City of God (Penguin Classics), page 30
10. Are men’s wills under the sway of necessity?
There is no need, then, to dread that ‘necessity’, through fear of which the Stoics took such pains to distinguish between the causes of things, withdrawing some of them from the sway of necessity, subjecting others to it, and classing our wills among the causes they wished to emancipate from necessity, for fear, I suppose, that they would not be free if subject to it. Now if, in our case, ‘necessity’ is to be used of what is not in our control, of what achieves its purpose whether we will or no – the ‘necessity’ of death, for example – then it is obvious that our wills, by the exercise of which we lead a good life or a bad, are not subject to a necessity of this kind. We do a great many things which we should not have done if we had not wished to. In the first place, our willing belongs to this class of acts. If we so wish, it exists; if we do not so wish, it does not; for we should not will, if we did not so wish.
If, on the other hand, we define ‘necessity’ in the sense implied when we say that it is necessary a thing should be thus, or should happen thus, I see no reason to fear that this would rob us of free will. We do not subject the life and the foreknowledge of God to necessity, if we say that it is ‘necessary’ for God to be eternal and to have complete foreknowledge; nor is his power diminished by saying that he cannot die or make a mistake. The reason why he cannot is that, if he could, his power would certainly be less; and he is rightly called ‘all-powerful’, although he has not the power to the, or to be mistaken. ‘All-powerful’ means that he does what he wills, and does not suffer what he does not will; otherwise he would be by no means all-powerful. It is just because he is all-powerful that there are some things he
cannot do. The same applies when we say that it is ‘necessary’ that when we will, we will by free choice. That statement is undisputable; and it does not mean that we are subjecting our free will to a necessity which abolishes freedom. Our wills are ours and it is our wills that affect all that we do by willing, and which would not have happened if we had not willed. But when anyone has something done to him against his will, here, again, the effective power is will, not his own will, but another’s But the power of achievement comes from God. For if there was only the will without the power of realization, that will would have been thwarted by a more powerful will. Even so, that will would have been a will, and the will not of another, but of him who willed, although it was incapable of realization. Hence, whatever happens to man against his will is to be attributed not to the wills of men, or angels, or any created spirits, but to the will of him who gives the power of realization.
It does not follow, then, that there is nothing in our will because God foreknew what was going to be in our will; for if he foreknew this, it was not nothing that he foreknew. Further, if, in foreknowing what would be in our will, he foreknew something, and not nonentity, it follows immediately that there is something in our will, even if God foreknows it. Hence we are in no way compelled either to preserve God’s prescience by abolishing our free will, or to safeguard our free will by denying (blasphemously) the divine foreknowledge. We embrace both truths, and acknowledge them in faith and sincerity, the one for a right belief, the other for a right life. And yet a man’s life cannot be right without a right belief about God. Therefore, let us never dream of denying his foreknowledge in the interests of our freedom; for it is with his help that we are, or shall be, free.
By the same token, it is not true that reprimands, exhortations, praise and blame are useless, because God has knowledge of them before; they are of the greatest efficacy in so far as he has foreknown that they would be effective. And prayers are effectual in obtaining all that God foreknew that he would grant in answer to them; and it is with justice that rewards are appointed for good actions and punishments for sins. The fact that God foreknew that a man would sin does not make a man sin; on the contrary, it cannot be doubted that it is the man himself who sins just because he whose prescience cannot be mistaken has foreseen that the man himself would sin. A man does not sin unless he wills to sin; and if he had willed not to sin, then God would have foreseen that refusal.
11. God’s universal providence, by whose laws the whole scheme of things is governed
Thus God is the supreme reality, with his Word and the Holy Spirit – three who are one. He is the God omnipotent, creator and maker of every soul and every body; participation in him brings happiness to all who are happy in truth and not in illusion; he has made man a rational animal, consisting of soul and body; and when man sins he does not let him go unpunished, nor does he abandon him without pity. He has given, to good men and bad alike, the existence they share with the stones; he has given man reproductive life which he shares with the plants, the life of the senses, which he shares with the animals, and the life of the intellect, shared only with the angels. From him derives every mode of being, every species, every order, all measure, number, and weight. He is the source of all that exists in nature, whatever its kind, whatsoever its value, and of the seeds of forms, and the forms of seeds, and the motions of seeds and forms. He has given to flesh its origin, beauty, health, fertility in propagation, the arrangement of the bodily organs, and the health that comes from their harmony. He has endowed even the soul of irrational creatures with memory, sense, and appetite, but above all this, he has given to the rational soul thought, intelligence, and will. He has not abandoned even the inner parts of the smallest and lowliest creature, or the bird’s feather (to say nothing of the heavens and the earth, the angels and mankind) – he has not left them without a harmony of their constituent parts, a kind of peace. It is beyond anything incredible that he should have willed the kingdoms of men, their dominations and their servitudes, to be outside the range of the laws of his providence.
12. The moral character in the ancient Romans which earned from the true God the increase of their empire although they did not worship him
Let us go on to examine for what moral qualities and for what reason the true. God deigned to help the Romans in the extension of their empire; for in his control are all the kingdoms of the earth.
In order to discuss this question more thoroughly, I have written the previous book, which deals with this topic; and I have shown there that in this matter there is no power at all in those gods whom the Romans considered they had to worship by means of frivolous ceremonies. In the first part of the present book, up to this point, I have shown that the notion of ‘destiny’ must be dismissed, so that no one, once convinced that the propagation and preservation of the Roman Empire was not due to the worship of those gods, should attribute it to some ‘destiny’ or other, and not to the omnipotent will of God most high.
Now according to the witness of the historians, the ancient Romans – those of the earliest epoch – no doubt worshipped false gods, like the other races (except only the Hebrew people) and sacrificed victims not to God, but to demons; nevertheless they were ‘greedy for praise, generous with their money, and aimed at vast renown and honourable riches’.23 They were passionately devoted to glory; it was for this that they desired to live, for this they did not hesitate to die. This unbounded passion for glory, above all else, checked their other appetites. They felt it would be shameful for their country to be enslaved, but glorious for her to have dominion and empire; and so they set their hearts first on making her free, then on making her sovereign.
That is why, when they found the domination of kings intolerable, they ‘created for themselves an annual authority in the hands of two men, who were called “consuls”, from consulere24 (to take counsel), not “kings” (reges), a word derived from regnare (to reign), or “lords” (domini), derived from dominare (to dominate)’.25 (It would, in fact, seem to be more correct to derive reges from regere (to rule), regnum (reign) being derived from reges, but reges, as I say, from regere.) The Romans accounted the royal disdain to be not the strict direction of a ruler, nor the benevolent advice of a counsellor, but the arrogance of a despot. And so, after the expulsion of King Tarquin and the institution of consuls, a period followed which the same author, Sallust, ranks among the glories of the Roman people. ‘When once the city had won liberty,’ he says, ‘the speed and extent of its development almost passes belief. So great was the passion for glory that took hold of the people.’26 It was this greed for praise, this passion for glory, that gave rise to those marvellous achievements, which were, no doubt, praiseworthy and glorious in men’s estimation.
Sallust also praises two great men of renown in his own era, Marcus Cato and Gaius Caesar.27 He says that Rome had for a long time been deprived of any men of outstanding quality, but that in his time there had been two men of immense moral stature, though very different in character.28 He praises Caesar, among other things, for his ambition for a great command, for an army, for a new war in which his abilities could shine. Thus the chief desire of men of eminent qualities was that Bellona should arouse wretched nations to war and drive them on with her bloody whip29 to give an occasion for their abilities to shine. Such was the ambition aroused by their ‘greed for praise’ and ‘passion for glory’. In early times it was the love of liberty that led to great achievements, later it was the love of domination, the greed for praise and glory. Their outstanding poet bears witness to both these motives, when he writes,
Porsenna bade take back the exiled Tarquin,
And pressed on Rome with overwhelming might.
Then rushed to arms Aeneas’ valiant sons,
Defending liberty.30
The important thing for the men of that time was either to die bravely, or to live in freedom. But when liberty had been won, ‘such a passion for glory took hold of them’ that liberty alone did not satisfy – they had to acquire dominion. What mattered then was expressed by the same poet, when he makes Jupiter say,
Only let savage Juno,
Who wearies land and sea and heaven with dread,
Come to a better mind, with me support
The toga’d race, the masters of the earth.
This is my will: as age succeeds to age
The time will come when those of Aeneas’ line
Shall press beneath the yoke of slavery
Phthia and famed Mycenae; yes, and Argos
Vanquished shall feel the mastery of Rome.31
Virgil, of course, represents Jupiter as prophesying the future; but he is himself recalling the past and contemplating the present situation. My purpose in quoting these lines is to show that after liberty, the Romans valued dominion so highly as to place it among their greatest glories. Hence the same poet puts above the accomplishments of other races the specifically Roman arts of ruling, commanding, subduing and subjecting other nations. This is what he says,
Others will forge the bronze that seems to breathe
With gentler life, and chisel from the marble
The living features. They will plead a case
With more persuasive skill: and with the compass
Will trace the mazes of the sky, and tell the rising
Of all the stars. Be these thy arts, my Roman;
To hold the nations under thy dominion,
Enforcing peace till it becomes a custom;
To spare the subject, and beat down the proud.32
The Romans practised those ‘arts’ with the more skill when they were the less given to indulgence and to the enervation of soul and body by the lust to accumulate wealth – that corrupter of morality – by robbing their less fortunate fellows and by extravagant generosity to degraded stage-players.
At the time when Sallust was writing and Virgil was composing his poem, moral corruption was already general and widespread, and men thus corrupted did not seek position and glory by Virgil’s ‘arts’, but schemed for them by trickery and deceit. Hence Sallust tells us,
It was, at first, ambition rather than greed that worked on men’s hearts; a vice closer to a virtue. The true man and the worthless wretch alike covet glory, honour and power. But the true man directs his efforts along the right way; the man who lacks the moral qualities works towards his goal by trickery and deceit.33
These ‘moral qualities’ enable a man to arrive at honour, glory, and power by merit, not by the tricks of the canvasser. The aims are shared by the true man and the worthless wretch; but ‘the true man directs his efforts along the right way.’ That is the way of merit; it is by this way that he strives towards his goal, towards glory, honour, and power. That this feeling was innate in the Romans is shown by the establishment of temples, very near to each other, to the gods Virtue and Honour;34 they thought of these gifts of God as being themselves divinities. From this one can realize what they wished to be the consummation of merit, what the good man connected with merit – it was honour. Although the bad men desired honour, they did not possess it, since they tried to win it by dishonest means, by ‘trickery and deceit’.
Cato is given even higher praise. Sallust says of him, ‘The less he sought glory, the more it pursued him.’35 Glory, the object of the Romans’ burning ambition, is the judgement of men when they think well of others. That is why virtue is superior to glory, since it is not content with the testimony of men, without the witness of a man’s own conscience. Hence the Apostle says, ‘This is our glory: the testimony of our own conscience.’36 And, in another place, ‘Let each man test his own work; and thus he will have his glory in himself, not in another.’37 Therefore glory, honour, and power – those Roman aims, which the good men strove to attain by honourable means – must be the consequences of virtue not its antecedents. The only genuine virtue is that which tends to the end where the good of man is, which surpasses any other good. Hence Cato was not obliged to solicit the honours which he sought; it was the city’s obligation to grant them to him, without his asking.
There were thus two Romans of eminent qualities at that period, Caesar and Cato. But Cato’s qualities evidently approached far more nearly to the true ideal of virtue than did those of Caesar. Accordingly, if we want a picture of the condition of the commonwealth at that time, and of its previous condition, we may find it in Cato’s judgement, when he says,
Do not imagine that it was by force of arms that our ancestors made a great nation out of a small community. If that were true, we should today have a far more glorious nation. In allies, in our own citizens, in armaments, in horses, we have greater resources than they enjoyed. But it was other causes that made them great, causes that with us have ceased to exist: energy in our own land, a rule of justice outside our borders; in forming policy, a mind that is free because not at the mercy of criminal passions. Instead of these we have self-indulgence and greed, public poverty and private opulence. We praise riches: we pursue a course of sloth. No distinction is made between good men and bad: the intrigues of ambition win the prizes due to merit. No wonder, when each of you thinks only of his own private interest; when at home you are slaves to your appetites, and to money and influence in your public life. The consequence is that an attack is being launched on a republic left without defences.38
These words of Cato, or of Sallust, might lead one to suppose that all the Romans of antiquity, or the majority of them, resembled those of whom they speak so highly. That is not so. Otherwise the remarks of the same historian, quoted in my second book,39 would be untrue. Sallust40 tells us that the injustices of the powerful classes led to a secession of the plebeians from the patricians, and that from the beginning there were other domestic dissensions, and that the era of just moderation in government lasted after the expulsion of the kings only as long as the threat from Tarquin remained until the end of the major war against Etruria which Rome had engaged in because of Tarquin. But after that the plebeians were treated like slaves under the rule of the patricians, who handled them with the same violence as the kings, drove them from their lands, and wielded sole power, all others being disenfranchised. These discords, with one side aiming at domination, the other seeking to avoid slavery, were only ended by the Second Punic War, because then once again came the pressure of a serious threat, which checked their restless spirits, and distracted them from these disorders by a more urgent anxiety, and recalled them to domestic concord.
But it was by a mere handful of men, good men in their way, that the great public interests were managed; and it was thanks to the foresight of those few that those domestic ills were rendered tolerable and alleviated, and thus the country advanced to greatness.41 Sallust adds that in reading or hearing of the many splendid exploits of the Roman people, in peace and war, on land and sea, he has been interested to observe what was the principal basis for their great achievements. He knew that on many occasions a mere handful of Romans had matched great enemy battalions and that Rome had waged war with scanty resources against opulent kings. And he declares that, after much reflection, he had reached the conclusion that all this success was due to the exceptional qualities of a small minority, and that this minority was responsible for the victory of poverty over riches – the triumph of the few over vast numbers. ‘But’, he continues, ‘when luxury and idleness had corrupted the city, then, conversely, the greatness of the country supported the vices of generals and magistrates.’
The virtue of the few, the moral quality of those who stride towards glory, honour, and power by the right path, that is, by virtue itself – this is what Cato also praises. Hence came the energy at home, which he mentions, that brought riches to the public treasure, while private fortunes remained straitened. He contrasted this with the perverted situation after the moral corruption had set in, when we find the public purse empty and private pockets well-lined.42
