Moral Letters to Lucilius

which it could be cast and moulded. The “second cause” is the artist; for without the skilled hands of a workman that bronze could not have been shaped to the outlines of the statue. The “third cause” is the form, inasmuch as our statue could never be called The Lance-Bearer or The Boy Binding his Hair,327 had not this special shape been stamped upon it. The “fourth cause” is the purpose of the work. For if this purpose had not existed, the statue would not have been made. Now what is this purpose? It is that which attracted the artist, which he followed when he made the statue. It may have been money, if he has made it for sale; or renown, if he has worked for reputation; or religion, if he has wrought it as a gift for a temple. Therefore this also is a cause contributing towards the making of the statue; or do you think that we should avoid including, among the causes of a thing which has been made, that element without which the thing in question would not have been made?

To these four Plato adds a fifth cause⁠—the pattern which he himself calls the “idea”; for it is this that the artist gazed upon328 when he created the work which he had decided to carry out. Now it makes no difference whether he has his pattern outside himself, that he may direct his glance to it, or within himself, conceived and placed there by himself. God has within himself these patterns of all things, and his mind comprehends the harmonies and the measures of the whole totality of things which are to be carried out; he is filled with these shapes which Plato calls the “ideas,”⁠—imperishable, unchangeable, not subject to decay. And therefore, though men die, humanity itself, or the idea of man, according to which man is moulded, lasts on, and though men toil and perish, it suffers no change. Accordingly, there are five causes, as Plato says:329 the material, the agent, the makeup, the model, and the end in view. Last comes the result of all these. Just as in the case of the statue⁠—to go back to the figure with which we began⁠—the material is the bronze, the agent is the artist, the makeup is the form which is adapted to the material, the model is the pattern imitated by the agent, the end in view is the purpose in the maker’s mind, and, finally, the result of all these is the statue itself. The universe also, in Plato’s opinion, possesses all these elements. The agent is God; the source, matter; the form, the shape and the arrangement of the visible world. The pattern is doubtless the model according to which God has made this great and most beautiful creation. The purpose is his object in so doing. Do you ask what God’s purpose is? It is goodness. Plato, at any rate, says: “What was God’s reason for creating the world? God is good, and no good person is grudging of anything that is good. Therefore, God made it the best world possible.” Hand down your opinion, then, O judge; state who seems to you to say what is truest, and not who says what is absolutely true. For to do that is as far beyond our ken as truth itself.

This throng of causes, defined by Aristotle and by Plato, embraces either too much or too little.330 For if they regard as “causes” of an object that is to be made everything without which the object cannot be made, they have named too few. Time must be included among the causes; for nothing can be made without time. They must also include place; for if there be no place where a thing can be made, it will not be made. And motion too; nothing is either made or destroyed without motion. There is no art without motion, no change of any kind. Now, however, I am searching for the first, the general cause; this must be simple, inasmuch as matter, too, is simple. Do we ask what cause is? It is surely Creative Reason331⁠—in other words, God. For those elements to which you referred are not a great series of independent causes; they all hinge on one alone, and that will be the creative cause. Do you maintain that form is a cause? This is only what the artist stamps upon his work; it is part of a cause, but not the cause. Neither is the pattern a cause, but an indispensable tool of the cause. His pattern is as indispensable to the artist as the chisel or the file; without these, art can make no progress. But for all that, these things are neither parts of the art, nor causes of it. “Then,” perhaps you will say, “the purpose of the artist, that which leads him to undertake to create something, is the cause.” It may be a cause; it is not, however, the efficient cause, but only an accessory cause. But there are countless accessory causes; what we are discussing is the general cause. Now the statement of Plato and Aristotle is not in accord with their usual penetration, when they maintain that the whole universe, the perfectly wrought work, is a cause. For there is a great difference between a work and the cause of a work.

Either give your opinion, or, as is easier in cases of this kind, declare that the matter is not clear and call for another hearing.332 But you will reply: “What pleasure do you get from wasting your time on these problems, which relieve you of none of your emotions, rout none of your desires?” So far as I am concerned, I treat and discuss them as matters which contribute greatly toward calming the spirit, and I search myself first, and then the world about