[1] Human art can imitate nature (that is, the divine art by which God created and governs the world) to such an extent, that it can, among other things, produce an artificial animal. Life is nothing other than the motion of the limbs, which has its internal source in some principal part of the body. So what is to prevent us from saying that all automata (that is, all machines which get their motion from springs and wheels arranged inside them, like clocks) also have an artificial life within themselves? What is the heart other than a spring; what are sinews other than strings; and what are joints other than so many wheels, which impart motion to the whole body in accordance with the designer’s intentions? Art does not merely imitate animals, but the noblest animal of all, namely the human being. That great Leviathan, [n.1] which is called the ‘state’, is the product of art, and is an artificial person; even though it is much larger and more powerful than the natural persons who invented it for their own protection and security. In this artificial person, the individual who holds sovereign power corresponds to the soul, which gives life and motion to the whole body; magistrates and officials are its artificial [2] limbs; rewards and punishments, which are the prerogative of the sovereign power, and by which each member is stimulated to perform its function, are its sinews, which do the same in a natural body; the wealth of individual people corresponds to its strength; the security of the people corresponds to its business; advisers, who bring what needs to be known to the attention of the supreme power, correspond to its memory; equity and laws correspond to its artificial reason; agreement is health; dissension is disease; and civil war is death. Finally, the contracts which bind the parts of this political body together imitate the divine words ‘Let it be’, or ‘Let us create a human being,’ which God uttered in the beginning, when he created the world.
In describing the nature of this artificial person, I shall consider the following:
As for the first, there are many who say that wisdom is to be acquired, not by reading books, but by reading people. As a consequence of this opinion, people who can provide no other evidence of their wisdom are very pleased with themselves, when they show how much progress they have made in their reading of others, by making uncharitable criticisms of those close to them. But there is [3] another, more ancient saying, which would teach people how to read others more correctly, if they wanted to do so, namely ‘Know thyself.’ [n.87] Many people take this saying as favouring the barbarous pride of powerful people towards ordinary folk, or the uncivilised rudeness of the lower orders towards the more powerful. But in fact it means that we should learn that the thoughts and passions of different people are so similar to each other, that if you look within yourself, and consider what you yourself do and why, when you think, have an opinion, reason, hope, fear, etc., at the very same time you will be reading and understanding the thoughts and passions of all other people when they arise from similar causes. I say similar passions, not objects of passions, because they are so varied and obscured by the differences in the constitution and education of different people, that the characters of their hearts are scribbled over and blended with deceit, hypocrisy, and false opinions, so that they are legible only to expert readers of hearts. Although we can sometimes know people’s intentions because of what they do, it is difficult unless we compare them with our own intentions, and make allowance for the particular circumstances which usually change individual effects. It is rather like trying to read a letter in an unknown code, without having the writer’s key. So readers of hearts will err on the side of naivety if they are nice, and on the side of suspiciousness if they are nasty.
But in knowing individual people, [4] however skilled you are, you will know only those you are on intimate terms with, who will be few. But someone who is going to rule a whole nation must know from their knowledge of themselves, not this or that individual person, but the human race in general. This is difficult to do — more difficult than learning a new language, or mastering a new science. But if I have explained, clearly and in the right order, what I have discovered on this topic, then the difficulty for others will be lessened, since all they have to do is to examine whether what I say corresponds to their own thoughts. For in such matters, there is no other kind of demonstration.
PART I: THE HUMAN BEING
[5] I shall first consider people’s thoughts individually, and then as depending on each other in sequences. Every thought is an apparition or representation of some quality or accident in an external body, which is generally called its ‘object’. This object produces different apparitions, depending on the different ways in which it acts upon the sense organs of the human body (eyes, ears, etc.).
The source of all thoughts is what is named ‘sensation’. There is no conception of the mind which did not originate in one of the senses, whether in its entirety, or through its parts. Sensations constitute the primary concepts from which all the rest are subsequently derived.
Knowledge of the natural cause of sensation is not absolutely necessary for the present undertaking. In any case, I have already dealt with this fully enough elsewhere. [n.2] However, in order to avoid a gap in the structure of the present work, I shall summarise what I have said before.
Sensation is caused by an external body, or object, setting up a pressure against the sense organ peculiar to each sense. The pressure takes place by direct contact in the case of the senses of touch and of taste, and indirectly in the case of sight, hearing, and smell. By exerting pressure along the nerves and tissues, the object brings about a continuous motion inwards towards the brain, and from there to the heart. This gives rise to a reaction or [6] counter-pressure (‘antitypy’[n.3]) in the heart — in other words, a conation of the heart to free itself from the pressure by a motion tending outwards. This is why the motion appears as if something external; and it is this apparition or phantasm which we call ‘sensation’. In the case of the eye, it is called ‘light’ or ‘colour’; in the case of the ear, ‘sound’; the nostrils, ‘scent’; the palate, ‘taste’; and the rest of the body, ‘warmth’, ‘cold’, ‘hardness’, ‘softness’, and everything else belonging to the sense of touch. All these qualities are usually named ‘sensible’ qualities. In objects themselves they are nothing other than the motion of matter, by means of which the objects affect our sense organs in various ways. In us too they are nothing but various motions, since motion can give rise to nothing but motion; and these apparitions are mere phantasms, whether we are awake or asleep. Besides, pressing, rubbing, or hitting the eye stimulates a phantasm of brightness, and pressure on the ears stimulates a sound; so it is in the same way that the objects of sight or hearing stimulate the same phantasms by setting up a pressure, even though it is not observable as such. If colours and sounds were in objects themselves, they would be inseparable from them. But they are separable from them, as is obvious when what is seen is reflected by mirrors, and what is heard by mountain locations. [n.4] But we know scientifically that the body we see is in only one place, whereas its appearances are in many places. And although, over short distances, the genuine object itself sometimes seems to be clothed in its image, it is always the case that the object itself is one thing, and the image of the object another. So sensation and the original phantasm are absolutely the same thing, and, as I have said, it is brought about by pressure on the eye or other sense organ, deriving from an external object.
University philosophers, however, relying on certain passages in Aristotle, teach something different. They say that seeing is brought about by ‘visible species’ (i.e. [7] apparitions) emitted by the object into the eye; similarly, that hearing is caused by ‘audible species’ (i.e. apparitions) emitted by the object into the ear; and even that understanding is caused by certain ‘intelligible species’ (i.e. apparitions) emitted by the thing understood. [n.5] I do not say this as implying any wholesale condemnation of philosophy departments; but since I am later going to discuss their function in society, I think I should not miss any opportunity to point out desirable reforms in passing — of which the elimination of meaningless language is one.
I think no-one doubts that anything absolutely at rest will remain at rest for ever, unless set in motion by something else. Furthermore, if a body is in motion, it will always continue moving forwards, unless its motion is stopped by another body. This is not usually so readily accepted, even though the reason is the same in each case, namely that nothing can set itself in motion. People expect all other bodies to be like their own. Having noticed that motion makes themselves sore and weary, they make the same judgment about all other moving things — as if they got tired, and all by themselves decided that they really must have a rest. They do not even consider whether the desire for rest might not itself consist in a sort of motion. This is also the source of the doctrine taught in the universities, that heavy bodies fall downwards because of an appetite to come to rest, and to preserve their natures in the places most suited to them. So appetite is absurdly attributed to inanimate things, and also a knowledge of what is good or bad for them, which most human beings lack.
[8] Once a body is in motion, it will continue moving till eternity, unless it is obstructed by another body. If it is obstructed, the body obstructing it will not stop it moving instantaneously, but gradually over a period of time. Just as we observe that waves in the sea do not die down the moment the wind drops, the same is also true of the motion which takes place in a person’s internal organs when they see, dream, etc. After the object has gone, or the eye is closed, we preserve the image of the thing seen, though the image is somewhat less clear. The faculty of ‘imagination’ is called after this image. But the Greek term ‘phantasy’ is more satisfactory, since it applies to any of the senses; whereas ‘images’ are strictly only of visible things. So imagination is nothing other than fading sensation, or a faint and vanishing phantasm; and it is common to humans and almost all other animals, whether awake or asleep.
The cause of a phantasm becoming fainter when its object is removed, is not any weakness of the motion generated in the act of sensation, but because the sense organs are preoccupied with other objects. It is just like the way the brighter light of the sun obscures the light of the stars, even though the stars exert the power by which they make themselves seen, as much by day as by night. However, among all the many and various stimuli affecting the eyes, ears and other sense organs from external agents during the day, only the most powerful stimulus is sensible; and the light of the sun is the overpowering cause which makes us less subject to the actions of the stars. When the object is removed, even though the impression which was made remains, the imagination of the past becomes faint and obscure through a succession of objects and agents, just as happens to a person’s voice during the noise of the day. So the longer the lapse of time since the seeing or sensation of an object, [9] the more faded the imagination or phantasm. With the passage of time, the continuous changing of the bodily organs also destroys various parts which were set in motion during sensation. This is why it happens that distance in time and distance in space bring about the same effect in us. Just as things we look at from a great distance appear more obscure, and without any distinction between their smaller parts; and voices appear weaker and undifferentiated; in the same way, after a long lapse of time, the imagination of the past becomes weaker, and we lose things like many of the streets in cities we have seen, and many details of events. As I have already said, we name this fading of sensation ‘imagination’, when we want to refer to the thing itself, that is, the phantasm itself. When we want to refer to its fading, we call it ‘memory’. Consequently, imagination and memory are one and the same thing, but we use different names to signify different ways of considering it.
Memory of many things is called ‘experience’. Further, when imagination is only of things we have previously perceived by sense, whether all at once or by parts, the imagination which is of the whole object at once is a ‘simple’ imagination, as when we imagine a person or a horse which we have previously seen. An imagination which is formed from sensations of a number of parts is called ‘composite’ — as when we form in our minds a conception of a centaur, from the seeing of a person on one occasion, and the seeing of a horse on another occasion. So whenever you combine a phantasm of your own person with a phantasm of someone else’s actions, as is done by those who imagine they are Hercules or Alexander (which sometimes happens to people who spend too much time reading romances), [10] that will be a composite imagination, and nothing other than a figment of the mind. Many other imaginations which people have, even when they are awake, arise from the strength of the impression made on them while sensing. Looking fixedly at the sun leaves little images of the sun, like spots before the eyes, for a long time afterwards; and even in the dark and while awake, people who have been intently studying geometrical figures for a long time will have lines and angles appearing before their eyes. I do not know if this kind of phantasy has a special name or not, since it is not something people often talk about.
‘Dreams’ are the imaginations of beings who are asleep. Like all other imaginations, these also previously existed in sensation, either as a whole or by parts. During sleep, the brain and the nerves, which are bodily organs necessary for sensation, are so numbed that they cannot easily be set in motion by the action of external objects. The consequence is that sleeping beings can only be subject to imaginations (and hence dreams) which come from the rapid motions of the internal organs of the sentient body. Because of their connections with the brain and other organs, when these internal organs are out of balance, they sometimes also activate the sense organs, and make phantasms which had occurred previously appear as if to someone who is awake. Given that the sense organs are now closed in sleep, so that no new object could overshadow them, against this background of sensory deprivation, a dream must necessarily be more vivid than waking imaginations. This is the reason why it is difficult (and some think even impossible) to distinguish infallibly between sensation and a dream. I myself am satisfied that when I am awake I really know that I am not dreaming, even though I think I am awake when I am dreaming. My criteria are that in dreams I only rarely and inconstantly have images of the same objects, places, people, and events, as I have when awake; when I am dreaming, I do not remember as [11] long a sequence of coherent thoughts as otherwise; and when I am awake, I often see the absurdity of my dreams, whereas when I am dreaming I see no absurdity in the thoughts I have while awake.
Since dreams are caused by various internal organs of the body being out of balance, it necessarily follows that different types of imbalance produce different types of dream. This is why it often happens that people who are cold in bed very often have nightmares, and think they see terrifying images. This is because there is a reciprocal motion from the brain to the other internal organs of the body, and from them to the brain. So it is also happens that, just as anger makes certain parts of the body hot when we are awake, correspondingly, even when we are asleep, excessive heat in the same parts causes anger, and stimulates in the brain the phantasm of some enemy. In the same way, just as among waking people a sexual advance will elicit a sexual response, and stimulate a warm feeling in certain internal organs of the body, so when people are asleep, warmth in the same organs of the body will give rise to sexual images. To sum up, dreams and waking phantasms are complementary to each other — that is, the motion starts at one end when we are awake, and at the other end when we are dreaming.
The most difficult circumstance for distinguishing between a dream and the thoughts of people who are awake is when, by some chance, we have completely failed to notice having fallen asleep. This can easily happen to someone who has a guilty conscience about a crime they have committed or are going to commit, and fall asleep without the normal rituals of undressing and going to bed — for example, if they nod off while sitting or slouching in an armchair. [12] On the other hand, anyone who goes through the preparations for sleeping cannot help interpreting as a dream any unusual or strange phantasm they happen to see. For example, we read that Marcus Brutus had treacherously assassinated Julius Caesar, despite being his friend, and having had his life spared by him. He had a terrifying phantasm on the eve of the battle against Augustus Caesar at Philippi. Historians have usually described it as a genuine seeing; but anyone who takes account of his exceptional circumstances will judge that it was not a seeing, but a short dream. It was very natural for him to dream about what terrified him the most, since he was sitting in his tent, he felt wretched at the horror of his rash deed which he could not get off his mind, and the air was too cold for him to lose consciousness fully, but only to become drowsy. The same terror would gradually wake him again, and while regaining consciousness, he would see the spectre which had appeared to him, as gradually disappearing. Since he was unaware that he had been asleep, he would also be unaware that it had been a dream, or anything other than a real thing he had seen. Occurrences like this are not so very rare. Even people who are wide awake are liable to the same kind of imaginations, if they are timid, superstitious, obsessed with reading horror stories, or alone in the dark. They believe that they see ghosts and the spirits of the dead walking around in graveyards, whereas in fact they see nothing other than mere phantasms. Alternatively, they might have been duped by tricksters, who take advantage of their superstitious fears by disguising themselves in the clothes of the dead, and cross graveyards and other consecrated ground during the night, so as to get to places it would be thought shameful for them to frequent too often.
[13] Ignorance of this distinction between dreams and other vivid phantasms on the one hand, and seeing and sensation on the other, was largely responsible for the religion of the ancient pagans, with its satyrs, fauns, nymphs, and other such spectres of its worshippers. The same goes for the belief among uneducated folk today in fairies, ghosts, and the powers of witches. And even though I do not think witches have any real power, I do think it can be just for witches to be punished, since they believe that their crimes are evil and that they are capable of committing them, and they try as hard as they can to commit them. I believe that witchcraft is not so much a genuine power, involving a practical technique or scientific knowledge, but rather a species of religion peculiar to witches themselves. As for ghosts and walking spirits, I think the belief in them which has prevailed up till now was deliberately given currency, or at least not refuted, in order to support the practice of exorcism, making the sign of the cross, holy water, and other such inventions of spiritual persons. There is certainly no doubt that God can create supernatural phantasms; but it is no article of the Christian Faith that he does this so often that people should fear them more than they fear the end of the world, or a change in the laws of nature, both of which are also within God’s power. Wicked people are bold enough to use the fact that God can do everything as a pretext for saying whatever they think it will be to their own advantage to say, even when they believe it is false. The wisest course is not to believe them any further than sound reasoning makes what they say to be plainly credible. If this fear of spectres were eliminated, along with the telling of fortunes from dreams, and many other things deriving from them, which clever and self-seeking people use for taking advantage of simple folk, the citizens of every state would be much more governable than they are now.
[14] This is the job of the universities; but instead they actually encourage doctrines of this sort more often than they refute them. Since they are ignorant of the nature of imagination and of sensation, they simply teach what they themselves were taught. Some say that imaginations happen of their own accord, that is without any cause; others say that most of them come from the will, and that good thoughts are ‘breathed’ into people by God, bad ones by the Devil (or good thoughts are ‘poured’ into people by God, bad ones by the Devil). Others say that when the senses receive the ‘species’ of things, they pass them on to the common sense, and the common sense passes them on to the imagination, the imagination to the memory, and the memory to the judgment — but despite using so many words, they make nothing comprehensible.
When, in human beings or in any other animal, imagination arises from language or other arbitrary signs, it is called ‘understanding’. Lower animals have it as well as human beings. Thus, as the result of training, a dog understands that its master is telling it to come or go; and many other animals are also capable of this. The type of understanding which is exclusive to humans is not merely the understanding of what other people want, but also the conception of their concepts and thoughts, through stringing and joining together the names of things into assertions, denials, and other forms of speech. And it is to a discussion of this sort of understanding that I now move.
Chapter 3: The following or sequence of imaginations
By a ‘sequence’ of imaginations, I mean the succession of one thought after another. I call this ‘mental discourse’, as distinct from verbal discourse.
When you thinks about anything whatever, your [15] next thought is not so much a matter of chance as it may seem, since one thought does not follow on from any other thought indifferently. Just as we never have an imagination which was not first given in sensation, whether as a whole or through its parts, in the same way there is no transition from one thought to another without there first having been a similar transition in sensation. The cause of this is as follows: All phantasms are internal motions, in fact traces of the motions constituting sensation. But motions which immediately follow each other in sensation still stay together, even after the sensation is over. So much so, that whenever the earlier thought comes back into predominance, the later thought follows it, because of the cohesion of the portion of matter which is in motion — rather as water on a flat, smooth table is drawn in the direction of a moving finger. But since one and the same conceived thing is followed by different things at different times, after many thoughts it becomes uncertain what thought will follow which. All that is certain is that whatever thought follows will be one of those which had followed it at some time in the past.
There are two types of sequences of thoughts, or mental discourse. The first type is unregulated, without any explicit purpose, and hence unsystematic, as when there is no passion to control the other thoughts, and direct them to some desired goal. In that case, thoughts are said to wander, and are seen to have no connection with each other, as in a dream. People’s thoughts are mostly like this when they are not merely alone, but have nothing to worry about — though even then their thoughts do not cease, but are without harmony, like strummings on a lute by someone who cannot play the instrument. All the same, in this wandering of the mind we can sometimes detect a certain structure, and the way in which one thought arises out of another. For example, in a certain discussion [16] about our Civil War, what could have seemed more irrelevant than to ask, as was in fact asked, how much a Roman denarius was worth? But the connection seemed obvious enough to me. The thought of war introduced the thought of a king handed over to his enemies by his subjects; that thought gave rise to the thought of Jesus Christ being betrayed to the Jews; that in turn produced the thought of the thirty denarii, the price of the betrayal; and finally the original question readily followed from that. And because of the speed of thought, all this took barely a moment of time.
The second type of sequence is more systematic, in that it is ‘regulated’ by some desired goal. An impression made by the things we want or fear is forceful and lasting, or if it does disappear for a while, it soon comes back. Sometimes it is so strong that it not only makes it difficult for us to get to sleep, but even wakes us up. Desire gives rise to the thought of the means for obtaining the thing desired, the means being such as we have seen to produce a similar effect in the past. In the same way, the thought of the means to the end produces the thought of the means to the means, and so on, until we arrive at some starting-point within our power. Since the goal is impressed on the mind so forcefully, it often and readily comes back into the mind, so that if one’s thoughts have perhaps begun to wander from the point, it readily brings them back onto course. It was noticing this that led one of the famous Seven Sages [n.6] to formulate the maxim, by now overworked: ‘Consider the end.’ By this he is advising us that, in all our actions, we should frequently consider the end we are aiming at, as being that which channels all our thoughts in the appropriate direction for attaining our goal.
‘Regulated’ sequences of thoughts are also of two kinds. The first kind is when we are trying to find the causes of some conceived [n.7] effect, and [17] the means by which it is produced. This is common to human beings and other animals. The other kind is when we imagine something, whatever it may be, and try to find all the possible effects which can be produced by it — that is, we try to find the uses it can have. I have never seen any sign of this kind of thought except in human beings. The reason is that this sort of curiosity can hardly be natural to animals, since all their passions are directly bound up with the senses — for example, hunger, thirst, sex, and anger. Finally, when the discourse of the mind is governed by some specified goal, it is nothing other than ‘investigation’ or the capacity for ‘discovering’ things. In Latin it is also known by words meaning ‘keen-scentedness’, and ‘resourcefulness’, [n.8] and it is a sort of hunting down of a present or past cause or effect by following its trail. Suppose you are trying to find something you have lost. Starting from the place and time of noticing the loss, you go back in your mind from place to place, and from time to time, so as to find when and where you had the lost thing. In other words, you try to find a definite and delimited time and place for beginning the search. You then retrace in thought the same places and times to find some action or other chance event which could have made you lose the thing in question. This is the capacity of the mind which is called ‘recollection’.
It sometimes happens that there is a delimited area within which the investigation is to be carried out. In that case your thoughts can cover all the parts of that delimited area, like sweeping out a room to find a lost jewel; or like a hunting-dog ranging over a field until it picks up the scent of game; or like going through the whole alphabet in your mind, in order to find a rhyming final syllable.
If you want to know the eventual outcome of some action, you think of the results of a similar [n.9] past action in the order in which they were originally seen to occur, since similar outcomes generally follow similar actions. For example, someone who wants to know what will happen to a person convicted of a capital offence, will recall what previously followed in the case of a similar crime, with an order of thoughts like: the crime, the arresting officer, the prison, the judge, the gallows. This kind of thought is called ‘foresight’, ‘prudence’, ‘providence’, and sometimes ‘wisdom’, even though it is really only conjecture, and quite fallible because of the difficulty of taking all circumstances into account. However, this at least is certain: that the more some people excel over others in experience of past events, the more they will excel in foresight, and the more rarely will their expectations be disappointed. Only present things exist in the real world; past things exist only in the memory; but future things do not exist at all, since they are nothing but figments of the mind attaching what follows from a past action to a present action. This is done with the greatest certainty by those with the greatest experience, although the certainty can never be absolute. Whenever the outcome corresponds to what was expected it is called ‘foresight’, even though it is in fact only an assumption. But the foresight of future things which is providence belongs only to him whose decision will bring them into being. Prophecy comes from him alone, and it comes supernaturally. At the natural level, the best prophets are the best guessers; and the best guessers are those who have dealt most with the things being guessed about, since they have more signs for guessing by.
[19] A ‘sign’ is an outcome following a preceding outcome, or alternatively, an outcome preceding a following outcome, when similar followings have been observed in the past. The more frequently the following has been observed, the less uncertain the sign. So in any sphere, people who have the most experience have the greatest number of signs for making guesses about the future, and consequently they are the most foresightful. They have so much more foresight than novices, that no amount of native intelligence or improvisation can make up the difference — though many young people might not perhaps agree.
But whatever the essential difference between human beings and lower animals may be, it is certainly not foresight. This is because there are other animals which, at the age of one, have observed more about what is conducive to their purposes, and pursue it with more foresight, than a ten-year-old child.
Just as foresight is an assumption about the future, gathered from experience of the past, similarly there is another kind of assumption about past events, derived not from future events, but from other past ones. Suppose someone has observed the ways of managing things and stages through which a state has descended into civil war and thereby been ruined. On seeing the ruins of any other state, they will guess that similar ways of managing things and a similar war will also have taken place earlier in that state. But this sort of conjecture carries the same uncertainty as a conjecture about the future.
As far as I know, this is all the human mind can do by virtue of its innate capacities — namely what it can bring about simply by virtue of having been born a human being, and having the use of the five senses. There are various other capacities which seem to be exclusive to human beings, and I shall discuss them shortly. [20] But they are acquired, and developed by deliberate hard work. They are initially instilled by instruction and training, and they depend on the invention of words and language. The only motions in the human mind are sensation, imagination, and the sequence of thoughts. However, thanks to language and method, these same capacities can be developed to such an extent, that they enable human beings to be distinguished from all other animals.
Whatever we imagine is finite. Consequently there is no idea or concept which can be conjured up by the word ‘infinite’. The human mind cannot accommodate an image of infinite size; nor can it conceive infinite speed, infinite force, infinite time, or infinite power. When we say that something is ‘infinite’, all we mean is that we cannot conceive any bounds or limits to the thing concerned, and merely conceive our own impotence. Consequently, the purpose of using the name of God is not so that we can form a conception of him, since he is incomprehensible, and his magnitude and power are inconceivable; but so that we can worship him. Since, as I have said above, anything we conceive has previously been perceived in sensation, human beings cannot have any imagination of a thing which is not perceptible by the senses. Consequently, no-one can conceive anything except as in space, and as having some finite magnitude, and as divisible into parts; nor can anything be conceived as being wholly in different places at the same time; nor can two or more things be conceived as occupying the same place at the same time. None of these states of affairs ever was or could be given in sensation. They are meaningless verbiage, sanctioned by the authority of various deluded philosophers, or mistaken university professors.
[21] The invention of printing, however ingenious, is relatively insignificant in comparison with the invention of writing. It is not known who invented writing. They say it was Cadmus, son of King Agenor of Phoenicia, who first introduced it to Greece. It is a very useful device for preserving a record of the past, and for bringing together the human race, scattered as it is over so many and such distant regions of the earth. It was also an extremely difficult thing to invent, since it depended on very thorough observation of the movements of the tongue, the palate, the lips, and the other organs of speech, in order to distinguish them by as many different characters. But the greatest and most useful invention of all was that of language, consisting of names or appellations and their connection together. These enable people’s thoughts to be registered, recalled to memory, and communicated to each other for the purpose of social intercourse and for their mutual advantage. Without language, human beings would no more have developed the State, society, contracts, or peace, than have lions, bears, or wolves. The first originator of language was Adam, who named the creatures which God brought before him. [n.10] This is all that the Bible has to say about the matter. But it was enough for the time being, since Adam was able to give other names to other things in the same way, depending on what was required by his experience and the use he made of the various things that had been created. After a while, he connected words together, so that he would be understood. As time went on, he could in this way [22] acquire as rich a language as he needed. On the other hand, he did not have as much as would be needed by a grammarian or a philosopher. I know of no passage in Holy Scripture which shows, either explicitly or implicitly, that Adam gave names to all the variety of shapes, numbers, measures, colours, sounds, thoughts, or relations; still less that he gave names to names or propositions, such as ‘general’, ‘specific’, ‘affirmative’, ‘negative’, ‘interrogative’, ‘optative’, or ‘infinitive’, all of which are useful; and least of all, ‘entity’, ‘intentionality’, ‘quiddity’, and other meaningless words of university professors.
But all this vocabulary, whether acquired or added to by Adam and his descendants, was completely lost at the Tower of Babel, when God punished the entire human race for its disobedience, by making it forget its language. Forced to scatter over different parts of the world, it was inevitable that people gradually developed the present variety of different languages, depending on what they were taught by necessity, the mother of all inventions. With the passage of time, each individual language developed a richer vocabulary.
The most general function of language is that of turning mental discourse into verbal, or sequences of our thoughts into sequences of words. This serves two purposes. The first is the recording of thoughts — since they are prone to slip out of the memory, they can be recalled by means of the words used to record them. So the first function of names is as ‘notes’ to serve the memory. The other purpose is so that, when a number of people have acquired the same language, they can use names strung together in an orderly way [23] to signify to each other what conceptions they have, and what they think about each thing, and also what they want, fear, etc. When this is the function they serve, they are called ‘signs’. The specific functions of language are as follows: Firstly, to record the causes of present or past things, or the effects that present or past things can produce, which we have discovered by thinking about them — in other words, the basis of technology. Secondly, to reveal to others the science we have acquired, through the receiving and giving of information. Thirdly, to make known to each other our intentions and desires, so that we can co-operate with each other. Fourthly, we can sometimes allow language a witty or ornamental function, provided it does not hurt anyone.
To each function there corresponds a specific malfunction. The first is when people record their thoughts incorrectly, because of variability in the significations of their words — as when they assert something they do not think, instead of what they actually think, and in this way deceive themselves. The second is when they use words metaphorically, that is, in a different sense from the one in which they were originally coined, and in this way deceive others. The third is when people use words to announce their will as being other than it really is. The fourth is when they use language to hurt their fellow humans. Nature armed other animals with teeth or horns, and gave human beings hands to hurt their enemies with when necessary. But to hurt with the tongue is a misuse of language, except when we have a duty to control someone — and that is not to hurt, but to reprimand or correct.
The way in which language enables us to remember sequences consists in the assigning of names, and in linking them together.
Some names are ‘proper’ names, signifying one [24] individual thing — for example, ‘Peter’, ‘John’, ‘this person’, ‘this tree’. Others are ‘common’ to a number of things — for example, ‘person’, ‘horse’, ‘tree’. Even though each of them is a single name, it is the name of a number of individual things. It is called ‘universal’ by virtue of its relationship to all those individuals. Nothing in the real world is universal, apart from words for things. The things named are all individual and singular.
A universal name assigned to a number of things is a single name by virtue of their similarity in some quality or accident. So whereas a proper name brings to mind one definite thing, a universal name brings to mind any one of a number of things.
Some universal names have a wider, and some a narrower signification, in such a way that the wider name includes the narrower one. Others have the same scope, and include each other. For example, the name ‘body’ includes the name ‘human being’, and more besides; whereas the names ‘human being’ and ‘rational’ are of equal scope, and include each other. Here it should be noted that by ‘name’ we do not always mean a single word, as grammarians do, but sometimes in a roundabout way we use a number of words to mean a single name. For example, the words ‘someone who observes the decrees, statutes, and laws of their forefathers’ constitutes a single name, equivalent to the name ‘just’.
By means of this assigning of names with a wider or narrower signification, we turn a calculation involving sequences of thoughts into a calculation involving sequences of names. For example, someone who is completely without language, such as a congenital deaf-mute, if shown [25] a triangle, and next to it two right angles, belonging to a square perhaps, then, by mentally studying them and comparing them, it is possible for such a person to discover that the three angles of that particular triangle are equal to those particular right angles next to it. But someone endowed with language will notice that this equality does not follow from the length of the sides, or from anything to do with what species of triangle it is, but only from the fact that the sides are straight lines, and that the angles are three in number, which is why this shape has been given the name ‘triangle’. Such a person will boldly assert as universally true, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. In this way, what has been discovered to follow in a single instance is recorded in the memory as a universal rule. It frees our mental calculations from all considerations of time and place; it saves the mind from the work involved in all but the initial calculation; and it brings it about that what is discovered to be true here and now is recognised as true for every other time and place.
The usefulness of words for recording our thoughts is nowhere more obvious than in the case of numbers. Mental defectives who cannot remember how to recite the numerals in order, can still be aware of each individual chime of a clock, and nod to them, and say ‘one’, ‘one’, ‘one’; but they cannot know how many hours it has struck. It would appear that there was once a time when there were only a few names for numbers, and in counting, people were compelled to correlate things counted with the fingers, first of one hand, and then of both. This is how it came about that among nearly all peoples there have been no more than ten words for numbers, and in some cases no more than five, so that [26] after the fifth they have used the same words again. And even people who have ten words for numbers cannot count up to ten unless they recite them in order. Still less can they add, subtract, or perform the other operations of arithmetic. So, without the use of words, numerical calculations are impossible; and this is all the more true of magnitudes, degrees of speed, forces, and other things one has to make calculations about, for the necessities and comforts of the human race.
When two names are combined to form an affirmation or sequence, as when we say ‘A human being is an animal,’ or ‘If something is a human being, then it is an animal,’ and the second name (‘animal’) signifies everything signified by the first name (‘human being’), then that affirmation or sequence is true; otherwise it is false. Truth and falsehood are attributes, not of things, but of language. Where there is no language, nothing is true or false. There can, however, be error, as when we expect something which is not going to happen, or suspect something which did not happen. But we cannot be accused of falsehood.
So, since truth consists in the correct arrangement of names when we affirm something, if we want the exact truth, we must remember the value of every name in each position, [n.11] and put the names we use together correctly. If not, we will find ourselves tangled in webs of words, like little birds caught in bird-lime, which get more firmly stuck the more they struggle to free themselves. This is why in geometry, which is almost the only exact science, the experts usually start by fixing the significations of the names they are going to use, that is, they start with definitions, and place them at the beginning of their works.
This shows how necessary it is, for those of us who [27] are aiming at true science, to examine the definitions of the older writers, and to correct the more carelessly written ones, or establish new ones for ourselves. In any science, the further a computation is carried, the more any errors in the definitions will be multiplied. Readers are gradually led to absurd conclusions; and even if they see the absurdities, they cannot extricate themselves without going right back to the beginning, which is the ultimate source of their errors. Those who put too much faith in other writers are like people who add together a number of subtotals, without properly checking the subtotals first. When they eventually discover an error, they cannot get themselves out of the difficulty, because of their failure to question the starting-points of the authorities they rely on. Instead, they waste time fluttering through the pages of their books, like birds which have got into a room by the chimney, and finding themselves trapped, flutter their wings at the deceptive light of a window-pane, but struggle in vain, since they have forgotten the way they came in.
So, the first function of language, which is the acquisition of scientific knowledge, consists in defining names correctly; and its first malfunction consists in defining them incorrectly, or failing to give definitions at all. This is the source of false and absurd philosophical opinions, which make those who take their instruction from the authority of books rather than from thinking things out for themselves, as much worse off than ignorant people, as people endowed with genuine knowledge are better off. Ignorance is half-way between genuine science and erroneous doctrine. Operating naturally, our senses and our imaginations are not liable to absurdity. Nature itself cannot err. But the richer a vocabulary people have, the more they are either wiser or stupider than ordinary people. Illiterates do not [28] usually become outstandingly wise; but nor do they become outstandingly stupid, unless perhaps their minds have been damaged by some disease or a deformity in their bodily organs. Wise people use words like the beads of an abacus, for calculating with; fools treat them like coins, the value of which depends on their being stamped with some famous name, like that of Aristotle, or Cicero, or Aquinas, or any other merely human authority.
A thing named is anything which can be thought about, or taken into account in reasoning [ratiocinatio]; it can either be added to something to make a total, or subtracted from something else. In Latin, a ledger for financial calculations is called a ratio [‘reason’], and the act of drawing up accounts is called ratiocinatio, and what we call an ‘item of account’, is called a ‘name’ in Latin. It is from this context that the word ratio was extended to the capacity to make calculations about other things. In Greek the single word logos signifies both language and reason — not because the Greeks thought there was no language without reason, but because they thought there was no reason without language. They called the act of reasoning ‘syllogism’, and this word signifies the joining of one spoken sequence to another. But since the same things enter into reasonings by virtue of different accidents, in order to signify these differences, it is normal for their names to be variously modified and inflected.
These variations of names can be reduced to four general headings:
First, a thing can enter into reasonings as matter or body, with a name like ‘living’, ‘sensible’, ‘rational’, ‘hot’, ‘cold’, ‘moving’, or ‘at rest’, [n.12] since all these names signify ‘matter’ or ‘body’.
Secondly, a thing can enter into reasonings by virtue of some accident or quality which we think of as being in the thing, for example, because it moves, or because it has a certain quantity, or because it is hot. In such cases we make a minor change in the name of the thing itself, [29] and replace ‘living’ by ‘life’, ‘moving’ by ‘motion’, ‘hot’ by ‘heat’, ‘long’ by ‘length’, and so on. When we have made such changes, these names are no longer names of matter or body, but of the accidents and properties by which one body is distinguished from another. Names like these are called ‘abstract’, not because they are abstracted from matter, but because they are abstracted from the calculation of matter. [n.13]
Thirdly, we bring into our reasonings the properties by which we ourselves distinguish things. For example, when we see something, we do not always take account of the thing seen, but only of the seeing, the colour, or the idea or phantasm of the thing seen. Similarly, when we hear, we consider only the sound or hearing, and not the thing itself which made the sound. The same goes for all other phantasms.
Fourthly, in our reasonings we sometimes bring in names of names and sequences of names themselves, for example, ‘general’, ‘universal’, ‘specific’, ‘univocal’, and ‘equivocal’, which are names of names. Similarly, ‘affirmation’, ‘question’, ‘command’, ‘narration’, ‘syllogism’, ‘speech’, and other such, are names of sequences of names. All this variety is of positive names, signifying something which exists in the real world, or which can be imagined by the mind — for example, bodies which exist or can seem to exist, or properties of bodies which exist or can seem to exist, or words and sequences of words.
In addition, there are negative names, which signify that a given name is not the name of the thing in question — for example, ‘nothing’, ‘nobody’, ‘infinite’, ‘unteachable’, ‘three minus four’, and the such like. They do, however, have their function in reasoning, either for correcting others or for taking back what we ourselves have said, since they make us reject names that have been incorrectly applied or used.
[30] All other names are meaningless sounds. Of these there are two sorts: The first are new names which have not yet been explained by means of a definition, such as have been coined by philosophers and university professors when in difficulties. The other sort is when a name is composed of two names with mutually incompatible meanings, for example, the name ‘incorporeal body’, or, which comes to the same thing, ‘incorporeal substance’; and other such names. Whenever an assertion is false, if a single name is formed from the two names constituting the assertion, that name will be meaningless. For example, if it is false to say that ‘a square is round,’ then the name ‘round square’ is a mere sound, signifying nothing. Similarly, if it is false to say that virtue can be ‘poured’ [‘infused’] or ‘blown’ [‘inspired’], then the words ‘infused virtue’ and ‘inspired virtue’ are meaningless names. Consequently, it is rare to come across an absurd and meaningless word which is not a compound of names which are incomprehensible to ordinary people.
When the thought of something arises from the hearing of a properly constructed sequence of words, then the hearer is said to ‘understand’ those words, since understanding is nothing other than a concept resulting from language. So if language is peculiar to human beings, as seems to be the case, understanding also belongs to human beings alone. It follows from this that’ when false assertions are universal, they cannot be understood; even though many people think they understand them, as long as in their minds they silently repeat to themselves the words they have heard.
What sorts of terminology signify appetite, aversion, and other passions of the human mind, and what their functioning and malfunctioning consist in, I shall come to when I deal with the passions.
The names of things which please us have variable significations, [31] since the same things are not equally pleasing to everyone, and not even to one and the same person all the time. Since all names have been assigned for the purpose of signifying concepts, we often have to give different names to the same things, since we do not sense the same things the same way. Even if there is no change in the nature of the thing conceived itself, the differences in the ways we take it, due to the differences between our individual natures and to our preconceived opinions, mean that each one of us gives things names which are to a certain extent coloured by our own particular affections. Consequently, whenever we are reasoning, we must be careful not to let in anything belonging to the nature, character, or affections of the speaker, over and above the signification of the thing itself. Most of these names are names of virtues and vices. What one person calls ‘prudence’, another calls ‘cowardice’; what one calls ‘cruelty’, another calls ‘justice’; what one calls ‘excess’, another calls ‘generosity’; what one calls ‘seriousness’, another calls ‘dullness’, and so on. Consequently, names like these cannot form the starting-point of any reasoning. The same goes for metaphors, and other figurative uses of language — but these are less insidious, since they are open about their inconstancy.
Chapter 5: Reasoning and science
Anyone who reasons is either trying to arrive at a total through the addition of parts, or at a remainder by subtracting a part from a part. If this is done through the medium of words, it is nothing other than the conception of a following from the name of a part to the name [32] of a whole, or from the names of a whole and of a part to the name of a remaining part. In some areas (numbers, for example), there are other operations than just addition and subtraction, such as multiplication and division; but these amount to the same thing, since multiplication is the addition of things that are equal to each other, and division is merely the subtraction of the same thing as many times as we can. These operations are not peculiar to numbers, but apply to any kind of thing of which one can be added to or taken away from another. Just as arithmeticians add and subtract with numbers, so geometricians teach us to do the same with lines, shapes, angles, ratios, times, degrees of speed, forces, powers, and the such like. Logicians too do the same with sequences of words, adding two names together to make a proposition, and two propositions together to make a syllogism, and a number of syllogisms to make a proof; and from the sum or conclusion of a syllogism they subtract one proposition to find another. Even political theorists add together a number of contracts in order to discover people’s duties; and lawyers add together laws and facts in order to discover what is right or wrong in the actions of private citizens. Wherever there is scope for addition and subtraction, there is also scope for reasoning; and where there is no scope for them, there is no scope for reasoning either.
From what has been said, we can define ‘reasoning’, that is, we can determine the signification of the word in so far as it is taken as a capacity of the mind. In this sense, reasoning is nothing other than calculation, or adding and subtracting the general names which have been agreed upon for the notation or signification of our thoughts. I use the term ‘notation’ [33] for when we calculate by ourselves, and ‘signification’ for when we reveal our calculations to others.
But just as in arithmetic untrained people often make mistakes (and sometimes even experts), it is also the case in reasonings about other things, that the most skilled, experienced, and careful practitioners can go wrong, and draw false conclusions. This does not mean that reasoning itself is not always right reasoning, any more than it means that arithmetic is not always an infallible technique; but that no single person’s reasoning, or even that of a number of people, yields certainty, any more than a correct numerical calculation is correct by virtue of its having been approved by a number of people. This is why, whenever there is a disagreement about a calculation or a piece of reasoning, those who are in dispute must voluntarily settle upon the reasoning of some arbitrator or judge as right reasoning, and each must agree to be bound by the decision. If not, their dispute will either never be settled at all, or only by physical force, since the criterion of right reasoning is not grounded in nature. The same goes for any kind of dispute. When arrogant people who believe that they are wiser than everybody else loudly claim right reasoning as their judge, all they are demanding is that their case should be judged on the basis of their own reasoning. But in human society, this is as intolerable as if a card-player should insist on trumps being whatever suit they had most of. What else is being done by people who try to gain for their leading passions the force of right reasoning, even when they are party to the dispute? Their very demand shows that they themselves are defective in the use of right reasoning.
The function and purpose of reasoning is not the discovery of one or a few sequences following remotely from an initial set of definitions of names. Starting out from an initial [34] set of definitions, reasoning proceeds to a sequence of further definitions, and then to another. [n.14] The certainty of the final conclusion depends entirely on the certainty of the affirmations and negations out of which it has been put together and inferred. The case is just like that of a landowner auditing the accounts of his estate manager: if he simply adds together the subtotals under all the individual headings of expenditure into a single grand total, without first checking the arithmetic of the people responsible for drawing up the subtotals, then he is doing himself no more good than if he trusts completely in the competence and honesty of his manager, and does not ask to see the accounts at all. Similarly, in reasonings on any topic whatever, those who take the work of other authors on trust, without themselves following the argument through from individual names, are wasting their time, since they do not acquire any scientific knowledge, but only belief.
When we are dealing with individual names, it is possible to reason without using words — for example, when we see some particular thing, and guess what seems likely to have preceded it or to follow it. If in such a case, what seems likely did not in fact precede it, or does not in fact follow it, then this is called an ‘error’ on the part of the reasoner. Even the best predictors are liable to error. When, on the other hand, we are reasoning with words which have universal application, if we arrive at a universal conclusion which is false, although this is usually called an ‘error’, it is really an absurdity, that is, meaningless language. Error consists merely in a mistaken assumption about the past or future, which, even if not true, is not seen to be impossible. But when a conclusion is a general one, if it is not true, it is not even conceivable; and words which give rise to a conception of nothing but their own sound are customarily called meaningless and absurd. Examples are: ‘There is a round square,’ ‘There are immaterial substances,’ or ‘A subject is a free person.’ [35] If I were to hear someone talking in these ways, I would not say that they were in error — I would say that they had been talking absurdly.
I have already said that human beings are superior to other animals in that, once they have thought about anything whatever, they are naturally inclined to investigate its consequences, and to consider what use they can make of it. Here I shall add another dimension to their superiority, namely that they are capable of using sequences of words for discovering general rules, which are usually called ‘theorems’ or ‘aphorisms’; that is, they can make calculations, not only about numbers, but about all other things of which one can be added to, or taken away from another.
However, this privilege is balanced by another, since only human beings have the privilege of absurdity, and no other creature is subject to it. Among human beings, those most prone to it are the people who are usually referred to as philosophers. Cicero was quite right to say that nothing can be so absurd that it is not found in the books of philosophers. [n.15] The reason for this is obvious: none of them start their reasonings with definitions, or explanations of the names they are going to use. This method is confined to geometricians.
In other sciences too, absurd conclusions must be attributed to lack of method, in that reasoning does not begin with definitions of names. It is as if people wanted to count, before understanding the values of the numerals. This is the general cause of absurdity. But since, as I said in the previous chapter, bodies enter into our reasonings in respect of different aspects, many absurdities arise from a failure to distinguish between these aspects, with the result that names are wrongly connected together into propositions.
[36] For example, firstly, when people apply names of bodies to accidents, or names of accidents to bodies, as they are doing when they say that ‘faith is infused’ or ‘inspired’, since nothing is either pourable [‘fusible’] or breathable [‘spirable’] unless it is a body; or as they do when they say that ‘extension is body,’ or that ‘a phantasm is a spirit,’ and so on.
Secondly, when they apply names of accidents which are in bodies outside us, to accidents of our bodies. This is being done by people who say that ‘colour is in the object,’ or that ‘sound is in the air,’ etc. [n.16]
Thirdly, when they give names of bodies to names or propositions, as when they say that ‘there are universal things,’ or that ‘animal is a genus.’
Fourthly, when they give names of accidents to names or propositions, as when they say that ‘the definition of a thing is its nature,’ or that ‘anyone’s command is their will.’
Fifthly, when instead of more appropriate words, they use metaphors, and other figures of speech. For example, although it is allowable in ordinary language to say that ‘the road leads in this direction’ or ‘aims in that direction,’ or that ‘the proverb says’ this or that; this sort of language cannot be admitted into the reasoning of anyone who aspires to the truth.
Sixthly, when they use words which they have picked up casually, but which do not signify anything, such as ‘transubstantiation,’ ‘consubsantiation,’ ‘the eternal now,’ and similar verbiage from the universities.
Anyone who manages to avoid these pitfalls is unlikely to lapse into absurdity, except through length of argument, since it is possible to forget some earlier proposition. It is natural to people to reason well, and in the same way as each other, provided they start out from true and clear beginnings. [37] You will hardly find anyone so stupid that, if they have made a mistake in geometry, and someone has pointed out their mistake to them, they will not immediately acknowledge it.
From this it is clear that, unlike sensation and memory, the capacity to reason is not innate in us; and unlike foresight, it is not acquired by experience alone, but by hard work, consisting first in the suitable imposition of names, and then in proceeding correctly and systematically from names to propositions, and from propositions to syllogisms, until we come to know all the sequences of the names belonging to the science in question. Sensation and memory are merely knowledge of facts; science is knowledge of the following of one fact from another. On the basis of what we can now do, science tells us that we can do something similar on another occasion if we wish. Whenever we see the origins and causes of effects, and how they come into being, we learn how to produce similar effects whenever similar causes are under our control.
The capacity to reason is not actualised in children before they have acquired the use of language; however, they are called ‘rational animals’ just because they have it in potential. Even though most people can reason to a certain extent (as in arithmetic, perhaps), it does not help them very much in ordinary life. How well or badly they conduct their affairs depends on differences in their experience, memory, or appetite; and especially on good or bad luck, and on each other’s mistakes. As for scientific knowledge of definite rules for conducting their affairs, they are so far from it that they have no understanding of rules of life apart from their own desires. Some people have even regarded geometry as a magical art. [38] As for the other sciences, those who have not learned the basics, or progressed far enough to see how these sciences came into being and were acquired, are in the same position in relation to them as children are to the facts of life, when they believe the women who tell them that their brothers and sisters were not born, but were found in the garden.
On the other hand, people who lack all science, and have only their innate capacity of foresight, are in a superior position to people who, by reasoning badly or putting their trust in bad reasoners, lapse into false and absurd general rules. Ignorance of causes and rules does not give rise to as many errors as do false causes and rules.
The light of the human mind is clear language, once its wick has been trimmed by accurate definitions, and purified of ambiguities. Reasoning is the journey; method is the road to science; and the goal of science is the good of humanity. Metaphors, and words that signify nothing or are ambiguous, are will-’o-the-wisps: people who trade in them wander among innumerable absurdities, which eventually lead to strife, sedition, or civil disobedience.
Just as wealth of experience becomes foresight, so wealth of science is wisdom. In order to see the distinction between these two more clearly, imagine a person who is blessed with a natural skill at handling weapons, and another person who is equally skilful, but has also learned the science of duelling, and knows perfectly how and where to injure the enemy from any position, and how one must keep up one’s guard. These two types of skill bear the same relation to each other as foresight and wisdom: [39] both are useful, but only the latter is infallible. Anyone who puts all their trust in the authority of books is blindly following the blind, and is like someone who, relying on the false rules of some fencing master, challenges an experienced opponent, and is either killed or disarmed.
Some of the signs that a person has scientific understanding are certain and infallible, and others uncertain. A certain sign is that, when people claim they know something, they can explain it to someone else, and clearly prove its truth. An uncertain sign is when what they say is true in some areas, but not so in many others. So all the signs of foresight are uncertain, since no-one can have observed all the circumstances essential to the outcome of all the events they have experienced, or even remember everything they have observed. But on any matter where there is no infallible science, it is imprudent to mistrust one’s own judgment, and allow oneself to be guided by opinions found in books. Although in councils of state people love to show off their reading of history and political theory, very few do that when it comes to their domestic concerns. Everyone has enough foresight for their own affairs; but in public matters, people are more interested in establishing a reputation for cleverness, than in the public good.
Chapter 6: The internal beginnings of voluntary motion, which are usually called ‘passions’, and the terminology through which they are expressed
[39] Animals have two kinds of motions which are exclusive to them. One is vital motion, which starts at conception, and continues throughout life without interruption — [40] for example, the motion of the blood, the pulse, breathing, digestion, nutrition, or excretion, none of which require the help of the imagination. The other is called ‘animal’ or ‘voluntary’ motion — for example, walking, talking, or moving one’s arms, which are preceded by a thought in the mind. As has already been said (in chapters 1 and 2), sensation is a motion in the sense organs and internal parts of the human body brought about by objects which are seen, heard, etc.; whereas phantasy is the after-effect of the same motion when sensation has ceased. Walking, talking, and other such voluntary motions always depend on some preceding thought, such as ‘where to’ ‘by what route’, or ‘what.’ Consequently, it is obvious that phantasy is the first internal beginning of all voluntary motions. Some might deny that there is any motion at all when the thing in motion is invisible, or the distance through which it moves is too small to be sensible; but this does not mean that there are no motions of this sort. However small the distance, something moving through a greater distance, of which the small distance is a part, will necessarily also pass through the latter. These small beginnings of motion, which take place within the human body before they become apparent as walking, talking, hitting, or other visible actions, are called ‘conations’.
When this conation is directed towards its cause, it is called ‘appetite’ or ‘desire’. The first of these words is more general, since the second is often restricted to signifying some particular appetite, such as hunger or thirst. When, on the other hand, the conation is directed away from something, it is called ‘aversion’. These two words ‘appetite’ and ‘aversion’ correspond to the Greek horme and aphorme. [n.17] For nature itself sometimes impels humans towards the truth; but those who desire to be learned beyond the bounds of nature [41] often stumble at it. University philosophers believe that there is no motion at all in appetite; but because it must necessarily be accepted that there is some sort of motion, they say that appetite is a ‘metaphorical’ motion. But this is absurd, since, although words can be metaphorical, bodies and motions cannot. . . . .
[47] It is called ‘deliberation’, when, in the human mind, appetite and aversion, or hope and fear about one and the same thing arise alternately. One after the other there come into the mind the good and bad consequences of doing it or not doing it. Consequently, at one moment we are motivated towards it, and at another against it; at one moment we are hopeful, and at another we are fearful. Deliberation is the totality of these passions taken together, and it lasts until the course of action is either carried out or rejected.
Therefore there can be no deliberation about things which have already happened, [48] because the past cannot be changed; nor about things we know or believe to be impossible, because deliberation about such things is fruitless. However, there can be deliberation about impossibilities if we believe them to be possible, since we do not know that it is fruitless. Another reason why it is called ‘deliberation’ is because it puts an end to our liberty of doing or not doing something. [n.18] This alternation between appetite and aversion, etc. is common to humans and other animals; for lower animals also deliberate.
Deliberation is said to come to an end when the object of deliberation is either put into effect or made impossible, because up to that point we retain the liberty of doing it or not doing it, according to our own judgment.
In deliberation, the last appetite towards, or aversion from, the action deliberated about, that is, the one which immediately precedes the action, is the ‘will’. Note that I mean the act of willing, not the power to do so. From this it follows that lower animals are also endowed with will, since they deliberate. The definition of the will given by university philosophers, namely that ‘will is rational appetite,’ is unacceptable. For if this were a correct definition, no voluntary action could ever be irrational, since a voluntary action is one which proceeds from the will, and nothing else. But if for ‘rational appetite,’ we substitute ‘an appetite which arises from preceding deliberation,’ then the definition is the same as the one I have given, namely the last appetite in deliberating. In ordinary speech we very often say that someone once had the will to do something, but later declined to do it. However, this is not ‘will’ in the proper sense, but ‘inclination’, which does not make an action voluntary, since actions depend only on the last appetite, and not on any of the others. The previous appetites [49] or inclinations are not acts of willing, otherwise all actions would be at the same time voluntary and involuntary.
It obviously follows from this that voluntary actions are not only those which have their beginning in an appetite for something, but also those which proceed from aversion or fear of the outcomes which follow from failure to perform some action. . . . .
Chapter 7: The determinations of discourses
[51] All discourse, if it is governed by the desire for knowledge, terminates either in acceptance or in rejection. But if a sequence of thoughts is interrupted only temporarily, it is not to be called ‘determined’ on that account.
If discourse takes the form of thoughts alone, then it consists in the alternating thoughts that something will or will not happen, or that it did or did not happen. So whenever the discourse stops, there remains a presumption that it will or will not happen, or that it did or did not happen. This sort of determination is called ‘opinion’. The alternating opinion in the search for the truth about a past or future event corresponds exactly to the alternating appetite in deliberating about what is good or bad. And just as will is the last appetite in deliberation, so opinion is the last judgment or final sentence in a question of the past or future. And just as the whole sequence of alternating appetites in a question of good or bad is called ‘deliberation;, so in a question of truth or falsehood, the whole sequence of alternating opinions is called ‘wondering’.
No discourse can terminate in perfect knowledge of the past or the future. For knowledge of what has happened is originally sensation, and subsequently memory. And knowledge of consequences, which (as I said earlier) is called ‘science’, is not absolute, but only conditional science. By means of discourse, no-one can know scientifically that this or that is, was, or will be — which is what it is to have perfect scientific knowledge. All one can know scientifically is that if this is, then that is; if this was, then that was; or if this will be, then that will be — and this is to have conditional scientific knowledge. [52] And scientific knowledge is knowledge that a name follows from a name, not that a thing follows from a thing.
Now if discourse consists in words, and begins with definitions of words, and proceeds by connecting words into propositions and propositions into syllogisms, it will be determined by some conclusion or other, which is the sum of all the preceding propositions. And this is science, or knowledge of the following of one word from another. But if the discourse does not begin with definitions, or if the definitions are not correctly connected into syllogisms, then again the discourse terminates only in an opinion as to what the true conclusion is, however absurd and meaningless.
When two or more people have scientific knowledge of the same thing at the same time, they are said to be ‘conscious’ of it. And since people who have acted jointly are the best possible witnesses of what they have done, it always was and always will be considered immoral to give evidence contrary to conscience, or to induce someone else to do so. However, the word ‘conscience’ is very often misappropriated for each person’s private knowledge of their own actions or thoughts. There are even some who, out of pride in their own originality, stubbornly prop up their personal and unorthodox opinions, however absurd, by gracing them with the favourable description of ‘conscience’ — as if it were the greatest of sins to change them. So they want people to think that they have scientific knowledge of their truth, when the only thing they know scientifically is the fact that they have these opinions. . . . .
Chapter 8: Intellectual virtues and their corresponding defects
[54] In any sphere, a virtue is something which is visibly superior, and it consists in a comparison. For if everything were equally present in everyone, there would be nothing which could be considered outstanding. By ‘intellectual virtues’ is meant those mental abilities which people generally commend, praise, and desire for themselves. In ordinary speech they are brought together under the name ‘good wit,’ even though ‘wit’ also sometimes refers to a particular ability distinct from the rest.
There are two kinds of these virtues: natural and acquired. By ‘natural wit’ I do not mean only that which we are born with, since the latter is nothing other than sensation, in which there is little difference between one person and another, or between humans and animals. What I mean by ‘wit’ is that which humans acquire as they grow older, solely through practice and experience, and not through some system, cultivation, or training. It consists in two things: quickness of imagining (i.e. the fast progression from one thought to another), and consistent pursuit of some set objective. By contrast, a slow imagination makes for the mental defect we usually call ‘slowness’ or [55] ‘stupidity’, or other names implying slowness of motion.
Difference in speed arises from differences in people’s passions, which make different people want or avoid different things. This is why different people’s thoughts run along different tracks, and are applied to things in different ways. As one thought follows another, usually all that is observed is similarity or dissimilarity, or what purpose they can serve, and how. Consequently, those who are best at noticing similarities which others rarely notice are said to have a ‘good wit’, or a ‘good phantasy’. On the other hand, those who are best at observing the contrasts and differences among the things they think about — i.e. who are good at distinguishing, discerning, and judging between one thing and another — are said to have ‘good judgment’, in so far as the judgment is a difficult one to make. More specifically, in public dealings and business affairs, where distinctions have to be made between times, places, and persons, this virtue is usually called ‘discrimination’. Phantasy without judgment is hardly ever valued; but judgment or discrimination is valued in itself, without any support from the phantasy. Apart from discrimination between times, places, and persons, which turns mere phantasy into something valuable, the frequent reference of thoughts to their objective is also required. This will bring to mind comparisons which are not merely illustrative, but will also decorate speech with new and appropriate metaphors, and give additional pleasure because of their exceptional inventiveness. But if thoughts are not constantly kept fixed on a specific pupose, a broad phantasy turns into one of the species of madness. This is the case with those who, once they begin talking, are beguiled by just about every thought which has nothing to do with the set purpose, into so many and such long digressions and interpolations, that they are unable to get back to the point. The cause [56] of this fault is sometimes because they lack experience, so that what seems commonplace and trivial to others strikes them as novel, important, and worth talking about. For whatever is novel, important, and worth talking about usually entices people away from the intended thread of a speech. . . . .
[58] As for acquired wit, that is, acquired through a method and training, there is none apart from reasoning; which, as long is it springs from the correct use of language, results in the sciences. But I have already discussed reasoning and science above (chapters 5 and 6).
Differences in wit arise from the passions; and differences in the passions arise partly from differences in bodily constitution, and partly from differences in social environment and education.
The passions which are most responsible for differences in wit are, broadly, greater or less desire for power, money, scientific knowledge, or status. But all these can be reduced to power, since money, scientific knowledge, and status are species of power.
So, anyone who has no ambition for these can be a good person, but they will never be perceived as having good wit. For thoughts are like the reconnoitrers of our desires: they are dispatched to explore the routes by which we can arrive at what we want, and they make the motions of the mind orderly and quick. To want nothing [59] is to be dead; not to want badly enough is to be slow; to want too many things at the same time is to be frivolous; but to have passions which are much stronger or more violent than is normal in other people is what is called ‘madness’.
There are about as many sorts of madness as there are of passions themselves; but madness can also sometimes result from a weakness of or injury to the bodily organs. And sometimes the bodily organs can themselves be harmed by the violence or long duration of a passion. But in either case the madness belongs to the same kind.
The passion which causes madness because of its violence or long duration is either excessive self-esteem (also called ‘pride’), or severe mental depression. . . . .
[65] Among the signs of madness can also be included the absurd or meaningless speech of certain people, as I mentioned in chapter 5. This kind of madness is almost exclusive to those people who are bold enough to talk or write about things which are incomprehensible. The only people who do this are university teachers and philosophers. Ordinary people rarely talk in such a way that they cannot be understood; and that is why this professional élite looks down on them as mere laypersons. [n.19] But so that we can really know the nature of the language which the university teachers and philosophers use for difficult matters, let someone explain to us the words which make up the title of Book I, Chapter 6 of Suárez’s On the Concourse, Motion, and Help of God. The words are as follows: ‘The first cause does not necessarily inflow anything into the second by virtue of the essential subordination of second causes, by which it might help the former to operate.’ People who fill whole volumes with such language, are they not mad, or are they not wanting to make others mad? Again, on the question of transubstantiation, they say that after certain specific words have been uttered, the whiteness, the roundness, [66] the magnitude, and other qualities of the bread, all of which are immaterial, migrate from it, and enter into the body of our Saviour Jesus Christ. [n.20] When they say this, surely they are turning those accidents into as many spirits? For they think that spirits are also immaterial, despite the fact that they believe that spirits can move from one place to another. So this kind of absurd language can rightly be included among the many sorts of madness. The times when the thoughts of these same madmen are expressed clearly, because they are governed by worldly desires, are nothing other than lucid intervals.
This is all I need to say about intellectual virtues and vices.
Chapter 9: The classification of the sciences [n.21]
There are two kinds of knowledge. One is knowledge of what has happened. It is exclusive to witnesses, and when it is put into writing, it is ‘historyi. It is divided into natural and civil history, neither of which depends on our will. The other kind is knowledge of what follows from what, and it is called ‘science’; but when it is put down in writing, it is usually called ‘philosophy’. But since the subjects of the sciences are bodies, philosophy must be subdivided into species in the same way as bodies themselves are subdivided into species — in other words, so that the more universal come before the less universal. For universals are essential to the special, and hence scientific knowledge of universals is essential for scientific knowledge of species, in such a way that species can be perceived only in the light of universals.
The most general of the subjects of scientific knowledge is body, which has two accidents: magnitude and motion. Consequently, the first question a philosopher asks [67] about this subject is ‘What is motion and what is magnitude?’ This part of philosophy is usually called ‘first philosophy’.
Next, once a definition has been given of magnitude (which is also called ‘quantity’), it can be further defined in terms of either shape or number. So, when body is defined in terms of shape, it is the subject of that part of philosophy which is called ‘geometry’. But when the parts of body are determined by number, the science is called ‘arithmetic’.
Motions are either visible or invisible, that is, when they occur in the tiniest parts of bodies. The science of visible motions is the province of those who have studied the secrets of machines, or buildings.
The invisible motions of the internal parts of a body are called ‘qualities’, on account of their effects on our senses. They are the subject of physics or natural philosophy. There can be as many special branches of physics as there are human senses — for example, one is called ‘optics’, and another ‘music’.
Then if the body of the universe is considered in respect of its parts, such as the stars, and things in the region between the earth and the moon, then the study of the moving stars in so far as they are in motion gives rise to the science which is called ‘astronomy’.
And since some parts of the universe are transitory, and sometimes appear and sometimes disappear in the spaces between the large heavenly bodies, the study of their motion generates the science of meteorology.
Similarly, the study of the parts of the earth, such as minerals, vegetables, and animals, gives rise to the same number of particular sciences.
Finally, the study of human beings and their capacities gives rise to the sciences of ethics, logic, rhetoric, and ultimately politics, or civil philosophy.
Innumerable other sciences can be generated by further subdivision of individual subjects, but it would be difficult and unnecessary to enumerate them.
PART III. THE CHRISTIAN STATE
Chapter 34: The meaning of the words ‘spirit’, ‘angel’, and ‘inspiration’ in the Holy Scriptures
[280] The foundation of correct reasoning is located in the signification of words. In the present chapter, the definitions of the words in question do not depend (as they do in the natural sciences) on the human will; nor do they depend on ordinary usage. Instead, they depend on the sense they have in Holy Scripture. Before I go any further, I must therefore use Holy Scripture to fix the meanings of the words which, because of their ambiguity, might make what I am going to deduce from them obscure or doubtful. So I shall start with the words ‘body’ and ‘spirit’, which are usually called ‘corporeal substance’ and ‘incorporeal substance’ in scholastic terminology.
Taken in its most general sense, ‘body’ means that which fills or occupies some particular space, and which does not depend on our imagination (as space itself does), but is a part of the real thing which we call the ‘universe’. And since the universe is the aggregate of all bodies, it has no part which is not also a body. Nor is it correct to call anything a ‘body’, unless it is some part or other of the whole universe. But since bodies make their appearances in different ways, they are also said to be ‘subject’ to various accidents — for example, they are sometimes at rest; at one time they are hot, and at another time they are cold; and they sometimes have one colour, smell, taste, or sound, and sometimes another. This is the reason why they are given the name of ‘substances’. However, this diversity of apparitions, which arises from the different ways in which external bodies affect our sense organs, means that we attribute them to changes in the bodies acting on us, and we think that they are accidents of the bodies themselves. [281] According to this interpretation of the word ‘body’, ‘body’ and ‘substance’ have the same meaning; and consequently the compound expression ‘incorporeal substance’ is as meaningless as if you were to say ‘non-bodily body.’ And neither that expression, nor the word ‘immaterial’ is to be found anywhere in Holy Scripture.
But ordinary people usually take it in a sense, according to which it is not the whole universe that is body, but only the parts of it which they sense as acting on themselves, whether by touch when bodies resist, or by sight when they obstruct the view. Hence in ordinary language, air, or aerial substances, are not considered to be bodies, but, whenever their effects are detected, they are called ‘wind’ or ‘spirit’, as in the expressions ‘vital spirit’, or ‘animal spirit’. And as for idols of the brain, or phantasms, which are seen but do not exist (such as appear in mirrors or dreams, or even sometimes to waking people who have a brain disorder), these are spectres, and, as the apostle said of all idols, nothing. [n.22] Nothing at all, I mean, where they are seen as being; and in the brain itself, nothing other than a vibration resulting from a disturbance of the organs. People whose minds are occupied with other thoughts do not investigate the causes of things, and they do not know what to call them. So they can easily be persuaded by people whose knowledge they respect, to call them bodies instead of spectres, and to believe that they are condensed out of the air by some supernatural power. Others can even be persuaded that they are spirits, since they cannot be perceived by touch in the place where they are seen as being. So in ordinary language, the proper meaning of ‘spirit’ is either a rarefied, fluid, and invisible body, or a spectre — that is, an idol or phantasm. But many of its meanings are metaphorical, especially in Holy Scripture. [282] Sometimes it means ‘disputatiousness’, or ‘inclination’; for example when we say ‘a spirit of contradiction’ for an argumentative person, ‘an unclean spirit’ for someone who is morally corrupt, ‘a perverse spirit’ for someone who is perverse, and ‘a spirit of God’ for someone who is disposed to serve God. Sometimes it also means excellence in some capacity, or even an unusual mental disorder; for example, someone of exceptional wisdom is called ‘the spirit of wisdom,’ and when people are deranged they are said to be ‘possessed by a spirit.’
I cannot find any other meanings of the word ‘spirit’ in the Holy Scriptures. And if there are any passages of Scripture which cannot be interpreted in any of these ways, we should consider them to transcend our understanding. This is hardly surprising, since the nature of God is incomprehensible, and names should be attributed to him, not so much so much in respect of his nature, but as appropriate for the respect which we are obliged to show him. . . . .
[He then discusses a number of Biblical passages in which the word ‘spirit’ occurs.]
[285] When the disciples saw Christ walking on the sea (Matthew 14.26; Mark 6.49), they said he was a spirit; but not because they thought he was a phantasm, since the Bible says that they all saw him — which is incompatible with the nature of a phantasm. However, they could perhaps have believed that he was a body condensed out of air. This can also be said of those who said that Peter, on being freed from prison by God (Acts 12.15), was ‘God’s angel’. For in the writings of the Jews there is absolutely no mention of incorporeal substances, and the whole doctrine originates from Greek philosophy. However, it is not to be denied that there can be substantial apparitions of some sort (after all, there is nothing which God is not capable of bringing about), nor that there are angels whenever God makes use of their services. However, they have dimensions, and since they are finite, they occupy space and can move. They are not incorporeal, that is, they are not nowhere, and since they are seen to be something, they are not nothing. [n.23]
The Greek word ‘angel’ means a ‘messenger’, among sacred writers as much as among profane ones; but in the Holy Scriptures, [286] usually a messenger from God. But a messenger from God is any means by which God supernaturally reveals his presence or miraculous power, especially in dreams and visions.
In the Holy Scriptures, nothing is said explicitly about the creation of angels, and this is why theologians disagree about their nature. Some of the most distinguished early fathers believed they were corporeal; whereas many others believed they were incorporeal. In various passages of the Scriptures, angels are described as spirits. But both Jewish and Greek writers sometimes consider spirits to be rarefied bodies, like the air, wind, or the spirits of animals, and sometimes to be mere phantasms, which are not thing-like, and continue to exist no longer than the dream or vision in which they appear. Even though these phantasms or apparitions are not substances, but accidents of the organs of the person sensing them, nevertheless, when they are produced supernaturally by God in order to indicate his will, it is not inappropriate for them to be called ‘messengers from God,’ that is, ‘angels’.
The gentiles believed that the phantasms of dreamers were real substances, and deduced from this the doctrine of good and evil demons. Similarly nearly all the Jews (except for the Sadducees), without the authority of the Old Testament, held that these apparitions were angels, and that they did not depend at all on the phantasy, but were permanent existences created by God. Again like the Greeks, they held that some of them wore good, and angels of God; and that others were evil, such as the spirit Python, [n.24] and the spirits of mentally deranged people or lunatics, and epileptics. For the Jews held that people of this sort were possessed by demons.
If we consider the passages in the Old Testament where angels are mentioned, [287] we will find that (usually if not always) the word ‘angel’ denotes some sort of an idea which God conjures up in the phantasy, in order to signify the divine presence in some supernatural action of his. . . . .
[He then discusses a number of Biblical passages in which the word ‘angel’ occurs.]
[290] Therefore it cannot be proved, either from the Old or from the New Testament, that angels are incorporeal.
The meaning of the word ‘inspiration’ depends on the word ‘spirit’. Strictly speaking, it means blowing some subtle body, such as air, into a place where it previously was not, in the same way as you blow up a balloon. But this does not make any sense in the case of incorporeal things. So the word ‘inspiration’ is used only metaphorically in the Holy Scriptures. . . . .
[He then discusses a number of Biblical passages in which the word ‘inspiration’ occurs.]
[291] Therefore we are not using the word ‘inspiration’ in accordance with the meaning of Holy Scripture, if we understand by it that the spirit of God literally went into people so that they could prophesy, or that evil spirits went into madmen, lunatics, or epileptics. The spirit of God is taken to be the grace or power of God, operating in a way which is unknown to us. Even the wind, which is said in Acts 2.2. to have filled the house where the apostles had assembled on the day of Pentecost, is not to be understood as if the Holy Spirit, that is, the divine substance itself, were a wind; but as an external sign of the divine presence, which was bringing about in them the sacred virtues which were necessary for their apostolic mission.
PART IV: THE KINGDOM OF DARKNESS
Chapter 45: Demonology, and other vestiges of pagan religions
[475] I have already explained in chapters 1 and 2, how visible objects produce phantasms in people — that is, images of the objects themselves. These are sometimes produced in a straight line, and sometimes in one which has been reflected or refracted. The ancient philosophers did not know this, and still less the other people of the time, who had no interest in the sciences, and were concerned only with the pursuit and enjoyment of wealth. They had to rely on the opinions of those who were called philosophers. They did not weigh their arguments, but learned only their words — just like those who themselves yawn when they see other people yawning. Some philosophers thought that, since these phantasms were impermanent and vanished away, they were immaterial, incorporeal, forms without matter, colour and shape existing independently of a coloured and shaped body; and that they could put on ethereal bodies as if they were clothes, whenever they wanted to be visible to human eyes. Other philosophers said that they were animated bodies, but made out of air, or some other more subtle matter, which they condensed when they wanted to become visible. But they all agreed that they were demons. However, this is no less silly than saying that the dead people they see in their dreams are the souls of the people they had seen when alive; or than calling the forms of themselves which they see in a mirror their souls, or the reflections of stars in water the souls of the stars. Similarly (as necessarily followed), they feared some phantasms as if they had unlimited power of doing them good or harm. For the ignorant masses usually regard an unknown power as infinite. [476] This fear which ignorant people felt provided an opportunity for rulers of states to establish a certain art of demonology, which they called ‘religion’. Their purpose in taking this route was to manipulate the fear of citizens so as to preserve peace within the state. So they distinguished between good and evil demons, and used the former to encourage citizens to obey the laws, and the latter to discourage them from breaking the laws. . . . .
[477] So it is obvious that, in this period, the Jews had the same opinion as the Greeks, namely that phantasms are not idols of the brain, but things existing by themselves, and not depending on the imagination.
Some might object that, if this doctrine is untrue, then why did Christ not teach the opposite? Indeed, why did he himself use forms of words which seem to confirm the doctrine? My first answer is that when Christ says (Luke 24.39) ‘The spirit does not have flesh and bones,’ although he asserts that spirits exist, he does not deny that they are corporeal. Similarly, when St. Paul says of the saved (1 Corinthians 15.44) that their ‘spiritual bodies will be resurrected,’ he acknowledges that the nature of spirits is corporeal. For air and many other things are bodies, even if they are not flesh or bones, or any other dense type of thing which can be discerned by the eyes. . . . .
[480] If we expect the Scriptures to supply an answer to every question which might make it difficult for a Christian to follow God’s commands, we could also complain about the fact that Moses said not a word about the creation of spirits, even though he explained the creation of the heavens, the earth, human beings, and all other things. We do indeed find in the Scriptures that there are angels, as also good and evil spirits — but not that these are incorporeal. We also find that there are apparitions, dreams, spectres, and idols — but not that these are substances.
However, the contrary doctrine, namely that there are various incorporeal spirits, has prevailed in the Church for so long that theologians have either believed or pretended that the practice of exorcism is a necessity for them, so that they can expel demons. In the primitive Church, there were many demoniacs, but few madmen or lunatics. Today there are many madmen and lunatics, but no demoniacs. This change has no foundation in reality, but arises simply from the different names we use to describe it. . . . .
Chapter 46: The darkness from vacuous philosophy [n.25]
[489] Reader, you will be disappointed if you are expecting this chapter to be a diatribe against philosophy or philosophers. What will it be, then? I distinguish between philosophers and non-philosophers, and between true and false philosophy. The former is the wisest teacher [490] of how human life should be lived, and the crowning glory of human nature. The latter, which has for long been considered the true philosophy, is a painted and garrulous tart. For philosophy is the search after wisdom; and in so far as it is true philosophy, it is wisdom. It can be defined as: science, acquired by correct reasoning, of effects from their conceived [n.26] causes or origins, [n.27] and of possible origins from known effects. This wisdom is neither prohibited by Scripture, nor rejected by any human being.
By this definition, philosophy is distinguished, firstly from experience, and from the foresight which is common to humans and other animals, since it is obtained from memory alone, and not by reasoning.
Secondly, it is distinguished from faith and supernatural revelation, which are not acquired by reasoning, but given to us as a gift.
Philosophising is almost as old as speech itself. Among the totally uneducated humans of earliest times, there were some who wondered at the works of God. But wonder stimulates the wit into searching after the causes of the things we wonder at. But what above all fostered and expanded philosophy was leisure, which the Greeks call schole. But leisure was made possible by peace, which is normally found only in large cities. So the first teachers of wisdom were the gymnosophists of India, the magi of Persia, and the priests of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians. Philosophy had not yet arisen among the Greeks or the people of the West. [n.28] But after its defeat of the Persians, the Athenian state began to flourish, and then, for the first time, those who had nothing else to do at home or out of doors began to gather in public places in order to talk to each other. As St. Luke says in [491] Acts 17.21, ‘. . . . they had no time for anything but talking or hearing about the latest novelty.’ So those who fancied themselves as having made progress in philosophy, started to teach others — Plato in the Academy, Aristotle in the Lyceum, and others in the Stoa. These places were called ‘schools’, [n.29] and their disputations were called ‘diatribes’. [n.30] And their followers were also distinguished by their own names. Those who followed Plato were called ‘Academics’; those who followed Aristotle were called ‘Peripatetics’; and those who followed Zeno were called ‘Stoics’. This division, together with the differences in their teachings, lasted until the time of our Saviour. By that time, the division was known throughout nearly the whole of Europe and Asia Minor, and it still served to mark the distinctions between one philosopher and another.
There were also public schools in Judaea, but in the synagogues, where the laws of the Jews were publicly expounded and debated — for example, the schools of the Freedmen, the Cyrenaeans, the Alexandrians, and the Cilicians. [n.31]
But what good did the Greek schools do for the human race? Plato himself was an outstanding philosopher and geometrician; but he did not owe that to any school. The benefits of physics and geometry which we enjoy today, we owe to Archimedes — a man of no school. As for the Peripatetic school, which silenced all the others with its verbosity, what does it offer apart from the verbal trickery of rhetoric and logic? What cause of any natural phenomenon not obvious to everyone did it make comprehensible? But even if the schools were useless, they were at least harmless up to this time. Philosophy remained free, with the different sects disagreeing with each other to the point of actual fighting. No-one was compelled to swear on the words of Aristotle, even though his dogmas were more widely accepted than those of the other sects.
Nor did their schools do any good for the Jews. Even though the law and the prophets were meticulously expounded, they [492] did not learn to recognise the presence of the Messiah they were waiting for.
However, the Jews were unaffected by the doctrines of the Greeks, since for them the Holy Scripture of the Old Testament constituted the whole of philosophy.
On the other hand, the Greeks laid great store by Greek philosophy (especially that of Aristotle) during the period of the early Church. At the time, Greeks were daily converting to the Christian faith in large numbers, including some philosophers. But these embraced the faith as half-baked Christians, since they did not abandon the dogmas of their masters, but retained as many as they could somehow reconcile with Christian doctrine. And this was the primary origin of sects (or ‘heresies’ in Greek) in the Church of Christ. In other words, the apostles had shown through miracles that Christ is God, but these leading converts disagreed among themselves as to his nature. Indeed, they did not even believe it was true that Christ was God, since it did not seem possible to deduce it from the principles of their philosophy. So, some followed a person called Valentinus, and turned the whole story of the birth of Christ into an allegory — a position which was opposed by Irenaeus from the orthodox side. Later, Appelles and others denied that Christ was truly a man, and held that he was a phantasm without a body. Their chief opponent was Tertullian, whose main argument was that ‘the immaterial is nothing.’ Others, who were called Anthropomorphites, attributed an organic body to God. Yet others held that Christ was not the whole, but only a part of God. In the meantime, the bishops and presbyters examined these new doctrines in their synods. The ones they condemned they called ‘heresies’, and the ones they confirmed they called ‘Catholic faith’. This was the origin of the distinction between Catholics and heretics. [493] Subsequently there emerged the heresy of Arius, who denied that Christ was God; and this was the issue over which the Council of Nicaea was convened. . . . .
[495] In later times, people felt much more free to follow the Aristotelian philosophy in their writings, and some of them even ostentatiously paraded their adherence to Aristotelianism by publishing logical and physical treatises on Aristotle’s opinions. But the majority of them adhered to a belief in spirits which is almost identical to what we read in Homer and Hesiod, and which had been impressed on their minds from an early age. This seemed to them much more consistent with Aristotle’s doctrine of separate forms, than with the philosophy of the other sects.
In the meantime, the Roman empire had been split up, and totally destroyed in Italy. Responsibility for the city of Rome (i.e. the sovereign power of Rome) was handed over to the Bishop of Rome. Now the papacy seemed something worth fighting over. Consequently it was fought over; and at the time [496] when Charlemagne, King of France, conquered the Lombards, who were the enemies of the Romans, Leo III was expelled from Rome because of a schism. However, Charlemagne brought him back, and reinstated him as Pope. Leo made Charlemagne the emperor of the western empire, and publicly bestowed on him the imperial crown in the name of God, with the crowd chanting ‘God has granted it!’ As a result, the kings of France have had in perpetuity the titles ‘by grace of God king of France,’ and ‘dominion of popes over kings.’ In order to preserve this dominion for the church, Leo, as an old man experienced in the ways of the world, thought up a most worthy project: to transfer to himself all the kingdoms of Christian kings through their own agency — and he achieved it.
For after a year or two, Pope Leo wrote to the Emperor Charlemagne, encouraging him to set up universities throughout his dominions, where universal scholarship and science would be studied. [n.32] As a result, Charlemagne established the first university in Paris; and subsequently other kings established other universities in their own dominions. Once their colleges had been built and equipped with teaching resources, they would be governed by statutes subject to the arbitrary decision of the Roman pontiff. Finally, the masters Peter Lombard, Duns Scotus, and Thomas Aquinas created the theology which is known as scholastic theology, by mixing the philosophy of Aristotle with the Holy Scriptures. The subjects taught in the universities were the logic, physics, metaphysics, ethics, and politics of Aristotle, as if the universe of scientific knowledge were encapsulated in one person, at that time the one great father of the church, namely Aristotle. [n.33] But for the special purpose of preserving the appearance that young people were being properly educated, they were trained to conduct public disputations and lectures, so that they would be able to propagate and support the dogmas of the Roman church. As a result, ecclesiastics have been sent out from the universities into virtually all the cities, towns, and parishes of Christendom, and through their [497] sermons and published writings, they have indelibly fixed into the minds of all Christians that the criterion of what is right or wrong is nothing other than the dictates of the Roman church; that there can be no obedience to sovereigns beyond what is permitted by the Roman church; and that sovereigns themselves must obey the Roman pontiff as if they were sheep. And what was to be done was done.
The university curriculum also included ancient Roman law, and medicine. Only the mathematical sciences were excluded — not because they contained anything contrary to Christian doctrine, but because of the irreconcilable divorce between ignorance and these skills. For even in earlier times it was enough to bar someone from being promoted to a bishopric, that they had acquired mathematical skills, or that they believed the earth was round, and that people lived on the opposite side of it.
It might be said: ‘You attack Roman Catholic doctrine, or the theology taught in the universities, on the grounds that it is Aristotelian. But how is it derived from Aristotle, and from what Aristotelian opinions?’ I shall tell you. When the Greeks, the Latins, and most Europeans affirm something, they combine two names with the word ‘to be’. This is how they indicate that both names are names of one and the same thing. For example, someone who says ‘A human is an animal,’ wants to be understood as if they had said ‘If we are correct in saying that some particular thing is a human, we are also correct in saying that the same thing is an animal.’ On other occasions, they attach the word ‘to be’ to a single name, as when someone says ‘God is.’ But in this case, they want to be understood as if they had said ‘God is something real, not a figment of the mind — a hypostasis, not a phantasm.’ This is how the Greeks distinguished between genuine things, and things which are only apparent. For example, they called a person looking at themselves in a mirror a hypostasis or ‘substance’; but they called their image seen in the mirror a ‘phantasm’. When the word ‘to be’ [498] is taken in the first way, namely when it combines two names, it is called the ‘copula’; and when it is taken in the other way, it is called the ‘substantive verb’. [n.34] Even the Hebrews used the substantive verb from time to time, as when God says without qualification that his name is ‘I am’; but they never used the word ‘to be’ as a copula. Instead of using the copula, the Hebrews put two names in apposition. For example, Genesis 1.2 has ‘Earth thing without form,’ whereas we necessarily have to translate it as ‘The Earth was without form.’
Aristotle was more interested in words than in things. He understood what things were to be understood by the names ‘human’ and ‘animal,’ for example. But not content with that, this diligent man went further, and asked what sort of thing was to be conceived through the copula ‘is’, or at least through the infinitive ‘to be’. He never doubted that the name ‘to be’ was the name of some thing, as if there were something in the real world of which the name was ‘being’ or ‘essence.’ [n.35] From this absurdity he fell into an even worse one, namely he asserted that some of these essences could become separated from the individual beings they belonged to, [n.36] occupy the celestial spheres, and drive them round. He also held that the human soul could be separated and removed from the human being, and continue to exist on its own — a doctrine which might perhaps be consistent with Homer’s theology, but not with Holy Scripture. The word ‘essence’ is not to be found in Scripture, nor in the liturgy, articles, or canons of the Anglican Church. Nor is the Greek word ousia [‘being’], except in the sense of ‘riches’ (the Latin res also carries both these senses). Nor again ‘essential’, ‘essentiality’, ‘entity’, or ‘entitative’, or any word formed from the copula. Hebrew did not have this problem. So an essence is not a thing, whether created or uncreated, but an artificially made up name. [499] Entangled by words, whether written or spoken, Aristotle by himself gave birth to such novel, bastard, and empty beings by means of the copulation of names, [n.37] and they are the original sources of the philosophy which St. Paul calls an ‘empty deceit.’
As I have said, it is this doctrine of essences and separate substantial forms which has landed the Church with the Greek belief in spirits, and the superstition which the Greeks call deisidaimonia, [n.38] or fear of phantasms. This is what gave rise to the practice of exorcism, the sign of the cross, and holy water to charm or drive them away. It is also the source of the opinion that there exist immaterial substances, that is, substances which have no magnitude at all; and that God, the best and greatest, has no magnitude [n.39] — despite the fact that the expressions ‘immaterial substance’ or ‘incorporeal substance’ are nowhere to be found in Holy Scripture. Likewise statements such as ‘The soul is wholly in the whole, and wholly in every part of the body.’ The same source has given rise to the whole doctrine or purgatory, nocturnal apparitions of souls, legends about miracles, and questions about the souls of the damned — when they will be punished, and how, since they are incapable of suffering [n.40] — and many other things which are not to be found in Holy Scripture.
Neither Aristotle, nor the philosophers, nor any sane person could think that one and the same body could be in different places at the same time, or that a number of bodies could occupy the same place at the same time. Yet this expedient had to be resorted to in order to sustain the doctrine of the real presence of the flesh of Christ in every piece of consecrated bread.
It is an Aristotelian doctrine that the cause of willing is the will, in other words, that the potential is the cause of the actual. [n.41] This doctrine was taken up by the scholastics, no doubt in order to establish the free will of humans, by abolishing the control of God over the human will.
[500] This is quite apart from the absurd explanations they gave of things in physics. For example, they said that the falling of heavy bodies is caused by their heaviness, [n.42] and that the cause of their heaviness is their desire to go to the centre of the earth in order to preserve themselves. Or that one and the same body can become larger or smaller by ‘condensation’ or ‘rarefaction’, without anything being added or removed. [n.43] Or that a soul is created by being ‘instilled’, and that it is instilled by being created — despite that fact that the Scripture states that everything was created by the word of God. Or that they replace causes by ‘occult qualities’, ‘sympathy’, ‘antipathy’, ‘antiperistasis’, [n.44] and ‘specific qualities’, and similarly ‘chance’ or ‘luck’ — that is, their own ignorance — for, discounting ignorance, what is the difference between luck and an occult quality? Or that every sensation and every intellection is brought about by some motion of species. But what is a species? As is known by everyone who knows Latin, a species is the form of a thing known by looking at it, consisting of shape and colour — for example, the ‘species’ of the human face, which we call its ‘appearance’ or ‘look’. So there are two theories: either the ‘species’ or ‘appearances’ of things are seen because they are projected into the eyes, or the object is seen because some sort of ‘species’ or ‘appearances’ of things are projected outwards onto the object. But the scholastics still have not come to an agreement as to whether vision occurs by the projection of species inwards or outwards. They also say that we hear, smell, taste and understand by means of species which pass through our ears, noses, and the organs of understanding. Or that eternity is not a succession of time without end or beginning, but an ‘enduring now’, so that our ‘now’ is the same as what was ‘now’ for Adam, and so there is no difference between ‘now’ and ‘then.’ All these, I say, have nothing to do with the doctrine of the Christian faith, but are only answers to problems of physics. But I decided to mention them [n.45] because they were given by the scholastics in order to make it seem that [501] all wisdom hung from the lips of priests.
They say that if there is no free will, it follows that God is the author of sin, and therefore that sinners should not be punished. Yet on the other hand, they allow that God is the first cause of things and actions. They try to reconcile these two positions by appealing to Aristotle’s calling sin an anomia, or a failure to be in accordance with the law — in other words, it is something negative, and not a specific deed or action. So they recognise that God is the cause of every deed and law, but they deny that he is the cause of the divergence between them — as if someone drew a straight line and a curved one, and said that they were responsible for both of them, but that someone else was responsible for their divergence. But Aristotle understood by ‘divergence’ the very act of going against the law, or at least considering or deciding to do so. So the scholastics revealed their obtuseness most of all when they wanted to seem at their subtlest. If they had been subtle, they would easily have discovered the difference between the cause of a deed and its author. The author of a deed is the one who orders it to be done; the cause is the one by whose physical power it is carried out. God never orders anyone to do or try to do anything against his laws; but everything we do, we do by means of the physical powers he has granted us. You might ask: But if God is the cause, why are we condemned? Well, I ask you: Why has God from eternity elected some, and damned others? And how can he have condemned to eternal and extreme punishment people who have not yet done or contemplated any evil, and cannot do it or contemplate it without God’s willing it and providing them with the power to do so? Again I ask whether it is not right for the potter to do what he likes with the pot he has made? [n.46] Finally, tell me where the Scriptures explicitly say that all those who are excluded from the kingdom of God will live in torture for ever, without a second death.
Let us now move to ethics and politics. [502] The Holy Scriptures teach that Christian subjects must obey their kings or other sovereigns and their ministers, even when they are pagans; and that we should do so not merely out of fear, but for conscience sake, since they have been set over us by God for our good. [n.47] So the civil wars in Germany, France, and England cannot have arisen from religion as such, but only from the pagan ethics and politics of Aristotle, and of the Roman Catholics who have followed Aristotle. In every state the criterion of good and evil is the law. However, Aristotle does not define virtue and vice in terms of the law, but in terms of praise and blame by the people; he calls any rule by kings ‘tyranny’; and he says that freedom exists only in a democracy. Following him, the majority of Roman writers, out of their hatred of King Tarquin, transferred the evil of this one man to the form of his rule in general — not by any argument, but by a single example which appealed to radically-minded citizens, but which was pernicious in its effects. When university students were taught these authors in courses on philosophy and rhetoric, they absorbed their poisonous doctrine at the same time, and they made up their own minds about good, evil, justice, injustice, the law, and religion. This was the beginning of our present ills. For the majority of preachers, who had high opinions of their own learning, and others who had read Greek and Latin political philosophy, fancied themselves as significant political figures. Failing to fulfil their career ambitions in church or state, they ignited civil war — a war in which tens of thousands of citizens were killed, and a king was undeservedly butchered.
This was the price paid for the learning of Greek and Latin rhetoric and philosophy. And unless our preachers teach the people better, and unless our universities teach the preachers themselves better, perhaps ‘Great Achilles will once more be sent to Troy.’ [n.48]
APPENDIX TO LEVIATHAN [n.49]
Chapter 1: The Nicene Creed [n.50]
. . . . [512] A. ‘God is the Father, God is omnipotent,’ etc. In logical terms, these are propositions. For they each have a subject and a predicate, and clearly some name or other is predicated of God in each of them. But in the affirmation ‘God is,’ I do not understand what name is predicated of God. I do not think it can be said that ‘God is is,’ and it is vacuous to say ‘God is God.’
B. When it is said that ‘God is,’ in both Latin and Greek, the word ‘is’ is the substantive verb, including both copula and predicate. So the proposition ‘God is’ means the same as ‘God exists.’ The substantive verb can be analysed as ‘God is a being’ (or ho on, in Greek) — that is, something real, and not a mere phantasm, like what we call a ‘ghost’, or like the ‘demons’ [n.51] which the pagans worshipped, and which were called ‘nothing’ by the Apostle Paul.
A. I certainly remember the Apostle describing idols as ‘nothing,’ but not demons.
B. Do you think he was describing the golden, ivory, and wooden statues as ‘nothing’, rather than the demons which were worshipped through them? Besides, strictly speaking the word ‘idol’ means a phantasm, or an image, or an idea of a thing, and not the thing itself; and the Greeks made their statues on the model of these ideas. They rarely derived their ideas or images of their Gods from the statues. The word ‘being’ also distinguishes God from names. For example, a human being as a thing is quite different from the name ‘human being.’ Besides, it should be noted that the word ‘is’, as used by the Latins and the Greeks for the copula in propositions, was completely unknown to the Hebrews. They used only the substantive verb, and instead of the copula, they merely placed one name next to another in every affirmative proposition in order to signify what the logicians call predication. In any case, for the Latins and Greeks the copula ‘is’ is not a verb, but a conjunction. Just as ‘and’ signifies [513] that the names either side of it are names of different things, so the conjunction ‘is’ signifies that the names either side of it are names of one and the same thing. Consequently, all those names which are derived from the copula ‘is’, for example ‘essence’, ‘entity’, or ‘being’, [n.52] were unavailable to the Hebrews, and there could be nothing equivalent to them. In Latin, it is said that ‘The earth was void;’ [n.53] whereas in Hebrew it runs ‘The earth existent void,’ where a Latin reader would not understand it as ‘was’, but as ‘(was) something existent.’
A. What should the word ‘creator’ make us believe? That our world was made out of nothing?
B. Certainly out of nothing, and not, as Aristotle says, out of pre-existing matter. For it is explicitly stated in Holy Scripture that everything was made out of nothing. Even Aristotle contradicts himself when he says that the world is eternal, since matter is defined as that out of which something is made. So this article of the creed says that God is the maker of all things out of nothing. It follows that he owes his existence to his own power, and not to anything else; and further that he exists from eternity, and since there was nothing which gave God his existence, that there also will be nothing which can make him cease to exist. Consequently, God is from eternity and to eternity. However, created beings are not from eternity, since they were created. On the other hand, they will be to eternity, in whatever form and kind [n.54] God wills; for heaven and earth will be renewed, and even if the earth is consumed by fire, it will not be annihilated, but real beings will remain in existence. [n.55] But since God was made neither by himself nor by anything else, he cannot undergo any change or metamorphosis, whether brought about by himself or by anything else. He is immutable and absolutely simple (he cannot be analysed in terms of Aristotelian metaphysics). All these attributes — simple, immutable, eternal — are not merely deducible from the wording of the creed, [514] but are also explicitly predicated of God in the Holy Scriptures. . . . .
[514] A. What is the ‘Light of Light?’ As it seems to me, light is a phantasm, and not an existent thing. For example, if you are looking at a candle, and place between it and your eye a glass with many plane surfaces at a certain angle to each other, you will see lots of candles. However, we know that there is only one genuine candle there, and therefore that all the others are mere [515] phantasms, or idols — that is, as St. Paul says, ‘nothing’. However, none of them is more genuinely a candle than any of the others in so far as they appear to us. The genuine candle which was placed there originally is none of the candles which are merely apparent, but the thing itself, and the single cause of all the images. This is why Aristotle distinguishes it from a phantasm by means of the word hypostasis, as if the thing itself remained constant, hiding under the image. The Latins translated the Greek word literally as substantia. [n.56] This is how both the Greeks and the Latins distinguish a genuine thing which subsists independently, from a phantasm, which seems to subsist, but does not exist, and is not a being. Surely this is the genuine difference between the thing itself and its appearance?
B. You are right. But the Fathers of the Church at that time, both before and after the Council of Nicaea, seem to have understood the word ‘hypostasis’ in a different sense when trying to make the mystery of the Christian Trinity intelligible to all Christians. They thought this could best be achieved by means of an analogy with fire, light, and heat, which three they thought were one and the same thing. They compared fire to the Father, light to the Son, and heat to the Holy Spirit. This could perhaps be an appropriate analogy, except that fire, brightness, and heat are not substances, and were not considered to be so by the Fathers (least of all the Aristotelians among them), unless perhaps they confused fire with whatever is on fire. For people can extinguish fire, and light, and heat whenever they want; but it is impossible to believe (and we are not told to believe) that feeble creatures such as ourselves can extinguish or annihilate a genuine substantial thing created by God Almighty. So whenever, the Fathers used that analogy in their own writings, they themselves immediately added [516] that they did not accept it as a perfect explanation of such a great mystery. Rather, it was the best they could come up with; for all agreed that it is impossible for us to understand the nature of God, the Trinity, the angels, or (as Athanasius adds) the rational soul. . . . .
[520] A. In the Apostolic Creed, it does not refer to ‘resurrection of the dead,’ but to ‘resurrection of the flesh.’ What is the difference? When the dead are resurrected, will they have flesh, bones, blood, hands, feet, and the other members of the human body?
B. Let St. Paul give you the answer (I Corinthians 15.23): ‘All will be resurrected, each in his own body.’ [n.57] And later (verse 44): ‘It is sown as an animal body,’ (that is, in my opinion, such as the human body is when [521] it died), and ‘it will arise as a spiritual body.’ So it is changed: as he says in verses 51–52, ‘I will unfold a mystery: we shall not all die, but we shall all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet-call. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise immortal, and we shall be changed.’
A. But it seems to me that there are two difficulties here. The first is this. Given that to be resurrected is to be brought to life again, how will a human being be brought to life again in the grave, unless their soul is added to their body — either coming down from heaven or some limbo in heaven, or coming up from hell or purgatory?
B. What? Cannot God, who turned humans from earth into living animals, bring them back to life after they have been dissolved into earth?
A. So it seems that after resurrection humans will have two rational souls — the one responsible for their resurrection, and the one which was separated from the body at death, and which went to heaven, limbo, purgatory, or hell. For everyone says that, once it has been created, the human soul never subsequently dies, not even for the briefest moment, so as to stop being a self-subsisting thing.
B. I shall not make any pronouncements on this matter, except what I find stated explicitly and without any ambiguity in the Scriptures, and not manifestly contradicted by some other text. But it is from the philosophers that you, along with almost everybody else, have got the idea that the human soul cannot die. Now that we have the Holy Scriptures, I myself do not want the philosophers for my teachers. However, I am willing to go along with the opinion of the philosophers if you can direct me to any passage in the Holy Scriptures, where any kind of immortality is attributed to the human soul other than that which is granted to humans under the name of eternal life. If you cite the passages in which God threatens [522] the wicked with eternal tortures, you will not be able to deduce from these passages that the souls of the wicked exist between the day of their death and the day of judgment, but only that they exist after the day of judgment. Besides, the fact that God is just means that you cannot deduce from his threatening the wicked with eternal tortures, that their tortures will in fact be eternal. For someone who fails to come up with goods which are due is unjust; but someone who fails to come up with evils or penalties which are due is not unjust, but merciful. Is it not all the more possible for God, who is infinitely merciful, to reduce the length and severity of deserved punishments without violence to his justice? Then the Scripture says (Revelation 20.14) ‘Hell itself will be thrown into the lake of fire, which is the second death.’ [n.58] So it seems that the wicked will be resurrected for a second death. Finally, if the soul is not the same as life, but a substance existing in itself separately from the body, and if it is the essence or nature of a human being, it seems to follow that, adding the divine nature to it, there must be three natures in Christ — which is contrary to faith.
A. Even if it cannot be demonstrated from Scripture that the human soul is a substance separate from the body, it does not seem possible to demonstrate the contrary from Scripture.
B. So let us see what the Scripture says (both Old and New Testament) about the nature of the human soul, and try to reconcile the various passages. For however important the preceding articles may be for theologians, this article about resurrection to eternal life is important for all Christians, since it contains all their hope and anticipation of joy after the distress of the present life. There were two trees in Paradise which excelled all others, namely the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God said to Adam (Genesis 2.17): ‘On the day that you eat [523] of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die by dying.’ But the Devil said to Eve: ‘You are prohibited from eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so that you do not become like gods.’ But both Adam and Eve, driven by ambition, believed the serpent rather than God, and ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree. So God expelled both of them from Paradise, to prevent them from reaching their hands out to the tree of life, and living to eternity.
A. I understand from this that Adam could have lived to eternity as the result of eating the fruit of the tree of life, and that he would have been made [n.59] immortal, not by his own nature, but only by virtue of the tree of life. Besides, the punishment imposed on Adam for disobeying the divine command was mortality, which necessarily followed from the fact that he had lost that without which he could not live to eternity. I see that all this is clearly in the sacred text. But I do not see why Adam, according to the words of the divine threat, did not die as soon as he had eaten the fruit, but lived on for more than 900 years.
B. God did not say simply ‘you will die,’ but ‘you will die by dying,’ that is, you will not be brought back to life, but your death will be permanent. This is how Athanasius interprets the passage — and correctly, since it is a Hebrew idiom. The passage also gives us to understand that the threat applies to Adam’s descendants as well, that is, to the human race. This is why the apostle Paul says (Romans 5.12): ‘Death entered the world through the sin of one man.’ From this it follows that, not only other humans, but also Adam himself needed to take advantage of the benefit of the death of Jesus Christ in order to acquire eternal life, which he had lost through his own fault.
A. Why so?
[524] B. Because St. Paul says, (1. Corinthians 15.22–24), bringing the Old and New Testaments into harmony, ‘Just as all of us are dead in Adam, so all of us are brought to life in Christ; each in their own body; first Christ, and then those who are of Christ, on the coming of Christ. Then comes the end. . . . etc.’
A. The coming of Christ will be the same as the day of judgment. So no-one will be brought back to life before the day of judgment, but on that very day. So I think that Adam is certainly to be saved, but that he will not receive life before the last day. In the meantime, how is he said to be alive? If Adam lives through his soul in heaven before it is joined to his body again, his soul, if it is simply a living substance, will live in a body which is not ensouled — which is very difficult to make sense of. [n.60] But the souls of those people who are alive on earth on the day of judgment will be raised into the clouds and from there into heaven, and the very same souls will have spiritual bodies, and these bodies will be animated by spiritual souls — if, that is, souls are independently existing substances. So what is the difference between these two spiritual beings, body and soul?
B. As far as I am concerned, this difference is inexplicable, unless it is accepted that for humans eternal life begins only with their resurrection, and that life and soul are one and the same thing, since they are never explicitly distinguished in the Holy Scriptures. Let us take what Christ said to the robber on the cross (Luke 23.43): ‘Today you will be with me in paradise;’ or what he said to his disciples: ‘I am the tree of life.’ What is their purpose, unless it is for the faithful to know that the flaming sword has been removed from the gate of paradise, and that, through the sacrifice of Christ, the way has been opened to the tree of life, that is, to eternal life? So what need is there for a pious person to attribute their immortality to how they were created (i.e. to their nature), rather than to redemption?
[525] A. But I am impressed by the fact that, whether or not they have any knowledge of sacred doctrine, everybody, past and present, has believed that the rational soul is immortal by its own nature and from the moment of its creation.
B. I myself do not blame people who feel this way; for people who have noble feelings about their own souls are generally careful to avoid disgracing them by living sinfully. However I do not concede that this is any less true of those who steadfastly believe that their souls are redeemed and made eternal through the blood of Christ. Nor do I accept that absolutely everyone, past and present, has adhered to the opinion you express. For example, there are those who have said in their hearts, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’ — they did not think this way, and there are plenty of them. Besides, people’s opinions are not their own if they have followed the pronouncements of their teachers without reasoning for themselves. Consequently, it should not be said that it is the opinion of peasants or craftsmen, or other people who are preoccupied with ordinary life, and hardly ever think about the nature of their souls, but usually think instead about getting money or prestige, or about satisfying the needs of their bodies. So this supposed consensus of all people boils down to a consensus only among philosophers. Furthermore, among the philosophers were the Sadducees, who did not believe there were any created spirits at all, and hence did not recognise the existence of the soul, except in the sense of ‘life’. Even the followers of Aristotle and Plato believed in it, not because they had thought through the reasons for it, but solely on the authority of their masters. So they should not be counted as the authors of the opinions they taught. So much so, that what you call ‘all people’ now boils down the Plato, Aristotle, and a few other founders of philosophical schools.
Finally, [526] let us consider what is said in Ecclesiastes 3.17–21 (this is the interlinear version in the Polyglot Bible [n.61]): ‘I said in my heart about the word of the sons of Adam (that God would purify them, and make them see that they themselves are animals) because the destiny of the sons of Adam is exactly the same as the destiny of animals. Just as the latter die, so the former die. They all have one and the same spirit, and humans have no superiority over animals, because all is vanity. All go to the same place. All were made from dust, and all will return to dust. Who really knows whether the spirits of the sons of Adam will rise up, and the spirits of beasts will descend beneath the earth?’ Instead of ‘would purify them,’ the Septuagint has diakrinei, [n.62] and instead of ‘about the word,’ it has peri lalias. [n.63] The meaning of these words is: ‘I have spoken about what human beings say, namely that God would make an essential difference between the life of humans and the life of dumb animals. But the destiny of humans and of animals is the same, and humans are not in essence superior to animals. So how can it be proved that the souls of humans will rise up, or that the souls of animals will go downwards?’ But the same Ecclesiastes frequently asserts in the same book that there will be a judgment on the last day. This is a powerful argument against your alleged consensus of all people.
Besides, in case you think I am being obstinate, give me a proof of the natural immortality of the soul, which is drawn from Aristotle, Plato, or any other philosopher whatever, and which is based on natural principles, and which proves it as evidently as I have demonstrated from the Sacred Scriptures that eternal life will be received by the elect through Christ. If you can find such a proof, I shall accept it. They say that it is the soul which thinks, remembers, and reasons. What if I deny this, and say that it is the animal itself that thinks [527] and remembers? How will they refute me? And what is reasoning, other than giving names to things, combining names into propositions, and combining propositions into syllogisms? And out of these arose the art of dialectic. How could Adam in Paradise, before he gave names to things, be any more rational than the other animals, except only potentially? So I do not think that humans are made of a different substance from animals, simply because the former indulge in verbal debates, and the latter do not. Let others look forward to whatever kind of immortality they wish; I look forward to the one which Christ acquired for us with his blood by conquering death. . . . .
[528] A. Now explain to me what the Greeks mean by hypostasis.
B. When you look at something which you call ‘white’, you impose this name on a substance, or underlying body, [n.64] e.g. a piece of marble, even though your gaze cannot penetrate through to the substance of the marble, or of any other being. Consequently, ‘white’ is the name of a body which subsists independently, and not the name of a colour. It is imposed by virtue of a certain specific appearance (or, in Greek, emphasis or phantasma), which certainly seems to be something, but which is in fact nothing. We understand clearly enough that this apparition cannot be without some cause and foundation — in other words, that there cannot be ‘white’ [529] unless the apparition is actually supported [n.65] by some substance or other, which serves as its cause and (as the logicians say) subject. This subject is what is called in Greek to on hyphistamenon or hypostan, or hypostasis; and in Latin being, subject, supposit, substance, basis, or foundation. What I have said about knowledge by means of sight should be understood as applying to the other senses as well. So the contrast between hypostasis and phantasm is that between cause and effect, and is therefore relative. Similarly, let us take three relative terms, such as ‘father’, ‘son’, and ‘grandson’. A son is one real being; but, by virtue of different relationships, he has two different names: he has the name ‘father’ because he has produced a child, and the name ‘son’ because he was produced by his father. So this son is in the middle: although he is only one being, he has two names which are said to be imposed on him, and the being itself is the supposit, hyphistamenon, hypostasis, or foundation of the relation. Therefore a hypostasis can be said to support not only phantasms, but also names. . . . .
[530] A. What does ‘essence’ mean?
B. As I have said, the Church Fathers made no distinction between ‘essence’ and ‘substance’.
A. So what does ‘substance’ mean?
B. The same as ‘being’. That is, whatever is truly existent, as contrasted with a phantasm or a name.
A. Why, then, did the Greeks and the Latins modify names which were well known and understood, and turn them into names with no definite meaning? They have no equivalents in Hebrew, and are quite unnecessary in any language.
B. Philosophers call this sort of modification ‘abstraction’ — for example, deriving ousia from on, hypostasis from hyphistamenon, essentia from ens, substantia from substans, or albedo from album. Thus on is called a ‘concrete’ name, and ousia an ‘abstract’ one; ens is concrete, and essentia is abstract; album is concrete, and albedo is abstract. But sometimes they use a verb in the infinitive instead of an abstract noun. For example, the Greeks say ‘the to be’ for ‘being’; the Latins ‘to be’ for ‘essence’; and the Greeks ‘the to be white’ for ‘whiteness’ — or even simply ‘the white’, with the article ‘the’ referring not to ‘white’, but to the suppressed word ‘name’. [n.66] Likewise the Latins derive from the concrete ‘living being’, not only the abstract ‘life’, but also ‘to live’. [n.67] These expressions can be called ‘abstract’ — and not without reason. For different names have been imposed on a single existing thing [531] by virtue of its different apparitions. One and the same thing has been called ‘large’, ‘coloured’, ‘hard’, or ‘heavy’, because it is sometimes considered as being of such and such a magnitude (which is the concern of geometricians), and sometimes as coloured, or hard, or heavy (which is the concern of physicists). So one phantasm which is understood as having its cause in the concrete being, has to be distinguished from all the other phantasms of the same thing; and the thing is indicated by modified names, so that it is no longer described in terms of being ‘big’, ‘coloured’, ‘hard’, or ‘heavy’, but in terms of ‘bigness’, ‘colour’, ‘hardness’, or ‘heaviness’. This abstraction of words is almost indispensable for physical science, [n.68] provided that it is nothing other than the consideration of a phantasm or name separately from all the other considerations or names of the same concrete thing. If you understand all this correctly, you will also understand that it is impossible for the essence of any being [n.69] to exist separately from the being itself — for example, that there should be something white where there is no whiteness, or whiteness where there is nothing white, or a human where there is no humanity. And Aristotle is wrong when he says that some essences exist separately from the things of which they are the essences. So the soul is either not the essence of the animal (as Aristotle claims), or else it ceases to exist on the death of the animal. Consequently, Aristotle’s mistake was that of failing to distinguish between separate things, and separate ways of considering one and the same thing.
A. I understand that abstract words are almost indispensable for researching into the causes of apparent things, and that these exist only in our imagination. However, the name ‘essence’ taken by itself was not imposed on things on account of a phantasm in our imagination, such as magnitude, colour, etc., which have their causes in the five sense organs. [532] For, as you said earlier, it is not the substance or being itself, but only its effects which appear to us and are called ‘phantasms’. But the essence of a being taken in itself is not a phantasm. So what is ‘essence’ [n.70] when it is used as a name? What thing is it the name of?
B. The essence of a concrete being, for example a white being, is a name of the white being itself, but considered only in so far as it is white. On the same basis, the essence of a being taken in itself is a name of the being, but considered in itself, and only in so far as it is a being. Quite generally, abstract names are names of concrete beings when they are considered separately from the other names of the same concrete being. For example, that which is white is a white being. If we now consider the white in the white being separately from the being, in order to talk scientifically, we refer to ‘whiteness’ or ‘being white’ [n.71] instead of ‘white’.
A. So when we use the word ‘essence’ instead of ‘being’ taken in itself, ‘essence’ and ‘being’ will have the same meaning, and consequently the word ‘essence’ is redundant.
B. More than that, it is inconsistent with the true faith. Here I appeal to St. John Damascene, in chapter xi of De expositione fidei. After quoting ‘The word was made man,’ he comments: ‘But in no way do we hear it said that ‘Deity’ was ‘enfleshed’ or ‘humanised’. So it is obvious that in being taken in itself, there is a difference between being and essence, and much more so in concrete individuals. [n.72]
A. Why did the doctors of the church assert that the divine substance would be composite unless being and essence were one and the same in God?
B. Because philosophers usually confuse a definition, which is an explanation of the essence of the thing defined, [n.88] with the essence itself. For example, if ‘rational animal’ is the definition of a human, they call its essence ‘rational animal’, and say that it is a compound [533] of ‘rational’ and ‘animal’, is if they were its parts. They fail to distinguish between the definition of a human, which is a linguistic item of which the names ‘animal’ and ‘rational’ are parts, and an actual human, whose parts are the head, chest, legs, and other parts of the body. But since it is very hard to call a rational animal, as a concrete individual, an essence, many philosophers have tried to soften this form of words. So they say that the essence of a human is not rational animal, but rational soul, [n.73] and that it is a substance existing separately from the human body. And in this way they make the essence a unifying and at the same time essential part of the human being itself.
A. What amazing conjuring tricks of vacuous philosophy! Now tell me the true and proper meaning of the word ‘person’. . . . .
[536] A. What is the meaning of ‘body’, ‘incorporeal’, and ‘spirit’?
B. These names have seemed so well known and understood by all educated people, that I do not think any theologian or philosopher has bothered to explain them by means of definitions. So, what thing do you have an idea of in your mind when you utter the word ‘body’, or hear it uttered?
[537] A. By ‘body’, I now understand that of which it can truly be said that it exists as a thing [n.74] in itself, and also has a certain magnitude; and I say it has a certain magnitude, and not that it is magnitude itself. [n.75] But I remember that I once thought that body was only that which resisted my touch or sight. Therefore, although it seemed strange to me, I thought that a species of a body appearing in a mirror, or in a dream, or in the dark, was also a body. But later I noted that these species vanish, so that their existence depended not on themselves, but on something with an animate nature. Consequently, it no longer seemed to me that they were things, [n.76] but only phantasms and the effects of things acting on the sense organs, and hence that they were incorporeal. My judgment about spirits was based on air, which is spirit, [n.77] and wind, which I sensed through touch. So I thought that spirit was a sort of body, but a rarefied one, and that some spirits could be more rarefied and purer than others, and that they could have different powers, just as liquids can differ vastly in their powers, even when they are equally transparent. But I could not conceive of any nature intermediate between body and spirit, or between spirit and phantasm, that is, between spirit and nothing. So the next question to be asked is whether expressions such as ‘incorporeal substance’, ‘immaterial substance’, or ‘separate essences’ are found in Holy Scripture.
B. These expressions are not in Holy Scripture. But the first of the 39 Articles of Religion, published by the Anglican Church in 1562, explicitly states that ‘God is without a body and without parts.’ Therefore it is not to be denied. Besides, it has been decreed that the punishment for denying it is excommunication. [n.79]
A. It will not be denied. However, in the 20th Article it is said that the Church should not tell anyone to believe anything [538] which cannot be deduced from Holy Scripture. If only it had been so deduced! For I do not yet know in what sense anything can be called ‘the greatest’ or ‘great’ unless it is a body. . . . .
[539] A. What is heresy?
B. It is a Greek word meaning the dogma of any sect.
A. What is a sect?
[540] B.A sect is a number of people following one and the same master in the sciences, one whom they have chosen for themselves by their own judgment. Just as ‘sect’ comes from the Latin for ‘to follow’, so ‘heresy’ comes from the Greek for ‘to choose’. Lucian (who, despite being a blasphemer, was a good writer of Greek) entitled his book about choosing a master ‘On Heresy.’
A. What sects were there, and who were their masters?
B. The philosophical sects were those of Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, and others. They were called the Academics, the Peripatetics, the Stoics, and the Epicureans, and they were the principal sects of the Greek philosophers, or at least of those who expected to be considered as philosophers. I think the founders of the sects themselves, namely Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus, were genuine philosophers (as far as pagans could be), since they were devoted to in the pursuit of knowledge and virtue, and this is why their names deservedly shone with the glory of wisdom throughout almost the whole world. However, I do not think their followers should be called philosophers, since they understood nothing, apart from knowing what the pronouncements of their masters were. For they did not know the principles and reasonings on which their dogmas depended; nor did they manifest any perceptible sign of philosophy in their lives, apart from walking about solemnly, growing beards, and wearing shabby clothes. Apart from that, as people they were greedy, disdainful, bad-tempered, and incapable of civilised behaviour. [n.80]
A. Do the words ‘truth’ and ‘error’, which you have omitted, have no bearing on the definition of ‘heresy’? Surely the latter is a necessary attribute of any dogma? [n.81]
B. Not at all. For ‘heresy’ simply denotes a declared opinion, whether it is true or false, and whether it is in accordance with or against the law.
[541] So it seems, then, that it is not a reproach if people call each other heretics.
B. The Greek philosophical sects did not call each other heretics, but they did use names like ‘criminal’, ‘sacrilegious’, ‘thief’, ‘father-killer’, ‘polluted’, ‘accursed’, and other names used by the lowest class of people when they are enraged to the point of actual fighting. It was only after the emergence of heresies in the Church that ‘heretic’ became the greatest reproach of all. . . . .
Appendix Chapter 3: Various objections against Leviathan
[560] A. . . . . At the time [of the civil war], the author [of Leviathan] was now living in Paris, taking advantage of the recently announced freedom to write. He certainly made an excellent defence of the King’s rights in both temporal and spiritual matters. However, while he was trying to do this on the basis of the Holy Scriptures, he lapsed into unheard-of dogmas, which most theologians accused of heresy and atheism.
B. What are these dogmas?
A. What do you think of this passage, from towards the end of the second chapter? ‘I think that the folk belief in the spirits of the dead stalking the earth was deliberately encouraged (or at least not refuted) in order to sustain the reputation of exorcisms, signs of the cross, holy water, and other practices of the clergy.’
B. In my opinion, this is true, sensible, and Christian, unless you can find the contrary in Holy Scripture. On my reading (Matthew 27.52), when Christ was dying on the cross, dead bodies were raised from the grave, not souls.
[561] Then, near the beginning of the fourth chapter, [n.82] he denies that there are any incorporeal substances. What else is this than to deny the existence of God, or to assert that God is body? [n.83]
B. He does indeed assert that God is body. But Tertullian made the same assertion before him. Arguing against Apelles and other heretics of his time, who taught that our Saviour Jesus Christ was not a body but a phantasm, he made this general pronouncement that ‘whatever is not a body is not a being.’ Similarly against Praxeas: ‘Every substance is a body of one kind or other.’ This doctrine was not condemned in any of the first four general Councils. Show me, if you can, the words ‘incorporeal’ or ‘immaterial’ in the Scriptures. But I shall show you that ‘the fulness of divinity dwells in Christ corporeally,’ [n.84] that is (as Athanasius explains) ‘divinely’.
Again, ‘We all have our being and move in God’ — these are the words of Paul the Apostle in Acts 17.28. But we all have quantitative features, and can something which is quantitative have its being in something which is non-quantitative? God is great; but it is impossible to understand his greatness without body. Not even at the Council of Nicaea was it decreed that God is incorporeal. I admit that the Fathers who were present, possibly all of them, felt this way. Even Constantine approved the word homoousios, that is ‘co-essential’, because he thought it followed from this word that God is incorporeal. Nevertheless, they were not prepared to include the word ‘incorporeal’ in the Creed, because it is not in Holy Scripture.
And in fact the incorporeality of God cannot be inferred from the word ‘co-essential’, even though an essence is not a body. The father of David and the son of Obediah were ‘co-essential’, since they were one and the same person, Jesse. But does it follow from this that the Father of David [562] and Jesse were incorporeal? Besides, it was the intention of the Fathers at the Council of Nicaea to condemn not only Arianism, but all the heresies which had crept into the Church after the death of our Lord. One of these was the heresy of the anthropomorphites, who attributed the parts of the human body to God. But they did not condemn those who had written (along with Tertullian) that genuine, thingly, and pure spirit is corporeal.
Those who attribute purity to God are right to do so, since it is an honorific title. But it is dangerous to describe him as a rarefied being, since rarefaction is on a scale leading to nothingness. John Damascene, explaining the Nicene Creed (Book I, chapter xiii) says: ‘Some of the divine names are negative, signifying what is above substance — for example, anousios, i.e. without essence; achronos, without time; anarchos; without a beginning — not because he is inferior to these, but because he stands above all of them. For God is not numbered among beings, but is above them all.’ So you see that John Damascene, who seems to have been an Aristotelian philosopher (to judge by his work on dialectic), and at the same time a Father of the Church and a pious doctor, lapsed into atheistic language, saying that God is anousios, [n.85] and not to be numbered among things which exist. This was because he was too scared too say (with Tertullian) that God is body, and he was anxious to attenuate his corporeal density, which he thought unworthy of God for reasons which are beyond me. . . . .
[564] A. In chapter 34, he denies that it can be proved from the canon of the Old Testament that angels are thingly and permanent substances; instead, he says that they are only supernatural phantasms, which are called ‘angels’ [n. 86] because God uses them to inform people about his will.
B. It is certainly the case that the name ‘angel’ is the name of a function, and that all spirits are invisible because of the transparency of spiritual substance, except in the sense in which phantasms are said to be seen in a mirror, or in a dream, or in the dark. So whenever the Holy Scriptures say that someone saw an angel, this vision is not a human sensation which is generated through the eyes, but like what Jacob had, when he saw angels going up and down a ladder while he was asleep. The Sadducees denied that angels were substances. Why? Not because they did not believe in the Old Testament, but because there is no mention of the creation of angels in the Old Testament. But they were not excommunicated by the Jews. Besides, does Hobbes deny that that it can be proved from the New Testament that angels are substances?
A. He does not deny it; but if they are, he says it can be proved from this that they are corporeal substances.
B. This is not considered to be an unorthodox position by any of the Early Fathers, or by the teachers of the reformed churches; nor is it condemned by the Anglican Church.
A. In chapter 38, he denies that the human soul is immortal by its own nature, i.e. from its very creation. Instead, he says that immortality is the gift of God, who supplied Adam and Eve [565] with the fruit of the tree of life, provided that they did not taste of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But when they disobeyed God’s command about eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were denied access to the tree of life, and they and their posterity became mortal. And dying they will remain dead, until, thanks to the remission of sins through the death of Christ, they will be given a new, eternal life at the general resurrection of the dead. And according to this doctrine, the immortal souls of the dead (whether pious or impious) do not exist at all until the day of judgment.
B. I have already explained my position on this matter fully enough. But I would add that I do not understand how anyone can be said to sin against the Christian faith if they believe in eternal life, and it is irrelevant whether they hold that it is received at creation or at redemption. Nor do I understand how it can be against Christian teaching or worship, since neither the Holy Scripture (which contains Christian doctrine) nor the liturgy (which contains Christian worship) make any mention at all of the expression ‘immortal soul’, whereas there is frequent reference to ‘eternal life through Christ.’
A. In the same chapter, he says that the Kingdom of God after the resurrection will be on earth.
B. Does he say this on the basis of his own philosophy, or of Holy Scripture?
A. He quotes a number of passages from the prophets Isaiah, Obadiah, and Joel, though I am not sure that I fully understand them, and also what St. Peter says about the holocaust and the restoration of this world.
B. In that case, add to them this more explicit passage from Revelation (5.8–11): ‘The four animals and twenty-four presbyters prostrated themselves before the Lamb, each one carrying a lyre and a golden phial full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints; and they sang [566] a new song, of which the words were: "You are worthy to receive the book and to open its seals, because you were killed, and through your blood you bought us back for God from every tribe, and language, and people, and race; and you made us kings and priests for our God, and we shall reign on Earth."’ What could be clearer than this?
A. In the same chapter, he says that the punishment of sinners will also take place on Earth, and that it will not be eternal.
B. There can be no doubt that, if sinners are to be destroyed by the military saints, they will be destroyed on the surface of the Earth; and that they will not be destroyed eternally, if it is true that they are going to die a second death. . . . .