Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/151

 VI] BEAUTY AND LOVE 133 There were, however, Christians who spoke against suppression of the affections, recognizing that such a principle was pagan, while Christianity called for the use and development of all elements of human nature. It is an error of the Stoics, says Lactantius, that they would cut off all emotions — desire, joy, fear, and grief — as diseases of the human being ; the Peripatetics are not so far from the truth in teaching that the affec- tions, as a part of human nature, should not be rooted out, but moderated. Yet they too are wrong, for at times it is right to rejoice or grieve greatly. Man should not moderate the affections, but regulate their causes. He who rightly fears God is a man of right fortitude, and will not fear pain and death, which it is unworthy of man to fear. "Where there are no vices, there is no place for virtue ; as there is no place for victory unless there be an adversary. There can be no good without evil in this life. Emotional desire is, as it were, a natural fruitfulness of souls (affectus igiturj quam ubertas est naturalis animorum). A wild field will bring forth briars, but a cultivated field good fruit ; and when God made man. He gave him emo- tions (coinmotiones) that he might take virtue." ^ A greater man than Lactantius also maintained that affections and emotions were elements of Christian life on earth : " The citizens of the sacred city of God in this life's sojourning, living according to God's will, fear, desire, griev^, rejoice. And because their love is rightly directed, so are these feelings of theirs. They fear eternal punishment, desire eternal life, they groan in themselves waiting for the adoption ; they 1 LactaaUos, Divine ImtUutet, V, 1A>17.