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for that this is against sense. And yet they make God, who is good, the beginning of evils.
For matter, they say,
produced not any evil of itself; for it is without quality, and whatever differences it has, it has received them all from that which moves and forms it. But that which moves and forms it is the reason dwelling in it, since it is not made to move and form itself. So that of necessity evil, if it come by nothing, must have been produced from that which has no being; but if by some moving principle, from God. But if they think that Jupiter has not the command of his parts nor uses every one of them according to his reason, they speak against common sense, and imagine an animal, many of whose parts are not subservient to his will but use their own operations and actions, to which the whole gives no incitation nor begins their motion. For there is nothing which has life so ill compacted as that, against its will, its feet shall go, its tongue speak, its horns push, or its teeth bite. The most of which things God must of necessity suffer, if the wicked, being parts of him, do against his will lie, cheat, rob, and murder one another. But if, as Chrysippus says, the very least part cannot possibly behave itself otherwise than according to Jupiter’s pleasure, and if every living thing is so framed by Nature as to rest and move according as he inclines it and as he turns, stays, and disposes it,
DIADUMENUS.
Nor is this the worst; but they are angry with Menander for saying upon the stage,The chief beginning of men’s miseries
Are things exceeding good;
This saying is more impious than the first.
1
For it were more tolerable to say that many parts of Jupiter are, through his weakness and want of power, hurried on to do many absurd things against his nature and will, than that there is not any intemperance or wickedness of which Jupiter is not the cause. Moreover, since they affirm the world to be a city and the stars citizens, if this be so, there must be also tribes-men and magistrates, the sun must be some consul, and the evening star a praetor or mayor of a city. Now I know not whether any one that shall go about to confute such things will not show himself more absurd than those who assert and affirm them.De communibus notitiis adversus Stoicos. Plutarch. Boston. 1874.
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