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| My ignorance of many natural phenomena is no excuse for your ignorance as to the origin of souls. You ought, according to your boasting dream to know everything. The thing of most importance was forgotten in your cargo of Eastern wares.
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30. Your Apology says that
there are three opinions as to the origin of souls: one held by Origen,
a second by Tertullian and Lactantius (as to Lactantius what you say is
manifestly false), a third by us simple and foolish men, who do not see
that, if our opinion is true, God is thereby shewn to be unjust. After
this you say that you do not know what is the truth. I say, then, tell
me, whether you think that outside of these three opinions any truth
can be found so that all these three may be false; or whether you think
one of these three is true. If there is some other possibility, why do
you confine the liberty of discussion within a close-drawn line? and
why do you put forward the views which are false and keep silence about
the true? But if one of the three is true and the two others false, why
do you include false and true in one assertion of ignorance? Perhaps
you pretend not to know which is true in order that it may be safe for
you, whenever you may please, to defend the false. This is the smoke,
these are the mists, with which you try to keep away the light from
men’s eyes. You are the Aristippus3191
| 3191 Of
Cyrene. A disciple of Socrates, founder of the Cyrenaic sect, the
precursors of the Epicureans. |
of our day: you bring your ship into the port of Rome full of
merchandize of all kinds; you set your professorial chair on high, and
represent to us Hermagoras3192
and Gorgias3193
| 3193 Statesman and Sophist, came to Athens on a mission b.c. 327, and settled there. | of Leontinum: only, you were in such a
hurry to set sail that you left one little piece of goods, one little
question, forgotten in the East. And you cry out with reiteration that
you learned both at Aquileia and at Alexandria that God is the creator
of both our bodies and our souls. This then, forsooth, is the pressing
question, whether our souls were created by God or by the devil, and
not whether the opinion of Origen is true that our souls existed before
our bodies and committed some sin because of which they have been tied
to these gross bodies; or whether, again, they slept like dormice in a
state of torpor and of slumber. Every one is asking this question, but
you say nothing about it; nobody asks the other, but to that you direct
your answer.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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