Plutarch

“ If they too are bad, he, seeing them punished, and being seen by them, is released only after having long expiated every one of his crimes by pains and sufferings which in magnitude and severity exceed those which come through the body alone, as much as reality is more substantial than a dream. But the scars and scourge-marks after punishment remain in some more conspicuous; in others, less so. “See,” said he, “those motley colors of every kind in the souls,—that dark and squalid dye, the pigment of meanness and avarice,—that blood-red and fiery hue, of cruelty and bitterness ”

“ Let us next consider, in the second place, that punishments inflicted by men have no purpose but retaliation, terminating in the suffering of the wrong-doer, and going no farther. They thus follow hard upon the offences, as a dog barking at the offender’s heels, and pursue evil deeds close in their rear. But God probably sees through the dispositions of the diseased souls to which he draws nigh in judgment, knows whether they show an inclination to repentance, and grants time for reformation to those whose guilt has not been excessive or irreclaimable. ”

“ It seems to me that it is no other considerations than these that lead bad men to encourage themselves, and to give themselves free scope for guilty enterprise, inasmuch as the fruit of wrong-doing is quickly ripe and in full sight, while punishment is late, and lingers far behind the enjoyment derived from the guilt. ”

“ For a body born [54] of a diseased body is deserving, not indeed of punishment, but of medical treatment and of vigilance, which if any one sees fit to call the punishment of timidity and feebleness, his opinion is of no account. If then it is worth our while to cherish and to preserve the body born of a diseased body, ought we to permit the congenital likeness of wickedness to spring up and come to growth in a young character, and to wait till, having its issue in vicious passions, it becomes openly manifest, and, as Pindar says, displays the malignant fruit of the inmost soul? ”

“ But if the reported sayings and doings of men can tone down the harshness and severity of anger, how much more fitting is it that we—seeing that God, to whom there is no need of delay nor possibility of repentance, yet puts off punishment into the future, and awaits its fitting time—should ourselves be circumspect in these matters, and should regard as a Divine part of virtue the clemency and long-suffering which God manifests, reforming few indeed by punishment, but by the slowness of punishment benefiting and admonishing many! ”

“ Yet it is only to you that I speak of a long time; for to the gods any period of human life is as nothing, and “now, not thirty years hence,” is to them as it would be to us for a malefactor to be put to torture or hanged this evening, and not to-morrow morning. Besides, one is kept in life as in a prison that has no outlet or mode of escape; yet he may enjoy frequent feasts, may transact business, may receive presents and kindnesses, like the men who play with dice or at draughts in prison, with the rope hanging over their heads. ”

“ While in no respect, least of all toward wicked men, is it fitting that God should be dilatory; for they are in no wise dilatory or slow in ill-doing, but are hurried on to evil by their passions with the utmost impetuosity. Indeed, as Thucydides says, [3:2] punishment close at hand bars the way to those who most hope to gain by guilt. Moreover, no debt overdue, equally with the delay of due punishment, renders the person wronged utterly hopeless and depressed, while it confirms the evil-doer in boldness and audacity. ”

“ For it is less presumptuous for one unskilled in music to discourse about it, or for one not versed in military science to give his judgment in matters relating to the conduct of war, than for us to pretend to look through the things that appertain to God and to superior spirits, mere men as we are, like unskilled observers who should undertake to pass sentence on the skill of artists by their own conjectures and surmises. ”

“ No bad man becomes and first appears bad at the same time; but one has the evil in him from the beginning, and puts it into practice, availing himself of opportunity and ability, the thief in stealing, the tyrant in exercising despotic rule. But God is not ignorant of any man’s disposition and nature, inasmuch as he discerns the soul even more than the body ”

“ Thus, if there is nothing for the soul after death, that is, if death is the end of all reward and punishment, one might be disposed to say that the Deity deals indulgently and leniently with those of the wicked who are soon punished and die early. For were it maintained that in their lifetime the wicked incur no other evil than the conviction that wrong-doing is utterly fruitless and graceless, and for the many and great conflicts of mind that it costs confers no benefit nor anything worthy of [30] endeavor, the perception of this alone is fatal to the soul’s happiness. ”

“ I, indeed, if it is not irreverent thus to speak, do not think that those who work iniquity need any avenger among gods or men; but their own life suffices for their punishment, being utterly corrupted and kept in constant agitation by their guilt. ”

“ The Stoics regarded matter as virtually an emanation from the Supreme Being, who is not only the universal soul and reason, but the creative fire, which, transformed into air and water,—part of the water becoming earth,—is the source of the material universe, which must at the end of a certain cosmical cycle be re-absorbed into the divine essence, whence will emanate in endless succession [xi] new universes to replace those that pass away. The Epicureans, on the other hand, believed in the existence of matter only, and regarded mind and soul as the ultimate product of material organization. ”

“ What I have said thus far has been said on the supposition that, as is generally thought, there is an actual delay in the punishment of the wicked. But as to what may yet be said on this point, it may be well for us to listen to Hesiod, who maintains, not, with Plato, that punishment is a suffering that follows wrong-doing, but that it is a twin birth with wrong-doing, springing from the same soil and the same root; for he says,
“Bad counsel does most harm to him who gives it,” and,
“Who does another wrong himself most wrongs.” ”

“ Certainly, if those who have done wrong were themselves punished, there is no justice in chastising those who have done no wrong; for it is not right to punish even the evil-doers in their own person twice for the same offence; and if the gods, in their remissness failing to punish the guilty, afterward inflict penalties on the innocent, they do not fittingly make amends for their slow doing by unrighteous doing. ”

“ But first see how, as Plato says, God, making himself conspicuous as the example of all things good, bestows human virtue, in some sort his own likeness, on those who are able to be followers of God. For nature throughout, being first in a state of chaos, had the beginning of its change, and of its becoming an orderly universe, by means of a resemblance to and a participation in the Divine idea and the Divine virtue. ”

“ Great natures, indeed, produce nothing small. Because of the intensity of their impulses, what is strong and efficient in them does not remain idle; but they are tossed to and fro as on an ocean before attaining to a fixed and established character. ”

“ Last of all, he saw the souls destined to a second birth, by main force, bent and transformed into all sorts of beasts by artificers who fashioned them by appropriate tools and by blows as upon an anvil, compressing all their parts, reversing some, planing down some, and utterly destroying some, so as to fit them for habits and modes of life other than human. ”

“ For as the punishment of the whip and the spur immediately on a horse’s stumbling or shying corrects him and puts him on right behavior, while beating and twitching of the reins and shouting at him at a later period seem to him for some other purpose than discipline, and thus annoy him without teaching him, so guilt rebuked and checked by punishment after each of its wrong-doings and transgressions might gradually become conscience-stricken, and be brought to the fear of God, as presiding over the affairs and experiences of men with a justice that does not linger ”

“ Were the soul of an impious and lawless man to behold after death, not his statues overthrown, or any honors that he had received cancelled, but his children, or friends, or kindred, or family, suffering great misfortunes and receiving punishment on his account, such a soul would not choose again to be depraved and profligate,—no, not even to obtain honors like those which belong [52] to Zeus. ”

“ It is not easy, indeed, for a common person to comprehend a physician’s reasons for using the knife later, and not earlier, or for ordering a bath, not yesterday, but to-day; and still less is it easy or safe for a mortal to say of God anything except that he, best knowing the fit time for the curing of wickedness, applies to every evil-doer punishment as the appropriate medicine, and this not of the same intensity, nor at one and the same interval of time, for all. ”

“ Yet whatever favors or whatever chastisements the soul, being there by itself, receives, are of no concern to us living here, nay, they are disbelieved and they are out of the field of our knowledge; but these penalties that pass on through children and remoter posterity, being manifest to men living here, check and restrain many of the wicked. There is, indeed, no punishment more shameful or more sorrowful than for men to see their posterity suffering on their account. ”

“ In one respect Plutarch transcends Plato, and, so far as I know, all pre-Christian philosophers. Plato’s theism bears a close kindred to pantheism. His God, if I may be permitted the phrase, is only semi-detached. He becomes the creator rather by blending his essence with eternal matter, than by shaping that matter to his will. He is rather in all things than above all things, rather the Soul of the universe than its sovereign Lord. But in Plutarch’s writings the Supreme Being is regarded as existing independently of material things ”

“ For, as on the earth the wickedness of the soul controlled by the passions, while the soul controls the body, produces certain shades of complexion, so here such tints mark the last stage of the process of cleansing and correction, by which, the evil affections being altogether expelled, the soul becomes of clear complexion and of a uniform color. But so long as these evil affections remain in a man, certain revivals of the passions take place, accompanied by palpitation and excitement, in some souls slight and soon quenched, in others intensely strong. ”

“ But a vivid sketch of his character, with well-chosen characteristic anecdotes, would give us a very distinct and realizing conception of the antecedent condition of things that made a life like his possible, and of his actual influence for good and for evil on his country and his age.
Nor is the value of such a biography affected in the least by any doubts that we may entertain as to the authenticity of incidents, trivial except as illustrative of character, which occupy a large space in Plutarch’s Lives. Indeed, the least authentic may be of the greatest historical value. ”

“ But that Plutarch had a serious, earnest, and efficient faith in the one Supreme God, in the wise and eternal Providence, and in the Divine wisdom, purity, and holiness, we have in his writings an absolute certainty. Nor can we find, even in Christian literature, the record of a firmer belief than his in human immortality, and in a righteous retribution beginning in this world and reaching on into the world beyond death. ”

“ In answer to the objection, Plutarch first adduces as a precisely parallel order of things, with which no one finds fault, that by which children or posterity derive enduring benefit and honor from a parent’s or ancestor’s virtues and services.
14. There are alike in outward and in human nature occult and subtle transmissions of qualities and properties, both in time and in space. Those in space are so familiar that they excite no wonder; those in time, though less liable to attract notice, are no more wonderful. ”

“ The house of Athamas may be my home,” [31:1] — so it is probable that the soul of every evil-doer discusses these things within itself, and considers how it can by any possibility evade the memory of its misdeeds, cast out from itself the consciousness of them, and, becoming pure, start as if from the beginning on a new life. For wickedness manifests neither courage, nor modesty, nor consistency, nor steadfastness in the objects of its preference,—unless, by Zeus, we admit that evil-doers are wise ”

“ A city has a continuous life, a definite and permanent character, and an individual unity, so that its moral responsibility may long outlast the lives of those who first contracted a specific form of guilt. ”