Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 27–36

What am I to do with most wretched minds perverted by error and entangled by habit? For these men do not know what they are saying when they say these things; for they do not pay attention. I beg you: no one is pressing you, no one is forcing you into a contest, no one mocks past errors except one who has not experienced the divine mercy so as to be free of errors; let us only see to it that they come to an end at last. Look a little, without animosity and bitterness (we are all men; let us hate not one another but errors and falsehoods); I beg you, look a little. God of mercies, help those who look, and kindle the inner light for those who seek the truth. For what do we understand, if we do not understand that straight is better than crooked? I ask you, then, if you will take it calmly and modestly: if someone were to make crooked the straight side of the land of darkness which is joined to the straight side of the land of light, would he not take away some beauty from it? You must confess, unless you want to bark, that if it is made crooked, not only is its own beauty taken away, but also that beauty which it could have in common with the straight side of the land of light. In taking this away, then, and making crooked out of straight, so that what agreed would disagree and what fitted would clash, would he take away any substance from it? So learn, then, that evil is not a substance; but just as in a body, by a change of form for the worse, beauty is lost, or rather diminished, and what was before called beautiful is called ugly, and a body displeases that pleased before, so in the mind the grace of a right will, by which one lives godly and justly, is spoiled when the will changes for the worse; and by this sin the soul, which by the honor of a right will possessed happiness, is made wretched, no substance being added or taken away. Then consider this too: even if we grant that for other reasons the side of the land of darkness is evil, because it is obscure, because it is dark, or whatever else can be said, yet it is not evil insofar as it is straight. Just as I grant, then, that there is something evil in its color, so you must grant that there is something good in its straightness. And so it is wrong to separate this good, however much it is, from God the craftsman; unless we believe that every good that is in any nature comes from him, we err most ruinously. How, then, does he say that this land is the supreme evil, when in the straightness of its side I find a good of no small beauty, as far as a body is concerned, and why does he want it to be wholly alien from the almighty and best God, when we cannot find to whom else that very good which we find in it should be ascribed except to the author of all goods? “But that side too,” he says, “was evil.” Suppose it was evil: it would certainly be worse if it were not straight but twisted. How, then, is that the supreme evil than which something worse can be thought? Further, there must be some good by lacking which a thing becomes worse; and by lacking straightness that side would become worse; so there is something good in it, straightness. And you will never tell me whence it is in it unless you betake yourself to him from whom, let us confess, all things, great or small, are good. But let us now pass from the consideration of this side to other matters.

“There dwelt,” he says, “in that land fiery bodies, that is, pestilential kinds.” When he says “dwelt,” he certainly wants them to be understood as animate and living. But so that we may not seem to want to cavil at a word, let us attend to how he distributes all these inhabitants of that land into five living kinds. “Here,” he says, “were infinite darknesses, flowing from the same nature, beyond reckoning, with their own offspring; beyond these were muddy and turbid waters with their inhabitants; further within them, horrible and violent winds with their prince and begetters; again a fiery and corruptible region with its leaders and nations; in the same way, further within, a race full of gloom and smoke, in which dwelt the monstrous prince and leader of all, having around him innumerable princes, of all of whom he was the mind and origin. And these were the five natures of the pestilential land.” We notice five natures, as parts of one nature, which he calls the pestilential land. They are these: darkness, waters, winds, fire, smoke. He arranges these five natures so that darkness is outermost, and from it he begins to count; within the darkness he places the waters; within the waters the winds; within the winds the fire; within the fire the smoke. And these five natures each had their own kinds of inhabitants, which are likewise five. For I ask whether there was one kind of inhabitant in all five natures, or different kinds, as the natures themselves are different. They answer that they were different, and from other books they teach that the darkness had creeping things; the waters swimming things, such as fish; the winds flying things, such as birds; the fire four-footed things, such as horses, lions, and others of this kind; the smoke two-footed things, such as men.

Who, then, arranged these things? Who distributed and distinguished them? Who gave them number, quality, forms, life? For all these things are good in themselves, and no source can be found from which they are given to each nature except from God, the author of all goods. For it is not as the poets are wont to describe chaos, or to suggest some formless matter without form, without quality, without measures, without number and weight, without order and distinction, some confused thing utterly devoid of every quality (which is why certain Greek teachers call it apoion, “without quality”): it is not in this way, then, that these men try to suggest what they call the land of darkness, but altogether otherwise, far differently and contrarily: they join side to side and line them up; they count five natures, distinguish them, arrange them, describe them by their proper qualities; nor do they allow them to be deserted and barren, but fill them with their inhabitants, and give these very inhabitants forms suited and fitted to their dwellings, and, what surpasses all, life. To enumerate such great goods and to say that they are alien from God, the author of all goods, is to recognize neither the great good of order in things nor the great evil of error in oneself.

“But these kinds,” he says, “that inhabited those five natures were savage and pestilential.” As if I had praised savagery and pestilence in them! See, I join you in condemning what you charge as evil in them; you join me in praising what you yourself mention as good in them: so you will see that you want to set up, as the supreme and ultimate evil, goods mixed with evils. I condemn with you the pestilence there; praise with me the health there; for those kinds could not have been born or nourished or inhabited that land without some health. I condemn with you the darkness there; praise with me the fruitfulness there; for you call the darknesses “beyond reckoning” and yet add “with their own offspring,” although darkness is not corporeal and this whole name means the absence of light, just as nakedness is lack of clothing and emptiness is want of bodily fullness; and so darkness could beget nothing, though a dark land, that is, one lacking light, could beget something. But let us pass over this for now. Yet where offspring arise, there is both a balance suited to health and a certain harmony of numbers that arranges the members of those being born and builds them together into a unity, members fitting one another in the peace of due measure. Who would not understand that all these things deserve more praise than darkness deserves blame? I condemn with you the turbid mud of the waters there; praise with me the very form and quality of the waters, and the fitting members of their swimming inhabitants, the life that holds together and rules the body, and every balance of its kind adapted to health. For however much you censure the waters as muddy and turbid, yet by calling them waters such as could both beget and sustain their living creatures, you cannot take away from them the form of some kind of body and the likeness of parts by which they are formed and brought to peace in one quality; for if you took it away, there would be no body; and all these things, if you are a man, you perceive to be praiseworthy. And however much you exaggerate the savagery of those inhabitants and their assaults on one another, tearing and laying waste, you do not take away from them the numbered boundaries of their forms, by which each of their bodies is brought to peace with itself by the equality of its members, nor the balance of health, nor the governance of a soul that brings the parts of its body into a unity of friendship and harmony; and if you look at these with human sense, you see that they are more to be praised than those things which displease are to be condemned. I condemn with you the dreadfulness of the winds there; praise with me the breathable and nourishing nature of those same winds, and the form of a body continuous and spread out with fitting parts, by all of which they could beget and feed and healthily sustain their inhabitants; and, in those inhabitants, besides the other things praised above in all living creatures, in particular their swift and easy passage from wherever and to wherever they wish, and the harmonious effort and even motion of their wings in flight. I condemn with you the corruption of the fire there; praise with me the generative fire and its vigorous temperature, suited to those being born, so that they might grow together, be perfected in their own numbers and outlines, and be able to live and dwell there; you know that all these things are to be admired and praised, not only in the fire as a dwelling but also in its very inhabitants. I condemn with you the obscurity of the smoke and the monstrousness of the prince who, as you say, dwelt in it; praise with me that even in the smoke itself you find no part unlike the rest, whereby in its own kind it keeps the agreement and measure of its parts with one another, so that it is what it is by a certain unity; no one considers these things soberly without marvelous praise. What more? You even add to smoke the force and power of generating, since you give it inhabitants, princes too, so that, what we have never seen here, smoke there is fruitful and provides a healthy dwelling for its inhabitants.

And as for your noticing only monstrousness in the prince of smoke himself, to condemn it, ought you not to have attended to the other things that would compel you to praise his nature? For he had a soul and a body: the one giving life, the other breathed into by life; the one ruling, the other obeying; the one leading, the other following; the one holding together, the other not flowing apart; the one moving in rhythm, the other made stable by the rhythmic framework of its members. Does not the ordered peace, or the peaceful order, in this one prince move you to praise? And what has been said of one may be understood of the rest. “But he was fierce and monstrous toward others.” I do not praise this, but those great things which you will not attend to. If anyone who rashly believed Mani looks at them and considers them, even after being reminded, he recognizes without doubt that, when Mani speaks of these natures, he is speaking of certain goods: not the highest and unmade ones, such as God the one Trinity is, nor those made ones which are ordered on high, such as the holy angels and most blessed powers are, but of the lowest goods, ordered at the bottom of things according to the measure of their kind. When these are compared with higher ones, the unlearned think them blameworthy; and when one considers how much good they lack that the others have, the absence of that same good takes the name of evil. And I argue about these natures in this way because the things named are those known to us in this world. For we know darkness, waters, winds, fire, smoke; we know also creeping, swimming, flying, four-footed, and two-footed animals. Among all these, except darkness (which, as I said, is nothing but the absence of light, discerned by the eyes by not seeing, as silence is discerned by the ears by not hearing; not because darkness is something, but because light is not, just as silence is not something, but sound is not), except darkness, then, the others in this list are natures and known to all; and since their form, to whatever degree it exists, is praiseworthy and good, no prudent man separates them from God, the author of all goods.

For Mani, insofar as he wished to arrange the natures he learned here in his phantasms as if in the race of darkness, is proved to be altogether wrong. First, because darkness can beget nothing, as has been said. “But,” he says, “that darkness was not such as you know here.” Whence, then, do you teach me about it? Or perhaps, wordy promiser of teaching that you are, you compel me to believe? But suppose I believe. This I know, at least: if it had no form, as this darkness has none, it could beget nothing; but if it had, it was better. Yet when you say it was not such, you want it believed to be somehow worse. You could also say that silence, which is to the ears what darkness is to the eyes, begot some deaf or dumb animals there, so that, when told that silence is not any nature, you might answer, “But not such silence as you know here,” and so say whatever you liked to those whom you had once deceived into believing you. Though what led him to invent that creeping things were born in darkness could well be observed in the very beginnings of those being born. But there are serpents that see so sharply and rejoice so much in the presence of light that they seem to bear the weightiest testimony against him. Next, it was easy to discern swimming things in waters here and transfer them to those phantasms; so too flying things in winds, since the movement of this thicker air in which birds fly is called wind; but whence it came into his mind to invent four-footed things in fire, I do not know. And yet he did not say this without reason, but he paid too little attention and erred greatly. For they usually give this reason: that four-footed animals are voracious and very hot in mating. But many men, who are certainly two-footed, surpass any four-footed animal in voracity, and he says they are children not of fire but of smoke. And nothing can easily be found more voracious than geese; whether he puts them in smoke because they are two-footed, or in the waters because they love to swim, or in the winds because they are feathered and sometimes fly, certainly according to his distinction they do not belong to fire. As for heat in mating, I suppose he had noticed horses neighing and often rushing at mares, champing the bit; and in wanting to write this observation down quickly, he did not notice the house sparrow, compared with which any stallion is found very cold. When they are asked why he placed two-footed things in smoke, they answer that the two-footed kind is proud and lofty, for they say men take their origin from it; and since smoke rises into the air in round and swelling clouds, they noticed, not absurdly, that it is like the proud. This observation should have sufficed to furnish some likeness for proud men, or to form or understand an allegory; but not so that two-footed animals should therefore be believed to have been born in smoke and of smoke. For then they ought to have been born in dust too, since it often rises to the sky with no less spreading and loftiness; and in mists, since these are often exhaled from the earth so that to those watching from afar it is uncertain whether they are smoke or mist. Finally, why in the case of waters and winds was the argument drawn from the dwelling’s being endurable for its inhabitants? Because we see swimming things living in waters and flying things in winds. But did fire and smoke not deter the lying man, so that he would be ashamed to place there inhabitants than whom nothing could be placed more absurdly? For fire burns and destroys a four-footed animal, and smoke chokes and kills two-footed ones. Here at least he is forced to admit that he says these natures were better in the race of darkness, where he wants everything believed to be worse; since there fire begot a four-footed animal and nourished and sustained it harmlessly or even most comfortably, and likewise smoke had brought up its two-footed creatures, born in its most gentle bosom, not only without harm but with life and indulgence, even to that princely rule, and sustained them. Thus these lies are shown to have arisen from observing things seen in the world, but conceived by a carnal sense that was not careful or shrewd enough, brought to birth by phantasms, and put forth and written down by rashness, and so to have increased the number of heretics.

But they must rather be pressed by that kind of argument, so that they may understand, if they can, how truly it is said in the Catholic Church that God is the author of all natures. I was dealing with that kind of argument above when I said: I condemn with you the pestilence, the blindness, the turbid muddiness, the horrible violence, the corruptibility, the monstrousness of the princes, and the like; you praise with me the form, the distinction, the arrangement, the peace, the unity of forms, the fitting of members and their rhythmic equalities, the vital breathings and nourishments, the balance of health, the rule and governance of the soul and the service of bodies, the likeness and harmony of parts in each nature, whether of the inhabitants or of what was inhabited, and other things of this kind. For thus they understand, if only they will attend without obstinacy, that they are mixing good and evil when they speak of that land where they believed there was only the supreme evil; and so, if those things listed as evil are taken away, the goods that have been praised remain without any blame; but if the goods themselves are taken away, no nature remains. From this, whoever can see sees that every nature, insofar as it is a nature, is good; for in one and the same thing, in which both I found something to praise and he something to blame, if what is good is taken away, there will be no nature; but if what displeases is taken away, the nature will remain uncorrupted. Take from the waters their being muddy and turbid, and pure and calm waters remain; take from the waters the harmony of their parts, and there will be no waters. If, then, when that evil is removed the nature remains purer, but when the good is withdrawn no nature remains, it is what it has of good that makes it a nature there; what it has of evil is not nature but against nature. Take from the winds the dreadfulness and excessive force that displeases you, and you can think of gentle and moderate winds; take from the winds the likeness of parts by which their body is held together in unity and at peace with itself, so as to be a body, and no nature will remain for you to think of. It would be long to go through the rest; but it is clear to those who judge with no partisan zeal that, when these natures are mentioned, certain things are attached to them because of which they displease, and when we take these away, the natures remain better. From this it is understood that they are good insofar as they are natures, since if you take away from them in turn all the good they have, there will be no natures. Consider also, you who wish to judge rightly, that monstrous prince: if monstrousness is taken from him, see how many praiseworthy things will remain: the framework of the body, the fitting of the members on this side and that, the unity of form and the peace of the parts woven together, the order and arrangement of a soul that rules, quickens, and is served, and of a body that is quickened. If all these are taken away, and anything else perhaps that I have not listed, no nature at all will remain.

But perhaps you will say that those evils cannot be taken away from such natures and are therefore to be accepted as natural. The question now is not what can or cannot be taken away; but it is certainly no small light for understanding that all natures, insofar as they are natures, are good, that those goods can be thought of without those evils, but no nature can be thought of without those goods. For I can think of waters without the disturbance of mud, but without the peace of continuous parts no form of body comes to mind or can in any way be perceived. And for this reason even those muddy waters could not have existed without this good, by which it came about that any bodily nature could exist. As for your saying that those evils cannot be taken away from such natures, the answer is that those goods cannot be taken away from such natures either. Why, then, do you want to call these things natural evils because of the evils which you think cannot be taken away, and do not want to call them natural goods because of the goods which you are shown cannot be taken away? It remains for you to ask (for this is usually the last word) whence come those evils which I said displease me too. I will answer, perhaps, if you first say whence come those goods which you too are compelled to praise, unless you want to be of a most absurd heart. But why should I ask this, since both of us confess that all goods, of whatever kind and however great, are from the one God, who is supremely good? Resist Mani yourselves, then, who thought that so many and such great goods as we have mentioned and justly praised (the peace and harmony of parts in each nature, the health and strength of living creatures, and the rest, which it is tiresome to repeat) were in his invented land of darkness in such a way that he tried to separate them from that God whom he confesses to be the author of all goods. For he did not see those goods while he attended only to what displeased him, as if someone, terrified by a lion’s roar and seeing it dragging and tearing the bodies of cattle or men, whatever it had seized, were struck with such fear by a childish weakness of mind that, looking only at the lion’s fierceness and savagery and wholly neglecting and passing over its other qualities, he cried out that the nature of that animal was not only an evil but a great evil, the more exaggeratedly the more fearfully; but if he saw a lion, its fierceness tamed, being led along gentle, especially if he had never before been frightened by that beast, then he would be at leisure, secure and fearless, to consider and praise the lion’s beauty. On this I will say nothing except what is most to the point: it can happen that some nature gives offense in some respect and hatred arises against the whole of it, although it is plain that the form of a real and living beast, even when it terrifies in the woods, is much better than that of an imitated and feigned one, when it is praised painted on a wall. Let him not deceive us, then, by this error, nor make us blind to considering the forms of natures, when he so censures certain things in them as to compel them to displease in every respect, though he cannot censure them in every respect. And composing our mind in this way to a fair judgment, let us now ask whence come, together with those goods, the evils which I said I too disapprove. We will see this more easily if we can bring them all under one name.

For who would doubt that all that is called evil is nothing other than corruption? Different evils can indeed be named by different words, but what is the evil of all things in which any evil can be noticed is corruption. The corruption of a learned soul is called ignorance; the corruption of a prudent one, imprudence; of a just one, injustice; of a brave one, cowardice; of a calm and tranquil one, desire or fear or sadness or boastfulness. Then, in an animate body, the corruption of health is pain and disease; the corruption of strength, weariness; the corruption of rest, toil. Then, in the body alone, the corruption of beauty is ugliness; the corruption of straightness, crookedness; the corruption of order, disorder; the corruption of wholeness, splitting or breaking or diminishing. It would be long and difficult to name individually all the corruptions of the things I have mentioned and of countless others, since many that are spoken of in the body can also be spoken of in the soul, and there are countless cases in which corruption has its own names. Yet it is now easy to see that corruption does no harm except by undermining a natural state, and therefore that it is not a nature but against nature. But if no evil is found in things except corruption, and corruption is not a nature, then certainly no nature is evil. But if perhaps you cannot understand this, attend to this: everything that is corrupted is diminished in some good; for if it were not corrupted, it would be uncorrupted; and if it could not be corrupted at all, it would be incorruptible. Now if corruption is an evil, incorruption and incorruptibility must be goods. But there is no question now about an incorruptible nature; the discussion is about things that can be corrupted, which, while they are not corrupted, can be called uncorrupted, but not incorruptible. For only that is properly called incorruptible which not only is not corrupted but cannot be corrupted in any part. So whatever things are uncorrupted and yet can be corrupted, when they begin to be corrupted, are diminished in that very good by which they were uncorrupted, and a great good indeed, since corruption is a great evil; and as long as corruption can increase in them, so long they have a good in which to be diminished. Therefore those natures which he imagines to have been in the land of darkness either could be corrupted or could not. If they could not, they were incorruptible, and there is no good higher than that. If they could, either they were being corrupted or they were not. If they were not, they were uncorrupted, which we see cannot be said without great praise. But if they were being corrupted, they were being diminished in that so great good; if they were being diminished in a good, they had a good in which to be diminished. And if they had a good, those natures were not the supreme evil, and the whole fable of Mani is false.

But since we have asked what evil is, and have learned that it is not a nature but against nature, we must next ask whence it is; and if Mani had done this, he would perhaps have slipped less into these straits of so great an error. For he asked too hastily and in the wrong order whence it came, when he had not first asked what it was; and so nothing could present itself to him as he asked except vain phantasms, of which a mind much fed by the carnal senses is stripped only with difficulty. Someone, then, desiring now not to contend but not to err, will say: Whence is this corruption, which we have found to be, as it were, the general evil of things that are good but corruptible? One who asks in this way soon finds, seeking the truth with great ardor and knocking with constant and godly perseverance. For through men some reminding can be done by the signs of words; but the one who teaches is the one true teacher, incorruptible truth itself, the only inner teacher, who also became outward, to call us back from outward things to inward ones, and, taking the form of a servant, so that his sublimity might become known to those rising up, deigned to appear lowly to those lying down. Let us be suppliants in his name, and, imploring the Father’s mercy through him, let us seek these things. To those who ask whence corruption is, a very brief first answer can be given: it comes from this, that these natures which can be corrupted were not begotten of God but made by him from nothing. Since the reasoning above has shown them to be good, no one can rightly say, “God should not have made good things”; and if anyone says, “He should have made them supremely good,” he must understand that the supreme good is he himself who made these goods.