 |
|
ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
(cont) |
|
|
|
by St Augustine of Hippo |
 |
|
|
|
Ch 19. Two kinds of heathen knowledge |
|
29. But to explain more fully this whole topic (for it is one that
cannot be omitted), there are two kinds of knowledge which are in
vogue among the heathen. One is the knowledge of things instituted
by men, the other of things which they have noted, either as
transacted in the past or as instituted by God. The former kind,
that which deals with human institutions, is partly superstitious,
partly not.
|
|
Ch 20. The superstitious nature of human institutions |
|
30. All the arrangements made by men to the making and
worshipping of idols are superstitious, pertaining as they do
either to the worship of what is created or of some part of it as
God, or to consultations and arrangements about signs and leagues
with devils, such, for example, as are employed in the magical
arts, and which the poets are accustomed not so much to teach as
to celebrate. And to this class belong, but with a bolder reach of
deception, the books of the haruspices and augurs. In this class
we must place also all amulets and cures which the medical art
condemns, whether these consist in incantations, or in marks which
they call characters, or in hanging or tying on or even dancing in
a fashion certain articles, not with reference to the condition of
the body, but to certain signs hidden or manifest; and these
remedies they call by the less offensive name of physica, so as to
appear not to be engaged in superstitious observances, but to be
taking advantage of the forces of nature. Examples of these are
the earrings on the top of each ear, or the rings of ostrich bone
on the fingers, or telling you when you hiccup to hold your left
thumb in your right hand.31. To these we may add thousands of
the most frivolous practices, that are to be observed if any part
of the body should jump, or if, when friends are walking
arm-in-arm, a stone, or a dog, or a boy, should come between them.
And the kicking of a stone, as if it were a divider of friends,
does less harm than to cuff an innocent boy if he happens to run
between men who are walking side by side. But it is delightful
that the boys are sometimes avenged by the dogs; for frequently
men are so superstitious as to venture upon striking a dog who has
run between them,--not with impunity however, for instead of a
superstitious remedy, the dog sometimes makes his assailant run in
hot haste for a real surgeon. To this class, too, belong the
following rules: To tread upon the threshold when you go out in
front of the house; to go back to bed if any one should sneeze
when you are putting on your slippers; to return home if you
stumble when going to a place; when your clothes are eaten by
mice, to be more frightened at the prospect of coming misfortune
than grieved by your present loss. Whence that witty saying of
Cato, who, when consulted by a man who told him that the mice had
eaten his boots, replied, "That is not strange, but it would have
been very strange indeed if the boots had eaten the mice."
|
|
Ch 21. Superstition of astrologers |
|
32. Nor can we exclude from this kind of superstition those who
were called genethliaci, on
account of their attention to birthdays, but are now commonly
called mathematici. For these, too,
although they may seek with pains for the true position of the
stars at the time of our birth,
and may sometimes even find it out, yet in so far as they attempt
thence to predict our actions, or
the consequences of our actions, grievously err, and sell
inexperienced men into a miserable
bondage.
For when any freeman goes to an astrologer of this kind,
he gives money that he may
come away the slave either of Mars or of Venus, or rather,
perhaps, of all the stars to which those
who first fell into this error, and handed it on to posterity,
have given the names either of beasts
on account of their likeness to beasts, or of men with a view to
confer honour on those men.
And
this is not to be wondered at, when we consider that even in times
more recent and nearer our
own, the Romans made an attempt to dedicate the star which we call
Lucifer to the name and
honour of Caesar. And this would, perhaps, have been done, and the
name handed down to
distant ages, only that his ancestress Venus had given her name to
this star before him, and could
not by any law transfer to her heirs what she had never possessed,
nor sought to possess, in life.
For where a place was vacant, or not held in honour of any of the
dead of former times, the
usual proceeding in such cases was carried out. For example, we
have changed the names of the
months Quintilis and Sextilis to July and August, naming them in
honour of the men Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar; and from this
instance any one who cares can easily see that the stars spoken of
above formerly wandered in the heavens without the names they now
bear. But as the men were dead whose memory people were either
compelled by royal power or impelled by human folly to honour,
they seemed to think that in putting their names upon the stars
they were raising the dead men themselves to heaven.
But whatever they may be called by men, still there are stars
which God has made and set in order after His own pleasure, and
they have a fixed movement, by which the seasons are distinguished
and varied. And when any one is born, it is easy to observe the
point at which this movement has arrived, by use of the rules
discovered and laid down by those who are rebuked by Holy Writ in
these terms: "For if they were able to know so much that they
could weigh the world, how did they not more easily find out the
Lord thereof?"
|
|
Ch 22. The knowledge both of language and things is
helpful for the understanding of figurative expressions |
|
33. But to desire to predict the characters, the acts, and the
fate of those who are born from such an observation, is a great
delusion and great madness. And among those at least who have any
sort of acquaintance with matters of this kind (which, indeed, are
only fit to be unlearnt again), this superstition is refuted
beyond the reach of doubt. For the observation is of the position
of the stars, which they call constellations, at the time when the
person was born about whom these wretched men are consulted by
their still more wretched dupes. Now it may happen that, in the
case of twins, one follows the other out of the womb so closely
that there is no interval of time between them that can be
apprehended and marked in the position of the constellations.
Whence it necessarily follows that twins are in many cases born
under the same stars, while they do not meet with equal fortune
either in what they do or what they suffer, but often meet with
fates so different that one of them has a most fortunate life, the
other a most unfortunate. As, for example, we are told that Esau
and Jacob were born twins, and in such close succession, that
Jacob, who was born last, was found to have laid hold with his
hand upon the heel of his brother, who preceded him. Now,
assuredly, the day and hour of the birth of these two could not be
marked in any way that would not give both the same constellation.
But what a difference there was between the characters, the
actions, the labours, and the fortunes of these two, the
Scriptures bear witness, which are now so widely spread as to be
in the mouth of all nations.
34. Nor is it to the point to say that the very smallest and
briefest moment of time that separates the birth of twins,
produces great effects in nature, and in the extremely rapid
motion of the heavenly bodies. For, although I may grant that it
does produce the greatest effects, yet the astrologer cannot
discover this in the constellations, and it is by looking into
these that he professes to read the fates. If, then, he does not
discover the difference when he examines the constellations, which
must, of course, be the same whether he is consulted about Jacob
or his brother, what does it profit him that there is a difference
in the heavens, which he rashly and carelessly brings into
disrepute, when there is no difference in his chart, which he
looks into anxiously but in vain? And so these notions also, which
have their origin in certain signs of things being arbitrarily
fixed upon by the presumption of men, are to be referred to the
same class as if they were leagues and covenants with devils.
|
| |
Ch 23. Why we repudiate arts
of divination |
| |
35. For in this way it comes to pass that men who lust after evil
things are, by a secret judgment of God, delivered over to be
mocked and deceived, as the just reward of their evil desires. For
they are deluded and imposed on by the false angels, to whom the
lowest part of the world has been put in subjection by the law of
God's providence, and in accordance with His most admirable
arrangement of things. And the result of these delusions and
deceptions is, that through these superstitious and baneful modes
of divination, many things in the past and future are made known,
and turn out just as they are foretold; and in the case of those
who practice superstitious observances, many things turn out
agreeably to their observances, and ensnared by these successes,
they become more eagerly inquisitive, and involve themselves
further and further in a labyrinth of most pernicious error.And
to our advantage, the Word of God is not silent about this species
of fornication of the soul; and it does not warn the soul against
following such practices on the ground that those who profess them
speak lies, but it says, "Even if what they tell you should come
to pass, hearken not unto them." For though the ghost of the dead
Samuel foretold the truth to King Saul, that does not make such
sacrilegious observances as those by which his ghost was brought
up the less detestable; and though the ventriloquist woman in the
Acts of the Apostles bore true testimony to the apostles of the
Lord, the Apostle Paul did not spare the evil spirit on that
account, but rebuked and cast it out, and so made the woman clean.
36. All arts of this sort, therefore, are either nullities, or
are part of a guilty superstition, springing out of a baleful
fellowship between men and devils, and are to be utterly
repudiated and avoided by the Christian as the covenants of a
false and treacherous friendship. Not as if the idol were
anything," says the apostle; "but because the things which they
sacrifice they sacrifice to devils and not to God; and I would not
that ye should have fellowship with devils." Now what the apostle
has said about idols and the sacrifices offered in their honour,
that we ought to feel in regard to all fancied signs which lead
either to the worship of idols, or to worshipping creation or its
parts instead of God, or which are connected with attention to
medicinal charms and other observances; for these are not
appointed by God as the public means of promoting love towards God
and our neighbour, but they waste the hearts of wretched men in
private and selfish strivings after temporal things.
Accordingly, in regard to all these branches of knowledge, we
must fear and shun the fellowship of demons, who, with the Devil
their prince, strive only to shut and bar the door against our
return. As, then, from the stars which God created and ordained,
men have drawn lying omens of their own fancy, so also from things
that are born, or in any other way come into existence under the
government of God's providence, if there chance only to be
something unusual in the occurrence,--as when a mule brings forth
young, or an object is struck by lightning,--men have frequently
drawn omens by conjectures of their own, and have committed them
to writing, as if they had drawn them by rule.
|
| |
Ch 24. The intercourse and agreement with demons
which superstitious observances maintain |
| |
37. And all these omens are of force just so far as has been
arranged with the devils by that
previous understanding in the mind which is, as it were, the
common language, but they are all full
of hurtful curiosity, torturing anxiety, and deadly slavery. For
it was not because they had
meaning that they were attended to, but it was by attending to and
marking them that they came
to have meaning. And so they are made different for different
people, according to their several
notions and prejudices. For those spirits which are bent upon
deceiving, take care to provide for
each person the same sort of omens as they see his own conjectures
and preconceptions have
already entangled him in.For, to take an illustration, the same
figure of the letter X, which is
made in the shape of a cross, means one thing among the Greeks and
another among the Latins,
not by nature, but by agreement and prearrangement as to its
signification; and so, any one who
knows both languages uses this letter in a different sense when
writing to a Greek from that in
which he uses it when writing to a Latin. And the same sound,
beta, which is the name of a letter
among the Greeks, is the name of a vegetable among the Latins; and
when I say, lege, these two syllables mean one thing to a Greek
and another to a Latin. Now, just as all these signs affect the
mind according to the arrangements of the community in which each
man lives, and affect different men's minds differently, because
these arrangements are different; and as, further, men did not
agree upon them as signs because they were already significant,
but on the contrary they are now significant because men have
agreed upon them; in the same way also, those signs by which the
ruinous intercourse with devils is maintained have meaning just in
proportion to each man's observations.
And this appears quite plainly in the rites of the augurs; for
they, both before they observe the omens and after they have
completed their observations, take pains not to see the flight or
hear the cries of birds, because these omens are of no
significance apart from the previous arrangement in the mind of
the observer. |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
