Comparatio vitarum

Comparison of Lives [Lives.] "You would judge for us, O stranger." [Judge.] "And what is the judgment?" [L.] "Lives are contending." [J.] "And which ones, and what is the judgment?" [L.] "The worldly life and the life of the spirit, which is better and livable for the wise." [J.] "This is difficult to judge, but nevertheless it must be heard." [World.] "I know I am born of the world and I cherish these things; this is piety: to honor ancestral law." [Spirit.] "I know I am born of God and I revere God; this is piety: to know perfect reverence. If for you the worse is most honorable, why is not for me the better more just?" [W.] "My mother is flesh, and I was mingled with earth; I long for the fullness of the broken flesh." [S.] "God is my father, and I was yoked to God; I long for the imitation of the form from which I fell away." [W.] "How, tell me, would the race of mortals be constituted, if the union of flesh had not come together, governed by divine law and nature?" [S.] "This is law, but now I must be released, hastening to another life better than the present, free from bonds and corruption." [W.] "How then did the virgin life come as a newcomer?" [S.] "It was shadowy even before; but now it shines, since the virgin mother of God appeared. For the old law yielded to the new. The letter departed, but the power of the spirit remains." [W.] "Would someone be unyoked without a yoked life, or someone just?" [S.] "You are too clever, persuading that the flesh comes together for the sake of beauty. Time has nurtured either beautiful or evil things, but the sower has poured forth the insolence of the flesh, nothing else. And thinking in passion is laughable, as if it labors together with the will of God." [W.] "What then have you given to life?" [S.] "What were you seeking? Branches? So that they may be cooled or a storm may seize them?" [W.] "Give my root.

Then have branches. {[P.]} It is enough to have come into being. But another, for corruption, would labor to nurture, teach, then mourn all at once the one who no longer is, seeing on walls the breathless beauty of a son who does not move. {[J.]} I am some nobleman. {[P.]} From what lineage? And what is the molder? But you are ignorant of the clay as one? One nobility, imitation of God. You rule by tombs and new decrees; from there you were written noble, not nurtured. {[J.]} For me, wealth casts down enemies, wastes the wicked with envy, makes friends, gives thrones, puffs up in the city. {[P.]} For me, poverty grants having no enemies, and pity is safer than envy. Thrones are abandoned, and friends are more than the occasion. If they remain, it is better to be inferior to God than to have first place among all visible things, [or to be above all visible things;] the city would have me brilliant, the intelligible one. {[J.]} What security does the poor man have in life—walls, gates, engines, swordsmen? {[P.]} They labor as if the body might be stolen from above? Only this is possessed, and a small rag. Another's robber, let tyranny go, the thief of those who have; for me, one wealth, God, whom no one will ever snatch from the one who possesses him. As for the rest, let those who like have them; let all hands seize my property; nothing is safer than a poor man. The rich man hunts with a net, greets his own right hand as a friend, and does not hymn God as the giver of good things, until what he possesses falls into another's hands, where he does not wish—what am I saying?—perhaps of an enemy, and from there to another; the rolling of wheels. For me, when I die, my whole life comes together, nothing will be left to envy and reversals.

How great it is not to look at the hands of neighbors, but for others to look at ours, perhaps more piously. How great it is to look only at the hand of God, who both gives and is asked paternally, and to do nothing shameful to receive a favor, imitating the blood-sucking leech, which holds some things, fixes its mind on others, sees some things not with good eyes, and molds others by the hopes of dreams, always more a beggar for what it desires. But how will one bear the burden of a difficult time, having no support for his distress? You asked me how one will escape a well-aimed arrow. A hair is not easily divided, even from close up. Be narrow for me, and you will escape the burden of evils. A reed bears the winds, but oaks do not. For the one yields, but weight overthrows the others. It is permitted for me to live luxuriously. But for me, luxury is not to live luxuriously, swollen with satiety and entrails, and sick with a rich disease, stinking of pleasant mire beyond the throat, narrowing the mind with the thickness of the slime. My cakes are mine. Bread is my seasoning, and everything from salt is sweet to me, with which I spit upon the saltiness of the luxurious. The scent of perfumes is for me, the delight of songs. Clapping of hands and feet, rhythmic bendings, the harmony of instruments sounding together. You praise these things, but these are the things by which wealth is evil to me, as a teacher of evils. Better for us is the psalmody of instruments, harmonizing the soul with the things understood. And more fragrant than any perfume is Christ for us, who emptied himself, so as to dissolve the stench with which the deadness of sin filled me. And I clap my hands if my murderer falls, introducing some evil word or deed.

A dance of the feet, an inspired turning. [K.] You might say this, that poverty suffices even for diseases, bearing more remedies for bodies. [P.] I would not say that. For the statement is not true; but what is true, this will also be spoken: a poor man is much stronger than those who have possessions. God gave, raising up the grace, strength to the poor, but drugs to the wealthy. The poor man labors, with sweat he empties the humors, he hungers, he shivers, he is burned by the midday sun, he travels, he is burdened, he is rained upon, he groans; he receives simple and uncompounded food of the season, he knows nothing of the tricks which cooks and servants of luxury procure from the depths of land and sea, setting out a womanish table for men. Flatulence, catarrhs, splenic disorders, dislocations, fluxes, gulping, pallors, collapses of the wealthy—these are the offspring of their surfeit—who neither have enjoyment of what they have, but seek it, and to whom they will leave their bulk, often envying those who are healthier though weaker; they are destitute of all things, wretchedly happy. Gold, stones, embroideries, dyes of clothing, and of the painter’s purple rivaling the walls, ceilings, and mosaic underfoot; silver, some hidden in the bosom of the earth, confined whence it came, worthy of tombs, other displayed and flashing in drinking parties; horses, carpets, chariots, charioteers, dogs, hunters, trackers of beasts; and these indeed the delights of an evil mistress, the belly, and of the all-receiving passage, the grace of the gullet; bed-makers, doorkeepers, summoners, sleep-makers, flower-bearers, sprinklers, wipers of circles, tasters, shadow-makers; observers of nods, bathers, mixers with finger-liftings, women for hair; seasonings for the eyes; all things of a rich man’s tomb, painted dust.

The needy one stands still; and if he falls, worn down by disease, scarcely ever or after a long time, he will provide no business for his friends, but will die like a lion in its roars, a corpse far more blooming than the wealthy. What then? Insolence, anger, ecstasy, audacity, drunkenness, unrestrained laughter, shameful words, contempt for God, for blood, for friends—these belong no more to the poor than to the rich; for wealth brings insolence, and insolence brings ruin. But the one who is pressed down like the many, and does not rise up, especially if fear of God runs along with him, is a strong educator of all good things. Consider each in exchange for the other briefly, remaining a just judge of both lives, if it does not seem to you that this too is insolence, that the poor stand near and breathe the same air or are called by one name, and seem to share a roof and a voyage. You envy the best and the worst; I pity you, for nothing is more wretched than evils, even if they run smoothly toward a perilous end. You spit upon the poor as if of another god; I know one creation, all coming to one judgment. There is another, second creation, a way. You exalt the good; I am disciplined by fear. You bend to the wretched; I am lightened by hopes; for nothing remains, but all flows in long time. Night has ended day, and day night; and joy, grief.

And he has turned pleasant things into disaster; so one must not trust them as if they were fixed. For you nothing is terrible, not even the worst evils; for somehow thinking aright resists indulgence. But for me even small things appear as grief; for sin is alienation from God. How could I bear being deprived of God? For you, a good sleep and the binding of two ribs, and sweet dreams are the images of the day; you drink, you gamble, you take, you play, you laugh. But for me, the greater part of life is sleepless; for my labors sting me even when I sleep, and if I snatch a little sleep, I weep. Even the phantoms of a wild night frighten me: judgment, an unswerving judge, a trembling court, a bubbling spring of unquenchable fire here, a worm there eating eternally; in the middle, conscience, an unwritten accuser. God is a god to you, if he brings favorable things; to me he is revered, even if he brings the opposite. For my suffering is a medicine of salvation. The more I am pressed, the closer I come to God; for my suffering binds me to God. For indeed, the persecution of an army leads to walls. You have children, a wife, and friends as comforters, whose removal is the greatest disaster. But for me, God is my support and solace when I am hungry, shivering, and distressed. Insult, strike, call me base, call me poor, trample, oppress; you will insult for a short time. I bear everything to God, toward whom I also look. I send my thought to the life to come; I station myself there; I know nothing of things below. Thus I easily dissolve what pains me. What of the rest? Today, for you, not receiving the vote is unbearable, as it seems to me. For the ruling power does not bear being controlled. But for me, receiving and not receiving are equal. God suffices for me, even if another carries off everything; this is the greatest glory and victory for me.

What then if some of the first fall? What then if some of the second also fall? For both success and failure belong to both. Equal to equal, but I consider those who fall in the first life much worse; so opposed am I to evils. For those whose rule is more honorable, their fall is more wretched when they fall. And I ask this: not to judge a life by whether someone is the worst, for I am hostile to that life, but to examine on its own and distinguish the whole, both of goods and of evils alike, opposite, and not to let the lesser tip the scale, for that is not just, but let the greater prevail. Thus you would know how great the distance is between the two lives. Do not compare the best of donkeys to a bad horse, nor the best man of the worldly life to the worst of mine. For they would appear better, I will not deny it. But if you set first against first and bad against bad, you would learn how much I prevail. Consider this also: equal in all time is the failure among you and the success among us. They say one swallow does not make the pleasant spring, nor one hair old age. What say you? Do you give your vote? Or shall I bid you farewell? I give it; how not? Then I will think I ought to prefer the lower to your life, when I am mad enough to equal some mortal to God. But if I am not mad, I will not suffer this either. But go; it would be better if you both lived peacefully toward each other and toward the great God, you assigning the first to the first life, you embracing the second as a brother. If the first does not have it, what prevents having the second? Not even this is dishonor. Thus life would be safe for us.