A History of Western Philosophy

by Bertrand Russell

  The Greek view, that creation out of nothing is impossible, has recurred at intervals in Christian times, and has led to pantheism. Pantheism holds that God and the world are not distinct, and that everything in the world is part of God. This view is developed most fully in Spinoza, but is one to which almost all mystics are attracted. It has thus happened, throughout the Christian centuries, that mystics have had difficulty in remaining orthodox, since they find it hard to believe that the world is outside God. Augustine, however, feels no difficulty on this point; Genesis is explicit, and that is enough for him. His view on this matter is essential to his theory of time.

  Why was the world not created sooner? Because there was no “sooner”. Time was created when the world was created. God is eternal, in the sense of being timeless; in God there is no before and after, but only an eternal present. God’s eternity is exempt from the relation of time; all time is present to Him at once. He did not precede His own creation of time, for that would imply that He was in time, whereas He stands eternally outside the stream of time. This leads Saint Augustine to a very admirable relativistic theory of time.

  “What, then, is time?” he asks. “If no one asks of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.” Various difficulties perplex him. Neither past nor future, he says, but only the present, really is; the present is only a moment, and time can only be measured while it is passing. Nevertheless, there really is time past and future. We seem here to be led into contradictions. The only way Augustine can find to avoid these contradictions is to say that past and future can only be thought of as present: “past” must be identified with memory, and “future” with expectation, memory and expectation being both present facts. There are, he says, three times: “a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future.” “The present of things past is memory; the present of things present is sight; and the present of things future is expectation.”* To say that there are three times, past, present, and future, is a loose way of speaking.

  He realizes that he has not really solved all difficulties by this theory. “My soul yearns to know this most entangled enigma,” he says, and he prays to God to enlighten him, assuring Him that his interest in the problem does not arise from vain curiosity. “I confess to Thee, O Lord, that I am as yet ignorant what time is.” But the gist of the solution he suggests is that time is subjective: time is in the human mind, which expects, considers, and remembers.† It follows that there can be no time without a created being,‡ and that to speak of time before the Creation is meaningless.

  I do not myself agree with this theory, in so far as it makes time something mental. But it is clearly a very able theory, deserving to be seriously considered. I should go further, and say that it is a great advance on anything to be found on the subject in Greek philosophy. It contains a better and clearer statement than Kant’s of the subjective theory of time—a theory which, since Kant, has been widely accepted among philosophers.

  The theory that time is only an aspect of our thoughts is one of the most extreme forms of that subjectivism which, as we have seen, gradually increased in antiquity from the time of Protagoras and Socrates onwards. Its emotional aspect is obsession with sin, which came later than its intellectual aspects. Saint Augustine exhibits both kinds of subjectivism. Subjectivism led him to anticipate not only Kant’s theory of time, but Descartes’ cogito. In his Soliloquia he says: “You, who wish to know, do you know you are? I know it. Whence are you? I know not. Do you feel yourself single or multiple? I know not. Do you feel yourself moved? I know not. Do you know that you think? I do.” This contains not only Descartes’ cogito, but his reply to Gassendi’s ambulo ergo sum. As a philosopher, therefore, Augustine deserves a high place.

  II. THE CITY OF GOD

  When, in 410, Rome was sacked by the Goths, the pagans, not unnaturally, attributed the disaster to the abandonment of the ancient gods. So long as Jupiter was worshipped, they said, Rome remained powerful; now that the Emperors have turned away from him, he no longer protects his Romans. This pagan argument called for an answer. The City of God, written gradually between 412 and 427, was Saint Augustine’s answer; but it took, as it proceeded, a far wider flight, and developed a complete Christian scheme of history, past, present, and future. It was an immensely influential book throughout the Middle Ages, especially in the struggles of the Church with secular princes.

  Like some other very great books, it composes itself, in the memory of those who have read it, into something better than at first appears on rereading. It contains a great deal that hardly anyone at the present day can accept, and its central thesis is somewhat obscured by excrescences belonging to his age. But the broad conception of a contrast between the City of this world and the City of God has remained an inspiration to many, and even now can be restated in non-theological terms.

  To omit detail in an account of the book, and concentrate on the central idea, would give an unduly favourable view; on the other hand, to concentrate on the detail would be to omit what is best and most important. I shall endeavour to avoid both errors by first giving some account of the detail and then passing on to the general idea as it appeared in historical development.

  The book begins with considerations arising out of the sack of Rome, and designed to show that even worse things happened in pre-Christian times. Among the pagans who attribute the disaster to Christianity, there are many, the Saint says, who, during the sack, sought sanctuary in the churches, which the Goths, because they were Christians, respected. In the sack of Troy, on the contrary, Juno’s temple afforded no protection, nor did the gods preserve the city from destruction. The Romans never spared temples in conquered cities; in this respect, the sack of Rome was milder than most, and the mitigation was a result of Christianity.

  Christians who suffered in the sack have no right to complain, for several reasons. Some wicked Goths may have prospered at their expense, but they will suffer hereafter: if all sin were punished on earth, there would be no need of the Last Judgement. What Christians endured would, if they were virtuous, turn to their edification, for saints, in the loss of things temporal, lose nothing of any value. It does not matter if their bodies lie unburied, because ravenous beasts cannot interfere with the resurrection of the body.

  Next comes the question of pious virgins who were raped during the sack. There were apparently some who held that these ladies, by no fault of their own, had lost the crown of virginity. This view the Saint very sensibly opposes. “Tush, another’s lust cannot pollute thee.” Chastity is a virtue of the mind, and is not lost by rape, but is lost by the intention of sin, even if unperformed. It is suggested that God permitted rapes because the victims had been too proud of their continence. It is wicked to commit suicide in order to avoid being raped; this leads to a long discussion of Lucretia, who ought not to have killed herself. Suicide is always a sin, except in the case of Samson.

  There is one proviso to the exculpation of virtuous women who are raped: they must not enjoy it. If they do, they are sinful.

  He comes next to the wickedness of the heathen gods. For example: “Your stage-plays, those spectacles of uncleanness, those licentious vanities, were not first brought up at Rome by the corruptions of the men, but by the direct command of your gods.”* It would be better to worship a virtuous man, such as Scipio, than these immoral gods. But as for the sack of Rome, it need not trouble Christians, who have a sanctuary in the “pilgrim city of God.”

  In this world, the two cities—the earthly and the heavenly—are commingled; but hereafter the predestinate and the reprobate will be separated. In this life, we cannot know who, even among our seeming enemies, are to be found ultimately among the elect.

  The most difficult part of the work, we are told, will consist in the refutation of the philosophers, with the best of whom Christians are to a large extent in agreement—for instance as to immortality and the creation of the world by God.†

  The philo
sophers did not throw over the worship of the heathen gods, and their moral instructions were weak because the gods were wicked. It is not suggested that the gods are mere fables; they are held by Saint Augustine to exist, but to be devils. They liked to have filthy stories told of them, because they wanted to injure men. Jupiter’s deeds count more, with most pagans, than Plato’s doctrines or Cato’s opinions. “Plato, who would not allow poets to dwell in a well-governed city, showed that his sole worth was better than those gods, that desire to be honoured with stage-plays.”‡

  Rome was always wicked, from the rape of the Sabine women onwards. Many chapters are devoted to the sinfulness of Roman imperialism. Nor is it true that Rome did not suffer before the State became Christian; from the Gauls and the civil wars it suffered as much as from the Goths, and more.

  Astrology is not only wicked, but false; this may be proved from the different fortunes of twins, who have the same horoscope.§ The Stoic conception of Fate (which was connected with astrology) is mistaken, since angels and men have free will. It is true that God has foreknowledge of our sins, but we do not sin because of His foreknowledge. It is a mistake to suppose that virtue brings unhappiness, even in this world: Christian Emperors, if virtuous, have been happy even if not fortunate, and Constantine and Theodosius were fortunate as well; again, the Jewish kingdom lasted as long as the Jews adhered to the truth of religion.

  There is a very sympathetic account of Plato, whom he places above all other philosophers. All others are to give place to him: “Let Thales depart with his water, Anaximenes with the air, the Stoics with their fire, Epicurus with his atoms.”* All these were materialists; Plato was not. Plato saw that God is not any bodily thing, but that all things have their being from God, and from something immutable. He was right, also, in saying that perception is not the source of truth. Platonists are the best in logic and ethics, and nearest to Christianity. “It is said that Plotinus, that lived but lately, understood Plato the best of any.” As for Aristotle, he was Plato’s inferior, but far above the rest. Both, however, said that all gods are good, and to be worshipped.

  As against the Stoics, who condemned all passion, Saint Augustine holds that the passions of Christians may be causes of virtue; anger, or pity, is not to be condemned per se, but we must inquire into its cause.

  Platonists are right about God, wrong about gods. They are also wrong in not acknowledging the Incarnation.

  There is a long discussion of angels and demons, which is connected with the Neoplatonists. Angels may be good or bad, but demons are always bad. To angels, knowledge of temporal things (though they have it) is vile. Saint Augustine holds with Plato that the sensible world is inferior to the eternal.

  Book XI begins the account of the nature of the City of God. The City of God is the society of the elect. Knowledge of God is obtained only through Christ. There are things that can be discovered by reason (as in the philosophers), but for all further religious knowledge we must rely on the Scriptures. We ought not to seek to understand time and space before the world was made: there was no time before the Creation, and there is no place where the world is not.

  Everything blessed is eternal, but not everything eternal is blessed—e.g., hell and Satan. God foreknew the sins of devils, but also their use in improving the universe as a whole, which is analogous to antithesis in rhetoric.

  Origen errs in thinking that souls were given bodies as a punishment. If this were so, bad souls would have bad bodies; but devils, even the worst of them, have airy bodies, which are better than ours.

  The reason the world was created in six days is that six is a perfect number (i.e., equal to the sum of its factors).

  There are good and bad angels, but even the bad angels do not have an essence which is contrary to God. God’s enemies are not so by nature, but by will. The vicious will has no efficient cause, but only a deficient one; it is not an effect, but a defect.

  The world is less than six thousand years old. History is not cyclic, as some philosophers suppose: “Christ died once for our sins.”*

  If our first parents had not sinned, they would not have died, but, because they sinned, all their posterity die. Eating the apple brought not only natural death, but eternal death, i.e., damnation.

  Prophyry is wrong in refusing bodies to saints in heaven. They will have better bodies than Adam’s before the fall; their bodies will be spiritual, but not spirits, and will not have weight. Men will have male bodies, and women female bodies, and those who have died in infancy will rise again with adult bodies.

  Adam’s sins would have brought all mankind to eternal death (i.e., damnation), but that God’s grace has freed many from it. Sin came from the soul, not from the flesh. Platonists and Manichæans both err in ascribing sin to the nature of the flesh, though Platonists are not so bad as Manichæans. The punishment of all mankind for Adam’s sin was just; for, as a result of this sin, man, that might have been spiritual in body, became carnal in mind.†

  This leads to a long and minute discussion of sexual lust, to which we are subject as part of our punishment for Adam’s sin. This discussion is very important as revealing the psychology of asceticism; we must therefore go into it, although the Saint confesses that the theme is immodest. The theory advanced is as follows.

  It must be admitted that sexual intercourse in marriage is not sinful, provided the intention is to beget offspring. Yet even in marriage a virtuous man will wish that he could manage without lust. Even in marriage, as the desire for privacy shows, people are ashamed of sexual intercourse, because “this lawful act of nature is (from our first parents) accompanied with our penal shame.” The cynics thought that one should be without shame, and Diogenes would have none of it, wishing to be in all things like a dog; yet even he, after one attempt, abandoned, in practice, this extreme of shamelessness. What is shameful about lust is its independence of the will. Adam and Eve, before the fall, could have had sexual intercourse without lust, though in fact they did not. Handicraftsmen, in the pursuit of their trade, move their hands without lust; similarly Adam, if only he had kept away from the apple-tree, could have performed the business of sex without the emotions that it now demands. The sexual members, like the rest of the body, would have obeyed the will. The need of lust in sexual intercourse is a punishment for Adam’s sin, but for which sex might have been divorced from pleasure. Omitting some physiological details which the translator has very properly left in the decent obscurity of the original Latin, the above is Saint Augustine’s theory as regards sex.

  It is evident from the above that what makes the ascetic dislike sex is its independence of the will. Virtue, it is held, demands a complete control of the will over the body, but such control does not suffice to make the sexual act possible. The sexual act, therefore, seems inconsistent with a perfectly virtuous life.

  Ever since the Fall, the world has been divided into two cities, of which one shall reign eternally with God, the other shall be in eternal torment with Satan. Cain belongs to the city of the Devil, Abel to the City of God. Abel, by grace, and in virtue of predestination, was a pilgrim on earth and a citizen of heaven. The patriarchs belonged to the City of God. Discussion of the death of Methuselah brings Saint Augustine to the vexed question of the comparison of the Septuagint with the Vulgate. The data, as given in the Septuagint, lead to the conclusion that Methuselah survived the flood by fourteen years, which is impossible, since he was not in the Ark. The Vulgate, following the Hebrew manuscript, gives data from which it follows that he died the year of the flood. On this point, Saint Augustine holds that Saint Jerome and the Hebrew manuscript must be right. Some people maintained that the Jews had deliberately falsified the Hebrew manuscript, out of malice towards the Christians; this hypothesis is rejected. On the other hand, the Septuagint must have been divinely inspired. The only conclusion is that Ptolemy’s copyists made mistakes in transcribing the Septuagint. Speaking of the translations of the Old Testament, he says: “The Church has received that of
the Seventy, as if there were no other, as many of the Greek Christians, using this wholly, know not whether there be or no. Our Latin translation is from this also, although one Jerome, a learned priest, and a great linguist, has translated the same Scriptures from the Hebrew into Latin. But although the Jews affirm his learned labour to be all truth, and avouch the Seventy to have oftentimes erred, yet the Churches of Christ hold no one man to be preferred before so many, especially being selected by the High Priest, for this work.” He accepts the story of the miraculous agreement of the seventy independent translations, and considers this a proof that the Septuagint is divinely inspired. The Hebrew, however, is equally inspired. This conclusion leaves undecided the question as to the authority of Jerome’s translation. Perhaps he might have been more decidedly on Jerome’s side if the two Saints had not had a quarrel about Saint Peter’s time-serving propensities.*

  He gives a synchronism of sacred and profane history. We learn that Æneas came to Italy when Abdon† was judge in Israel, and that the last persecution will be under Antichrist, but its date is unknown.

  After an admirable chapter against judicial torture, Saint Augustine proceeds to combat the new Academicians, who hold all things to be doubtful. “The Church of Christ detests these doubts as madness, having a most certain knowledge of the things it apprehends.” We should believe in the truth of the Scriptures. He goes on to explain that there is no true virtue apart from true religion. Pagan virtue is “prostituted with the influence of obscene and filthy devils.” What would be virtues in a Christian are vices in a pagan. “Those things which she [the soul] seems to account virtues, and thereby to sway her affections, if they be not all referred unto God, are indeed vices rather than virtues.” They that are not of this society (the Church) shall suffer eternal misery. “In our conflicts here on earth, either the pain is victor, and so death expels the sense of it, or nature conquers, and expels the pain. But there, pain shall afflict eternally, and nature shall suffer eternally, both enduring to the continuance of the inflicted punishment” (Ch. 28).