Episode 079 - The Cause Of The Arising of Belief In Gods
Date: 07/16/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2087-episode-seventy-nine-the-cause-of-the-arising-of-belief-in-gods/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Panel reads Book 5 lines 1151–1240 on the origins of religion. Discussion of the first passage covers Epicurean justice — bad acts commonly recoil on the perpetrator, and those who accept pleasure as the goal cannot live happily while breaking social bonds. Martin shares an anecdote about talking in his sleep; Cassius references Diogenes of Oenoanda on religious countries sometimes being the most vile.
The main discussion focuses on Lucretius’s account of how belief in gods arose from images seen while waking and in dreams, the tantum religio potuit suadere malorum line from Book 1, and the claim that true piety is viewing all things with an undisturbed mind (pacata). Don raises Sedley’s “idealist” reading of Epicurean gods; the panel compares Munro, Bailey, and Rouse translations; Martin comments on Islamic prayer toward the Kaaba as a parallel to “turning towards the stone”; and Principal Doctrine 1 on the gods’ eternal, untroubled nature closes the episode.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 79 of Lucretius Today. I’m your host, Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we’ll walk you through the six books of Lucretius’ poem and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself. We suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Norman DeWitt. For anyone who is not familiar with our podcast, please visit EpicureanFriends.com where you’ll find our goals and our ground rules. If you have any questions about those, please be sure to contact us at the forum for more information. In this episode 79, we’ll read approximately Latin lines 1151 through 1240 from Book 5. We’ll talk about how the worship of the gods first arose and what misery it brought to men. Now let’s join Don reading today’s text.
Don:
And therefore, men were tired of this hostile way which soured all their pleasures of life with the fears of punishment, for force and wrong entangle the man that uses them and commonly recoil upon the head that contrived them. Nor is it easy for that man to live a secure and pleasant life who by his conduct breaks through the common bonds of peace, though he has the cunning to deceive both gods and men. His heart always trembles for fear of being discovered. For men often talk in their sleep and are said to reveal things when they are delirious by a disease, and to bring to light their plots that had been long concealed. And now I’ll show the cause that first dispersed the notions of the gods throughout the world, and filled the towns with altars, and ordered solemn rites to be performed at holy ceremonies now in use, when victims smoked on every sacred fire, and what fixed awe in the minds of men that built new temples to the gods in every corner of the earth, and compels men to celebrate their festivals — it is not so hard a thing to show the cause. For men, in the beginning of the world, were used to see divine and glorious forms, even when awake. And in their sleep those images appeared in a more majestic state and raised their wonder. And these they thought had sense, they fancied that they moved their limbs and spoke proud words, suitable to the grand appearance they showed and to the mightiness of their strength. They ascribed eternity to them, because a constant stream of images incessantly came on in form the same, that could not change, and therefore could not die, because no power, they thought, could crush beings so strong in force, so large in size. They thought them infinitely happy, because they were never vexed with the fears of death, and likewise in their dreams they saw them do things strange and wonderful with ease and without fatigue. Besides, they observed the motions of the heavens were regular and certain, that the various seasons of the year came orderly about, but could discover nothing of the causes of these revolutions, and therefore they had this resort: they ascribed everything to the power of the gods, and made everything depend upon their will and command. The habitation and abode of these gods they placed in the heavens, for there they saw the sun and moon were rolled about. The moon, I say, they observed there, and the day and the night, and the stars serenely bright, and the blazing meteors wandering in the dark, the flying lightning, the clouds, the dew, the rain, the snow, the thunder, the hail, the dreadful noises, the threatenings and loud roarings of the sky. Unhappy race of men, to ascribe such events, to charge the gods with such distracted rage, what sorrows have they brought upon themselves, what miseries upon us, what floods of tears have they entailed upon our posterity! Nor can there be any piety for a wretch with his head veiled, to be ever turning himself about towards a stone, to creep to every altar, to throw himself flat upon the ground, to spread his arms before the shrines of the gods, to sprinkle the altars abundantly with the blood of beasts, and to heap vows upon vows. To look upon things with an undisturbed mind — this is piety. For when we behold the celestial canopy of the great world, and the heavens spread over with the shining stars, when we reflect upon the courses of the sun and moon, then doubts that before lay quiet under a load of other cares begin to awake and grow strong within us. What are the gods endued with so great power that can direct the various motions of all the bright luminaries above? For the ignorance of causes gives great uneasiness to the doubting mind of man. And hence we doubt whether the world had a beginning and shall ever have an end, and how long the heavens, the walls of this world, shall be able to bear the fatigue of such mighty motions, or whether they are made eternal by the gods, and so shall forever roll on and despise the strong power of devouring age. Besides, what heart does not faint with the dread of the gods? Whose are the limbs that will not shrink when the scorched earth quakes with the horrible stroke of lightning and the roaring thunder scours over the whole heavens? Do not the people and the nations shake, and proud tyrants, struck with fear of those avenging powers, tremble in every limb, lest the dismal day were come to punish them for the baseness of their crimes and the arrogance of their speeches.
Cassius:
Thank you for reading that, Don. This is going to be another interesting series of passages to go over today. And before we jump into the details, I’m beginning to see that this section of Book Five is one of perhaps the best summaries of some of the more important general points of the philosophy. I know I haven’t discussed it over the years of my reading and talking about Epicurus very much, but our going through it is emphasizing to me that possibly if we were looking for sections of Lucretius that are very basic and cover some of the important parts of the philosophy, this is one of the ones we’d go to. And talking to people who are not familiar with Lucretius — it’s not very focused on the details of atoms and void or anything like that, but it’s covering some of the really important ethical questions that follow from the physics and from the worldview of Epicurean philosophy. So he really has some hard-hitting objections to the general idea of gods in this one too, so it’s a nice summary.
Don:
Right. Well, before we even get into the gods, it’s kind of a follow-through from last week, but the first passage is still on sort of the issue of justice and how that operates. And we want to spend some time with that one too, I think. And we’ll just go through this passage — we didn’t get very far in it last week — and I don’t know how far we’ll get this week, because we should make sure we give everything here the attention it deserves. And because it is so general, this is one of those good parts of the podcast where we ought to take it more generally and look at it from a thirty-thousand-foot view, or whatever height you’d like to think about, and how this fits into the big picture.
Cassius:
So the first passage is still more of a continuation perhaps from last week, and he’s talking about one of the really interesting aspects of the Epicurean outlook on justice. Which of course the question that gets raised back then and can get raised now is: well, if there’s no gods, and if there’s no enforcing power of nature to have a Platonic ideal of how men should live, and if you’re saying that nature has not really set that up in the same way for everybody at all times and every place — you’re saying that there’s different standards — then what is to prevent the constant war of individual against individual, and just a dog-eat-dog type of society where everyone does exactly what they think is best for them, and you’re just constantly killing each other? Basically, Epicurus’s theory of justice is a very broad one in terms of not doing harm to each other. And so he gets asked the question, “Well, then what are the brakes on conduct? What are the reasons that someone who has your worldview should not just be a criminal all the time?” And one of Epicurus’s answers is that if you adopt that type of lifestyle, it’s basically impossible for you to live a peaceful and pleasurable life.
Don:
Yeah, exactly. And one of the things that I always struggle with — it seems to me that Lucretius here and Epicurus, they put a lot of stock in human conscience. Because they’re saying that even if you aren’t found out, you can deceive men and that sort of thing, but your conscience is still going to wear on you because you’re going to be afraid that people are going to find out. And you know, maybe that’s true of a lot of people, but there seem to be people — to me at least, in the history of crimes and punishments — that some people don’t really seem to have a conscience. So where does that leave his idea here that if people are troubled by something, they talk in their sleep, or that sort of thing? If they’re not bothered by it, at least to me — and feel free to talk me out of it — that reasoning seems to break down.
Cassius:
Martin, you jump in at any point here. But I guess I’ll go ahead and volunteer my initial thought on it, which is that I see this argument breaking down into two pieces, just like it’s presented in this paragraph at line 1151. Because the first aspect of the argument, it seems to me, is that “for force and wrong entangle the man that uses them and commonly recoil upon the head that contrived them.” So I think he is recognizing the practical argument that people don’t like bullies, people don’t like criminals, and in general it is not safe — and in general, if you go out and practice crime and murder and assault and battery and all those other things that we don’t like, in general someone is going to respond against you and come back and apply that same kind of unhappy circumstance to you. The old saw about “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword,” that kind of thing. I think that is a practical argument for those people who are open to the practical arguments. Now, Don, you’re raising the point that some people just are not affected by conscience, some people are not affected by just looking into the future — they’re just so short-sighted. And to some extent you start having to talk about people who are clinically unable to think clearly about what is likely to happen to them in any particular circumstance. You certainly are going to have people like that. And I think for them the answer is what’s hinted at least in this first passage — that bad actions are in fact commonly punished by the people who have to suffer from those bad actions generally. And that’s the whole idea of the social compact — is where justice comes from and that sort of thing. That even if you have someone who does those kinds of acts, even if they’re not technically bothered by them in their own mind, society is still going to have structures for punishing them and getting them away from everybody else.
Don:
Yeah, yeah. Because I see that in the context of you know this paragraph — also coming to mind is the fragment that Epicurus supposedly said, that “it’s not easy to determine whether a man who is certain not to be discovered will violate the law or not.” So the foundational issue we’re all talking about is: what is the enforcing mechanism that we can look to to prevent society from degenerating into savagery basically? And of course Epicurus has said all along that as much as you might like to, you cannot look to the gods to enforce this because the gods are not of that nature. And of course in the description of Diogenes of Oenoanda, the comment is made that look at those countries that are the most religious — they’re sometimes the most vile countries of all. So he makes the point that the gods of Socrates and Plato do not in fact stop criminals from pursuing their crimes, and so we ought to dismiss that argument on its face.
Cassius:
And you’re right, Don, I have to believe that ancient people would have said the same thing that you’re saying — that when he starts talking about men talking in their sleep and being bothered by their consciences and so forth, I think everybody knows that there are lots of people who don’t seem to have any conscience at all. And as far as talking in your sleep — it’s almost borderline funny. It’s certainly true that people do talk in their sleep and have a hard time keeping secrets. But it’s hard to think of that in terms of a universal. I’m even thinking here right now that it may not even necessarily be that they’re bothered by things whenever they talk in their sleep or are delirious by a disease, as Lucretius says here — it could even be that if they commit something and they think they’ve gotten away with it, maybe they’re even proud of the fact and they know that they can’t tell anybody about it. But maybe when in their moments of weakness, in their sleep, or if they’re delirious by a disease, they will talk about it and people will find out. So that’s the other side of that point too.
Don:
Yeah, I think any halfway normal person probably finds it very difficult to just totally not talk to anyone about something that they’ve done. It’s kind of like the elephant in the room — once you start telling yourself you can’t talk about it, it becomes the only thing you think about, which is finding somebody to talk to about this particular issue.
Cassius:
Exactly, exactly. And of course he’s also, I think, referring to the issue when it says “nor is it easy for that man to live a secure and pleasant life” — to me that goes back to the sort of philosophical position that for those people who accept that the goal is to live a secure and pleasant life, he’s saying that the person who wants to live that kind of life is not going to be able to do it if he breaks the common bonds of peace. That’s a practical argument. Martin, I’m sorry, I’m talking too much. What do you think about this first passage?
Martin:
Yeah, just one remark about revealing something while talking in sleep — I think that is very misleading. So what I heard from my wife, and what others have reported of me when I was talking in sleep, it’s still out of context. It’s absolutely misleading to take it.
Cassius:
What do you talk about in your sleep, Martin?
Martin:
And the one thing I remember — because that was a bit embarrassing — that was when I was in a camp trip with my senior high school, it seems I talked in sleep and mentioned the name of a girl. But everybody thought that this would have revealed it, and so this was so embarrassing in some way — embarrassing because I revealed the name of the girl I was really in love with.
Cassius:
I think that’s the kind of thing people think about when they talk about other people talking in their sleep. But I’m wondering — I haven’t had any people report to me about me talking too much in my sleep — but I’m thinking that people who talk in their sleep talk nonsense, or talk things that just are not necessarily related to reality.
Don:
I guess if you are thinking about something all the time and you can’t talk about it — like you said, if you can’t talk about it in your conscious life — if it’s always on your mind, I could see something like that coming out in your sleep. Or if you were thinking about a girl all the time, evidently that can come up too.
Cassius:
Right. And of course you’re right when you said it — when you’re sick or something — because this passage says “and are said to reveal things when they are delirious by a disease.” I’ve been sick at times and you’re not unconscious, you’re obviously still conscious, but your judgment is definitely altered sometimes when you’re sick. So I could see that when you’re delirious by disease, that’s kind of like the truth-serum situation where your judgment has been suspended by the disease and so you just say things you otherwise would not. And he doesn’t bring it up, but he could easily talk about whenever if you happen to be drunk or something — I mean, that would be another time that you would reveal things that you wouldn’t normally reveal.
Don:
Right. Right. So again, since this sort of whole section we’re talking about is one of the more general ones, I think that’s what we’re doing already. But we got some very high-level conclusions or summaries of Epicurean positions that are in these sections. And I guess this passage 1151, just to sort of repeat or summarize, would be to me that we’re just about to launch into the discussion of the gods, so we really haven’t gotten into that problem yet. He’s really still at the point that he’s raised the issue of riches and desire for empire in the parts that we’ve read just above where we are now, and that that desire for empire and riches leads people to be in conflict with each other and commit crimes. And so he’s saying that okay, once we got to that position, people got sick of the problems that that caused, and that it did in fact cause these problems. Even though at that point people weren’t concerned about gods or Platonic ideals, they just observed from a practical point of view that they were not able to live as happily as they otherwise might, with everybody running around like a savage with no restraints on their conduct whatsoever. And then that’s where the whole idea of justice comes from — from people deciding that they don’t want to live that way anymore, and so they’re going to put some rules in place. And that’s where the whole idea of justice comes from.
Cassius:
Then just to emphasize the significance of what you just said — that is the foundation of justice. Not gods, not Platonic ideals, but the practical natural circumstance that arises if you don’t put into place some kind of agreements.
Don:
Yeah. I still think that the best summation of the whole idea of that is that they were living in that sort of time period, and they found that they couldn’t live the way they were living, and so they came up with the idea that to live in a community they wanted to neither harm nor be harmed. And that was the basis for all the rules that came afterwards.
Cassius:
But don’t forget, Don — despite what you’re reading here, Epicurus told everybody to live solitary lives in caves! So the whole idea of having an agreement to keep the peace would not necessarily occur to your normal Epicurean because they’re sitting in their cave by themselves the whole time. At least, that’s what many commentators today in my mind seem to want you to believe. But that’s obviously not the direction Epicurus is going.
Cassius:
Oh yeah, so we go to the next passage. “And now I’ll show the cause that first dispersed the notions of the gods throughout the world and filled the towns with altars and fixed awe in the minds of men that built temples to the gods in every corner of the earth and compels men to celebrate their festivals — it is not so hard a thing to show the cause.” Well, now that I’ve read that, that’s kind of just an introductory or a linking passage.
Don:
Yeah, I think he does show the causes too. I found it kind of interesting the way he sort of summarizes the whole thing — that they looked out and they saw things happening in the world and they couldn’t explain them, and they had these ideas in their imaginations and in their dreams of these giant beings that could roll the moon and make the lightning. And so that’s where the whole idea of the gods came from.
Cassius:
Yeah, they were not instituted by the gods themselves — human imagination took over — and that needed a pattern-recognition sort of thing. You know, if you look up in the sky and you’d see a cloud shaped like a person or something, that would plant the seed in your mind, and then you start thinking about it some more. It’s like, “Well, how could this happen? Humans can’t do this. All these threatenings and loud roarings of the sky — you need an explanation for it.” And so you come up with giant human beings living in the sky.
Cassius:
Right. Now let’s get into the details of this next passage here. So we’ve just read in 1161 this transition paragraph — “and now I’ll show the cause.” I don’t know that he’s necessarily linking it to the prior discussion about justice or the need to have common bonds for peace. I was looking to see if that was the case, that somehow he was linking the need for peace to the arrival of men’s ideas of gods. But at least at the beginning of this next passage, he’s not looking at that practical potential — he’s looking at our discussion of images and what we’ve run into in the past. I think he’s definitely moved on to the next bullet point, so to speak. So yeah, it would be logical to link the two together, and certainly they do have relevance to each other, but at least for purposes of his argument at this point, in presenting to people where did religion come from, he’s starting out his discussion by talking about images.
Don:
I’m going to say right at the outset that I am swayed by — and this may be a little deeper than what we want to go — but I am swayed by Sedley’s argument and others about the idealist version of the Epicurean gods. Because that seems to me to fit with what he goes through here, because he talks about some of the things about the constant stream of images and all this sort of thing that leads me to believe that he runs down through all these characteristics of the gods — and even living in the heavens and this sort of thing — and it just seems to me that he’s just saying these kinds of gods cannot exist as actual physical beings anywhere. And whenever he says “to look upon things with an undisturbed mind, that’s actually piety,” and he talks about all the other things where people genuflect in front of the idols and the stones and throw themselves on the ground — the way that he describes it here, to me at least, really leads me to believe that it was a very idealistic concept, that the gods were seen in Epicurean philosophy and not even the physical beings in the intermundia. That’s at least my take on it right now.
Cassius:
Well, there’s some subtlety — or a lot of subtlety — I guess in the issues that you’ve raised there. Because someone who wanted to argue that the nature of the gods is grounded in actual physical reality, I think would also look at these sections and say that, “My gosh, this is the clear statement in Lucretius — and maybe more clear than anywhere else — that the evidence of the gods comes from basically receiving images of them, that it’s not from outside.” You’re using the word the idealistic view, and I think maybe that applies to the conclusion that you’re reaching about the nature of the gods, that they don’t really exist, you’re saying?
Don:
But yeah, they don’t really exist as a physical entity — they exist as a concept — but they do not exist as a physical entity.
Cassius:
But the argument that’s presented in these passages here is that you could probably — I guess — read it to mean that this idealistic conclusion that you’re talking about comes about because of some very real, very physical mechanisms, that it’s not just simply thinking inside the mind. Tell me what you think about where I’m going there, but I mean very clearly in 1169, “they were used to see these divine and glorious forms even when awake.” So he’s specifically saying that they’re seeing something that they then conclude, erroneously, to be the type of gods that most people in the world today think about when they think about gods. So given what you said a moment ago about the idealistic conclusion that the gods don’t really exist in the intermundia — how do you relate that to “they were used to seeing these things even when awake”?
Don:
Well, I could — I’m not quite sure — I’d have to go back and look at the original text. But whenever he says things like “they used to see divine and glorious forms even when awake,” I mean, I can see that again as like the pattern recognition — in clouds or in natural formations, or you know you think you see a face — and then in their sleep they appeared even more majestic, which is of course then your imagination runs away with you. “They thought they had sense, they fancied that they moved their limbs, they ascribed eternity to them, they thought them infinitely happy.” So it’s definitely it seems to me that these are human beings that are ascribing these attributes to something that they’re thinking about, and that they’re not actually seeing gods there — they’re looking for explanations for physical phenomena. And they need to see agency in the world where it may just be chance and happenstance. You know, something gets struck by lightning — do you ascribe that to a natural phenomenon, or do you see it as a portent of the gods’ displeasure with this particular thing that got hit by lightning? And if you’re looking to make sense of the world and you don’t have any other way to make sense of the world, then you’re going to ascribe that sort of agency to a supernatural power.
Cassius:
Martin, you ready to say something there? Should we read 1183 first?
Martin:
Let’s continue. I think you both covered already whatever thought I had before, so it’s dated very well already.
Cassius:
Okay. So if we look to the next passage — related to what we’ve just been talking about, the next passage talks about observing the motions of the heavens being regular and certain, and that various seasons of the year were orderly, but they could discover nothing of the causes of these revolutions. And therefore they had this resort: “they ascribed everything to the power of the gods.” Now to me that’s closer, Don, to where you’re going with the Sedley observation — they’re obviously taking things that they’re seeing, but then in their minds they are speculating as to the causes.
Don:
Right, right. And when they start talking about the speculations, he includes here they talk about the habitation and the abodes they placed in the heavens. And it sounds like — it sounds to me at least here — it’s not like they came up with the idea that there are giant human beings controlling some things. They saw the motions of the heavens and they couldn’t figure out what would cause that, and so they began to ascribe these things to the gods that they were coming up with, and made everything depend upon their will and command. So it was easier to just extrapolate — if they couldn’t explain something, then well, that was because of the gods, or that was because this god was displeased with this, or this good thing happened because this god helped me out. And so that line there about “made everything depend upon their will and command” — that was the reasoning and causes that they came up with, and so they just started to apply it over everything.
Cassius:
You know, before we go too much further into it, I probably should drop back. And I’m relating this to some comments that Martin regularly makes, but in this passage that’s indicated as 1169, he makes the comment, “For men in the beginning of the world, were used to see divine and glorious forms.” I suppose it’s possible that that’s another reference to the idea that this early period of the world things were different, just like the world was able to give birth to fully formed human beings. Is there an implication here that at that time period there were different things being seen than there are today?
Cassius:
You mean that they could actually see gods walking the earth?
Cassius:
Well, not necessarily that, but when he says “for men in the beginning of the world, were used to seeing these things” — that “in the beginning of the world” reference indicates to me that whatever he’s talking about might actually have been a little bit different, or maybe a lot different, than the way things are today. As if he’s making the point that somehow these early human beings had this phenomena more in their face than we see it today. I’m more asking the question really than I am saying I’m sure that’s the case. But let’s see — that’s the Brown translation. The Munro simply says, “even then in sooth the races of mortal men would see in waking mind glorious forms,” and then Bailey says, “for indeed already the races of mortals used to perceive the glorious shapes of the gods.” So I guess there’s some variation there. Maybe the Brown translation places more emphasis on the “in the beginning of the world” aspect than these other two do. That may be an example of putting too much reliance on a small phrase.
Don:
Yeah, exactly. That’s the danger of translations.
Martin:
I’m sorry — yeah, I mean all these translations, what they have in common is that they do not say there were gods roaming around and they were seen. It’s like, “what appears to be divine was seen.”
Cassius:
Yes, excellent point. Yeah, because earth was able to produce complex beings just from itself, it would certainly have been possible to produce all kinds of more glorious phenomena, and it can still produce today.
Martin:
And it can still produce today.
Cassius:
Well, yes. And that point that you just raised there is the question I was asking — whether these early human beings who came up with religion were facing exactly the same phenomena that we have today, or whether the phenomena in that early state of the world was somewhat different. Or is the only difference between them and us the fact that we are able to come up with explanations that don’t require the gods to do it?
Don:
I’m skeptical on that one.
Cassius:
Right. Well — do you say that because I think you’re leaving open the possibility that they were actually seeing things that they could mistake for gods?
Cassius:
Well, that’s exactly it — I’m not leaving it open, I’m specifically suggesting it. But not from the point of view that it’s true, but from the point of view of whether that’s what Lucretius is saying or not. Could it be, in Lucretius’s mind or Epicurus’s mind, that the things that people saw in the early stages of the world were different than what we see today? Because if you look at the opening phrasing of 1169, he seems to be pretty clear that he’s saying that these people observed some kind of phenomena.
Don:
I was looking in my Loeb translation here, and it gives a reference to Usener fragment 353, and I looked up 353, and it’s from Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists, and the quote that I looked up on the Attalus website is: “Epicurus thinks that men have derived the conception of God from presentations received while asleep, for he says, since large manlike images strike them while they sleep, they suppose that some such manlike gods also existed in reality.” So according to Sextus Empiricus at least, he is saying that the conception of the gods was derived primarily while people were asleep, when they would dream about giants, and that they assumed that these giants they saw in their sleep also existed in reality.
Cassius:
Personally, I’m still of the view — and I have nothing to back this up, so take this with a grain of salt — I still think it is more likely that they were more inclined to see giants in clouds and natural formations and rocks and that sort of thing, and to ascribe to them with that pattern-recognition idea that these things actually exist. And then they extrapolate that, and the more you think about it and the more you internalize it, the more you dream about it. And then you share this with other people and they’re like, “Yeah, I was thinking that same thing too.” And that’s at least a more material sort of progression that I can see happen. I’m just leery of the idea of thinking that they could see things that literally gave them this idea that giants exist.
Cassius:
Well, there’s always at least these two perspectives to be clear about — as to whether you think that yourself, or whether you think that’s what Lucretius and Epicurus were saying.
Don:
Right, right, right. Exactly. That’s like I said — I have nothing to back that up other than the fact that they talk about “in those days.” So they didn’t have a lot of things to go on, and they were looking for causes and looking for that sort of thing. And that was how they came up with the idea. The Loeb translation says for that line: “the truth is that even in those days, the generations of men used to see with the waking mind, and still more in sleep, gods conspicuous in beauty and of marvelous bodily stature.”
Cassius:
Yeah, that’s a very clear statement to me. And when it says “when they’re awake, they saw these things” — that’s my sticking point too, that I’m not quite sure where we’re going with that with the religious question. It’s like, “give me a little bit more detail.” Because I think even today, my general analysis is that I try to look at things that I can experience today and that I think other people tell me they experience. And it doesn’t strike me as a big problem to suggest that if I’m asleep and I have a dream, that I may see something in my dream that I would label to be a god. It strikes me that’s not a very controversial assertion — when you have a dream or nightmare, you might see something that is godlike to you and you conclude that that’s a god. But as far as seeing something like that when you’re awake — that’s the sticking point. And he seems to be, if he stopped and just said that they saw things in their sleep that appeared to be gods, that would be pretty easy for us to just pass on by. But when he says that they saw these things even when awake, I don’t see anything when I’m awake that fits into that same category. And I don’t think anybody’s reported to me — at least anybody who I had any confidence in their judgment — that they saw something that was really a god of the type that we all consider to be godlike. So I guess I have no resolution on this.
Don:
Well, I mean, could you at least see where I’m coming from with things like seeing images in clouds and on cliff faces?
Cassius:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I’m not saying by any means that I think that’s the wrong answer. Like I said, there’s always these two sides in my mind of trying to understand what I think the accurate true answer is, and then there’s the issue of determining where they were going and what they were thinking. Of course, I always want to try to bring those two together. And I think that they were very smart people and very practical people, and they probably had exactly the same experiences that we do today, so they ought to have come to the same conclusion in most important practical questions — even though they didn’t have the scientific knowledge we have today. They were very smart people and practical, and they shouldn’t really come up with any theory that we think is just totally nonsensical. If they come up with some theory that we think is nonsensical, then that probably deserves a lot of analysis to see why they would have come up with it, because they’re just not going to go off on a tangent without any evidence at all.
Don:
Yeah, because I mean humans seem to be wired to look for — it’s a well-known fact — they look for faces and look for reasons for things and look for causes. And we want to make sense of the world. And so this was a way for early humans to try and make sense of the world, which I can understand the reasons they wanted to do, because they didn’t want to live in a random universe that had no structure to it. And so this was the sort of structure that they gave to it — “it’s under the command of the gods.”
Cassius:
Well, let’s move to what we have as 1194, unless Martin has anything?
Martin:
No, no, it’s fine.
Cassius:
Okay, all right. Well, the next passage talks about the unhappy consequences — the incredibly far-reaching and negative consequences of reaching this conclusion that is so erroneous. “To ascribe such events, to charge the gods with such a distracted rage — what sorrows they brought upon themselves, and what miseries they’ve brought upon us, and floods of tears have they entailed upon their posterity.”
Don:
Yeah, I can’t go farther without bringing up the line from Book 1 — the famous line, “tantum religio potuit suadere malorum” — so that’s right there, which means — for those who aren’t as good at Latin — “such are the crimes to which religion leads.”
Cassius:
That’s a good translation of that. Boy, you see that particular phrase translated in so many different ways.
Don:
Yeah. I like the version you just used there. I’ve seen some of the older translations use the word “superstition” to sort of get around the fact that religio is the word actually used.
Cassius:
Right — your head’s in your bets there, yeah.
Don:
This paragraph I thought was really interesting in the sense that he talks about all the religious practices and everything, and at the very end it’s like, “you know, the real piety is to look upon things with an undisturbed mind.”
Cassius:
Okay, now let’s look at that one. That’s the Brown edition — it looks like Munro has it a little bit different, but basically the sense is the same. I think he is describing what piety is. These other guys, Munro and Bailey, seem to break it down separately. Do you have another translation that you like for that version?
Don:
I think probably Rouse in the Loeb translation says, “but rather to be able to survey all things with tranquil mind.” The word piety isn’t actually there in the Latin — pieties is at the very beginning.
Cassius:
Yeah, “people think this is piety,” and then at the end it’s “but rather to be able to survey all things with a tranquil mind.”
Don:
Yeah, it’s one of those issues of how the Latin word structure is different from ours. But it probably is accurate to say that he’s talking about what piety is not, and then what piety is.
Cassius:
Exactly. And the actual Latin word there is pacata?
Don:
Which is to bring into a state of peace and quietness — to make peaceful, to quiet, to pacify, to subdue. So it’s related to the word “pacific” in English, which I think describes the Greek idea of ataraxia. So that seems to me to be bringing that into there. And maybe one aspect I would comment on is that by describing it as piety — piety generally meaning to us that it is consistent with the will of the gods or whatever — I think the use of the word piety probably plays into that Epicurean view of true religion. Meaning that by being able to look upon all things with a mind at peace, he’s not just simply saying that that is what brings us a happy life — he’s saying that that’s the only way to look at things that’s consistent with the majesty of the gods. That that would be the true religion, or true piety, would be to have a correct conception of the gods — which is that they’re not going to cause us trouble.
Don:
Right, and they aren’t the source of our troubles. And they too have an undisturbed mind — they’re sort of the pinnacle of that sort of idea.
Cassius:
One of those details that jumps out at me is “to be ever turning himself about towards a stone.” Of course at that point they didn’t have Islam, but that’s kind of what the Islamic prayer is, right? They face not only Mecca but also that black rock that’s in the center of the town — the Kaaba, I believe.
Cassius:
Yeah, Martin, you’re always good about details like that. Do you have analogies to this issue of turning around to face towards the stone?
Martin:
I mean basically, the particular chosen stones were used as idols maybe. Yes, maybe he’s talking “stone” in the generality — every idol or every statue of a god is stone.
Cassius:
Yeah, but I kind of thought “turning himself about towards it” struck me as more than just your general statue of Zeus inside a temple.
Martin:
It is. There has been a movement which strongly denounced the worship at the Kaaba, so that this was actually seen as against the will of God — that this is far back into old superstitions. You making a comment about Islam there.
Cassius:
Yes.
Martin:
Because the — and to me it makes sense — so that this was something where they really fell back into older kinds of religions for the convenience of manipulating people. And so to produce some kind of religion which is more attractive to most people.
Cassius:
I’m trying to think of other analogies to religions I know about that when they talk about turning yourself about — I guess what I’m focusing on, that seems like some people will always pray in a particular direction. The dervishes dance in circles and things like that. I know that’s not what he’s referring to because I don’t think they’re that old. But yeah, and then there are ancient religions too that will walk around stones in a certain direction. They even talk about you know the processions that probably took place in Stonehenge and that sort of thing. Whenever you have some sort of magnificent natural structure — if you have a giant stone that’s maybe isolated from other stones, it can take on special significance.
Cassius:
Right. Well, I’m looking at the time and we have a little bit of time left. I think we can probably complete this passage for today, because the next two passages, 1204 and 1218, are pretty much a continuation of what we’ve been discussing so far. “Ignorance of causes gives great uneasiness to the doubting mind of man, and hence we doubt whether the world had a beginning and shall ever have an end, how long the heavens, the walls of the world, should be able to bear the fatigue of mighty motions, or whether they are made eternal by the gods.” Those are the kinds of questions that confront people apparently naturally, according to Lucretius. And “what heart does not faint with the dread of the gods.”
Don:
Yeah, he’s just — to me — setting up the fact that if you ascribe these just overwhelming powers to these giant beings that live in the sky, and you are afraid of them and you prostrate yourself before their altars and you sprinkle the blood of your sacrificial animals on the altars and live in fear of them, you’re just not going to be able to live a pleasant life. Because you’re always going to be afraid there’s going to be some sort of divine wrath that’s going to rain down upon you.
Cassius:
You know, something else that catches my eye here at this beginning of 1204, where he says “for when we behold the celestial canopy of the great world and the heavens spread over with shining stars, when we reflect upon the courses of the sun and moon, the doubts begin to awake and grow strong within us.” The point I was going to make about that is that that would be a statement that is just absolutely natural for human beings — to have a question about what they see and have doubts as a result of it, and go looking for an answer.
Don:
Exactly. Exactly. And I can even see — if you go out on a dark night and you look up at the sky and the stars are spread out over your head, you just start to feel insignificant in the universe and start to have doubts, and then you need an explanation for your place in the universe. And then Lucretius is saying this is where you turn.
Cassius:
You know, one of the theories out there is that in the Velleius section of On the Nature of the Gods — that anticipations are one of the bases of where the theory of gods comes from, that the statement is made that it’s implanted in the minds of men to think in this direction. Well, whether that’s true or not, this is an observation here that you could certainly use to conclude that it doesn’t have to be that way — whether there are anticipations that are intuitively planted in minds or not, they’re going to have these questions just from the things that they observe in nature around them.
Don:
Exactly. And I think it’s important too to sort of see that Principal Doctrine 1 — about the gods being eternal and incorruptible — that those are the two basic attributes. And I think he even talks about that a little bit in the previous sections that we talked about today — that those two attributes alone don’t necessarily follow on to all of the worship and the dread and the fear of the gods and all that sort of thing. He keeps coming back to the idea that those two attributes don’t necessarily lead to all this misery in the world.
Cassius:
But this was a fascinating section. I think this is a really good summation of: here’s where the gods came from, here’s the misery that people give to themselves whenever religion rears its head, and it doesn’t have to be this way. And the true piety is looking at things with an undisturbed mind. And even the proud — the last sentence to what we have today — “even the proud tyrants who are struck with fear of those avenging powers and they tremble lest the day would have come to punish them for the baseness of their crimes and the arrogance of their speeches.” There you go — it doesn’t appear to me that Epicurus and Lucretius were fans of tyrants in any way. Okay, Martin, I sense that we haven’t had enough input from you today. I apologize for talking so much. As we begin to close — do you have thoughts from this section?
Martin:
No, I’m fine already.
Cassius:
All right, well, Don?
Don:
I think I’ve said everything. I think like I said, I think this is a good summary of the whole idea of where the gods came from and why we don’t necessarily need them.
Cassius:
Okay, all right. So unless anybody has anything else for today, we’ll go ahead and close and come back next week. So thanks, and talk to you soon.
Don:
All right, have a good day.
Cassius:
All right, bye.