Adversus Coloten

The doctrine then of retaining the assent is not, as Colotes thinks, a fable or an invention of rash and lightheaded young men who please themselves in babbling and prating; but a certain habit and disposition of men who desire to keep themselves from falling into error, not leaving the judgment at a venture to such suspected and inconstant senses, nor suffering themselves to be deceived by those who hold that in uncertain matters things which do not appear are credible and ought to be believed, when they see so great obscurity and uncertainty in things which appear. But the infinity you assert is a fable, and so indeed are the images you dream of; and he breeds in young men rashness and self-conceitedness, who writ of Pythocles, not yet eighteen years of age, that there was not in all Greece a better or more excellent nature, that he admirably well expressed his conceptions, and that he was in other respects like a woman, — praying that all these extraordinary endowments of the young man might not work him hatred

and envy. But these are sophisters and arrogant, who write so impudently and proudly against great and excellent personages. I confess indeed, that Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Democritus contradicted those who went before them; but never durst any man besides Colotes set forth with such an insolent title as this against all at once.

Whence it comes to pass that, like to such as have offended some Divinity, confessing his fault, he says thus towards the end of his book: Those who have established laws and ordinances and instituted monarchies and other governments in towns and cities, have placed human life in great repose and security and delivered it from many troubles; and if any one should go about to take this away, we should lead the life of savage beasts, and should be every one ready to eat up one another as we meet. For these are the very words of Colotes, though neither justly nor truly spoken. For if any one, taking away the laws, should leave us nevertheless the doctrines of Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and Heraclitus, we should be far from mutually devouring one another and leading the life of beasts. For we should fear dishonest things, and should for honesty alone venerate justice, the Gods, our superiors, and magistrates, believing that we have spirits and Daemons who are the guardians and superintendents of human life, esteeming all the gold that is upon and within the earth not to be equivalent to virtue; and doing that willingly by reason, as Xenocrates says, which we now do by force and through fear of the law. When then will our life become savage, unsocial, and bestial When, the laws being taken away, there shall be left doctrines inciting men to pleasure; when the world shall be thought not to be ruled and governed by Divine Providence; when those men shall be esteemed wise who spit at honesty if it is not joined with pleasure; and when such

discourses and sentences as these shall be scoffed at and derided:

For Justice has an eye which all things sees;

and again:

God near us stands, and views whate’er we do;

and once more: God, as antiquity has delivered to us, holding the beginning, middle, and end of the universe, makes a direct line, walking according to Nature. After him follows Justice, a punisher of those who have been deficient in their duties by transgressing the divine law.

For they who contemn these things as if they were fables, and think that the sovereign good of man consists about the belly, and in those other avenues by which pleasure is admitted, are such as stand in need of the law, and fear, and stripes, and some king, prince, or magistrate, having in his hand the sword of justice; to the end that they may not devour their neighbors through their gluttony, rendered confident by their atheistical impiety. For this is the life of brutes, because brute beasts know nothing better nor more honest than pleasure, understand not the justice of the Gods, nor revere the beauty of virtue; but if Nature has bestowed on them any point of courage, subtlety, or activity, they make use of it for the satisfaction of their fleshly pleasure and the accomplishment of their lusts. And the wise Metrodorus believes that this should be so, for he says: All the fine, subtle, and ingenious inventions of the soul have been found out for the pleasure and delight of the flesh, or for the hopes of attaining to it and enjoying it, and every act which tends not to this end is vain and unprofitable. The laws being by such discourses and philosophical reasons as these taken away, there wants nothing to a beast-like life but lions’ paws, wolves’ teeth, oxen’s paunches, and camels’ necks; and these passions and doctrines do the beasts themselves, for want of speech

and letters, express by their bellowings, neighings, and brayings, all their voice being for their belly and the pleasure of their flesh, which they embrace and rejoice in either present or future; unless it be perhaps some animal which naturally takes delight in chattering and garrulity.