FABLE OF CUPID. 45 



tise were the conclusions and productions of unassisted 

 reason, and rested on perception alone, the failing and im 

 perfect oracles of which are deservedly rejected, now that 

 the higher and more certain light of the Divine Word has 

 shone upon men. That chaos therefore which was coeval 

 with Cupid signified the confused and disordered mass or 

 collection of matter. But matter itself with its power and 

 nature, in a word, the elements of things were shadowed 

 out in Cupid himself. He is introduced without a parent, 

 that is, without a cause : for cause is as it were the parent 

 of effect; and in tropical discourse nothing is therefore 

 more usual than for the parent to stand for cause, and the 

 offspring for effect. But there cannot be in nature (for we 

 always except God) any cause of the first matter and of its 

 proper influence and action, for there is nothing prior in 

 time to the first matter. Therefore there is no efficient nor 

 any thing more known to nature ; there is therefore neither 

 genus nor form. Wherefore whatever primitive matter is, 

 together with its influence and action, it is sui generis, and 

 admits of no definition drawn from perception, and is to be 

 taken just as it is found, and not to be judged of from any 

 preconceived idea. For the mode of it, if it is given to us 

 to know it, cannot be judged of by means of its cause, 

 seeing that it is, next to God, the cause of causes, itself 

 without a cause. For there is a certain real limit of causes 

 in nature, and it would argue levity and inexperience in a 

 philosopher to require or imagine a cause for the last and 

 positive power and law of nature, as much as it would not 

 to demand a cause in those that are subordinate. 



On this account the ancients have fabled Cupid to be 

 without a parent, that is, without a cause. And they did 

 so not without design. Nay, perhaps there is not any thing 

 more important ; for nothing has more corrupted philosophy 

 than the seeking after the parents of Cupid; I mean, that 

 philosophers have not received and embraced the elements 

 of things as they are found in nature, as a certain fixed 

 and positive doctrine, and as it were by an experimental 

 trust in them; but have rather deduced them from the 

 laws of words, and from dialectics and slight mathematical 

 conclusions and common notions and similar wanderings 

 of the mind beyond the bounds of nature. This therefore 

 must be constantly in the philosopher s thoughts, that 

 Cupid is without parents, lest perchance his understanding 

 turn aside to empty questions; because in universal per 

 ceptions of this kind the human mind becomes diffusive, 

 and departs from the right use of itself and of its objects, 



