Book: The Consolation of Philosophy

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BOOK V.



I.


She ceased, and was about to pass on in her discourse to the exposition
of other matters, when I break in and say: 'Excellent is thine
exhortation, and such as well beseemeth thy high authority; but I am
even now experiencing one of the many difficulties which, as thou saidst
but now, beset the question of providence. I want to know whether thou
deemest that there is any such thing as chance at all, and, if so, what
it is.'

Then she made answer: 'I am anxious to fulfil my promise completely, and
open to thee a way of return to thy native land. As for these matters,
though very useful to know, they are yet a little removed from the path
of our design, and I fear lest digressions should fatigue thee, and thou
shouldst find thyself unequal to completing the direct journey to our
goal.'

'Have no fear for that,' said I. 'It is rest to me to learn, where
learning brings delight so exquisite, especially when thy argument has
been built up on all sides with undoubted conviction, and no place is
left for uncertainty in what follows.'

She made answer: 'I will accede to thy request;' and forthwith she thus
began: 'If chance be defined as a result produced by random movement
without any link of causal connection, I roundly affirm that there is no
such thing as chance at all, and consider the word to be altogether
without meaning, except as a symbol of the thing designated. What place
can be left for random action, when God constraineth all things to
order? For "ex nihilo nihil" is sound doctrine which none of the
ancients gainsaid, although they used it of material substance, not of
the efficient principle; this they laid down as a kind of basis for all
their reasonings concerning nature. Now, if a thing arise without
causes, it will appear to have arisen from nothing. But if this cannot
be, neither is it possible for there to be chance in accordance with the
definition just given.'

'Well,' said I, 'is there, then, nothing which can properly be called
chance or accident, or is there something to which these names are
appropriate, though its nature is dark to the vulgar?'

'Our good Aristotle,' says she, 'has defined it concisely in his
"Physics," and closely in accordance with the truth.'

'How, pray?' said I.

'Thus,' says she: 'Whenever something is done for the sake of a
particular end, and for certain reasons some other result than that
designed ensues, this is called chance; for instance, if a man is
digging the earth for tillage, and finds a mass of buried gold. Now,
such a find is regarded as accidental; yet it is not "ex nihilo," for it
has its proper causes, the unforeseen and unexpected concurrence of
which has brought the chance about. For had not the cultivator been
digging, had not the man who hid the money buried it in that precise
spot, the gold would not have been found. These, then, are the reasons
why the find is a chance one, in that it results from causes which met
together and concurred, not from any intention on the part of the
discoverer. Since neither he who buried the gold nor he who worked in
the field _intended_ that the money should be found, but, as I said, it
_happened_ by coincidence that one dug where the other buried the
treasure. We may, then, define chance as being an unexpected result
flowing from a concurrence of causes where the several factors had some
definite end. But the meeting and concurrence of these causes arises
from that inevitable chain of order which, flowing from the
fountain-head of Providence, disposes all things in their due time and
place.'



SONG I.

CHANCE.


In the rugged Persian highlands,
Where the masters of the bow
Skill to feign a flight, and, fleeing,
Hurl their darts and pierce the foe;
There the Tigris and Euphrates
At one source[O] their waters blend,
Soon to draw apart, and plainward
Each its separate way to wend.
When once more their waters mingle
In a channel deep and wide,
All the flotsam comes together
That is borne upon the tide:
Ships, and trunks of trees, uprooted
In the torrent's wild career,
Meet, as 'mid the swirling waters
Chance their random way may steer.
Yet the shelving of the channel
And the flowing water's force
Guides each movement, and determines
Every floating fragment's course.
Thus, where'er the drift of hazard
Seems most unrestrained to flow,
Chance herself is reined and bitted,
And the curb of law doth know.

FOOTNOTES:

[O] This is not, of course, literally true, though the Tigris and
Euphrates rise in the same mountain district.



II.


'I am following needfully,' said I, 'and I agree that it is as thou
sayest. But in this series of linked causes is there any freedom left to
our will, or does the chain of fate bind also the very motions of our
souls?'

'There is freedom,' said she; 'nor, indeed, can any creature be
rational, unless he be endowed with free will. For that which hath the
natural use of reason has the faculty of discriminative judgment, and of
itself distinguishes what is to be shunned or desired. Now, everyone
seeks what he judges desirable, and avoids what he thinks should be
shunned. Wherefore, beings endowed with reason possess also the faculty
of free choice and refusal. But I suppose this faculty not equal alike
in all. The higher Divine essences possess a clear-sighted judgment, an
uncorrupt will, and an effective power of accomplishing their wishes.
Human souls must needs be comparatively free while they abide in the
contemplation of the Divine mind, less free when they pass into bodily
form, and still less, again, when they are enwrapped in earthly members.
But when they are given over to vices, and fall from the possession of
their proper reason, then indeed their condition is utter slavery. For
when they let their gaze fall from the light of highest truth to the
lower world where darkness reigns, soon ignorance blinds their vision;
they are disturbed by baneful affections, by yielding and assenting to
which they help to promote the slavery in which they are involved, and
are in a manner led captive by reason of their very liberty. Yet He who
seeth all things from eternity beholdeth these things with the eyes of
His providence, and assigneth to each what is predestined for it by its
merits:

'"All things surveying, all things overhearing.'"



SONG II.

THE TRUE SUN.


Homer with mellifluous tongue
Phoebus' glorious light hath sung,
Hymning high his praise;
Yet _his_ feeble rays
Ocean's hollows may not brighten,
Nor earth's central gloom enlighten.

But the might of Him, who skilled
This great universe to build,
Is not thus confined;
Not earth's solid rind,
Nor night's blackest canopy,
Baffle His all-seeing eye.

All that is, hath been, shall be,
In one glance's compass, He
Limitless descries;
And, save His, no eyes
All the world survey--no, none!
_Him_, then, truly name the Sun.



III.


Then said I: 'But now I am once more perplexed by a problem yet more
difficult.'

'And what is that?' said she; 'yet, in truth, I can guess what it is
that troubles you.'

'It seems,' said I, 'too much of a paradox and a contradiction that God
should know all things, and yet there should be free will. For if God
foresees everything, and can in no wise be deceived, that which
providence foresees to be about to happen must necessarily come to pass.
Wherefore, if from eternity He foreknows not only what men will do, but
also their designs and purposes, there can be no freedom of the will,
seeing that nothing can be done, nor can any sort of purpose be
entertained, save such as a Divine providence, incapable of being
deceived, has perceived beforehand. For if the issues can be turned
aside to some other end than that foreseen by providence, there will not
then be any sure foreknowledge of the future, but uncertain conjecture
instead, and to think this of God I deem impiety.

'Moreover, I do not approve the reasoning by which some think to solve
this puzzle. For they say that it is not because God has foreseen the
coming of an event that _therefore_ it is sure to come to pass, but,
conversely, because something is about to come to pass, it cannot be
hidden from Divine providence; and accordingly the necessity passes to
the opposite side, and it is not that what is foreseen must necessarily
come to pass, but that what is about to come to pass must necessarily be
foreseen. But this is just as if the matter in debate were, which is
cause and which effect--whether foreknowledge of the future cause of the
necessity, or the necessity of the future of the foreknowledge. But we
need not be at the pains of demonstrating that, whatsoever be the order
of the causal sequence, the occurrence of things foreseen is necessary,
even though the foreknowledge of future events does not in itself
impose upon them the necessity of their occurrence. For example, if a
man be seated, the supposition of his being seated is necessarily true;
and, conversely, if the supposition of his being seated is true, because
he is really seated, he must necessarily be sitting. So, in either case,
there is some necessity involved--in this latter case, the necessity of
the fact; in the former, of the truth of the statement. But in both
cases the sitter is not therefore seated because the opinion is true,
but rather the opinion is true because antecedently he was sitting as a
matter of fact. Thus, though the cause of the truth of the opinion comes
from the other side,[P] yet there is a necessity on both sides alike. We
can obviously reason similarly in the case of providence and the future.
Even if future events are foreseen because they are about to happen, and
do not come to pass because they are foreseen, still, all the same,
there is a necessity, both that they should be foreseen by God as about
to come to pass, and that when they are foreseen they should happen, and
this is sufficient for the destruction of free will. However, it is
preposterous to speak of the occurrence of events in time as the cause
of eternal foreknowledge. And yet if we believe that God foresees future
events because they are about to come to pass, what is it but to think
that the occurrence of events is the cause of His supreme providence?
Further, just as when I _know_ that anything is, that thing
_necessarily_ is, so when I know that anything will be, it will
_necessarily_ be. It follows, then, that things foreknown come to pass
inevitably.

'Lastly, to think of a thing as being in any way other than what it is,
is not only not knowledge, but it is false opinion widely different from
the truth of knowledge. Consequently, if anything is about to be, and
yet its occurrence is not certain and necessary, how can anyone foreknow
that it will occur? For just as knowledge itself is free from all
admixture of falsity, so any conception drawn from knowledge cannot be
other than as it is conceived. For this, indeed, is the cause why
knowledge is free from falsehood, because of necessity each thing must
correspond exactly with the knowledge which grasps its nature. In what
way, then, are we to suppose that God foreknows these uncertainties as
about to come to pass? For if He thinks of events which possibly may not
happen at all as inevitably destined to come to pass, He is deceived;
and this it is not only impious to believe, but even so much as to
express in words. If, on the other hand, He sees them in the future as
they are in such a sense as to know that they may equally come to pass
or not, what sort of foreknowledge is this which comprehends nothing
certain nor fixed? What better is this than the absurd vaticination of
Teiresias?

'"Whate'er I say
Shall either come to pass--or not."

In that case, too, in what would Divine providence surpass human opinion
if it holds for uncertain things the occurrence of which is uncertain,
even as men do? But if at that perfectly sure Fountain-head of all
things no shadow of uncertainty can possibly be found, then the
occurrence of those things which He has surely foreknown as coming is
certain. Wherefore there can be no freedom in human actions and designs;
but the Divine mind, which foresees all things without possibility of
mistake, ties and binds them down to one only issue. But this admission
once made, what an upset of human affairs manifestly ensues! Vainly are
rewards and punishments proposed for the good and bad, since no free and
voluntary motion of the will has deserved either one or the other; nay,
the punishment of the wicked and the reward of the righteous, which is
now esteemed the perfection of justice, will seem the most flagrant
injustice, since men are determined either way not by their own proper
volition, but by the necessity of what must surely be. And therefore
neither virtue nor vice is anything, but rather good and ill desert are
confounded together without distinction. Moreover, seeing that the whole
course of events is deduced from providence, and nothing is left free to
human design, it comes to pass that our vices also are referred to the
Author of all good--a thought than which none more abominable can
possibly be conceived. Again, no ground is left for hope or prayer,
since how can we hope for blessings, or pray for mercy, when every
object of desire depends upon the links of an unalterable chain of
causation? Gone, then, is the one means of intercourse between God and
man--the communion of hope and prayer--if it be true that we ever earn
the inestimable recompense of the Divine favour at the price of a due
humility; for this is the one way whereby men seem able to hold
communion with God, and are joined to that unapproachable light by the
very act of supplication, even before they obtain their petitions. Then,
since these things can scarcely be believed to have any efficacy, if the
necessity of future events be admitted, what means will there be whereby
we may be brought near and cleave to Him who is the supreme Head of all?
Wherefore it needs must be that the human race, even as thou didst
erstwhile declare in song, parted and dissevered from its Source, should
fall to ruin.'

FOOTNOTES:

[P] _I.e._, the necessity of the truth of the statement from the fact.



SONG III.

TRUTH'S PARADOXES.


Why does a strange discordance break
The ordered scheme's fair harmony?
Hath God decreed 'twixt truth and truth
There may such lasting warfare be,
That truths, each severally plain,
We strive to reconcile in vain?

Or is the discord not in truth,
Since truth is self consistent ever?
But, close in fleshly wrappings held,
The blinded mind of man can never
Discern--so faint her taper shines--
The subtle chain that all combines?

Ah! then why burns man's restless mind
Truth's hidden portals to unclose?
Knows he already what he seeks?
Why toil to seek it, if he knows?
Yet, haply if he knoweth not,
Why blindly seek he knows not what?[Q]


Who for a good he knows not sighs?
Who can an unknown end pursue?
How find? How e'en when haply found
Hail that strange form he never knew?
Or is it that man's inmost soul
Once knew each part and knew the whole?

Now, though by fleshly vapours dimmed,
Not all forgot her visions past;
For while the several parts are lost,
To the one whole she cleaveth fast;
Whence he who yearns the truth to find
Is neither sound of sight nor blind.

For neither does he know in full,
Nor is he reft of knowledge quite;
But, holding still to what is left,
He gropes in the uncertain light,
And by the part that still survives
To win back all he bravely strives.

FOOTNOTES:

[Q] Compare Plato, 'Meno,' 80; Jowett, vol. ii., pp. 39, 40.



IV.


Then said she: 'This debate about providence is an old one, and is
vigorously discussed by Cicero in his "Divination"; thou also hast long
and earnestly pondered the problem, yet no one has had diligence and
perseverance enough to find a solution. And the reason of this obscurity
is that the movement of human reasoning cannot cope with the simplicity
of the Divine foreknowledge; for if a conception of its nature could in
any wise be framed, no shadow of uncertainty would remain. With a view
of making this at last clear and plain, I will begin by considering the
arguments by which thou art swayed. First, I inquire into the reasons
why thou art dissatisfied with the solution proposed, which is to the
effect that, seeing the fact of foreknowledge is not thought the cause
of the necessity of future events, foreknowledge is not to be deemed any
hindrance to the freedom of the will. Now, surely the sole ground on
which thou arguest the necessity of the future is that things which are
foreknown cannot fail to come to pass. But if, as thou wert ready to
acknowledge just now, the fact of foreknowledge imposes no necessity on
things future, what reason is there for supposing the results of
voluntary action constrained to a fixed issue? Suppose, for the sake of
argument, and to see what follows, we assume that there is no
foreknowledge. Are willed actions, then, tied down to any necessity in
_this_ case?'

'Certainly not.'

'Let us assume foreknowledge again, but without its involving any actual
necessity; the freedom of the will, I imagine, will remain in complete
integrity. But thou wilt say that, even although the foreknowledge is
not the necessity of the future event's occurrence, yet it is a sign
that it will necessarily happen. Granted; but in this case it is plain
that, even if there had been no foreknowledge, the issues would have
been inevitably certain. For a sign only indicates something which is,
does not bring to pass that of which it is the sign. We require to show
beforehand that all things, without exception, happen of necessity in
order that a preconception may be a sign of this necessity. Otherwise,
if there is no such universal necessity, neither can any preconception
be a sign of a necessity which exists not. Manifestly, too, a proof
established on firm grounds of reason must be drawn not from signs and
loose general arguments, but from suitable and necessary causes. But how
can it be that things foreseen should ever fail to come to pass? Why,
this is to suppose us to believe that the events which providence
foresees to be coming were not about to happen, instead of our supposing
that, although they should come to pass, yet there was no necessity
involved in their own nature compelling their occurrence. Take an
illustration that will help to convey my meaning. There are many things
which we see taking place before our eyes--the movements of charioteers,
for instance, in guiding and turning their cars, and so on. Now, is any
one of these movements compelled by any necessity?'

'No; certainly not. There would be no efficacy in skill if all motions
took place perforce.'

'Then, things which in taking place are free from any necessity as to
their being in the present must also, before they take place, be about
to happen without necessity. Wherefore there are things which will come
to pass, the occurrence of which is perfectly free from necessity. At
all events, I imagine that no one will deny that things now taking place
were about to come to pass before they were actually happening. Such
things, however much foreknown, are in their occurrence _free_. For even
as knowledge of things present imports no necessity into things that are
taking place, so foreknowledge of the future imports none into things
that are about to come. But this, thou wilt say, is the very point in
dispute--whether any foreknowing is possible of things whose occurrence
is not necessary. For here there seems to thee a contradiction, and, if
they are foreseen, their necessity follows; whereas if there is no
necessity, they can by no means be foreknown; and thou thinkest that
nothing can be grasped as known unless it is certain, but if things
whose occurrence is uncertain are foreknown as certain, this is the very
mist of opinion, not the truth of knowledge. For to think of things
otherwise than as they are, thou believest to be incompatible with the
soundness of knowledge.

'Now, the cause of the mistake is this--that men think that all
knowledge is cognized purely by the nature and efficacy of the thing
known. Whereas the case is the very reverse: all that is known is
grasped not conformably to its own efficacy, but rather conformably to
the faculty of the knower. An example will make this clear: the
roundness of a body is recognised in one way by sight, in another by
touch. Sight looks upon it from a distance as a whole by a simultaneous
reflection of rays; touch grasps the roundness piecemeal, by contact and
attachment to the surface, and by actual movement round the periphery
itself. Man himself, likewise, is viewed in one way by Sense, in another
by Imagination, in another way, again, by Thought, in another by pure
Intelligence. Sense judges figure clothed in material substance,
Imagination figure alone without matter. Thought transcends this again,
and by its contemplation of universals considers the type itself which
is contained in the individual. The eye of Intelligence is yet more
exalted; for overpassing the sphere of the universal, it will behold
absolute form itself by the pure force of the mind's vision. Wherein the
main point to be considered is this: the higher faculty of comprehension
embraces the lower, while the lower cannot rise to the higher. For Sense
has no efficacy beyond matter, nor can Imagination behold universal
ideas, nor Thought embrace pure form; but Intelligence, looking down, as
it were, from its higher standpoint in its intuition of form,
discriminates also the several elements which underlie it; but it
comprehends them in the same way as it comprehends that form itself,
which could be cognized by no other than itself. For it cognizes the
universal of Thought, the figure of Imagination, and the matter of
Sense, without employing Thought, Imagination, or Sense, but surveying
all things, so to speak, under the aspect of pure form by a single flash
of intuition. Thought also, in considering the universal, embraces
images and sense-impressions without resorting to Imagination or Sense.
For it is Thought which has thus defined the universal from its
conceptual point of view: "Man is a two-legged animal endowed with
reason." This is indeed a universal notion, yet no one is ignorant that
the _thing_ is imaginable and presentable to Sense, because Thought
considers it not by Imagination or Sense, but by means of rational
conception. Imagination, too, though its faculty of viewing and forming
representations is founded upon the senses, nevertheless surveys
sense-impressions without calling in Sense, not in the way of
Sense-perception, but of Imagination. See'st thou, then, how all things
in cognizing use rather their own faculty than the faculty of the things
which they cognize? Nor is this strange; for since every judgment is the
act of the judge, it is necessary that each should accomplish its task
by its own, not by another's power.'



SONG IV.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL FALLACY.[R]


From the Porch's murky depths
Comes a doctrine sage,
That doth liken living mind
To a written page;
Since all knowledge comes through
Sense,
Graven by Experience.

'As,' say they, 'the pen its marks
Curiously doth trace
On the smooth unsullied white
Of the paper's face,
So do outer things impress
Images on consciousness.'

But if verily the mind
Thus all passive lies;
If no living power within
Its own force supplies;
If it but reflect again,
Like a glass, things false and vain--


Whence the wondrous faculty
That perceives and knows,
That in one fair ordered scheme
Doth the world dispose;
Grasps each whole that Sense presents,
Or breaks into elements?

So divides and recombines,
And in changeful wise
Now to low descends, and now
To the height doth rise;
Last in inward swift review
Strictly sifts the false and true?

Of these ample potencies
Fitter cause, I ween,
Were Mind's self than marks impressed
By the outer scene.
Yet the body through the sense
Stirs the soul's intelligence.

When light flashes on the eye,
Or sound strikes the ear,
Mind aroused to due response
Makes the message clear;
And the dumb external signs
With the hidden forms combines.

FOOTNOTES:

[R] A criticism of the doctrine of the mind as a blank sheet of paper on
which experience writes, as held by the Stoics in anticipation of Locke.
See Zeller, 'Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics,' Reichel's translation,
p. 76.



V.


'Now, although in the case of bodies endowed with sentiency the
qualities of external objects affect the sense-organs, and the activity
of mind is preceded by a bodily affection which calls forth the mind's
action upon itself, and stimulates the forms till that moment lying
inactive within, yet, I say, if in these bodies endowed with sentiency
the mind is not inscribed by mere passive affection, but of its own
efficacy discriminates the impressions furnished to the body, how much
more do intelligences free from all bodily affections employ in their
discrimination their own mental activities instead of conforming to
external objects? So on these principles various modes of cognition
belong to distinct and different substances. For to creatures void of
motive power--shell-fish and other such creatures which cling to rocks
and grow there--belongs Sense alone, void of all other modes of gaining
knowledge; to beasts endowed with movement, in whom some capacity of
seeking and shunning seems to have arisen, Imagination also. Thought
pertains only to the human race, as Intelligence to Divinity alone;
hence it follows that that form of knowledge exceeds the rest which of
its own nature cognizes not only its proper object, but the objects of
the other forms of knowledge also. But what if Sense and Imagination
were to gainsay Thought, and declare that universal which Thought deems
itself to behold to be nothing? For the object of Sense and Imagination
cannot be universal; so that either the judgment of Reason is true and
there is no sense-object, or, since they know full well that many
objects are presented to Sense and Imagination, the conception of
Reason, which looks on that which is perceived by Sense and particular
as if it were a something "universal," is empty of content. Suppose,
further, that Reason maintains in reply that it does indeed contemplate
the object of both Sense and Imagination under the form of
universality, while Sense and Imagination cannot aspire to the
knowledge of the universal, since their cognizance cannot go beyond
bodily figures, and that in the cognition of reality we ought rather to
trust the stronger and more perfect faculty of judgment. In a dispute of
this sort, should not we, in whom is planted the faculty of reasoning as
well as of imagining and perceiving, espouse the cause of Reason?

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