Boethius, The Consolation 3.38

. . .“We are not now discussing the voluntary movements of a reasoning mind, but the natural instinct. For instance, we unwittingly digest the food we have eaten, and unconsciously breathe in sleep. Not even in animals does this love of self-preservation come from mental wishes, but from elementary nature.

“For often the will, under stress of external causes, embraces the idea of death, from which nature revolts in horror. And, on the other hand, the will sometimes restrains what nature always desires, namely the operation of begetting, by which alone the continuance of mortal things becomes enduring. Thus far, then, this love of self-preservation arises not from the reasoning animal's intention, but from natural instinct.

“Providence has given to its creatures this the greatest cause of permanent existence, the instinctive desire to remain existent so far as possible. Wherefore you have no reason to doubt that all things, which exist, seek a permanent existence by nature, and similarly avoid extinction.”

“Yes,” I said, “I confess that I see now beyond all doubt what appeared to me just now uncertain.”

“But,” she continued, “that which seeks to continue its existence, aims at unity; for take this away, and none will have any chance of continued existence.”

“That is true.”

“Then all things desire unity,” she said, and I agreed. “But we have shown unity to be identical with the good?”

“Yes,” said I.

“Then all things desire the good; and that you may define as being the absolute good which is desired by all.”

“Nothing could be more truthfully reasoned. For either everything is brought back to nothing, and all will flow on at random with no guiding head; or if there is any universal aim, it will be the sum of all good.”

“Great is my rejoicing, my son,” said she, “for you have set firmly in your mind the mark of the central truth. And hereby is made plain to you that which you a short time ago said that you knew not.”

“What was that?”

“What was the final aim of all things,” she said, “for that is plainly what is desired by all. Since we have agreed that unity is the good, we must confess that the good is the end of all things.”

—from Book 3, Prose 11

There are two points that always struck me deeply about this passage, one little, and the other big, but both quite important.

The first insight turns a usual assumption of mine on its head. I can see how beings endowed with awareness seek to maintain their existence, and therefore their unity, but it is not so readily apparent that this actually applies to all created things, conscious or not.

In fact, those beings lacking in reason and choice do so without question, even as you and I may well question it.

How wonderful that an animal eats its food, and rears its young, and by doing so it preserves itself. It doesn’t need to “know” what it does to do what it does. How tragic that a man makes his conscious choices, and he still can somehow freely destroy himself.

In one sense, the man is a more perfect creature, because he determines his own actions; but when he chooses poorly, he becomes the worse creature, because he is actually able to deny his own nature. The rock, the tree, the frog, or the rabbit never do that. Yet I will somehow do that.

The second insight, quite honestly, makes me quake in my boots. Each thing may have its own particular purpose and end, even while there can only be one universal purpose and end.

This took me a while to embrace. Surely the rock, the tree, the frog, and the rabbit, and the man, for that matter, all have very different things they are meant to do? What could they possibly have in common?

They all do it in varied ways, and each acts according to its nature. Each preserves itself, as best as it can, and as long as it can. Each may pass, while each resists its passing. Each remains good as long as it is one.

In doing so, by defending what they are, they express their own specific unity. And there can be no imperfect or incomplete aspects of unity without a perfect or complete form of unity. The parts can only make any sense within the whole.

There aren’t many “ones”, only one “one”, if that makes any sense in my befuddled way of expressing it; it would hardly be one if it were many. Each piece cannot exist in isolation, and it must exist together with all the other pieces. In other words, all the lower goods exist within a higher good.

The rock, the tree, the frog, and the rabbit, and the man, for that matter, are present in a single world, and for all that they are individually, they are nothing on their own. All of them aim for their own unity and good, in their own manner, and thereby prove that there is a highest unity and good that encompasses them all.

Sorry, I like frogs and rabbits. Use whatever examples may suit you best.

I quake in my boots because it means I can never think of my own good as independent of the good of other things, or of my unity as independent of the unity of all things.

In a lesser sense, it puts a terrible crimp in my sense of entitlement; in a greater sense, it liberates me by teaching me that I am not alone. The “good” and the “one” are ultimately the same, for each and every thing. 

Written in 9/2015