Against Fate 7–11

As I was going through these things and driving the argument by such thoughts to absurdity, the philosopher who was talking with me cut short the argument as it was going on with a rush, and said: "Why do you fight against the evidence? Why do you not follow those who have observed the truth of the universe through numbers? If the hour of the birth of the one brought forth is taken exactly, they foretell in sequence the whole life of the one born: the time, the manner, the peculiarities of character, the dangerous circumstances, marriages and the begetting of children and the gaining of ranks, or again the opposite, childlessness and diseases and dishonours and shortness of life and the evils of poverty. Since the truth of these has been testified [by experience] and by the outcome, what argument do you still have for disbelieving the necessity of fate?"

I said I would inquire into the causes of such predictions a little later, and asked whether the cause of such outcomes is irrational and a matter of chance, or whether they find some reason too along with this observation, so that what happens does not happen beyond what is likely. "Very much so," he says; "there is reason in what happens. For when from the particular coincidence of the qualities in the stars such a constitution of body is formed in the one born, the one who has grasped exactly the contemplation of the heavenly things has foreseen both that this constitution would be formed in the child and that life could last to this measure, longer for the more robust constitution of body, and shorter again for the more sickly."

I laughed at what was said and told him: "You had escaped our notice, holding the fates to be the offspring of Galen and Hippocrates and the like. For they too, letting the motion of the stars go, foretell the future by conjecture from the subject: when the eyes are hollow and the temples [shrunk to the] skin, they foretell death. But for many," I said, "who were in a sickly state of body and were expected to die at any moment, the threads of such a fate have been spun back the other way by medicine; as Plato's account relates of the trainer Herodicus, that through his experience of gymnastics he was not able to restore his body to complete health, since his disease was mortal; but, always postponing by his devices the death that was at hand, he provided for himself not security of life but a prolonging of death. So he lasted even into old age, having contrived by a long death not to die. So by this argument too fate is not grasped by you as unbreakable, if some art is found that loosens the necessity."

"But," he says, "such an argument does nothing to undo the proof about fate from the predictions. For this too could be foretold by one who has examined the motion of the heavenly bodies exactly: so that to one death is foretold as certain, to another as doubtful." I said: "That is not how the argument of necessity maintains it. For the account of what may happen either way is one thing, and the account of the unchangeable another, which cannot be taken in matters that may happen either way; but either this certainly, or the other. To waver in one's hopes between both outcomes is far from the arguments of necessity." But I said this to him: "From where does he think the prediction of what will come about gets its credibility?" And he said: "Though you have often heard me go through it, you still ask about the same things now: that there are certain particular powers of the stars; and [does not] the ever-moving character of their course, through their particular interweaving, work countless differences of powers?"

"So the one brought into life by birth, according to the portion of time that met him, [has in life] of necessity whatever the power of that hour is grasped as holding, and has it in no other way."

"What, then," I said, "of the calamities in war, and earthquakes, and the falls of cities, and the shipwrecks, crew and all, of merchant ships carrying ten thousand measures, floods and conflagrations and chasms, and all such kinds of utter destruction? How will these save the account of prediction? How many disasters did life show in earlier times, and how many in our own? The flood in Noah's time, and the burning of Sodom? Or the Egyptian army sunk under the Red Sea? Or after these the slaughters of the foreigners, those countless killings of men? Or the death that came of itself in a short time on the Israelite people in many tens of thousands? Or the hundred and eighty-five thousand of the Assyrians, put to death in one moment of time, and the histories of the evils that followed, which befell in the Median and Greek calamities, in great sea battles and land battles, and all such things, whose memory becomes a teacher for those who come after? And even if we pass over all these, what our own life has recorded would be enough to testify to what is said. For who does not know the great metropolis of Bithynia, counted among the most eminent cities? Who is ignorant of broad and spacious Thrace, how war utterly destroyed the one, and earthquake with fire the other, in an instant of time? How many children were there, how many infants? Those of middle age, the old, free and slaves, rulers and subjects, rich, poor, healthy, sick: all were destroyed in one turn of time. The fire fed on all alike; for all, their houses became tombs. Where are those interweavings of the stars that define the differences of men's lives? Did one conjunction of the stars loose the birth pangs for all those, and did the Crab, rising at the hour, lay the portion on all? Yet the countless differences of age and rank testify that not all met birth at the same time as one another. If, then, the time of birth was different for each, while the sameness of the calamities admitted no variation from the cause in the birth, then by this too the doctrine of prediction is convicted of having no standing."

"But," he says, "there is a fate also of a ship and of a city and of a nation and of everything, spinning what follows according to the first setting, and the things contained are of necessity disposed together with what contains them."

"What, then, is the birth goddess of shipbuilding? What is the birth of a city? From what beginning do we see the coming-to-be of a nation? The woodcutter cuts the timber; the timber merchant trades in it; the [shipwright] buys the material with money, and divides the art by the work. One cuts the wood into planks with the saw; another builds the keel; another spends the effort of the construction on the bracing cables; another finishes off the prow, and another the stern. One cares for the mast, another for the yard; [the rudders] are the concern of the helmsman; others make the decking and the sail-cloth; others add the adornment of painting; others smear the joints with pitch and make the [hold] in the middle. Surely they do not each do their own work at the same time, but one now, others a little later; for one the work has already reached its end, while another is seen at work. When, then, will the wise set fate over the ship? When the wood is bought, or when it is cut, or when it is handled, or when the iron is put to it, or when it is fitted together with the bolts? Since the tasks in shipbuilding are many and different and do not come about at the same time as one another, what time will he assign to fate, so that, having received the necessity of sinking, it may destroy along

with itself those who sail in it? And what would you say about cities? When do they think fate takes hold of a city? When some plan of settlement comes to those who are eager for it? When they reckon up the fitness of the place, or when they mark out the plan, or when they now bring iron to the work, or stones and timber? Which of these is the beginning of its constitution? And what would you say of the nation that was destroyed by the calamities of war? Who, or from where, was the portion that took its beginning against them, which slaughtered some and enslaved others through captivity? How did Hannibal or Caesar, or Alexander of Macedon, among those against whom they campaigned, produce an equality of fate for all, so far prevailing over that necessity that all were brought together to the same measures of evil?

That to think the fates of cities make conjunctions of stars in the falls of earthquakes is an argument beyond what is reasonable, one may see from this. Who does not know that such sufferings of the earth occur not only in inhabited places but also in uninhabited ones? If anyone knows by his own experience the mountain of the Sangarians lying on the borders of the Bithynians, or has heard of it from report, he will find the truth of the argument: that along the very road it becomes a fearful sight for travellers. Such are the sufferings around the lands of the Paphlagonians; in some places there are human dwellings by these chasms, but in many the place is shown bare of inhabitants in such a suffering. And why must I [speak] in detail [of the] Cypriots, Pisidians, and Achaeans, among whom there are many proofs of what is said? But we have mentioned these things for this reason, that all such things are sufferings of the earth. If it should happen that there is a human dwelling in the place, of every necessity those too [share in] the misfortune of the place; but if it is free of inhabitants, the misfortune about the place brings no harm to men. What, then, is the necessity of fate, when both inhabited and uninhabited places suffer such a suffering alike?

If they were able to show that the whole earth was made part by part and not all at once, their vain talk might perhaps have had an opening: that when this part of the earth was being created, with this interweaving of the stars fitted to it, this or that of necessity happened. But since all things are grasped together with one another, heaven, earth, sea, and, according to the word of Moses, the earth even comes before the making and movement of the stars, how will they refer the cause of the partial accidents on earth to the movement of the stars? If, then, the earth is of the same age as the stars and draws from there no cause either of falling or of remaining, and if such sufferings occur in particular outlines of places, then it is not a necessity of fate but some other particular cause that comes about in such accidents. When, then, the earth suffers something of the kind and works such calamities, [what will they say], those who worship fate and declare that the movement of the stars presides over beings?

How is it that there the infant, the babe, the youth, the man, the father, the old man, the well-born, the noble, the hireling, the prisoner are hindered neither by the time of birth nor by any difference of rank from an equal share in the evils?

Besides this, who does not know that intercourse with daughters, marriage with sisters, and lawlessness with mothers are the last extreme of every pollution? If this happened by some necessity of portion, it would surely have been ventured in our regions too. But since such a pollution is ventured only by the nation of the Persians and those who have been taught their customs, it is plain in consequence that each one's free choice becomes his portion and fate, choosing by its own authority what it thinks fit. And besides this, so that they may not be able to say even this, that according to the particular inclinations of the regions there are certain movements of the stars, and for this reason some marry their mothers, [others ...] and eat men, the position of the stars falling particularly on them (even if such an argument belongs to those wholly uneducated and unexamined in the contemplation of beings, who think that the lot from above is stamped on them according to the particular outlines of the earth; for so earthly things would be found more governing than heavenly ones, if those were thought to be according to these), nevertheless we shall add this too for the refutation of their deceived supposition. The [nation] of the Jews [is scattered over] almost all parts of the earth, [eastern, western], southern, northern; almost all the nations are mixed with the Jews living among them. How, then, did no necessity of the stars in any of them prevail to grant any one of that nation freedom from circumcision; but in the countless interweavings of the stars every child born is surely in the same state, nature undergoing the cutting at the appointed period of days?

He said: "We have not yet examined by what reason things held by laws among many nations escape the necessity from the stars. But the prediction of what will come about would not be thought a small proof that what is portioned to each is inviolable. For how did so-and-so, having learned beforehand that he would live this number of years and meet such chances in life, [know it], unless some necessity had spun these things to happen to him in every case, making it plain to the one who foretold it through the particular observation of what was marked by number?"

I said that it was better to seem ignorant in such matters than to give an occasion for laughter to those more ignorant of our doctrines; but, caring little for those who make our affairs a laughingstock, I would set out briefly, as far as I could, the whole cause of this.

There is a power hostile by nature to the race of men, known from what is opposite to the good nature. One could present countless proofs of this from evident facts; but I do not think it necessary at the present time to go through in sequence everything by which this is believed to be so. Since the divine nature is seen in every good thought and name, from which come life, light, truth, the just and wise and incorruptible, and everything good that can be grasped in thought, being this and granting this, the power known from the opposites is grasped as being seen in all things that are opposed to each of the goods: so that instead of life it brings death, instead of truth deceit, and instead of each of the better things the evil set against it, among men themselves. For this is dear to it, whatever by nature becomes destruction for men.

As those who do harm with poisons often sweeten the destroying drug with honey, not taking pains to please the taste of the one harmed, but to steal away the sensation of what destroys, so too this destroying nature, having as its aim to make man stand away from the good nature, puts on the forms of certain good things, covering the hidden reason of its deceit with predictions and cures, so that the wretched race of men, attending to this and thinking it good, may have no desire for what is truly good by nature. For this reason, whatever form of foreknowledge someone happens to have accepted beforehand through some deceit, the deceitful power of demons answers according to it, in the inspection of livers and in [the observation of birds, in dreams and in omens], [none] of these foretelling what follows in the same way, but each differently. As, then, the one who signifies the future by the liver, the one who guesses beforehand what will be by some chance utterance, or the one who looks to the flight of the bird, does not claim to foretell such things by the necessity of fate, in the same way, since the cause that pursues this kind of prediction is one, as has been said, I mean the deceitful activity of demons, the power of fate is not shown because one of the things said once happened by chance to come true (if indeed it came true at all); since then every kind of prediction might reasonably be established as having its strength from fate, so that for us the dream would be one fate, the observation from twitchings another, and another made up from omens or chance utterances or certain signs. But if nothing in those cases prevents there being prediction and there not being fate, neither would a prediction from number by the casters of nativities be sufficient proof [of fate], [especially since] such things do not easily come true.

And yet the predictions given by those who profess such things are neither exact nor free of doubt, but they [prepare] many retreats for themselves in the outcome, in case the word should be refuted to the contrary; and those who care for these things devise in advance some technical excuses for themselves, so as to reckon the failure not to the error of the science but to the noting of the hour. And their predictions are for the most part oblique and [ambiguous], so that whatever comes out may seem to have been foretold. For often the one who has examined the hour of birth has foretold distinction and pre-eminence above others; then, when this man came to be in some extraordinary calamities, he maintained that he had not erred at all in his prediction, for the man had more than others in his share of evils. Of these things the history of our own time is a witness. When the emperor Valens held the rule of the Romans, some such deceit stirred a certain man to revolt against the rule. He set out having the prediction of the casters of nativities as provision for his daring; and the end of the attempt was such that he, who had been made known for the greatest offices, became the more famous in the greatness of his calamity; and this was thought by the many to be a confirmation of the casting of nativities, that greatness of calamity befell the man instead of greatness of goods.

For my part, I do not yet make it a great proof that the doctrine of fate does not stand that predictions about these things turn out mistaken; but since the deceitful power of demons contrives predictions by many other devices too. For there is a prophetic water, working derangement and madness in those who taste it, and a vapour coming up from below through some opening, which, if it came into a woman's inward parts, made her belly swell and worked an ecstasy of the mind and a derangement of the settled state. All these seemed divine and prophetic to the deceived; and of those who guess the future by certain signs from the liver or from fire, or of those who look to the flights of birds, no one ascribed the power of prediction to fate, but they reckon such a thing to some demonic possession. So I say: either there is no prediction at all, because predictions are refuted by many contrary instances; or, if someone shows it to foretell what will come about, then what we think must be held of each of the others, we must hold of this kind of prediction too. For in all these alike it is the same, to err in most cases and to seem in some not to lead the prediction outside the truth of what will come about; and the aim is achieved alike by the deceitful nature of the demons, through this and every device. For to make man stand away from looking to God, and from preparing from there for himself the portion of goods, is pursued by the demons above all. So the persuasion of the easily deceived that the things of life lie not in the divine will but in the particular interweaving of the stars and the power flowing from there looks most of all to the aim of the harmful nature of the demons. If, then, it pleases the demons to make man stand away from God, and the error about these things does make him stand away, it is clearly shown to be a demonic activity, deceiving through deceit those who think that all power is in these things, and toward the all-powerful authority of God [do not ...]