Part 62 (1/2)
They wished to consider all, to balance every thing, and found that an employment well suited to our natural curiosity. Some things they wrote for the benefit of public society, as their religions; and for that consideration it was but reasonable that they should not examine public opinions to the quick, that they might not disturb the common obedience to the laws and customs of their country.
Plato treats of this mystery with a raillery manifest enough; for where he writes according to his own method he gives no certain rule. When he plays the legislator he borrows a magisterial and positive style, and boldly there foists in his most fantastic inventions, as fit to persuade the vulgar, as impossible to be believed by himself; knowing very well how fit we are to receive all sorts of impressions, especially the most immoderate and preposterous; and yet, in his _Laws_, he takes singular care that nothing be sung in public but poetry, of which the fiction and fabulous relations tend to some advantageous end; it being so easy to imprint all sorts of phantasms in human minds, that it were injustice not to feed them rather with profitable untruths than with untruths that are unprofitable and hurtful. He says very roundly, in his _Republic,_ ”That it is often necessary, for the benefit of men, to deceive them.”
It is very easy to distinguish that some of the sects have more followed truth, and the others utility, by which the last have gained their reputation. 'Tis the misery of our condition that often that which presents itself to our imagination for the truest does not appear the most useful to life. The boldest sects, as the Epicurean, Pyrrhonian, and the new Academic, are yet constrained to submit to the civil law at the end of the account.
There are other subjects that they have tumbled and tossed about, some to the right and others to the left, every one endeavouring, right or wrong, to give them some kind of colour; for, having found nothing so abstruse that they would not venture to speak of, they are very often forced to forge weak and ridiculous conjectures; not that they themselves looked upon them as any foundation, or establis.h.i.+ng any certain truth, but merely for exercise. _Non tam id sensisse quod dicerent, quam exercere ingenia materio difficultate videntur voluisse._ ”They seem not so much themselves to have believed what they said, as to have had a mind to exercise their wits in the difficulty of the matter.” And if we did not take it thus, how should we palliate so great inconstancy, variety, and vanity of opinions, as we see have been produced by those excellent and admirable men? As, for example, what can be more vain than to imagine, to guess at G.o.d, by our a.n.a.logies and conjectures? To direct and govern him and the world by our capacities and our laws? And to serve ourselves, at the expense of the divinity, with what small portion of capacity he has been pleased to impart to our natural condition; and because we cannot extend our sight to his glorious throne, to have brought him down to our corruption and our miseries?
Of all human and ancient opinions concerning religion, that seems to me the most likely and most excusable, that acknowledged G.o.d as an incomprehensible power, the original and preserver of all things, all goodness, all perfection, receiving and taking in good part the honour and reverence that man paid him, under what method, name, or ceremonies soever--
Jupiter omnipotens, rerum, regumque, deumque, Progenitor, genitrixque.
”Jove, the almighty, author of all things, The father, mother, of both G.o.ds and kings.”
This zeal has universally been looked upon from heaven with a gracious eye. All governments have reaped fruit from their devotion; impious men and actions have everywhere had suitable events. Pagan histories acknowledge dignity, order, justice, prodigies, and oracles, employed for their profit and instruction in their fabulous religions; G.o.d, through his mercy, vouchsafing, by these temporal benefits, to cherish the tender principles of a kind of brutish knowledge that natural reason gave them of him, through the deceiving images of their dreams. Not only deceiving and false, but impious also and injurious, are those that man has forged from his own invention: and of all the religions that St.
Paul found in repute at Athens, that which they had dedicated ”to the unknown G.o.d” seemed to him the most to be excused.
Pythagoras shadowed the truth a little more closely, judging that the knowledge of this first cause and being of beings ought to be indefinite, without limitation, without declaration; that it was nothing else than the extreme effort of our imagination towards perfection, every one amplifying the idea according to the talent of his capacity.
But if Numa attempted to conform the devotion of his people to this project; to attach them to a religion purely mental, without any prefixed object and material mixture, he undertook a thing of no use; the human mind could never support itself floating in such an infinity of inform thoughts; there is required some certain image to be presented according to its own model. The divine majesty has thus, in some sort, suffered himself to be circ.u.mscribed in corporal limits for our advantage. His supernatural and celestial sacraments have signs of our earthly condition; his adoration is by sensible offices and words; for 'tis man that believes and prays. I shall omit the other arguments upon this subject; but a man would have much ado to make me believe that the sight of our crucifixes, that the picture of our Saviour's pa.s.sion, that the ornaments and ceremonious motions of our churches, that the voices accommodated to the devotion of our thoughts, and that emotion of the senses, do not warm the souls of the people with a religious pa.s.sion of very advantageous effect.
Of those to whom they have given a body, as necessity required in that universal blindness, I should, I fancy, most incline to those who adored the sun:--
La Lumiere commune, L'oil du monde; et si Dieu au chef porte des yeux, Les rayons du soleil sont ses yeulx radieux, Qui donnent vie a touts, nous maintiennent et gardent, Et les faictsdes humains en ce monde regardent: Ce beau, ce grand soleil qui nous faict les saisons, Selon qu'il entre ou sort de ses douze maisons; Qui remplit l'univers de ses vertus cognues; Qui d'un traict de ses yeulx nous dissipe les nues; L'esprit, l'ame du monde, ardent et flamboyant, En la course d'un jour tout le Ciel tournoyant; Plein d'immense grandeur, rond, vagabond, et ferme; Lequel tient des...o...b.. luy tout le monde pour terme: En repos, sans repos; oysif, et sans sejour; Fils aisne de nature, et le pere du jour:
”The common light that equal s.h.i.+nes on all, Diffused around the whole terrestrial ball; And, if the almighty Ruler of the skies Has eyes, the sunbeams are his radiant eyes, That life and safety give to young and old, And all men's actions upon earth behold.
This great, this beautiful, the glorious sun, Who makes their course the varied seasons run; That with his virtues fills the universe, And with one glance can sullen clouds disperse; Earth's life and soul, that, flaming in his sphere, Surrounds the heavens in one day's career; Immensely great, moving yet firm and round, Who the whole world below has made his bound; At rest, without rest, idle without stay, Nature's first son, and father of the day:”
forasmuch as, beside this grandeur and beauty of his, 'tis the only piece of this machine that we discover at the remotest distance from us; and by that means so little known that they were pardonable for entering into so great admiration and reverence of it.
Thales, who first inquired into this sort of matter, believed G.o.d to be a Spirit that made all things of water; Anaximander, that the G.o.ds were always dying and entering into life again; and that there were an infinite number of worlds; Anaximines, that the air was G.o.d, that he was procreate and immense, always moving. Anaxagoras the first, was of opinion that the description and manner of all things were conducted by the power and reason of an infinite spirit. Alcmaeon gave divinity to the sun, moon, and stars, and to the soul. Pythagoras made G.o.d a spirit, spread over the nature of all things, whence our souls are extracted; Parmenides, a circle surrounding the heaven, and supporting the world by the ardour of light. Empedocles p.r.o.nounced the four elements, of which all things are composed, to be G.o.ds; Protagoras had nothing to say, whether they were or were not, or what they were; Democritus was one while of opinion that the images and their circuitions were G.o.ds; another while, the nature that darts out those images; and then, our science and intelligence. Plato divides his belief into several opinions; he says, in his _Timaeus_, that the Father of the World cannot be named; in his Laws, that men are not to inquire into his being; and elsewhere, in the very same books, he makes the world, the heavens, the stars, the earth, and our souls, G.o.ds; admitting, moreover, those which have been received by ancient inst.i.tution in every republic.
Xenophon reports a like perplexity in Socrates's doctrine; one while that men are not to inquire into the form of G.o.d, and presently makes him maintain that the sun is G.o.d, and the soul G.o.d; that there is but one G.o.d, and then that there are many. Speusippus, the nephew of Plato, makes G.o.d a certain power governing all things, and that he has a soul.
Aristotle one while says it is the spirit, and another the world; one while he gives the world another master, and another while makes G.o.d the heat of heaven. Zenocrates makes eight, five named amongst the planets; the sixth composed of all the fixed stars, as of so many members; the seventh and eighth, the sun and moon. Heraclides Ponticus does nothing but float in his opinion, and finally deprives G.o.d of sense, and makes him s.h.i.+ft from one form to another, and at last says that it is heaven and earth. Theophrastus wanders in the same irresolution amongst his fancies, attributing the superintendency of the world one while to the understanding, another while to heaven, and then to the stars. Strato says that 'tis nature, she having the power of generation, augmentation, and diminution, without form and sentiment Zeno says 'tis the law of nature, commanding good and prohibiting evil; which law is an animal; and takes away the accustomed G.o.ds, Jupiter, Juno, and Vesta. Diogenes Apolloniates, that 'tis air. Zenophanes makes G.o.d round, seeing and hearing, not breathing, and having nothing in common with human nature.
Aristo thinks the form of G.o.d to be incomprehensible, deprives him of sense, and knows not whether he be an animal or something else; Cleanthes, one while supposes it to be reason, another while the world, another the soul of nature, and then the supreme heat rolling about, and environing all. Perseus, Zeno's disciple, was of opinion that men have given the t.i.tle of G.o.ds to such as have been useful, and have added any notable advantage to human life, and even to profitable things themselves. Chrysippus made a confused heap of all the preceding theories, and reckons, amongst a thousand forms of G.o.ds that he makes, the men also that have been deified. Diagoras and Theodoras flatly denied that there were any G.o.ds at all. Epicurus makes the G.o.ds s.h.i.+ning, transparent, and perflable, lodged as betwixt two forts, betwixt two worlds, secure from blows, clothed in a human figure, and with such members as we have; which members are to them of no use:--
Ego Deum genus esse semper duxi, et dicam colitum; Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus.
”I ever thought that G.o.ds above there were, But do not think they care what men do here.”
Trust to your philosophy, my masters; and brag that you have found the bean in the cake when you see what a rattle is here with so many philosophical heads! The perplexity of so many worldly forms has gained this over me, that manners and opinions contrary to mine do not so much displease as instruct me; nor so much make me proud as they humble me, in comparing them. And all other choice than what comes from the express and immediate hand of G.o.d seems to me a choice of very little privilege.