Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The Physical Theory Continued. Further Reasons Advanced Against the Divinity of the Elements. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
V.—The Physical Theory Continued. Further Reasons Advanced
Against the Divinity of the Elements.
Why, then, do we not resort to that far more
reasonable850 opinion, which has
clear proof of being derived from men’s common sense and
unsophisticated deduction?851 Even Varro bears it
in mind, when he says that the elements are supposed to be divine,
because nothing whatever is capable, without their
concurrence,852 of being produced,
nourished, or applied to the sustenance853 of
man’s life and of the earth, since not even our bodies and souls
could have sufficed in themselves without the modification854 of the elements. By this it is that the world
is made generally habitable,—a result which is harmoniously
secured855 by the distribution into zones,856
856 Circulorum
conditionibus. | except where human residence has been
rendered impracticable by intensity of cold or heat. On this account,
men have accounted as gods—the sun, because it imparts from
itself the light of day, ripens the fruit with its warmth, and measures
the year with its stated periods; the moon, which is at once the solace
of the night and the controller of the months by its governance; the
stars also, certain indications as they are of those seasons which are
to be observed in the tillage of our fields; lastly, the very heaven
also under which, and the earth over which, as well as the intermediate
space within which, all things conspire together for the good of man.
Nor is it from their beneficent influences only that a faith in their
divinity has been deemed compatible with the elements, but from their
opposite qualities also, such as usually happen from what one might
call857 their wrath and anger—as thunder, and
hail, and drought, and pestilential winds, floods also, and openings of
the ground, and earthquakes: these are all fairly enough858 accounted gods, whether their nature becomes
the object of reverence as being favourable, or of fear because
terrible—the sovereign dispenser,859 in
fact,860 both of help and of hurt. But in the
practical conduct of social life, this is the way in which men
act and feel: they do not show gratitude or find fault with the very
things from which the succour or the injury proceeds, so much as with
them by whose strength and power the operation of the things is
effected. For even in your amusements you do not award the crown as a
prize to the flute or the harp, but to the musician who manages the
said flute or harp by the power of his delightful skill.861 In like manner, when one is in ill-health,
you do not bestow your acknowledgments on the flannel wraps,862 or the medicines, or the poultices, but on
the doctors by whose care and prudence the remedies become
effectual. So again, in untoward events, they who are wounded
with the sword do not charge the injury on the sword or the spear, but
on the enemy or the robber; whilst those whom a falling house covers do
not blame the tiles or the stones, but the oldness of the building; as
again shipwrecked sailors impute their calamity not to the rocks and
waves, but to the tempest. And rightly too; for it is certain that
everything which happens must be ascribed not to the instrument with
which, but to the agent by whom, it takes place; inasmuch as he is the
prime cause of the occurrence,863 who appoints both the
event itself and that by whose instrumentality it comes to pass (as
there are in all things these three particular elements—the fact
itself, its instrument, and its cause), because he himself who wills
the occurrence of a thing comes into notice864 prior
to the thing which he wills, or the instrument by which it occurs. On
all other occasions therefore, your conduct is right enough, because
you consider the author; but in physical phenomena your rule is opposed
to that natural principle which prompts you to a wise judgment in all
other cases, removing out of sight as you do the supreme position of
the author, and considering rather the things that happen, than him by
whom they happen. Thus it comes to pass that you suppose the power and
the dominion to belong to the elements, which are but the slaves and
functionaries. Now do we not, in thus tracing out an artificer
and master within, expose the artful structure of their
slavery865
865 Servitutis artem.
“Artem” Oehler explains by “artificiose
institutum.” | out of the appointed functions of those
elements to which you ascribe (the attributes) of power?866
866 We subjoin
Oehler’s text of this obscure sentence: “Non in ista
investigatione alicujus artificis intus et domini servitutis artem
ostendimus elementorum certis ex operis” (for
“operibis,” not unusual in Tertullian) “eorum quas
facis potestatis?” | But gods are not slaves; therefore whatever
things are servile in character are not gods. Otherwise867 they should prove to us that, according to
the ordinary course of things, liberty is promoted by irregular
licence,868
868 De licentia passivitatis
libertas approbetur. | despotism by liberty,
and that by despotism divine power is meant. For if all the (heavenly
bodies) overhead forget not869 to fulfil their
courses in certain orbits, in regular seasons, at proper distances,
and at equal intervals—appointed in the way of a law for
the revolutions of time, and for directing the guidance
thereof—can it fail to result870 from the very
observance of their conditions and the fidelity of their operations,
that you will be convinced both by the recurrence of their orbital
courses and the accuracy of their mutations, when you bear in mind how
ceaseless is their recurrence, that a governing power presides over
them, to which the entire management of the world871
871 Universa negotiatio
mundialis. |
is obedient, reaching even to the utility and injury of the human race?
For you cannot pretend that these (phenomena) act and care for
themselves alone, without contributing anything to the advantage of
mankind, when you maintain that the elements are divine for no other
reason than that you experience from them either benefit or injury to
yourself. For if they benefit themselves only, you are under no
obligation to them.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|