Irrisio gentilium philosophorum

Mockery of the Gentile Philosophers The blessed apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians dwelling in Laconian Greece, declared, 'O beloved,' saying: 'The wisdom of this world is foolishness before God,' not speaking without purpose; for it seems to me to have taken its beginning from the apostasy of the angels. For this reason the philosophers, neither agreeing nor speaking consistently with one another, set forth their doctrines. For some of them say the soul is fire, others air (the Stoics), others mind, others motion, Heraclitus others exhalation, others a power flowing from the stars, others a moving number (Pythagoras), others generative water (Hippon), others an element from elements, others harmony (Deinarchus), others blood (Critias), others breath, others the monad (Pythagoras), and the ancients the opposites. How many arguments about these things, how many attempts, how many disputes of sophists contending rather than finding the truth? But let it be; they disagree about the soul *** but the rest concerning it they declared in agreement; and others call its pleasure one thing good, another evil, another intermediate between good and evil, and its nature some say immortal, others mortal, others persisting for a short time, others bestialize it, others dissolve it into atoms, others embody it three times, others define periods of three thousand years for it. And indeed those who do not live even a hundred years make promises about three thousand future years. What then must one call these things? As it seems to me, either monstrosity or folly or madness or discord or all together.

If they have found the truth, let them agree or consent, and I will then gladly be persuaded by them. But if they pull the soul in different directions and drag it, one to one nature, another to another substance, and change matter from matter, I confess I am deeply distressed by the ebb and flow of things. Now I am immortal and rejoice, now again I become mortal and weep; presently I am dissolved into atoms, I become water, I become air, I become fire; then after a little I am neither air nor fire; it makes me a beast, it makes me a fish; again, then, I have dolphins as brothers. And when I look at myself, I fear the body and do not know what to call it—man or dog or wolf or bull or bird or snake or dragon or chimera; for I am changed into all the beasts by the philosophers—land, water, winged, many-formed, wild, tame, voiceless, melodious, irrational, rational; I swim, I fly, I soar, I crawl, I run, I sit. And further, Empedocles even makes me a bush. Where, then, it is not possible for the philosophers to find the human soul in agreement, they would scarcely be able to declare the truth about the gods or about the cosmos. For they have this boldness—not to say madness. For those who cannot find their own soul do not seek that of the gods themselves, and those who do not know their own body busy themselves with the nature of the cosmos. Indeed, they strongly oppose each other concerning the principles of nature. When Anaxagoras takes me over, he teaches this:

The beginning of all things is mind, and this is the cause and master of all, and it provides order to the disordered, motion to the unmoved, separation to the mixed, and cosmos to the uncosmic. Saying these things, Anaxagoras is dear to me, and I am persuaded by his doctrine. But Melissus and Parmenides oppose him. Indeed, Parmenides proclaims in poetic verses that being is one, eternal, infinite, unmoved, and entirely uniform. Again, then, I change to this doctrine, I know not how: Parmenides has driven Anaxagoras from my opinion. But when I think I hold the doctrine of the unmoved, Anaximenes, taking it up, cries out in opposition: But I say to you: the all is air, and this, when condensed and compacted, becomes water and earth, when rarefied and diffused, becomes aether and fire, and returning to its own nature, it is rare air; and if it is condensed, he says, it changes. And again I adapt to this and love Anaximenes. But Empedocles stands directly opposite, roaring mightily from Aetna: the principles of all things are Strife and Love, the one bringing together, the other separating; and their conflict produces all things. I define them as both like and unlike, both infinite and finite, both eternal and generated. O Empedocles, I follow you even to the craters of fire. But on the other side, Protagoras, standing, draws me back, saying: the measure and judgment of things is man, and things that fall under the senses are real things, while things that do not fall under them are not among the forms of being.

Flattered by this argument of Protagoras, I am delighted, because he assigns the whole or the greatest part to man. But from another direction, Thales nods the truth to me, defining water as the beginning of all things. And from the moist all things are constituted and are resolved into the moist, and the earth is borne upon water. Why, then, should I not be persuaded by Thales, the most ancient of the Ionians? But his fellow citizen Anaximander says that the eternal motion is a more ancient beginning than the moist, and by this some things are generated, others destroyed. And so, then, let Anaximander be trusted. And yet does not Archelaus gain approval, declaring the beginnings of all things to be hot and cold? But again, the great-voiced Plato does not agree with him, saying that the beginnings are god, matter, and form. Now, then, I am indeed persuaded. For how am I not going to believe a philosopher who has made the chariot of Zeus? But behind him stands his student Aristotle, emulating his teacher in chariot-making. He defines other beginnings: the active and the passive. And the active is the impassible aether, while the passive has four qualities: dryness, moistness, heat, cold; for by the change of these into each other all things come to be and are destroyed. We are already weary, being tossed up and down by the doctrines. Yet I will stand by the opinion of Aristotle and let no argument trouble me any further. But what then would I suffer? For older men than these pull my soul by strings. Pherecydes says that the beginnings are Zênas and Chthoniê and Kronos: Zênas being the aether, Chthoniê the earth, and Kronos time.

The one says aether is the active principle, earth the passive, and time that in which things come to be. So there is jealousy among the old men towards one another. For Leucippus, considering all these things nonsense, says that the principles are the infinite, ever-moving, and smallest bodies; and that the fine-grained ones, moving upward, became fire and air, while the coarse-grained ones, settling downward, became water and earth. How long am I taught so many things, learning nothing true? Unless perhaps Democritus will deliver me from error, declaring that the principles are being and non-being, and that being is full, non-being void; and that the full, by turning and rhythm in the void, produces all things. I might perhaps be persuaded by the noble Democritus and would wish to laugh with him, if Heraclitus did not convert me, weeping and saying at the same time: the principle of all things is fire, and its two affections are rarefaction and condensation, one active, the other passive, one combining, the other separating. I have had enough, and I am already drunk with so many principles. But from that quarter Epicurus summons me, bidding me by no means insult his noble doctrine of atoms and the void. For by the manifold and multiform intertwining of these, all things come to be and pass away. I do not contradict you, best of men.

Epicurus! But Cleanthes, raising his head from the well, laughs at your doctrine and himself draws up the true principles: god and matter. And earth changes into water, water into air, air is borne upward, fire goes into the regions around the earth, and soul pervades the whole cosmos, a part of which we partake and are ensouled. Now, with so many of these, another multitude flows in upon me from Libya: Carneades and Clitomachus and all their followers, trampling underfoot all the doctrines of the others, while themselves declaring outright that all things are incomprehensible and that a false impression always lies alongside the truth. What then am I to suffer, having labored for so long a time? How am I to pour out so many doctrines from my mind? For if nothing is comprehensible, truth departs from human beings, and the much-vaunted philosophy fights with shadows rather than possessing knowledge of beings. Others then from the ancient tribe, Pythagoras and his fellow tribesmen, solemn and silent, hand down to me other doctrines as if mysteries, and this great and ineffable thing: "He himself said." The beginning of all things is the monad. From its shapes and from numbers the elements come to be. And of each of these, the number, shape, and measure are declared somewhat as follows: fire is completed by twenty-four right-angled triangles, contained by four equilateral triangles. Each equilateral triangle is composed of six right-angled triangles, whence indeed they liken it to a pyramid. Air is completed by forty-eight triangles, contained by eight equilateral triangles.

It is likened to an octahedron, which is contained by eight equilateral triangles, each of which is divided into six right-angled triangles, so that the total becomes forty-eight. Water is filled up by one hundred twenty triangles, being contained by twenty equal and equilateral triangles, and is likened to an icosahedron, which is composed of one hundred twenty equal and equilateral triangles. Aether is filled up by twelve equilateral pentagons and is like a dodecahedron. Earth is filled up from forty-eight triangles and is contained by six equilateral squares. It is like a cube. For the cube is contained by six squares, each of which is divided into eight triangles, so that the total becomes forty-eight. So Pythagoras measures the cosmos. But I, becoming inspired again, despise my house and fatherland and wife and children, and no longer care about these things. I myself go up into the aether itself and, taking the cubit from Pythagoras, begin to measure fire. For Zeus measuring is not enough, but unless I myself go up into heaven and measure the aether—the great animal, the great body, the great soul—the rule of Zeus is lost. And when I have measured, and Zeus learns from me how many angles fire has, I come down from heaven again, and after eating olives and figs and vegetables, I hasten as quickly as possible to the water, and by cubit and finger and half-finger I measure the liquid substance and measure its depth, so that I may also teach Poseidon how much sea he rules.

I traverse the entire earth in a single day, gathering its number, its measure, and its shapes. For I am persuaded that I will leave not even a span of the whole cosmos unexplored, being such and so great as I am. I know the number of the stars, of the fishes, and of the beasts, and, placing the cosmos on a balance, I can easily learn its weight. So far, then, my soul has been eager to rule over all things. But Epicurus, peering forth, says to me: "You have measured one cosmos, my friend, but there are many and infinite cosmoi." So again I am compelled to measure other heavens, other aethers, and these many. Come then, no longer delaying, having provisioned myself for a few days, I will journey to the Epicurean cosmoi. I easily fly over the boundaries, Tethys and Ocean. Entering into a new cosmos, as into another city, I measure everything in a few days. From there I pass over again into a third cosmos, then into a fourth, a fifth, a tenth, a hundredth, a thousandth, and so on—until where? For already darkness of ignorance meets me, and black deceit, and infinite error, and incomplete fantasy, and incomprehensible folly. Yet why should I delay? I will even count the atoms themselves, from which so many cosmoi have come into being, so that I may leave nothing unexamined, especially those things so necessary and beneficial, from which a household and a city prosper.

These things, then, I have gone through, wishing to show the contradiction that exists in their doctrines, and how their inquiry into matters proceeds to the infinite and indefinite, and that their end is unascertainable and useless, being confirmed by no evident deed or clear word.