And if we look closely, we shall see that beneath
these questions lies the wish to know not so much the "why" as the
"wherefore," not the cause but the end. Cicero's definition of
philosophy is well known--"the knowledge of things divine and human and
of the causes in which these things are contained," _rerum divinarum et
humanarum, causarumque quibus hae res continentur_; but in reality these
causes are, for us, ends. And what is the Supreme Cause, God, but the
Supreme End? The "why" interests us only in view of the "wherefore." We
wish to know whence we came only in order the better to be able to
ascertain whither we are going.
This Ciceronian definition, which is the Stoic definition, is also found
in that formidable intellectualist, Clement of Alexandria, who was
canonized by the Catholic Church, and he expounds it in the fifth
chapter of the first of his _Stromata_. But this same Christian
philosopher--Christian?--in the twenty-second chapter of his fourth
_Stroma_ tells us that for the gnostic--that is to say, the
intellectual--knowledge, _gnosis_, ought to suffice, and he adds: "I
will dare aver that it is not because he wishes to be saved that he, who
devotes himself to knowledge for the sake of the divine science itself,
chooses knowledge. For the exertion of the intellect by exercise is
prolonged to a perpetual exertion. And the perpetual exertion of the
intellect is the essence of an intelligent being, which results from an
uninterrupted process of admixture, and remains eternal contemplation, a
living substance.
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