On the Catholic Way of Life and On the Manichaean Way of Life 2.16

O obscurity of nature, how great a cover for falsehood you are! Who, hearing these things, if he has not learned the causes of things and, not yet sprinkled with even a little light of truth, is deceived by bodily images, would not think them true, precisely because they are not at all evident, are thought of through certain images of visible things, and can be eloquently stated? Great crowds and herds of such people are called in, whom religious fear rather than reason keeps safe from these deceptions. So I will try to refute these things, as far as God deigns to help me, in such a way that it may be clear enough how false and absurd they are, not only to the judgment of the prudent, by which they are rejected as soon as they are stated, but even to ordinary understanding.

First, then, I ask how you show that this part of God, whatever it is, is present in grain, beans, vegetables, flowers, and fruits. “It is plain,” they say, “from the very brightness of their color, the pleasantness of their smell, and the sweetness of their taste: and when they are rotten and no longer have these, they show that they have been deserted by that same good.” Are you not ashamed to think that God is found by nose and palate? But I pass over this. For I will speak to you plainly, and, as the saying goes, it is much for you. Rather, you should have understood this, with whatever mind you have: if the presence of the good appears in bodies by color, then the dung of animals, which is the very refuse of flesh, shines with various colors, sometimes white, often golden, and others of the kind which in fruits and flowers you take as witnesses of God present and inhering. What reason is there, then, that you declare redness in a rose to be a sign of abundant good, and condemn the same in blood? Why do you embrace the same color in a violet which you despise in bile, in the disease of the jaundiced, and finally in an infant's excrement? Why do you think the brightness and gleam of oil proclaim a plenty of good mixed in it, and prepare throat and belly to purify it; but fear to touch your lips with the drops of very similar gleam that drip from fat meat? Why do you think a melon is golden from the treasures of God, and do not think so of the rancid fat of bacon or the yolk of an egg? Why does whiteness in lettuce proclaim God to you, but not in milk? I am still speaking of colors, in which (to pass over the rest) you can compare no meadows clothed with flowers to the quills and plumes of a single peacock, which certainly are born of mating and flesh. And if this good is also found by smell, ointments of marvelous fragrance are made from the flesh of some animals. And the very foods usually cooked with better kinds of meat smell much more pleasant than if the meat were missing. Finally, if you judge things that smell sweeter to be cleaner, you should have eaten a certain kind of mud more eagerly than drink cistern water; for dry earth soaked by rain charms the nostrils with a wonderful smell, and such mud smells better than the purer rain would if caught by itself. And if taste must bear witness, so that we may know that something of God dwells in a body, it dwells more in dates and honey than in pork, but more in pork than in beans; more in a fig than in liver fattened on figs, I grant it; but you too grant that it dwells more in such liver than in beet. What of the fact that by this reasoning you are forced to confess that certain plants, all of which you certainly want to be cleaner than flesh, receive God from flesh itself, if God is recognized as mixed in by taste? For vegetables become tastier when cooked with meat; and the grasses on which cattle feed we cannot taste, but when turned into the juice of milk we judge them both finer in color and most agreeable in taste.

Or do you think that where the three goods are found together, good color, smell, and taste, there is a greater part of the good? Then do not admire and praise flowers so much, which you cannot admit to the tribunal of the palate to be judged. At least do not prefer purslane to meat, since cooked meat surpasses it in color, taste, and smell. A roast sucking pig (for you force us to discuss good and evil with you rather in the manner of cooks and confectioners than of writers and copyists), a roast sucking pig, then, is bright in color, pleasing in smell, and delightful in taste: you have a perfect sign of the divine substance dwelling in it; it invites you with a threefold testimony and longs to be purified by your holiness. Attack it; why do you hesitate? What objection are you ready to make? In color alone an infant's dung surpasses lentils; in smell alone a roast morsel surpasses a soft green fig; in taste alone a slaughtered kid surpasses the grass on which it fed alive: a flesh has been found whose cause is helped by all three witnesses together. What more do you want? Or what will you say? Why do morsels of meat make you unclean when you feast, and these monstrous things do not make you so when you argue? Especially since the ray of this sun, which you certainly set above all meats and fruits, neither smells nor tastes but excels among other bodies only by the excellence of its most brilliant color; and it strongly urges you, indeed compels you against your will, to prefer nothing to brightness of color among the proofs of mixed good. So you are brought into such straits that you must confess that a part of God dwells more in blood, and in those things, most foul but brightly colored, which are discharged from the flesh of animals into the streets, than in the pale leaves of the olive.

And if you say, as you do say, that olive leaves, when burned, give off fire, in which the presence of light appears, but meat when burned does not do the same, what will you answer about fat, which lights almost all the lamps of Italy? What about cow dung, which is certainly filthier than the flesh of the ox, which the peasants dry and use on the hearth in such a way that nothing burns more easily or with less smoke? What of the fact that, if brightness and gleam show a greater presence of the divine part, you do not purify it, seal it, set it free? For it is found most in flowers, to say nothing of blood and countless things in flesh or very like what comes from flesh; and you certainly cannot have flowers at your feasts. And even if you ate meat, you would certainly not put fish scales and certain grubs and flies, all of which glitter with their own light even in the dark, in your dishes.

What remains, then, but that you stop saying that you have eyes, nostrils, and palate as competent judges by which to prove the presence of the divine part in bodies? And with these removed, how will you show not only that there is a greater part of God in plants than in flesh, but that there is anything of him in plants at all? Or does beauty move you, not the beauty of pleasant color, but that of the agreement of parts? Would that it did! For when would you dare to compare twisted wood with the bodies of animals, in whose form equal limbs answer to equal limbs? But if you delight in the testimony of the bodily senses, as must be for those who cannot see the force of being with the mind, how do you prove that the substance of the good escapes from bodies through lapse of time and through certain crushings, except because God departs from there, as you assert, and moves from place to place? That is full of madness.

And yet no signs or evidence, as far as I can judge, have led you to this opinion. For many things plucked from trees or pulled from the earth become better by some lapse of time before they come to our food, such as leeks and endives, lettuce, grapes, apples, figs, and some pears; and many things besides which both take on better color when they are not eaten as soon as they are plucked, and are taken into the body more healthily, and taste more savory in the mouth: and such great benefit and sweetness ought not to be in these things if, according to your opinion, they became the more deserted by the good, the longer they are stored after being separated from the earth as from a mother. The flesh itself of animals killed the day before is certainly more pleasant and more wholesome; but it ought not to be so if, as you assert, it had more good on the day the animal was freshly killed than the day after, when a greater flight of the divine substance had taken place. And who does not know that wine becomes purer and better with age? Not more apt to upset the senses, as you think, but more useful for invigorating the body: only let there be moderation, which ought to rule in everything. For it is with new must that disorder of the senses usually happens more quickly: so much so that if it is sometimes left in the vat and has fermented a little, it strikes the brain of those who look down on it, sends them headlong, and, unless they are helped somehow, kills them. And as for health, who would deny that bodies are swollen by it and harmfully distended? Are such great harms in it because it has more good, and are they absent from old wine because a great part of the divine substance has departed? It is absurd to say so; especially for you, who judge the presence of a part of God by the eyes, nostrils, and palate, when these senses are pleasantly affected.

And what great perversity it is to think wine the gall of the princes of darkness, and not to refrain from eating grapes! Will that gall be in it more when it is in the cask than when it was in the grapes? And if, when the good departs, the evil remains, as it were, more undiluted, and this happens with the lapse of time, then the same grapes, hung up and kept, ought not to become mellower, sweeter, healthier; nor should the wine itself mentioned above become clearer and brighter after losing light, and healthier as the health-giving substance departs. What shall I say of wood and leaves, which dry out with time, yet cannot on that account be said by you to become worse? For they lose what produces smoke, and keep what makes a bright flame rise, and by that brightness, which you love so much, they testify that the good is purer in drier wood than in greener. From this it follows that either you deny that the part of God is greater in pure light than in smoky light, and so throw all your proofs into confusion, or you confess that it can happen that, from plants cut off or pulled up, if they are stored for a longer time, the nature of evil escapes more abundantly than that of good. And once this is granted, we shall hold that from plucked fruits a greater evil may depart, and so a greater good may remain in flesh.

Let this be said about time. For if that divine nature finds an occasion for flight through the stirring, kneading, and rubbing of these things, many similar things refute you, which become better by being stirred. Some people imitate wine with the juice of barley, which becomes best by being stirred. And indeed, what must by no means be passed over, this kind of drink makes people drunk very quickly: yet you have never said that the juice of barley is the gall of the princes. Flour is skillfully worked a little stiffly with a rather small amount of water, so that it becomes better by kneading, and, than which nothing more perverse can be said, whiter as the light flees. The confectioner works honey a long time, so that it reaches that whiteness and a less harmful and milder sweetness: explain how this happens as the good departs. And if you like to prove the presence of God not by sight, smell, and taste, but also by the delight of hearing, flesh supplies strings for lyres and bones for flutes, which become sonorous when dried, rubbed, and twisted. So the sweetness of music, which you claim came from the divine kingdoms, is supplied to us by the refuse of dead flesh, dried by time, thinned by rubbing, stretched by twisting: afflictions by which you preach that the divine substance escapes even from living things; which you say also happens by boiling them. Why then do boiled thistles not harm health at all? Are we to think that God, or a part of God, departs from them while they are cooked like this? Why should I go through the rest, all of which it is neither easy nor necessary to mention? For to whom does it not occur how many things are sweeter and healthier when cooked? Which ought not to be so if, as you think, they are deserted by the good through such stirrings.

I think you find nothing at all by which to prove to these bodily senses that meats are unclean and defile the souls of those who eat them because plucked fruits, after many stirrings, are turned into flesh; especially since you think the age and corruption of vinegar cleaner than wine, and we see that the boiled-down wine you drink is nothing else than cooked wine, which ought to be filthier than wine if the divine members depart from bodily things through movements and cookings. And if that is not so, there is no reason why you should think that fruits, when they are plucked, stored, handled, cooked, and digested, are deserted by the escaping good and therefore supply a very filthy matter for forming bodies.

And if you are not led by color, form, smell, and taste to judge that good is in these things, what else can you bring forward? Or is it a proof to you that a certain firmness and strength seems to be taken from these things when they are separated from the earth and handled? But if this moved you (although it can quickly be seen to be false, because of the increased firmness of some things after they have been taken from the earth, as has already been mentioned of wine, which becomes stronger with age), yet if this firmness moved you, as I said, you would prove that a more abundant part of God is in no food more than in meat. For athletes, to whom that strength and vigor is most necessary, do not live on vegetables and fruit, but on meat. Or because flesh is fed by trees, but trees are not fed by flesh, do you think that their bodies are better than ours? You do not consider a thing so plain, that shrubs become more luxuriant and fruitful, and crops richer, by the nourishment of dung, while in accusing flesh you seem to yourselves to say nothing more grievous than when you say it is a house of dung. So the things which are clean for you are nourished by what you proclaim to be much more unclean than the thing which is unclean for you.

And if you despise flesh because it is born after mating, then let the flesh of worms delight you, which are born so numerous and so large in fruits, in wood, and in the earth itself without any mating. But I do not know what this pretense is. For if flesh displeased you because it is formed by the union of father and mother, you would not say that those princes of darkness were born of the fruits of their trees, whom you certainly despise more than the meats you will not taste. For your opinion that all the souls of animals come from the food of their parents, from which prisons you boast that you set free the divine substance held in your food, tells very strongly against you, and drives you most urgently to eat meat. For why do you not set free, by forestalling them and eating, the souls which those who feast on meat are going to bind to a body? “But,” he says, “some of the good part is bound by them not from the meats but from the fruits they take with the meats.” What answer, then, seems to be given about the souls of lions, whose only food is flesh? “They drink,” he says, “and so that soul is drawn from the water and entangled in flesh.” What can be said of countless birds? What of eagles themselves, which feed only on flesh and need no drink? Here certainly he fails, and no answer can be found. For if the soul comes from food, and there are animals that bear young, which have no drink and whose only food is flesh, there is a soul in flesh which you, in your fashion, ought to help purify by eating flesh. Unless perhaps you think that the pig, because it is fed on fruits and drinks water, has a soul of light; while you maintain that a soul of darkness is in the eagle, to which the sun is most congenial, because it lives on flesh alone. O straits, O incredible absurdities! Into these you would surely not have fallen if, estranged from empty fables, you followed in abstinence from food what truth approves, so as to judge that delicate foods are to be refused for the sake of restraining desire, not of avoiding an uncleanness which does not exist.

For even if someone, little regarding the nature of things and the power of soul and body, were to grant you that the soul is defiled by a dish, still you grant that it becomes much more unclean through desire. What reason, then, or rather what madness, is it to drive from the number of the Elect a man who has perhaps tasted meat for the sake of health without any desire; while if he has desired to eat peppered truffles greedily, you could perhaps rebuke him only for immoderation, but not condemn him as a breaker of the seal? So it comes about that among your Elect there cannot be one who has been found to have eaten some part of a chicken, not out of desire but as a remedy; but there can be one who has himself betrayed that he longed vehemently for rich dishes and other cakes without meat. You keep, then, the one whom desire plunges in filth, and you do not keep the one whom the food itself, as you think, stains; though you confess that a far greater defilement comes from lust than from a dish: embracing the one who hangs gaping over sweetly seasoned produce and does not restrain himself; excluding the one who takes any human food indifferently, for the sake of suppressing hunger, without any desire, ready to take it and ready to lose it. Behold wonderful morals, behold excellent discipline, behold memorable temperance!

And your thinking it wicked if anyone besides the Elect touches for eating the foods which are offered to you, as if to be purified, how full of shamefulness, and sometimes of crime, is that? For often so much is given that it cannot easily be consumed by a few. And since it is thought sacrilege either to give what is left over to others or even to throw it away, you are thrust into great indigestion, wanting to purify, as it were, all that was given. Then, when you are distended and nearly bursting, you compel the boys who are under your discipline by a cruel domination to devour the remains: so much so that someone at Rome was charged with having killed wretched little children by forcing them to eat through such superstition. I would not believe this, did I not know how great a wickedness you think it either to give these things to others who are not Elect or even to have them thrown away. Hence there remains that necessity of eating, which leads almost daily to the most shameful indigestion, and sometimes even to homicide.

And while this is so, you even forbid giving bread to a beggar; yet you think money may be given out of mercy, or rather out of ill will. What shall I convict here first, cruelty or folly? For what if the matter happens in a place where food cannot be found for sale? That needy man will die of hunger, while you, wise and kind man, pity a cucumber more than a human being. This is surely (for what can I say more fittingly and plainly?) false mercy and true cruelty. Now let us look at the folly. What if he buys bread for himself with the coins you have given? Will not that divine part of yours suffer in him, who takes it from the seller, what it would have suffered if he had taken it from you? So that sinful beggar wraps in filth the part of God that longs to fly back, helped to so great a crime by your coins: and yet you, most prudent men, think it makes a difference whether you do not give a man who is about to commit murder a man to kill, but knowingly give him money with which to buy someone to kill. What can be added to this madness? For so it comes about that either the man dies, if he does not find food for sale, or the food itself dies, if he does find it: of which the one is true homicide, the other is your homicide, yet to be attributed to you as if both were true. And as for your not forbidding your Hearers to eat meat, while forbidding them to kill animals, what can be more foolish and more perverse? For if such food does not contaminate, take it yourselves too; if it does contaminate, what madness is it to think it a greater wickedness to free a pig's soul from its body than to stain a human soul with a pig's body?