Complete Works (324 page)

No one who believes in gods as the law directs ever voluntarily commits an unholy act or lets any lawless word pass his lips. If he does, it is because of one of three possible misapprehensions: either, as I said, he believes (1) the gods do not exist, or (2) that they exist but take no thought for the human race, or (3) that they are influenced by sacrifices and supplications and can easily be won over.

[c] C
LINIAS
: So what’s the right thing for us to do or say to these people?

A
THENIAN
: My friend, let’s listen to the ridicule and scorn with which I imagine they put their case.

C
LINIAS
: What ridicule?

A
THENIAN
: They’ll probably go in for bantering, and address us like this: ‘Gentlemen of Athens, of Sparta and of Crete, you are quite right. Some of us are indeed absolute atheists, whereas others do believe in such gods as you describe. So we demand of you what you yourselves demanded of the laws, that before you resort to threats and bullying, you should try [d] to convince us by argument and cogent proofs that gods do exist, and that they are in fact above being seduced by gifts into turning a blind eye to injustice. But you see, it’s precisely in these and similar terms that we hear them spoken of by the most highly thought-of poets and orators and prophets and priests and thousands of other people too. That’s why most of us make little effort to avoid crime, but commit it first and try to put [e] things right afterwards. So from lawgivers who profess to use the velvet glove rather than the iron fist we claim the right to be tackled by persuasion first. Even if, when you state your case for the existence of gods, your elegance of expression is only marginally superior to your opponents’, persuade us that your argument is a better expression of the
truth
, and then perhaps we’ll believe you. Isn’t that fair enough? Well then, try to reply to our challenge.’

C
LINIAS
: Well sir, don’t you think that the gods’ existence is an easy truth to explain?

A
THENIAN
: How?
[886]

C
LINIAS
: Well, just look at the earth and the sun and the stars and the universe in general; look at the wonderful procession of the seasons and its articulation into years and months! Anyway, you know that all Greeks and all foreigners are unanimous in recognizing the existence of gods.

A
THENIAN
: My dear sir, when I think of the contempt these scoundrels will probably feel for us, I’m overcome with embarrassment—no, I withdraw that word: let’s say they ‘alarm’ me—because you don’t appreciate the real grounds of their opposition to you. You think it’s just because they can’t resist temptation and desire that they are attracted to the godless life. [b]

C
LINIAS
: What other reason could there be, sir?

A
THENIAN
: A reason which you two, living rather off the beaten track as you do, simply wouldn’t appreciate. It will have completely passed you by.

C
LINIAS
: What are you talking about now?

A
THENIAN
: A form of ignorance that causes no end of trouble, but which passes for the height of wisdom.

C
LINIAS
: How do you mean?

A
THENIAN
: In Athens a number of written works are current which are not found in your states (which are, I understand, too well run to tolerate [c] them). The subject of these writings (some of which are in verse, others in prose) is theology. The most ancient accounts, after relating how the primitive substances—the sky and so on—came into being, pass rapidly on to a description of the birth of the gods and the details of how once born they subsequently treated each other. On some subjects, the antiquity of these works makes them difficult to criticize, whatever their influence—good or bad—on their audience; but when it comes to the respect and [d] attention due to parents, I for one shall never recommend them either as a good influence or as a statement of the honest truth. Still, there’s no need to bother with this old material: we may freely allow it to be arranged and recounted in any way the gods find amusing. But the principles of our modern pundits do need to be denounced as a pernicious influence. Just look at the effects of their arguments! When you and I present our proofs for the existence of gods and adduce what you adduced—sun, moon, stars and earth—and argue they are gods and divine beings, the [e] proselytes of these clever fellows will say that these things are just earth and stones, and are incapable of caring for human affairs, however much our plausible rhetoric has managed to dress them up.

C
LINIAS
: Even if it were unique, sir, that theory you’ve just described would make trouble. But as similar doctrines in fact exist in their thousands, the situation is even worse.

A
THENIAN
: What now, then? What’s our reply? What must we do? It’s as though we were on trial before a bench of godless judges, defending
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ourselves on a charge arising out of our legislation. ‘It’s monstrous,’ they say to us, ‘that you should pass laws asserting that gods exist.’ Shall we defend ourselves? Or shall we ignore them and get back to our legislation, so that the mere preface doesn’t turn out longer than the actual code? You see, if we’re going to postpone passing the appropriate legislation until we’ve proved properly to those with a taste for impiety all the points they insisted we had to cover, so that they feel uneasy and begin to find their views going sour on them, our explanation will be anything but brief.

[b] C
LINIAS
: Even so, sir, as we’ve often said in the comparatively short time we’ve been talking, there’s no reason at the moment to prefer a brief explanation to a full one: after all, no one’s ‘breathing down our neck’ (as they say). It would be an awful farce, if we appeared to be putting brevity first and quality second. It’s vital that somehow or other we should make out a plausible case for supposing that gods do exist, that they are good, and that they respect justice more than men do. Such a demonstration would constitute just about the best and finest preamble our penal code [c] could have. So let’s overcome our reluctance and unhurriedly exert what powers of persuasion we have in this field, devoting ourselves wholeheartedly to a full exposition of our case.

A
THENIAN
: How keen and insistent you are! I take it you’re suggesting we should now offer up a prayer for the success of our exposition, which we certainly can’t delay any longer.

Well now, how
can
one argue for the existence of gods without getting angry? You see, one inevitably gets irritable and annoyed with these people [d] who have put us to the trouble, and continue to put us to the trouble, of composing these explanations. If only they believed the stories which they had as babes and sucklings from their nurses and mothers! These almost literally ‘charming’ stories were told partly for amusement, partly in full earnest; the children heard them related in prayer at sacrifices, and saw acted representations of them—a part of the ceremony a child always loves to see and hear; and they saw their own parents praying with the utmost seriousness for themselves and their families in the firm conviction that their prayers and supplications were addressed to gods who really did [e] exist. At the rising and setting of the sun and moon the children saw and heard Greeks and foreigners, in happiness and misery alike, all prostrate at their devotions; far from supposing gods to be a myth, the worshippers believed their existence to be so sure as to be beyond suspicion. When some people contemptuously brush aside all this evidence without a single good reason to support them (as even a half-wit can see) and oblige us to
[888]
deliver this address—well, how could one possibly admonish them and at the same time teach them the basic fact about gods, their existence, without using the rough edge of one’s tongue? Still, we must make the best of it: we don’t want both sides maddened at once, they by their greed for pleasure, we by our anger at their condition. So our address to men with such a depraved outlook should be calm, and run as follows. Let’s use honeyed words and abate our anger, and pretend we’re addressing just one representative individual.

‘Now then, my lad, you’re still young, and as time goes on you’ll come [b] to adopt opinions diametrically opposed to those you hold now. Why not wait till later on to make up your mind about these important matters? The most important of all, however lightly you take it at the moment, is to get the right ideas about the gods and so live a good life:—otherwise you’ll live a bad one. In this connection, I want first to make a crucial and irrefutable point. It’s this: you’re not unique. Neither you nor your friends are the first to have held this opinion about the gods. It’s an illness from which the world is never free, though the number of sufferers varies from time to time. I’ve met a great many of them, and let me assure you that [c] none of them who have been convinced early in life that gods do not exist have ever retained that belief into old age. However, it is true that some men (but not many) do persist in laboring under the impression either that although the gods exist they are indifferent to human affairs, or alternatively that they are not indifferent but can easily be won over by prayers and sacrifices. Be guided by me: you’ll only see this business in its truest light if you wait to gather your information from all sources, [d] particularly the legislator, and then see which theory represents the truth. In the meantime, don’t venture any impiety where gods are concerned. You may take it that it will be up to your lawgiver, now and in the future, to try to enlighten you on precisely these topics.’

C
LINIAS
: So far, sir, that’s very well said.

A
THENIAN
: Certainly, Megillus and Clinias, but what an amazing doctrine we’ve got involved in, without noticing it!

C
LINIAS
: What doctrine do you mean?

[e] A
THENIAN
: I mean the one which many people regard as the highest truth of all.

C
LINIAS
: Please be more explicit.

A
THENIAN
: Some people, I believe, account for all things which have come to exist, all things which are coming into existence now, and all things which will do so in the future, by attributing them either to nature, art, or chance.

C
LINIAS
: Isn’t that satisfactory?

[889]
A
THENIAN
: Oh, I expect they’ve got it more or less right—they’re clever fellows. Still, let’s keep track of them, and see what’s really implied in the theories of that school of thought.

C
LINIAS
: By all means.

A
THENIAN
: The facts show—so they claim—that the greatest and finest things in the world are the products of nature and chance, the creations of art being comparatively trivial. The works of nature, they say, are grand and primary, and constitute a ready-made source for all the minor works constructed and fashioned by art—
art
efacts, as they’re generally called.

C
LINIAS
: How do you mean?

[b] A
THENIAN
: I’ll put it more precisely. They maintain that fire, water, earth and air owe their existence to nature and chance, and in no case to art, and that it is by means of these entirely inanimate substances
²
that the secondary physical bodies—the earth, sun, moon and stars—have been produced. These substances moved at random, each impelled by virtue of its own inherent properties, which depended on various suitable amalgamations of hot and cold, dry and wet, soft and hard, and all other haphazard combinations that inevitably resulted when the opposites were [c] mixed. This is the process to which all the heavens and everything that is in them owe their birth, and the consequent establishment of the four seasons led to the appearance of all plants and living creatures. The cause of all this, they say, was neither intelligent planning, nor a deity, nor art, but—as we’ve explained—nature and chance. Art, the brain-child of these living creatures, arose later, the mortal child of mortal beings; it has produced, [d] at a late stage, various amusing trifles that are hardly real at all—mere insubstantial images of the same order as the arts themselves (I mean for instance the productions of the arts of painting and music, and all their ancillary skills). But if there are in fact some techniques that produce worthwhile results, they are those that
co-operate
with nature, like medicine and farming and physical training. This school of thought maintains that government, in particular, has very little to do with nature, and is largely [e] a matter of art; similarly legislation is never a natural process but is based on technique, and its enactments are quite artificial.

C
LINIAS
: What are you driving at?

A
THENIAN
: My dear fellow, the first thing these people say about the gods is that they are artificial concepts corresponding to nothing in nature; they are legal fictions, which moreover vary very widely according to the different conventions people agree on when they produce a legal code. In particular, goodness according to nature and goodness according to the law are two different things, and there is no natural standard of justice at all. On the contrary, men are always wrangling about their moral standards and altering them, and every change introduced becomes binding from the moment it’s made, regardless of the fact that it is entirely artificial,
[890]
and based on convention, not nature in the slightest degree. All this, my friends, is the theme of experts—as our young people regard them—who in their prose and poetry maintain that anything one can get away with by force is absolutely justified. This is why we experience outbreaks of impiety among the young, who assume that the kind of gods the law tells them to believe in do not exist; this is why we get treasonable efforts to convert people to the ‘true natural life’, which is essentially nothing but a life of conquest over others, not one of service to your neighbor as the law enjoins.