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Wyttenbach, whom de Maistre attacks for repudiating this view, is willing, with all his scholarly caution, to admit that Plutarch, in this tract, touches the excellences of the Christian faith.[1]
The position which Plutarch sets himself to overthrow is that which is expressed most concisely in the famous verses of Ennius:—
"Ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam cœlitum,
Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus;
Nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest"
—a sentiment in exact harmony with the Epicurean view of the matter.[2] While, however, establishing the providence and goodness of God as against the practical
- [Footnote: l'oreille ne supporte pas ses vers: les dames surtout et les étrangers le goûtent peu." Another French critic justly remarks on these "liberties" of de Maistre: "C'est trop de licence. Plutarque n'est pas un de ces écrivains qui laissent leurs pensées en bouton" (Gréard, p. 274). Yet it is upon de Maistre's "paraphrase" that Gréard bases his own analysis!]
- ↑ Wyttenbach: De Sera Numinis Vindicta (Præfatio). It is pleasant to repeat the praise which Christian writers have poured on this tract. "Diese Schrift" says Volkmann, "gehört meines Erachtungs unbedingt mit zu dem schönsten, was aus der gesammten nachclassischen Litteratur der Griechen überhaupt auf uns gekommen ist." (Volkmann, vol. ii. p. 265.) One may wonder a little, perhaps, at the limitation conveyed in the nach of nachclassischen.—Trench says that some of Plutarch's arguments "would have gone far to satisfy St. Augustine, and to meet the demands of his theology."
- ↑ The Epicurean author of the De Placitis, still inveighing against "that tall talker, Plato," is bitterly emphatic on this point.—"If there is a God, and human affairs are administered by His Providence, how comes it that bareness prospers, while the refined and good fall into adversity?" And he instances the murder of Agamemnon "at the hands of an adulterer and an adultress," and the death of Hercules, that benefactor of humanity, "done to death by Dejaniras drugs." (881 D.)
