The Good Book

by A. C. Grayling

  Walker & Co.

  New York

  Epistle to the Reader

  Dear reader:

  It might be thought vain to offer a work such as this to humankind in the hope that it will be useful, because the diversity of principles, ideas and tastes among people is very great, as is the fixity of our notions and our reluctance to change. But in truth it would be a greater vanity to offer a work for any other reason. Let the sincerity of the intention, then, be this book’s main commendation. No work of this or any kind can please everyone, whatever its ambition; but this one at least gives satisfaction to its maker, of having aimed sincerely at truth and usefulness, and having done so by following in the paths of the wise. Throughout history the commonwealth of humankind has had master-thinkers whose mighty works are monuments to posterity; it is aspiration enough to be a guide among them, and to take from them resources to promote what is true and good.

  All who read this book, therefore, if they read with care, may come to be more than they were before. This is not praise of the work itself, but of its attentive readers, for the worth to be found in it will come from their minds. If there is anyone who learns nothing from this book, that will not be attributable to faults in it, but to that reader’s excellence. If readers judge candidly, none among them can be harmed or offended by what it asks them to consider. Yet all who come hungry to these granaries of the harvest made by their fellows and forebears, will find nourishment here.

  Every art and inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, aims at some good; therefore the ultimate good has rightly been described as that at which all things aim. If there is a goal of what we do that we desire for its own sake, everything else being desired for the sake of this, that goal must constitute our chief and highest good. Seeking knowledge of that good cannot fail to have a great influence on life. When archers choose a target to aim at, they are more likely to aim true; shall we not do likewise by having as our target the discovery and doing of what is right? To determine what the good is, and of the best ways to know it, is the most important of all our endeavours, and is truly the master art of living.

  Here in your hands is just such an endeavour, consisting in distillations of the wisdom and experience of humankind, to the end that reflecting on them might bring profit and comfort. It has been remarked that a person who fishes a stream might find something of advantage to himself there, but he who takes his nets to the ocean might expect greater catches, and from greater depths. In what follows these great catches are brought before us by fishers of wisdom, returned from the storms as well as the calms of their voyages, and from both near and distant shores.

  Anyone who rises above his daily concerns in hope of finding and following truth, will discover it here. Every moment of the pursuit of truth rewards the pursuer’s pains, when seeking it alongside the great company of those who have trodden the paths of life before us. These are gifts which they have passed back to us; they have freely given the best of themselves, and their gifts have been freely accepted here. Other such books have been similarly made: writings of many hands, ancient and otherwise, taken, wrought, arranged, edited, supplemented and changed, and offered with a familiar purpose in view. Here the procedure has been the same, but the purpose is different: not to demand acceptance of beliefs or obedience to commands, not to impose obligations and threaten with punishments, but to aid and guide, to suggest, inform, warn and console; and above all to hold up the light of the human mind and heart against the shadows of life.

  For we live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; and our time should be counted in the throbs of our hearts as we love and help, learn and strive, and make from our own talents whatever can increase the stock of the world’s good.

  To let light in upon ignorance and falsehood is a service to human understanding; a yet greater service is to show the way to an upland where the view of life is clearer. It is certain, therefore, that most readers will find profit in the following pages, if they read with the attention that those pages merit. How can it be otherwise? All times are seasonable to the increase of wisdom, and no time is lost when spent in the kind of company that inhabits here.

  For this is a good book as well as a book of the good, its words from mighty pens, its thoughts from votaries of the right and true. It is a text made from all times for all times, its aspiration and aim the good for humanity and the good of the world.

  Contents

  Epistle to the Reader

  Genesis

  Wisdom

  Parables

  Concord

  Lamentations

  Consolations

  Sages

  Songs

  Histories

  Proverbs

  The Lawgiver

  Acts

  Epistles

  The Good

  Some source texts

  Copyright Page

  Genesis

  Chapter 1

  1. In the garden stands a tree. In springtime it bears flowers; in the autumn, fruit.

  2. Its fruit is knowledge, teaching the good gardener how to understand the world.

  3. From it he learns how the tree grows from seed to sapling, from sapling to maturity, at last ready to offer more life;

  4. And from maturity to age and sleep, whence it returns to the elements of things.

  5. The elements in turn feed new births; such is nature’s method, and its parallel with the course of humankind.

  6. It was from the fall of a fruit from such a tree that new inspiration came for inquiry into the nature of things,

  7. When Newton sat in his garden, and saw what no one had seen before: that an apple draws the earth to itself, and the earth the apple,

  8. Through a mutual force of nature that holds all things, from the planets to the stars, in unifying embrace.

  9. So all things are gathered into one thing: the universe of nature, in which there are many worlds: the orbs of light in an immensity of space and time,

  10. And among them their satellites, on one of which is a part of nature that mirrors nature in itself,

  11. And can ponder its beauty and significance, and seek to understand it: this is humankind.

  12. All other things, in their cycles and rhythms, exist in and of themselves;

  13. But in humankind there is experience also, which is what makes good and its opposite,

  14. In both of which humankind seeks to grasp the meaning of things.

  Chapter 2

  1. Those who first set themselves to discover nature’s secrets and designs, fearlessly opposing mankind’s early ignorance, deserve our praise;

  2. For they began the quest to measure what once was unmeasurable, to discern its laws, and conquer time itself by understanding.

  3. New eyes were needed to see what lay hidden in ignorance, new language to express the unknown,

  4. New hope that the world would reveal itself to inquiry and investigation.

  5. They sought to unfold the world’s primordial sources, asking how nature yields its abundance and fosters it,

  6. And where in its course everything goes when it ends, either to change or cease.

  7. The first inquirers named nature’s elements atoms, matter, seeds, primal bodies, and understood that they are coeval with the world;

  8. They saw that nothing comes from nothing, so that discovering the elements reveals how the things of nature exist and evolve.

  9. Fear holds dominion over people when they understand little, and need simple stories and legends to comfort and explain;

  10. But legends and the ignorance that give them birth are a house of limitations and darkness.

  11. Knowledge is freedom, freedom from ignorance and its offspring fear; knowledge is light and liberatio
n,

  12. Knowledge that the world contains itself, and its origins, and the mind of man,

  13. From which comes more knowledge, and hope of knowledge again.

  14. Dare to know: that is the motto of enlightenment.

  Chapter 3

  1. All things take their origin from earlier kinds:

  2. Ancestors of most creatures rose from the sea, some inhabitants of the sea evolved from land-dwelling forefathers;

  3. Birds descend from creatures that once ran flightless on the ground;

  4. Horned cattle, the herds and all the wild creatures of nature, that graze both the wasteland and the sown, are the progeny of earlier kinds.

  5. Nor do fruits for ever keep their ancient forms, but grow new forms through time and nature’s changing course.

  6. Could such be the outcome of an anarchy in things, arbitrarily arising from nothing? No:

  7. For nature is orderly, and works by measure; all things arise from the elements in their generations,

  8. Each kind exists by its own nature, formed from the primal bodies that are their source, and descended by steps through life’s rhythms.

  9. We see lavished over the lands at spring the rose, at summer heat the corn,

  10. The vines that mellow when autumn brings them to ripeness, because the seeds of things at their own season stream together,

  11. And new forms and births are revealed when their due times arrive, and pregnant earth safely gives her offspring to the shores of light.

  12. But if they came from nothing, without order and natural law, they might suddenly appear, unforeseen, in alien months, without parent;

  13. Nor would they grow from living seeds, if life were an arbitrary product of emptiness or chaos:

  14. Then the newborn infant would suddenly walk a man, and from the turf would leap a full-branched tree;

  15. Rather, by nature each thing increases in order from its seed, and through its increase conserves its kind.

  Chapter 4

  1. From this comes the proof that nature’s bounty has proper origins in all its forms.

  2. The fruitful earth, without its seasons of rains and sun, could not bear the produce that makes us glad,

  3. And everything that lives, if deprived of nourishment, could neither survive nor further its kind.

  4. We see that all things have elements in common, as we see letters common to many words.

  5. Why should nature not make men large enough to ford the seas afoot, or tear mountains with their hands,

  6. Or conquer time with great length of days, if it were not that all things are subject to proportion?

  7. We see how far the tilled fields surpass the untilled, returning to the labour of our hands their more abounding crops;

  8. Would we see, without toil of ours, the straight furrow and the tended orchard, fairer forms than ours coming from spontaneous generation? Yes;

  9. For nature likewise is a husbandman, whose ploughshare turns the fertile soil and kneads the mould, quickening life to birth;

  10. Nothing comes from nothing; all things have their origins in nature’s laws, and by their edicts reach the shores of light.

  Chapter 5

  1. When things fall and decay they return to primal bodies again; nothing perishes to annihilation.

  2. For if time, that wastes with age the works of all the world, destroyed things entirely, how would nature’s generations replenish themselves, kind by kind?

  3. How might the water-springs of the mountain, and the far-flowing inland rivers, keep the oceans full?

  4. And what feeds the stars? Time and ages must otherwise eat all things away, except that nature’s laws infallibly rule that nothing returns to nothing.

  5. Behold, the rains, streamed down from the sky, sink into the earth; then springs up the shining grain,

  6. And boughs are green amid the trees, and trees themselves are heavy with fruit.

  7. By these gifts of nature mankind and all creatures are fed; so joyful cities thrive with children, and woodlands echo with birdsong;

  8. Cattle, fat and drowsy, lay their bulk in the pastures while their milk flows, and sheep grow their wool on lush hillsides;

  9. Nature offers its bounties; the kind earth gives up its stores; then what is given returns to its source, to prepare bounties anew;

  10. Nothing perishes utterly, nor does anything come to birth but through some other thing’s death,

  11. For death is nothing but the origin of life, as life is the compensation of death.

  Chapter 6

  1. And now, since nature teaches that things cannot be born from nothing,

  2. Nor the same, when born, be recalled to nothingness, do not doubt this truth because our eyes cannot see the minute parts of things.

  3. For mark those bodies which, though known and felt, yet are invisible:

  4. The winds lash our face and frame, unseen, and swamp ships at sea when the waves rage, and rend the clouds,

  5. Or, eddying wildly down, strew the plains with broken branches, or scour the mountaintops with forest-rending blasts.

  6. The winds are invisible, yet they sweep sea, lands, the clouds along the sky, vexing and whirling all amain;

  7. Invisible, yet mighty as the river flood that dashes houses and trees headlong down its raging course,

  8. So that even a solid bridge cannot bide the shock when floods overwhelm: the turbulent stream,

  9. Strong with a hundred rains, beats round the piers, crashes with havoc, and rolls beneath its waves down-toppled masonry and ponderous stone,

  10. Hurling away whatever opposes it. Even so the blasts of the hurricane, like a mighty flood hither or thither driving all before,

  11. Or sometimes in their circling vortex seizing and bearing helpless objects in whirlwinds down the world:

  12. Yet these invisible winds are real, both in works and ways rivalling mighty rivers whose waters we can see.

  Chapter 7

  1. Consider, too, we know the varied perfumes of things, yet never see the scent touch our nostrils;

  2. With eyes we do not see heat, nor cold, yet we feel them; nor do we see men’s voices, yet we hear them: everything is corporeal,

  3. All things are body or arise from it; the real is the corporeal, visible and invisible alike.

  4. Raiment, hung by the surf-beaten shore, grows moist; the same, spread before the sun, then dries;

  5. No one saw how the moisture sank in, nor how it was lifted by heat. Thus we know that moisture is dispersed in parts too small to see.

  6. A ring upon the finger thins away along the under side, with the passing of the years;

  7. Raindrops dripping from our roof’s eaves will scoop the stone;

  8. The hooked ploughshare, though of iron, wastes insidiously amid the furrows of the fields.

  9. We see the rock-paved highways worn by many feet, and the gates’ bronze statues show right hands leaner from the greeting touch of wayfarers.

  10. We see how wearing-down diminishes these, but what tiny parts depart, the envious nature of vision bars from our sight.

  11. Lastly whatever days and nature add little by little, constraining things to grow in due proportion,

  12. No unaided gaze, however keen, sees. No more can we observe what time steals, when things wane with age and decay,

  13. Or when salt seas eat away the beetling cliffs. Thus nature by unseen bodies and forces works;

  14. Thus the elements and seeds of nature lie far beneath the ordinary gaze of eyes,

  15. Needing instead the mind’s gaze, the eye of science and reason’s eye, to penetrate and understand;

  16. And at last the instruments that man’s ingenuity has devised, to see and record the minute parts of things,

  17. And nature’s ultimates, from which its infinite variety is built.

  Chapter 8

  1. Bodies are unions of the primal atoms. And these no power can quench; they live by their own powers, and en
dure.

  2. Though it is hard to think that anything is solid; for lightnings pass, like sound, through walls,

  3. And iron liquefies in fire, and rocks burn with fierce exhalations in the volcano’s heart, and burst asunder;

  4. Rigid gold dissolves in heat; cold bronze melts, conquered by the flame;

  5. Warmth and the piercing cold seep through silver, since, with cup in hand, we often feel either, when liquid pours in;

  6. It seems that nothing truly solid can be found, other than the world’s foundation of elements.

  7. But if nature had given scope for things to be dissolved for ever, no more rejoined or renewed in being,

  8. By now all bodies that once existed would be reduced to ultimate parts alone, nothing returned or built from them again.

  9. For each thing is quicker marred than made; whatever the long infinitude of days and all fore-passed time dissolved,

  10. That same could never refurnish the world, no matter how much time remained.

  11. Yet we see things renewed, in their seasons and after their kind: renewed or new made, by nature’s laws and necessities;

  12. We see how things endure, great crags of basalt and bars of strong iron, demonstrating the foundations of nature’s frame.

  13. The entities and forces underlying everything are powerful in their ancient simplicity, knitting and tying all objects.

  14. By this they show their strength, binding each other by bonds which our senses do not perceive:

  15. A bonding that exists within all parts, in the minima of nature, each thing itself a parcel of another,

  16. From which other parts and others similar in order lie, packed in phalanx: the plenitude of body.

  17. Whatever has parts, its parts have their bonds, connections and motions, whereby things have being, and continue, decay, and renew.

  18. What is less than atoms make atoms; and atoms, molecules; and these in the animate and inanimate make the solid, liquid and gaseous varieties that in their systems and relationships are nature,

  19. Forming everything from the animalcule to the host of stars that figure the night with brilliance, vast in time and space.