CHAPTER X
THE NATURE OF VIRTUE
POMPONAZZI always shews a marked anxiety about the ethical effect of his theories. It is characteristic of him that he constantly desires to shew his philosophical conclusions to be consistent with the highest views of moral life, and with the binding obligation of moral duties. In particular he labours to prove that his doctrine of the soul's mortality not only does not deprive morality of any sanction, but even establishes morality upon a better basis. The ground on which he rests this latter claim for his doctrine is that it makes morality independent of every consideration of rewards and punishments, and so places it upon its true foundation.
But first he was obliged to meet a number of arguments by which it was sought to prove his conclusion hostile to morality. It was argued that to deny the future life was to deprive virtue of its motives and sanctions: for how could men be induced to prefer death to dishonour, or to die for duty, if death ended all? Or would it be reasonable to ask them to do so? Again, if the Divine Government were represented only by its operation in the present life, it seemed impossible to trace in it any principle of justice, or to maintain the existence of a moral order at all. Finally there was the most profound and fundamental objection of all, that in this life man does not, and cannot, attain his End: but a being for ever precluded from attaining its natural end is an impossibility: therefore, it was argued, since
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for the attainment of the end of man a further existence is required, that extension of existence must be given.
Pomponazzi accepts the issues thus offered to him. He admits that his doctrine must be tried by these tests. He proposes, on his own principles, salvare rationem virtutis. He will not for a moment allow that his view of human life leads to immoral conclusions, or lessens the sanctions and destroys the motives for moral action. If it were to follow from the soul's mortality that men should prefer dishonour to death, or fail to persist in duty even to the point of death, that certainly would be something contra naturam 1 , but by his determination of good ness as a thing desirable for its own sake, he proposes to shew that this does not follow. Similarly he vindicates Divine Justice and the reality of a moral order, as something independent of rewards and punishments in a future state.
But he deals most fully with the argument against him in the most general form namely as concerning the possibility of man's attaining in this life the end of his being. He proposes such a view of the nature and end of man, and of the possibilities (however limited) of the present life, as shall permit man on earth to reach a certain relative perfection that perfection, Pomponazzi would say, which is appropriate to his condition and place in the universe and to attain a measure of real happiness.
This is the question which Pomponazzi takes up first, in the fourteenth chapter of the De Immortalitate.
He raises first the question, whether it be possible for man in this life to attain the end of his being. And he admits that if we suppose that " end " to be intellectual contemplation, it can in no sense be attained within the bounds of mortality. How few men have in this life ability, time, or opportunity for philosophic thought! How utterly imperfect and rudimentary is the highest earthly knowledge so that it is rather to be called ignorance than knowledge, a guess rather than a certainty! Again, the more one knows, one still desires to know the more. Then there are so many arts, so many sciences, and life is all too short to master even one. And how many obstructions there are, and how many accidents may befall, to hinder the pursuit of
1 De Imm. xill. p. 99; cf. xiv. p. 117.
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truth; how difficult is the struggle; how uncertain the outcome; how suddenly all may come to an end 1!
This is the negative case against the sufficiency of the present life. But the positive argument, on which the thinkers of that time depended to prove the immortality of the soul, was that the soul of man desires and demands infinity. It is true that the beasts also desire the prolongation of life, and have an instinct of self-preservation; but they do not desire this like men appetitu cognoscitivo, while " we know the eternal and desire that we too should become eternal and immortal." This appetite belongs, it was said, to the very constitution of our nature. It is in all men: "but if it is in all, it will be natural 2 ."