Traduction Masquer
The City of God

Chapter 30.--Porphyry's Emendations and Modifications of Platonism.

If it is considered unseemly to emend anything which Plato has touched, why did Porphyry himself make emendations, and these not a few? for it is very certain that Plato wrote that the souls of men return after death to the bodies of beasts. ¹ Plotinus also, Porphyry's teacher, held this opinion; ² yet Porphyry justly rejected it. He was of opinion that human souls return indeed into human bodies, but not into the bodies they had left, but other new bodies. He shrank from the other opinion, lest a woman who had returned into a mule might possibly carry her own son on her back. He did not shrink, however, from a theory which admitted the possibility of a mother coming back into a girl and marrying her own son. How much more honorable a creed is that which was taught by the holy and truthful angels, uttered by the prophets who were moved by God's Spirit, preached by Him who was foretold as the coming Saviour by His forerunning heralds, and by the apostles whom He sent forth, and who filled the whole world with the gospel,--how much more honorable, I say, is the belief that souls return once for all to their own bodies, than that they return again and again to divers bodies? Nevertheless Porphyry, as I have said, did considerably improve upon this opinion, in so far, at least, as he maintained that human souls could transmigrate only into human bodies, and made no scruple about demolishing the bestial prisons into which Plato had wished to cast them. He says, too, that God put the soul into the world that it might recognize the evils of matter, and return to the Father, and be for ever emancipated from the polluting contact of matter. And although here is some inappropriate thinking (for the soul is rather given to the body that it may do good; for it would not learn evil unless it did it), yet he corrects the opinion of other Platonists, and that on a point of no small importance, inasmuch as he avows that the soul, which is purged from all evil and received to the Father's presence, shall never again suffer the ills of this life. By this opinion he quite subverted the favorite Platonic dogma, that as dead men are made out of living ones, so living men are made out of dead ones; and he exploded the idea which Virgil seems to have adopted from Plato, that the purified souls which have been sent into the Elysian fields (the poetic name for the joys of the blessed) are summoned to the river Lethe, that is, to the oblivion of the past,

"That earthward they may pass once more,

Remembering not the things before,

And with a blind propension yearn

To fleshly bodies to return." ³

This found no favor with Porphyry, and very justly; for it is indeed foolish to believe that souls should desire to return from that life, which cannot be very blessed unless by the assurance of its permanence, and to come back into this life, and to the pollution of corruptible bodies, as if the result of perfect purification were only to make defilement desirable. For if perfect purification effects the oblivion of all evils, and the oblivion of evils creates a desire for a body in which the soul may again be entangled with evils, then the supreme felicity will be the cause of infelicity, and the perfection of wisdom the cause of foolishness, and the purest cleansing the cause of defilement. And, however long the blessedness of the soul last, it cannot be founded on truth, if, in order to be blessed, it must be deceived. For it cannot be blessed unless it be free from fear. But, to be free from fear, it must be under the false impression that it shall be always blessed,--the false impression, for it is destined to be also at some time miserable. How, then, shall the soul rejoice in truth, whose joy is founded on falsehood? Porphyry saw this, and therefore said that the purified soul returns to the Father, that it may never more be entangled in the polluting contact with evil. The opinion, therefore, of some Platonists, that there is a necessary revolution carrying souls away and bringing them round again to the same things, is false. But, were it true, what were the advantage of knowing it? Would the Platonists presume to allege their superiority to us, because we were in this life ignorant of what they themselves were doomed to be ignorant of when perfected in purity and wisdom in another and better life, and which they must be ignorant of if they are to be blessed? If it were most absurd and foolish to say so, then certainly we must prefer Porphyry's opinion to the idea of a circulation of souls through constantly alternating happiness and misery. And if this is just, here is a Platonist emending Plato, here is a man who saw what Plato did not see, and who did not shrink from correcting so illustrious a master, but preferred truth to Plato.

Edition Masquer
De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XXX: Quanta Platonici dogmatis Porphyrius refutauerit et dissentiendo correxerit.

Si post Platonem aliquid emendare existimatur indignum, cur ipse Porphyrius nonnulla et non parua emendauit? nam Platonem animas hominum post mortem reuolui usque ad corpora bestiarum scripsisse certissimum est. hanc sententiam Porphyrii doctor tenuit et Plotinus; Porphyrio tamen iure displicuit. in hominum sane non sua quae dimiserant, sed alia noua corpora redire humanas animas arbitratus est. puduit scilicet illud credere, ne mater fortasse filium in mulam reuoluta uectaret; et non puduit hoc credere, ubi reuoluta mater in puellam filio forsitan nuberet. quanto creditur honestius, quod sancti et ueraces angeli docuerunt, quod prophetae dei spiritu acti locuti sunt, quod ipse quem uenturum saluatorem praemissi nuntii praedixerunt, quod missi apostoli qui orbem terrarum euangelio repleuerunt, - quanto, inquam, honestius creditur reuerti animas semel ad corpora propria quam reuerti totiens ad diuersa. uerumtamen, ut dixi, ex magna parte correctus est in hac opinione Porphyrius, ut saltem in solos homines humanas animas praecipitari posse sentiret, beluinos autem carceres euertere minime dubitaret. dicit etiam ad hoc deum animam mundo dedisse, ut materiae cognoscens mala ad patrem recurreret nec aliquando iam talium polluta contagione teneretur. ubi etsi aliquid inconuenienter sapit - magis enim data est corpori, ut bona faceret; non enim mala disceret, si non faceret - , in eo tamen aliorum Platonicorum opinionem et non in re parua emendauit, quod mundatam ab omnibus malis animam et cum patre constitutam numquam iam mala mundi huius passuram esse confessus est. qua sententia profecto abstulit, quod esse Platonicum maxime perhibetur: ut mortuos ex uiuis, ita uiuos ex mortuis semper fieri; falsum que esse ostendit, quod Platonice uidetur dixisse Vergilius, in campos Elysios purgatas animas missas - quo nomine tamquam per fabulam uidentur significari gaudia beatorum - ad fluuium Letheum euocari, hoc est ad obliuionem praeteritorum: scilicet inmemores supera ut conuexa reuisant rursus et incipiant in corpora uelle reuerti. merito displicuit hoc Porphyrio, quoniam reuera credere stultum est ex illa uita, quae beatissima esse non poterit nisi de sua fuerit aeternitate certissima, desiderare animas corruptibilium corporum labem et inde ad ista remeare, tamquam hoc agat summa purgatio, ut inquinatio requiratur. si enim quod perfecte mundantur hoc efficit, ut omnium obliuiscantur malorum, malorum autem obliuio facit corporum desiderium, ubi rursus inplicentur malis: profecto erit infelicitatis causa summa felicitas et stultitiae causa perfectio sapientiae et inmunditiae causa summa mundatio. nec ueritate ibi beata erit anima, quamdiucumque erit, ubi oportet fallatur, ut beata sit. non enim beata erit nisi secura; ut autem secura sit, falso putabit semper se beatam fore, quoniam aliquando erit et misera. cui ergo gaudendi causa falsitas erit, quomodo de ueritate gaudebit? uidit hoc Porphyrius purgatamque animam ob hoc reuerti dixit ad patrem, ne aliquando iam malorum polluta contagione teneatur. falso igitur a quibusdam est Platonicis creditus quasi necessarius orbis ille ab eisdem abeundi et ad eadem reuertendi. quod etiamsi uerum esset, quid hoc scire prodesset, nisi forte inde se nobis auderent praeferre Platonici, quia id nos in hac uita iam nesciremus, quod ipsi in alia meliore uita purgatissimi et sapientissimi fuerant nescituri et falsum credendo beati futuri? quod si absurdissimum et stultissimum est dicere, Porphyrii profecto est praeferenda sententia his, qui animarum circulo alternantem semper beatitudinem et miseriam suspicati sunt. quod si ita est, ecce Platonicus in melius a Platone dissentit; ecce uidit, quod ille non uidit, nec post talem ac tantum magistrum refugit correctionem, sed homini praeposuit ueritatem.