On the Sacred Disease 47
as Jeanne Ducatillon has claimed,^8 that the statements of the first chapter
actually reveal an authentic religious conviction, we are obliged to define
as accurately as possible how this conviction is related to the concept of the
divine as an immanent natural law and of its workings as natural processes.
But we must also consider the possibility (which Ducatillon appears to
have overlooked) that the accusations of the first chapter are no more
than rhetorical or occasional argumentspour besoin de la causewhich need
not imply the author’s personal involvement, seeing that many of these
statements have an obviously hypothetical character.^9 I may, for instance,
criticise a person for acting contrarily to his own principles and I may even
define how he should act according to these principles without endorsing
either his principles or the corresponding behaviour. Yet such a hypothetical
argument does reflect my opinion on the logical connection between the
premise and the conclusion, since it shows what I believe to be a valid or a
non-valid conclusion from a given premise (a premise which I need not be-
lieve to be true). Thus the argument reflects my sense of ‘logic’ or ‘necessity’
and the presuppositions underlying the stringency of my argument.
One might object that our apparent problem is not genuine, and that
there is nothing strange about intellectuals participating in traditional cul-
tic activities such as prayer and sacrifice, while at the same time holding
‘advanced’ religious or theological ideas which seem inconsistent with the
presuppositions underlying these cultic practices.^10 However, the problem
(^8) Ducatillon ( 1977 ) 180 – 5.
(^9) Cf. the use of
in 1. 23 ( 6. 358 L.), of in 1. 25 ( 6. 358 L.), of
and
in 1. 31 ( 6. 360
L.) as well as the modal imperfectsin 1. 41 ( 6. 362 L.) and 1. 43 ( 6. 362 L.) (and
in 2. 7 , 6. 366
L.). It is probably this hypothetical character which has led most interpreters to refrain from bringing
these statements to bear on the discussion of the writer’s theological ideas (e.g. Lloyd ( 1975 c) 13 n.
19 ). N ̈orenberg ( 1968 ) 69 also claims that the sections 41 – 6 are put into the mouth of the magicians,
although later on ( 74 – 6 ) he suddenly takes them seriously as reflecting the author’s own opinion.
However, his own ‘hypothetical’ remarks there on the ‘moral significance’ of the divine remain
inconclusive and partly contradict his earlier views on the divinity of nature. As will become clear in
the course of this chapter, I do not believe that ‘the divine’ (to theion) mentioned in 1. 45 is identical
with ‘the divine’ (sc. ‘character’) of natural laws or that both the ‘moral’ and the ‘naturalistic’ aspects
of the divine are subordinated to a higher concept of divinity; nor do I see any textual grounds for
denying that the author ofOn the Sacred Diseasebelieves in ‘personal’ or ‘anthropomorphic’ gods
(see section 4 below).
(^10) This is apparently the view taken by H. W. Miller ( 1953 ) 2 n. 3 : ‘This passage [i.e. 1. 44 – 5 , PJvdE]
as well as the following remarks concerning the true meaning of the use of purifications, suggests
that the author would not refuse to accept and conform to the rituals of temple and civic religion –
as would hardly be expected. His remarks reflect, indeed, a genuine belief in the Divine, but, as
perhaps in the case of a Socrates or a Euripides, it is not simply a belief in the gods as traditionally
and popularly conceived.’ This is a complicated and controversial issue, and although I believe that
it does not affect my argument, I am aware that ‘nothing strange about it’ does not do justice to
this discussion. At least three questions are important: (i) To what extent did intellectuals try to
harmonise their own theological conceptions with traditional beliefs and, if they did, then for what