XXXVI THE CAUSES OF SUCH PERIODS OF DEARTH AND WHAT FORMS THE DEARTH MAY TAKE

Son. I see clearly now that troubles may befall men in many ways, the mighty as well as the humble, kings as well as cotters. But as you have given me this freedom and have allowed me to question you in our conversation, 196I shall ask you to enlarge somewhat fully upon this speech before we take up another. What is your opinion as to the causes of such a severe dearth as may come upon the minds of men, so that all is ruined at the same time, insight and national morals? And do you think such losses should be traced to the people who inhabit the realm or to the king and the men who manage the state with him?

Father. What you have now asked about has its origin in various facts and occurrences of a harmful character. I believe, however, that such misfortunes would rarely appear among the people who inhabit and till the land, if the men who govern the realm were discreet and the king himself were wise. But when God, because of the sins of the people, determines to visit a land with a punishment that means destruction to morals and intellect, He will carry out His decision promptly, though in various ways, as soon as He wills it. Instances of this have occurred frequently and in various places, where trouble has come when a chieftain, who possessed both wealth and wisdom and who had been highly honored by the king, having sat in his council and shared largely with him in the government, departed this life leaving four or five sons in his place, all in their early youth or childhood. Then the king and the whole realm have suffered immediate injury: the king has lost a good friend, an excellent adviser, and a strong bulwark. Next the man’s possessions are divided into five parts, and all his projects are disturbed. His household sinks in importance, since each of the sons has but a fifth of all the power that the father derived from his means while he was 197living, and has even less of his insight and knowledge of manners, being a mere child. Greater still will the change be if he leaves no son at his decease but as many daughters as I have now counted sons; but the very greatest change will come if neither sons nor daughters survive him; for then it is likely that his possessions will be split up among distant relatives, unless a near kinsman be found.

Now if many such events should occur at one time in a kingdom, vigor would disappear from the king’s council, though he himself be very capable. And if it should happen (for there are cases of such events as well as of the others) that a king depart this life and leave a young son who succeeds to the paternal kingdom, though a mere child, and young counsellors come into the places of the old and wise advisers who were before,—if all these things that we have now recounted should happen at one time, then it is highly probable that all the government of the realm would be stricken with dearth, and that, when the government goes to ruin, the morals of the nation would also fail to some extent.

There still remains the one contingency which is most likely to bring on such years of dearth as produce the greatest evils; and unfortunately there are no fewer instances of such issues than of those that we have just mentioned. If a king who has governed a kingdom should happen to die, and leave behind three or four sons, and the men who are likely to be made counsellors be all young and full of temerity, though wealthy and of good ancestry, since they have sprung from families 198that formerly conducted the government with the king,—now if a kingdom should come into such unfortunate circumstances as have been described, with several heirs at the same time, and the evil counsel is furthermore taken to give them all the royal title and dignity, then that realm must be called a rudderless ship or a decayed estate; it may be regarded almost as a ruined kingdom, for it is sown with the worst seeds of famine and the grains of unpeace. For the petty kings, having rent the realm asunder, will quickly divide the loyalty of the people who inhabit the land, both of the rich and of the poor; and each of these lords will then try to draw friends about him, as many as he can. Thereupon each will begin to survey his realm as to population and wealth; and when he recalls what his predecessor possessed, each will feel that he has too little. Then the friends, too, of each one will remind him of and tell about how much the king who ruled before him possessed in wealth and numbers and what great undertakings he set out upon; and it seems as if in every suggestion each one tries to urge his lord to seize upon more than he already has. After that these lords begin to treasure those riches that are of the least profit to the kingdom, namely envy: trivial matters are carefully garnered and great wrath is blown out of them. Soon the love of kinship begins to decay; he who was earlier called friend and relative is now looked upon as an evil-doer, for soon each one begins to be suspicious of the others. But when suspicion and evil rumors begin to appear, wicked men think that good times are at hand, and they all bring out their plows. Before long the seeds of hostility begin to sprout, 199avarice and iniquity flourish, and men grow bold in manslaying, high-handed robbery, and theft.

Now if it happens that one of these princes should wish to punish the aforesaid vices in his kingdom, the wicked take refuge in the service of some other master; and, though they have been driven from home because of their misdeeds, they pretend to have come in innocence to escape the cruel wrath of their lord. The one to whom they have fled gives protection in temerity rather than in mercy; for he wishes to acquire friends in the other’s realm, who may prove useful to himself and hostile to the other in case they should come to disagreement. But those who had to flee because of their evil conduct and law-breaking soon begin to show hostility toward the lord whose subjects they formerly were and to rouse as much enmity as they can between him and the one to whom they have come. They take revenge for their exile by carrying murder, rapine, and plundering into the kingdom, as if they were guiltless and all the blame lay with the lord. Soon immorality begins to multiply, for God shows His wrath in this way, that where the four boundaries of the territories of these chiefs touch, he places a moving wheel which turns on a restless axle. After that each one forgets all brotherly love, and kinship is wrecked. Nothing is now spared, for whenever the people are divided into many factions through loyalty to different chiefs, and these fall out, the masses will rashly pursue their desires, and the morals of the nation go to ruin. For then everyone makes his own moral code according to his own way of thinking; and no one fears punishment any longer when the rulers fall out and are weakened thereby.

200When each one looks only to his own tricks and wiles, great misfortunes of all kinds will come upon the land. Murder and quarrels will multiply; many women will be carried off as captives of war and violated, while others will be ensnared and seduced into fornication; children will be begotten in adultery and unlawful co-habitation. Some take their kinswomen or sisters-in-law, while others seduce wives away from their husbands; and thus all forms of whoredom are committed and degeneracy will come to light in all the generations that are begotten in such immorality. Every form of crime will be committed. Peasants and subjects become defiant and disobedient; they are not careful to avoid crimes, and though they commit many, they atone for few only. Trusting in their own strength and numbers, they attend seditious meetings; and they choose as their part what is likely to bring a dangerous outcome, for they place all men on the same level, the discreet and decent ones with the coarse and stupid, and they screen foolish and iniquitous men from punishment, though these deserve it every day. And this they do either by swearing falsely and giving false witness in their behalf, or by making a foolhardy and crafty defence at the court of trial, so that the guilty have to answer for nothing before the kingsmen who assist the king in carrying out the law. For the unthinking mob seem to imagine that the king was appointed to be their opponent; and a foolish man regards himself fortunate and highly favored in the eyes of thoughtless people, if he can maintain himself for some time in opposition to royal authority and the prescriptions of law. And if 201such men have disputes to settle anywhere, the wicked will support the foolish one, so that he may prevail in the controversy; thus the upright and the peaceful are robbed of their dues. If the greedy or the quarrelsome is slain because of his avarice, his stupid kinsmen who survive him will feel that their family has been greatly injured and impaired thereby; and if at some earlier time there was slain one of their family who was both wise and peaceful, and whose wisdom and even temper proved useful to many, and if this one was atoned for with a payment to the kindred, they will now ask as large a fine for the unwise as what was formerly taken for the prudent one; otherwise there will be revenge by manslaying.

But when God sees that such misjudgments, born of perversity and unwisdom, are decreed, He turns the injustice back upon those who first began to pass unfair and unfounded judgments. For as soon as the foolish or the avaricious sees that he is held in high regard, even more than the wise with his even temper, and that his avarice and folly are turned to honor and advancement, he will do according to his nature and the custom of all foolish men: he will become more grasping and will operate more widely in his greed. And when the mob begins to regard that as worthy of praise and renown which is evil and should be hated by all, the second and the third will learn it and the one after the other, until it becomes common custom; and he alone will be counted a worthy man who is grasping and knows how to detract unjustly from another’s honor to his own profit. After that the one deals greedily with the other, 202till misfortune turns against the very ones whose folly and wickedness originally began these evil practices. For one will finally bring evil upon another, wounds or other afflictions, and thus all old and lawful ordinances must decay. Now everyone holds that the king and other great lords should temper the severity of the laws with mercy; but none of the commoners seems willing to deal justly with another; indeed, each would rather demand more than what he was entitled to from the beginning. But when all lawful ordinances and right punishments are ignored and unlaw and malice take their place, and this condition becomes so general that God is wearied, He applies the punishment that is able to reach all, since the guilt has touched all. He throws hatred and enmity down among the chiefs who are placed in control of the realm; when things go ill there may also come failure of crops; and the chiefs soon begin to quarrel, for each finds complaints in the other’s kingdom, which are finally settled with slaughter and strife.

But whenever famine, murder, and warfare begin to arrive together and visit all those who inhabit the realm, the kingdom will be brought near to utter weakness and ruin, if the period should continue any length of time. Though laws and useful customs may have been observed and maintained to some extent in the times mentioned earlier, they will be wholly forgotten whenever such times appear as those that we have just now described; for in warfare the best men and those of the noblest kinship are destroyed. But failure of crops, rapine, and unpeace of every sort that may then appear will rob those of wealth who are in possession of 203it and have acquired it honestly, while he gets it who can most readily deprive others by theft and plunder. And when such a time comes upon a nation, it will suffer loss in good morals and capable men, wealth and security, and every blessing as long as God permits the plague to continue. But He metes out according to His mercy, for He is able to save such a country, when He finds that the people have been sufficiently chastised for their sins. Now you can imagine how highly moral the people will become, if such a nation is saved by God’s grace and again brought under the rule of a single monarch, and how prosperous the realm may become in the period immediately following such an unrest as I have just described. For then the kingdom was rent, the morals of the people were confused, and their loyalty was divided among a number of lords, each one of whom was striving to contrive and employ against the others cunning, deception, disloyalty, and evil in every form.^[247]