The Complete Essays (77 page)

[C] Let us smash down such presumption. It is the very foundation of the tyrannous rule of the Evil Spirit:
‘Deus superbis resistit; humilibus autem dat gratiam’
[God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble]. ‘There is intelligence in all the gods,’ says Plato, ‘but very little of it in men.’
³⁴

[A] Yet it is a great source of consolation to a Christian man to see our transitory mortal tools so properly matched to our holy and divine faith that when we use them on subjects which, like them, are transitory and mortal, it is precisely then that they are most closely and most powerfully matched. Let us try and see, then, whether a man has in his power any reasons stronger than those of Sebond – whether, indeed, it is in man to arrive at any certainty by argument and reflection.

[C] St Augustine, pleading his case against presumptuous people, has cause to criticize their injustice when they consider those parts of our faith to be false which human reason is unable to establish. In order to show that many things can exist or have had existence, even though their nature and causes have no foundation which can be fixed by rational discourse, he advances various indubitable, recognized experiences, for which Man admits he can see no explanation. Augustine does this, as he does all things, after careful and intelligent search.
³⁵
We must do even more, teaching such people the lesson that the weakness of their reason can be proved without our having to marshal rare examples; that reason is so inadequate, so blind, that there is no example so clear and easy as to be clear enough for her; that the easy and the hard are all one to her; that all subjects and Nature in general equally deny her any sway or jurisdiction.

[A] What is Truth teaching us, when she preaches that we must fly from the wisdom of this world; when she so frequently urges that what seems wise to Man is but foolishness to God; that of all vain things, Man is
the most vain; that a man who dares to presume that he knows anything, does not even know what knowledge is; that Man, who is nothing yet thinks he is something, misleads and deceives himself? These are verdicts of the Holy Ghost;
³⁶
they express so clearly and so vividly what I myself wish to uphold that I would need no other proof to use against people who, with due submission and obedience, would surrender to his authority. But these people simply ask to be whipped, and will not let us fight their reason, save by reason alone.

So let us consider for a while Man in isolation – Man with no outside help, armed with no arms but his own and stripped of that grace and knowledge of God in which consist his dignity, his power and the very ground of his being.
³⁷
Let us see how much constancy there is in all his fine panoply. Let Man make me understand, by the force of discursive reason, what are the grounds on which he has founded and erected all those advantages which he thinks he has over other creatures and who has convinced him that it is for his convenience, his service, that, for so many centuries, there has been established and maintained the awesome motion of the vault of heaven, the everlasting light of those tapers coursing so proudly overhead or the dread surging of the boundless sea? Is it possible to imagine anything more laughable than that this pitiful, wretched creature – who is not even master of himself, but exposed to shocks on every side – should call himself Master and Emperor of a universe, the smallest particle of which he has no means of knowing, let alone swaying! Man claims the privilege of being unique in that, within this created frame, he alone is able to recognize its structure and its beauty; he alone is able to render thanks to its Architect or to tot up the profit or loss of the world… But who impressed his seal on such a privilege? If Man has been given so great and fair a commission, let him produce documents saying so. [C] Were they drawn up in favour of wise men only? (They apply to few enough!)
³⁸
Are fools and knaves worthy of a favour so far exceeding the normal order – the worst thing in the world exalted above all others? Are we supposed to believe that fellow who wrote:
‘Quorum igitur causa quis dixerit effectum esse mundum? Eorum scilicet animantium quae ratione utuntur. Hi sunt dii et homines
,
quibus profecto nihil est melius’
[Who will tell for whose sake this world has been brought about? Why, for the sake of beings having souls able to use reason, those most perfect of beings, gods and men].
³⁹
Coupling gods and men together! We can never do enough to batter down such impudence.

[A] Poor little wretch! What is there in man worthy of such a privilege?

Consider the sun, moon and stars, with their lives free from corruption, their beauty, their grandeur, their motions ever proceeding by laws so just:

    cum suspicimus magni caelestia mundi
Templa super, stellisque micantibus Aethera fixum,
Et venit in mentem Lunae Solisque viarum;

[When we gaze upwards to the celestial temples of this great Universe, to the Aether with its fixed and twinkling stars, and when there comes to mind the courses of the Moon and of the Sun…]
⁴⁰

then consider the dominion and power which those bodies have, not only over our lives and the settled detail of our fortunes –

Facta etenim et vitas hominum suspendit ab astris

[For he made the deeds and lives of man to depend upon the Sun, the Moon and the Stars]
⁴¹
–

– but over our very inclinations, our discursive reasoning and our wills, which are all governed, driven and shaken at the mercy of their influences. Our reason tells us that and finds it to be so;

speculataque longe
Deprendit tacitis dominantia legibus astra,
Et totum alterna mundum ratione moveri,
Fatorumque vices certis discernere signis
.

[it gazes in the distance, grasping that the heavenly bodies govern us by silent laws, that all the world is moved by periodic causes; and it discerns changing Fate in fixed and certain signs.]

Then see how not merely one man or one king is sent reeling by the slightest motion of the heavenly bodies, but whole monarchies, empires and all this lower world:

Quantaque quam parvi faciant discrimina motus:
Tantum est hoc regnum, quod regibus imperat ipsis!

[When such small motions produce such changes, how great must be the kingdom which rules over kings themselves!]

Then allow that our reason judges that our virtues and our vices, our competencies, our knowledge, and this very discourse we are making here and now about the power of the heavenly bodies, comes to us by their means and by their favour:

furit alter amore
,
Et pontum tranare potest et vertere Trojam;
Alterius sors est scribendis legibus apta;
Ecce patrem nati perimunt, natosque parentes;
Mutuaque armati coeunt in vulnera fratres:
Non nostrum hoc bellum est; coguntur tanta movere,
Inque suas ferri poenas, lacerandaque membra;
Hoc quoque fatale est, sic ipsum expendere fatum
.

[One man, mad with love, can cross the sea and topple Troy: another’s lot is to be apt at prescribing laws. Look: children kill parents: parents, children; brothers bear arms and clash to wound each other. Such wars do not belong to men alone. Men are compelled to do such things, compelled to punish themselves, to tear their limbs apart. And when we ponder thus on Fate, that too is fated…]

If we are dependent upon the disposition of the heavens for such little rationality as we have, how can our reason make us equal to the Heavens? How can their essence, or the principles on which they are founded, be subjects of human knowledge? Everything that we can see in those bodies produces in us ecstatic wonder. [C]
‘Quae molitio, quae ferramenta, qui vectes, quae machinae, qui ministri tanti operis fuerunt?’
[What engineering, what tools, what levers, what contrivances, what agents were used in such an enterprise?]
⁴²

[A] Why do we deprive the heavenly bodies of souls, life or rationality? Have we, who have no dealings with them beyond pure obedience, been able to recognize in them some kind of stupor, motionless and insensible? [C] Shall we say that we have seen no other creature but Man possessed of a rational soul? What do we mean? Have we ever seen anything like the Sun? And just because we have seen nothing like it, does it cease to be; or, since we have seen nothing like its movements, shall they, too, cease to be? If things we have not actually seen do not exist, then our
knowledge is wondrously diminished!
‘Quae sunt tantae animi angustiae’
[What narrow defiles has our mind].
⁴³

[A] What vain human dreams, to make the Moon into some celestial Earth, [C] dreaming up, like Anaxagoras, mountains and valleys for it, [A] planting human dwellings and habitations on it and, like Plato and Plutarch, settling colonies there for our convenience: and then to make our own Earth into a brightly shining star: [C]
‘Inter caetera mortalitatis incommoda et hoc est, calligo mentium, nec tantum necessitas errandi sed errorum amor’
[Among the other disorders of our mortal condition there is that mental darkness which not only compels us to go wrong but makes us love to do so].
‘Corruptibile corpus aggravat animam, et deprimit terrena inhabitatio sensum multa cogitantem’
[For the corruptible body is a load upon the soul, and the earthly habitation presseth down the mind that museth on many things].
⁴⁴

[A] The natural, original distemper of Man is presumption. Man is the most blighted and frail of all creatures and, moreover, the most given to pride.
⁴⁵
This creature knows and sees that he is lodged down here, among the mire and shit of the world, bound and nailed to the deadest, most stagnant part of the universe, in the lowest storey of the building, the farthest from the vault of heaven; his characteristics place him in the third and lowest category of animate creatures, yet, in thought, he sets himself above the circle of the Moon, bringing the very heavens under his feet. The vanity of this same thought makes him equal himself to God; attribute to himself God’s mode of being; pick himself out and set himself apart from the mass of other creatures; and (although they are his fellows and his brothers) carve out for them such helpings of force or faculties as he thinks fit. How can he, from the power of his own understanding, know the hidden, inward motivations of animate creatures? What comparison between us and them leads him to conclude that they have the attributes of senseless brutes?

[C] When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?
⁴⁶

In his description of the Golden Age under Saturn, Plato counted among one of the principal advantages which Man then had his ability to communicate with the beasts; inquiring and learning from them, Man knew what they were really like and how they differed from each other. By this means Man used to acquire a full understanding and discretion, leading his life far more happily than we ever can now. After that, do we need a better proof of the impudence of Man towards beast? Well, that great author then opined that Nature mainly gave the beasts their bodily forms to enable the men in his time to foretell the future!
⁴⁷

[A] Why should it be a defect in the beasts not in us which stops all communication between us? We can only guess whose fault it is that we cannot understand each other: for we do not understand them any more than they understand us. They may reckon us to be brute beasts for the same reason that we reckon them to be so. It is no great miracle if we cannot understand them: we cannot understand Basques or Troglodytes! –

[A1] Some have boasted, though, that they could understand the beasts: Apollonius of Thyana, [B] Melampus, Tiresias, Thales [AI] and others. [B] And since there are nations (so the cosmographers tell us) who acknowledge a dog as their king, they must interpret its bark and its movements as having some definite meaning.
⁴⁸
[A] We ought to note the parity there is between us. We have some modest understanding of what they mean: they have the same of us, in about equal measure. They fawn on us, threaten us and entreat us – as we do them. Meanwhile we discover that they manifestly have converse between themselves, both whole and entire: they understand each other, not only within one species but across different species.

[B]
Et mutae pecudes et denique secla ferarum
Dissimiles suerunt voces variasque cluere
,
Cum metus aut dolor est, aut cum jam gaudia gliscunt
.

[And dumb cattle and, finally, the generations of wild beasts customarily make sounds having various meanings, when they feel fear or pain or when joy overflows.]
⁴⁹

[A] A horse knows there to be anger in a given bark of a dog; but that
horse does not take fright when the same dog makes some other meaningful cry. Even in beasts who cannot utter meaningful sounds we can readily conclude that there is some other means of communication between them, from the way they work purposefully together; [C] their very movements serve as arguments and ideas.