|
[after
ridiculing pagan idols]... As teacher on this point, I shall produce to
you the Sibyl prophetess: "Not the oracular lie of Phoebus, Whom silly
men called God, and falsely termed Prophet; But the oracles of the
great God, who was not made by men's hands, Like dumb idols of
Sculptured stone."
She also predicts the ruin of the temple, foretelling that that of the
Ephesian Artemis would be engulphed by earthquakes and rents in the
ground, as follows: "Prostrate on the ground Ephesus shall wail,
weeping by the shore, And seeking a temple that has no longer an
inhabit ant."
She says also that the temple of Isis and Serapis would be demolished
and burned: "Isis, thrice-wretched goddess, thou shalt linger by the
streams of the Nile; Solitary, frenzied, silent, on the sands of
Acheron."
Then she proceeds: "And thou, Serapis, covered with a heap of white
stones, Shalt lie a huge ruin in thrice-wretched Egypt."
But if you attend not to the prophetess, hear at least your own
philosopher, the Ephesian Heraclitus, upbraiding images with their
senselessness: "And to these images they pray, with the same result as
if one were to talk to the Walls of his house." For are they not to be
wondered at who worship stones, and place them before the doors, as if
capable of activity? They worship Hermes as a god, and place Aguieus as
a doorkeeper. For if people upbraid them with being devoid of
sensation, why worship them as gods? And if they are thought to be
endowed with sensation, why place them before the door? The Romans, who
ascribed their greatest successes to Fortune, and regarded her as a
very great deity, took her statue to the privy, and erected it there,
assigning to the goddess as a fitting temple--the necessary. But
senseless wood and stone, and rich gold, care not a whir for either
savoury odour, or blood, or smoke, by which, being at once honoured and
fumigated, they are blackened; no more do they for honour or insult.
And these images are more worthless than any animal. I am at a loss to
conceive how objects devoid of sense were deified, and feel compelled
to pity as miserable wretches those that wander in the mazes of this
folly: for if some living creatures have not all the senses, as worms
and caterpillars, and such as even from the first appear imperfect, as
moles and the shrew-mouse, which Nicander says is blind and uncouth;
yet are they superior to those utterly senseless idols and images. For
they have some one sense,--say, for example, hearing, or touching, or
something analogous to smell or taste; while images do not possess even
one sense. There are many creatures that have neither sight, nor
hearing, nor speech, such as the genus of oysters, which yet live and
grow, and are affected by the changes of the moon. But images, being
motionless, inert, and senseless, are bound, nailed, glued,--are
melted, filed, sawed, polished, carved. The senseless earth is
dishonoured by the makers of images, who change it by their art from
its proper nature, and induce men to worship it; and the makers of gods
worship not gods and demons, but in my view earth and art, which go to
make up images. For, in sooth, the image is only dead matter shaped by
the craftsman's hand. But we have no sensible image of sensible matter,
but an image that is perceived by the mind alone,--God, who alone is
truly God.
|
|