Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Now if Plato himself and the Pythagoreans, just as later on the followers of Marcion also, had supposed generation to be evil (though it was far from Plato's intent to lay down that wives should be held in common), yet the Marcionites hold that nature is evil, arising both from evil matter and from a just Demiurge; and it is on this account, unwilling to help fill up the world made by the Demiurge, that they wish to abstain from marriage, setting themselves in opposition to their own maker and hastening instead toward the one they call the good, but not, as they say, the god in some other fashion — hence, wishing to leave nothing of their own behind here, they become continent not by free choice but by enmity toward their maker, unwilling to make use of the things created by him. But these men, having strayed by an impious war against God from the reckonings that accord with nature, and despising the long-suffering and goodness of God, even while refusing to marry nevertheless make use of created foods and breathe the air of the Demiurge, being themselves his works and dwelling among his things, and they proclaim, as they say, a strange knowledge, though on this very count — that they were evangelized here — they ought to acknowledge gratitude to the Lord of the world.
But against these men, when we take up the discourse concerning first principles, we shall argue with the utmost precision. As for the philosophers we have mentioned, from whom the Marcionites impiously learned that generation is evil and now bluster over it as though it were their own doctrine, the philosophers do not hold generation to be evil by nature, but only in relation to the soul that has perceived the truth; for they bring down the soul, being divine, into this world as into a place of punishment, and it is fitting, according to them, that souls being embodied should be purified. And this doctrine belongs no longer only to the Marcionites, but is proper also to those who hold that souls are embodied and re-clothed and transferred from one body to another — concerning whom another occasion would be fitting to speak, when we take up the discourse on the soul.
Heraclitus, at any rate, clearly disparages generation when he says: 'Being born, they wish to live and to have their fates' — or rather, to find rest — 'and they leave behind children to become fates in turn.' Empedocles is plainly of the same mind when he says: 'I wept and wailed when I saw the unfamiliar place.' And again: 'For out of the living he made the dead, changing their forms.' And again: 'Alas, O wretched race of mortals, O ill-starred — out of what strifes and out of what groanings you were born.' The Sibyl too says: 'Men, mortal and fleshly, being nothing,' likewise to the poet who writes: 'Earth nurtures nothing feebler than man.'
Indeed Theognis also shows generation to be evil, speaking somewhat as follows: 'Best of all for those upon the earth is never to be born, nor to look upon the rays of the piercing sun; but having been born, to pass as swiftly as possible through the gates of Hades.' In agreement with them the tragic poet Euripides writes: 'We ought, gathering in assembly, to mourn for the one who is born, for all the evils into which he comes; but the one who has died and ceased from his labors we ought to send from the house rejoicing and speaking words of good omen.' And again he will say the like: 'Who knows whether living is really dying, and dying, living?'
Herodotus plainly does the same, making Solon say: 'O Croesus, every man is a calamity.' And his tale about Cleobis and Biton clearly means nothing other than to censure birth and to praise death. 'As is the generation of leaves, so too is that of men,' says Homer. And Plato in the Cratylus attributes to Orpheus the account of the soul being punished in the body, speaking thus: 'For some say that this body is a tomb of the soul, as though it were buried in the present life; and because by means of it the soul signifies whatever it signifies, on this account too it is rightly called a 'sign.' It seems, however, that it was chiefly the followers of Orpheus who gave it this name, on the ground that the soul is paying the penalty for whatever it is paying it for.'
It is worth recalling too the words of Philolaus; for the Pythagorean speaks thus: 'The ancient theologians and seers also bear witness that the soul has been yoked to the body as a punishment for certain offenses, and has been buried in this body as in a tomb.' Pindar too, speaking of the mysteries at Eleusis, adds: 'Blessed is he who has seen those rites before going beneath the earth; he knows the end of life, and he knows its god-given beginning.' Plato likewise, in the Phaedo, does not hesitate to write in similar vein: 'And those who established the rites of initiation for us meant nothing other than this — that he will dwell with the gods.' And what does he mean when he says: 'So long as we have the body, and our soul is fouled by association with such an evil, we shall never adequately possess that which we desire'? Does he not hint that generation is the cause of the greatest evils? And in the Phaedo he further bears witness: 'For it is likely that those who rightly lay hold of philosophy escape the notice of others in this, that they themselves pursue nothing other than dying and being dead.'
And again: 'Is it not the case that here too the soul of the philosopher above all dishonors the body and flees from it, and seeks to come to be by itself alone?' And does this not chime with the divine apostle who says: 'Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?' — unless he speaks tropically of the like-mindedness of those dragged down into vice as a body of death. And even before Marcion, Plato plainly turns away from intercourse, which is the beginning of generation, in the first book of the Republic. For in praising old age he adds: 'Know well that, for my part, in proportion as the other pleasures relating to the body wither away, so much the more do the desires and pleasures relating to reason increase' — and, recalling the use of the pleasures of love, he says: 'Hush, man; most gladly indeed have I escaped from it, as from escaping some raging and savage master.'
Again, in the Phaedo he disparages generation when he writes: 'Now the account given in secret teachings concerning these things is that we men are in a kind of guard-post.' And again: 'But those who are found to have lived especially in a holy manner are the ones who are set free from these regions here on earth and released, as it were from prisons, and who arrive above at the pure dwelling.' Yet, being in this condition, he nonetheless perceives that the ordering of things is good, and says: 'One ought not to release oneself from this nor to run away.' And, to put it briefly, he gave Marcion no ground to reckon matter evil, for he himself piously said the following concerning the world: 'From the one who put it together it possesses all that is beautiful; but whatever is harsh and unjust that occurs in heaven, this it possesses of itself from its former condition, and it works this out also in living creatures.'
He adds still more clearly: 'The cause of these things for it is the bodily element of its composite nature, the element bred long ago in its former condition, because it partook of much disorder before it arrived at the present world-order.' No less does he lament the race of men in the Laws also, speaking thus: 'And the gods, taking pity on the toilsome race of men as it is by nature, ordained for them, as respites from their toils, the recurring cycles of festivals.' And in the Epinomis he goes through the causes of this pity and says the following: 'That from the beginning it is hard for every living creature to come into being — first, to partake of the condition of those still in the womb, and then, in turn, to be born, and further to be reared and to be educated — all this comes about through countless toils, as we all agree.'
What then? Does not Heraclitus too call generation death, in a manner similar to Pythagoras and to the Socrates of the Gorgias, when he says: 'Death is all we see when awake; all we see when asleep is sleep'?
But enough of these matters; when we take up the discourse on first principles, we shall then also examine these contrarieties which both the philosophers hint at and the followers of Marcion make into doctrine. Meanwhile I think it has been shown by us clearly enough that Marcion took the starting points of his strange doctrines from Plato, ungratefully and ignorantly.
Let our discourse on continence now proceed. We were saying that the Greeks, suspicious of the difficulty involved, uttered many sayings against the begetting of children, but that the Marcionites, taking these up in a godless manner, show ingratitude toward the Demiurge. For tragedy says: 'Better for mortals never to be born than to be born. Then again I bear children with bitter pangs; and having borne them, if I bear fools, I grieve in vain, seeing them base, though I destroyed good ones in the bearing; but if I bear ones who turn out well, I melt my wretched heart with dread. What good is this? Is it not enough for a single soul to be in distress, and to have its labors on top of that?' And likewise still: 'It seems to me, now as always, that men ought never to beget children, seeing how many toils are in store for those they beget.' And in what is said further on he plainly traces the cause of these evils back to first principles, saying thus: 'O you who were born to misfortune and to fare ill, you became a man, and from that source you took the ill fortune of life, from the source whence this upper air, giving breath to mortals, began to nourish all alike; do not now, being mortal, resent your mortal lot.'
Again he renders the like sentiments thus: 'No mortal is blessed or fortunate; for no one has yet been born free from grief.' And then again: 'Alas, alas, how many are the fortunes of mortal sufferings, and how many their shapes — no one could tell their limit.' And likewise still: 'For among mortals there is nothing that is happy through to the end.'
In this way, they say, the Pythagoreans too abstained from the pleasures of love. But it seems to me, on the contrary, that they marry for the sake of begetting children, but wish, after the begetting of children, to master the pleasure arising from love. In this same spirit they mystically forbid the eating of beans — not because the legume produces flatulence and is hard to digest and makes dreams disturbed, nor indeed because a bean resembles a human head, according to that little verse, 'to eat beans is the same as eating the heads of one's parents,' but rather because beans, when eaten, render women barren. Theophrastus, at any rate, in the fifth book of his Causes of Plants, records that the husks of beans, when placed around the roots of newly planted trees, wither the growing plants, and that domestic hens too, when they feed on these continually, become barren.
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