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Whoever gives even moderate attention to human affairs and to our
common nature, will recognize that if there is no man who does not wish
to be joyful, neither is there any one who does not wish to have
peace. For even they who make war desire nothing but victory,
desire, that is to say, to attain to peace with glory. For what else
is victory than the conquest of those who resist us? and when this is
done there is peace. It is therefore with the desire for peace that
wars are waged, even by those who take pleasure in exercising their
warlike nature in command and battle. And hence it is obvious that
peace is the end sought for by war. For every man seeks peace by
waging war, but no man seeks war by making peace. For even they who
intentionally interrupt the peace in which they are living have no
hatred of peace, but only wish it changed into a peace that suits them
better. They do not, therefore, wish to have no peace, but only one
more to their mind. And in the case of sedition, when men have
separated themselves from the community, they yet do not effect what
they wish, unless they maintain some kind of peace with their
fellow-conspirators. And therefore even robbers take care to maintain
peace with their comrades, that they may with greater effect and
greater safety invade the peace of other men. And if an individual
happen to be of such unrivalled strength, and to be so jealous of
partnership, that he trusts himself with no comrades, but makes his
own plots, and commits depredations and murders on his own account,
yet he maintains some shadow of peace with such persons as he is unable
to kill, and from whom he wishes to conceal his deeds. In his own
home, too, he makes it his aim to be at peace with his wife and
children, and any other members of his household; for unquestionably
their prompt obedience to his every look is a source of pleasure to
him. And if this be not rendered, he is angry, he chides and
punishes; and even by this storm he secures the calm peace of his own
home, as occasion demands. For he sees that peace cannot be
maintained unless all the members of the same domestic circle be subject
to one head, such as he himself is in his own house. And therefore if
a city or nation offered to submit itself to him, to serve him in the
same style as he had made his household serve him, he would no longer
lurk in a brigand's hiding-places, but lift his head in open day as a
king, though the same coveteousness and wicked ness should remain in
him. And thus all men desire to have peace with their own circle whom
they wish to govern as suits themselves. For even those whom they make
war against they wish to make their own, and impose on them the laws of
their own peace.
But let us suppose a man such as poetry and mythology speak of, a man
so insociable and savage as to be called rather a semi-man than a man.
Although, then, his kingdom was the solitude of a dreary cave, and
he himself was so singularly bad-hearted that he was named kakos,
which is the Greek word for bad; though he had no wife to soothe him
with endearing talk, no children to play with, no sons to do his
bidding, no friend to enliven him with intercourse, not even his
father Vulcan (though in one respect he was happier than his father,
not having begotten a monster like himself); although he gave to no
man, but took as he wished whatever he could, from whomsoever he
could, when he could yet in that solitary den, the floor of which, as
Virgil says, was always reeking with recent slaughter, there was
nothing else than peace sought, a peace in which no one should molest
him, or disquiet him with any assault or alarm. With his own body he
desired to be at peace, and he was satisfied only in proportion as he
had this peace. For he ruled his members, and they obeyed him; and
for the sake of pacifying his mortal nature, which rebelled when it
needed anything, and of allaying the sedition of hunger which
threatened to banish the soul from the body, he made forays, slew,
and devoured, but used the ferocity and savageness he displayed in
these actions only for the preservation of his own life's peace. So
that, had he been willing to make with other men the same peace which
he made with himself in his own cave, he would neither have been called
bad, nor a monster, nor a semi-man. Or if the appearance of his
body and his vomiting smoky fires frightened men from having any
dealings with him, perhaps his fierce ways arose not from a desire to
do mischief, but from the necessity of finding a living. But he may
have had no existence, or, at least, he was not such as the poets
fancifully describe him, for they had to exalt Hercules, and did so
at the expense of Cacus. It is better, then, to believe that such a
man or semi-man never existed, and that this, in common with many
other fancies of the poets, is mere fiction. For the most savage
animals (and he is said to have been almost a wild beast) encompass
their own species with a ring of protecting peace. They cohabit,
beget, produce, suckle, and bring up their young, though very many
of them are not gregarious, but solitary, not like sheep, deer,
pigeons, starlings, bees, but such as lions, foxes, eagles, bats.
For what tigress does not gently purr over her cubs, and lay aside her
ferocity to fondle them? What kite, solitary as he is when circling
over his prey, does not seek a mate, build a nest, hatch the eggs,
bring up the young birds, and maintain with the mother of his family as
peaceful a domestic alliance as he can? How much more powerfully do
the laws of man's nature move him to hold fellowship and maintain peace
with all men so far as in him lies, since even wicked men wage war to
maintain the peace of their own circle, and wish that, if possible,
all men belonged to them, that all men and things might serve but one
head, and might, either through love or fear, yield themselves to
peace with him! It is thus that pride in its perversity apes God.
It abhors equality with other men under Him; but, instead of His
rule, it seeks to impose a rule of its own upon its equals. It
abhors, that is to say, the just peace of God, and loves its own
unjust peace; but it cannot help loving peace of one kind or other.
For there is no vice so clean contrary to nature that it obliterates
even the faintest traces of nature.
He, then, who prefers what is right to what is wrong, and what is
well-ordered to what is perverted, sees that the peace of unjust men
is not worthy to be called peace in comparison with the peace of the
just. And yet even what is perverted must of necessity be in harmony
with, and in dependence on, and in some part of the order of things,
for otherwise it would have no existence at all. Suppose a man hangs
with his head downwards, this is certainly a perverted attitude of body
and arrangement of its members; for that which nature requires to be
above is beneath, and vice versa. This perversity disturbs the peace
of the body, and is therefore painful. Nevertheless the spirit is at
peace with its body, and labors for its preservation, and hence the
suffering; but if it is banished from the body by its pains, then, so
long as the bodily framework holds together, there is in the remains a
kind of peace among the members, and hence the body remains suspended.
And inasmuch as the earthly body tends towards the earth, and rests on
the bond by which it is suspended, it tends thus to its natural peace,
and the voice of its own weight demands a place for it to rest; and
though now lifeless and without feeling, it does not fall from the
peace that is natural to its place in creation, whether it already has
it, or is tending towards it. For if you apply embalming preparations
to prevent the bodily frame from mouldering and dissolving, a kind of
peace still unites part to part, and keeps the whole body in a suitable
place on the earth, in other words, in a place that is at peace with
the body. If, on the other hand, the body receive no such care, but
be left to the natural course, it is disturbed by exhalations that do
not harmonize with one another, and that offend our senses; for it is
this which is perceived in putrefaction until it is assimilated to the
elements of the world, and particle by particle enters into peace with
them. Yet throughout this process the laws of the most high Creator
and Governor are strictly observed, for it is by Him the peace of the
universe is administered. For although minute animals are produced
from the carcass of a larger animal, all these little atoms, by the
law of the same Creator, serve the animals they belong to in peace.
And although the flesh of dead animals be eaten by others, no matter
where it be carried, nor what it be brought into contact with, nor
what it be converted and changed into, it still is ruled by the same
laws which pervade all things for the conservation of every mortal
race, and which bring things that fit one another into harmony.
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