III. quiry whatsoever, in which those who had nothing CHAP. but natural light to guide them, were more to seek for satisfaction in, than this concerning the origin of evil. They saw, by continual experience, how great a torrent of both sorts of evils, of sin and punishment, did overflow the world; but they were like the Egyptians, who had sufficient evidence of the overflowing their banks by the river Nile, but could not find out the spring or the head of it. The reason was, as corruption increased in the world, so the means of instruction and knowledge decayed; and so as the phenomena grew greater, the reason of them was less understood; the knowledge of the history of the first ages of the world, through which they could alone come to the full understanding of the true cause of evil, insensibly decaying in the several nations; insomuch that those who are not at all acquainted with that history of the world, which was preserved in sacred records among the Jews, had nothing but their own uncertain conjectures to go by, and some kind of obscure traditions which were preserved among them: which, while they sought to rectify by their interpretations, they made them more obscure and false than they found them. They were certain of nothing, but that mankind was in a low and degenerate condition, and subject to continual miseries and calamities. They who cried up the most the aureouoov, or the self-determining power of the soul, could not certainly but strangely wonder, that a principle indifferent to be carried either way, should be so almost fatally inclined to the worst of them. It was very strange, that, since reason ought to have the command of passions, by their own acknowledgment, the brutish part of the soul should so master and enslave the rational, and the beast should still cast the rider in man; the sensitive appetite should throw off III. Aurea p. 17. BOOK the power of the Tò yeμovikov, of that faculty of the soul which was designed for the government of all the rest. The philosophers could not be ignorant what slaves they were themselves to this terrestrial hyle, how easily their most mettlesome souls were mired in the dirt, how deep they were sunk into corporeal pleasures, that it was past the power of their reason to help them out. Nay, when the soul begins to be fledged again, after her aтepoppúnois, or moulting, at her entrance into the body, which Plato speaks of, and strives to raise herself above this lower world, she then feels the weight of such plummets hanging at her feet, that they bring her down again to her former flutterHieroc. in ing up and down in her cage of earth. So Hierocles Carmina, complains, that when reason begins to carry the soul to the perception of the most noble objects, the soul with a generous flight would soar above this world, ὅταν μὴ ταῖς παθητικαῖς ὁλκαῖς ὥσπερ τισι μολύβδισιν, ὑποφέ ρηται πρὸς κακίαν, were it not borne down to that which is evil by the force of passions, which hang like leads upon the soul's feet. What a strange unaccountable thing must this needs be to those who beheld the constancy of the effect, but were to seek for the cause of it! It could not but be clear to them, that the avτežoúσ they were wont to extol so high, was (in the state man was now in) but a more noble name for slavery; when themselves could not but confess the porn, or inclination in the soul, was so strong to the evil. And could that be an even balance, where there was so much down-weight in one of the scales, unless they made, as some of them did, the voluntary inclinations of the soul to evil an evidence of her liberty in this most degenerate condition? As though it were any argument that the prisoner was the freer, because he delighted himself in the noise of his shackles. Neither III. was this disorder alone at home in the soul, where CHAP. there was still a Xantippe scolding with Socrates, passion striving with reason; but when they looked abroad in the world, they could not but observe some strange irregularities in the converse among men. What debaucheries, contentions, rapines, fightings, and destroying each other, and that with the greatest cruelty, and that frequently among countrymen, friends, nay relations and kindred! And could this hostility between those of the same nature, and under the most sacred bonds of union, be the result of nature, when even beasts of prey are not such to those of their own kind? Besides all this, when they summed up the life of man together, and took an account of the weaknesses and follies of childhood, the heats and extravagancies of youth, the passions, disquietments, and disappointments of men in their strength and height of business, the inquietude, aches, and infirmities of old age, besides the miseries which through every one of these all men are subject to, and few escape, into how small a sum will the solid pleasure and contentment of the life of man be reduced? Nay, if we take those things in the world which men please themselves the most in enjoyment of, and consider but with what care they are got, with what fear they are kept, and with what certainty they must be lost, and how much the possession of any thing fails of the expectation of it, and how near men are upon the top of Teneriffe to fall into the depth of the sea, how often they are precipitated from the height of prosperity into the depth of adversity, we shall find yet much less that by the greatest chemistry can be extracted of real satisfaction out of these things. Whence then should it come that men's souls should so delight to feed on these husks, and to embrace these BOOK clouds and shadows, instead of that real good, which III. is the true object of the soul's desire? They could Plutarch. de Isid. et Osir. Plat. in Phæd. IX. easily see there was no pure, unmixed good in the world; but there was a contemperation of both together, according to that of Euripides: Οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο χωρὶς ἐσθλὰ καὶ κακὰ, ̓Αλλ' ἔστι τις σύγκρασις. There is a kind of continual mixture of good and evil in the world; which Socrates observed upon the rubbing of his thigh where the fetters made it itch, ws ἄτοπον, ὦ ἄνδρες, ἔοικέ τι εἶναι τοῦτο ὃ παλοῦσιν ἄνθρωποι ἡδύ; ὡς θαυμασίως πέφυκε πρὸς τὸ δοκοῦν ἐναντίον εἶναι, τὸ λυπηρόν ; What a strange thing is that which men are wont to call pleasure? How near akin is it to that which seems so contrary to it, pain? Now the observing the strange and sudden vicissitudes of these things, and what near neighbours pain and pleasure were to each other, (so that there is frequently a passage out of one into the other,) did yet more entangle them to give a clear account of the origin of both these. Those who believe there was a God who produced the world, and ordered all things in it, did easily attribute whatever was good in the world to the fountain of all goodness; but that any evil should come from him, they thought it repugnant to the very notion of a Deity; which they were so far right in as it concerned the evil of sin; which we have already shewed God could not be the author of; but therein they shewed their ignorance of the true cause of evil, that they did not look upon the miseries of life as the effects of God's justice upon the world for the evil of sin. And therefore that they might set the origin of evil far enough off from God, they made two different principles of things; the one of good, and the other of evil. This, Plutarch tells us, was the III. de Isid. et ed. Oxon. most ancient and universal account which he could CHAP. meet with of the origin of good and evil. To which purpose we have this ample testimony of his, in his learned discourse De Iside et Osiride, Διὸ καὶ παμπά-Plutarch. λαιος αὕτη κάτεισιν ἐκ θεολόγων καὶ νομοθετῶν, εἴς τε ποιητὰς Osir. c. 45. καὶ φιλοσόφους δόξα, τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀδέσποτον ἔχουσα, τὴν δὲ πίστιν ἰσχυρὰν καὶ δυσεξάλειπτον, οὐκ ἐν λόγοις μόνον, οὐδὲ ἐν φήμαις, ἀλλὰ ἔν τε τελεταῖς ἔν τε θυσίαις, καὶ βαρβάροις καὶ Ἕλλησι πολλαχοῦ περιφερομένην, ὡς οὔτ ̓ ἄνουν καὶ ἄλογον καὶ ἀκυβέρνη τον αἰωρεῖται τῷ αὐτομάτῳ τὸ πᾶν, οὔτε εἷς ἐστιν ὁ κρατῶν καὶ κατευθύνων, ὥσπερ οἴαξιν ἤ τισι πειθηνίοις χαλινοῖς, λόγος, ἀλλὰ πολλὰ καὶ μεμιγμένα κακοῖς καὶ ἀγαθοῖς· μᾶλλον δὲ μηδὲν, ὡς ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν, ἄκρατον ἐνταῦθα τῆς φύσεως φερούσης, οὐ δυεῖν πίθων εἷς ταμίας, ὥσπερ νάματα τὰ πράγματα καπηλικῶς διανέμων ἀνακεράννυσιν ἡμῖν· ἀλλ ̓ ἀπὸ δυεῖν ἐναντίων ἀρχῶν, καὶ δυεῖν ἀντιπάλων δυνάμεων, τῆς μὲν ἐπὶ τὰ δεξιὰ καὶ κατ ̓ εὐθεῖαν ὑφη γουμένης, τῆς δ ̓ ἔμπαλιν ἀναστρεφούσης καὶ ἀνακλώσης, ὅ, τε βίας μικτὸς, ὅ, τε κόσμος, εἰ καὶ μὴ πᾶς, ἀλλ ̓ ὁ περίγειος οὗτος καὶ μετὰ σελήνην, ἀνώμαλος καὶ ποικίλος γέγονε, καὶ μεταβολὰς πάσας δεχόμενος. Εἰ γὰρ οὐθὲν ἀναιτίως πέφυκε γίνεσθαι, αἰτίαν δὲ κακοῦ τἀγαθὸν οὐκ ἂν παράσχοι, δεῖ γένεσιν ἰδίαν καὶ ἀρχὴν, ὥσπερ ἀγαθοῦ καὶ κακοῦ, τὴν φύσιν ἔχειν. Which words I have the more largely cited, because they give us the most full account of the antiquity, universality, and reason of that opinion, which asserts two different principles of good and evil. It is a tradition (saith he) of great antiquity, derived down from the ancient masters of Divine knowledge, and formers of commonwealths, to the poets and philosophers, whose first author cannot be found, and yet hath met with firm and unshaken belief, not only in ordinary discourses and reports, but was spread into the mysteries and sacrifices both of Greeks and others, that the universe did not depend on chance, and was destitute of mind and reason to govern it; neither was there one only |