9781945186240

1. Injustice is a kind of blasphemy. Nature designed rational beings for
each other’s sake: to help—not harm—one another, as they deserve. To
transgress its will, then, is to blaspheme against the oldest of the gods.
And to lie is to blaspheme against it too. Because “nature” means the
nature of that which is. And that which is and that which is the case are
closely linked, so that nature is synonymous with Truth—the source of all
true things. To lie deliberately is to blaspheme—the liar commits deceit,
and thus injustice. And likewise to lie without realizing it. Because the
involuntary liar disrupts the harmony of nature—its order. He is in conflict
with the way the world is structured. As anyone is who deviates toward
what is opposed to the truth—even against his will. Nature gave him the
resources to distinguish between true and false. And he neglected them, and
now can’t tell the difference.
And to pursue pleasure as good, and flee from pain as evil—that too is
blasphemous. Someone who does that is bound to find himself constantly
reproaching nature—complaining that it doesn’t treat the good and bad as
they deserve, but often lets the bad enjoy pleasure and the things that
produce it, and makes the good suffer pain, and the things that produce
pain. And moreover, to fear pain is to fear something that’s bound to
happen, the world being what it is—and that again is blasphemy. While if
you pursue pleasure, you can hardly avoid wrongdoing—which is
manifestly blasphemous.
Some things nature is indifferent to; if it privileged one over the other it
would hardly have created both. And if we want to follow nature, to be of
one mind with it, we need to share its indifference. To privilege pleasure
over pain—life over death, fame over anonymity—is clearly blasphemous.
Nature certainly doesn’t.
And when I say that nature is indifferent to them, I mean that they
happen indifferently, at different times, to the things that exist and the
things that come into being after them, through some ancient decree of