CHAPTER XII.

CICERO’S RELIGION.

It is difficult to separate Cicero’s religion from his philosophy.  In both he was a sceptic, but in the better sense of the word.  His search after truth was in no sneering or incredulous spirit, but in that of a reverent inquirer.  We must remember, in justice to him, that an earnest-minded man in his day could hardly take higher ground than that of the sceptic.  The old polytheism was dying out in everything but in name, and there was nothing to take its place.

His religious belief, so far as we can gather it, was rather negative than positive.  In the speculative treatise which he has left us, ’On the Nature of the Gods’, he examines all the current creeds of the day, but leaves his own quite undefined.

The treatise takes the form, like the rest, of an imaginary conversation.  This is supposed to have taken place at the house of Aurelius Cotta, then Pontifex Maximus—­an office which answered nearly to that of Minister of religion.  The other speakers are Balbus, Velleius, and Cicero himself,—­who acts, however, rather in the character of moderator than of disputant.  The debate is still, as in the more strictly philosophical dialogues, between the different schools.  Velleius first sets forth the doctrine of his master Epicurus; speaking about the gods, says one of his opponents, with as much apparent intimate knowledge “as if he had just come straight down from heaven”.  All the speculations of previous philosophers—­which he reviews one after the other—­are, he assures the company, palpable errors.  The popular mythology is a mere collection of fables.  Plato and the Stoics, with their Soul of the world and their pervading Providence, are entirely wrong; the disciples of Epicurus alone are right.  There are gods; that much, the universal belief of mankind in all ages sufficiently establishes.  But that they should be the laborious beings which the common systems of theology would make them,—­that they should employ themselves in the manufacture of worlds,—­is manifestly absurd.  Some of this argument is ingenious.  “What should induce the Deity to perform the functions of an Aedile, to light up and decorate the world?  If it was to supply better accommodation for himself, then he must have dwelt of choice, up to that time, in the darkness of a dungeon.  If such improvements gave him pleasure, why should he have chosen to be without them so long?”

No—­the gods are immortal and happy beings; and these very attributes imply that they should be wholly free from the cares of business—­exempt from labour, as from pain and death.  They are in human form, but of an ethereal and subtile essence, incapable of our passions or desires.  Happy in their own perfect wisdom and virtue, they

  “Sit beside their nectar, careless of mankind”.