TEXT: Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (tr W.V. Cooper)

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (tr W.V. Cooper, 1902)

BOOK I

Met. I
Boethius bewails his changed circumstances

     'To pleasant songs my work was erstwhile given, and bright were
all my labours then; but now in tears to sad refrains am I compelled
to turn. Thus my maimed Muses guide my pen, and gloomy songs make no
feigned tears bedew my face. Then could no fear so overcome to leave
me companionless upon my way. They were the pride of my earlier
bright-lived days: in my later gloomy days they are the comfort of my
fate; for hastened by unhappiness has age come upon me without
warning, and grief hath set within me the old age of her gloom. White
hairs are scattered untimely on my head, and the skin hangs loosely
from my worn-out limbs.

     'Happy is that death which thrusts not itself upon men in their
pleasant years, yet comes to them at the oft-repeated cry of their
sorrow. Sad is it how death turns away from the unhappy with so deaf
an ear, and will not close, cruel, the eyes that weep. Ill is it to
trust to Fortune's fickle bounty, and while yet she smiled upon me,
the hour of gloom had well-nigh overwhelmed my head. Now has the cloud
put off its alluring face, wherefore without scruple my life drags out
its wearying delays.

     'Why, O my friends, did ye so often puff me up, telling me that
I was fortunate? For he that is fallen low did never firmly stand.
'
Prose I

Philosophy approaches Boethius: the form of her appearance is
allegorical

     While I was pondering thus in silence, and using my pen to set
down so tearful a complaint, there appeared standing over my head a
woman's form, whose countenance was full of majesty, whose eyes shone
as with fire and in power of insight surpassed the eyes of men, whose
colour was full of life, whose strength was yet intact though she was
so full of years that none would ever think that she was subject to
such age as ours. One could but doubt her varying stature, for at one
moment she repressed it to the common measure of a man, at another she
seemed to touch with her crown the very heavens: and when she had
raised higher her head, it pierced even the sky and baffled the sight
of those who would look upon it. Her clothing was wrought of the
finest thread by subtle workmanship brought to an indivisible piece.
This had she woven with her own hands, as I afterwards did learn by
her own shewing. Their beauty was somewhat dimmed by the dulness of
long neglect, as is seen in the smoke-grimed masks of our ancestors.
On the border below was inwoven the symbol (Pi), on that above was
to be read a (Theta)[1]. And between the two letters there could be
marked degrees, by which, as by the rungs of a ladder, ascent might be
made from the lower principle to the higher. Yet the hands of rough
men had torn this garment and snatched such morsels as they could
therefrom. In her right hand she carried books, in her left was a
sceptre brandished.

     When she saw that the Muses of poetry were present by my couch
giving words to my lamenting, she was stirred a while; her eyes
flashed fiercely, and said she, 'Who has suffered these seducing
mummers to approach this sick man? Never do they support those in
sorrow by any healing remedies, but rather do ever foster the sorrow
by poisonous sweets. These are they who stifle the fruit-bearing
harvest of reason with the barren briars of the passions: they free
not the minds of men from disease, but accustom them thereto. I would
think it less grievous if your allurements drew away from me some
uninitiated man, as happens in the vulgar herd. In such an one my
labours would be naught harmed, but this man has been nourished in the
lore of Eleatics and Academics; and to him have ye reached? Away with
you, Sirens, seductive unto destruction! leave him to my Muses to be
cared for and to be healed.'

     Their band thus rated cast a saddened glance upon the ground,
confessing their shame in blushes, and passed forth dismally over the
threshold. For my part, my eyes were dimmed with tears, and I could
not discern who was this woman of such commanding power. I was amazed,
and turning my eyes to the ground I began in silence to await what she
should do. Then she approached nearer and sat down upon the end of my
couch: she looked into my face heavy with grief and cast down by
sorrow to the ground, and then she raised her complaint over the
trouble of my mind in these words.

Met. II

     'Ah me! how blunted grows the mind when sunk below the
o'erwhelming flood! Its own true light no longer burns within, and it
would break forth to outer darknesses. How often care, when fanned by
earthly winds, grows to a larger and unmeasured bane. This man has
been free to the open heaven: his habit has it been to wander into the
paths of the sky: his to watch the light of the bright sun, his to
inquire into the brightness of the chilly moon; he, like a conqueror,
held fast bound in its order every star that makes its wandering
circle, turning its peculiar course. Nay, more, deeply has he searched
into the springs of nature, whence came the roaring blasts that ruffle
the ocean's bosom calm: what is the spirit that makes the firmament
revolve; wherefore does the evening star sink into the western wave
but to rise from the radiant East; what is the cause which so tempers
the season of Spring that it decks the earth with rose-blossoms;
whence comes it to pass that Autumn is prolific in the years of plenty
and overflows with teeming vines: deeply to search these causes was
his wont, and to bring forth secrets deep in Nature hid.

     'Now he lies there; extinct his reason's light, his neck in
heavy chains thrust down, his countenance with grievous weight
downcast; ah! the brute earth is all he can behold.

Prose II

     'But now,'said she, 'is the time for the physician's art, rather
than for complaining.' Then fixing her eyes wholly on me, she said,
'Are you the man who was nourished upon the milk of my learning,
brought up with my food until you had won your way to the power of a
manly soul? Surely I had given you such weapons as would keep you
safe, and your strength unconquered; if you had not thrown them away.
Do you know me? Why do you keep silence? Are you dumb from shame or
from dull amazement? I would it were from shame, but I see that
amazement has overwhelmed you.'

     When she saw that I was not only silent, but utterly tongue-tied
and dumb, she put her hand gently upon my breast, and said, 'There is
no danger: he is suffering from drowsiness, that disease which attacks
so many minds which have been deceived. He has forgotten himself for a
moment and will quickly remember, as soon as he recognises me. That he
may do so, let me brush away from his eyes the darkening cloud of
thoughts of matters perishable.' So saying, she gathered her robe into
a fold and dried my swimming eyes.

Met. III

     Then was dark night dispelled, the shadows fled away, and my
eyes received returning power as before. 'Twas just as when the
heavenly bodies are enveloped by the west wind's rush, and the sky
stands thick with watery clouds; the sun is hidden and the stars are
not yet come into the sky, and night descending from above o'erspreads
the earth: but if the north wind smites this scene, launched forth
from the Thracian cave, it unlocks the imprisoned daylight; the sun
shines forth, and thus sparkling Phoebus smites with his rays our
wondering eyes.

Prose III

Boethius gains power to address philosophy
Philosophy chides his lack of courage

     In such a manner were the clouds of grief scattered. Then I drew
breath again and engaged my mind in taking knowledge of my physician's
countenance. So when I turned my eyes towards her and fixed my gaze
upon her, I recognised my nurse, Philosophy, in whose chambers I had
spent my life from earliest manhood. And I asked her, 'Wherefore have
you, mistress of all virtues, come down from heaven above to visit my
lonely place of banishment? Is it that you, as well as I, may be
harried, the victim of false charges?' 'Should I,' said she, 'desert
you, my nursling? Should I not share and bear my part of the burden
which has been laid upon you from spite against my name? Surely
Philosophy never allowed herself to let the innocent go upon their
journey unbefriended. Think you I would fear calumnies? that I would
be terrified as though they were a new misfortune? Think you that this
is the first time that wisdom has been harassed by dangers among men
of shameless ways? In ancient days before the time of my child, Plato,
have we not as well as nowadays fought many a mighty battle against
the recklessness of folly? And though Plato did survive, did not his
master, Socrates, win his victory of an unjust death, with me present
at his side? When after him the followers of Epicurus, and in turn the
Stoics, and then others did all try their utmost to seize his legacy,
they dragged me, for all my cries and struggles, as though to share me
as plunder; they tore my robe which I had woven with mine own hands,
and snatched away the fragments thereof: and when they thought I had
altogether yielded myself to them, they departed. And since among them
were to be seen certain signs of my outward bearing, others ill-
advised did think they wore my livery: thus were many of them undone
by the errors of the herd of uninitiated. But if you have not heard of
the exile of Anaxagoras,[2] nor the poison drunk by Socrates,[3] nor
the torture of Zeno,[4] which all were of foreign lands, yet you may
know of Canius,[5] Seneca,[6] and Soranus,[7] whose fame is neither
small nor passing old. Naught else brought them to ruin but that,
being built up in my ways, they appeared at variance with the desires
of unscrupulous men. So it is no matter for your wonder if, in this
sea of life, we are tossed about by storms from all sides; for to
oppose evil men is the chief aim we set before ourselves. Though the
band of such men is great in numbers, yet is it to be contemned: for
it is guided by no leader, but is hurried along at random only by
error running riot everywhere. If this band when warring against us
presses too strongly upon us, our leader, Reason, gathers her forces
into her citadel, while the enemy are busied in plundering useless
baggage. As they seize the most worthless things, we laugh at them
from above, untroubled by the whole band of mad marauders, and we are
defended by that rampart to which riotous folly may not hope to
attain.

Met. IV

     'He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate, and set proud
death beneath his feet, can look fortune in the face, unbending both
to good and bad: his countenance unconquered he can shew. The rage and
threatenings of the sea will not move him though they stir from its
depths the upheaving swell: Vesuvius's furnaces may never so often
burst forth, and he may send rolling upwards smoke and fire; the
lightning, whose wont it is to smite down lofty towers, may flash upon
its way, but such men shall they never move. Why then stand they
wretched and aghast when fierce tyrants rage in impotence? Fear
naught, and hope naught: thus shall you have a weak man's rage
disarmed. But whoso fears with trembling, or desires aught from them,
he stands not firmly rooted, but dependent: thus has he thrown away
his shield; he can be rooted up, and he links for himself the very
chain whereby he may be dragged.

Prose IV

Boethius complains to Philosophy of his sufferings after his just life

     'Are such your experiences, and do they sink into your soul?'
she asked. 'Do you listen only as "the dull ass to the lyre"? Why do
you weep? Wherefore flow your tears? "Speak, nor keep secret in thine
heart." If you expect a physician to help you, you must lay bare your
wound.'

     Then did I rally my spirit till it was strong again, and
answered, 'Does the savage bitterness of my fortune still need
recounting? Does it not stand forth plainly enough of itself? Does not
the very aspect of this place strike you? Is this the library which
you had chosen for yourself as your sure resting-place in my house? Is
this the room in which you would so often tarry with me expounding the
philosophy of things human and divine? Was my condition like this, or
my countenance, when I probed with your aid the secrets of nature,
when you marked out with a wand the courses of the stars, when you
shaped our habits and the rule of all our life by the pattern of the
universe?[8] Are these the rewards we reap by yielding ourselves to
you? Nay, you yourself have established this saying by the mouth of
Plato, that commonwealths would be blessed if they were guided by
those who made wisdom their study, or if those who guided them would
make wisdom their study.[9] By the mouth of that same great man did
you teach that this was the binding reason why a commonwealth should
be governed by philosophers, namely that the helm of government should
not be left to unscrupulous or criminal citizens lest they should
bring corruption and ruin upon the good citizens.[10] Since, then, I
had learned from you in quiet and inaction of this view, I followed it
further, for I desired to practise it in public government. You and
God Himself, who has grafted you in the minds of philosophers, are my
witnesses that never have I applied myself to any office of state
except that I might work for the common welfare of all good men.
Thence followed bitter quarrels with evil men which could not be
appeased, and, for the sake of preserving justice, contempt of the
enmity of those in power, for this is the result of a free and
fearless conscience. How often have I withstood Conigastus[11]  to his
face, whenever he has attacked a weak man's fortune! How often have I
turned by force Trigulla,[11] the overseer of the Emperor's household,
from an unjust act that he had begun or even carried out! How many
times have I put my own authority in danger by protecting those
wretched people who were harried with unending false charges by the
greed of barbarian Goths which ever went unpunished! Never, I say, has
any man depraved me from justice to injustice. My heart has ached as
bitterly as those of the sufferers when I have seen the fortunes of
our subjects ruined both by the rapacity of persons and the taxes of
the state. Again, in a time of severe famine, a grievous, intolerable
sale by compulsion was decreed in Campania, and devastation threatened
that province. Then I undertook for the sake of the common welfare a
struggle against the commander of the Imperial guard; though the king
was aware of it, I fought against the enforcement of the sale, and
fought successfully. Paulinus was a man who had been consul: the
jackals of the court had in their own hopes and desires already
swallowed up his possessions, but I snatched him from their very
gaping jaws. I exposed myself to the hatred of the treacherous
informer Cyprian, that I might prevent Albinus, also a former consul,
being overwhelmed by the penalty of a trumped-up charge. Think you
that I have raised up against myself bitter and great quarrels enough?
But I ought to have been safer among those whom I helped; for, from my
love of justice, I laid up for myself among the courtiers no resource
to which I might turn for safety. Who, further, were the informers
upon whose evidence I was banished? One was Basilius: he was formerly
expelled from the royal service, and was driven by debt to inform
against me. Again, Opilio and Gaudentius had been condemned to exile
by the king for many unjust acts and crimes: this decree they would
not obey, and they sought sanctuary in sacred buildings, but when the
king was aware of it, he declared that if they departed not from
Ravenna before a certain day, they should be driven forth branded upon
their foreheads. What could be more stringent than this? Yet upon that
very day information against me was laid by these same men and
accepted. Why so? Did my character deserve this treatment? Or did my
prearranged condemnation give credit and justification to my accusers?
Did Fortune feel no shame for this? If not for innocence calumniated,
at any rate for the baseness of the calumniators?

     'Would you learn the sum of the charges against me? It was said
that "I had desired the safety of the Senate." You would learn in what
way. I was charged with "having hindered an informer from producing
papers by which the Senate could be accused of treason." What think
you, my mistress? Shall I deny it lest it shame you? Nay, I did desire
the safety of the Senate, nor shall ever cease to desire it. Shall I
confess it? Then there would have been no need to hinder an informer.
Shall I call it a crime to have wished for the safety of that order?
By its own decrees concerning myself it has established that this is a
crime. Though want of foresight often deceives itself, it cannot alter
the merits of facts, and, in obedience to the Senate's command, I
cannot think it right to hide the truth or to assent to falsehood.

     'However, I leave it to your judgment and that of philosophers
to decide how the justice of this may be; but I have committed to
writing for history the true course of events, that posterity may not
be ignorant thereof. I think it unnecessary to speak of the forged
letters through which I am accused of "hoping for the freedom of
Rome." Their falsity would have been apparent if I had been free to
question the evidence of the informers themselves, for their
confessions have much force in all such business.

     'But what avails it? No liberty is left to hope for. Would there
were any! I would answer in the words of Canius, who was accused by
Gaius Cæsar,[12] Germanicus's son, of being cognisant of a plot
against himself: " If I had known of it, you would not have."

     'And in this matter grief has not so blunted my powers that I
should complain of wicked men making impious attacks upon virtue: but
at this I do wonder, that they should hope to succeed. Evil desires
are, it may be, due to our natural failings, but that the conceptions
of any wicked mind should prevail against innocence while God watches
over us, seems to me unnatural. Wherefore not without cause has one of
your own followers asked, " If God is, whence come evil things? If He
is not, whence come good?"

     'Again, let impious men, who thirst for the blood of the whole
Senate and of all good citizens, be allowed to wish for the ruin of us
too whom they recognise as champions of the Senate and all good
citizens: but surely such as I have not deserved the same hatred from
the members of the Senate too?

     'Since you were always present to guide me in my words and my
deeds, I think you remember what happened at Verona. When King
Theodoric, desiring the common ruin of the Senate, was for extending
to the whole order the charge of treason laid against Albinus, you
remember how I laboured to defend the innocence of the order without
any care for my own danger? You know that I declare this truthfully
and with no boasting praise of self. For the secret value of a
conscience, that approves its own action, is lessened somewhat each
time that it receives the reward of fame by displaying its deeds. But
you see what end has fallen upon my innocency. In the place of the
rewards of honest virtue, I am suffering the punishments of an ill
deed that was not mine. And did ever any direct confession of a crime
find its judges so well agreed upon exercising harshness, that neither
the liability of the human heart to err, nor the changeableness of the
fortune of all mankind, could yield one dissentient voice? If it had
been said that I had wished to burn down temples, to murder with
sacrilegious sword their priests, that I had planned the massacre of
all good citizens, even so I should have been present to plead guilty
or to be convicted, before the sentence was executed. But here am I,
nearly five hundred miles away, without the opportunity of defending
myself, condemned to death and the confiscation of my property because
of my too great zeal for the Senate. Ah! well have they deserved that
none should ever be liable to be convicted on such a charge! Even
those who laid information have seen the honour of this accusation,
for, that they might blacken it with some criminal ingredient, they
had need to lie, saying that I had violated my conscience by using
unholy means to obtain offices corruptly. But you, by being planted
within me, dispelled from the chamber of my soul all craving for that
which perishes, and where your eyes were looking there could be no
place for any such sacrilege. For you instilled into my ears, and thus
into my daily thoughts, that saying of Pythagoras, "Follow after God."
Nor was it seemly that I, whom you had built up to such excellence
that you made me as a god, should seek the support of the basest wills
of men. Yet, further, the innocent life within my home, my gathering
of most honourable friends, my father-in-law Symmachus,[13] a man
esteemed no less in his public life than for his private
conscientiousness, these all put far from me all suspicion of this
crime. But -- O the shame of it! -- it is from you that they think
they derive the warrant for such a charge, and we seem to them to be
allied to ill-doing from this very fact that we are steeped in the
principles of your teaching, and trained in your manners of life. Thus
it is not enough that my deep respect for you has profited me nothing,
but you yourself have received wanton contumely from the hatred that
had rather fallen on me. Yet besides this, is another load added to my
heap of woes: the judgment of the world looks not to the deserts of
the case, but to the evolution of chance, and holds that only this has
been intended which good fortune may chance to foster: whence it comes
that the good opinion of the world is the first to desert the
unfortunate. It is wearisome to recall what were the tales by people
told, or how little their many various opinions agreed. This alone I
would fain say: it is the last burden laid upon us by unkind fortune,
that when any charge is invented to be fastened upon unhappy men, they
are believed to have deserved all they have to bear. For kindness I
have received persecutions; I have been driven from all my
possessions, stripped of my honours, and stained for ever in my
reputation. I think I see the intoxication of joy in the sin-steeped
dens of criminals: I see the most abandoned of men intent upon new and
evil schemes of spying: I see honest men lying crushed with the fear
which smites them after the result of my perilous case: wicked men one
and all encouraged to dare every crime without fear of punishment,
nay, with hope of rewards for the accomplishment thereof: the innocent
I see robbed not merely of their peace and safety, but even of all
chance of defending themselves. So then I may cry aloud:--

Met. V

     'Founder of the star-studded universe, resting on Thine eternal
throne whence Thou turnest the swiftly rolling sky, and bindest the
stars to keep Thy law; at Thy word the moon now shines brightly with
full face, ever turned to her brother's light, and so she dims the
lesser lights; or now she is herself obscured, for nearer to the sun
her beams shew her pale horns alone. Cool rises the evening star at
night's first drawing nigh: the same is the morning star who casts off
the harness that she bore before, and paling meets the rising sun.
When winter's cold doth strip the trees, Thou settest a shorter span
to day. And Thou, when summer comes to warm, dost change the short
divisions of the night. Thy power doth order the seasons of the year,
so that the western breeze of spring brings back the leaves which
winter's north wind tore away; so that the dog-star's heat makes ripe
the cars of corn whose seed Arcturus watched. Naught breaks that
ancient law: naught leaves undone the work appointed to its place.
Thus all things Thou dost rule with limits fixed: the lives of men
alone dost Thou scorn to restrain, as a guardian, within bounds. For
why does Fortune with her fickle hand deal out such changing lots? The
hurtful penalty is due to crime, but falls upon the sinless head:
depraved men rest at ease on thrones aloft, and by their unjust lot
can spurn beneath their hurtful heel the necks of virtuous men.
Beneath obscuring shadows lies bright virtue hid: the just man bears
the unjust's infamy. They suffer not for forsworn oaths, they suffer
not for crimes glozed over with their lies. But when their will is to
put forth their strength, with triumph they subdue the mightiest kings
whom peoples in their thousands fear. O Thou who dost weave the bonds
of Nature's self, look down upon this pitiable earth! Mankind is no
base part of this great work, and we are tossed on Fortune's wave.
Restrain, our Guardian, the engulfing surge, and as Thou dost the
unbounded heaven rule, with a like bond make true and firm these
lands.
'
Prose V

Philosophy reassures him

     While I grieved thus in long-drawn pratings, Philosophy looked
on with a calm countenance, not one whit moved by my complaints. Then
said she, 'When I saw you in grief and in tears I knew thereby that
you were unhappy and in exile, but I knew not how distant was your
exile until your speech declared it. But you have not been driven so
far from your home; you have wandered thence yourself: or if you would
rather hold that you have been driven, you have been driven by
yourself rather than by any other. No other could have done so to you.
For if you recall your true native country, you know that it is not
under the rule of the many-headed people, as was Athens of old, but
there is one Lord, one King, who rejoices in the greater number of his
subjects, not in their banishment. To be guided by his reins, to bow
to his justice, is the highest liberty. Know you not that sacred and
ancient law of your own state by which it is enacted that no man, who
would establish a dwelling-place for himself therein, may lawfully be
put forth? For there is no fear that any man should merit exile, if he
be kept safe therein by its protecting walls. But any man that may no
longer wish to dwell there, does equally no longer deserve to be
there. Wherefore it is your looks rather than the aspect of this place
which disturb me.[14] It is not the walls of your library, decked with
ivory and glass, that I need, but rather the resting-place in your
heart, wherein I have not stored books, but I have of old put that
which gives value to books, a store of thoughts from books of mine. As
to your services to the common weal, you have spoken truly, though but
scantily, if you consider your manifold exertions. Of all wherewith
you have been charged either truthfully or falsely, you have but
recorded what is well known. As for the crimes and wicked lies of the
informers, you have rightly thought fit to touch but shortly thereon,
for they are better and more fruitfully made common in the mouth of
the crowd that discusses all matters. You have loudly and strongly
upbraided the unjust ingratitude of the Senate: you have grieved over
the charges made against myself, and shed tears over the insult to my
fair fame: your last outburst of wrath was against Fortune, when you
complained that she paid no fair rewards according to deserts:
finally, you have prayed with passionate Muse that the same peace and
order, that are seen in the heavens, might also rule the earth. But
you are overwhelmed by this variety of mutinous passions: grief, rage,
and gloom tear your mind asunder, and so in this present mood stronger
measures cannot yet come nigh to heal you. Let us therefore use
gentler means, and since, just as matter in the body hardens into a
swelling, so have these disquieting influences, let these means soften
by kindly handling the unhealthy spot, until it will bear a sharper
remedy.

Met. VI

     'When the sign of the crab doth scorch the field, fraught with
the sun's most grievous rays, the husbandman that has freely intrusted
his seed to the fruitless furrow, is cheated by the faithless harvest-
goddess; and he must turn him to the oak tree's fruit.

     'When the field is scarred by the bleak north winds, wouldst
thou seek the wood's dark carpet to gather violets? If thou wilt enjoy
the grapes, wouldst thou seek with clutching hand to prune the vines
in spring? 'Tis in autumn Bacchus brings his gifts. Thus God marks out
the times and fits to them peculiar works: He has set out a course of
change, and lets no confusion come. If aught betake itself to headlong
ways, and leaves its sure design, ill will the outcome be thereto.

Prose VI

     'First then,' she continued,' will you let me find out and make
trial of the state of your mind by a few small questions, that so I
may understand what should be the method of your treatment?'

     'Ask,' said I, 'what your judgment would have you ask, and I
will answer you.'

     Then said she, 'Think you that this universe is guided only at
random and by mere chance? or think you there is any rule of reason
constituted in it?'

     'No, never would I think it could be so, nor believe that such
sure motions could be made at random or by chance. I know that God,
the founder of the universe, does overlook His work; nor ever may that
day come which shall drive me to abandon this belief as untrue.'

     'So is it,' she said, 'and even so you cried just now, and only
mourned that mankind alone has no part in this divine guardianship:
you were fixed in your belief that all other things are ruled by
reason. Yet, how strange! how much I wonder how it is that you can be
so sick though you are set in such a health-giving state of mind! But
let us look deeper into it: I cannot but think there is something
lacking. Since you are not in doubt that the universe is ruled by God,
tell me by what method you think that government is guided?'

     'I scarcely know the meaning of your question; much less can I
answer it.'

     'Was I wrong,' said she, 'to think that something was lacking,
that there was some opening in your armour, some way by which this
distracting disease has crept into your soul? But tell me, do you
remember what is the aim and end of all things? what the object to
which all nature tends?'

     'I have heard indeed, but grief has blunted my memory.'

     'But do you not somehow know whence all things have their
source?'

     'Yes,' I said; 'that source is God.'

     'Is it possible that you, who know the beginning of all things,
should not know their end? But such are the ways of these
distractions, such is their power, that though they can move a man's
position, they cannot pluck him from himself or wrench him from his
roots. But this question would I have you answer: do you remember that
you are a man?'

     'How can I but remember that?'

     'Can you then say what is a man?'

     'Need you ask? I know that he is an animal, reasoning and
mortal; that I know, and that I confess myself to be.'

     'Know you naught else that you are?' asked Philosophy.

     'Naught,' said I.

     'Now,' said she, 'I know the cause, or the chief cause, of your
sickness. You have forgotten what you are. Now therefore I have found
out to the full the manner of your sickness, and how to attempt the
restoring of your health. You are overwhelmed by this forgetfulness of
yourself: hence you have been thus sorrowing that you are exiled and
robbed of all your possessions. You do not know the aim and end of all
things; hence you think that if men are worthless and wicked, they are
powerful and fortunate. You have forgotten by what methods the
universe is guided; hence you think that the chances of good and bad
fortune are tossed about with no ruling hand. These things may lead
not to disease only, but even to death as well. But let us thank the
Giver of all health, that your nature has not altogether left you. We
have yet the chief spark for your health's fire, for you have a true
knowledge of the hand that guides the universe: you do believe that
its government is not subject to random chance, but to divine reason.
Therefore have no fear. From this tiny spark the fire of life shall
forthwith shine upon you. But it is not time to use severer remedies,
and since we know that it is the way of all minds to clothe themselves
ever in false opinions as they throw off the true, and these false
ones breed a dark distraction which confuses the true insight,
therefore will I try to lessen this darkness for a while with gentle
applications of easy remedies, that so the shadows of deceiving
passions may be dissipated, and you may have power to perceive the
brightness of true light.'

Met. VII

     'When the stars are hidden by black clouds, no light can they
afford. When the boisterous south wind rolls along the sea and stirs
the surge, the water, but now as clear as glass, bright as the fair
sun's light, is dark, impenetrable to sight, with stirred and
scattered sand. The stream, that wanders down the mountain's side,
must often find a stumbling-block, a stone within its path torn from
the hill's own rock. So too shalt thou: if thou wouldst see the truth
in undimmed light, choose the straight road, the beaten path; away
with passing joys! Away with fear! Put vain hopes to flight! And grant
no place to grief! Where these distractions reign, the mind is clouded
o'er, the soul is bound in chains.'


BOOK II

Prose I

Philosophy would prove that his opinions and griefs are not justified
in one of her followers

     THEN for a while she held her peace. But when her silence, so
discreet, made my thoughts to cease from straying, she thus began to
speak: 'If I have thoroughly learned the causes and the manner of your
sickness, your former good fortune has so affected you that you are
being consumed by longing for it. The change of one of her this alone
has overturned your peace of mind through your own imagination. I
understand the varied disguises of that unnatural state. I know how
Fortune is ever most friendly and alluring to those whom she strives
to deceive, until she overwhelms them with grief beyond bearing, by
deserting them when least expected. If you recall her nature, her
ways, or her deserts, you will see that you never had in her, nor have
lost with her, aught that was lovely. Yet, I think, I shall not need
great labour to recall this to your memory. For then too, when she was
at your side with all her flattery, you were wont to reproach her in
strong and manly terms; and to revile her with the opinions that you
had gathered in worship of me with my favoured ones. But no sudden
change of outward affairs can ever come without some upheaval in the
mind. Thus has it followed that you, like others, have fallen somewhat
away from your calm peace of mind. But it is time now for you to make
trial of some gentle and pleasant draught, which by reaching your
inmost parts shall prepare the way for yet stronger healing draughts.
Try therefore the assuring influence of gentle argument which keeps
its straight path only when it holds fast to my instructions. And with
this art of orators let my handmaid, the art of song, lend her aid in
chanting light or weighty harmonies as we desire.

     'What is it, mortal man, that has cast you down into grief and
mourning? You have seen something unwonted, it would seem, something
strange to you. But if you think that Fortune has changed towards you,
you are wrong. These are ever her ways: this is her very nature. She
has with you preserved her own constancy by her very change. She was
ever changeable at the time when she smiled upon you, when she was
mocking you with the allurements of false good fortune. You have
discovered both the different faces of the blind goddess. To the eyes
of others she is veiled in part: to you she has made herself wholly
known. If you find her welcome, make use of her ways, and so make no
complaining. If she fills you with horror by her treachery, treat her
with despite; thrust her away from you, for she tempts you to your
ruin. For though she is the cause of this great trouble for you, she
ought to have been the subject of calmness and peace. For no man can
ever make himself sure that she will never desert him, and thus has
she deserted you. Do you reckon such happiness to be prized, which is
sure to pass away? Is good fortune dear to you, which is with you for
a time and is not sure to stay, and which is sure to bring you
unhappiness when it is gone? But seeing that it cannot be stayed at
will, and that when it flees away it leaves misery behind, what is
such a fleeting thing but a sign of coming misery? Nor should it ever
satisfy any man to look only at that which is placed before his eyes.
Prudence takes measure of the results to come from all things. The
very changeableness of good and bad makes Fortune's threats no more
fearful, nor her smiles to be desired. And lastly, when you have once
put your neck beneath the yoke of Fortune, you must with steadfast
heart bear whatever comes to pass within her realm. But if you would
dictate the law by which she whom you have freely chosen to be your
mistress must stay or go, surely you will be acting without
justification; and your very impatience will make more bitter a lot
which you cannot change. If you set your sails before the wind, will
you not move forward whither the wind drives you, not whither your
will may choose to go? If you intrust your seed to the furrow, will
you not weigh the rich years and the barren against each other? You
have given yourself over to Fortune's rule, and you must bow yourself
to your mistress's ways. Are you trying to stay the force of her
turning wheel? Ah! dull-witted mortal, if Fortune begin to stay still,
she is no longer Fortune.

Met. I

     'As thus she turns her wheel of chance with haughty hand, and
presses on like the surge of Euripus's tides, fortune now tramples
fiercely on a fearsome king, and now deceives no less a conquered man
by raising from the ground his humbled face. She hears no wretch's
cry, she heeds no tears, but wantonly she mocks the sorrow which her
cruelty has made. This is her sport: thus she proves her power; if in
the selfsame hour one man is raised to happiness, and cast down in
despair, 'tis thus she shews her might.

Prose II

Philosophy shews how fortune may plead her justification

     'Now would I argue with you by these few words which Fortune
herself might use: and do you consider whether her demands are fair
"Why, O man," she might say, "do you daily accuse me with your
complainings? What injustice have I wrought upon you? Of what good
things have I robbed you? Choose your judge whom you will, and before
him strive with me for the right to hold your wealth and honours. If
you can prove that any one of these does truly belong to any mortal
man, readily will I grant that these you seek to regain were yours.
When nature brought you forth from your mother's womb, I received you
in my arms naked and bare of all things; I cherished you with my
gifts, and I brought you up all too kindly with my favouring care,
wherefore now you cannot bear with me, and I surrounded you with glory
and all the abundance that was mine to give. Now it pleases me to
withdraw my hand: be thankful, as though you had lived upon my loans.
You have no just cause of complaint, as though you had really lost
what was once your own. Why do you rail against me? I have wrought no
violence towards you. Wealth, honours, and all such are within my
rights. They are my handmaids; they know their mistress; they come
with me and go when I depart. Boldly will I say that if these, of
whose loss you complain, were ever yours, you would never have lost
them at all. Am I alone to be stayed from using my rightful power? The
heavens may grant bright sunlit days, and hide the same beneath the
shade of night. The year may deck the earth's countenance with flowers
and fruits, and again wrap it with chilling clouds. The sea may charm
with its smoothed surface, but no less justly it may soon bristle in
storms with rough waves. Is the insatiate discontent of man to bind me
to a constancy which belongs not to my ways? Herein lies my very
strength; this is my unchanging sport. I turn my wheel that spins its
circle fairly; I delight to make the lowest turn to the top, the
highest to the bottom. Come you to the top if you will, but on this
condition, that you think it no unfairness to sink when the rule of my
game demands it. Do you not know my ways? Have you not heard how
Croesus,[15] king of Lydia, who filled even Cyrus with fear but a
little earlier, was miserably put upon a pyre of burning faggots, but
was saved by rain sent down from heaven? Have you forgotten how Paulus
shed tears of respect for the miseries of his captive, King
Perses?[16] For what else is the crying and the weeping in tragedies
but for the happiness of kings overturned by the random blow of
fortune? Have you never learnt in your youth the ancient allegory that
in the threshold of Jove's hall there stand two vessels, one full of
evil, and one of good? What if you have received more richly of the
good? What if I have not ever withheld myself from you? What if my
changing nature is itself a reason that you should hope for better
things? In any way, let not your spirit eat itself away: you are set
in the sphere that is common to all, let your desire therefore be to
live with your own lot of life, a subject of the kingdom of the world.

Met. II

     "'If Plenty with o'erflowing horn scatter her wealth abroad,
abundantly, as in the storm-tossed sea the sand is cast around, or so
beyond all measure as the stars shine forth upon the studded sky in
cloudless nights; though she never stay her hand, yet will the race of
men still weep and wail. Though God accept their prayers freely and
give gold with ungrudging hand, and deck with honours those who
deserve them, yet when they are gotten, these gifts seem naught. Wild
greed swallows what it has sought, and still gapes wide for more. What
bit or bridle will hold within its course this headlong lust, when,
whetted by abundance of rich gifts, the thirst for possession burns?
Never call we that man rich who is ever trembling in haste and
groaning for that he thinks he lacks."

Prose III

Philosophy proceeds to justify fortune in the balance of accounts with
Boethius

     'If Fortune should thus defend herself to you,' said Philosophy,
'you would have naught, I think, to utter on the other part. But if
you have any just defence for your complaining, you must put it
forward. We will grant you the opportunity of speaking.'

     Then I answered, 'Those arguments have a fair form and are
clothed with all the sweetness of speech and of song. When a man
listens to them, they delight him; but only so long. The wretched have
a deeper feeling of their misfortunes. Wherefore when these pleasing
sounds fall no longer upon the ear, this deep-rooted misery again
weighs down the spirit.'

     'It is so,' she said. 'For these are not the remedies for your
sickness, but in some sort are the applications for your grief which
chafes against its cure. When the time comes, I will apply those which
are to penetrate deeply. But that you may not be content to think
yourself wretched, remember how many and how great have been the
occasions of your good fortune. I will not describe how, when you lost
your father, men of the highest rank received you into their care: how
you were chosen by the chief men in the state to be allied to them by
marriage;[17] and you were dear to them before you were ever closely
related; which is the most valuable of all relationships. Who
hesitated to pronounce you most fortunate for the greatness of your
wives' families, for their virtues, and for your blessings in your
sons too? I need not speak of those things that are familiar, so I
pass over the honours which are denied to most old men, but were
granted to you when yet young. I choose to come to the unrivalled
crown of your good fortune. If the enjoyment of anything mortal can
weigh at all in the balance of good fortune, can your memory of one
great day ever be extinguished by any mass of accumulated ills? I mean
that day when you saw your two sons proceed forth from your house as
consuls together, amid the crowding senators, the eager and applauding
populace: when they sat down in the seats of honour and you delivered
the speech of congratulation to the king, gaining thereby glory for
your talent and your eloquence: when in the circus you sat in the
place of honour between the consuls, and by a display of lavishness
worthy of a triumphing general, you pleased to the full the multitude
who were crowded around in expectation.

     'While Fortune then favoured you, it seems you flaunted her,
though she cherished you as her own darling. You carried off a bounty
which she had never granted to any citizen before. Will you then
balance accounts with Fortune? This is the first time that she has
looked upon you with a grudging eye. If you think of your happy and
unhappy circumstances both in number and in kind, you will not be able
to say that you have not been fortunate until now. And if you think
that you were not fortunate because these things have passed away
which then seemed to bring happiness, these things too are passing
away, which you now hold to be miserable, wherefore you cannot think
that you are wretched now. Is this your first entrance upon the stage
of life? Are you come here unprepared and a stranger to the scene?
Think you that there is any certainty in the affairs of mankind, when
you know that often one swift hour can utterly destroy a man? For
though the chances of life may seldom be depended upon, yet the last
day of a lifetime seems to be the end of Fortune's power, though it
perhaps would stay. What, think you, should we therefore say; that you
desert her by dying, or that she deserts you by leaving you?'

Met. III

     'When o'er the heaven Phoebus from his rose-red car begins to
shed his light abroad, his flames oppress the paling stars and blunt
their whitened rays. When the grove grows bright in spring with roses
'neath the west wind's warming breath, let but the cloudy gale once
wildly blow, and their beauty is gone, the thorns alone remain. Often
the sea is calmly glistening bright with all untroubled waves, but as
often does the north wind stir them up, making the troubling tempest
boil. If then the earth's own covering so seldom constant stays, if
its changes are so great, shalt thou trust the brittle fortunes of
mankind, have faith in fleeting good? For this is sure, and this is
fixed by everlasting law, that naught which is brought to birth shall
constant here abide.'

Prose IV

Boethius pleads that 'sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier
things,' and Philosophy answers him

     Then I answered her, 'Cherisher of all the virtues, you tell me
but the truth: I cannot deny my rapid successes and my prosperity. But
it is such remembrances that torment me more than others. For of all
suffering from Fortune, the unhappiest misfortune is to have known a
happy fortune.'

     'But,' said Philosophy, 'you are paying the penalty for your
mistaken expectations, and with this you cannot justly charge your
life's circumstances. If you are affected by this empty name of
Fortune's gift of happiness, you must listen while I recall how many
and how great are your sources of happiness: and thus, if you have
possessed that which is the most precious among all Fortune's gifts,
and if that is still safe and unharmed in your possession, you will
never, while you keep these better gifts, be able to justly charge
Fortune with unkindness. Firstly, your wife's father, Symmachus, is
still living and hale; and what more precious glory has the human race
than him? And he, because your worth is undiminished and your life
still so valuable, is mourning for the injustice you suffer, this man
who is wholly made up of wisdom and virtue. Again, your wife lives, a
woman whose character is full of virtue, whose modesty excels its
kind; a woman who (to put in a word the gifts she brought you) is like
her father. She lives, and, hating this life, for your sake alone she
clings to it. Herein only will I yield to allow you unhappiness; she
pines with tears and grief through her longing for you. Need I speak
of your sons who have both been consuls, and whose lives, as when they
were boys, are yet bright with the character of their grandfather and
their father? Wherefore, since mortals desire exceedingly to keep a
hold on life, how happy you should be, knew you but your blessings,
since you have still what none doubts to be dearer than life itself?
Wherefore now dry your tears. Fortune's hatred has not yet been so
great as to destroy all your holds upon happiness: the tempest that is
fallen upon you is not too great for you: your anchors hold yet firm,
and they should keep ever nigh to you confidence in the present and
hope for future time.'

     'And may they continue to hold fast,' said I, 'that is my
prayer: while they are firm, we will reach the end of our voyage,
however things may be. But you see how much my glory has departed.'

     And she answered, 'We have made some progress, if you are not
now weary entirely of your present lot. But I cannot bear this
dallying so softly, so long as you complain that your happiness lacks
aught, so long as you are full of sorrow and care. Whose happiness is
so firmly established that he has no quarrel from any side with his
estate of life? For the condition of our welfare is a matter fraught
with care: either its completeness never appears, or it never remains.
One man's wealth is abundant, but his birth and breeding put him to
shame. Another is famous for his noble birth, but would rather be
unknown because he is hampered by his narrow means. A third is blessed
with wealth and breeding, but bewails his life because he has no wife.
Another is happy in his marriage, but has no children, and saves his
wealth only for an heir that is no son of his. Another is blessed with
children, but weeps tears of sorrow for the misdeeds of son or
daughter. So none is readily at peace with the lot his fortune sends
him. For in each case there is that which is unknown to him who has
not experienced it, and which brings horror to him who has experienced
it. Consider further, that the feelings of the most fortunate men are
the most easily affected, wherefore, unless all their desires are
supplied, such men, being unused to all adversity, are cast down by
every little care: so small are the troubles which can rob them of
complete happiness.

     'How many are they, think you, who would think themselves raised
to heaven if the smallest part of the remnants of your good fortune
fell to them? This very place, which you call a place of exile, is
home to those who live herein. Thus there is nothing wretched unless
you think it to be so: and in like manner he who bears all with a calm
mind finds his lot wholly blessed. Who is so happy but would wish to
change his estate, if he yields to impatience of his lot? With how
much bitterness is the sweetness of man's life mingled! For even
though its enjoyment seem pleasant, yet it may not be surely kept from
departing when it will. It is plain then how wretched is the happiness
of mortal life which neither endures for ever with men of calm mind,
nor ever wholly delights the care-ridden. Wherefore, then, O mortal
men, seek ye that happiness without, which lies within yourselves? Ye
are confounded by error and ignorance. I will shew you as shortly as I
may, the pole on which turns the highest happiness. Is there aught
that you value more highly than your own self? You will answer that
there is nothing. If then you are master of yourself, you will be in
possession of that which you will never wish to lose, and which
Fortune will never be able to take from you. Yet consider this
further, that you may be assured that happiness cannot be fixed in
matters of chance: if happiness is the highest good of a man who lives
his life by reason, and if that which can by any means be snatched
away, is not the highest good (since that which is best cannot be
snatched away), it is plain that Fortune by its own uncertainty can
never come near to reaching happiness. Further, the man who is borne
along by a happiness which may stumble, either knows that it may
change, or knows it not: if he knows it not, what happiness can there
be in the blindness of ignorance ? If he knows it, he must needs live
in fear of losing that which he cannot doubt that he may lose;
wherefore an ever-present fear allows not such an one to be happy. Or
at any rate, if he lose it without unhappiness, does he not think it
worthless? For that, whose loss can be calmly borne, is indeed a small
good. You, I know well, are firmly persuaded that men's understandings
can never die; this truth is planted deep in you by many proofs: since
then it is plain that the happiness of fortune is bounded by the death
of the body, you cannot doubt that, if death can carry away happiness,
the whole race of mortals is sinking into wretchedness to be found
upon the border of death. But we know that many have sought the
enjoyment of happiness not only by death, but even by sorrow and
sufferings: how then can the presence of this life make us happy, when
its end cannot make us unhappy?

Met. IV

     'He that would build on a lasting resting-place; who would be
firm to resist the blasts of the storming wind; who seeks, too, safety
where he may contemn the surge and threatening of the sea; must leave
the lofty mountain's top, and leave the thirsting sands. The hill is
swept by all the might of the headstrong gale: the sands dissolve, and
will not bear the load upon them. Let him fly the danger in a lot
which is pleasant rest unto the eye: let him be mindful to set his
house surely upon the lowly rock. Then let the wind bellow,
confounding wreckage in the sea, and thou wilt still be founded upon
unmoving peace, wilt be blessed in the strength of thy defence: thy
life will be spent in calmness, and thou mayest mock the raging
passions of the air.

Prose V

Philosophy examines more carefully the value of things highly prized
by men

     'But now,' she continued, 'the first remedies of reasoning are
reaching you more deeply, and I think I should now use those that are
somewhat stronger. If the gifts of Fortune fade not nor pass quickly
away, even so, what is there in them which could ever be truly yours,
or which would not lose its value when examined or thought upon?

     'Are riches valuable for their own nature, or on account of your
and other men's natures? Which is the more valuable, the gold itself
or the power of the stored up-money? Surely wealth shines more
brightly when spent than when put away in masses. Avarice ever brings
hatred, while generous spending brings honour. But that cannot remain
with one person which is handed over to another: therefore money
becomes valuable to its possessor when, by being scattered, it is
transferred to others, and ceases to be possessed. And if all that is
heaped together among mankind comes to one man, it makes the others
all poor. A voice indeed fills equally the ears of all that hear: but
your riches cannot pass to others without being lessened: and when
they pass, they make poor those whom they leave. How strait then and
poor are those riches, which most men may not have, and which can only
come to one by making others poor!

     'Think again of precious stones: does their gleam attract your
eyes? But any excellence they have is their own brilliance, and
belongs not to men: wherefore I am amazed that men so strongly admire
them. What manner of thing can that be which has no mind to influence,
which has no structure of parts, and yet can justly seem to a living,
reasoning mind to be beautiful? Though they be works of their creator,
and by their own beauty and adornment have a certain low beauty, yet
are they in rank lower than your own excellence, and have in no wise
deserved your admiration.

     'Does the beauty of landscape delight you?'

     'Surely, for it is a beautiful part of a beautiful creation: and
in like manner we rejoice at times in the appearance of a calm sea,
and we admire the sky, the stars, the sun, and the moon.'

     'Does any one of these,' said she, 'concern you? Dare you boast
yourself of the splendid beauty of any one of such things? Are you
yourself adorned by the flowers of spring? Is it your richness that
swells the fruits of autumn? Why are you carried away by empty
rejoicing. Why do you embrace as your own the good things which are
outside yourself? Fortune will never make yours what Nature has made
to belong to other things. The fruits of the earth should doubtless
serve as nourishment for living beings, but if you would satisfy your
need as fully as Nature needs, you need not the abundance of Fortune.
Nature is content with very little, and if you seek to thrust upon her
more than is enough, then what you cast in will become either
unpleasing or even harmful.

     'Again, you think that you appear beautiful in many kinds of
clothing. But if their form is pleasant to the eyes, I would admire
the nature of the material or the skill of the maker. Or are you made
happy by a long line of attendants? Surely if they are vicious, they
are but a burden to the house, and full of injury to their master
himself; while if they are honest, how can the honesty of others be
counted among your possessions?

     'Out of all these possessions, then, which you reckon as your
wealth, not one can really be shown to be your own. For if they have
no beauty for you to acquire, what have they for which you should
grieve if you lose them, or in keeping which you should rejoice? And
if they are beautiful by their own nature, how are you the richer
thereby? For these would have been pleasing of themselves, though cut
out from your possessions. They do not become valuable by reason that
they have come into your wealth; but you have desired to count them
among your wealth, because they seemed valuable. Why then do you long
for them with such railing against Fortune? You seek, I believe, to
put want to flight by means of plenty. But you find that the opposite
results. The more various is the beauty of furniture, the more helps
are needed to keep it beautiful; and it is ever true that they who
have much, need much; and on the other hand, they need least who
measure their wealth by the needs of nature, not by excess of display.

     'Is there then no good which belongs to you and is implanted
within you, that you seek your good things elsewhere, in things
without you and separate from you? Have things taken such a turn that
the animal, whose reason gives it a claim to divinity, cannot seem
beautiful to itself except by the possession of. lifeless trappings?
Other classes of things are satisfied by their intrinsic possessions;
but men, though made like God in understanding, seek to find among the
lowest things adornment for their higher nature: and you do not
understand that you do a great wrong thereby to your Creator. He
intended that the human race should be above all other earthly beings;
yet you thrust down your honourable place below the lowest. For if
every good thing is allowed to be more valuable than that to which it
belongs, surely you are putting yourselves lower than them in your
estimation, since you think precious the most worthless of things; and
this is indeed a just result. Since, then, this is the condition of
human nature, that it surpasses other classes only when it realises
what is in itself; as soon as it ceases to know itself, it must be
reduced to a lower rank than the beasts. To other animals ignorance of
themselves is natural; in men it is a fault. How plainly and how
widely do you err by thinking that anything can be adorned by
ornaments that belong to others! Surely that cannot be. For if
anything becomes brilliant by additions thereto, the praise for the
brilliance belongs to the additions. But the subject remains in its
own vileness, though hidden and covered by these externals.

     'Again, I say that naught can be a good thing which does harm to
its possessor. Am I wrong? "No," you will say. Yet many a time do
riches harm their possessors, since all base men, who are therefore
the most covetous, think that they themselves alone are worthy to
possess all gold and precious stones. You therefore, who now go in
fear of the cudgel and sword of the robber, could laugh in his face if
you had entered upon this path with empty pockets.[18] How wonderful
is the surpassing blessing of mortal wealth! As soon as you have
acquired it, your cares begin!

Met. V

     'O happy was that early age of men, contented with their trusted
and unfailing fields, nor ruined by the wealth that enervates. Easily
was the acorn got that used to satisfy their longwhile fast. They knew
not Bacchus' gifts, nor honey mixed therewith. They knew not how to
tinge with Tyre's purple dyes the sheen of China's silks. Their sleep
kept health on rush and grass; the stream gave them to drink as it
flowed by: the lofty pine to them gave shade. Not one of them yet
clave the ocean's depths, nor, carrying stores of merchandise, had
visited new shores. Then was not heard the battle's trump, nor had
blood made red with bitter hate the bristling swords of war. For why
should any madness urge to take up first their arms upon an enemy such
ones as knew no sight of cruel wounds nor knew rewards that could be
reaped in blood? Would that our times could but return to those old
ways! but love of gain and greed of holding burn more fiercely far
than Ætna's fires. Ah! who was the wretch who first unearthed the mass
of hidden gold, the gems that only longed to lie unfound? For full of
danger was the prize he found.

Prose VI

     'What am I to say of power and of the honours of office, which
you raise to heaven because you know not true honoured power? What
fires belched forth from Ætna's flames, what overwhelming flood could
deal such ruin as these when they fall into the hands of evil men? I
am sure you remember how your forefathers wished to do away with the
consular power, which had been the very foundation of liberty, because
of the overbearing pride of the consuls, just as your ancestors had
too in earlier times expunged from the state the name of king on
account of the same pride. But if, as rarely happens, places of honour
are granted to honest men, what else is delightful in them but the
honesty they practise thereby? Wherefore honour comes not to virtue
from holding office, but comes to office from virtues there practised.

     'But what is the power which you seek and esteem so highly? O
creatures of the earth, can you not think over whom you are set? If
you saw in a community of mice, one mouse asserting his rights and his
power over the others, with what mirth you would greet the sight! Yet
if you consider the body, what can you find weaker than humanity?
Cannot a tiny gnat by its bite, or by creeping into the inmost parts,
kill that body? How can any exercise right upon any other except upon
the body alone, or that which is below the body, whereby I mean the
fortunes? Can you ever impose any law upon a free spirit? Can you ever
disturb the peculiar restfulness which is the property of a mind that
hangs together upon the firm basis of its reason? When a certain
tyrant thought that by tortures he would compel a free man[l9] to
betray the conspirators in a plot against his life, the philosopher
bit through his tongue and spat it out in the tyrant's face. Thus were
the tortures, which the tyrant intended to have cruel results, turned
by the philosopher into subjects of high courage. Is there aught that
one man can do to another, which he may not suffer from another in his
turn? We have heard how Busiris, who used to kill strangers, was
killed by Hercules when he came to Egypt. Regulus,[20] who had cast
into chains many a Carthaginian captive, soon yielded himself a
prisoner to their chains. Do you think that power to be any power,
whose possessor cannot ensure his own escape from suffering at
another's hands what he inflicts upon some other?

     'Further, if there were any intrinsic good in the nature of
honours and powers themselves, they could never crowd upon the basest
men. For opposites will not be bound together. Nature refuses to allow
contraries to be linked to each other. Wherefore, while it is
undoubted that for the most part offices of honour are enjoyed by bad
men, it is also manifest that those things are not by nature good,
which allow themselves to cling to evil men. And this indeed may
worthily be held of all the gifts of fortune which come with the
greatest success to the most unscrupulous. And in this matter we must
also think on this fact, that no one doubts a man to be brave in whom
he has found by examination that bravery is implanted: and whoever has
the quality of swiftness is plainly swift. So also music makes men
musical, medicine makes men physicians, oratory makes men orators. The
nature of each quality acts as is peculiar to itself: it is not
confused with the results of contrary qualities, but goes so far as to
drive out those qualities which are opposed to it. Wealth cannot
quench the insatiable thirst of avarice: nor can power ever make
master of himself the man whom vicious passions hold fast in
unbreakable chains. Honours, when joined to dishonest men, so far from
making them honourable, betray them rather, and show them to be
dishonourable. Why is this so? It is because you rejoice to call
things by false names which belong not to them;  their names are
refuted by the reality of their qualities: wherefore neither riches,
nor that kind of power, nor these honours, can justly so be called.
Lastly, we may come to the same conclusion concerning all the aspects
of Fortune: nothing is to be sought in her, and it is plain she has no
innate good, for she is not always joined with good men, nor does she
make good those with whom she is joined.'

Met. VI

     'We have heard what ruin Nero wrought when Rome was burnt and
senators were slain. We know how savagely he did to death his
brother,[21] how he was stained by the spilling of his own mother's
blood, and how he looked upon her cold body and yet no tear fell upon
his cheek: yet could this man be judge of the morals that were dead.
Nay, he was ruler of the peoples whom the sun looks upon from the time
he rises in the east until he hides his rays beneath the waves, and
those whom the chilling northern Wain o'errules, and those whom the
southern gale burns with its dry blast, as it heats the burning sands.
Say, could great power chasten Nero's maddened rage? Ah! heavy fate,
how often is the sword of high injustice given where is already most
poisonous cruelty!'

Prose VII

Philosophy discusses fame, 'that last infirmity of noble minds'

     Then I said, 'You know that the vain-glory of this world has had
but little influence over me; but I have desired the means of so
managing affairs that virtue might not grow aged in silence.'

     'Yes,' said she, 'but there is one thing which can attract
minds, which, though by nature excelling, yet are not led by
perfection to the furthest bounds of virtue; and that thing is the
love of fame and reputation for deserving well of one's country. Think
then thus upon it, and see that it is but a slight thing of no weight.
As you have learnt from astronomers' shewing, the whole circumference
of the earth is but as a point compared with the size of the heavens.
That is, if you compare the earth with the circle of the universe, it
must be reckoned as of no size at all. And of this tiny portion of the
universe there is but a fourth part, as you have learnt from the
demonstration of Ptolemæus,[22] which is inhabited by living beings
known to us. If from this fourth part you imagine subtracted all that
is covered by sea and marsh, and all the vast regions of thirsty
desert, you will find but the narrowest space left for human
habitation. And do you think of setting forth your fame and publishing
your name in this space, which is but as a point within another point
so closely circumscribed? And what size or magnificence can fame have
which is shut in by such close and narrow bounds? Further, this narrow
enclosure of habitation is peopled by many races of men which differ
in language, in customs, and in their whole scheme of living; and
owing to difficulty of travelling, differences of speech, and rareness
of any intercourse, the fame of cities cannot reach them, much less
the fame of men. Has not Cicero written somewhere that in his time the
fame of Rome had not reached the mountains of the Caucasus, though the
Republic was already well grown and striking awe among the Parthians
and other nations in those parts? Do you see then how narrow and
closely bounded must be that fame which you wish to extend more
widely? Can the fame of a Roman ever reach parts to which the name of
Rome cannot come?

     'Further, the manners and customs of different races are so
little in agreement, that what is make his name known, because he
takes pleasure in a glorious fame. So each man shall be content if his
fame travels throughout his own countrymen, and the immortality of his
name shall be bounded by the limits of one nation. But how many men,
the most famous of their times, are wiped out by oblivion because no
man has written of them![23] And yet what advantage is there in much
that is written? For with their authors these writings are overwhelmed
in the length and dimness of age. Yet when you think upon your fame in
future ages, you seem to think that you are prolonging it to
immortality. But if you think upon the unending length of eternity,
what enjoyment do you find in the long endurance of  your name? For
though one moment bears but the least proportion to ten thousand
years, yet there is a definite ratio, because both are limited spaces
of time. But even ten thousand years, or the greatest number you will,
cannot even be compared with eternity. For there will always be ratio
between finite things, but between the finite and the infinite there
can never be any comparison. Wherefore, however long drawn out may be
the life of your fame, it is not even small, but it is absolutely
nothing when compared with eternity. You know not how to act rightly
except for the breezes of popular opinion and for the sake of empty
rumours; thus the excellence of conscience and of virtue is left
behind, and you seek rewards from the tattle of other men. Listen to
the witty manner in which one played once upon the shallowness of this
pride. A certain man once bitterly attacked another who had taken to
himself falsely the name of philosopher, not for the purpose of true
virtue, but for pride of fame; he added to his attack that he would
know soon whether he was a philosopher, when he saw whether the other
bore with meekness and patience the insults he heaped upon him. The
other showed patience for a while and took the insults as though he
scoffed at them, until he said, "Do you now see that I am a
philosopher?" "I should have, had you kept silence," said the other
stingingly. But we are speaking of great men: and I ask, what do they
gain from fame, though they seek glory by virtue? what have they after
the body is dissolved at death? For if men die utterly, as our reason
forbids us to believe, there is no glory left to them at all, since
they whose it is said to be, do not exist. If, on the other hand, the
mind is still conscious and working when it is freed from its earthly
prison, it seeks heaven in its freedom and surely spurns all earthly
traffic: it enjoys heaven and rejoices in its release from the of this
world.

Met. VII

     'The mind that rushes headlong in its search for fame, thinking
that is its highest good, should look upon the spreading regions of
the air, and then upon the bounded tracts that are this world: then
will shame enter it; that, though fame grow, yet can it never fill so
small a circle. Proud men! why will ye try in vain to free your necks
from the yoke mortality has set thereon? Though fame may be wide
scattered and find its way through distant lands, and set the tongues
there talking; though a splendid house may draw brilliance from famous
names and tales; yet death regards not any glory, howsoever great.
Alike he overwhelms the lowly and the lofty head, and levels high with
low.

     'Where are Fabricius's[24] bones, that honourable man? What now
is Brutus?[25] or unbending Cato?[26] Their fame survives in this: it
has no more than a few slight letters shewing forth an empty name. We
see their noble names engraved, and only know thereby that they are
brought to naught. Ye lie then all unknown, and fame can give no
knowledge of you. But if you think that life can be prolonged by the
breath of mortal fame, yet when the slow time robs you of this too,
then there awaits you but a second death.

Prose VIII

     'But,' she said, 'do not think that I would urge implacable war
upon Fortune. There are times when her deception of men has certain
merits: I mean when she discovers herself, unveils her face, and
proclaims her ways. Perhaps you do not yet understand what I would
say. It is a strange thing that I am trying to say, and for that
reason I can scarcely explain myself in words. I think that ill
fortune is of greater advantage to men than good fortune. Good fortune
is ever lying when she seems to favour by an appearance of happiness.
Ill fortune is ever true when by her changes she shews herself
inconstant. The one deceives; the other edifies. The one by a
deceitful appearance of good things enchains the minds of those who
enjoy them: the other frees them by a knowledge that happiness is so
fragile. You see, then, that the one is blown about by winds, is ever
moving and ever ignorant of its own self; the other is sober, ever
prepared and ever made provident by the undergoing of its very
adversities. Lastly, good fortune draws men from the straight path of
true good by her fawning: ill fortune draws most men to the true good,
and holds them back by her curved staff.

     'And do you think that this should be reckoned among the least
benefits of this rough, unkind, and terrible ill fortune, that she has
discovered to you the minds of your faithful friends? Fortune has
distinguished for you your sure and your doubtful friends; her
departure has taken away her friends and left you yours. At what price
could you have bought this benefit if you had been untouched and, as
you thought, fortunate? Cease then to seek the wealth you have lost.
You have found your friends, and they are the most precious of all
riches.

Met. VIII

     'Through Love[27] the universe with constancy makes changes all
without discord: earth's elements, though contrary, abide in treaty
bound: Phoebus in his golden car leads up the glowing day; his sister
rules the night that Hesperus brought: the greedy sea confines its
waves in bounds, lest the earth's borders be changed by its beating on
them: all these are firmly bound by Love, which rules both earth and
sea, and has its empire in the heavens too. If Love should slacken
this its hold, all mutual love would change to war; and these would
strive to undo the scheme which now their glorious movements carry out
with trust and with accord. By Love are peoples too kept bound
together by a treaty which they may not break. Love binds with pure
affection the sacred tie of wedlock, and speaks its bidding to all
trusty friends. O happy race of mortals, if your hearts are ruled as
is the universe, by Love![28]'


BOOK III

Prose I

     When she finished her lay, its soothing tones left me spellbound
with my ears alert in my eagerness to listen. So a while afterwards I
said, 'Greatest comforter of weary minds, how have you cheered me with
your deep thoughts and sweet singing too! No more shall I doubt my
power to meet the blows of Fortune. So far am I from terror at the
remedies which you did lately tell me were sharper, that I am longing
to hear them, and eagerly I beg you for them.'

     Then said she, 'I knew it when you laid hold upon my words in
silent attention, and I was waiting for that frame of mind in you, or
more truly, I brought it about in you. They that remain are indeed
bitter to the tongue, but sweet to the inner man. But as you say you
are eager to hear, how ardently you would be burning, if you knew
whither I am attempting to lead you!'

     'Whither is that?' I asked.

     'To the true happiness, of which your soul too dreams; but your
sight is taken up in imaginary views thereof, so that you cannot look
upon itself.'

     Then said I, 'I pray you shew me what that truly is, and
quickly.'

     'I will do so,' she said, 'for your sake willingly. But first I
will try to picture in words and give you the form of the cause, which
is already better known to you, that so, when that picture is perfect
and you turn your eyes to the other side, you may recognise the form
of true happiness.

Met. I

     'When a man would sow in virgin soil, first he clears away the
bushes, cuts the brambles and the ferns, that the corn-goddess may go
forth laden with her new fruit. The honey, that the bee has toiled to
give us, is sweeter when the mouth has tasted bitter things. The stars
shine with more pleasing grace when a storm has ceased to roar and
pour down rain. After the morning star has dispersed the shades of
night, the day in all its beauty drives its rosy chariot forth. So
thou hast looked upon false happiness first; now draw thy neck from
under her yoke: so shall true happiness now come into thy soul.'

Prose II

Philosophy discusses 'the highest good'

     She lowered her eyes for a little while as though searching the
innermost recesses of her mind; and then she continued:-- 'The trouble
of the many and various aims of mortal men bring them much care, and
herein they go forward by different paths but strive to reach one end,
which is happiness. And that good is that, to which if any man attain,
he can desire nothing further. It is that highest of all good things,
and it embraces in itself all good things: if any good is lacking, it
cannot be the highest good, since then there is left outside it
something which can be desired. Wherefore happiness is a state which
is made perfect by the union of all good things. This end all men seek
to reach, as I said, though by different paths. For there is implanted
by nature in the minds of men a desire for the true good; but error
leads them astray towards false goods by wrong paths.

     'Some men believe that the highest good is to lack nothing, and
so they are at pains to possess abundant riches. Others consider the
true good to be that which is most worthy of admiration, and so they
strive to attain to places of honour, and to be held by their fellow-
citizens in honour thereby. Some determine that the highest good lies
in the highest power; and so they either desire to reign themselves,
or try to cleave to those who do reign. Others think that renown is
the greatest good, and they therefore hasten to make a famous name by
the arts of peace or of war. But more than all measure the fruit of
good by pleasure and enjoyment, and these think that the happiest man
is abandoned to pleasure.

     'Further, there are those who confuse the aims and the causes of
these good things: as those who desire riches for the sake of power or
of pleasure, or those who seek power for the sake of money or
celebrity. In these, then, and other things like to them, lies the aim
of men's actions and prayers, such as renown and popularity, which
seem to afford some fame, or wife and children, which are sought for
the pleasure they give. On the other hand, the good of friends, which
is the most honourable and holy of all, lies not in Fortune's but in
Virtue's realm. All others are adopted for the sake of power or
enjoyment.

     'Again, it is plain that the good things of the body must be
accounted to those false causes which we have mentioned; for bodily
strength and stature seem to make men more able and strong; beauty and
swiftness seem to give renown; health seems to give pleasure. By all
these happiness alone is plainly desired. For each man holds that to
be the highest good, which he seeks before all others. But we have
defined the highest good to be happiness. Wherefore what each man
desires above all others, he holds to be a state of happiness.

     'Wherefore you have each of these placed before you as the form
of human happiness: wealth, honours, power, glory, and pleasure.
Epicurus[29] considered these forms alone, and accordingly determined
upon pleasure as the highest good, because all the others seemed but
to join with it in bringing enjoyment to the mind.

     'But to return to the aims of men: their minds seem to seek to
regain the highest good, and their memories seem to dull their powers.
It is as though a drunken man were seeking his home, but could not
remember the way thither. Can those people be altogether wrong whose
aim it is to lack nothing? No, there is nothing which can make
happiness so perfect as an abundant possession of good things, needing
naught that belongs to others, but in all ways sufficing for itself.
Surely those others too are not mistaken who think that what is best
is also most worthy of reverence and respect. It cannot be any cheap
or base thing, to attain which almost all men aim and strive. And is
power not to be accounted a good thing? Surely it is: can that be a
weak thing or forceless, which is allowed in all cases to excel? Is
renown of no value? We cannot surrender this; that whatever is most
excellent, has also great renown. It is hardly worth saying that
happiness has no torturing cares or gloom, and is not subject to grief
and trouble; for even in small things, the aim is to find that which
it is a delight to have and to enjoy. These, then, are the desires of
men: they long for riches, places of honour, kingdoms, glory, and
pleasure; and they long for them because they think that thereby they
will find satisfaction, veneration, power, renown, and happiness. It
is the good then which men seek by their different desires; and it is
easy to shew how great a force nature has put therein, since in spite
of such varying and discordant opinions, they are all agreed in the
goal they seek, that of the highest good.

Met. II

     'I would to pliant strings set forth a song of how almighty
Nature turns her guiding reins, telling with what laws her providence
keeps safe this boundless universe, binding and tying each and all
with cords that never shall be loosed. The lions of Carthage, though
they bear the gorgeous bonds and trappings of captivity, and eat the
food that is given them by hand, and though they fear their harsh
master with his lash they know so well; yet if once blood has touched
their bristling jaws, their old, their latent wills return; with deep
roaring they remember their old selves; they loose their bands and
free their necks, and their tamer is the first torn by their cruel
teeth, and his blood is poured out by their rage and wrath.

     'If the bird who sings so lustily upon the high tree-top, be
caught and caged, men may minister to him with dainty care, may give
him cups of liquid honey and feed him with all gentleness on plenteous
food; yet if he fly to the roof of his cage and see the shady trees he
loves, he spurns with his foot the food they have put before him; the
woods are all his sorrow calls for, for the woods he sings with his
sweet tones.

     'The bough which has been downward thrust by force of strength
to bend its top to earth, so soon as the pressing hand is gone, looks
up again straight to the sky above.

     'Phœbus sinks into the western waves, but by his unknown track
he turns his car once more to his rising in the east.

     'All things must find their own peculiar course again, and each
rejoices in his own return. Not one can keep the order handed down to
it, unless in some way it unites its rising to its end, and so makes
firm, immutable, its own encircling course.

Prose III

Philosophy shews the vanity of riches

     'And you too, creatures of the earth, do dream of your first
state, though with a dim idea. With whatsoever thinking it may be, you
look to that goal of happiness, though never so obscure your thoughts:
thither, to true happiness, your natural course does guide you, and
from the same your various errors lead you. For I would have you
consider whether men can reach the end they have resolved upon, namely
happiness, by these ways by which they think to attain thereto. If
money and places of honour and such-like do bring anything of that
sort to a man who seems to lack no good thing, then let us acknowledge
with them that men do become happy by the possession of these things.
But if they cannot perform their promises, and there is still lack of
further good things, surely it is plain that a false appearance of
happiness is there discovered. You, therefore, who had lately abundant
riches, shall first answer me. With all that great wealth, was your
mind never perturbed by torturing care arising from some sense of
injustice?'

     'Yes,' I said; 'I cannot remember that my mind was ever free
from some such care.'

     'Was it not because something was lacking, which you missed, or
because something was present to you which you did not like to have?'

     'Yes,' I answered.

     'You desired, then, the presence of the one, and the absence of
the other?'

     'I acknowledge it.'

     'Then,' said she, 'such a man lacks what he desires.'

     'He does.'

     'But while a man lacks anything, can he possibly satisfy
himself?'

     'No,' said I.

     'Then, while you were bountifully supplied with wealth, you felt
that you did not satisfy yourself?'

     'I did indeed.'

     'Then,' said she, 'wealth cannot prevent a man from lacking or
make him satisfied. And this is what it apparently professed to do.
And this point too I feel is most important: money has in itself, by
its own nature, nothing which can prevent its being carried off from
those, who possess it, against their will.'

     'It has not,' I said.

     'No, you cannot deny that any stronger man may any day snatch it
from them. For how come about the quarrels of the law-courts ? Is it
not because people try to regain money that has been by force or by
fraud taken from them?' 'Yes,' I answered.

     'Then,' said she, 'a man will need to seek from the outside help
to guard his own money.'

     'That cannot be denied,' I said.

     'And a man will not need that unless he possesses money which he
can lose.'

     'Undoubtedly he will not.'

     'Then the argument turns round the other way,' she said. 'The
riches which were thought to make a man all-sufficient for himself, do
really put him in need of other people's help. Then how can need be
separated from wealth? Do the rich never feel hunger nor thirst? Do
the limbs of moneyed men never feel the cold of winter? You will say,
"Yes, but the rich have the wherewithal to satisfy hunger and thirst,
and drive away cold." But though riches may thus console wants, they
cannot entirely take them away. For, though these ever crying wants,
these continual requests, are satisfied, yet there must exist that
which is to be satisfied. I need not say that nature is satisfied with
little, greed is never satisfied. Wherefore, I ask you, if wealth
cannot remove want, and even creates its own wants, what reason is
there that you should think it affords satisfaction to a man?

Met. III

     'Though the rich man with greed heap up from ever-flowing
streams the wealth that cannot satisfy, though he deck himself with
pearls from the Red Sea's shore, and plough his fertile field with
oxen by the score, yet gnawing care will never in his lifetime leave
him, and at his death his wealth will not go with him, but leave him
faithlessly.'

Prose IV

The vanity of high places

     'But,' I urged, 'places of honour make the man, to whom they
fall, honoured and venerated.'

     'Ah!' she answered, 'have those offices their force in truth
that they may instil virtues into the minds of those that hold them,
and drive out vices therefrom? And yet we are too well accustomed to
see them making wickedness conspicuous rather than avoiding it.
Wherefore we are displeased to see such places often falling to the
most wicked of men, so that Catullus called Nonius "a diseased
growth,"[30] though he sat in the highest chair of office. Do you see
how great a disgrace high honours can add to evil men? Their
unworthiness is less conspicuous if they are not made famous by
honours. Could you yourself have been induced by any dangers to think
of being a colleague with Decoratus, [31] when you saw that he had the
mind of an unscrupulous buffoon, and a base informer? We cannot
consider men worthy of veneration on account of their high places,
when we hold them to be unworthy of those high places. But if you see
a man endowed with wisdom, you cannot but consider him worthy of
veneration, or at least of the wisdom with which he is endowed. For
such a man has the worth peculiar to virtue, which it transmits
directly to those in whom it is found. But since honours from the
vulgar crowd cannot create merit, it is plain that they have not the
peculiar beauty of this worth. And here is a particular point to be
noticed: if men are the more worthless as they are despised by more
people, high position makes them all the worse because it cannot make
venerable those whom it shews to so many people to be contemptible.
And this brings its penalty with it: wicked people bring a like
quality into their positions, and stain them with their infection.

     'Now I would have you consider the matter thus, that you may
recognise that true veneration cannot be won through these shadowy
honours. If a man who had filled the office of consul many times in
Rome, came by chance into a country of barbarians, would his high
position make him venerated by the barbarians? Yet if this were a
natural quality in such dignities, they would never lose their
effective function in any land, just as fire is never aught but hot in
all countries. But since they do not receive this quality of
veneration from any force peculiar to themselves, but only from a
connexion in the untrustworthy opinions of men, they become as nothing
as soon as they are among those who do not consider these dignities as
such.

     'But that is only in the case of foreign peoples. Among the very
peoples where they had their beginnings, do these dignities last for
ever? Consider how great was the power in Rome of old of the office of
Præfect: now it is an empty name and a heavy burden upon the income of
any man of Senator's rank. 'The præfect then, who was commissioner of
the corn-market, was held to be a great man. Now there is no office
more despised. For, as I said before, that which has no intrinsic
beauty, sometimes receives a certain glory, sometimes loses it,
according to the opinion of those who are concerned with it. If then
high offices cannot make men venerated, if furthermore they grow vile
by the infection of bad men, if changes of time can end their glory,
and, lastly, if they are held cheaply in the estimation of whole
peoples, I ask you, so far from affording true beauty to men, what
beauty have they in themselves which men can desire?

Met. IV

     'Though Nero decked himself proudly with purple of Tyre and
snow-white gems, none the less that man of rage and luxury lived ever
hated of all. Yet would that evil man at times give his dishonoured
offices to men who were revered. Who then could count men blessed, who
to such a villain owed their high estate?

Prose V

The vanity of kingdoms

     'Can kingdoms and intimacies with kings make people powerful?
"Certainly, "some may answer, "in so far as their happiness is
lasting." But antiquity and our times too are full of examples of the
contrary; examples of men whose happiness as kings has been exchanged
for disaster. What wonderful power, which is found to be powerless
even for its own preservation! But if this kingly power is really a
source of happiness, surely then, if it fail in any way, it lessens
the happiness it brings, and equally causes unhappiness. However
widely human empires may extend, there must be still more nations
left, over whom each king does not reign. And so, in whatever
direction this power ceases to make happy, thereby comes in
powerlessness, which makes men unhappy; thus therefore there must be a
greater part of unhappiness in every king's estate. That tyrant [32]
had learnt well the dangers of his lot, who likened the fear which
goes with kingship to the terror inspired by a sword ever hanging
overhead. What then is such a power, which cannot drive away the bite
of cares, nor escape the stings of fear?

     'Yet these all would willingly live without fear, but they
cannot, and yet they boast of their power. Think you a man is powerful
when you see that he longs for that which he cannot bring to pass? Do
you reckon a man powerful who walks abroad with dignity and attended
by servants? A man who strikes fear into his subjects, yet fears them
more himself? A man who must be at the mercy of those that serve him,
in order that he may seem to have power?

     'Need I speak of intimacies with kings when kingship itself is
shewn to be full of weakness? Not only when kings' powers fall are
their friends laid low, but often even when their powers are intact.
Nero compelled his friend and tutor, Seneca,[33] to choose how he
would die. Papinianus,[34] for a long while a powerful courtier, was
handed over to the soldiers' swords by the Emperor Antoninus. Yet each
of these was willing to surrender all his power. Seneca even tried to
give up all his wealth to Nero, and to seek retirement. But the very
weight of their wealth and power dragged them down to ruin, and
neither could do what he wished.

     'What then is that power, whose possessors fear it? in desiring
to possess which, you are not safe, and from which you cannot escape,
even though you try to lay it down? What help are friends, made not by
virtue but by fortune? The friend gained by good fortune becomes an
enemy in ill-fortune. And what plague can more effectually injure than
an intimate enemy?

Met. V

     'The man who would true power gain, must needs subdue his own
wild thoughts: never  must he let his passions triumph and yoke his
neck by their foul bonds. For though the earth, as far as India's
shore, tremble before the laws you give, though Thule bow to your
service on earth's farthest bounds, yet if thou canst not drive away
black cares, if thou canst not put to flight complaints, then is no
true power thine.

Prose VI

The vanity of earthly glory, fame
The vanity of noble birth

     'How deceitful is fame often, and how base a thing it is! Justly
did the tragic poet cry out,[35] "O Fame, Fame, how many lives of men
of naught hast thou puffed up!" For many men have got a great name
from the false opinions of the crowd. And what could be baser than
such a thing? For those who are falsely praised, must blush to hear
their praises. And if they are justly won by merits, what can they add
to the pleasure of a wise man's conscience? For he measures his
happiness not by popular talk, but by the truth of his conscience. If
it attracts a man to make his name widely known, he must equally think
it a shame if it be not made known. But I have already said that there
must be yet more lands into which the renown of a single man can never
come; wherefore it follows that the man, whom you think famous, will
seem to have no such fame in the next quarter of the earth.

     'Popular favour seems to me to be unworthy even of mention under
this head, for it comes not by any judgment, and is never constant.

     'Again, who can but see how empty a name, and how futile, is
noble birth? For if its glory is due to renown, it belongs not to the
man. For the glory of noble birth seems to be praise for the merits of
a man's forefathers. But if praise creates the renown, it is the
renowned who are praised. Wherefore, if you have no renown of your
own, that of others cannot glorify you. But if there is any good in
noble birth, I conceive it to be this, and this alone, that the
highborn seem to be bound in honour not to show any degeneracy from
their fathers' virtue.

Met. VI

     'From like beginning rise all men on earth, for there is one
Father of all things; one is the guide of everything. 'Tis He who gave
the sun his rays, and horns unto the moon. 'Tis He who set mankind on
earth, and in the heavens the stars. He put within our bodies spirits
which were born in heaven. And thus a highborn race has He set forth
in man. Why do ye men rail on your forefathers? If ye look to your
beginning and your author, which is God, is any man degenerate or base
but he who by his own vices cherishes base things and leaves that
beginning which was his?

Prose VII

The vanity of the lusts of the flesh

     'And now what am I to say of the pleasures of the body? The
desires of the flesh are full of cares, their fulfilment is full of
remorse. What terrible diseases, what unbearable griefs, truly the
fruits of sin, do they bring upon the bodies of those who enjoy them!
I know not what pleasure their impulse affords, but any who cares to
recall his indulgences of his passions, will know that the results of
such pleasures are indeed gloomy. If any can shew that those results
are blest with happiness, then may the beasts of the field be justly
called blessed, for all their aims are urged toward the satisfying of
their bodies' wants. The pleasures of wife and children may be most
honourable; but nature makes it all too plain that some have found
torment in their children. How bitter is any such kind of suffering, I
need not tell you now, for you have never known it, nor have any such
anxiety now. Yet in this matter I would hold with my philosopher
Euripides,[36] that he who has no children is happy in his misfortune.

Met. VII

     'All pleasures have this way: those who enjoy them they drive on
with stings. Pleasure, like the winged bee, scatters its honey sweet,
then flies away, and with a clinging sting it strikes the hearts it
touches.

Prose VIII

All these vanities are actually harmful

     'There is then no doubt that these roads to happiness are no
roads, and they cannot lead any man to any end whither they profess to
take him. I would shew you shortly with what great evils they are
bound up. Would you heap up money? You will need to tear it from its
owner. Would you seem brilliant by the glory of great honours? You
must kneel before their dispenser, and in your desire to surpass other
men in honour, you must debase yourself by setting aside all pride. Do
you long for power? You will be subject to the wiles of all over whom
you have power, you will be at the mercy of many dangers. You seek
fame? You will be drawn to and fro among rough paths, and lose all
freedom from care. Would you spend a life of pleasure? Who would not
despise and cast off such servitude to so vile and brittle a thing as
your body? How petty are all the aims of those who put before
themselves the pleasures of the body, how uncertain is the possession
of such? In bodily size will you ever surpass the elephant? In
strength will you ever lead the bull, or in speed the tiger? Look upon
the expanse of heaven, the strength with which it stands, the rapidity
with which it moves, and cease for a while to wonder at base things.
This heaven is not more wonderful for those things than for the design
which guides it. How sweeping is the brightness of outward form, how
swift its movement, yet more fleeting than the passing of the flowers
of spring. But if, as Aristotle says, many could use the eyes of
lynxes to see through that which meets the eye, then if they saw into
the organs within, would not that body, though it had the most fair
outside of Alcibiades,[37] seem most vile within? Wherefore it is not
your own nature, but the weakness of the eyes of them that see you,
which makes you seem beautiful. But consider how in excess you desire
the pleasures of the body, when you know that howsoever you admire it,
it can be reduced to nothing by a three-days' fever. To put all these
points then in a word: these things cannot grant the good which they
promise; they are not made perfect by the union of all good things in
them; they do not lead to happiness as a path thither; they do not
make men blessed.[38]

Met. VIII

     'Ah! how wretched are they whom ignorance leads astray by her
crooked path! Ye seek not gold upon green trees, nor gather precious
stones from vines, nor set your nets on mountain tops to catch the
fishes for your feast, nor hunt the Umbrian sea in search of goats.
Man knows the depths of the sea themselves, hidden though they be
beneath its waves; he knows which water best yields him pearls, and
which the scarlet dye. But in their blindness men are content, and
know not where lies hid the good which they desire. They sink in
earthly things, and there they seek that which has soared above the
star-lit heavens. What can I call down upon them worthy of their
stubborn folly? They go about in search of wealth and honours; and
only when they have by labours vast stored up deception for
themselves, do they at last know what is their true good.

Prose IX

Philosophy begins to examine true happiness

     'So far,' she continued, 'we have been content to set forth the
form of false happiness. If you clearly understand that, my next duty
is to shew what is true happiness.'

     'I do see,' said I, 'that wealth cannot satisfy, that power
comes not to kingdoms, nor veneration to high offices; that true
renown cannot accompany ambition, nor true enjoyment wait upon the
pleasures of the body.'

     'Have you grasped the reasons why it is so?' she asked.

     'I seem to look at them as through a narrow chink, but I would
learn more clearly from you.'

     'The reason is to hand,' said she; 'human error takes that which
is simple and by nature impossible to divide, tries to divide it, and
turns its truth and perfection into falsity and imperfection. Tell me,
do you think that anything which lacks nothing, can be without power?'

     'Of course not.'

     'You are right; for if anything has any weakness in any part, it
must lack the help of something else.'

     'That is so,' I said.

     'Then perfect satisfaction and power have the same nature?'

     'Yes, it seems so.'

     'And do you think such a thing contemptible, or the opposite,
worthy of all veneration?'

     'There can be no doubt that it is worthy.'

     'Then let us add veneration to that satisfaction and power, and
so consider these three as one.'

     'Yes, we must add it if we wish to proclaim the truth.'

     'Do you then think that this whole is dull and of no reputation,
or renowned with all glory? For consider it thus: we have granted that
it lacks nothing, that it has all power and is worthy of all
veneration; it must not therefore lack the glory which it cannot
supply for itself, and thereby seem to be in any direction
contemptible.'

     'No,' I said, 'I must allow that it has glory too.'

     'Therefore we must rank this glory equally with the other
three.'

     'Yes, we must.'

     'Then that which lacks nothing from outside itself, which is
all-powerful by its own might, which has renown and veneration, must
surely be allowed to be most happy too?'

     'I cannot imagine from what quarter unhappiness would creep into
such a thing, wherefore we must grant that it is full of happiness if
the other qualities remain existent.'

     'Then it follows further, that though perfect satisfaction,
power, glory, veneration, and happiness differ in name, they cannot
differ at all in essence?'

     'They cannot.'

     'This then,' said she, 'is a simple, single thing by nature,
only divided by the mistakes of base humanity; and while men try to
gain a part of that which has no parts, they fail both to obtain a
fraction, which cannot exist, and the whole too after which they do
not strive.'

     'Tell me how they fail thus,' I said.

     'One seeks riches by fleeing from poverty, and takes no thought
of power,' she answered, 'and so he prefers to be base and unknown,
and even deprives himself of natural pleasures lest he should part
with the riches which he has gathered. Thus not even that satisfaction
reaches the man who loses all power, who is stabbed by sorrow, lowered
by his meanness, hidden by his lack of fame. Another seeks power only:
he scatters his wealth, he despises pleasures and honours which have
no power, and sets no value upon glory. You see how many things such
an one lacks. Sometimes he goes without necessaries even, sometimes he
feels the bite and torture of care; and as he cannot rid himself of
these, he loses the power too which he sought above all things. The
same argument may be applied to offices, glory, and pleasure. For
since each one of these is the same as each other, any man who seeks
one without the others, gains not even that one which he desires.'

     'What then?' I asked.

     'If any man desires to obtain all together, he will be seeking
the sum of happiness. But will he ever find that in these things which
we have shewn cannot supply what they promise?'

     'No.'

     'Then happiness is not to be sought for among these things which
are separately believed to supply each thing so sought.'

     'Nothing could be more plainly true,' I said.

     'Then you have before you the form of false happiness, and its
causes; now turn your attention in the opposite direction, and you
will quickly see the true happiness which I have promised to shew
you.'

     'But surely this is clear even to the blindest, and you shewed
it before when you were trying to make clear the causes of false
happiness. For if I mistake not, true and perfect happiness is that
which makes a man truly satisfied, powerful, venerated, renowned, and
happy. And (for I would have you see that I have looked deeply into
the matter) I realise without doubt that that which can truly yield
any one of these, since they are all one, is perfect happiness.'

     'Ah! my son,' said she, 'I do see that you are blessed in this
opinion, but I would have you add one thing.'

     'What is that?' I asked.

     'Do you think that there is anything among mortals, and in our
perishable lives, which could yield such a state?'

     'I do not think that there is, and I think that you have shewn
this beyond the need of further proof.'

     'These then seem to yield to mortals certain appearances of the
true good, or some such imperfections; but they cannot give true and
perfect good.'

     'No.'

     'Since, then, you have seen what is true happiness, and what are
the false imitations thereof, it now remains that you should learn
whence this true happiness may be sought.'

     'For that,' said I, 'I have been impatiently waiting.'

     'But divine help must be sought in small things as well as great
(as my pupil Plato says in his Timæus)[39]; so what, think you, must
we do to deserve to find the place of that highest good?'

     'Call,' I said, 'upon the Father of all, for if we do not do so,
no undertaking would be rightly or duly begun.'

     'You are right,' said she; and thus she cried aloud:-- [40]

Met. IX

Philosophy invokes God's guidance

     'Thou who dost rule the universe with everlasting law, founder
of earth and heaven alike, who hast bidden time stand forth from out
Eternity, for ever firm Thyself, yet giving movement unto all. No
causes were without Thee which could thence impel Thee to create this
mass of changing matter, but within Thyself exists the very idea of
perfect good, which grudges naught, for of what can it have envy? Thou
makest all things follow that high pattern. In perfect beauty Thou
movest in Thy mind a world of beauty, making all in a like image, and
bidding the perfect whole to complete its perfect functions. All the
first principles of nature Thou dost bind together by perfect orders
as of numbers, so that they may be balanced each with its opposite:
cold with heat, and dry with moist together; thus fire may not fly
upward too swiftly because too purely, nor may the weight of the solid
earth drag it down and overwhelm it. Thou dost make the soul as a
third between mind and material bodies: to these the soul gives life
and movement, for Thou dost spread it abroad among the members of the
universe, now working in accord. Thus is the soul divided as it takes
its course, making two circles, as though a binding thread around the
world. Thereafter it returns unto itself and passes around the lower
earthly mind; and in like manner it gives motion to the heavens to
turn their course. Thou it is who dost carry forward with like
inspiration these souls and lower lives. Thou dost fill these weak
vessels with lofty souls, and send them abroad throughout the heavens
and earth, and by Thy kindly law dost turn them again to Thyself and
bring them to seek, as fire doth, to rise to Thee again.

     'Grant then, O Father, that this mind of ours may rise to Thy
throne of majesty; grant us to reach that fount of good. Grant that we
may so find light that we may set on Thee unblinded eyes; cast Thou
therefrom the heavy clouds of this material world. Shine forth upon us
in Thine own true glory. Thou art the bright and peaceful rest of all
Thy children that worship Thee. To see Thee clearly is the limit of
our aim. Thou art our beginning, our progress, our guide, our way, our
end.

Prose X

Philosophy discourses on the union of the highest good with God

     'Since then you have seen the form both of the imperfect and the
perfect good, I think I should now shew you where lies this perfection
of happiness. In this I think our first inquiry must be whether any
good of this kind can exist in the very nature of a subject; for we
must not let any vain form of thought make us miss the truth of this
matter. But there can be no denial of its existence, that it is as the
very source of all good. For if anything is said to be imperfect, it
is held to be so by some loss of its perfection. Wherefore if in any
kind of thing a particular seems imperfect, there must also be a
perfect specimen in the same kind. For if you take away the
perfection, it is impossible even to imagine whence could come the so-
called imperfect specimen. For nature does not start from degenerate
or imperfect specimens, but starting from the perfect and ideal, it
degenerates to these lower and weaker forms. If then, as we have shewn
above, there is an uncertain and imperfect happiness to be found in
the good, then there must doubtless be also a sure and perfect
happiness therein.'[41]

     'Yes,' said I, 'that is quite surely proved to be true.'

     'Now consider,' she continued, 'where it lies. The universally
accepted notion of men proves that God, the fountain-head of all
things, is good. For nothing can be thought of better than God, and
surely He, than whom there is nothing better, must without doubt be
good. Now reason shews us that God is so good, that we are convinced
that in Him lies also the perfect good. For if it is not so, He cannot
be the fountain-head; for there must then be something more excellent,
possessing that perfect good, which appears to be of older origin than
God: for it has been proved that all perfections are of earlier origin
than the imperfect specimens of the same: wherefore, unless we are to
prolong the series to infinity, we must allow that the highest Deity
must be full of the highest, the perfect good. But as we have laid
down that true happiness is perfect good, it must be that true
happiness is situated in His Divinity.'

     'Yes, I accept that; it cannot be in any way contradicted.'

     'But,' she said, 'I beg you, be sure that you accept with a sure
conscience and determination this fact, that we have said that the
highest Deity is filled with the highest good.'

     'How should I think of it?' I asked.

     'You must not think of God, the Father of all, whom we hold to
be filled with the highest good, as having received this good into
Himself from without, nor that He has it by nature in such a manner
that you might consider Him, its possessor, and the happiness
possessed, as having different essential existences. For if you think
that good has been received from without, that which gave it must be
more excellent than that which received it; but we have most rightly
stated that He is the most excellent of all things. And if you think
that it is in Him by His nature, but different in kind, then, while we
speak of God as the fountain-head of all things, who could imagine by
whom these different kinds can have been united? Lastly, that which is
different from anything cannot be the thing from which it differs. So
anything which is by its nature different from the highest good,
cannot be the highest good. And this we must not think of God, than
whom there is nothing more excellent, as we have agreed. Nothing in
this world can have a nature which is better than its origin,
wherefore I would conclude that that which is the origin of all
things, according to the truest reasoning, is by its essence the
highest good.'

     'Most truly,' I said.

     'You agree that the highest good is happiness?'

     'Yes.'

     'Then you must allow that God is absolute happiness?'

     'I cannot deny what you put forward before, and I see that this
follows necessarily from those propositions.'

     'Look then,' she said, 'whether it is proved more strongly by
this too: there cannot be two highest goods which are different. For
where two good things are different, the one cannot be the other;
wherefore neither can be the perfect good, while each is lacking to
the other. And that which is not perfect cannot be the highest,
plainly. Therefore if two things are highest good, they cannot be
different. Further, we have proved to ourselves that both happiness
and God are each the highest good. Therefore the highest Deity must be
identical with the highest happiness.'

     'No conclusion,' I said, 'could be truer in fact, or more surely
proved by reason, or more worthy of our God.'

     'Besides this let me give you corollary, as geometricians do,
when they wish to add a point drawn from the propositions they have
proved. Since men become happy by acquiring happiness, and happiness
is identical with divinity, it is plain that they become happy by
acquiring divinity. But just as men become just by acquiring the
quality of justice, and wise by wisdom, so by the same reasoning, by
acquiring divinity they become divine. Every happy man then is divine.
But while nothing prevents as many men as possible from being divine,
God is so by His nature, men become so by participation.'

     'This corollary,' I said, 'or whatever you call it, is indeed
beautiful and very precious.'

     'Yes, but nothing can be more beautiful than this too which
reason would have us add to what we have agreed upon.'

     'What is that?' I asked.

     'Happiness seems to include many things: do all these join it
together as into a whole which is happiness, as though each thing were
a different part thereof, or is any one of them a good which fulfils
the essence of happiness, and do the others merely bear relations to
this one .?'

     'I would have you make this plain by the enunciation of these
particulars.'

     'Do we not,' she asked, 'hold that happiness is a good thing?'

     'Yes,' I answered, 'the highest good.'

     'But you may apply this quality of happiness to them all. For
the perfect satisfaction is the same, and the highest power, and
veneration, and renown, and pleasure; these are all held to be
happiness.

     'What then?' I asked.

     'Are all these things, satisfaction, power, and the others, as
it were, members of the body, happiness, or do they all bear their
relation to the good, as members to a head?'

     'I understand what you propose to examine, but I am waiting
eagerly to hear what you will lay down.'

     'I would have you take the following explanation,' she said. 'If
these were all members of the one body, happiness, they would differ
individually. For this is the nature of particulars, to make up one
body of different parts. But all these have been shewn to be one and
the same. Therefore they are not as members; and further, this
happiness will then appear to be joined together into a whole body out
of one member, which is impossible.'

     'That is quite certain,' said I, 'but I would hear what is to
come.'

     'It is plain that the others have some relation to the good. It
is for that reason, namely because it is held to be good, that this
satisfaction is sought, and power likewise, and the others too; we may
suppose the same of veneration, renown, and pleasure. The good then is
the cause of the desire for all of these, and their consummation also.
Such a thing as has in itself no real or even pretended good, cannot
ever be sought. On the other hand, such things as are not by nature
good, but seem to be so, are sought as though they were truly good.
Wherefore we may justly believe that their good quality is the cause
of the desire for them, the very hinge on which they turn, and their
consummation. The really important object of a desire, is that for the
sake of which anything is sought, as a means. For instance, if a man
wishes to ride for the sake of his health, he does not so much desire
the motion of riding, as the effect, namely health. As, therefore,
each of these things is desired for the sake of the good, the absolute
good is the aim, rather than themselves. But we have agreed that the
other things are desired for the sake of happiness, wherefore in this
case too, it is happiness alone which is the object of the desire.
Wherefore it is plain that the essence of the good and of happiness is
one and the same.'

     'I cannot see how any one can think otherwise.'

     'But we have shewn that God and true happiness are one and the
same.'

     'Yes.'

     'Therefore,' said she, 'we may safely conclude that the essence
of God also lies in the absolute good and nowhere else.'
Met. X

     'Come hither all who are the prey of passions, bound by their
ruthless chains; those deceiving passions which blunt the minds of
men. Here shall you find rest from your labours; here a haven lying in
tranquil peace; this shall be a resting-place open to receive within
itself all the miserable on earth. Not all the wealth of Tagus's
golden sands, nor Hermus's gleaming strand,[42] nor Indus, nigh
earth's hottest zone, mingling its emeralds and pearls, can bring
light to the eyes of any soul, but rather plunge the soul more blindly
in their shade. In her deepest caverns does earth rear all that
pleases the eye and excites the mind. The glory by which the heavens
move and have their being, has nought to do with the darknesses which
bring ruin to the soul. Whosoever can look on this true light will
scarce allow the sun's rays to be clear.'
Prose XI
Philosophy discourses on the unity which is the highest good

     'I cannot but agree with that,' I said, 'for it all stands woven
together by the strongest proofs.' Then she said, 'At what would you
value this, namely if you could find out what is the absolute good?'

     'I would reckon it,' I said, 'at an infinite value, if I could
find out God too, who is the good.'

     'And that too I will make plain by most true reasoning, if you
will allow to stand the conclusions we have just now arrived at.'

     'They shall stand good.'

     'Have I not shewn,' she asked, 'that those upon the things which
most men seek are for this reason not perfect goods, because they
differ between the highest themselves; they are lacking to one
another, and so cannot afford full, absolute good? But when they are
gathered together, as it were, into one form and one operation, so
that complete satisfaction, power, veneration, renown, and pleasure
are all the same, then they become the true good. Unless they are all
one and the same, they have no claim to be reckoned among the true
objects of men's desires.'

     'That has been proved beyond all doubt.'

     'Then such things as differ among themselves are not goods, but
they become so when they begin to be a single unity. Is it not then
the case these become goods by the attainment of unity?'

     'Yes,' I said, 'it seems so.'

     'But I think you allow that every good is good by participation
in good?'

     'Yes, I do.'

     'Then by reason of this likeness both unity and good must be
allowed to be the same thing; for such things as have by nature the
same operation, have the same essence.'

     'Undeniably.'

     'Do you realise that everything remains existent so long as it
keeps its unity, but perishes in dissolution as soon as it loses its
unity?'

     'How so?' I asked.

     'In the case of animals,' she said, 'so long as mind and body
remain united, you have what you call an animal. But as soon as this
unity is dissolved by the separation of the two, the animal perishes
and can plainly be no longer called an animal. In the case of the
body, too, so long as it remains in a single form by the union of its
members, the human figure is presented. But if the division or
separation of the body's parts drags that union asunder, it at once
ceases to be what it was. In this way one may go through every
subject, and it will be quite evident that each thing exists
individually, so long as it is one, but perishes so soon as it ceases
to be one.'

     'Yes, I see the same when I think of other cases.'

     'Is there anything,' she then asked, 'which, in so far as it
acts by nature, ever loses its desire for self-preservation, and would
voluntarily seek to come to death and corruption?'

     'No,' I said; 'while I think of animals which have volition in
their nature, I can find in them no desire to throw away their
determination to remain as they are, or to hasten to perish of their
own accord, so long as there are no external forces compelling them
thereto. Every animal labours for its preservation, shunning death and
extinction. But about trees and plants, I have great doubts as to what
I should agree to in their case, and in all inanimate objects.'

     'But in this case too,' she said, 'you have no reason to be in
doubt, when you see how trees and plants grow in places which suit
them, and where, so far as nature is able to prevent it, they cannot
quickly wither and perish. For some grow in plains, others on
mountains; some are nourished by marshes, others cling to rocks; some
are fertilised by otherwise barren sands, and would wither away if one
tried to transplant them to better soil. Nature grants to each what
suits it, and works against their perishing while they can possibly
remain alive. I need hardly remind you that all plants seem to have
their mouths buried in the earth, and so they suck up nourishment by
their roots and diffuse their strength through their pith and bark:
the pith being the softest part is always hidden away at the heart and
covered, protected, as it were, by the strength of the wood; while
outside, the bark, as being the defender who endures the best, is
opposed to the unkindness of the weather. Again, how great is nature's
care, that they should all propagate themselves by the reproduction of
their seed; they all, as is so well known, are like regular machines
not merely for lasting a time, but for reproducing themselves for
ever, and that by their own kinds. Things too which are supposed to be
inanimate, surely do all seek after their own by a like process. For
why is flame carried upward by its lightness, while solid things are
carried down by their weight, unless it be that these positions and
movements are suitable to each? Further, each thing preserves what is
suitable to itself, and what is harmful, it destroys. Hard things,
such as stones, cohere with the utmost tenacity of their parts, and
resist easy dissolution; while liquids, water, and air, yield easily
to division, but quickly slip back to mingle their parts which have
been cut asunder. And fire cannot be cut at all.

     '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.[43] 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 shewn 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 that is the
good, we must confess that the good is the end of all things.
Met. XI

     'If any man makes search for truth with all his penetration, and
would be led astray by no deceiving paths, let him turn upon himself
the light of an inward gaze, let him bend by force the long-drawn
wanderings of his thoughts into one circle; let him tell surely to his
soul, that he has, thrust away within the treasures of his mind, all
that he labours to acquire without. Then shall that truth, which now
was hid in error's darkening cloud, shine forth more clear than
Phoebus's self. For the body, though it brings material mass which
breeds forgetfulness, has never driven forth all light from the mind.
The seed of truth does surely cling within, and can be roused as a
spark by the fanning of philosophy. For if it is not so, how do ye men
make answers true of your own instinct when teachers question you? Is
it not that the quick spark of truth lies buried in the heart's low
depths? And if the Muse of Plato sends through those depths the voice
of truth, each man has not forgotten and is but reminding himself of
what he learns.'[44]
Prose XII
Philosophy shows that God rules the universe for the highest good

     When she made an end, I said, 'I agree very strongly with Plato;
for this is the second time that you have reminded me of these
thoughts. The first time I had lost them through the material
influence of the body; the second, when overwhelmed by this weight of
trouble.'

     'If,' said she, 'you look back upon what we that have agreed
upon earlier, you will also soon recall what you just now said you
knew not.'

     'What is that?' I asked.

     'The guidance by which the universe is directed.'

     'Yes, I remember confessing my ignorance, and though I think I
foresee the answer you will offer, I am eager to hear you explain it
more fully.'

     'This world,' she said, 'you thought a little while ago must
without doubt be guided by God.'

     'And I think so now,' I said, 'and will never think there is any
doubt thereof; and I will shortly explain by what reasoning I arrive
at that point. This universe would never have been suitably put
together into one form from such various and opposite parts, unless
there were some One who joined such different parts together; and when
joined, the very variety of their natures, so discordant among
themselves, would break their harmony and tear them asunder unless the
One held together what it wove into one whole. Such a fixed order of
nature could not continue its course, could not develop motions taking
such various directions in place, time, operation, space, and
attributes, unless there were One who, being immutable, had the
disposal of these various changes. And this cause of their remaining
fixed and their moving, I call God, according to the name familiar to
all.'

     Then said she,' Since these are your feelings, I think there is
but little trouble left me before you may revisit your home with
happiness in your grasp. But let us look into the matter we have set
before ourselves. Have we not shewn that complete satisfaction exists
in true happiness, and we have agreed that God is happiness itself,
have we not?'

     'We have.'

     'Wherefore He needs no external aid in governing the universe,
or, if He had any such need, He would not have this complete
sufficiency.'

     'That of necessity follows,' I said.

     'Then He arranges all things by Himself.'

     Without doubt He does.'

     'And God has been shewn to be the absolute good.'

     'Yes, I remember.'

     'Then He arranges all things by good, if He arranges them by
Himself, whom we have agreed to be the absolute good. And so this is
the tiller and rudder by which the ship of the universe is kept sure
and unbreakable.'

     'I feel that most strongly,' I said; 'and I foresaw that you
would say so before, though I had a slight uncertainty.'

     'I believe you,' she said, 'for now you bring your eyes more
watchfully to scan the truth. But what I am going to say is no less
plain to the sight.'

     'What is that?'

     'Since we may reasonably be sure that God steers all things by
the helm of goodness, and, as I have shewn you, all things have a
natural instinct to hasten towards the good, can there be any doubt
that they are guided according to their own will: and that of their
own accord they turn to the will of the supreme disposer, as though
agreeing with, and obedient to, the helmsman?'

     'That is so,' I said, 'and the government would not seem happy
if it was a yoke upon discontented necks, and not the salvation of the
submissive.'

     'Then nothing need oppose God's way for its own nature's
preservation.'

     'No.'

     'But if it try to oppose Him, will it ever have any success at
all against One whom we have justly allowed to be supremely powerful
in matters of happiness?'

     'Certainly not.'

     'Then there is nothing which could have the will or the power to
resist the highest good?'

     'I think not.'

     'Then it is the highest good which is guiding with strength and
disposing with gentleness?'

     Then said I, 'How great pleasure these things give me! not only
those which have been proved by the strongest arguments, but still
more the words in which you prove them, which make me ashamed that my
folly has bragged so loudly.'

     'You have heard in mythology how the giants attacked heaven. It
was this kindly strength which overthrew them too, as was their
desert. But would you care to put these arguments at variance? For
perhaps from such a friction, some fair spark of truth may leap
forth.'

     'As you hold best,' I said.

     'Nobody would care to doubt that God is all-powerful?'

     'At any rate, no sane man would doubt it.'

     'Being, then, all-powerful, nothing is beyond His power?'

     'Nothing.'

     'Can, then, God do evil?'

     'No.'

     'Then evil is nothing, since it is beyond His power, and nothing
is beyond His power?'

     'Are you playing with me,' I asked, 'weaving arguments as a
labyrinth out of which I shall find no way? You may enter a labyrinth
by the way by which you may come forth: come now forth by the way you
have gone in: or are you folding your reason in some wondrous circle
of divine simplicity? A little while ago you started from happiness,
and said that happiness was the highest good; and you shewed how that
rested in the highest Deity. And you reasoned that God too was the
highest good, and the fullest happiness; and you allowed, as though
granting a slight gift, that none could be happy except such as were
similarly divine. Again, you said that the essence of God and of
happiness was identical with the very form of good; and that that
alone was good which was sought by all nature. And you argued, too,
that God guided this universe by the helm of goodness; and that all
creatures with free will obeyed this guidance, and that there was no
such thing as natural evil; and all these things you developed by no
help from without, but by homely and internal proofs, each gaining its
credence from that which went before it.'

     Then she answered, 'I was not mocking you. We have worked out
the greatest of all matters by the grace of God, to whom we prayed.
For the form of the divine essence is such that it is not diffused
without, nor receives aught into itself from without. But as
Parmenides says of it, "It is a mass well rounded upon all sides."[45]
But if you examine it with reasoning, sought for not externally but by
lying within the sphere of the very thing we are handling, you will
not wonder at what you have learnt on Plato's authority,[46] that our
language must be akin to the subjects of which we speak.
Met. XII

     'Happy the man who could reach the crystal fount of good: happy
he who could shake off the chains of matter and of earth. The singer
of Thrace in olden time lamented his dead wife: by his tearful strains
he made the trees to follow him, and bound the flowing streams to
stay: for him the hind would fearlessly go side by side with fiercest
lions, and the hare would look upon the hound, nor be afraid, for he
was gentle under the song's sway. But when the hotter flame burnt up
his inmost soul, even the strains, which had subdued all other things,
could not soothe their own lord's mind. Complaining of the hard hearts
of the gods above, he dared approach the realms below. There he tuned
his songs to soothing tones, and sang the lays he had drawn from his
mother's[47] fount of excellence. His unrestrained grief did give him
power, his love redoubled his grief's power: his mourning moved the
depths of hell. With gentlest prayers he prayed to the lords of the
shades for grace. The three-headed porter[48] was taken captive with
amazement at his fresh songs. The avenging goddesses,[49] who haunt
with fear the guilty, poured out sad tears. Ixion's[50] wheel no
longer swiftly turned. Tantalus,[51] so long abandoned unto thirst,
could then despise the flowing stream. The vulture, satisfied by his
strains, tore not awhile at Tityos's[52] heart. At last the lord of
the shades[53] in pity cried: "We are conquered; take your bride with
you, bought by your song; but one condition binds our gift: till she
has left these dark abodes, turn not your eyes upon her." Who shall
set a law to lovers? Love is a greater law unto itself. Alack! at the
very bounds of darkness Orpheus looked upon his Eurydice; looked, and
lost her, and was lost himself.

     'To you too this tale refers; you, who seek to lead your
thoughts to the light above. For whosoever is overcome of desire, and
turns his gaze upon the darkness 'neath the earth, he, while he looks
on hell, loses the prize he carried off.'


BOOK IV

Prose I

They discuss the possibility of evil in God's world

     THUS gently sang the Lady Philosophy with dignified mien and
grave countenance; and when she ceased, I, who had not thoroughly
forgotten the grief within me, interrupted her as she was about to
speak further. 'Herald of true light,' I said, 'right clear have been
the outpourings of your speech till now, seeming inspired as one
contemplates them, and invincible through your reasonings. And though
through grief for the injustices I suffer, I had forgotten them, yet
you have not spoken of what I knew not at all before. But this one
thing is the chief cause of my grief, namely that, when there exists a
good governor of the world, evils should exist at all, or, existing,
should go unpunished. I would have you think how strange is this fact
alone. But there is an even stranger attached thereto: ill-doing
reigns and flourishes, while virtue not only lacks its reward, but is
even trampled underfoot by wicked doers, and pays the penalties
instead of crime. Who can wonder and complain enough that such things
should happen under the rule of One who, while all-knowing and all-
powerful, wills good alone?'

     Then she answered: 'Yes, it would be most terrible, monstrous,
and infinitely amazing if it were as you think. It would be as though
in a well-ordered house of a good master, the vilest vessels were
cared for while the precious were left defiled. But it is not so. If
our former conclusions are unshaken, God Himself, of whose government
we speak, will teach you that the good are always powerful, the evil
are always the lowest and weakest; vice never goes unpunished; virtue
never goes without its own reward; happiness comes to the good,
misfortune to the wicked: and when your complaints are set at rest,
many such things would most firmly strengthen you in this opinion. You
have seen now from my teaching the form of true happiness; you know
now its place: let us go quickly through all that must be lightly
passed over, and let me shew you the road which shall lead you to your
home. I will give wings to your mind, by which it shall raise itself
aloft: so shall disquiet be driven away, and you may return safe to
your home by my guidance, by the path I shall shew you, even by myself
carrying you thither.

Met. I

     'Yea, airy wings are mine to scale the heights of heaven; when
these the mind has donned, swiftly she loathes and spurns this earth.
She soars above the sphere of this vast atmosphere, sees the clouds
behind her far; she passes high above the topmost fires which seethe
above the feverish turmoil of the air,[54] until she rises to the
stars' own home, and joins her path unto the sun's; or accompanies on
her path the cold and ancient Saturn, maybe as the shining warrior
Mars; or she may take her course through the circle of every star that
decks the night. And when she has had her fill of journeying, then may
she leave the sky and tread the outer plane of the swift moving air,
as mistress of the awful light. Here holds the King of kings His sway,
and guides the reins of the universe, and Himself unmoved He drives
His winged chariot, the bright disposer of the world. And if this path
brings thee again hither, the path that now thy memory seeks to
recall, I tell thee, thou shalt say, "This is my home, hence was I
derived, here shall I stay my course." But if thou choose to look back
upon the earthly night behind thee, thou shalt see as exiles from
light the tyrants whose grimness made wretched peoples so to fear.
'
Prose II

Philosophy argues that the good are powerful, the bad are weak

     'Wondrous,' I cried; 'what vast things do you promise! and I
doubt not that you can fulfil them. I only beg that you will not hold
me back with delays, now that you have excited me thus far.'

     'First, then, you must learn that power is never lacking to the
good, while the wicked are devoid of all strength. The proofs of these
two statements hang upon each other. For good and bad are opposites,
and therefore, if it is allowed that good is powerful, the weakness of
evil is manifest: if the weakness and uncertainty of evil is made
plain, the strength and sureness of good is proved. To gain more full
credit for my opinion, I will go on to make my argument sure by first
the one, then the other of the two paths, side by side.

     'It is allowed that there are two things upon which depend the
entire operation of human actions: they are will and power. For if the
will be wanting, a man does not even attempt that which he has no
desire to perform; if the power be wanting, the will is exercised in
vain. Wherefore, if you see a man wish for that which he will in no
wise gain, you cannot doubt that he lacks the power to attain that
which he wishes.'

     'That is plain beyond doubt.'

     'And if you see a man gain that which he wishes, can you doubt
that he has the power?'

     'No.'

     'But wherein a man has power, he is strong; wherein he has not
power, he must be counted weak?'

     'Yes.'

     'Do you remember that we agreed from our earlier reasonings,
that the instinct of all human will, though acted upon by different
aims, does lead with eagerness towards happiness?'

     'Yes,' said I, 'I remember that that too was proved.'

     'Do you remember that happiness is the absolute good, and that
the good is desired of all, when in that manner happiness is sought?'

     'I need not recall that,' I said, 'since it is present fixedly
in my memory.'

     'Then all men, good and bad alike, seek to arrive at the good by
no different instincts?'

     'Yes, that follows necessarily.'

     'But it is certain that the good become so by the attainment of
good?'

     'Yes.'

     'Then the good attain that which they wish?'

     'Yes,' said I, 'it seems so.'

     'But if evil men attain the good they seek, they cannot be
evil?'

     'No.'

     'Since, then, both classes seek the good, which the good attain,
but the evil attain not, it is plain that the good are powerful, while
the evil are weak?'

     'If any doubt that, he cannot judge by the nature of the world,
nor by the sequence of arguments.'

     Again she said, 'If there are two persons before whom the same
object is put by natural instinct, and one person carries his object
through, working by his natural functions, but the other cannot put
his natural instinct into practice, but using some function unsuitable
to nature he can imitate the successful person, but not fulfil his
original purpose, in this case, which of the two do you decide to be
the more capable?'

     'I think I guess what you mean, but I would hear more
explicitly.'

     'You will not, I think, deny that the motion of walking is a
natural one to mankind?'

     'No, I will not.'

     'And is not that the natural function of the feet?'

     'Yes.'

     'If, then, one man walks, being able to advance upon his feet,
while another, who lacks the natural function of feet, uses his hands
and so tries to walk, which of these two may justly be held the more
capable?'

     'Weave me other riddles!' I exclaimed, 'for can any one doubt
that a man who enjoys his natural functions, is more capable than one
who is incapable in that respect?'

     'But in the case of the highest good,' she said, 'it is equally
the purpose set before good and bad men; good men seek it by the
natural functions of virtue, while bad men seek to attain the same
through their cupidity, which is not a natural function for the
attainment of good. Think you not so?'

     'I do indeed,' said I; 'this is plain, as also is the deduction
which follows. For it must be, from what I have already allowed, that
the good are powerful, the wicked weak.'

     'Your anticipation is right; and as doctors are wont to hope, it
shews a lively nature now fit to withstand disease. But I see that you
are very ready in understanding, and I will multiply my arguments one
upon another. See how great is the weakness of these wicked men who
cannot even attain that to which their natural instinct leads them,
nay, almost drives them. And further, how if they are deprived of this
great, this almost invincible, aid of a natural instinct to follow?
Think what a powerlessness possesses these men. They are no light
objects which they seek; they seek no objects in sport, objects which
it is impossible that they should achieve. They fail in the very
highest of all things, the crown of all, and in this they find none of
the success for which they labour day and night in wretchedness. But
herein the strength of good men is conspicuous. If a man could advance
on foot till he arrived at an utmost point beyond which there was no
path for further advance, you would think him most capable of walking:
equally so, if a man grasps the very end and aim of his search, you
must think him most capable. Wherefore also the contrary is true; that
evil men are similarly deprived of all strength. For why do they leave
virtue and follow after vice? Is it from ignorance of good? Surely
not, for what is weaker or less compelling than the blindness of
ignorance? Do they know what they ought to follow, and are they thrown
from the straight road by passions? Then they must be weak too in
self-control if they cannot struggle with their evil passions. But
they lose thus not only power, but existence all together. For those
who abandon the common end of all who exist, must equally cease to
exist. And this may seem strange, that we should say that evil men,
though the majority of mankind, do not exist at all; but it is so. For
while I do not deny that evil men are evil, I do deny that they "are,"
in the sense of absolute existence. You may say, for instance, that a
corpse is a dead man, but you cannot call it a man. In a like manner,
though I grant that wicked men are bad, I cannot allow that they are
men at all, as regards absolute being. A thing exists which keeps its
proper place and preserves its nature; but when anything falls away
from its nature, its existence too ceases, for that lies in its
nature. You will say, "Evil men are capable of evil": and that I would
not deny. But this very power of theirs comes not from strength, but
from weakness. They are capable of evil; but this evil would have no
efficacy if it could have stayed under the operation of good men. And
this very power of ill shews the more plainly that their power is
naught. For if, as we have agreed, evil is nothing, then, since they
are only capable of evil, they are capable of nothing'

     'That is quite plain.'

     'I would have you understand what is this strength of power. We
have a little while ago laid down that nothing is more powerful than
the highest good?'

     'Yes,' I said.

     'But the highest good can do no evil?'

     'No.'

     'Is there any one who thinks that men are all-powerful?'

     'No one,' I said, 'unless he be mad.'

     'And yet those same men can do evil.

     Would to heaven they could not!' I cried.

     'Then a powerful man is capable only of all good; but even those
who are capable of evil, are not capable of all: so it is plain that
those who are capable of evil, are capable of less. Further, we have
shewn that all power is to be counted among objects of desire, and all
objects of desire have their relation to the good, as to the coping-
stone of their nature. But the power of committing crime has no
possible relation to the good. Therefore it is not an object of
desire. Yet, as we said, all power is to be desired. Therefore the
power of doing evil is no power at all. For all these reasons the
power of good men and the weakness of evil men is apparent. So Plato's
opinion[55] is plain that " the wise alone are able to do what they
desire, but unscrupulous men can only labour at what they like, they
cannot fulfil their real desires." They do what they like so long as
they think that they will gain through their pleasures the good which
they desire; but they do not gain it, since nothing evil ever reaches
happiness.

Met. II

     'Kings you may see sitting aloft upon their thrones, gleaming
with purple, hedged about with grim guarding weapons, threatening with
fierce glances, and their hearts heaving with passion. If any man take
from these proud ones their outward covering of empty honour, he will
see within, will see that these great ones bear secret chains. For the
heart of one is thus filled by lust with the poisons of greed, or
seething rage lifts up its waves and lashes his mind therewith: or
gloomy grief holds them weary captives, or by slippery hopes they are
tortured. So when you see one head thus labouring beneath so many
tyrants, you know he cannot do as he would, for by hard task-masters
is the master himself oppressed.

Prose III

The good and the evil have their own rewards

     'Do you see then in what a slough crimes are involved, and with
what glory honesty shines forth? It is plain from this that reward is
never lacking to good deeds, nor punishment to crime. We may justly
say that the reward of every act which is performed is the object for
which it is performed. For instance, on the racecourse the crown for
which the runner strives is his reward. But we have shewn that
happiness is the identical good for the sake of which all actions are
performed. Therefore the absolute good is the reward put before all
human actions. But good men cannot be deprived of this. And further, a
man who lacks good cannot justly be described as a good man; wherefore
we may say that good habits never miss their rewards. Let the wicked
rage never so wildly, the wise man's crown shall never fail nor
wither. And the wickedness of bad men can never take away from good
men the glory which belongs to them. Whereas if a good man rejoiced in
a glory which he received from outside, then could another, or even
he, may be, who granted it, carry it away. But since honesty grants to
every good man its own rewards, he will only lack his reward when he
ceases to be good. And lastly, since every reward is sought for the
reason that it is held to be good, who shall say that the man, who
possesses goodness, does not receive his reward? And what reward is
this? Surely the fairest and greatest of all. Remember that corollary
which I emphasised when speaking to you a little while ago; and reason
thus therefrom. While happiness is the absolute good, it is plain that
all good men become good by virtue of the very fact that they are
good. But we agreed that happy men are as gods. Therefore this is the
reward of the good, which no time can wear out, no power can lessen,
no wickedness can darken; they become divine. In this case, then, no
wise man can doubt of the inevitable punishment of the wicked as well.
For good and evil are so set, differing from each other just as reward
and punishment are in opposition to each other: hence the rewards,
which we see fall to the good, must correspond precisely to the
punishments of the evil on the other side. As, therefore, honesty is
itself the reward of the honest, so wickedness is itself the
punishment of the wicked. Now whosoever suffers punishment, doubts not
that he is suffering an evil: if, then, they are ready so to judge of
themselves, can they think that they do not receive punishment,
considering that they are not only affected but thoroughly permeated
by wickedness, the worst of all evils?

     'Then, from the other point of view of the good, see what a
punishment ever goes with the wicked. You have learnt a little while
past that all that exists is one, and that the good itself is one; it
follows therefrom that all that exists must appear to be good. In this
way, therefore, all that falls away from the good, ceases also to
exist, wherefore evil men cease to be what they were. The form of
their human bodies still proves that they have been men; wherefore
they must have lost their human nature when they turned to evil-doing.
But as goodness alone can lead men forward beyond their humanity, so
evil of necessity will thrust down below the honourable estate of
humanity those whom it casts down from their first position. The
result is that you cannot hold him to be a man who has been, so to
say, transformed by his vices. If a violent man and a robber burns
with greed of other men's possessions, you say he is like a wolf.
Another fierce man is always working his restless tongue at lawsuits,
and you will compare him to a hound. Does another delight to spring
upon men from ambushes with hidden guile? He is as a fox. Does one man
roar and not restrain his rage? He would be reckoned as having the
heart of a lion. Does another flee and tremble in terror where there
is no cause of fear? He would be held to be as deer. If another is
dull and lazy, does he not live the life of an ass? One whose aims are
inconstant and ever changed at his whims, is in no wise different from
the birds. If another is in a slough of foul and filthy lusts, he is
kept down by the lusts of an unclean swine. Thus then a man who loses
his goodness, ceases to be a man, and since he cannot change his
condition for that of a god, he turns into a beast.

Met. III

     'The east wind wafted the sails which carried on the wandering
ships of Ithaca's king to the island where dwelt the fair goddess
Circe, the sun's own daughter. There for her new guests she mingled
cups bewitched by charms. Her hand, well skilled in use of herbs,
changed these guests to different forms. One bears the face of a boar;
another grows like to an African lion with fangs and claws; this one
becomes as a wolf, and when he thinks to weep, he howls; that one is
an Indian tiger, though he walks all harmless round about the
dwelling-place. The leader alone, Ulysses, though beset by so many
dangers, was saved from the goddess's bane by the pity of the winged
god, Mercury. But the sailors had drunk of her cups, and now had
turned from food of corn to husks and acorns, food of swine. Naught is
left the same, speech and form are gone; only the mind remains
unchanged, to bewail their unnatural sufferings.

     'How weak was that hand, how powerless those magic herbs which
could change the limbs but not the heart! Within lies the strength of
men, hidden in deep security. Stronger are those dread poisons which
can drag a man out of himself, which work their way within: they hurt
not the body, but on the mind their rage inflicts a grievous
wound.'[56]

Prose IV

     Then I answered: 'I confess that I think it is justly said that
vicious men keep only the outward bodily form of their humanity, and,
in the attributes of their souls, are changed to beasts. But I would
never have allowed them willingly the power to rage in the ruin of
good men through their fierce and wicked intentions.'

     'They have not that power,' said she, 'as I will shew you at a
convenient time. But if this very power, which you believe is allowed
to them, were taken from them, the punishment of vicious men would be
to a great extent lightened. For, though some may scarcely believe it,
evil men must be more unhappy when they carry out their ill desires
than when they cannot fulfil them. For if it is pitiable to have
wished bad things, it is more pitiable to have had the power to
perform them, without which power the performance of this pitiable
will would never have effect. Thus, when you see men with the will and
the power to commit a crime, and you see them perform it, they must be
the victims of a threefold misfortune, since each of those three
things brings its own misery.

     'Yes,' said I, 'I agree; but I do wish from my heart that they
may speedily be rid of one of these misfortunes, being deprived of
this power of doing evil.'

     'They will be rid of it,' she said, 'more speedily even than you
wish perhaps, and sooner than they think they will be rid thereof.
There is in the short course of life naught which is so long coming
that an immortal mind can think it has long to wait for it. Many a
time are their high hopes and great plans for evil-doing cut short by
a sudden and unlooked-for end. This indeed it is that sets a limit to
their misery. For if wickedness makes a man miserable, the longer he
is wicked, the more miserable must he be; and I should hold them most
miserable of all, if not even death at last put an end to their evil-
doing. If we have reached true conclusions concerning the unhappiness
of depravity, the misery, which is said to be eternal, can have no
limit.'

     'That is a strange conclusion and hard to accept. But I see that
it is suited too well by what we have agreed upon earlier.'

     'You are right,' she said; 'but when one finds it hard to agree
with a conclusion, one ought in fairness to point out some fault in
the argument which has preceded, or shew that the sequence of
statements is not so joined together as to effectively lead to the
conclusion; otherwise, if the premises are granted, it is not just to
cavil at the inference. This too, which I am about to say, may not
seem less strange, but it follows equally from what has been taken as
fact.'

     'What is that?' I asked.

     'That wicked men are happier when they pay the penalty for their
wickedness than when they receive no penalty at the hands of
justice.[57] I am not going to urge what may occur to any one, namely,
that depraved habits are corrected by penalties, and drawn towards the
right by fear of punishment, and that an example is hereby given to
others to avoid all that deserves blame. But I think that the wicked
who are not punished are in another way the more unhappy, without
regard to the corrective quality of punishment, nor its value as an
example.'

     'And what way is there other than these?'

     'We have allowed, have we not,' she said, 'that the good are
happy, but the bad are miserable?'.

     'Yes.'

     'Then if any good be added to the misery of any evil man, is he
not happier than the man whose miserable state is purely and simply
miserable without any good at all mingled therewith?'

     'I suppose so.'

     'What if some further evil beyond those by which a man, who
lacked all good things, were made miserable, were added to his
miseries? Should not he be reckoned far more unhappy than the man
whose misfortune was lightened by a share in some good?'

     'Of course it is so.'

     'Therefore,' she said, 'the wicked when punished have something
good added to their lot, to wit, their punishment, which is good by
reason of its quality of justice; and they also, when unpunished, have
something of further evil, their very impunity, which you have allowed
to be an evil, by reason of its injustice.'

     'I cannot deny that,' said I.

     'Then the wicked are far more unhappy when they are unjustly
unpunished, than when they are justly punished. It is plain that it is
just that the wicked should be punished, and unfair that they should
escape punishment.'

     'No one will gainsay you.'

     'But no one will deny this either, that all which is just is
good; and on the other part, all that is unjust is evil.'

     Then I said: 'The arguments which we have accepted bring us to
that conclusion. But tell me, do you leave no punishment of the soul
to follow after the death of the body?'

     'Yes,' she answered, 'heavy punishments, of which some, I think,
are effected by bitter penalties, others by a cleansing mercy.[58] But
it is not my intention to discuss these now. My object has been to
bring you to know that the power of evil men, which seems to you so
unworthy, is in truth nothing; and that you may see that those wicked
men, of whose impunity you complained, do never miss the reward of
their ill-doing; and that you may learn that their passion, which you
prayed might soon be cut short, is not long-enduring, and that the
longer it lasts, the more unhappiness it brings, and that it would be
most unhappy if it endured for ever. Further, I have tried to shew you
that the wicked are more to be pitied if they escape with unjust
impunity, than if they are punished by just retribution. And it
follows upon this fact that they will be undergoing heavier penalties
when they are thought to be unpunished.'

     'When I hear your arguments, I feel sure that they are true as
possible. But if I turn to human opinions, I ask what man would not
think them not only incredible, but even unthinkable?'

     'Yes,' she said, 'for men cannot raise to the transparent light
of truth their eyes which have been accustomed to darkness. They are
like those birds whose sight is clear at night, but blinded by
daylight. So long as they look not upon the true course of nature, but
upon their own feelings, they think that the freedom of passion and
the impunity of crime are happy things. Think upon the sacred
ordinances of eternal law. If your mind is fashioned after better
things, there is no need of a judge to award a prize; you have added
yourself to the number of the more excellent. If your mind sinks to
worse things, seek no avenger from without: you have thrust yourself
downward to lower things. It is as though you were looking at the
squalid earth and the heavens in turn; then take away all that is
about you; and by the power of sight, you will seem to be in the midst
now of mud, now of stars. But mankind looks not to such things. What
then shall we do? Shall we join ourselves to those whom we have shewn
to be as beasts? If a man lost utterly his sight, and even forgot that
he had ever seen, so that he thought he lacked naught of human
perfection, should we think that such a blind one can see as we do?
Most people would not even allow another point, which rests no less
firmly upon strong reasons, namely, that those who do an injury are
more unhappy than those who suffer one.'[59]

     'I would hear those strong reasons,' I said.

     'You do not deny that every wicked man deserves punishment?'

     'No.'

     'It is plain for many reasons that the wicked are unhappy?'

     'Yes.'

     'Then you doubt not that those who are worthy of punishment are
miserable?'

     'No, I agree.'

     'If then you were sitting as a judge, upon which would you
consider punishment should fall -- the man who did the injury, or the
man who suffered it?'

     'I have no hesitation in saying that I would make amends to the
sufferer at the expense of the doer of the injustice.'

     'Then the doer of the injustice would seem to you more miserable
than the sufferer?'

     'That follows.'

     'Then from this,' said she, 'and other causes which rest upon
the same foundation, it is plain that, since baseness makes men more
miserable by its own nature, the misery is brought not to the sufferer
of an injustice, but to the doer thereof. But the speakers in law-
courts take the opposite course: they try to excite the pity of the
judges for those who have suffered any heavy or bitter wrong; but more
justly their pity would be due to those who have committed the wrong.
These guilty men ought to be brought, by accusers kindly rather than
angry, to justice, as patients to a doctor, that their disease of
crime may be checked by punishment. Under such an arrangement the
occupation of advocates for defence would either come to a complete
stand-still, or if it seemed more to the advantage of mankind, it
might turn to the work of prosecution. And if the wicked too
themselves might by some device look on virtue left behind them, and
if they could see that they would lay aside the squalor of vice by the
pain of punishment, and that they would gain the compensation of
achieving virtue again, they would no longer hold it punishment, but
would refuse the aid of advocates for their defence, and would intrust
themselves unreservedly to their accusers and their judges. In this
way there would be no place left for hatred among wise men. For who
but the most foolish would hate good men? And there is no cause to
hate bad men. Vice is as a disease of the mind, just as feebleness
shews ill-health in the body. As, then, we should never think that
those, who are sick in the body, deserve hatred, so are those, whose
minds are oppressed by a fiercer disease than feebleness, namely
wickedness, much more worthy of pity than of persecution.

Met. IV

     'To what good end do men their passions raise, even to drag from
fate their deaths by their own hands? If ye seek death, she is surely
nigh of her own will; and her winged horses she will not delay.
Serpents and lions, bears, tigers and boars, all seek your lives with
their fangs, yet do ye seek them with swords? Is it because your
manners are so wide in variance that men raise up unjust battles and
savage wars, and seek to perish by each other's darts? Such is no just
reason for this cruelty. Wouldst thou apportion merit to merit fitly?
Then love good men as is their due, and for the evil shew your pity.'

Prose V

Boethius still feels dissatisfied with the world's government

     Then said I, 'I see how happiness and misery lie inseparably in
the deserts of good and bad men. But I am sure that there is some good
and some bad in the general fortune of men. For no wise man even would
wish to be exiled, impoverished, and disgraced rather than full of
wealth, power, veneration, and strength, and flourishing securely in
his own city. The operation of wisdom is shewn in this way more nobly
and clearly, when the happiness of rulers is in a manner transmitted
to the people who come into contact with their rule; and especially
when prisons, bonds, and other penalties of the law become the lot of
the evil citizens for whom they were designed. I am struck with great
wonder why these dues are interchanged; why punishments for crimes
fall upon the good, while the bad citizens seize the rewards of
virtue; and I long to learn from you what reason can be put forward
for such unjust confusion. I should wonder less if I could believe
that everything was the confusion of accident and chance. But now the
thought of God's guidance increases my amazement; He often grants
happiness to good men and bitterness to the bad, and then, on the
other hand, sends hardships to the good and grants the desires of the
wicked. Can we lay our hands on any cause? If not, what can make this
state different in any way from accidental chance?'

     'It is no wonder,' she answered, 'if one who knows not the order
and reasons of nature, should think it is all at random and confused.
But doubt not, though you know not the cause of such a great matter of
the world's government, doubt not, I say, that all is rightly done,
because a good Governor rules the universe.

Met. V

     'If any man knows not that the star Arcturus[60] has his course
nearest the topmost pole how shall he not be amazed that Boötes so
slowly takes his wain and is so late to dip his brightness in the
ocean, and yet so swiftly turns to rise again? The law of heaven on
high will but bewilder him. When the full moon grows dim to its horns,
darkened by the shadow of dull night, when Phœbe thus lays bare all
the varying bands of the stars, which she had hidden by the power of
her shining face: then are the nations stirred by the errors of the
vulgar, and beat without ceasing brazen cymbals.[61] No man is
surprised when the blasts of the wind beat a shore with roaring waves,
nor when a solid mass of frozen snow is melted by the warmth of
Phoebus's rays; for herein the causes are ready at hand to be
understood. But in those other matters the causes are hidden, and so
do trouble all men's hearts, for time does not grant them to advance
with experience in such things as seldom recur: the common herd is
ever amazed at all that is extraordinary. But let the cloudy errors of
ignorance depart, and straightway these shall seem no longer
marvellous.'

Prose VI

Philosophy discusses Providence and Fate

     'That is true,' I said; 'but it is your kind office to unravel
the causes of hidden matters, and explain reasons now veiled in
darkness; wherefore I beg of you, put forth your decree and expound
all to me, since this wonder most deeply stirs my mind.'

     Then said she, smiling, 'Your question calls me to the greatest
of all these matters, and a full answer thereto is well-nigh
impossible. For this is its kind: if one doubt be cut away,
innumerable others arise, as the Hydra's heads; and there can be no
limit unless a man restrains them by the most quick fire of the mind.
For herein lie the questions of the directness of Providence, the
course of Fate, chances which cannot be foreseen, knowledge, divine
predestination, and freedom of judgment. You can judge for yourself
the weight of these questions. But since it is a part of your
treatment to know some of these, I will attempt to make some advantage
therefrom, though we are penned in by our narrow space of time. But if
you enjoy the delights of song, you must wait a while for that
pleasure, while I weave together for you the chain of reasons.'

     'As you will,' said I. Then, as though beginning afresh, she
spake thus:

     'The engendering of all things, the whole advance of all
changing natures, and every motion and progress in the world, draw
their causes, their order, and their forms from the allotment of the
unchanging mind of God, which lays manifold restrictions on all action
from the calm fortress of its own directness Such restrictions are
called Providence when they can be seen to lie in the very simplicity
of divine understanding; but they were called Fate in old times when
they were viewed with reference to the objects which they moved or
arranged. It will easily be understood that these two are very
different if the mind examines the force of each. For Providence is
the very divine reason which arranges all things, and rests with the
supreme disposer of all; while Fate is that ordering which is a part
of all changeable things, and by means of which Providence binds all
things together in their own order. Providence embraces all things
equally, however different they may be, even however infinite: when
they are assigned to their own places, forms, and times, Fate sets
them in an orderly motion; so that this development of the temporal
order, unified in the intelligence of the mind of God, is Providence.
The working of this unified development in time is called Fate. These
are different, but the one hangs upon the other. For this order, which
is ruled by Fate, emanates from the directness of Providence. Just as
when a craftsman perceives in his mind the form of the object he would
make, he sets his working power in motion, and brings through the
order of time that which he had seen directly and ready present to his
mind. So by Providence does God dispose all that is to be done, each
thing by itself and unchangeably; while these same things which
Providence has arranged are worked out by Fate in many ways and in
time. Whether, therefore, Fate works by the aid of the divine spirits
which serve Providence, or whether it works by the aid of the soul, or
of all nature, or the motions of the stars in heaven, or the powers of
angels, or the manifold skill of other spirits, whether the course of
Fate is bound together by any or all of these, one thing is certain,
namely that Providence is the one unchangeable direct power which
gives form to all things which are to come to pass, while Fate is the
changing bond, the temporal order of those things which are arranged
to come to pass by the direct disposition of God. Wherefore everything
which is subject to Fate is also subject to Providence, to which Fate
is itself subject. But there are things which, though beneath
Providence, are above the course of Fate. Those things are they which
are immovably set nearest the primary divinity, and are there beyond
the course of the movement of Fate. As in the case of spheres moving
round the same axis, that which is nearest the centre approaches most
nearly the simple motion of the centre, and is itself, as it were, an
axis around which turn those which are set outside it. That sphere
which is outside all turns through a greater circuit, and fulfils a
longer course in proportion as it is farther from the central axis;
and if it be joined or connect itself with that centre, it is drawn
into the direct motion thereof, and no longer strays or strives to
turn away. In like manner, that which goes farther from the primary
intelligence, is bound the more by the ties of Fate, and the nearer it
approaches the axis of all, the more free it is from Fate. But that
which clings without movement to the firm intellect above, surpasses
altogether the bond of Fate. As, therefore, reasoning is to
understanding; as that which becomes is to that which is; as time is
to eternity; as the circumference is to the centre: so is the changing
course of Fate to the immovable directness of Providence. That course
of Fate moves the heavens and the stars, moderates the first
principles in their turns, and alters their forms by balanced
interchangings. The same course renews all things that are born and
wither away by like advances of offspring and seed. It constrains,
too, the actions and fortunes of men by an unbreakable chain of
causes: and these causes must be unchangeable, as they proceed from
the beginnings of an unchanging Providence. Thus is the world governed
for the best if a directness, which rests in the intelligence of God,
puts forth an order of causes which may not swerve. This order
restrains by its own unchangeableness changeable things, which might
otherwise run hither and thither at random. Wherefore in disposing the
universe this limitation directs all for good, though to you who are
not strong enough to comprehend the whole order, all seems confusion
and disorder. Naught is there that comes to pass for the sake of evil,
or due to wicked men, of whom it has been abundantly shewn that they
seek the good, but misleading error turns them from the right course;
for never does the true order, which comes forth from the centre of
the highest good, turn any man aside from the right beginning.

     'But you will ask, "What more unjust confusion could exist than
that good men should sometimes enjoy prosperity, sometimes suffer
adversity, and that the bad too should sometimes receive what they
desire, sometimes what they hate?" Are then men possessed of such
infallible minds that they, whom they consider honest or dishonest,
must necessarily be what they are held to be? No, in these matters
human judgment is at variance with itself, and those who are held by
some to be worthy of reward, are by others held worthy of punishment.
But let us grant that a man could discern between good and bad
characters. Can he therefore know the inmost feelings of the soul, as
a doctor can learn a body's temperature? For it is no less a wonder to
the ignorant why sweet things suit one sound body, while bitter things
suit another; or why some sick people are aided by gentle draughts,
others by sharp and bitter ones. But a doctor does not wonder at such
things, for he knows the ways and constitutions of health and
sickness. And what is the health of the soul but virtue? and what the
sickness, but vice? And who is the preserver of the good and banisher
of the evil, who but God, the guardian and healer of minds? God looks
forth from the high watch-tower of His Providence, He sees what suits
each man, and applies to him that which suits him. Hence then comes
that conspicuous cause of wonder in the order of Fate, when a wise man
does that which amazes the ignorant. For, to glance at the depth of
God's works with so few words as human reason is capable of
comprehending, I say that what you think to be most fair and most
conducive to justice's preservation, that appears different to an all-
seeing Providence. Has not our fellow-philosopher Lucan told us how
"the conquering cause did please the gods, but the conquered,
Cato?"[62] What then surprises you when done on this earth, is the
true-guided order of things; it is your opinion which is perverted and
confused. But if there is any one whose life is so good that divine
and human estimates of him agree, yet he must be uncertain in the
strength of his mind; if any adversity befall him, it may always be
that he will cease to preserve his innocence, by which he found that
he could not preserve his good fortune. Thus then a wise dispensation
spares a man who might be made worse by adversity, lest he should
suffer when it is not good for him to be oppressed. Another may be
perfected in all virtues, wholly conscientious, and very near to God:
Providence holds that it is not right such an one should receive any
adversity, so that it allows him to be troubled not even by bodily
diseases. As a better man[63] than I has said, "The powers of virtues
build up the body of a good man." It often happens that the duty of a
supreme authority is assigned to good men for the purpose of pruning
the insolent growth of wickedness. To some, Providence grants a
mingled store of good and bad, according to the nature of their minds.
Some she treats bitterly, lest they grow too exuberant with long
continued good fortune; others she allows to be harassed by hardships
that the virtues of their minds should be strengthened by the habit
and exercise of patience. Some have too great a fear of sufferings
which they can bear; others have too great contempt for those which
they cannot bear: these she leads on by troubles to make trial of
themselves. Some have brought a name to be honoured for all time at
the price of a glorious death. Some by shewing themselves undefeated
by punishment, have left a proof to others that virtue may be
invincible by evil. What doubt can there be of how rightly such things
are disposed, and that they are for the good of those whom we see them
befall? The other point too arises from like causes, that sometimes
sorrows, sometimes the fulfilment of their desires, falls to the
wicked. As concerns the sorrows, no one is surprised, because all
agree that they deserve ill. Their punishments serve both to deter
others from crime by fear, and also to amend the lives of those who
undergo them; their happiness, on the other hand, serves as a proof to
good men of how they should regard good fortune of this nature, which
they see often attends upon the dishonest. And another thing seems to
me to be well arranged: the nature of a man may be so headstrong and
rough that lack of wealth may stir him to crime more readily than
restrain him; for the disease of such an one Providence prescribes a
remedy of stores of patrimony: he may see that his conscience is
befouled by sin, he may take account with himself of his fortune, and
will perhaps fear lest the loss of this property, of which he enjoys
the use, may bring unhappiness. Wherefore he will change his ways, and
leave off from ill-doing so long as he fears the loss of his fortune.
Again, good fortune, unworthily improved, has flung some into ruin. To
some the right of punishing is committed that they may use it for the
exercise and trial of the good, and the punishment of evil men. And
just as there is no league between good and bad men, so also the bad
cannot either agree among themselves: nay, with their vices tearing
their own consciences asunder, they cannot agree with themselves, and
do often perform acts which, when done, they perceive that they should
not have done. Wherefore high Providence has thus often shewn her
strange wonder, namely, that bad men should make other bad men good.
For some find themselves suffering injustice at the hands of evil men,
and, burning with hatred of those who have injured them, they have
returned to cultivate the fruits of virtue, because their aim is to be
unlike those whom they hate. To divine power, and to that alone, are
evil things good, when it uses them suitably so as to draw good
results therefrom. For a definite order embraces all things, so that
even when some subject leaves the true place assigned to it in the
order, it returns to an order, though another, it may be, lest aught
in the realm of Providence be left to random chance. But "hard is it
for me to set forth all these matters as a god,"[64] nor is it right
for a man to try to comprehend with his mind all the means of divine
working, or to explain them in words. Let it be enough that we have
seen that God, the Creator of all nature, directs and disposes all
things for good. And while He urges all, that He has made manifest, to
keep His own likeness, He drives out by the course of Fate all evil
from the bounds of His state. Wherefore if you look to the disposition
of Providence, you will reckon naught as bad of all the evils which
are held to abound upon earth.

     'But I see that now you are weighed down by the burden of the
question, and wearied by the length of our reasoning, and waiting for
the gentleness of song. Take then your draught, be refreshed thereby
and advance further the stronger.

Met. VI

     'If thou wouldst diligently behold with unsullied mind the laws
of the God of thunder upon high, look to the highest point of heaven
above. There, by a fair and equal compact, do the stars keep their
ancient peace. The sun is hurried on by its whirl of fire, but impedes
not the moon's cool orb. The Bear turns its rushing course around the
highest pole of the universe, and dips not in the western depths, and
though it sees the other constellations sink, it never seeks to quench
its flames in the ocean stream. In just divisions of time does the
evening star foretell the coming of the late shadows, and, as Lucifer,
brings back again the warming light of day. Thus does the
interchanging bond of love bring round their neverfailing courses; and
strife is for ever an exile from the starry realms. This unity rules
by fair limits the elements, so that wet yields to dry, its opposite,
and it faithfully joins cold to heat. Floating fire rises up on high,
and matter by its weight sinks down. From these same causes in warm
spring the flowering season breathes its scents; then the hot summer
dries the grain; then with its burden of fruits comes autumn again,
and winter's falling rain gives moisture. This mingling of seasons
nourishes and brings forth all on earth that has the breath of life;
and again snatches them away and hides them, whelming in death all
that has arisen. Meanwhile the Creator sits on high, rules all and
guides, king and Lord, fount and source of all, Law itself and wise
judge of justice. He restrains all that stirs nature to motion, holds
it back, and makes firm all that would stray. If He were not to recall
them to their true paths, and set them again upon the circles of their
courses, they would be torn from their source and so would perish.
This is the common bond of love; all seek thus to be restrained by the
limit of the good. In no other manner can they endure if this bond of
love be not turned round again, and if the causes, which He has set,
return not again.

Prose VII

Philosophy shews that all fortune is good

     'Do you see now,' she continued, 'what follows upon all that we
have said?'

     'What is it?' I asked.

     'That all fortune is plainly good,' she answered.

     'How can that be?' said I.

     'Consider this,' she said: 'all fortune, whether pleasant or
difficult, is due to this cause; it is for the sake of rewarding the
good or exercising their virtue, and of punishing and correcting bad
men: therefore it is plain that all this fortune which is allowed to
be just or expedient, must be good.'

     'Yes,' I said, 'that is a true argument, and when I think of the
Providence or Fate about which you have taught me, the conclusion
rests upon strong foundations. But if it please you, let us count it
among those conclusions which you a little while ago set down as
inconceivable.'

     'Why?' she asked.

     'Because it is a commonplace saying among men -- indeed an
especially frequent one -- that some people have bad fortune.'

     'Would you then have us approach more nearly the common
conversation of men, lest we should seem to withdraw too far from
human ways?'

     'If you will,' I said.

     'Do you not think that that, which is advantageous, is good?'

     'Yes.'

     'And that fortune, which exercises or corrects, is
advantageous?'

     'I agree,' said I.

     'Then it is good, is it not?'

     'It must be so.'

     'This is the fortune of those who are either firmly set in
virtue and struggling against their difficulties, or of those who
would leave their vices and take the path of virtue?'

     'That is true,' I said.

     'But what of that pleasant fortune which is granted as a reward
to good men? Do most people perceive that it is bad? No; but, as is
true, they esteem it the best. And what of the last kind of fortune,
which is hard and which restrains bad men by just punishment? Is that
commonly held to be good?'

     'No,' said I, 'it is held to be the most miserable of all that
can be imagined.'

     'Beware lest in following the common conception, we come to some
truly inconceivable conclusion.'

     'What do you mean?'

     'From what we have allowed,' she said, 'it results that the
fortune of those who are in possession of virtue, or are gaining it,
or advancing therein, is entirely good, whatever it be, while for
those who remain in wickedness, their fortune is the worst.'

     'That is true, but who would dare confess it?'

     'For this reason a wise man should never complain, whenever he
is brought into strife with fortune; just as a brave man cannot
properly be disgusted whenever the noise of battle is heard, since for
both of them their very difficulty is their opportunity, for the brave
man of increasing his glory, for the wise man of confirming and
strengthening his wisdom. From this is virtue itself so named,[65]
because it is so supported by its strength that it is not overcome by
adversity. And you who were set in the advance of virtue have not come
to this pass of being dissipated by delights, or enervated by
pleasure; but you fight too bitterly against all fortune. Keep the
middle path of strength and virtue, lest you be overwhelmed by
misfortune or corrupted by pleasant fortune. All that falls short or
goes too far ahead, has contempt for happiness, and gains not the
reward for labour done. It rests in your own hands what shall be the
nature of the fortune which you choose to form for yourself. For all
fortune which seems difficult, either exercises virtue, or corrects or
punishes vice.

Met. VII

     'The avenging son of Atreus strove for full ten years before he
expiated in the fall of Phrygian Troy the wrong done to his brother's
marriage. The same Agamemnon must needs throw off his father's nature,
and himself, an unwilling priest, thrust his knife into his unhappy
daughter's throat, and buy the winds at the cost of blood, when he
sought to fill the sails of the fleet of Greece. The King of Ithaca
wept sore for his lost comrades whom the savage Polyphemus swallowed
into his huge maw as he lay in his vast cave; but, when mad for his
blinded eye, he paid back with rejoicings for the sad tears he had
drawn. Hercules became famous through hard labours. He tamed the
haughty Centaurs, and from the fierce lion of Nemea took his spoil.
With his sure arrows he smote the birds of Stymphalus; and from the
watchful dragon took the apples of the Hesperides, filling his hand
with their precious gold; and Cerberus he dragged along with threefold
chain. The story tells how he conquered the fierce Diomede and set
before his savage mares their master as their food. The Hydra's poison
perished in his fire. He took the horn and so disgraced the brow of
the river Achelous, who hid below his bank his head ashamed. On the
sands of Libya he laid Antæus low; Cacus he slew to sate Evander's
wrath. The bristling boar of Erymanthus flecked with his own foam the
shoulders which were to bear the height of heaven; for in his last
labour he bore with unbending neck the heavens, and so won again his
place in heaven, the reward of his last work.

     'Go forth then bravely whither leads the lofty path of high
example. Why do ye sluggards turn your backs? When the earth is
overcome, the stars are yours.'


BOOK V

Prose I

Philosophy discusses 'chance'

     HERE she made an end and was for turning the course of her
speaking to the handling and explaining of other subjects. Then said
I: 'Your encouragement is right and most worthy in truth of your name
and weight. But I am learning by experience what you just now said of
Providence; that the question is bound up in others. I would ask you
whether you think that Chance exists at all, and what you think it
is?'

     Then she answered: ' I am eager to fulfil my promised debt, and
to shew you the path by which you may seek your home. But these
things, though all-expedient for knowledge, are none the less rather
apart from our path, and we must be careful lest you become wearied by
our turnings aside, and so be not strong enough to complete the
straight journey.'

     'Have no fear at all thereof,' said I.' It will be restful to
know these things in which I have so great a pleasure; and when every
view of your reasoning has stood firm with unshaken credit, so let
there be no doubt of what shall follow.'

     'I will do your pleasure,' she made answer, and thus she began
to speak:

     'If chance is defined as an outcome of random influence,
produced by no sequence of causes, I am sure that there is no such
thing as chance, and I consider that it is but an empty word, beyond
shewing the meaning of the matter which we have in hand. For what
place can be left for anything happening at random, so long as God
controls everything in order? It is a true saying that nothing can
come out of nothing. None of the old philosophers has denied that,
though they did not apply it to the effective principle, but to the
matter operated upon -- that is to say, to nature; and this was the
foundation upon which they built all their reasoning. If anything
arises from no causes, it will appear to have risen out of nothing.
But if this is impossible, then chance also cannot be anything of that
sort, which is stated in the definition which we mentioned.'

     'Then is there nothing which can be justly called chance, nor
anything "by chance"?' I asked.' Or is there anything which common
people know not, but which those words do suit?'

     'My philosopher, Aristotle, defined it in his Physics[66]
shortly and well-nigh truly.'

     'How?' I asked.

     'Whenever anything is done with one intention, but something
else, other than was intended, results from certain causes, that is
called chance: as, for instance, if a man digs the ground for the sake
of cultivating it, and finds a heap of buried gold. Such a thing is
believed to have happened by chance, but it does not come from
nothing, for it has its own causes, whose unforeseen and unexpected
coincidence seem to have brought about a chance. For if the cultivator
did not dig the ground, if the owner had not buried his money, the
gold would not have been found. These are the causes of the chance
piece of good fortune, which comes about from the causes which meet
it, and move along with it, not from the intention of the actor. For
neither the burier nor the tiller intended that the gold should be
found; but, as I said, it was a coincidence, and it happened that the
one dug up what the other buried. We may therefore define chance as an
unexpected result from the coincidence of certain causes in matters
where there was another purpose. The order of the universe, advancing
with its inevitable sequences, brings about this coincidence of
causes. This order itself emanates from its source, which is
Providence, and disposes all things in their proper time and place.

Met. I

     'In the land where the Parthian, as he turns in flight, shoots
his arrows into the pursuer's breast, from the rocks of the crag of
Achmænia, the Tigris and Euphrates flow from out one source, but
quickly with divided streams are separate. If they should come
together and again be joined in a single course, all, that the two
streams bear along, would flow in one together. Boats would meet
boats, and trees meet trees torn up by the currents, and the mingled
waters would together entwine their streams by chance; but their
sloping beds restrain these chances vague, and the downward order of
the falling torrent guides their courses. Thus does chance, which
seems to rush onward without rein, bear the bit, and take its way by
rule.'

Prose II

Philosophy asserts the existence of free will

     'I have listened to you,' I said, 'and agree that it is as you
say. But in this close sequence of causes, is there any freedom for
our judgment or does this chain of fate bind the very feelings of our
minds too?'

     'There is free will,' she answered. 'Nor could there be any
reasoning nature without freedom of judgment. For any being that can
use its reason by nature, has a power of judgment by which it can
without further aid decide each point, and so distinguish between
objects to be desired and objects to be shunned. Each therefore seeks
what it deems desirable, and flies from what it considers should be
shunned. Wherefore all who have reason have also freedom of desiring
and refusing in themselves. But I do not lay down that this is equal
in all beings. Heavenly and divine beings have with them a judgment of
great insight, an imperturbable will, and a power which can effect
their desires. But human spirits must be more free when they keep
themselves safe in the contemplation of the mind of God; but less free
when they sink into bodies, and less still when they are bound by
their earthly members. The last stage is mere slavery, when the spirit
is given over to vices and has fallen away from the possession of its
reason. For when the mind turns its eyes from the light of truth on
high to lower darkness, soon they are dimmed by the clouds of
ignorance, and become turbid through ruinous passions; by yielding to
these passions and consenting to them, men increase the slavery which
they have brought upon themselves, and their true liberty is lost in
captivity. But God, looking upon all out of the infinite, perceives
the views of Providence, and disposes each as its destiny has already
fated for it according to its merits: "He looketh over all and heareth
all."[67]

Met. II

     'Homer with his honeyed lips sang of the bright sun's clear
light; yet the sun cannot burst with his feeble rays the bowels of the
earth or the depths of the sea. Not so with the Creator of this great
sphere. No masses of earth can block His vision as He looks over all.
Night's cloudy darkness cannot resist Him. With one glance of His
intelligence He sees all that has been, that is, and that is to come.
He alone can see all things, so truly He may be called the Sun.' [68]

Prose III

Boethius cannot reconcile God's foreknowledge with man's free will

     Then said I, 'Again am I plunged in yet more doubt and
difficulty.'

     'What are they,' she asked, 'though I have already my idea of
what your trouble consists?

     'There seems to me,' I said, 'to be such incompatibility between
the existence of God's universal foreknowledge and that of any freedom
of judgment. For if God foresees all things and cannot in anything be
mistaken, that, which His Providence sees will happen, must result.
Wherefore if it knows beforehand not only men's deeds but even their
designs and wishes, there will be no freedom of judgment. For there
can neither be any deed done, nor wish formed, except such as the
infallible Providence of God has foreseen. For if matters could ever
so be turned that they resulted otherwise than was foreseen of
Providence, this foreknowledge would cease to be sure. But, rather
than knowledge, it is opinion which is uncertain; and that, I deem, is
not applicable to God. And, further, I cannot approve of an argument
by which some men think that they can cut this knot; for they say that
a result does not come to pass for the reason that Providence has
foreseen it, but the opposite rather, namely, that because it is about
to come to pass, therefore it cannot be hidden from God's Providence.
In that way it seems to me that the argument must resolve itself into
an argument on the other side. For in that case it is not necessary
that that should happen which is foreseen, but that that which is
about to happen should be foreseen; as though, indeed, our doubt was
whether God's foreknowledge is the certain cause of future events, or
the certainty of future events is the cause of Providence. But let our
aim be to prove that, whatever be the shape which this series of
causes takes, the fulfilment of God's foreknowledge is necessary, even
if this knowledge may not seem to induce the necessity for the
occurrence of future events. For instance, if a man sits down, it must
be that the opinion, which conjectures that he is sitting, is true;
but conversely, if the opinion concerning the man is true because he
is sitting, he must be sitting down. There is therefore necessity in
both cases: the man must be sitting, and the opinion must be true. But
he does not sit because the opinion is true, but rather the opinion is
true because his sitting down has preceded it. Thus, though the cause
of the truth of the opinion proceeds from the other fact, yet there is
a common necessity on both parts. In like manner we must reason of
Providence and future events. For even though they are foreseen
because they are about to happen, yet they do not happen because they
are foreseen. None the less it is necessary that either what is about
to happen should be foreseen of God, or that what has been foreseen
should happen; and this alone is enough to destroy all free will.

     'Yet how absurd it is that we should say that the result of
temporal affairs is the cause of eternal foreknowledge! And to think
that God foresees future events because they are about to happen, is
nothing else than to hold events of past time to be the cause of that
highest Providence. Besides, just as, when I know a present fact, that
fact must be so; so also when I know of something that will happen,
that must come to pass. Thus it follows that the fulfilment of a
foreknown event must be inevitable.

     'Lastly, if any one believes that any matter is otherwise than
the fact is, he not only has not knowledge, but his opinion is false
also, and that is very far from the truth of knowledge. Wherefore, if
any future event is such that its fulfilment is not sure or necessary,
how can it possibly be known beforehand that it will occur? For just
as absolute knowledge has no taint of falsity, so also that which is
conceived by knowledge cannot be otherwise than as it is conceived.
That is the reason why knowledge cannot lie, because each matter must
be just as knowledge knows that it is. What then How can God know
beforehand these uncertain future events? For if He thinks inevitable
the fulfilment of such things as may possibly not result, He is wrong;
and that we may not believe, nor even utter, rightly. But if He
perceives that they will result as they are in such a manner that He
only knows that they may or may not occur, equally, how is this
foreknowledge, this which knows nothing for sure, nothing absolutely?
How is such a fore-knowledge different from the absurd prophecy which
Horace puts in the mouth of Tiresias: "Whatever I shall say, will
either come to pass, or it will not "?[69] How, too, would God's
Providence be better than man's opinion, if, as men do, He only sees
to be uncertain such things as have an uncertain result? But if there
can be no uncertainty with God, the most sure source of all things,
then the fulfilment of all that He has surely foreknown, is certain.
Thus we are led to see that there is no freedom for the intentions or
actions of men; for the mind of God, foreseeing all things without
error or deception, binds all together and controls their results. And
when we have once allowed this, it is plain how complete is the fall
of all human actions in consequence. In vain are rewards or
punishments set before good or bad, for there is no free or voluntary
action of the mind to deserve them; and what we just now determined
was most fair, will prove to be most unfair of all, namely to punish
the dishonest or reward the honest, since their own will does not put
them in the way of honesty or dishonesty, but the unfailing necessity
of development constrains them. Wherefore neither virtues nor vices
are anything, but there is rather an indiscriminate confusion of all
deserts. And nothing could be more vicious than this; since the whole
order of all comes from Providence, and nothing is left to human
intention, it follows that our crimes, as well as our good deeds, must
all be held due to the author of all good. Hence it is unreasonable to
hope for or pray against aught. For what could any man hope for or
pray against, if an undeviating chain links together all that we can
desire? Thus will the only understanding between God and man, the
right of prayer, be taken away. We suppose that at the price of our
deservedly humbling ourselves before Him we may win a right to the
inestimable reward of His divine grace: this is the only manner in
which men can seem to deal with God, so to speak, and by virtue of
prayer to join ourselves to that inaccessible light, before it is
granted to us; but if we allow the inevitability of the future, and
believe that we have no power, what means shall we have to join
ourselves to the Lord of all, or how can we cling to Him? Wherefore,
as you sang but a little while ago,[70] the human race must be cut off
from its source and ever fall away.

Met. III

     'What cause of discord is it breaks the bonds of agreement here?
What heavenly power has set such strife between two truths? Thus,
though apart each brings no doubt, yet can they not be linked
together. Comes there no discord between these truths? Stand they for
ever sure by one another? Yes, 'tis the mind, o'erwhelmed by the
body's blindness, which cannot see by the light of that dimmed
brightness the finest threads that bind the truth. But wherefore burns
the spirit with so strong desire to learn the hidden signs of truth?
Knows it the very object of its careful search? Then why seeks it to
learn anew what it already knows? If it knows it not, why searches it
in blindness? For who would desire aught unwitting? Or who could seek
after that which is unknown? How should he find it, or recognise its
form when found, if he knows it not? And when the mind of man
perceived the mind of God, did it then know the whole and parts alike?
Now is the mind buried in the cloudy darkness of the body, yet has not
altogether forgotten its own self, and keeps the whole though it has
lost the parts. Whosoever, therefore, seeks the truth, is not wholly
in ignorance, nor yet has knowledge wholly; for he knows not all, yet
is not ignorant of all. He takes thought for the whole which he keeps
in memory, handling again what he saw on high, so that he may add to
that which he has kept, that which he has forgotten.'

Prose IV

Philosophy tries to shew how they may be reconciled

     Then said she, 'This is the old plaint concerning Providence
which was so strongly urged Philosophy by Cicero when treating of
Divination,[71] and you yourself have often and at length questioned
the same subject. But so far, none of you have explained it with
enough diligence or certainty. The cause of this obscurity is that the
working of human reason cannot approach the directness of divine
foreknowledge. If this could be understood at all, there would be no
doubt left. And this especially will I try to make plain, if I can
first explain your difficulties.

     'Tell me why you think abortive the reasoning of those who solve
the question thus; they argue that foreknowledge cannot be held to be
a cause for the necessity of future results, and therefore free will
is not in any way shackled by foreknowledge.[72] Whence do you draw
your proof of the necessity of future results if not from the fact
that such things as are known beforehand cannot but come to pass? If,
then (as you yourself admitted just now), foreknowledge brings no
necessity to bear upon future events, how is it that the voluntary
results of such events are bound to find a fixed end? Now for the sake
of the argument, that you may turn your attention to what follows, let
us state that there is no foreknowledge at all. Then are the events
which are decided by free will, bound by any necessity, so far as this
goes? Of course not. Secondly, let us state that foreknowledge exists,
but brings no necessity to bear upon events; then, I think, the same
free will will be left, intact and absolute." But," you will say,
"though foreknowledge is no necessity for a result in the future, yet
it is a sign that it will necessarily come to pass." Thus, therefore,
even if there had been no foreknowledge, it would be plain that future
results were under necessity; for every sign can only shew what it is
that it points out; it does not bring it to pass. Wherefore we must
first prove that nothing happens but of necessity, in order that it
may be plain that foreknowledge is a sign of this necessity.
Otherwise, if there is no necessity, then foreknowledge will not be a
sign of that which does not exist. Now it is allowed that proof rests
upon firm reasoning, not upon signs or external arguments; it must be
deduced from suitable and binding causes. How can it possibly be that
things, which are foreseen as about to happen, should not occur? That
would be as though we were to believe that events would not occur
which Providence foreknows as about to occur, and as though we did not
rather think this, that though they occur, yet they have had no
necessity in their own natures which brought them about. We can see
many actions developing before our eyes; just as chariot drivers see
the development of their actions as they control and guide their
chariots, and many other things likewise. Does any necessity compel
any of those things to occur as they do? Of course not. All art,
craft, and intention would be in vain, if everything took place by
compulsion. Therefore, if things have no necessity for coming to pass
when they do, they cannot have any necessity to be about to come to
pass before they do. Wherefore there are things whose results are
entirely free from necessity. For I think not that there is any man
who will say this, that things, which are done in the present, were
not about to be done in the past, before they are done. Thus these
foreknown events have their free results. Just as foreknowledge of
present things brings no necessity to bear upon them as they come to
pass, so also foreknowledge of future things brings no necessity to
bear upon things which are to come.

     'But you will say that there is no doubt of this too, whether
there can be any foreknowledge of things which have not results
bounden by necessity. For they do seem to lack harmony: and you think
that if they are foreseen, the necessity follows; if there is no
necessity, then they cannot be foreseen; nothing can be perceived
certainly by knowledge, unless it be certain. But if things have
uncertainty of result, but are foreseen as though certain, this is
plainly the obscurity of opinion, and not the truth of knowledge. For
you believe that to think aught other than it is, is the opposite of
true knowledge. The cause of this error is that every man believes
that all the subjects, that he knows, are known by their own force or
nature alone, which are known; but it is quite the opposite. For every
subject, that is known, is comprehended not according to its own
force, but rather according to the nature of those who know it. Let me
make this plain to you by a brief example: the roundness of a body may
be known in one way by sight, in another way by touch. Sight can take
in the whole body at once from a distance by judging its radii, while
touch clings, as it were, to the outside of the sphere, and from close
at hand perceives through the material parts the roundness of the body
as it passes over the actual circumference. A man himself is
differently comprehended by the senses, by imagination, by reason, and
by intelligence. For the senses distinguish the form as set in the
matter operated upon by the form; imagination distinguishes the
appearance alone without the matter. Reason goes even further than
imagination; by a general and universal contemplation it investigates
the actual kind which is represented in individual specimens. Higher
still is the view of the intelligence, which reaches above the sphere
of the universal, and with the unsullied eye of the mind gazes upon
that very form of the kind in its absolute simplicity. Herein the
chief point for our consideration is this: the higher power of
understanding includes the lower, but the lower never rises to the
higher. For the senses are capable of understanding naught but the
matter; imagination cannot look upon universal or natural kinds;
reason cannot comprehend the absolute form; whereas the intelligence
seems to look down from above and comprehend the form, and
distinguishes all that lie below, but in such a way that it grasps the
very form which could not be known to any other than itself. For it
perceives and knows the general kind, as does reason; the appearance,
as does the imagination; and the matter, as do the senses, but with
one grasp of the mind it looks upon all with a clear conception of the
whole. And reason too, as it views general kinds, does not make use of
the imagination nor the senses, but yet does perceive the objects both
of the imagination and of the senses. It is reason which thus defines
a general kind according to its conception: Man, for instance, is an
animal, biped and reasoning. This is a general notion of a natural
kind, but no man denies that the subject can be approached by the
imagination and by the senses, just because reason investigates it by
a reasonable conception and not by the imagination or senses.
Likewise, though imagination takes its beginning of seeing and forming
appearances from the senses, yet without their aid it surveys each
subject by an imaginative faculty of distinguishing, not by the
distinguishing faculty of the senses.

     'Do you see then, how in knowledge of all things, the subject
uses its own standard of capability, and not those of the objects
known? And this is but reasonable, for every judgment formed is an act
of the person who judges, and therefore each man must of necessity
perform his own action from his own capability and not the capability
of any other.

Met. IV

     In days of old the Porch at Athens[73] gave us men, seeing dimly
as in old age, who could believe that the feelings of the senses and
the imagination were but impressions on the mind from bodies without
them, just as the old custom was to impress with swift-running pens
letters upon the surface of a waxen tablet which bore no marks before.
But if the mind with its own force can bring forth naught by its own
exertions; if it does but lie passive and subject to the marks of
other bodies; if it reflects, as does, forsooth, a mirror, the vain
reflections of other things; whence thrives there in the soul an all-
seeing power of knowledge? What is the force that sees the single
parts, or which distinguishes the facts it knows? What is the force
that gathers up the parts it has distinguished, that takes its course
in order due, now rises to mingle with the things on high, and now
sinks down among the things below, and then to itself brings back
itself, and, so examining, refutes the false with truth? This is a
cause of greater power, of more effective force by far than that which
only receives the impressions of material bodies. Yet does the passive
reception come first, rousing and stirring all the strength of the
mind in the living body When the eyes are smitten with a light, or the
ears are struck with a voice's sound, then is the spirit's energy
aroused, and, thus moved, calls upon like forms, such as it holds
within itself, fits them to signs without and mingles the forms of its
imagination with those which it has stored within.

Prose V

Human reasoning, being lower than divine intelligence, can at best
only strive to approach thereto

     'With regard to feeling the effects of bodies, natures which are
brought into contact from without may affect the organs of the senses,
and the body's passive affection may precede the active energy of the
spirit, and call forth to itself the activity of the mind; if then,
when the effects of bodies are felt, the mind is not marked in any way
by its passive reception thereof, but declares that reception subject
to the body of its own force, how much less do those subjects, which
are free from all affections of bodies, follow external objects in
their perceptions, and how much more do they make clear the way for
the action of their mind? By this argument many different manners of
understanding have fallen to widely different natures of things. For
the senses are incapable of any knowledge but their own, and they
alone fall to those living beings which are incapable of motion, as
are sea shell-fish, and other low forms of life which live by clinging
to rocks; while imagination is granted to animals with the power of
motion, who seem to be affected by some desire to seek or avoid
certain things. But reason belongs to the human race alone, just as
the true intelligence is God's alone. Wherefore that manner of
knowledge is better than others, for it can comprehend of its own
nature not only the subject peculiar to itself, but also the subjects
of the other kinds of knowledge. Suppose that the senses and
imagination thus oppose reasoning, saying, "The universal natural
kinds, which reason believes that it can perceive, are nothing; for
what is comprehensible to the senses and the imagination cannot be
universal: therefore either the judgment of reason is true, and that
which can be perceived by the senses is nothing; or, since reason
knows well that there are many subjects comprehensible to the senses
and imagination, the conception of reason is vain, for it holds to be
universal what is an individual matter comprehensible to the senses."
To this reason might answer, that "it sees from a general point of
view what is comprehensible to the senses and the imagination, but
they cannot aspire to a knowledge of universals, since their manner of
knowledge cannot go further than material or bodily appearances; and
in the matter of knowledge it is better to trust to the stronger and
more nearly perfect judgment." If such a trial of argument occurred,
should not we, who have within us the force of reasoning as well as
the powers of the senses and imagination, approve of the cause of
reason rather than that of the others? It is in like manner that human
reason thinks that the divine intelligence cannot perceive the things
of the future except as it conceives them itself. For you argue thus:
"If there are events which do not appear to have sure or necessary
results, their results cannot be known for certain beforehand:
therefore there can be no foreknowledge of these events; for if we
believe that there is any foreknowledge thereof, there can exist
nothing but such as is brought forth of necessity." If therefore we,
who have our share in possession of reason, could go further and
possess the judgment of the mind of God, we should then think it most
just that human reason should yield itself to the mind of God, just as
we have determined that the senses and imagination ought to yield to
reason.

     'Let us therefore raise ourselves, if so be that we can, to that
height of the loftiest intelligence. For there reason will see what it
cannot of itself perceive, and that is to know how even such things as
have uncertain results are perceived definitely and for certain by
foreknowledge; and such foreknowledge will not be mere opinion, but
rather the single and direct form of the highest knowledge unlimited
by any finite bounds.

Met. V

     'In what different shapes do living beings move upon the earth!
Some make flat their bodies, sweeping through the dust and using their
strength to make therein a furrow without break; some flit here and
there upon light wings which beat the breeze, and they float through
vast tracks of air in their easy flight. 'Tis others' wont to plant
their footsteps on the ground, and pass with their paces over green
fields or under trees. Though all these thou seest move in different
shapes, yet all have their faces downward along the ground, and this
doth draw downward and dull their senses. Alone of all, the human race
lifts up its head on high, and stands in easy balance with the body
upright, and so looks down to spurn the earth. If thou art not too
earthly by an evil folly, this pose is as a lesson. Thy glance is
upward, and thou dost carry high thy head, and thus thy search is
heavenward: then lead thy soul too upward, lest while the body is
higher raised, the mind sink lower to the earth.

Prose VI

Philosophy explains that God's divine intelligence can view all things
from its eternal mind, while human reason can only see them from a
temporal point of view

     'Since then all that is known is apprehended, as we just now
shewed, not according to its nature but according to the nature of the
knower, let us examine, so far as we lawfully may, the character of
the divine nature, so that we may be able to learn what its knowledge
is.

     'The common opinion, according to all men living, is that God is
eternal. Let us therefore consider what is eternity. For eternity
will, I think, make clear to us at the same time the divine nature and
knowledge.

     'Eternity is the simultaneous and complete possession of
infinite life. This will appear more clearly if we compare it with
temporal things. All that lives under the conditions of time moves
through the present from the past to the future; there is nothing set
in time which can at one moment grasp the whole space of its lifetime.
It cannot yet comprehend to-morrow; yesterday it has already lost. And
in this life of to-day your life is no more than a changing, passing
moment. And as Aristotle[74] said of the universe, so it is of all
that is subject to time; though it never began to be, nor will ever
cease, and its life is co-extensive with the infinity of time, yet it
is not such as can be held to be eternal. For though it apprehends and
grasps a space of infinite lifetime, it does not embrace the whole
simultaneously; it has not yet experienced the future. What we should
rightly call eternal is that which grasps and possesses wholly and
simultaneously the fulness of unending life, which lacks naught of the
future, and has lost naught of the fleeting past; and such an
existence must be ever present in itself to control and aid itself,
and also must keep present with itself the infinity of changing time.
Therefore, people who hear that Plato thought that this universe had
no beginning of time and will have no end, are not right in thinking
that in this way the created world is co-eternal with its creator.[75]
For to pass through unending life, the attribute which Plato ascribes
to the universe is one thing; but it is another thing to grasp
simultaneously the whole of unending life in the present; this is
plainly a peculiar property of the mind of God.

     'And further, God should not be regarded as older than His
creations by any period of time, but rather by the peculiar property
of His own single nature. For the infinite changing of temporal things
tries to imitate the ever simultaneously present immutability of His
life: it cannot succeed in imitating or equalling this, but sinks from
immutability into change, and falls from the single directness of the
present into an infinite space of future and past. And since this
temporal state cannot possess its life completely and simultaneously,
but it does in the same manner exist for ever without ceasing, it
therefore seems to try in some degree to rival that which it cannot
fulfil or represent, for it binds itself to some sort of present time
out of this small and fleeting moment; but inasmuch as this temporal
present bears a certain appearance of that abiding present, it somehow
makes those, to whom it comes, seem to be in truth what they imitate.
But since this imitation could not be abiding, the unending march of
time has swept it away, and thus we find that it has bound together,
as it passes, a chain of life, which it could not by abiding embrace
in its fulness. And thus if we would apply proper epithets to those
subjects, we can say, following Plato, that God is eternal, but the
universe is continual.

     'Since then all judgment apprehends the subjects of its thought
according to its own nature, and God has a condition of ever-present
eternity, His knowledge, which passes over every change of time,
embracing infinite lengths of past and future, views in its own direct
comprehension everything as though it were taking place in the
present. If you would weigh the foreknowledge by which God
distinguishes all things, you will more rightly hold it to be a
knowledge of a never-failing constancy in the present, than a
foreknowledge of the future. Whence Providence is more rightly to be
understood as a looking forth than a looking forward, because it is
set far from low matters and looks forth upon all things as from a
lofty mountain-top above all. Why then do you demand that all things
occur by necessity, if divine light rests upon them, while men do not
render necessary such things as they can see? Because you can see
things of the present, does your sight therefore put upon them any
necessity? Surely not. If one may not unworthily compare this present
time with the divine, just as you can see things in this your temporal
present, so God sees all things in His eternal present. Wherefore this
divine foreknowledge does not change the nature or individual
qualities of things: it sees things present in its understanding just
as they will result some time in the future. It makes no confusion in
its distinctions, and with one view of its mind it discerns all that
shall come to pass whether of necessity or not. For instance, when you
see at the same time a man walking on the earth and the sun rising in
the heavens, you see each sight simultaneously, yet you distinguish
between them, and decide that one is moving voluntarily, the other of
necessity. In like manner the perception of God looks down upon all
things without disturbing at all their nature, though they are present
to Him but future under the conditions of time. Wherefore this
foreknowledge is not opinion but knowledge resting upon truth, since
He knows that a future event is, though He knows too that it will not
occur of necessity. If you answer here that what God sees about to
happen, cannot but happen, and that what cannot but happen is bound by
necessity, you fasten me down to the word necessity, I will grant that
we have a matter of most firm truth, but it is one to which scarce any
man can approach unless he be a contemplator of the divine. For I
shall answer that such a thing will occur of necessity, when it is
viewed from the point of divine knowledge; but when it is examined in
its own nature, it seems perfectly free and unrestrained. For there
are two kinds of necessities; one is simple: for instance, a necessary
fact, "all men are mortal"; the other is conditional; for instance, if
you know that a man is walking, he must be walking: for what each man
knows cannot be otherwise than it is known to be; but the conditional
one is by no means followed by this simple and direct necessity; for
there is no necessity to compel a voluntary walker to proceed, though
it is necessary that, if he walks, he should be proceeding. In the
same way, if Providence sees an event in its present, that thing must
be, though it has no necessity of its own nature. And God looks in His
present upon those future things which come to pass through free will.
Therefore if these things be looked at from the point of view of God's
insight, they come to pass of necessity under the condition of divine
knowledge; if, on the other hand, they are viewed by themselves, they
do not lose the perfect freedom of their nature. Without doubt, then,
all things that God foreknows do come to pass, but some of them
proceed from free will; and though they result by coming into
existence, yet they do not lose their own nature, because before they
came to pass they could also not have come to pass.

     '"What then," you may ask, "is the difference in their not being
bound by necessity, since they result under all circumstances as by
necessity, on account of the condition of divine knowledge?" This is
the difference, as I just now put forward: take the sun rising and a
man walking; while these operations are occurring, they cannot but
occur: but the one was bound to occur before it did; the other was not
so bound. What God has in His present, does exist without doubt; but
of such things some follow by necessity, others by their authors'
wills. Wherefore I was justified in saying that if these things be
regarded from the view of divine knowledge, they are necessary, but if
they are viewed by themselves, they are perfectly free from all ties
of necessity: just as when you refer all, that is clear to the senses,
to the reason, it becomes general truth, but it remains particular if
regarded by itself. "But," you will say, "if it is in my power to
change a purpose of mine, I will disregard Providence, since I may
change what Providence foresees." To which I answer, "You can change
your purpose, but since the truth of Providence knows in its present
that you can do so, and whether you do so, and in what direction you
may change it, therefore you cannot escape that divine foreknowledge:
just as you cannot avoid the glance of a present eye, though you may
by your free will turn yourself to all kinds of different actions."
"What?" you will say, "can I by my own action change divine knowledge,
so that if I choose now one thing, now another, Providence too will
seem to change its knowledge?" No; divine insight precedes all future
things, turning them back and recalling them to the present time of
its own peculiar knowledge. It does not change, as you may think,
between this and that alternation of foreknowledge. It is constant in
preceding and embracing by one glance all your changes. And God does
not receive this ever-present grasp of all things and vision of the
present at the occurrence of future events, but from His own peculiar
directness. Whence also is that difficulty solved which you laid down
a little while ago, that it was not worthy to say that our future
events were the cause of God's knowledge. For this power of knowledge,
ever in the present and embracing all things in its perception, does
itself constrain all things, and owes naught to following events from
which it has received naught. Thus, therefore, mortal men have their
freedom of judgment intact. And since their wills are freed from all
binding necessity, laws do not set rewards or punishments unjustly.
God is ever the constant foreknowing overseer, and the ever-present
eternity of His sight moves in harmony with the future nature of our
actions, as it dispenses rewards to the good, and punishments to the
bad. Hopes are not vainly put in God, nor prayers in vain offered: if
these are right, they cannot but be answered. Turn therefore from
vice: ensue virtue: raise your soul to upright hopes: send up on high
your prayers from this earth. If you would be honest, great is the
necessity enjoined upon your goodness, since all you do is done before
the eyes of an all-seeing Judge.'


APPENDIX
(See Book II, Prose III)

     BOETHIUS'S first wife was Elpis, daughter of Festus. The
following epitaph has been handed down as that of Elpis, and has been
said by some to have been written by Boethius himself:--

Hope[76] was my name, and Sicily my home,
Where I was nursed, until I came from thence
An exile for the love I bore my lord:
Apart from him my time was full of tears,
Heavy the day, laden with care the night,
(But with him all was joy and peace and love) [77]
And now, my pilgrim's journey o'er, I rest
Within this sacred place, and witness bear
Before the throne of the Eternal Judge on high.


NOTES
1. (Pi) and (Theta) are the first letters of the Greek words
denoting Practical and Theoretical, the two divisions of philosophy.
2. Anaxagoras went into exile from Athens about 450 B.C.
3. Socrates was executed by the Athenian state, B.C. 399.
4. Zeno of Elea was tortured by Nearchus, tyrant of Elea, about 440
B.C.
5. Canius was put to death by Caligula, c. A.D. 40.
6. Seneca was driven to commit suicide by Nero, A.D. 65.
7. Soranus was condemned to death by Nero, A.D. 66.
8. Boethius means that his chief 'philosophical' studies had been
physics, astronomy, and ethics.
9. Plato, Repub. v. 473.
10. Plato, Repub. vi. 488, 489.
11. Conigastus and Trigulla were favourite officers of the Emperor
Theodoric, the Goth: they used their influence with him for the
oppression of the weak.
12. The Emperor Caligula.
13. Symmachus was executed by Theodoric at the same time as Boethius.
14. Cp. Prose iv. of this book, above.
15. The proverbially rich and happy king; defeated and condemned to
death by Cyrus, king of Media, in 546 B.C., but spared by him.
16. The last king of Macedonia, defeated at Pydna, 168 B.C., by L.
Æmilius Paulus.
17. Boethius's first wife was Elpis, daughter of Festus: his second
was Rusticiana, daughter of Symmachus, a senator and consul, A.D.485.
His second wife was the mother of the two sons mentioned below. (See
Appendix)
18. This is an application of Juvenal's lines (Sat. x. 19) which
contrast the terror of the money-laden traveller with the careless
happiness of the man who meets a highwayman with no purse and empty
pockets.
19. This story is told of Anaxagoras and Nicocreon, king of Cyprus, c.
B.C. 323.
20. Regulus was the Roman general in Sicily in the first Punic War,
taken prisoner in 255 B.C., and put to death in 250.
21. Britannicus, son of Nero's father, the Emperor Claudius, put to
death A.D. 55.
22. A mathematician, astronomer, and geographer of Alexandria. Fl.
140-160 A.D. Boethius translated one of his works.
23. Boethius is thinking of Horace, Odes iv. 9.
Ere Agamemnon saw the light,
There lived brave men: but tearless all
Enfolded in eternal night,
For lack of sacred minstrels, fall.
(Mr. Gladstone's translation.)
24. Fabricius. was the Roman general whom Pyrrhus could neither bribe
nor intimidate, B.C. 280.
25. L. Junius Brutus, who led the Romans to expel the last of the
kings, and was elected the first consul, B.C. 509.
26. Probably Cato Major, the great censor, B.C. 184, the rigid
champion of the stern old Roman morals; or possibly Cato Minor, who
committed suicide at Utica after the battle of Thapsus, B.C. 46,
because he considered that Cæsar's victory was fatal to the Republic
and the liberty of Rome.
27. Boethius in this passage is probably thinking of Empedocles's
doctrine of Love which unites, and Strife which divides, the two
primal forces in the universe.
28. Cp. Bk. I. Prose iv, above.
29. Epicurus (B.C. 342-270) was the famous founder of the Epicurean
school of philosophy. His school had a large following of Romans under
the Empire. His own teaching was of a higher nature than might be
supposed from this bare statement that he thought 'pleasure was the
highest good.'
30. Probably Boethius makes a mistake in his interpretation of
Catullus (Carm. 52), as Nonius's surname was very likely 'Struma'
(which also means a wen); in which case Catullus cannot at most have
intended more to be understood than a play upon the man's true name.
31. Decoratus was a minion of Theodoric.
32. Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, shewed his flattering courtier
Damocles, what it was to be a tyrant, by setting him in his own seat
at a sumptuous banquet, but hung a sword above him by a hair.
33. Seneca, the philosopher and wise counsellor of Nero, was by him
compelled to commit suicide, A.D. 65.
34. Papinianus, the greatest lawyer of his time, was put to death by
the Emperor Antoninus Caracalla, A.D. 212.
35. Euripedes, Andromache, l. 319-320.
36. Referring to lines in the Andromache (419-420), where Euripides
says: 'The man who complains that he has no children suffers less than
he who has them, and is blest in his misfortune.'
37. Alcibiades was the most handsome and brilliantly fascinating of
all the public men of Athens in her most brilliant period.
38. Compare Philosophy's first words about the highest good, above.
39. Plato, Timæus, 27 C. (ch. v.) -- 'All those who have even the
least share of moderation, on undertaking any enterprise, small or
great, always call upon God at the beginning.'
40. This hymn is replete with the highest development of Plato's
theory of ideas, as expressed in the Timæus, and his theory of the
ideal good being the moving spirit of the material world. Compare also
the speculative portion of Virgil, Æneid, vi.
41. This reasoning hangs upon Plato's theory of ideas and so is the
opposite of the theory of evolution.
42. The modern Sarabat, in Asia Minor, formerly auriferous.
43. Boethius is possibly thinking here of passages in Plato's
Republic, Bk. iv. (439-441) where Socrates points out the frequent
opposition of reason and instinct.
44. Plato's doctrine of remembrance is chiefly treated of in his Phædo
and Meno.
45. This is a verse from the poems in which Parmenides embodied his
philosophy: this was the doctrine of the unity which must have been in
Boethius's mind above. Parmenides, the founder of the Eleatic school
(495 B.C.) was perhaps, considering his early date, the greatest and
most original of Greek philosophers. Boethius probably did not make a
clear distinction between the philosopher's own poems and the views
expressed in Plato's Parmenides.
46. Plato in the Timæus says, 'The language must also be akin to the
subjects of which its words are the interpreters'
47. Orpheus's mother was the Muse Calliope, mistress of the Castalian
fount.
48. The dog Cerberus.
49. The Furies.
50. Ixion for his crimes was bound upon a rolling wheel.
51. Tantalus for his crimes was condemned to perpetual hunger and
thirst though surrounded by fruits and water which ever eluded his
grasp.
52. Tityos for his crimes was for ever fastened to the ground while a
vulture devoured his entrails.
53. Pluto.
54. This and some of the following lines allude to some of the
theories of the early Physicists.
55. From Plato's Gorgias (466). Boethius in this and several other
passages in this book has the Gorgias in mind; for Plato there
discusses the strength and happiness of good men, and the impotence
and unhappiness of bad men. Socrates is also there represented as
proving that the unjust man is happier punished than unpunished, as
Boethius does below.
56. Cf. St. Matthew x. 28.
57. Plato, Gorgias, 472 and ff.
58. It must not be supposed from the words 'cleansing mercy'
(purgatoria clementia) that Boethius held the same views as were held
by the Church later concerning purgatory, and as are now taught by the
Roman Catholic Church. It is true that St. Augustine had in 407 A.D.
hinted at the existence of such a state, but it was not dogmatically
inculcated till 604, in the Papacy of Gregory the Great.
59. Plato, Gorgias, 474 and ff.
60. Arcturus, the star in Boötes nearest to the Bear, used to be
thought the nearest star to our pole. Boötes was also known as the
Arctophylax, or Bearward, and so also as the driver of the Wain.
61. The old superstition was that an eclipse meant the withdrawal of
the moon, and that by a noise of beaten brass, etc., she could be
saved.
62. Lucan, Pharsalia, i. 128. This famous line refers to the final
triumph of Cæsar at Thapsus, B.C. 46, when Cato considered that the
Republican cause was finally doomed and he committed suicide at Utica
rather than survive it.
63. The author is supposed to be Hermes Trismegistus, who wrote in the
third century after Christ. The word 'powers' was used by many Neo-
Platonic philosophers for those beings in the scale of nature, with
which they filled the chasm between God and man. But Boethius does not
seem to intend the word to have that definite meaning here.
64. Homer, Iliad, xii. 176.
65. The Latin word 'virtus' means by its derivation, manly strength.
66. Aristotle, Physics, ii. 3.
67. A phrase from Homer (Iliad, iii. 277, and Odyssey, xi. 1O9), where
it is said of the sun.
68. This sentence, besides referring to the application of Homer's
words used above, contains also a play on words in the Latin, which
can only be clumsily reproduced in English by some such words as 'The
sole power which can see all is justly to be called the solar.'
69. Horace, Satires, II. v. 59.
70. Supra, Book IV. Met. vi.
71. Cicero, De Divinatione, II.
72. Referring to Boethius's words in Prose III. of this book
73. Zeno, of Citium (342-270 B.C), the founder of the Stoic school,
taught in the Stoa Poekile, whence the name of the school. The
following lines refer to their doctrine of presentations and
impressions.
74. Aristotle, De Cœlo, 1.
75. Boethius speaks of people who 'hear that Plato thought, etc.,'
because this was the teaching of some of Plato's successors at the
Academy. Plato himself thought otherwise, as may be seen in the
Timæus, e.g. ch. xi. 38 B., 'Time then has come into being along with
the universe, that being generated together, together they may be
dissolved, should a dissolution of them ever come to pass; and it was
made after the pattern of the eternal nature that it might be as like
to it as possible. For the pattern is existent for all eternity, but
the copy has been, and is, and shall be, throughout all time
continually.' (Mr. Archer Hind's translation.)
76. Elpis is a Greek word meaning hope
77. This line is lost from the original Latin.