It is always a wonderful sensation when one discovers something in an ancient text that feels fresh and alive and of the present. That was my experience today in reading book X of Plato’s Laws, his conservative, unfinished final work.

There is always this problem in doing historical work: what in our minds today was thinkable then, and what was not? For instance, there have been ongoing debates about whether the ancients were capable of atheism, or whether true atheism, as we understand it, is a recent invention of dour Victorians (or somesuch). What Plato says about naturalism here is as Victorian as can be.

But first, his moving sighs of woe at the youth who fail to accept the existence of the gods and thus venture into crime:

Who can be calm when he is called upon to prove the existence of the Gods? Who can avoid hating and abhorring the men who are and have been the cause of this argument; I speak of those who will not believe the tales which they have heard as babes and sucklings from their mothers and nurses, repeated by them both in jest and earnest, like charms, who have also heard them in the sacrificial prayers, and seen sights accompanying them,—sights and sounds delightful to children,—and their parents during the sacrifices showing an intense earnestness on behalf of their children and of themselves, and with eager interest talking to the Gods, and beseeching them, as though they were firmly convinced of their existence; who likewise see and hear the prostrations and invocations which are made by Hellenes and barbarians at the rising and setting of the sun and moon, in all the vicissitudes of life, not as if they thought that there were no Gods, but as if there could be no doubt of their existence, and no suspicion of their non-existence; when men, knowing all these things, despise them on no real grounds, as would be admitted by all who have any particle of intelligence, and when they force us to say what we are now saying, how can any one in gentle terms remonstrate with the like of them, when he has to begin by proving to them the very existence of the Gods? Yet the attempt must be made; for it would be unseemly that one half of mankind should go mad in their lust of pleasure, and the other half in their indignation at such persons.

Plato then assures the youths,

You and your friends are not the first who have held this opinion about the Gods. There have always been persons more or less numerous who have had the same disorder.

And continues with this incredible account of naturalism. He says he has known many who have taught this doctrine, though none of them has been able to maintain it until death. Since this comes in the context of a book on legislation, Plato is of course most concerned that naturalism makes the laws seem like mere human inventions rather than divine ordinances.

They say that fire and water, and earth and air, all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order,—earth, and sun, and moon, and stars,—they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them—of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only. Art sprang up afterwards and out of these, mortal and of mortal birth, and produced in play certain images and very partial imitations of the truth, having an affinity to one another, such as music and painting create and their companion arts. And there are other arts which have a serious purpose, and these co-operate with nature, such, for example, as medicine, and husbandry, and gymnastic. And they say that politics co-operate with nature, but in a less degree, and have more of art; also that legislation is entirely a work of art, and is based on assumptions which are not true.

Finally, and most significantly for me, he is aware of materialistic theories of religion. Again, they make him fear for the laws.

These people would say that the Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them.

Good things of which to keep note.