, saying that there are certain
light corpuscles--some smooth, some rough, some round, some square,
some crooked and bent as bows--which by a fortuitous concourse made
heaven and earth, without the influence of any natural power. This
opinion, C. Velleius, you have brought down to these our times; and you
would sooner be deprived of the greatest advantages of life than of
that authority; for before you were acquainted with those tenets, you
thought that you ought to profess yourself an Epicurean; so that it was
necessary that you should either embrace these absurdities or lose the
philosophical character which you had taken upon you; and what could
bribe you to renounce the Epicurean opinion? Nothing, you say, can
prevail on you to forsake the truth and the sure means of a happy life.
But is that the truth? for I shall not contest your happy life, which
you think the Deity himself does not enjoy unless he languishes in
idleness. But where is truth? Is it in your innumerable worlds, some of
which are rising, some falling, at every moment of time? Or is it in
your atomical corpuscles, which form such excellent works without the
direction of any natural power or reason? But I was forgetting my
liberality, which I had promised to exert in your case, and exceeding
the bounds which I at first proposed to myself. Granting, then,
everything to be made of atoms, what advantage is that to your
argument? For we are searching after the nature of the Gods; and
allowing them to be made of atoms, they cannot be eternal, because
whatever is made of atoms must have had a beginning: if so, there were
no Gods till there was this beginning; and if the Gods have had a
beginning, they must necessarily have an end, as you have before
contended when you were discussing Plato's world. Where, then, is your
beatitude and immortality, in which two words you say that God is
expressed, the endeavor to prove which reduces you to the greatest
perplexities? For you said that God had no body, but something like
body; and no blood, but something like blood.

XXV. It is a frequent practice among you, when you assert anything that
has no resemblance to truth, and wish to avoid reprehension, to advance
something else which is absolutely and utterly impossible, in order
that it may seem to your adversaries better to grant that point which
has been a matter of doubt than to keep on pertinaciously contradicting
you on every point: like Epicurus, who, when he found that if his atoms
were allowed to descend by their own weight, our actions could not be
in our own power, because their motions would be certain and necessary,
invented an expedient, which escaped Democritus, to avoid necessity. He
says that when the atoms descend by their own weight and gravity, they
move a little obliquely. Surely, to make such an assertion as this is
what one ought more to be ashamed of than the acknowledging ourselves
unable to defend the proposition. His practice is the same against the
logicians, who say that in all propositions in which yes or no is
required, one of them must be true; he was afraid that if this were
granted, then, in such a proposition as "Epicurus will be alive or dead
to-morrow," either one or the other must necessarily be admitted;
therefore he absolutely denied the necessity of yes or no. Can anything
show stupidity in a greater degree? Zeno,[89] being pressed by
Arcesilas, who pronounced all things to be false which are perceived by
the senses, said that some things were false, but not all. Epicurus was
afraid that if any one thing seen should be false, nothing could be
true; and therefore he asserted all the senses to be infallible
directors of truth. Nothing can be more rash than this; for by
endeavoring to repel a light stroke, he receives a heavy blow. On the
subject of the nature of the Gods, he falls into the same errors. While
he would avoid the concretion of individual bodies, lest death and
dissolution should be the consequence, he denies that the Gods have
body, but says they have something like body; and says they have no
blood, but something like blood.

XXVI. It seems an unaccountable thing how one soothsayer can refrain
from laughing when he sees another. It is yet a greater wonder that you
can refrain from laughing among yourselves. It is no body, but
something like body! I could understand this if it were applied to
statues made of wax or clay; but in regard to the Deity, I am not able
to discover what is meant by a quasi-body or quasi-blood. Nor indeed
are you, Velleius, though you will not confess so much. For those
precepts are delivered to you as dictates which Epicurus carelessly
blundered out; for he boasted, as we see in his writings, that he had
no instructor, which I could easily believe without his public
declaration of it, for the same reason that I could believe the master
of a very bad edifice if he were to boast that he had no architect but
himself: for there is nothing of the Academy, nothing of the Lyceum, in
his doctrine; nothing but puerilities. He might have been a pupil of
Xenocrates. O ye immortal Gods, what a teacher was he! And there are
those who believe that he actually was his pupil; but he says
otherwise, and I shall give more credit to his word than to another's.
He confesses that he was a pupil of a certain disciple of Plato, one
Pamphilus, at Samos; for he lived there when he was young, with his
father and his brothers. His father, Neocles, was a farmer in those
parts; but as the farm, I suppose, was not sufficient to maintain him,
he turned school-master; yet Epicurus treats this Platonic philosopher
with wonderful contempt, so fearful was he that it should be thought he
had ever had any instruction. But it is well known he had been a pupil
of Nausiphanes, the follower of Democritus; and since he could not deny
it, he loaded him with insults in abundance. If he never heard a
lecture on these Democritean principles, what lectures did he ever
hear? What is there in Epicurus's physics that is not taken from
Democritus? For though he altered some things, as what I mentioned
before of the oblique motions of the atoms, yet most of his doctrines
are the same; his atoms--his vacuum--his images--infinity of
space--innumerable worlds, their rise and decay--and almost every part
of natural learning that he treats of.

Now, do you understand what is meant by quasi-body and quasi-blood? For
I not only acknowledge that you are a better judge of it than I am, but
I can bear it without envy. If any sentiments, indeed, are communicated
without obscurity, what is there that Velleius can understand and Cotta
not? I know what body is, and what blood is; but I cannot possibly find
out the meaning of quasi-body and quasi-blood. Not that you
intentionally conceal your principles from me, as Pythagoras did his
from those who were not his disciples; or that you are intentionally
obscure, like Heraclitus. But the truth is (which I may venture to say
in this company), you do not understand them yourself.

XXVII. This, I perceive, is what you contend for, that the Gods have a
certain figure that has nothing concrete, nothing solid, nothing of
express substance, nothing prominent in it; but that it is pure,
smooth, and transparent. Let us suppose the same with the Venus of Cos,
which is not a body, but the representation of a body; nor is the red,
which is drawn there and mixed with the white, real blood, but a
certain resemblance of blood; so in Epicurus's Deity there is no real
substance, but the resemblance of substance.

Let me take for granted that which is perfectly unintelligible; then
tell me what are the lineaments and figures of these sketched-out
Deities. Here you have plenty of arguments by which you would show the
Gods to be in human form. The first is, that our minds are so
anticipated and prepossessed, that whenever we think of a Deity the
human shape occurs to us. The next is, that as the divine nature excels
all things, so it ought to be of the most beautiful form, and there is
no form more beautiful than the human; and the third is, that reason
cannot reside in any other shape.

First, let us consider each argument separately. You seem to me to
assume a principle, despotically I may say, that has no manner of
probability in it. Who was ever so blind, in contemplating these
subjects, as not to see that the Gods were represented in human form,
either by the particular advice of wise men, who thought by those means
the more easily to turn the minds of the ignorant from a depravity of
manners to the worship of the Gods; or through superstition, which was
the cause of their believing that when they were paying adoration to
these images they were approaching the Gods themselves. These conceits
were not a little improved by the poets, painters, and artificers; for
it would not have been very easy to represent the Gods planning and
executing any work in another form, and perhaps this opinion arose from
the idea which mankind have of their own beauty. But do not you, who
are so great an adept in physics, see what a soothing flatterer, what a
sort of procuress, nature is to herself? Do you think there is any
creature on the land or in the sea that is not highly delighted with
its own form? If it were not so, why would not a bull become enamored
of a mare, or a horse of a cow? Do you believe an eagle, a lion, or a
dolphin prefers any shape to its own? If nature, therefore, has
instructed us in the same manner, that nothing is more beautiful than
man, what wonder is it that we, for that reason, should imagine the
Gods are of the human form? Do you suppose if beasts were endowed with
reason that every one would not give the prize of beauty to his own
species?

XXVIII. Yet, by Hercules (I speak as I think)! though I am fond enough
of myself, I dare not say that I excel in beauty that bull which
carried Europa. For the question here is not concerning our genius and
elocution, but our species and figure. If we could make and assume to
ourselves any form, would you be unwilling to resemble the sea-triton
as he is painted supported swimming on sea-monsters whose bodies are
partly human? Here I touch on a difficult point; for so great is the
force of nature that there is no man who would not choose to be like a
man, nor, indeed, any ant that would not be like an ant. But like what
man? For how few can pretend to beauty! When I was at Athens, the whole
flock of youths afforded scarcely one. You laugh, I see; but what I
tell you is the truth. Nay, to us who, after the examples of ancient
philosophers, delight in boys, defects are often pleasing. Alcaeus was
charmed with a wart on a boy's knuckle; but a wart is a blemish on the
body; yet it seemed a beauty to him. Q. Catulus, my friend and
colleague's father, was enamored with your fellow-citizen Roscius, on
whom he wrote these verses:

As once I stood to hail the rising day,
Roscius appearing on the left I spied:
Forgive me, Gods, if I presume to say
The mortal's beauty with th' immortal vied.

Roscius more beautiful than a God! yet he was then, as he now is,
squint-eyed. But what signifies that, if his defects were beauties to
Catulus?

XXIX. I return to the Gods. Can we suppose any of them to be
squint-eyed, or even to have a cast in the eye? Have they any warts?
Are any of them hook-nosed, flap-eared, beetle-browed, or jolt-headed,
as some of us are? Or are they free from imperfections? Let us grant
you that. Are they all alike in the face? For if they are many, then
one must necessarily be more beautiful than another, and then there
must be some Deity not absolutely most beautiful. Or if their faces are
all alike, there would be an Academy[90] in heaven; for if one God does
not differ from another, there is no possibility of knowing or
distinguishing them.

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Hezekiah Butterworth - "The Log School House on the Columbia"

Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes) - "A Daughter of To Day"

John M'lean - "Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory"

Samuel Johnson - "A Grammar of the English Tongue"