The Complete Essays (93 page)

As though it were simply not enough that Plato should be descended, on both sides, from the gods, with Neptune as the common ancestor, it was believed as a fact in Athens that, when Ariston had wished to consummate his love for the fair Perictione, he could not bring it off; he was warned in a dream by the god Apollo not to deflower her but to leave her a virgin until she had given birth… And they were Plato’s father and mother!
²⁴⁹

How many other accounts are there of similar cuckoldries procured by the gods against wretched human beings, or of husbands unjustly defamed to honour their children! In the religion of Mahomet the people believe that there are ‘Merlins’ in plenty – children, that is, begot without fathers, spiritual children divinely conceived in virgins’ wombs. (They are given a special name which, in their language, means just that.)
²⁵⁰

[B] We should note that no creature holds anything dearer than the kind of being that it is [C] (lions, eagles, dolphins value nothing above their own species) [B] and that every species reduces the qualities of everything else to analogies with its own. We can extend our characteristics or reduce them, but that is all we can do, since our intellect can do nothing and guess nothing except on the principle of such analogies; it is impossible for it to go beyond that point. [C] That explains Ancient philosophical
conclusions such as these: Man is the most beautiful of all forms, so God must also have that form! – No one can be happy without virtue; virtue cannot be without reason: no reason can dwell elsewhere but in the human shape: therefore God is clad in a human shape!
‘Ita est informatum, anticipatum mentibus nostris ut homini, cum de Deo cogitet, forma occurrat humana’
[The mould and prejudice of our minds are such that when we think of God it is the human form which occurs to them].
²⁵¹

[B] That is why Xenophanes said with a smile that if the beasts invent gods for themselves, as they probably do, they certainly make them like themselves, glorifying themselves – as we do.
²⁵²
For why should a gosling not argue thus: ‘All the parts of the universe are there for me: the earth serves me to waddle upon, the sun to give me light; the heavenly bodies exist to breathe their influences upon me; the winds help me this way, the waters, that way: there is nothing which the vault of Heaven treats with greater favour than me. I am Nature’s darling: does not Man care for me, house me, serve me? It is for me that Man sows and grinds his corn; it is true that he eats me, but he also eats his fellow-men, and I eat the worms which kill him and eat him.’

A crane could say the same – even more majestically on account of the freedom of its flight and its secure enjoyment of those fair and higher regions: [C]
‘Tam blanda conciliatrix et tam sui est lena ipsa natura’
[So flattering a procuress is Nature, such a seductress of herself].
²⁵³

[B] Well, if that is how it goes, the Universe and the Fates are all for us! The lightning flashes for us; the thunder crashes for us; the Creator and all his creatures exist just for us. We are the end which the entire Universe is aiming towards. Just examine the records of celestial affairs which Philosophy has kept for two thousand years and more: the gods have acted and spoken only for Man. Philosophy attributes no other concern to them, no other employment: they go to war against us,

domitosque Herculea manu
Telluris juvenes, unde periculum
Fulgens contremuit domus
Saturni veteris
.

[The Sons of Earth, those Titans at whose assault the shining house of ancient Saturn shook with fear, are defeated by the hand of Hercules.]

The gods side with us in our civil disturbances, [C] to return our services, since we have so often taken sides in theirs:

[B]
Neptunus muros magnoque emota tridenti
Fundamenta quatit, totamque a sedibus urbem
Eruit. Hic Juno Scaeas saevissima portas
Prima tenet
.

[With his mighty trident Neptune shakes the walls of Troy to their foundations and dashes the whole city to the ground; here, implacable Juno holds the Scaean gates.]

[C] On their feast-days, the Caunians, jealous for the hegemony of their own gods, load weapons on their shoulders and charge around the outskirts of their city stabbing their swords into the air, fighting the foreign gods to the finish and driving them out of their lands.
²⁵⁴

[B] The powers of the gods are tailored to meet our human needs: this one cures horses, another, men; [C] this one, the plague, [B] that one, the ring-worm, that one, the cough; [C] this one cures one sort of mange; that one, another:
‘adeo minimis etiam rebus prava religio inserit deos’
[Thus does religion, when depraved, bring the gods even into the most trivial affairs]; [B] this god makes grapes to grow, another, garlic; this god is responsible for lechery, that one, for trade, [C] (each tribe of craftsmen has its god!); [B] this god’s sway and reputation lie in the East; that god’s lie in the West.

hic illius arma,
Hic currus fuit;

[Here were her arms, here stood her chariot;]
[C] O
Sancte Apollo, qui umbilicum certum terrarum obtines;
[O holy Apollo, thou that holdest sway in the Navel of the world;]

Pallada Cecropidae, Minoia Creta Dianam,
Vulcanum tellus Hipsipilea colit
,

Junonem Sparte Pelopeiadesque Mycenae;
Pinigerum Fauni Maenalis ora caput;
Mars Latio venerandus
.

[The descendants of Cecrops worship Pallas in Athens; Minoan Crete worships Diana; Lemnos, Vulcan; Sparta and Peloponnesian Mycenae, Juno. Pan, crowned with pine leaves, is venerated in Maenalus; and Mars in Latium.]

[B] This god has only a single town or family under his sway, [C] that one lives alone, but the other one, willingly or from necessity, lives with his peers:

Junctaque sunt magno templa nepotis avo
.
[The grandson’s temple is amalgamated with the temple of his grandsire.]
²⁵⁵

[B] Some of these gods are so mean and so lowly (for their number amounts to thirty-six thousand) that you need a pile of five or six of them to make a grain of corn – their various names are taken from this – [C] you need three for a door (one for the wood, one for the hinge, one for the doorstep); then you need four for an infant (protecting its cradle, its drink, its food and its sucking). The functions of some are uncertain and doubtful; others are not allowed into Paradise yet:

Quos quoniam coeli nondum dignamur honore,
Quas dedimus certe terras habitare sinamus
.

[Since some are not yet worthy to be honoured with paradise, we at least allow them to dwell in the lands we have given them.]

There are nature-gods, poetic gods, civic gods; there are intermediary beings, half-way between the divine nature and the human, who are mediators, doing business between us and God and worshipped with an inferior, second-grade worship; they have innumerable titles and duties. Some are good: some are bad. [B] There are gods who are old and decrepit; there are gods who are mortal; for Chrysippus considered that all gods died in the last great conflagration of the world, except Jupiter.

[C] Man invents a thousand amusing links of fellowship between
himself and God. Is God not a fellow-Countryman!
‘Jovis incunabula Creten’
[Crete, cradle of Jupiter].
²⁵⁶

Here is the justification given after reflection by Scaevola, a great Pontifex, and by Varro, a great theologian (both ‘great’ in their time): it is necessary (they said) that people should not know many things which are true and should believe many things which are false,
‘cum veritatem qua liberetur, inquirat, credatur ei expedire, quod fallitur’
[since man only wants to find such truth as sets him free, it can be thought expedient for him to be deceived].
²⁵⁷

[B] Human eyes can only perceive things in accordance with such Forms as they know. [C] We forget what a tumble the wretched Phaëton took when, with a mortal hand, he tried to manage the reins of his father’s horses: our rashness causes our minds to take a similar plunge and to be bruised and broken as he was.
²⁵⁸
[B] Ask Philosophy what the Sky and the Sun are composed of; what will she answer, if not iron, or, [C] with Anaxagoras, [B] stone, or some such everyday material? If you ask Zeno what Nature is, he replies Fire – an artificer having as its properties generative powers and regularity; if you ask Archimedes (the master of geometry, that science which grants itself precedence over all others in matters of truth and certainty) he replies that the Sun is a god of burning iron. What a fine idea to come out of geometrical demonstrations, with their beauty and compelling necessities! Not so compelling [C] and useful, though, [B] but that [C] Socrates thought you only need to know enough geometry to survey any land given or acquired; [B] the illustrious Polyaenus (formerly a famous teacher of geometry) came to despise its demonstrations as false and manifestly vain; that was after tasting the sweet fruits of the idle gardens of Epicurus.
²⁵⁹

[C] In Antiquity Anaxagoras was believed to have excelled all others in treating matters celestial and divine; but in Xenophon, Socrates, talking of
his teaching, said that the brain of Anaxagoras finally became disturbed: that often happens to those who immoderately pore over matters which do not appertain to them.
²⁶⁰

As for Anaxagoras’ making the Sun a burning stone, he failed to realize that stone does not glow in the fire, or, what is worse, that it is consumed by fire; as for his making the Sun and Fire one, he further failed to realize that fire does not blacken those who simply look at it, that we can gaze fixedly at fire, or that fire
kills
plants and grasses. Socrates’ verdict – and mine as well – is that the best judgement you can make about the heavens is not to make any at all.
²⁶¹

When Plato in the
Timaeus
was about to talk about
daemons
he declared: This is an undertaking which is beyond our range; we are obliged to have faith in men of old who said they were born of
daemons:
it is not reasonable to refuse to believe these children of the gods – even though what they say is not supported by compelling reasons or by verisimilitude – since they swear they are talking about matters known within their homes and families…
²⁶²

[A] Now let us see whether we have a little more light than that concerning our knowledge of Man and Nature.

When treating objects which, by our own admission, exceed our knowledge, is it not stupid to go forging bodies for them and imposing on them false Forms of our own invention? – as in the case of the movement of the planets: since our minds cannot manage to conceive what makes them move naturally, we impose on them our own heavy corporeal, material principles:

temo aureus, aurea summae
Curvatura rotae, radiorum argenteus ordo
.

[The shaft was of gold; so too the rim of the wheels and the spokes were made of silver.]
²⁶³

It is almost as though we had sent coach-smiths, carpenters [C] and painters [A] up there, preparing mechanical contrivances with diverse movements [C] and then, in accordance with Plato’s instructions, arranging, round about the spindle of Necessity, sets of wheels and interlaced courses for the heavenly bodies, variously painted.
²⁶⁴

[B]
Mundus domus est maxima rerum,
Quam quinque altitonae fragmine zonae
Cingunt, per quam limbus pictus bis sex signis
Stellimicantibus, altus in obliquo aethere, lunae
Bigas acceptat
.

[The Universe is an edifice, immense, encircled by five thundering belts and crossed obliquely by an aethereal sash, decorated with twice half-dozen constellations and the paired horses of the Moon.]
²⁶⁵

These are dreams [C] and frantic folly. [A] If only Nature would deign to open her breast one day and show us the means
²⁶⁶
and the workings of her movements as they really are [C] (first preparing our eyes to see them). [A] O God, what fallacies and miscalculations we would find in our wretched science! [C] Either I am quite mistaken or our science has not put one single thing squarely in its rightful place, and I will leave this world knowing nothing better than my own ignorance. It was in Plato (was it not?) that I came across the inspired adage, ‘Nature is but enigmatic poetry,’ as if to say that Nature is intended to exercise our ingenuity, like a painting veiled in mists and obscured by an infinite variety of wrong lights.
²⁶⁷
‘Latent ista omnia crassis occultata et circumfusa tenebris, ut nulla acies humani ingenii tanta sit, quae penetrare in coelum, terram intrare possit’
[All things lie hidden, wrapped in a darkness so thick that no human mind is sharp enough to pierce the heavens or to sound the earth]. Certainly, philosophy is poetry adulterated by Sophists. Where do all those Ancient authors get their authority from, if not from the poets? The original authorities were themselves poets; they treated philosophy in terms of poetic art. Plato is but a disjointed poet. As an insult, Timon called him a great contriver of miracles.
²⁶⁸