worshippers of the gods regard human things as more ancient
than divine things._
In this whole series of most beautiful and most subtle distributions
and distinctions, it will most easily appear evident from the things
we have said already, and from what is to be said hereafter, to any
man who is not, in the obstinacy of his heart, an enemy to himself,
that it is vain to seek and to hope for, and even most impudent to
wish for eternal life. For these institutions are either the work
of men, or of demons,--not of those whom they call good demons,
but, to speak more plainly, of unclean, and, without controversy,
malign spirits, who with wonderful slyness and secretness suggest to
the thoughts of the impious, and sometimes openly present to their
understandings, noxious opinions, by which the human mind grows more
and more foolish, and becomes unable to adapt itself to and abide in
the immutable and eternal truth, and seek to confirm these opinions
by every kind of fallacious attestation in their power. This very
same Varro testifies that he wrote first concerning human things,
but afterwards concerning divine things, because the states existed
first, and afterward these things were instituted by them. But the
true religion was not instituted by any earthly state, but plainly it
established the celestial city. It, however, is inspired and taught
by the true God, the giver of eternal life to His true worshippers.
The following is the reason Varro gives when he confesses that he
had written first concerning human things, and afterwards of divine
things, because these divine things were instituted by men:--"As the
painter is before the painted tablet, the mason before the edifice,
so states are before those things which are instituted by states."
But he says that he would have written first concerning the gods,
afterwards concerning men, if he had been writing concerning the
whole nature of the gods,--as if he were really writing concerning
some portion of, and not all, the nature of the gods; or as if,
indeed, some portion of, though not all, the nature of the gods ought
not to be put before that of men. How, then, comes it that in those
three last books, when he is diligently explaining the certain,
uncertain, and select gods, he seems to pass over no portion of the
nature of the gods? Why, then, does he say, "If we had been writing
on the whole nature of the gods, we would first have finished the
divine things before we touched the human?" For he either writes
concerning the whole nature of the gods, or concerning some portion
of it, or concerning no part of it at all. If concerning it all, it
is certainly to be put before human things; if concerning some part
of it, why should it not, from the very nature of the case, precede
human things? Is not even some part of the gods to be preferred
to the whole of humanity? But if it is too much to prefer a part
of the divine to all human things, that part is certainly worthy
to be preferred to the Romans at least. For he writes the books
concerning human things, not with reference to the whole world, but
only to Rome; which books he says he had properly placed, in the
order of writing, before the books on divine things, like a painter
before the painted tablet, or a mason before the building, most
openly confessing that, as a picture or a structure, even these
divine things were instituted by men. There remains only the third
supposition, that he is to be understood to have written concerning
no divine nature, but that he did not wish to say this openly, but
left it to the intelligent to infer; for when one says "not all,"
usage understands that to mean "some," but it _may_ be understood
as meaning _none_, because that which is _none_ is neither all nor
some. In fact, as he himself says, if he had been writing concerning
all the nature of the gods, its due place would have been before
human things in the order of writing. But, as the truth declares,
even though Varro is silent, the divine nature should have taken
precedence of Roman things, though it were not _all_, but only
_some_. But it is properly put after, therefore it is _none_. His
arrangement, therefore, was due, not to a desire to give human things
priority to divine things, but to his unwillingness to prefer false
things to true. For in what he wrote on human things, he followed
the history of affairs; but in what he wrote concerning those things
which they call divine, what else did he follow but mere conjectures
about vain things? This, doubtless, is what, in a subtle manner, he
wished to signify; not only writing concerning divine things after
the human, but even giving a reason why he did so; for if he had
suppressed this, some, perchance, would have defended his doing so
in one way, and some in another. But in that very reason he has
rendered, he has left nothing for men to conjecture at will, and has
sufficiently proved that he preferred men to the institutions of men,
not the nature of men to the nature of the gods. Thus he confessed
that, in writing the books concerning divine things, he did not write
concerning the truth which belongs to nature, but the falseness which
belongs to error; which he has elsewhere expressed more openly (as
I have mentioned in the fourth book[234]), saying that, had he been
founding a new city himself, he would have written according to the
order of nature; but as he had only found an old one, he could not
but follow its custom.