City of God (Penguin Classics), page 49
It is from this collection of demons that the poets generally select their characters when, without departing much from the truth, they give a fictitious picture of the gods as haters or lovers of particular men: when they represent them as raising some people to prosperity and bringing to others frustration and affliction. Hence the gods are shown feeling pity and indignation, anguish, joy and every facet of human emotion; being subject, like men, to such agitation of the heart and turmoil in the mind they are tossed about on the stormy waters of their imaginations. All these squalls and tempests banish them far away from the tranquillity of the gods of heaven.4
There is no uncertainty in those words. It is not any of the lower parts of the souls of the demons that Apuleius describes as agitated as if by raging seas and storms of passion; it is their mind, the faculty that makes them rational beings. And therefore they are not worthy of comparison with wise men who, even under the conditions of their present life, offer the resistance of an undisturbed mind to those disturbances of the soul from which human weakness cannot be exempt, and do not allow themselves either to command or to commit any act which strays from the path of wisdom or transgresses the law of justice. It is the foolish and the lawless among mortals that these demons resemble, not in their bodies but in their characters. I might say that they are worse than such men, inasmuch as they are older in wickedness, and incapable of being reformed by the punishment they deserve. And so they are tossed about on what Apuleius calls the raging sea of their minds. Only truth and virtue can offer a centre of resistance against turbulent and degraded passions. And there is no truth or virtue in the constitution of their souls.
4. The opinions of Peripatetics and Stoics about the passions
Two opinions are found among the philosophers concerning these agitations of the soul, which the Greeks call pathê, while some of our Latin authors, Cicero for example,5 describe them as disturbances, others as affections or affects, or again as passions, the word used by Apuleius, which is closer to the meaning of the Greek term. Now these disturbances (or affections or passions), according to some philosophers, befall even a wise man, though with him they are restrained and subjected to reason, and the predominant intellect as it were imposes laws on the passions, which keep them within strict bounds. This opinion is held by the Platonists and the Aristotelians – Aristotle being a disciple of Plato who founded the Peripatetic school. Others, the Stoics among them, refuse to admit that passions of this kind can conceivably befall a wise man. Now Cicero, in his work On the Ends of Good and Evil, proves that the opposition between Stoics and Platonists (or Peripatetics) is really a quarrel about words rather than things. For example, the Stoics refuse to give the name ‘goods’ to what they call material and external ‘advantages’. According to them there is no ‘good’ for man except virtue, meaning the art of the good life, which exists only in the soul. The other side called them quite simply ‘goods’, in conformity with the normal usage, but they regarded them as goods of small or infinitesimal value in comparison with virtue, the practice of the good life. The result is that both sides attach the same value to ‘goods’ or ‘advantages’, in spite of the different terminology; the Stoics are only indulging in the pleasure of linguistic innovation on this point. And it seems to me that in the question whether passions of the soul can befall the wise man, the dispute is a matter of words rather than of things. In my opinion, the Stoic view of the matter is identical with that of Platonists and Peripatetics, in respect of the objective reference of their statements, as opposed to the sound of their words.
To dispense with the tedium of a detailed demonstration, I shall confine myself to one most cogent piece of evidence. In his work entitled Attic Nights, Aulus Gellius,6 a writer of polished eloquence and multifarious erudition, tells the following anecdote.7 He once found himself on a sea voyage in the company of a well-known Stoic. When the ship began to pitch dangerously on a stormy sea beneath a lowering sky (I am condensing the detailed and copious narrative of Gellius) the philosopher turned pale with fright. This was noticed by those present, who were curious to observe, even when death was imminent, whether a philosopher would be disturbed in soul or not. Once the storm had passed, and restored confidence afforded the opportunity for conversation, and even raillery, one of the other passengers, a rich and self-indulgent Asiatic, hailed the philosopher with a jibe at his terror and pallor, in contrast with the speaker’s own unshaken intrepidity in the face of impending destruction. The Stoic replied with the retort given in a similar situation by Aristippus8 the Socratic to a man of the same type who had made the same remark: ‘You were quite right not to be worried about the life of a contemptible scoundrel: but I was bound to be afraid for the life of Aristippus.’ This reply put the rich man in his place. But later on Gellius asked the philosopher, with no intention of criticizing him, but simply for information, what really was the reason for his panic. The Stoic was ready to instruct a man who betrayed such an ardent thirst for knowledge, and he immediately produced from his baggage a work of Epictetus9 the Stoic, an exposition of doctrines in harmony with the principles laid down by Zeno and Chrysippus, whom we know as the originators of Stoicism.10 Gellius tells us that he read in that book that the Stoics had concluded that there are certain mental phenomena, to which they give the name of ‘fantasies’, which we cannot control. We cannot decide whether they will happen, or when they will happen. When these are brought on by circumstances of overwhelming terror they are bound to disturb even the mind of a philosopher, so that, for a moment, he experiences the panic of terror or the anguish of grief. It is as if these passions are too quick for the functioning of his intellect and reason. This does not mean that his intellect forms any judgement on the evil, or that his reason approves those reactions or consents to them. It is this consent, they insist, that is under our control, and this, according to the Stoics, is the difference between the attitude of a wise man and a fool. The soul of the fool gives way to these passions and accords them the consent of his mind, while the wise man’s soul, although it cannot help experiencing these emotions, still keeps its mind unshaken and holds firmly to its right decision about what aims it ought, in reason, to pursue, and what it should reject.
Such is the teaching which Gellius read, according to his own account, in the book of Epictetus, where the author expresses ideas based on the principles of Stoicism. I have expounded the teaching to the best of my power, less attractively, no doubt, than Gellius, but more succinctly, and, I fancy, with greater clarity.
On this showing there is little or no difference between the opinions of Stoics and of other philosophers on the subject of the disturbances – or passions – of the soul. Both sides champion the mind and the reason against the tyranny of the passions. And the meaning of the Stoic assertion that passions do not touch a wise man is probably that passions in no way cloud with error that wisdom in virtue of which he is wise, nor can they undermine and overthrow it. However, they do happen to his soul, but that is because of circumstances which the Stoics call ‘advantageous’ or ‘disadvantageous’, being unwilling to describe them as ‘good’ or ‘evil’. For, to be sure, if the philosopher in the anecdote had attached no importance to all that he felt he was going to lose in the shipwreck, including his life, and his material existence, he would not have dreaded the danger to the point of betraying his fear by turning pale. Yet it was possible for him to experience that emotion, while retaining in his mind the fixed conviction that life and material existence, which were threatened by the violence of the storm, are not ‘goods’ of the same order as justice; they cannot determine the goodness of their possessor.
The Stoic insistence that such things are not to be called ‘good’, but ‘advantageous’, should be regarded as a quibble about words, not a question of the realities they signify. What does it matter whether they are more properly called ‘goods’, or ‘advantages’, seeing that Stoic and Peripatetic alike turn pale with dread at the prospect of their loss? There is a difference of terminology, but an identical judgement of value. Both schools certainly maintain that if they were urged to any disgraceful or criminal act by a threatened danger to these ‘goods’ or ‘advantages’ as the only way to ensure their retention, they would prefer to lose all that guarantees the life and health of the physical body rather than commit any violation of justice. Thus the mind in which this principle is fixed does not allow any of those disturbances to prevail in it against reason, even though they may occur in the lower parts of the soul. On the contrary, the mind exercises dominion over them. Far from consenting to them, it resists, and by that resistance establishes the reign of virtue. Virgil describes Aeneas as such a man when he says
Unmoved his mind: the tears roll down in vain.11
5. For Christians, the passions offer a training in virtue, not an inducement to sin
It is not at this point necessary to expound in copious detail what is taught about these passions in the divine Scriptures, which contain the syllabus of instruction for Christians. Scripture subjects the mind to God for his direction and assistance, and subjects the passions to the mind for their restraint and control so that they may be turned into the instruments of justice. In fact, in our discipline, the question is not whether the devout soul is angry, but why; not whether it is sad, but what causes its sadness; not whether it is afraid, but what is the object of its fear.
To be indignant with the sinner with a view to his correction, to feel sorrow for the afflicted with a view to his release from suffering, to be afraid for one in danger so as to prevent his death – those are emotions which, as far as I can see, no sane judgement could reprove. The Stoics, to be sure, are in the habit of extending their condemnation to compassion;12 but how much more honourable would it have been in the Stoic of our anecdote to have been ‘disturbed’ by compassion so as to rescue someone, rather than by the fear of being shipwrecked! Far more creditable, more humane, and more in harmony with the feelings of true religion was the sentiment expressed in Cicero’s praise of Caesar, ‘Of all your virtues, none was more admirable, none more attractive, than your compassion.’13 What is compassion but a kind of fellow-feeling in our hearts for another’s misery, which compels us to come to his help by every means in our power? Now this emotion is the servant of reason, when compassion is shown without detriment to justice, when it is a matter of giving to the needy or of pardoning the repentant. Cicero, with his unique mastery of words, did not hesitate to call compassion a virtue, while the Stoics did not scruple to class it as a vice. Yet, on the evidence of the book of that notable Stoic, Epictetus (a book based on the principles of Zeno and Chrysippus, the founders of that sect) even the Stoics admit passions of this kind into the soul of a wise man, while insisting that such a man is free from every vice. From this one must conclude that they do not regard them as vices when they occur in a wise man in such a way as to have no power against his strength of mind and his reason. The Stoic position would then be identical with that of the Peripatetics and even the Platonists; and, as Cicero says, ‘It is high time that these linguistic disputes were left to torment those poor little Greeks who are more devoted to controversy than to truth.’14
There is another question which merits examination. Are we to suppose that our experience of such emotions, even in the practice of good works, is one of the disabilities involved in this present life? Do we then assume that the holy angels feel no anger when they punish those who are consigned to them for punishment by God’s eternal law? That they come to the help of the wretched without feeling compassion for their wretchedness, and have no fear for those whom they love when they rescue them from danger? Certainly, we follow the conventions of human language in applying to the angels the words denoting these passions, but this is perhaps because of the analogy between their actions and those of men, not because they are subject to the infirmity of our passions. In the same way, God is described in Scripture as showing anger though in fact he is not troubled by any passion. The word ‘anger’ signifies that his vengeance is effected; it does not mean he is himself affected by any storm of emotion.
6. Demons are at the mercy of passions
Let us postpone the question of the holy angels for the time being and notice how, according to the Platonists, these demons, located midway between gods and men, are tossed about on the waves of the passions. If they experienced these emotions while their minds remained free from their influence, and exerted mastery over the passions, Apuleius would not have spoken of them as ‘tossed about on the stormy waters of their imaginations, subject, like men, to such agitation of the heart and turmoil in the mind’.15 It follows that it is their mind that is affected, the superior part of the soul, the faculty that makes them rational beings, the place where virtue and wisdom, if they have any, exercises mastery over the turbulent passions of the lower parts of the soul by directing and controlling them. It is their mind, which, on the admission of this Platonist, is ‘tossed on those stormy waters’. Thus the mind of the demons is in subjection to the passions of desire, of fear, of anger, and the rest. Then is there any part of them free and capable of wisdom, which can make them acceptable to the gods, and of service to man by offering an example of morality? How can there be, if their mind is subdued under the oppressive tyranny of vicious passions, and employs for seduction and deception all the rational power that it has by nature, with all the more eagerness as the lust for doing harm gains increasing mastery?
7. According to the Platonists, the poets’ slanders of the gods refer to the demons
It may be objected that it is not the whole class of demons, but only the evil kind, to which this applies; that it is from this class that the poets have taken their characters, when, without straying far from the truth, they give a fictitious picture of gods as haters and lovers of men (these being the ‘gods’ who, in the words of Apuleius, ‘are tossed about on the stormy waters of their imaginations’). What are we to make of this? For when Apuleius made this remark he was describing the intermediate situation between gods and men held, in virtue of their bodies of air, by all the demons, not just by some of them, the evil kind.
According to Apuleius the effect of the poets’ fictions was to make some of these demons into gods, to give them the names of gods, and to distribute them to men as friends or foes, quite capriciously, thanks to the unrestricted licence of poetical fiction; whereas the gods, he maintains, are worlds apart from such demon morality in virtue of their situation in the heavens and their abundant felicity. Thus it is mere poetic fiction to give the names of gods to those who are not gods, and to portray them in mutual conflict on account of men for whom they feel the affection or dislike of partisanship. For all that, Apuleius declares that this fiction is not far from the truth, seeing that though they are given names of gods, to which they are not entitled, it is demons who are being presented in their real characters. In fact Apuleius asserts that Minerva, as Homer presents her, belongs to this class ‘when she intervenes to restrain Achilles in the midst of the Greek assemblies’.16 It was, he insists, a poetical fiction to say that she was Minerva; for he considers Minerva to be a goodess and sets her among the gods, whom he believes to be all of them good and happy in their ethereal abode on high, far from any intercourse with mortals. But he agrees that there was same demon supporting the Greeks against the Trojans and another demon helping the Trojans against the Greeks, whom the poet calls Venus, or Mars, using the names of gods whom Apuleius locates in heavenly abodes, taking no part in such activities, and that those demons fought among themselves in support of those whom they loved, and in opposition to those whom they hated. All this he admitted to be not far from the truth in the poet’s narrative. For these accounts were concerned with beings who were, on his showing, ‘subject, like men, to such agitation of the heart and turmoil in the mind, tossed about on the stormy waters of their imaginations’, so that their loves or hates could prompt them to act in favour of some and in opposition to others, without regard to justice, but at the bidding of partisan feeling, just as the members of the populace, who are the image of them, support their favourite wild beast fighters and charioteers. The chief anxiety of our Platonist was that the activities described by the poets should be attributed to these intermediary demons, and not to the gods whose names the poets misapplied.
8. Gods, demons, and men, as defined by Apuleius
But we must not too lightly pass over the actual definition of demons, given by Apuleius – a definition intended to include them all The demons, he says, are animals in respect of species; in respect of soul, liable to passions; in mind, capable of reason; in body, composed of air; in life-span, eternal.17 Now in all these five attributes thus listed, he has mentioned nothing at all which would suggest that the demons have something in common with good men which is not found in the bad. For he gives a somewhat extended description of man, to embrace him in a definition; he treats of him in his turn as being a creature made of earth on the lowest scale of existence, when he had previously treated of the gods of heaven, and so after allocating these two divisions of the universe, the highest and the lowest, he goes on to speak in the third and last place about the demons, who occupy the intermediate situation. These are his words:
