Book I: Wisdom and the Arts
1. The Origin of the Arts
Wisdom comes first among all things we should seek, for in it lies the form of the perfect good. Wisdom enlightens a person to know himself. He was like other creatures when he did not understand that he had been made to surpass them. Illuminated by wisdom, the immortal soul looks back to its origin and recognizes how unworthy it is to seek anything outside itself when what it is could have sufficed. On Apollo’s tripod is written gnothi seauton, that is, “Know yourself.” Surely, if a person had not forgotten his origin, he would recognize how little everything subject to change amounts to.
A view accepted among philosophers holds that the soul is composed of all the parts of nature. In Plato’s Timaeus, the soul was fashioned from divisible and indivisible substance and a mixture of both, and likewise from the same and the different and a nature compounded of both. In this way the whole universe is represented. The soul takes in both “the beginnings and what follows from the beginnings,” for through understanding it grasps the invisible causes of things, and through the impressions of the senses it gathers the visible forms of actual things. It “gathers its motion, divided into two circles,” whether it goes out through the senses toward sensible things or rises through understanding toward invisible things. Drawing the likenesses of things back to itself, it circles back upon itself. Thus the same mind, which can take in all things, is fitted from every substance and nature to represent their likeness.
For it was a Pythagorean teaching that like is understood by like: unless the rational soul were composed of all things, it could in no way understand all things. As someone says:
“We comprehend earth by what is earthly, ether by flames, moisture by what is liquid, and what breathes by our own breath.”
Yet we should not suppose that men thoroughly versed in the nature of all things thought the soul’s simple essence was extended by any quantity of parts. To show its marvelous power more clearly, they said that it consists of all natures “not through composition, but according to the principle of composition.” Nor should we believe that this likeness of all things comes to the soul from somewhere else or from outside. Rather, the soul receives it in itself and from itself through an inborn power and a capacity of its own. As Varro says in Periphysion: “Not every change in things comes from outside; it is therefore not necessary that whatever changes should either lose something it had or take in from outside something other and different that it did not have.”
We see a wall receive the likeness of an image through a form brought to it from outside. But when a maker impresses a figure on metal, the metal begins to represent something else through its own capacity and natural aptitude, not through something brought to it from outside. So the mind, endowed with the likeness of all things, is said to be all things and to receive a composition from all things. It contains them, not as integral parts, but in its capacity and potential. This is the dignity of our nature, which all possess equally by nature, though not all know it equally. The soul, lulled to sleep by bodily affections and drawn outside itself by sensible forms, has forgotten what it was. Because it remembers having been nothing else, it believes that nothing exists beyond what appears. Instruction restores us so that we may recognize our nature and learn to find within ourselves what we need not seek outside. Thus “the greatest solace in life” is the pursuit of wisdom. Whoever finds it is fortunate, and whoever possesses it is blessed.
2. The Pursuit of Wisdom Is Philosophy
“Pythagoras was the first of all to call the pursuit of wisdom philosophy.” He preferred that its followers be called philosophers, whereas before they had been called sophoi, that is, wise men. He rightly called seekers of truth lovers of wisdom rather than wise men. All truth lies so deeply hidden that, however ardently the mind burns with love for it and however earnestly it rises to seek it, the mind can scarcely grasp truth itself as it is. He established philosophy as the study of things that truly exist and “possess their own unchangeable substance.”
“Philosophy is, in a way, the love, pursuit, and friendship of wisdom. It is not the wisdom concerned with tools and with knowledge of a craft, but that wisdom which needs nothing, is the living mind, and is the sole primordial reason of things. This love of wisdom is the illumination of the understanding soul by that pure wisdom, and, in a way, its recall and summons back to itself. Thus the pursuit of wisdom appears to be friendship with divinity and with that pure mind. This wisdom bestows upon the whole order of souls a share in its divinity and restores them to their nature’s own power and purity. From this arise truth in contemplation and thought, and holy and pure conduct in action.”
“Since this supreme good of philosophy has been made available to human souls, we must begin with the soul’s own powers, so that the discussion may proceed along an orderly path.”
3. The Three Powers of the Soul and Human Reason
“Three powers of the soul can be discerned in the animation of bodies. One supplies the body with life alone, so that it grows by being born and continues to exist by being nourished. Another supplies the power of sensory judgment. A third rests upon the power of mind and reason.
“The office of the first is to serve in the generation, feeding, and nourishment of bodies, while supplying no judgment of reason or sense. This is the power of herbs and trees and of whatever is held fast to the earth by roots.
“The second power is compounded and joined to the first. Taking the first into itself as one of its parts, it makes judgments of varied and manifold kinds about the things it can perceive. Every animal that has sensation is also born, fed, and nourished. The senses differ and number as many as five. Thus whatever is merely nourished does not also have sensation; but whatever can have sensation is also nourished, and the soul’s first power, that of generation and nourishment, is shown to underlie it. Beings endowed with sensation perceive the forms of things not only when those things are present and strike their sensing bodies. Even after the things have gone away and the sensible objects are removed, they retain images of forms previously known through sense. They form memories and keep them for a longer or shorter time, according to each animal’s capacity. But they receive these images in a confused and indistinct way, so that they can produce nothing by joining and combining them. They can therefore remember, though not all things equally, but cannot recover and recall what has been lost to forgetfulness. They have no knowledge of the future.
“The soul’s third power draws along with it the earlier powers of nourishment and sensation and uses them as servants obedient to it. This power is established wholly in reason. It is engaged in firmly grasping present things, understanding absent things, and investigating things unknown. It belongs to the human race alone. It receives not only sensations and images that are complete rather than disordered, but also, through the full exercise of understanding, explains and confirms what imagination has suggested. Thus, as has been said, this divine nature is not content to know only the things it grasps as presented to the senses. From what it has conceived in imagination through sensible things, it can also give names to things that are absent. It makes known, by assigning words, what it grasps through understanding and reason. It is also proper to this nature to investigate unknown things through what it knows, and to learn not only whether each thing exists, but also what it is, what sort of thing it is, and why it exists.
“As has been said, human nature alone has received these three powers of the soul. Its soul does not lack the movements of understanding, through which it exercises reason in four particular ways. It asks whether something exists. If its existence is established, it asks what it is. If reason has also given it knowledge of both these matters, it investigates what sort of thing it is, examining its other accidental qualities. Having learned these, it asks why it is so and investigates this too by reason.
“Since the human mind is always engaged in grasping present things, understanding absent things, or investigating and discovering unknown things, the reasoning power of the soul devotes all its effort to two ends. One is to know the natures of things by reasoned inquiry. The other is to come first to the knowledge that moral seriousness may afterward put into practice.”
4. What Belongs to Philosophy
But, as I see it, the course of our discussion has already led us into a labyrinth from which it is hard to find a way out. The difficulty comes from an obscure subject rather than tangled speech. We undertook to speak about the pursuit of wisdom and affirmed that, by a certain privilege of nature, it belongs to human beings alone. It now seems to follow that we have placed wisdom in charge of all human actions. For irrational animals are governed by no judgment of reason. They direct their movements according to sensory impulses alone. In pursuing or avoiding something, they use no discernment of understanding but are driven by a blind bodily inclination. It follows that blind desire should not carry away the actions of the rational soul; wisdom should always go before them as their guide. If this is true, we may properly say that philosophy includes studies of the nature of things and the discipline of conduct, as well as the principles governing all human actions and pursuits. In this sense we may define philosophy as the discipline that fully investigates the principles of all things human and divine.
We should not be troubled that we said above that philosophy is the love and pursuit of wisdom, not the wisdom exercised with tools, such as architecture, agriculture, and similar arts, but the wisdom “which alone is the primordial reason of things.” The same activity can belong to philosophy in respect of its underlying principle and be excluded from it in respect of its execution. To take an example at hand, the principle of agriculture belongs to the philosopher, while its execution belongs to the farmer. Moreover, although the works of artisans are not nature, they imitate nature. By reason they express the form of the natural model they imitate. You now see why we are compelled to extend philosophy to all human actions. Philosophy must therefore have as many parts as there are kinds of things to which it belongs.
5. The Origins of Theoretical, Practical, and Mechanical Learning
The end and purpose of all human actions or pursuits governed by wisdom ought to be either to restore the integrity of our nature or to relieve the necessities arising from the defects to which this present life is subject. I will say this more plainly.
There are two things in a human being: good and evil, nature and vice. Good, because it is nature, has been corrupted and diminished, and must be restored through practice. Evil, because it is vice and corruption and is not nature, must be cast out. If it cannot be utterly destroyed, it must at least be restrained by a remedy. This is the whole task: to restore nature and cast out vice.
The integrity of human nature is perfected by two things, knowledge and virtue. These alone make us like the higher and divine substances. For a human being is not a simple nature but is composed of two substances. In one part, the higher part or, to say more plainly what I mean, the part that is the person himself, he is immortal. In the other part, which is perishable and is the only part known to those who can trust nothing but the senses, he is subject to mortality and change. There he must die as often as he loses what he is. This is the lowest class of things, those that have a beginning and an end.
6. Three Kinds of Things
Among things, some have neither beginning nor end and are called eternal. Others have a beginning but are bounded by no end and are called perpetual. Still others have both beginning and end, and these are temporal.
In the first class we place that for which its being and what it is are not different: its cause and effect are not distinct, and it has its subsistence from itself, not from elsewhere. Such is the sole begetter and maker of nature.
That whose being and what it is are different, however, comes into being from elsewhere and proceeds into actuality from a preceding cause. This is nature, which embraces the whole world. It is divided in two. One part proceeds from its primordial causes into actuality without anything moving it, solely by the decision of the divine will. There it remains unchangeable, free from every end and alteration. Such are the substances of things, which the Greeks call ousiai, and all the bodies of the world above the moon, which have also been called divine because they do not change.
The third class of things has a beginning and an end. These things do not come into being by themselves but are works of nature. They arise on earth beneath the sphere of the moon, through the motion of the artisan fire, which descends with a certain power to generate sensible things.
Of the former it has been said, “Nothing in the world dies,” because no essence perishes. It is not the essences of things that pass away, but their forms. When a form is said to pass away, we should not understand this to mean that an existing thing utterly perishes and loses its being. Rather, it changes: perhaps things once joined are separated, things once separate are joined, things once here pass elsewhere, or things that existed at one time subsist at another. In all these changes, the being of things suffers no loss. Of the latter it has been said, “All things born perish, and all things grown grow old,” because every work of nature has an end just as it has a beginning. Of the former it has been said, “Nothing can come from nothing or return to nothing,” because every nature has both a primordial cause and perpetual subsistence. Of the latter it has been said, “What once was nothing returns to nothing,” because every work of nature proceeds in time from a hidden cause into actuality and, when that actuality is destroyed in time, returns to the place from which it came.
7. The Worlds Above and Below the Moon
This is why the mathematicians divided the world into two parts: the region from the moon’s circle upward and the region below it. They called the world above the moon nature, because all things there abide according to the primordial law. They called the world below the moon the work of nature, that is, of the higher nature. For all the kinds of living creatures in the lower world, animated by an infusion of vital spirit, receive nourishment poured down from above through invisible channels. They receive it not only to grow after birth but also to sustain themselves through nourishment. They also called the upper world time, because of the course and motion of the stars within it, and the lower world temporal, because it is governed according to the motions above. Likewise, they called the world above the moon Elysium, because of its perpetual serenity of light and rest, and this lower world the underworld, because of the instability and confusion of its changing things.
We have pursued this subject at somewhat greater length to show that, in the part of himself that shares in change, a human being is also subject to necessity, while in the part that is immortal he is akin to divinity. From this we may gather what was said above: the purpose of all human actions is either to restore in us the likeness of the divine image or to provide for the needs of this life. The more readily this life can be harmed by adversity, the more it needs to be supported and preserved.
8. How a Human Being Resembles God
Two things restore the divine likeness in a human being: contemplation of truth and the practice of virtue. In these a human being is like God, being wise and just. But the human being is wise and just changeably, while God is wise and just unchangeably. Actions that serve the needs of this life fall into three kinds. The first supplies nourishment to nature; the second protects against troubles that may come from outside; the third provides a remedy for harms already suffered. Thus, when we seek to restore our nature, our action is divine; when we provide necessities for what is weak in us, it is human. Every action, then, is either divine or human. We may suitably call the former understanding, since it concerns higher things, and the latter knowledge, since it concerns lower things and requires a kind of practical judgment.
If wisdom, as said above, governs all actions performed by reason, it follows that wisdom contains these two parts: understanding and knowledge. Understanding, in turn, is engaged both in the investigation of truth and in the consideration of conduct. We therefore divide it into two kinds: the theoretical, or contemplative, and the practical, or active, which is also called ethical or moral. Knowledge, because it is concerned with human works, is suitably called mechanical, that is, counterfeit.
9. The Three Kinds of Work
“There are three kinds of work: the work of God, the work of nature, and the work of the artisan who imitates nature.” God’s work is to create what did not exist. Hence the words, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth” (Gen 1:1). Nature’s work is to bring into actuality what lay hidden. Hence the words, “Let the earth bring forth green plants,” etc. (Gen 1:11). The artisan’s work is to join things that were separate or separate things that were joined. Hence the words, “They sewed loincloths for themselves” (Gen 3:7). For the earth could not create heaven, nor could a human being bring forth a plant, since he “cannot add even a handbreadth to his stature.”
Among these three kinds of work, human work is fittingly called mechanical, or counterfeit, because it is not nature but imitates nature. In the same way, a key slipped in surreptitiously is called mechanical. To explain in detail how the artisan’s work imitates nature would take too long and be burdensome. We can, however, show it briefly through examples. The maker who cast a statue looked to a human being. The builder who made a house looked to a mountain. As the prophet says, “You send forth springs in the valleys; waters pass between the mountains.” The height of mountains does not hold water. A house therefore had to rise to a high, pointed roof so that it could safely withstand the force of storms.
The first person to devise the use of clothing observed that each kind of living thing has its own protection, by which it defends its nature against harm. Bark surrounds a tree, feathers cover a bird, scales protect a fish, wool clothes a sheep, hair covers beasts of burden and wild animals, a shell shelters a tortoise, and ivory enables an elephant not to fear spears. Nor is it without reason that, while other animals are born with the defenses proper to their natures, the human being alone is born defenseless and naked. Nature had to provide for creatures that cannot provide for themselves. A human being, however, was given a greater opportunity for discovery by having to find through his own reason what was given naturally to the others. Human reason shines much more brightly now through finding these things than it would have shone through merely possessing them. The proverb does not say without reason, “Resourceful hunger has forged all the arts.” This is how the things you now see as the highest achievements of human endeavor were discovered. This is how the countless forms of painting, weaving, carving, and casting arose, so that we marvel at the artisan alongside nature itself.
10. What Nature Means
Since we have mentioned nature so often, we should not pass over the meaning of the word altogether, even though, as Cicero says, “It is difficult to define nature.” Our inability to say everything we would like is no reason to remain silent about what we can say.
The ancients said many things about nature, but none seems to have left nothing more to say. As far as I can gather from their statements, they used the word chiefly in three senses, assigning each its own definition.
In the first sense, they meant the archetypal pattern of all things in the divine mind, according to which all things were formed. They said that nature is each thing’s primordial cause, from which it receives not only existence but also the particular kind of existence it has. To this sense belongs the definition: “Nature is that which assigns to each thing its being.”
In the second sense, they said that nature is each thing’s own being. To this sense belongs the definition: “Nature is what gives each thing its form through its distinctive character.” In this sense we commonly say, “It is natural for all heavy things to tend toward the earth, light things to seek the heights, fire to burn, and water to moisten.”
The third definition is this: “Nature is an artisan fire proceeding with a certain power to generate sensible things.” Natural philosophers say that all things are generated from heat and moisture. Hence Virgil calls Ocean the father, and Valerius Soranus says in a verse about Jupiter, meaning the ethereal fire:
“Almighty Jupiter, discoverer of things and kings, begetter and mother of the gods, yet one and the same.”
11. The Origin of Logic
Having shown the origins of theoretical, practical, and mechanical learning, we still have to investigate the origin of logic. I count it last because it was discovered last. The other branches had been found earlier, but logic too had to be discovered, since no one can discuss things properly without first knowing the principles of correct and truthful speech. As Boethius says, when the ancients first devoted themselves to investigating the natures of things and the qualities of conduct, they were often bound to fall into error because they could not distinguish words from concepts. “This happened in many matters to Epicurus, who thinks the world consists of atoms and falsely claims that pleasure is the honorable good. It is clear that this happened to him and others because, through ignorance of disputation, they supposed that whatever they had grasped by reasoning must also hold true of things themselves. This is a great error. Things do not stand in relation to reasoning as they do to numbers. In numbers, whatever results from correct calculation on the fingers must undoubtedly hold true of the things themselves. If calculation yields a hundred, there must be a hundred things falling under that number. This does not hold equally in disputation. Whatever a course of speech arrives at is not thereby fixed in nature.
“Those who investigate the nature of things while neglecting the knowledge of disputation must therefore fall into error. Unless a person first learns which line of reasoning follows the true path of disputation and which merely seems plausible, and recognizes which reasoning is trustworthy and which may be suspect, the uncorrupted truth of things cannot be found through reasoning.
“The ancients often fell into many errors and drew conclusions in disputation that were false and contrary to one another. Since it seemed impossible for contrary conclusions about the same thing both to be true, and since it was uncertain which line of reasoning ought to be trusted, they decided first to examine the true and complete nature of disputation itself. Once they knew this, they could understand whether what they found through disputation had truly been grasped. From this arose the discipline of logic. It provides ways to distinguish modes of disputation and lines of reasoning, so that one may recognize which reasoning can be true on one occasion and false on another, which is always false, and which can never be false.”
Logic came last in time but first in order. Beginners in philosophy should study it first, because it teaches the nature of words and concepts, without which no philosophical discussion can be conducted rationally.
Logic comes from the Greek logos, a word with two meanings. Logos means either speech or reason, and so logic can be called the knowledge of speech or of reasoning. Rational logic, also called the art of disputation, includes dialectic and rhetoric. Logic concerned with speech is the broader class that includes grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, and thus includes the art of disputation within it. It is this logic concerned with speech that we count as the fourth branch after theoretical, practical, and mechanical learning.
We should not suppose that logic is called the study of speech because there was no speech before its invention, as though people had not previously spoken with one another. Ordinary speech and written letters existed before it, but their principles had not yet been organized into an art. No rules for speaking or disputing correctly had yet been given. For every branch of knowledge existed in use before it existed as an art. People later saw that customary practice could be made into an art, and that what had formerly been unregulated and unrestricted could be confined by definite rules and precepts. As has been said, they began to make an art of custom, which had arisen partly by chance and partly by nature. They corrected what was faulty in its use, supplied what was lacking, cut away what was excessive, and thereafter prescribed definite rules and precepts for each matter.
This was the origin of all the arts, as we find when we examine them one by one. Before grammar existed, people wrote and spoke. Before dialectic existed, they distinguished truth from falsehood by reasoning. Before rhetoric existed, they dealt with civil law. Before arithmetic existed, they knew how to count. Before music existed, they sang. Before geometry existed, they measured fields. Before astronomy existed, they distinguished times by the courses of the stars. Then the arts came into being. Though they began in practice, they are better than unaided practice.
This would be the place to explain who invented each art, when and where its inventors lived, and how each discipline began through them. But I first want to distinguish the arts from one another by dividing philosophy in a certain way. We must therefore briefly recount what was said above, so that the transition to what follows will be easier.
We said that there are just four branches of knowledge containing all the others: theoretical learning, which is engaged in contemplation of truth; practical learning, which considers the discipline of conduct; mechanical learning, which orders the activities of this life; and logic, which supplies knowledge of correct speech and precise disputation. Here, then, one may fittingly understand the fourfold number of the soul, which the ancients adopted in their oath out of reverence for it. Hence the saying:
“By him who gave our soul its fourfold number.”
We shall show how these branches are contained within philosophy, and what each in turn contains, by briefly restating the definition of philosophy.
