Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Why not turn, then, to a somewhat more humane opinion, one that appears to be drawn from everyone's common sense and simple conjecture? [2] For Varro too recalls it, saying that the divinity of the elements is believed in for this reason: that nothing at all can be born, nourished, or brought forward for the preservation of human life without their support, [3] since not even bodies or souls themselves could have sufficed without the tempering of the elements, by which this habitation of the world is furnished, bound together by the conditions of its circling courses — except where the excess of cold or heat has denied habitation to men, [4] and that for this reason the sun is believed to be a god, who heaps up the day from his own store, ripens the crops with his heats, and keeps the year by its stations; the moon, the comfort of the nights, the patroness of the months, its guide; [5] likewise the stars, certain markers of the seasons for noting the times of farm-work; and finally the sky itself, beneath which all things are, and the earth, upon which all things stand, and whatever among them conspires together for human advantage; [6] and that credit for divinity accrues to the elements not only from their benefits, but also from the various things that tend to befall as if from their anger and displeasure — thunderbolts, hailstorms, blazing heats, pestilential winds, likewise floods, likewise chasms and quakings of the earth; [7] and that it is right to believe them gods, whose nature is to be honored in good fortune and feared in bad — mistress, that is, of both helping and harming. [8] Now, if this is how people feel in ordinary life, they do not, correspondingly, render thanks or lodge complaints against the very things by which they are helped or hurt, but against those under whose right and power the operation of these things runs its course. [9] For even in matters of pleasure, you award the crown as prize not to the flute or the lyre, but to the artist who tempers the flute and lyre with the power of sweetness. [10] Equally, when someone is in poor health, you do not remember your gratitude toward the wool-dressings or antidotes or poultices themselves, but toward the physicians, by whose skill and judgment the remedies come about. [11] Likewise in misfortunes: those wounded by the sword do not blame the pain itself or the spear, but the enemy or the robber; and those crushed by a collapse do not accuse the tiles or the roof-slates, but old age, just as shipwrecked men do not lay the blame on rocks and waves, but on the storm. [12] And rightly so: for it is certain that whatever happens is to be credited not to the means by which it happens, but to the one by whom it happens, since he is the source of the deed who determined both that it should happen and the means by which it should happen (and in all things there are these three headings: what it is, by what means it is, and by whom it is) — because there must first be someone who wills a thing to happen, and then a means that can be found for it. [13] And so you act rightly in all other matters by taking the author into account; but in physics — contrary to nature — you depart from that very rule which in other matters you judge to be wisdom, by stripping away the highest rank, that of the author, and crediting what is done not to the one by whom it is done. [14] Thus it comes about that you believe to be powers and wills of the elements what are in fact servitudes and functions. We, in this investigation, posit some artisan and lord within them, but we maintain that the elements are servitudes — as their very work shows — which you turn into powers. [15] But gods do not serve; therefore what serves is not god. Or else let them show us a common case where, from license of being acted upon, freedom is proven, and from freedom, dominion, and from dominion, divinity is inferred. [16] For if all these things above us are recalled to run their fixed courses, their lawful circuits, their own intervals, their equal turns, established after the manner of a law, as the times revolve and their guidance of the seasons is carried out, [17] by this very observance of their own conditions, by the reliability of their workings, by their persistence, by their care in the changes, by their memory in the returning cycles — let them persuade you that some dominion presides over them, to which the whole business of the world appears to answer, arriving at the benefit of the human race. [18] For you cannot say that the elements do these things for themselves and look after themselves, arranging nothing for man's sake, when the very reason you defend divinity for the elements is that you feel yourself helped or harmed by them; for if they do it for themselves, you owe them nothing.
VI.