DISCOURSE ONMETAPHYSICS 597
Everyone who sees the admirable structure of animals is led to recognise the
wisdom of the Author of things, and I advise those with any feeling of piety or even of
true Philosophy to avoid the expression of some would-be tough minds who say that
we see because we happen to have eyes, without noting that the eyes were made to see.
If we are seriously involved in these opinions that assign everything to the necessity of
matter or to a particular chance (although both must seem ridiculous to those who
understand what we have explained above), we will inevitably fail to recognise an
intelligent Author of nature. For it is ridiculous to introduce a Sovereign Intelligence as
the Ordainer of things and not use His wisdom to account for phenomena. As if, in
accounting for the conquest of a great prince in capturing an important position, a
historian tried to say that it was because the particles of the gunpowder liberated by
lighting the fuse escaped at a speed capable of pushing a hard heavy body against the
walls of the position, while the branches of the particles composing the copper of the
cannon were sufficiently intertwined not to be separated by this speed, instead of show-
ing how the foresight of the victor caused him to choose the appropriate time and
means, and how his power overcame all the obstacles.
- REMARKABLEPASSAGE OFSOCRATES INPLATOAGAINST
EXCESSIVELYMATERIALISTICPHILOSOPHERS. M
This point reminds me of a fine passage of Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo. In marvellous
agreement with my thoughts on this point, it seems to be written expressly against our
excessively materialistic philosophers. So this account made me want to translate it, and
though it is rather long, perhaps this sample will give one of us the occasion to share
many other fine sound thoughts from the writings of the great man.
“One day,” he said, “I heard someone read a book of Anaxagoras, where there
were these words ‘that an Intelligent Being was the cause of all things, and that He
arranged and adorned them.’ I was extremely pleased with that, for I thought that if
the world was the result of an Intelligence, everything would have been made in the
most perfect way possible. That is why I thought that he who wanted to explain why
things came to be, perished or subsisted had to search for what suited the perfection of
each. Thus man would only have to consider in himself or in some other thing, what
was best or most perfect, alone. For he who knew the most perfect would easily decide
thereby what was imperfect, since there is only one true knowledge of both.
“In view of all this, I rejoiced to have found a master able to teach the reason of
things: whether, for example, the earth was round or flat, and why it was best that way
rather than otherwise....Moreover,I expected that when he said that the earth was or
was not at the centre of the universe, he would explain to me why that was the most suit-
able. And when he said the same of the sun, the moon, the stars and their
motions....And finally, after showing what was suitable to each thing individually, he
would show me what was best in general.
“Full of this hope, I took and skimmed through the books of Anaxagoras with great
eagerness, but I was far from my expectation, for I was surprised to see that he made no use
of this governing Intelligence, set out in advance, that he spoke no more of the adornment
and the perfection of things, and introduced some rather implausible ethereal matters.
“In this he was rather like the man who said that Socrates did things intelligently,
but when he came to explaining in particular the causes of his actions, thereupon said
that he was sitting here because he had a body composed of bone, flesh and nerves, that