For as there is no wax, no silver, no brass which cannot be converted into something else, whatever is composed of wax, or silver, or brass may cease to be what it is. By the same reason, if all the elements are mutable, every body is mutable.
Now, according to your doctrine, all the elements are mutable; all bodies, therefore, are mutable. But if there were any body immortal, then all bodies would not be mutable. Every body, then, is mortal; for every body is either water, air, fire, or earth, or composed of the four elements together, or of some of them. Now, there is not one of all these elements that does not perish; for earthly bodies are fragile: water is so soft that the least shock will separate its parts, and fire and air yield to the least impulse, and are subject to dissolution; besides, any of these elements perish when converted into another nature, as when water is formed from earth, the air from water, and the sky from air, and when they change in the same manner back again. Therefore, if there is nothing but what is perishable in the composition of all animals, there is no animal eternal.
XIII. But, not to insist on these arguments, there is no 329animal to be found that had not a beginning, and will not have an end; for every animal being sensitive, they are consequently all sensible of cold and heat, sweet and bitter; nor can they have pleasing sensations without being subject to the contrary. As, therefore, they receive pleasure, they likewise receive pain; and whatever being is subject to pain must necessarily be subject to death. It must be allowed, therefore, that every animal is mortal.
Besides, a being that is not sensible of pleasure or pain cannot have the essence of an animal; if, then, on the one hand, every animal must be sensible of pleasure and pain, and if, on the other, every being that has these sensations cannot be immortal, we may conclude that as there is no animal insensible, there is none immortal. Besides, there is no animal without inclination and aversion—an inclination to that which is agreeable to nature, and an aversion to the contrary: there are in the case of every animal some things which they covet, and others they reject. What they reject are repugnant to their nature, and consequently would destroy them. Every animal, therefore, is inevitably subject to be destroyed. There are innumerable arguments to prove that whatever is sensitive is perishable; for cold, heat, pleasure, pain, and all that affects the sense, when they become excessive, cause destruction. Since, then, there is no animal that is not sensitive, there is none immortal.
XIV. The substance of an animal is either simple or compound; simple, if it is composed only of earth, of fire, of air, or of water (and of such a sort of being we can form no idea); compound, if it is formed of different elements, which have each their proper situation, and have a natural tendency to it—this element tending towards the highest parts, that towards the lowest, and another towards the middle. This conjunction may for some time subsist, but not forever; for every element must return to its first situation. No animal, therefore, is eternal.
But your school, Balbus, allows fire only to be the sole active principle; an opinion which I believe you derive from Heraclitus, whom some men understand in one sense, some in another: but since he seems unwilling to be understood, we will pass him by. You Stoics, then, say that 330fire is the universal principle of all things; that all living bodies cease to live on the extinction of that heat; and that throughout all nature whatever is sensible of that heat lives and flourishes. Now, I cannot conceive that bodies should perish for want of heat, rather than for want of moisture or air, especially as they even die through excess of heat; so that the life of animals does not depend more on fire than on the other elements.
However, air and water have this quality in common with fire and heat. But let us see to what this tends. If I am not mistaken, you believe that in all nature there is nothing but fire, which is self-animated. Why fire rather than air, of which the life of animals consists, and which is called from thence anima,[248] the soul? But how is it that you take it for granted that life is nothing but fire? It seems more probable that it is a compound of fire and air. But if fire is self-animated, unmixed with any other element, it must be sensitive, because it renders our bodies sensitive; and the same objection which I just now made will arise, that whatever is sensitive must necessarily be susceptible of pleasure and pain, and whatever is sensible of pain is likewise subject to the approach of death; therefore you cannot prove fire to be eternal.
You Stoics hold that all fire has need of nourishment, without which it cannot possibly subsist; that the sun, moon, and all the stars are fed either with fresh or salt waters; and the reason that Cleanthes gives why the sun is retrograde, and does not go beyond the tropics in the summer or winter, is that he may not be too far from his sustenance. This I shall fully examine hereafter; but at present we may conclude that whatever may cease to be cannot of its own nature be eternal; that if fire wants sustenance, it will cease to be, and that, therefore, fire is not of its own nature eternal.
XV. After all, what kind of a Deity must that be who 331is not graced with one single virtue, if we should succeed in forming this idea of such a one? Must we not attribute prudence to a Deity? a virtue which consists in the knowledge of things good, bad, and indifferent. Yet what need has a being for the discernment of good and ill who neither has nor can have any ill? Of what use is reason to him? of what use is understanding? We men, indeed, find them useful to aid us in finding out things which are obscure by those which are clear to us; but nothing can be obscure to a Deity. As to justice, which gives to every one his own, it is not the concern of the Gods; since that virtue, according to your doctrine, received its birth from men and from civil society. Temperance consists in abstinence from corporeal pleasures, and if such abstinence hath a place in heaven, so also must the pleasures abstained from. Lastly, if fortitude is ascribed to the Deity, how does it appear? In afflictions, in labor, in danger? None of these things can affect a God. How, then, can we conceive this to be a Deity that makes no use of reason, and is not endowed with any virtue?
However, when I consider what is advanced by the Stoics, my contempt for the ignorant multitude vanishes. For these are their divinities. The Syrians worshipped a fish. The Egyptians consecrated beasts of almost every kind. The Greeks deified many men; as Alabandus[249] at Alabandæ, Tenes at Tenedos; and all Greece pay divine honors to Leucothea (who was before called Ino), to her son Palæmon, to Hercules, to Æsculapius, and to the Tyndaridæ; our own people to Romulus, and to many others, who, as citizens newly admitted into the ancient body, they imagine have been received into heaven.