De Defectu Oraculorum

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. IV. Goodwin, William W., editor; Midgley, Robert translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.

As to the other oppositions which the Stoics make, who should fear them? As when they demand, how it is possible to maintain a fatal destiny and a divide providence, and how it can be otherwise but that we must admit of several Jupiters, when we assert the plurality of worlds. Now if there be an inconveniency in admitting many Jupiters, their opinions will appear far more absurd; for they imagine there are suns, and moons, Apollos, Dianas, and Neptunes innumerable, in innumerable changes and revolutions of worlds. But where is the necessity which lies upon us to grant that there must be many Jupiters if there be many worlds, seeing that each of them may be subject to a sovereign governor of the whole, a God endued with a suitable mind and ability, like to him whom we name the Lord and Father of all things? Or what shall hinder us from asserting that the several worlds must be subject to the providence and destiny of Jupiter, and that he has an eye to all things, directing all, and administering to them the principles, seeds, and causes of all things which are made? For, while we often see here a body composed of several other distinct bodies,—for example,

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the assembly of a town, an army, or a chorus,— in each of which bodies there is life, prudence, and understanding; so it cannot be impossible that, in the whole universe, ten or fifty or a hundred worlds which may be in it should all use the same reason, and all correspond with the same principle. For this order and disposition is very suitable to the Gods; for we must not make them kings of a swarm of bees who never stir out of their hives, or keep them fast imprisoned in matter, like those who affirm the Gods to be certain dispositions of the air, and powers of waters and fire, infused and mixed within, which arise and spring up together with the world, and in time are to be burnt and end with it,—not affording them the liberty of coachmen and pilots, but nailing them down to their bases like statues and images. For they enclose the Gods within matter, and that in so strict a manner as makes them liable to all the changes, alterations, and decays of it.

It is certainly more agreeable to the nature of the Gods to say that they are wholly at liberty, like Castor and Pollux, ready to succor such as are overtaken by bad weather at sea; for when they appear, the winds cease and the waves are calmed. Not that they navigate and are partakers of the same peril; but they only appear in the sky, and the danger is over. Thus do the Gods visit each world, and rule and provide for all things in them. Jupiter in Homer cast not his eyes far from the city of Troy into Thrace, and to the nomad Scythians along the river Ister; but the true Jupiter has several seemly and agreeable passages for his majesty from one world into another, not looking into the infinite vacuum without, nor regarding himself and nothing else, as some have imagined, but weighing the deeds of Gods and men, and the motions and revolutions of the stars. For the Divinity does not hate variety and changes, but takes great pleasure in them, as one may conjecture by the circuits, conversions, and mutations

observable in the heavens. And therefore I conclude that the infinite number of worlds is a chimera, which has not the least probability of truth, and which cannot by any means admit of any God, but must be wholly guided by chance and fortune. Whereas the government and providence of a certain definite number of worlds has nothing in it that seems more laborious and unworthy than that which is employed in the direction of one alone, which is transformed, renewed, and reformed an infinite number of times.

Having said this, I paused. And Philippus immediately cried out: Whether this be certain or not, I will not be too positive; but if we carry God beyond one world, it would more gratify me to know why we should make him the Creator only of five worlds and no more, and what proportion this number bears to that of the worlds, than to know why the word E I was inscribed upon this temple. For this is neither a triangular, a quadrate, a perfect, nor a cubic number, neither does it yield any elegancy to such as are delighted in this kind of sciences. As to what concerns the argument dawn from the number of elements, which Plato seems to have touched upon, it is obscure and improbable, and will not afford this consequence,—that, as there are formed from matter five sorts of regular bodies, which have equal angles and equal sides, and are environed with equal superficies, so there were from the beginning five worlds, made and formed of these five bodies.

Yet Theodorus the Solian, said I, when he reads Plato’s mathematics to his scholars, both keeps to the text and clearly expounds it, when he saith, the pyramid, octahedron, dodecahedron. icosahedron (which Plato lays down as the first bodies) are all beautiful both in their proportions and equalities; Nature cannot contrive and make better than these, nor perhaps so good. Yet they have not all the same constitution and origin; for the least

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and slightest of the five is the pyramid; the greatest, which has most parts, is the dodecahedron; and of the other two, the icosahedron is greater than the octahedron by more than twofold, if you compare their number of triangles. And therefore it is impossible they should be all made at once, of one and the same matter; for the smallest and most subtile have been certainly more pliable to the hand of the workman who moved and fashioned the matter, and consequently were sooner made and shaped, than those which have stronger parts and a greater mass of bodies, and whose composition was more laborious and difficult, like the dodecahedron. Whence it follows that the pyramid was the first body, and not one of the others, which were by nature last produced. Now the way also to avoid this absurdity is to separate and divide matter into five worlds; here the pyramid (for she is the first and most simple), there the octahedron, and there the icosahedron; and out of that which exists first in every one of these the rest draw their original by the concretion of parts, by which every thing is changed into every thing, as Plato himself shows us by examples throughout. But it will suffice us briefly to learn thus much. Air is engendered by the extinction of fire, and the same being subtilized and rarefied produceth fire. Now by the seeds of these two we may find out the passions and transmutations of all. The seminary or beginning of fire is the pyramid, consisting of twenty-four first triangles; and the octahedron is the seminary of the air, consisting of forty-eight triangles of the same kind. So that the one element of air stands upon two of fire, joined together and condensed. And again, one body or element of air is divided into two of fire, which again, becoming thick and hard, is changed into water; so that, throughout, that which comes first into light gives easily birth unto the rest by transmutation. And so it comes to pass, that there is not merely one first principle
of all things; but one thing is so mixed with the origin of another, in the several changes and alterations of nature by motion, that the same name and denomination belong equally to all.