CHAPTER X

OF THOSE WHO REJECT THE DOCTRINES OF PHILOSOPHERS, AS WELL AS THOSE OF SCRIPTURE: AND THAT WE OUGHT TO YIELD OUR ASSENT TO THE POETS IN ALL THINGS, OR NOT AT ALL

THERE are, however, some persons so infatuated, that neither their attention nor their fears are excited when they meet with such sentiments as these: nay, they even treat them with contempt and scorn, as if they listened to the inventions of fable; applauding, perhaps, the beauty and eloquence of the style, but abhorring the severity of the precepts therein conveyed. And yet they give credence to the fictions of the poets, and fill both civilized and barbarous countries with legends of vanity and falsehood. For the poets assert that the judgment of souls after death is committed to men whose parentage they ascribe to the gods, and extol the severe and impartial sentence of those whom they represent as arbiters of the conduct of the dead. The same poets describe the conflicts and usages of war as existing amongst the gods, and speak of them as subject to the power of fate. Some of these deities they picture to us as cruel and relentless, others as strangers to all care for the human race, and others again as morose and stern in their character. They introduce them also as mourning the slaughter of their own children, thus implying their inability to succour, not strangers only, but those most dear to them, in the hour of peril. They describe them, too, as subject to human passions, and sing of their battles and wounds, their joys and sorrows. And in all this they appear worthy of belief. For if we suppose them to be moved by a divine impulse to attempt the poetic art, we are bound to give our full assent to what they utter under this inspiration. They speak, then, of the calamities to which their divinities are subject; calamities which truly are probable enough. But it will be objected that it is the privilege of poets to lie, since the peculiar province of poetry is to charm the spirits of the hearers, while truth is confined to the strict relation of mere matters of fact. Let us grant that it is a characteristic of poetry occasionally to conceal the truth. But they who speak falsehood do it not without an object; being influenced either by a desire of personal advantage, or possibly, being conscious of some evil conduct, they are induced to disguise the truth by dread of the threatening vengeance of the laws. But surely it were possible for them (in my judgment), by adhering faithfully to truth at least while treating of the nature of the Supreme Being, to avoid the guilt at once of falsehood and impiety.