AUGUSTINE: CONFESSIONS
Newly translated and edited
by
ALBERT C. OUTLER, Ph.D., D.D.
Professor of Theology
Perkins School of Theology
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, Texas
First published MCMLV
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 55-5021
Printed in the United States of America
Introduction
Like a colossus bestriding two worlds, Augustine stands as the last patristic and the first medieval father of Western Christianity. He gathered together and conserved all the main motifs of Latin Christianity from Tertullian to Ambrose; he appropriated the heritage of Nicene orthodoxy; he was a Chalcedonian before Chalcedon--and he drew all this into an unsystematic synthesis which is still our best mirror of the heart and mind of the Christian community in the Roman Empire. More than this, he freely received and deliberately reconsecrated the religious philosophy of the Greco-Roman world to a new apologetic use in maintaining the intelligibility of the Christian proclamation. Yet, even in his role as summator of tradition, he was no mere eclectic. The center of his “system” is in the Holy Scriptures, as they ordered and moved his heart and mind. It was in Scripture that, first and last, Augustine found the focus of his religious authority.
At the same time, it was this essentially conservative genius who recast the patristic tradition into the new pattern by which European Christianity would be largely shaped and who, with relatively little interest in historical detail, wrought out the first comprehensive “philosophy of history.” Augustine regarded himself as much less an innovator than a summator. He was less a reformer of the Church than the defender of the Church’s faith. His own self-chosen project was to save Christianity from the disruption of heresy and the calumnies of the pagans, and, above everything else, to renew and exalt the faithful hearing of the gospel of man’s utter need and God’s abundant grace. But the unforeseen result of this enterprise was to furnish the motifs of the Church’s piety and doctrine for the next thousand years and more. Wherever one touches the Middle Ages, he finds the marks of Augustine’s influence, powerful and pervasive--even Aquinas is more of an Augustinian at heart than a “proper” Aristotelian. In the Protestant Reformation, the evangelical elements in Augustine’s thought were appealed to in condemnation of the corruptions of popular Catholicism--yet even those corruptions had a certain right of appeal to some of the non-evangelical aspects of Augustine’s thought and life. And, still today, in the important theological revival of our own time, the influence of Augustine is obviously one of the most potent and productive impulses at work.
A succinct characterization of Augustine is impossible, not only because his thought is so extraordinarily complex and his expository method so incurably digressive, but also because throughout his entire career there were lively tensions and massive prejudices in his heart and head. His doctrine of God holds the Plotinian notions of divine unity and remotion in tension with the Biblical emphasis upon the sovereign God’s active involvement in creation and redemption. For all his devotion to Jesus Christ, this theology was never adequately Christocentric, and this reflects itself in many ways in his practical conception of the Christian life. He did not invent the doctrines of original sin and seminal transmission of guilt but he did set them as cornerstones in his “system,” matching them with a doctrine of infant baptism which cancels, ex opere operato, birth sin and hereditary guilt. He never wearied of celebrating God’s abundant mercy and grace--but he was also fully persuaded that the vast majority of mankind are condemned to a wholly just and appalling damnation. He never denied the reality of human freedom and never allowed the excuse of human irresponsibility before God--but against all detractors of the primacy of God’s grace, he vigorously insisted on both double predestination and irresistible grace.
For all this the Catholic Church was fully justified in giving Augustine his aptest title, Doctor Gratiae. The central theme in all Augustine’s writings is the sovereign God of grace and the sovereign grace of God. Grace, for Augustine, is God’s freedom to act without any external necessity whatsoever--to act in love beyond human understanding or control; to act in creation, judgment, and redemption; to give his Son freely as Mediator and Redeemer; to endue the Church with the indwelling power and guidance of the Holy Spirit; to shape the destinies of all creation and the ends of the two human societies, the “city of earth” and the “city of God.” Grace is God’s unmerited love and favor, prevenient and occurrent. It touches man’s inmost heart and will. It guides and impels the pilgrimage of those called to be faithful. It draws and raises the soul to repentance, faith, and praise. It transforms the human will so that it is capable of doing good. It relieves man’s religious anxiety by forgiveness and the gift of hope. It establishes the ground of Christian humility by abolishing the ground of human pride. God’s grace became incarnate in Jesus Christ, and it remains immanent in the Holy Spirit in the Church.
Augustine had no system--but he did have a stable and coherent Christian outlook. Moreover, he had an unwearied, ardent concern: man’s salvation from his hopeless plight, through the gracious action of God’s redeeming love. To understand and interpret this was his one endeavor, and to this task he devoted his entire genius.
He was, of course, by conscious intent and profession, a Christian theologian, a pastor and teacher in the Christian community. And yet it has come about that his contributions to the larger heritage of Western civilization are hardly less important than his services to the Christian Church. He was far and away the best--if not the very first--psychologist in the ancient world. His observations and descriptions of human motives and emotions, his depth analyses of will and thought in their interaction, and his exploration of the inner nature of the human self--these have established one of the main traditions in European conceptions of human nature, even down to our own time. Augustine is an essential source for both contemporary depth psychology and existentialist philosophy. His view of the shape and process of human history has been more influential than any other single source in the development of the Western tradition which regards political order as inextricably involved in moral order. His conception of a societasas a community identified and held together by its loyalties and love has become an integral part of the general tradition of Christian social teaching and the Christian vision of “Christendom.” His metaphysical explorations of the problems of being, the character of evil, the relation of faith and knowledge, of will and reason, of time and eternity, of creation and cosmic order, have not ceased to animate and enrich various philosophic reflections throughout the succeeding centuries. At the same time the hallmark of the Augustinian philosophy is its insistent demand that reflective thought issue in practical consequence; no contemplation of the end of life suffices unless it discovers the means by which men are brought to their proper goals. In sum, Augustine is one of the very few men who simply cannot be ignored or depreciated in any estimate of Western civilization without serious distortion and impoverishment of one’s historical and religious understanding.
In the space of some forty-four years, from his conversion in Milan (A.D. 386) to his death in Hippo Regius (A.D. 430), Augustine wrote--mostly at dictation--a vast sprawling library of books, sermons, and letters, the remains of which (in the Benedictine edition of St. Maur) fill fourteen volumes as they are reprinted in Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina (Vols. 32-45). In his old age, Augustine reviewed his authorship (in the Retractations) and has left us a critical review of ninety-three of his works he judged most important. Even a cursory glance at them shows how enormous was his range of interest. Yet almost everything he wrote was in response to a specific problem or an actual crisis in the immediate situation. One may mark off significant developments in his thought over this twoscore years, but one can hardly miss the fundamental consistency in his entire life’s work. He was never interested in writing a systematic summa theologica, and would have been incapable of producing a balanced digest of his multifaceted teaching. Thus, if he is to be read wisely, he must be read widely--and always in context, with due attention to the specific aim in view in each particular treatise.
For the general reader who wishes to approach Augustine as directly as possible, however, it is a useful and fortunate thing that at the very beginning of his Christian ministry and then again at the very climax of it, Augustine set himself to focus his experience and thought into what were, for him, summings up. The result of the first effort is the Confessions, which is his most familiar and widely read work. The second is in the Enchiridion, written more than twenty years later. In the Confessions, he stands on the threshold of his career in the Church. In the Enchiridion, he stands forth as triumphant champion of orthodox Christianity. In these two works--the nearest equivalent to summation in the whole of the Augustinian corpus--we can find all his essential themes and can sample the characteristic flavor of his thought.
Augustine was baptized by Ambrose at Milan during Eastertide, A.D. 387. A short time later his mother, Monica, died at Ostia on the journey back to Africa. A year later, Augustine was back in Roman Africa living in a monastery at Tagaste, his native town. In 391, he was ordained presbyter in the church of Hippo Regius (a small coastal town nearby). Here in 395--with grave misgivings on his own part (cf. Sermon CCCLV, 2) and in actual violation of the eighth canon of Nicea (cf. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, II, 671, and IV, 1167)--he was consecrated assistant bishop to the aged Valerius, whom he succeeded the following year. Shortly after he entered into his episcopal duties he began his Confessions, completing them probably in 398 (cf. De Labriolle, I, vi (see Bibliography), and di Capua, Miscellanea Agostiniana, II, 678).
Augustine had a complex motive for undertaking such a
self-analysis. He had no models before him,
for such earlier writings as the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
and the autobiographical sections in Hilary of Poitiers and Cyprian of
Carthage have only to be compared with the Confessions to see
how different they are.
The Confessions are not Augustine’s autobiography. They are, instead, a deliberate effort, in the permissive atmosphere of God’s felt presence, to recall those crucial episodes and events in which he can now see and celebrate the mysterious actions of God’s prevenient and provident grace. Thus he follows the windings of his memory as it re-presents the upheavals of his youth and the stages of his disorderly quest for wisdom. He omits very much indeed. Yet he builds his successive climaxes so skillfully that the denouement in Book VIII is a vivid and believable convergence of influences, reconstructed and “placed” with consummate dramatic skill. We see how Cicero’s Hortensius first awakened his thirst for wisdom, how the Manicheans deluded him with their promise of true wisdom, and how the Academics upset his confidence in certain knowledge--how they loosed him from the dogmatism of the Manicheans only to confront him with the opposite threat that all knowledge is uncertain. He shows us (Bk. V, Ch. X, 19) that almost the sole cause of his intellectual perplexity in religion was his stubborn, materialistic prejudice that if God existed he had to exist in a body, and thus had to have extension, shape, and finite relation. He remembers how the “Platonists” rescued him from this “materialism” and taught him how to think of spiritual and immaterial reality--and so to become able to conceive of God in non-dualistic categories. We can follow him in his extraordinarily candid and plain report of his Plotinian ecstasy, and his momentary communion with the One (Book VII). The “Platonists” liberated him from error, but they could not loose him from the fetters of incontinence. Thus, with a divided will, he continues to seek a stable peace in the Christian faith while he stubbornly clings to his pride and appetence.
In Book VIII, Augustine piles up a series of remembered incidents that inflamed his desire to imitate those who already seemed to have gained what he had so long been seeking. First of all, there had been Ambrose, who embodied for Augustine the dignity of Christian learning and the majesty of the authority of the Christian Scriptures. Then Simplicianus tells him the moving story of Victorinus (a more famous scholar than Augustine ever hoped to be), who finally came to the baptismal font in Milan as humbly as any other catechumen. Then, from Ponticianus he hears the story of Antony and about the increasing influence of the monastic calling. The story that stirs him most, perhaps, relates the dramatic conversion of the two “special agents of the imperial police” in the garden at Treves--two unlikely prospects snatched abruptly from their worldly ways to the monastic life.
He makes it plain that these examples forced his own feelings to an intolerable tension. His intellectual perplexities had become resolved; the virtue of continence had been consciously preferred; there was a strong desire for the storms of his breast to be calmed; he longed to imitate these men who had done what he could not and who were enjoying the peace he longed for.
But the old habits were still strong and he could not
muster a full act of the whole will to strike them down. Then comes the
scene in the Milanese garden which is an interesting parallel to
Ponticianus’ story about the garden at Treves. The long struggle
is recapitulated in a brief moment; his will struggles against and
within itself. The trivial distraction of a child’s voice,
chanting, “Tolle, lege,” precipitates the resolution
of the conflict. There is a radical shift in mood and will, he turns
eagerly to the chance text in
After this radical change, there was only one more past event that had to be relived before his personal history could be seen in its right perspective. This was the death of his mother and the severance of his strongest earthly tie. Book IX tells us this story. The climactic moment in it is, of course, the vision at Ostia where mother and son are uplifted in an ecstasy that parallels--but also differs significantly from--the Plotinian vision of Book VII. After this, the mother dies and the son who had loved her almost too much goes on alone, now upheld and led by a greater and a wiser love.
We can observe two separate stages in Augustine’s “conversion.” The first was the dramatic striking off of the slavery of incontinence and pride which had so long held him from decisive commitment to the Christian faith. The second was the development of an adequate understanding of the Christian faith itself and his baptismal confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. The former was achieved in the Milanese garden. The latter came more slowly and had no “dramatic moment.” The dialogues that Augustine wrote at Cassiciacum the year following his conversion show few substantial signs of a theological understanding, decisively or distinctively Christian. But by the time of his ordination to the presbyterate we can see the basic lines of a comprehensive and orthodox theology firmly laid out. Augustine neglects to tell us (in 398) what had happened in his thought between 385 and 391. He had other questions, more interesting to him, with which to wrestle.
One does not read far in the Confessions before he recognizes that the term “confess” has a double range of meaning. On the one hand, it obviously refers to the free acknowledgment, before God, of the truth one knows about oneself--and this obviously meant, for Augustine, the “confession of sins.” But, at the same time, and more importantly, confiteri means to acknowledge, to God, the truth one knows about God. To confess, then, is to praise and glorify God; it is an exercise in self-knowledge and true humility in the atmosphere of grace and reconciliation.
Thus the Confessions are by no means complete when the personal history is concluded at the end of Book IX. There are two more closely related problems to be explored: First, how does the finite self find the infinite God (or, how is it found of him?)? And, secondly, how may we interpret God’s action in producing this created world in which such personal histories and revelations do occur? Book X, therefore, is an exploration of man’s way to God, a way which begins in sense experience but swiftly passes beyond it, through and beyond the awesome mystery of memory, to the ineffable encounter between God and the soul in man’s inmost subject-self. But such a journey is not complete until the process is reversed and man has looked as deeply as may be into the mystery of creation, on which all our history and experience depend. In Book XI, therefore, we discover why time is such a problem and how “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” is the basic formula of a massive Christian metaphysical world view. In Books XII and XIII, Augustine elaborates, in loving patience and with considerable allegorical license, the mysteries of creation--exegeting the first chapter of Genesis, verse by verse, until he is able to relate the whole round of creation to the point where we can view the drama of God’s enterprise in human history on the vast stage of the cosmos itself. The Creator is the Redeemer! Man’s end and the beginning meet at a single point!
The Enchiridion is a briefer treatise on the grace of God and represents Augustine’s fully matured theological perspective--after the magnificent achievements of the De Trinitate and the greater part of the De civitate Dei, and after the tremendous turmoil of the Pelagian controversy in which the doctrine of grace was the exact epicenter. Sometime in 421, Augustine received a request from one Laurentius, a Christian layman who was the brother of the tribune Dulcitius (for whom Augustine wrote the De octo dulcitii quaestionibus in 423-425). This Laurentius wanted a handbook (enchiridion) that would sum up the essential Christian teaching in the briefest possible form. Augustine dryly comments that the shortest complete summary of the Christian faith is that God is to be served by man in faith, hope, and love. Then, acknowledging that this answer might indeed be too brief, he proceeds to expand it in an essay in which he tries unsuccessfully to subdue his natural digressive manner by imposing on it a patently artificial schematism. Despite its awkward form, however, the Enchiridion is one of the most important of all of Augustine’s writings, for it is a conscious effort of the theological magistrate of the Western Church to stand on final ground of testimony to the Christian truth.
For his framework, Augustine chooses the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. The treatise begins, naturally enough, with a discussion of God’s work in creation. Augustine makes a firm distinction between the comparatively unimportant knowledge of nature and the supremely important acknowledgment of the Creator of nature. But creation lies under the shadow of sin and evil and Augustine reviews his famous (and borrowed!) doctrine of the privative character of evil. From this he digresses into an extended comment on error and lying as special instances of evil. He then returns to the hopeless case of fallen man, to which God’s wholly unmerited grace has responded in the incarnation of the Mediator and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. The questions about the appropriation of God’s grace lead naturally to a discussion of baptism and justification, and beyond these, to the Holy Spirit and the Church. Augustine then sets forth the benefits of redeeming grace and weighs the balance between faith and good works in the forgiven sinner. But redemption looks forward toward resurrection, and Augustine feels he must devote a good deal of energy and subtle speculation to the questions about the manner and mode of the life everlasting. From this he moves on to the problem of the destiny of the wicked and the mystery of predestination. Nor does he shrink from these grim topics; indeed, he actually expands some of his most rigid ideas of God’s ruthless justice toward the damned. Having thus treated the Christian faith and Christian hope, he turns in a too-brief concluding section to the virtue of Christian love as the heart of the Christian life. This, then, is the “handbook” on faith, hope, and love which he hopes Laurence will put to use and not leave as “baggage on his bookshelf.”
Taken together, the Confessions and the Enchiridion give us two very important vantage points from which to view the Augustinian perspective as a whole, since they represent both his early and his mature formulation. From them, we can gain a competent--though by no means complete--introduction to the heart and mind of this great Christian saint and sage. There are important differences between the two works, and these ought to be noted by the careful reader. But all the main themes of Augustinian Christianity appear in them, and through them we can penetrate to its inner dynamic core.
There is no need to justify a new English translation of these books, even though many good ones already exist. Every translation is, at best, only an approximation--and an interpretation too. There is small hope for a translation to end all translations. Augustine’s Latin is, for the most part, comparatively easy to read. One feels directly the force of his constant wordplay, the artful balancing of his clauses, his laconic use of parataxis, and his deliberate involutions of thought and word order. He was always a Latin rhetor; artifice of style had come to be second nature with him--even though the Latin scriptures were powerful modifiers of his classical literary patterns. But it is a very tricky business to convey such a Latin style into anything like modern English without considerable violence one way or the other. A literal rendering of the text is simply not readable English. And this falsifies the text in another way, for Augustine’s Latin is eminently readable! On the other side, when one resorts to the unavoidable paraphrase there is always the open question as to the point beyond which the thought itself is being recast. It has been my aim and hope that these translations will give the reader an accurate medium of contact with Augustine’s temper and mode of argumentation. There has been no thought of trying to contrive an English equivalent for his style. If Augustine’s ideas come through this translation with positive force and clarity, there can be no serious reproach if it is neither as eloquent nor as elegant as Augustine in his own language. In any case, those who will compare this translation with the others will get at least a faint notion of how complex and truly brilliant the original is!
The sensitive reader soon recognizes that Augustine will not willingly be inspected from a distance or by a neutral observer. In all his writings there is a strong concern and moving power to involve his reader in his own process of inquiry and perplexity. There is a manifest eagerness to have him share in his own flashes of insight and his sudden glimpses of God’s glory. Augustine’s style is deeply personal; it is therefore idiomatic, and often colloquial. Even in his knottiest arguments, or in the labyrinthine mazes of his allegorizing (e.g., Confessions, Bk. XIII, or Enchiridion, XVIII), he seeks to maintain contact with his reader in genuine respect and openness. He is never content to seek and find the truth in solitude. He must enlist his fellows in seeing and applying the truth as given. He is never the blind fideist; even in the face of mystery, there is a constant reliance on the limited but real powers of human reason, and a constant striving for clarity and intelligibility. In this sense, he was a consistent follower of his own principle of “Christian Socratism,” developed in the De Magistro and the De catechezandis rudibus.
Even the best of Augustine’s writing bears the marks of his own time and there is much in these old books that is of little interest to any but the specialist. There are many stones of stumbling in them for the modern secularist--and even for the modern Christian! Despite all this, it is impossible to read him with any attention at all without recognizing how his genius and his piety burst through the limitations of his times and his language--and even his English translations! He grips our hearts and minds and enlists us in the great enterprise to which his whole life was devoted: the search for and the celebration of God’s grace and glory by which his faithful children are sustained and guided in their pilgrimage toward the true Light of us all.
The most useful critical text of the Confessions is that of Pierre de Labriolle (fifth edition, Paris, 1950). I have collated this with the other major critical editions: Martin Skutella, S. Aureli Augustini Confessionum Libri Tredecim (Leipzig, 1934)--itself a recension of the Corpus Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum XXXIII text of Pius Knöll (Vienna, 1896)--and the second edition of John Gibb and William Montgomery (Cambridge, 1927).
There are two good critical texts of the Enchiridion and I have collated them: Otto Scheel, AugustinsEnchiridion (zweite Auflage, Tübingen, 1930), and Jean Rivière, Enchiridion in the Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Œuvres de S. Augustin, première série: Opuscules, IX: Exposés généraux de la foi (Paris, 1947).
It remains for me to express my appreciation to the General Editors of this Library for their constructive help; to Professor Hollis W. Huston, who read the entire manuscript and made many valuable suggestions; and to Professor William A. Irwin, who greatly aided with parts of the Enchiridion. These men share the credit for preventing many flaws, but naturally no responsibility for those remaining. Professors Raymond P. Morris, of the Yale Divinity School Library; Robert Beach, of the Union Theological Seminary Library; and Decherd Turner, of our Bridwell Library here at Southern Methodist University, were especially generous in their bibliographical assistance. Last, but not least, Mrs. Hollis W. Huston and my wife, between them, managed the difficult task of putting the results of this project into fair copy. To them all I am most grateful.
AUGUSTINE’S TESTIMONY CONCERNING
THE CONFESSIONS
I. The Retractations, II, 6 (A.D. 427)
1. My Confessions, in thirteen books, praise the
righteous and good God as they speak either of my evil or good, and
they are meant to excite men’s minds and affections toward him.
At least as far as I am concerned, this is what they did for me when
they were being written and they still do this when read. What some
people think of them is their own affair [ipse viderint]; but I
do know that they have given pleasure to many of my brethren and still
do so. The first through the tenth books were written about myself; the
other three about Holy Scripture, from what is written there, In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth,
2. In Book IV, when I confessed my soul’s misery over the death of a friend and said that our soul had somehow been made one out of two souls, “But it may have been that I was afraid to die, lest he should then die wholly whom I had so greatly loved” (Ch. VI, 11)--this now seems to be more a trivial declamation than a serious confession, although this inept expression may be tempered somewhat by the “may have been” [forte] Which I added. And in Book XIII what I said--“The firmament was made between the higher waters (and superior) and the lower (and inferior) waters”--was said without sufficient thought. In any case, the matter is very obscure.
This work begins thus: “Great art thou, O Lord.”
II. De Dono Perseverantiae, XX, 53 (A.D. 428)
Which of my shorter works has been more widely known or
given greater pleasure than the [thirteen] books of my
Confessions? And, although I published them long before the
Pelagian heresy had even begun to be, it is plain that in them I said
to my God, again and again, “Give what thou commandest and
command what thou wilt.” When these words of mine were repeated
in Pelagius’ presence at Rome by a certain brother of mine (an
episcopal colleague), he could not bear them and contradicted him so
excitedly that they nearly came to a quarrel. Now what, indeed, does
God command, first and foremost, except that we believe in him? This
faith, therefore, he himself gives; so that it is well said to him,
“Give what thou commandest.” Moreover, in those same books,
concerning my account of my conversion when God turned me to that faith
I was laying waste with a very wretched and wild verbal
assault, Notice the echo here of
III. Letter to Darius (A.D. 429)
Thus, my son, take the books of my Confessions
and use them as a good man should--not superficially, but as a
Christian in Christian charity. Here see me as I am and do not praise
me for more than I am. Here believe nothing else about me than my own
testimony. Here observe what I have been in myself and through myself.
And if something in me pleases you, here praise Him with me--Him whom I
desire to be praised on my account and not myself. “For it is he
that hath made us and not we ourselves.”
The Confessions of Saint Augustine
BOOK ONE
In God’s searching presence, Augustine undertakes to plumb the depths of his memory to trace the mysterious pilgrimage of grace which his life has been--and to praise God for his constant and omnipotent grace. In a mood of sustained prayer, he recalls what he can of his infancy, his learning to speak, and his childhood experiences in school. He concludes with a paean of grateful praise to God.
CHAPTER I
1. “Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly to be
praised; great is thy power, and infinite is thy
wisdom.” Cf. A reference to Bishop
Ambrose of Milan; see Bk. V, Ch. XIII; Bk. VIII, Ch. 11, 3.
CHAPTER II
2. And how shall I call upon my God--my God and my
Lord? For when I call on him I ask him to come into me. And what place
is there in me into which my God can come? How could God, the God who
made both heaven and earth, come into me? Is there anything in me, O
Lord my God, that can contain thee? Do even the heaven and the earth,
which thou hast made, and in which thou didst make me, contain thee? Is
it possible that, since without thee nothing would be which does exist,
thou didst make it so that whatever exists has some capacity to receive
thee? Why, then, do I ask thee to come into me, since I also am and
could not be if thou wert not in me? For I am not, after all, in
hell--and yet thou art there too, for “if I go down into hell,
thou art there.”
CHAPTER III
3. Since, then, thou dost fill the heaven and earth, do they contain thee? Or, dost thou fill and overflow them, because they cannot contain thee? And where dost thou pour out what remains of thee after heaven and earth are full? Or, indeed, is there no need that thou, who dost contain all things, shouldst be contained by any, since those things which thou dost fill thou fillest by containing them? For the vessels which thou dost fill do not confine thee, since even if they were broken, thou wouldst not be poured out. And, when thou art poured out on us, thou art not thereby brought down; rather, we are uplifted. Thou art not scattered; rather, thou dost gather us together. But when thou dost fill all things, dost thou fill them with thy whole being? Or, since not even all things together could contain thee altogether, does any one thing contain a single part, and do all things contain that same part at the same time? Do singulars contain thee singly? Do greater things contain more of thee, and smaller things less? Or, is it not rather that thou art wholly present everywhere, yet in such a way that nothing contains thee wholly?
CHAPTER IV
4. What, therefore, is my God? What, I ask, but the
Lord God? “For who is Lord but the Lord himself, or who is God
besides our God?” Cf.
CHAPTER V
5. Who shall bring me to rest in thee? Who will send
thee into my heart so to overwhelm it that my sins shall be blotted out
and I may embrace thee, my only good? What art thou to me? Have mercy
that I may speak. What am I to thee that thou shouldst command me to
love thee, and if I do it not, art angry and threatenest vast misery?
Is it, then, a trifling sorrow not to love thee? It is not so to me.
Tell me, by thy mercy, O Lord, my God, what thou art to me. “Say
to my soul, I am your salvation.”
6. The house of my soul is too narrow for thee to come
in to me; let it be enlarged by thee. It is in ruins; do thou restore
it. There is much about it which must offend thy eyes; I confess and
know it. But who will cleanse it? Or, to whom shall I cry but to thee?
“Cleanse thou me from my secret faults,” O Lord, “and
keep back thy servant from strange sins.” Cf. Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER VI
7. Still, dust and ashes as I am, allow me to speak before thy mercy. Allow me to speak, for, behold, it is to thy mercy that I speak and not to a man who scorns me. Yet perhaps even thou mightest scorn me; but when thou dost turn and attend to me, thou wilt have mercy upon me. For what do I wish to say, O Lord my God, but that I know not whence I came hither into this life-in-death. Or should I call it death-in-life? I do not know. And yet the consolations of thy mercy have sustained me from the very beginning, as I have heard from my fleshly parents, from whom and in whom thou didst form me in time--for I cannot myself remember. Thus even though they sustained me by the consolation of woman’s milk, neither my mother nor my nurses filled their own breasts but thou, through them, didst give me the food of infancy according to thy ordinance and thy bounty which underlie all things. For it was thou who didst cause me not to want more than thou gavest and it was thou who gavest to those who nourished me the will to give me what thou didst give them. And they, by an instinctive affection, were willing to give me what thou hadst supplied abundantly. It was, indeed, good for them that my good should come through them, though, in truth, it was not from them but by them. For it is from thee, O God, that all good things come--and from my God is all my health. This is what I have since learned, as thou hast made it abundantly clear by all that I have seen thee give, both to me and to those around me. For even at the very first I knew how to suck, to lie quiet when I was full, and to cry when in pain--nothing more.
8. Afterward I began to laugh--at first in my sleep, then when waking. For this I have been told about myself and I believe it--though I cannot remember it--for I see the same things in other infants. Then, little by little, I realized where I was and wished to tell my wishes to those who might satisfy them, but I could not! For my wants were inside me, and they were outside, and they could not by any power of theirs come into my soul. And so I would fling my arms and legs about and cry, making the few and feeble gestures that I could, though indeed the signs were not much like what I inwardly desired and when I was not satisfied--either from not being understood or because what I got was not good for me--I grew indignant that my elders were not subject to me and that those on whom I actually had no claim did not wait on me as slaves--and I avenged myself on them by crying. That infants are like this, I have myself been able to learn by watching them; and they, though they knew me not, have shown me better what I was like than my own nurses who knew me.
9. And, behold, my infancy died long ago, but I am still living. But thou, O Lord, whose life is forever and in whom nothing dies--since before the world was, indeed, before all that can be called “before,” thou wast, and thou art the God and Lord of all thy creatures; and with thee abide all the stable causes of all unstable things, the unchanging sources of all changeable things, and the eternal reasons of all non-rational and temporal things--tell me, thy suppliant, O God, tell me, O merciful One, in pity tell a pitiful creature whether my infancy followed yet an earlier age of my life that had already passed away before it. Was it such another age which I spent in my mother’s womb? For something of that sort has been suggested to me, and I have myself seen pregnant women. But what, O God, my Joy, preceded that period of life? Was I, indeed, anywhere, or anybody? No one can explain these things to me, neither father nor mother, nor the experience of others, nor my own memory. Dost thou laugh at me for asking such things? Or dost thou command me to praise and confess unto thee only what I know?
10. I give thanks to thee, O Lord of heaven and earth, giving praise to thee for that first being and my infancy of which I have no memory. For thou hast granted to man that he should come to self-knowledge through the knowledge of others, and that he should believe many things about himself on the authority of the womenfolk. Now, clearly, I had life and being; and, as my infancy closed, I was already learning signs by which my feelings could be communicated to others.
Whence could such a creature come but from thee, O
Lord? Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself? Or is there
any other source from which being and life could flow into us, save
this, that thou, O Lord, hast made us--thou with whom being and life
are one, since thou thyself art supreme being and supreme life both
together. For thou art infinite and in thee there is no change, nor an
end to this present day--although there is a sense in which it ends in
thee since all things are in thee and there would be no such thing as
days passing away unless thou didst sustain them. And since “thy
years shall have no end,”
CHAPTER VII
11. “Hear me, O God! Woe to the sins of men!” When a man cries thus, thou showest him mercy, for thou didst create the man but not the sin in him. Who brings to remembrance the sins of my infancy? For in thy sight there is none free from sin, not even the infant who has lived but a day upon this earth. Who brings this to my remembrance? Does not each little one, in whom I now observe what I no longer remember of myself? In what ways, in that time, did I sin? Was it that I cried for the breast? If I should now so cry--not indeed for the breast, but for food suitable to my condition--I should be most justly laughed at and rebuked. What I did then deserved rebuke but, since I could not understand those who rebuked me, neither custom nor common sense permitted me to be rebuked. As we grow we root out and cast away from us such childish habits. Yet I have not seen anyone who is wise who cast away the good when trying to purge the bad. Nor was it good, even in that time, to strive to get by crying what, if it had been given me, would have been hurtful; or to be bitterly indignant at those who, because they were older--not slaves, either, but free--and wiser than I, would not indulge my capricious desires. Was it a good thing for me to try, by struggling as hard as I could, to harm them for not obeying me, even when it would have done me harm to have been obeyed? Thus, the infant’s innocence lies in the weakness of his body and not in the infant mind. I have myself observed a baby to be jealous, though it could not speak; it was livid as it watched another infant at the breast.
Who is ignorant of this? Mothers and nurses tell us that they cure these things by I know not what remedies. But is this innocence, when the fountain of milk is flowing fresh and abundant, that another who needs it should not be allowed to share it, even though he requires such nourishment to sustain his life? Yet we look leniently on such things, not because they are not faults, or even small faults, but because they will vanish as the years pass. For, although we allow for such things in an infant, the same things could not be tolerated patiently in an adult.
12. Therefore, O Lord my God, thou who gavest life to
the infant, and a body which, as we see, thou hast furnished with
senses, shaped with limbs, beautified with form, and endowed with all
vital energies for its well-being and health--thou dost command me to
praise thee for these things, to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing
praise unto his name, O Most High. Cf.
I am loath to dwell on this part of my life of which, O
Lord, I have no remembrance, about which I must trust the word of
others and what I can surmise from observing other infants, even if
such guesses are trustworthy. For it lies in the deep murk of my
forgetfulness and thus is like the period which I passed in my
mother’s womb. But if “I was conceived in iniquity, and in
sin my mother nourished me in her womb,” Cf.
CHAPTER VIII
13. Did I not, then, as I grew out of infancy, come next to boyhood, or rather did it not come to me and succeed my infancy? My infancy did not go away (for where would it go?). It was simply no longer present; and I was no longer an infant who could not speak, but now a chattering boy. I remember this, and I have since observed how I learned to speak. My elders did not teach me words by rote, as they taught me my letters afterward. But I myself, when I was unable to communicate all I wished to say to whomever I wished by means of whimperings and grunts and various gestures of my limbs (which I used to reinforce my demands), I myself repeated the sounds already stored in my memory by the mind which thou, O my God, hadst given me. When they called some thing by name and pointed it out while they spoke, I saw it and realized that the thing they wished to indicate was called by the name they then uttered. And what they meant was made plain by the gestures of their bodies, by a kind of natural language, common to all nations, which expresses itself through changes of countenance, glances of the eye, gestures and intonations which indicate a disposition and attitude--either to seek or to possess, to reject or to avoid. So it was that by frequently hearing words, in different phrases, I gradually identified the objects which the words stood for and, having formed my mouth to repeat these signs, I was thereby able to express my will. Thus I exchanged with those about me the verbal signs by which we express our wishes and advanced deeper into the stormy fellowship of human life, depending all the while upon the authority of my parents and the behest of my elders.
CHAPTER IX
14. O my God! What miseries and mockeries did I then experience when it was impressed on me that obedience to my teachers was proper to my boyhood estate if I was to flourish in this world and distinguish myself in those tricks of speech which would gain honor for me among men, and deceitful riches! To this end I was sent to school to get learning, the value of which I knew not--wretch that I was. Yet if I was slow to learn, I was flogged. For this was deemed praiseworthy by our forefathers and many had passed before us in the same course, and thus had built up the precedent for the sorrowful road on which we too were compelled to travel, multiplying labor and sorrow upon the sons of Adam. About this time, O Lord, I observed men praying to thee, and I learned from them to conceive thee--after my capacity for understanding as it was then--to be some great Being, who, though not visible to our senses, was able to hear and help us. Thus as a boy I began to pray to thee, my Help and my Refuge, and, in calling on thee, broke the bands of my tongue. Small as I was, I prayed with no slight earnestness that I might not be beaten at school. And when thou didst not heed me--for that would have been giving me over to my folly--my elders and even my parents too, who wished me no ill, treated my stripes as a joke, though they were then a great and grievous ill to me.
15. Is there anyone, O Lord, with a spirit so great, who cleaves to thee with such steadfast affection (or is there even a kind of obtuseness that has the same effect)--is there any man who, by cleaving devoutly to thee, is endowed with so great a courage that he can regard indifferently those racks and hooks and other torture weapons from which men throughout the world pray so fervently to be spared; and can they scorn those who so greatly fear these torments, just as my parents were amused at the torments with which our teachers punished us boys? For we were no less afraid of our pains, nor did we beseech thee less to escape them. Yet, even so, we were sinning by writing or reading or studying less than our assigned lessons.
For I did not, O Lord, lack memory or capacity, for, by thy will, I possessed enough for my age. However, my mind was absorbed only in play, and I was punished for this by those who were doing the same things themselves. But the idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men. For will any common sense observer agree that I was rightly punished as a boy for playing ball--just because this hindered me from learning more quickly those lessons by means of which, as a man, I could play at more shameful games? And did he by whom I was beaten do anything different? When he was worsted in some small controversy with a fellow teacher, he was more tormented by anger and envy than I was when beaten by a playmate in the ball game.
CHAPTER X
16. And yet I sinned, O Lord my God, thou ruler and creator of all natural things--but of sins only the ruler--I sinned, O Lord my God, in acting against the precepts of my parents and of those teachers. For this learning which they wished me to acquire--no matter what their motives were--I might have put to good account afterward. I disobeyed them, not because I had chosen a better way, but from a sheer love of play. I loved the vanity of victory, and I loved to have my ears tickled with lying fables, which made them itch even more ardently, and a similar curiosity glowed more and more in my eyes for the shows and sports of my elders. Yet those who put on such shows are held in such high repute that almost all desire the same for their children. They are therefore willing to have them beaten, if their childhood games keep them from the studies by which their parents desire them to grow up to be able to give such shows. Look down on these things with mercy, O Lord, and deliver us who now call upon thee; deliver those also who do not call upon thee, that they may call upon thee, and thou mayest deliver them.
CHAPTER XI
17. Even as a boy I had heard of eternal life promised to us through the humility of the Lord our God, who came down to visit us in our pride, and I was signed with the sign of his cross, and was seasoned with his salt even from the womb of my mother, who greatly trusted in thee. Thou didst see, O Lord, how, once, while I was still a child, I was suddenly seized with stomach pains and was at the point of death--thou didst see, O my God, for even then thou wast my keeper, with what agitation and with what faith I solicited from the piety of my mother and from thy Church (which is the mother of us all) the baptism of thy Christ, my Lord and my God. The mother of my flesh was much perplexed, for, with a heart pure in thy faith, she was always in deep travail for my eternal salvation. If I had not quickly recovered, she would have provided forthwith for my initiation and washing by thy life-giving sacraments, confessing thee, O Lord Jesus, for the forgiveness of sins. So my cleansing was deferred, as if it were inevitable that, if I should live, I would be further polluted; and, further, because the guilt contracted by sin after baptism would be still greater and more perilous.
Thus, at that time, I “believed” along with my mother and the whole household, except my father. But he did not overcome the influence of my mother’s piety in me, nor did he prevent my believing in Christ, although he had not yet believed in him. For it was her desire, O my God, that I should acknowledge thee as my Father rather than him. In this thou didst aid her to overcome her husband, to whom, though his superior, she yielded obedience. In this way she also yielded obedience to thee, who dost so command.
18. I ask thee, O my God, for I would gladly know if it
be thy will, to what good end my baptism was deferred at that time? Was
it indeed for my good that the reins were slackened, as it were, to
encourage me in sin? Or, were they not slackened? If not, then why is
it still dinned into our ears on all sides, “Let him alone, let
him do as he pleases, for he is not yet baptized”? In the matter
of bodily health, no one says, “Let him alone; let him be worse
wounded; for he is not yet cured”! How much better, then, would
it have been for me to have been cured at once--and if thereafter,
through the diligent care of friends and myself, my soul’s
restored health had been kept safe in thy keeping, who gave it in the
first place! This would have been far better, in truth. But how many
and great the waves of temptation which appeared to hang over me as I
grew out of childhood! These were foreseen by my mother, and she
preferred that the unformed clay should be risked to them rather than
the clay molded after Christ’s image. In baptism which,
Augustine believed, established the effigiem Christi in the
human soul.
CHAPTER XII
19. But in this time of childhood--which was far less dreaded for me than my adolescence--I had no love of learning, and hated to be driven to it. Yet I was driven to it just the same, and good was done for me, even though I did not do it well, for I would not have learned if I had not been forced to it. For no man does well against his will, even if what he does is a good thing. Neither did they who forced me do well, but the good that was done me came from thee, my God. For they did not care about the way in which I would use what they forced me to learn, and took it for granted that it was to satisfy the inordinate desires of a rich beggary and a shameful glory. But thou, Lord, by whom the hairs of our head are numbered, didst use for my good the error of all who pushed me on to study: but my error in not being willing to learn thou didst use for my punishment. And I--though so small a boy yet so great a sinner--was not punished without warrant. Thus by the instrumentality of those who did not do well, thou didst well for me; and by my own sin thou didst justly punish me. For it is even as thou hast ordained: that every inordinate affection brings on its own punishment.
CHAPTER XIII
20. But what were the causes for my strong dislike of
Greek literature, which I studied from my boyhood? Even to this day I
have not fully understood them. For Latin I loved exceedingly--not just
the rudiments, but what the grammarians teach. For those
beginner’s lessons in reading, writing, and reckoning, I
considered no less a burden and pain than Greek. Yet whence came this,
unless from the sin and vanity of this life? For I was “but
flesh, a wind that passeth away and cometh not again.” Cf.
21. For what can be more wretched than the wretch who
has no pity upon himself, who sheds tears over Dido, dead for the love
of Aeneas, but who sheds no tears for his own death in not loving thee,
O God, light of my heart, and bread of the inner mouth of my soul, O
power that links together my mind with my inmost thoughts? I did not
love thee, and thus committed fornication against thee. Cf. Aeneid, VI, 457
22. But now, O my God, cry unto my soul, and let thy
truth say to me: “Not so, not so! That first learning was far
better.” For, obviously, I would rather forget the wanderings of
Aeneas, and all such things, than forget how to write and read. Still,
over the entrance of the grammar school there hangs a veil. This is not
so much the sign of a covering for a mystery as a curtain for error.
Let them exclaim against me--those I no longer fear--while I confess to
thee, my God, what my soul desires, and let me find some rest, for in
blaming my own evil ways I may come to love thy holy ways. Neither let
those cry out against me who buy and sell the baubles of literature.
For if I ask them if it is true, as the poet says, that Aeneas once
came to Carthage, the unlearned will reply that they do not know and
the learned will deny that it is true. But if I ask with what letters
the name Aeneas is written, all who have ever learned this will answer
correctly, in accordance with the conventional understanding men have
agreed upon as to these signs. Again, if I should ask which would cause
the greatest inconvenience in our life, if it were forgotten: reading
and writing, or these poetical fictions, who does not see what everyone
would answer who had not entirely lost his own memory? I erred, then,
when as a boy I preferred those vain studies to these more profitable
ones, or rather loved the one and hated the other. “One and one
are two, two and two are four”: this was then a truly hateful
song to me. But the wooden horse full of its armed soldiers, and the
holocaust of Troy, and the spectral image of Creusa were all a most
delightful--and vain--show! Cf. Aeneid, II.
CHAPTER XIV
23. But why, then, did I dislike Greek learning, which was full of such tales? For Homer was skillful in inventing such poetic fictions and is most sweetly wanton; yet when I was a boy, he was most disagreeable to me. I believe that Virgil would have the same effect on Greek boys as Homer did on me if they were forced to learn him. For the tedium of learning a foreign language mingled gall into the sweetness of those Grecian myths. For I did not understand a word of the language, and yet I was driven with threats and cruel punishments to learn it. There was also a time when, as an infant, I knew no Latin; but this I acquired without any fear or tormenting, but merely by being alert to the blandishments of my nurses, the jests of those who smiled on me, and the sportiveness of those who toyed with me. I learned all this, indeed, without being urged by any pressure of punishment, for my own heart urged me to bring forth its own fashioning, which I could not do except by learning words: not from those who taught me but those who talked to me, into whose ears I could pour forth whatever I could fashion. From this it is sufficiently clear that a free curiosity is more effective in learning than a discipline based on fear. Yet, by thy ordinance, O God, discipline is given to restrain the excesses of freedom; this ranges from the ferule of the schoolmaster to the trials of the martyr and has the effect of mingling for us a wholesome bitterness, which calls us back to thee from the poisonous pleasures that first drew us from thee.
CHAPTER XV
24. Hear my prayer, O Lord; let not my soul faint under thy discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto thee thy mercies, whereby thou hast saved me from all my most wicked ways till thou shouldst become sweet to me beyond all the allurements that I used to follow. Let me come to love thee wholly, and grasp thy hand with my whole heart that thou mayest deliver me from every temptation, even unto the last. And thus, O Lord, my King and my God, may all things useful that I learned as a boy now be offered in thy service--let it be that for thy service I now speak and write and reckon. For when I was learning vain things, thou didst impose thy discipline upon me: and thou hast forgiven me my sin of delighting in those vanities. In those studies I learned many a useful word, but these might have been learned in matters not so vain; and surely that is the safe way for youths to walk in.
CHAPTER XVI
25. But woe unto you, O torrent of human custom! Who
shall stay your course? When will you ever run dry? How long will you
carry down the sons of Eve into that vast and hideous ocean, which even
those who have the Tree (for an ark) Lignum is a common
metaphor for the cross; and it was often joined to the figure of Noah's
ark, as the means of safe transport from earth to heaven. This apostrophe to "the
torrent of human custom" now switches its focus to the poets who
celebrated the philanderings of the gods; see Probably a contemporary
disciple of Cicero (or the Academics) whom Augustine had heard levy a
rather common philosopher's complaint against Olympian religion and the
poetic myths about it. Cf. De Labriolle, I, 21 (see Bibl.).
26. And yet, O torrent of hell, the sons of men are still cast into you, and they pay fees for learning all these things. And much is made of it when this goes on in the forum under the auspices of laws which give a salary over and above the fees. And you beat against your rocky shore and roar: “Here words may be learned; here you can attain the eloquence which is so necessary to persuade people to your way of thinking; so helpful in unfolding your opinions.” Verily, they seem to argue that we should never have understood these words, “golden shower,” “bosom,” “intrigue,” “highest heavens,” and other such words, if Terence had not introduced a good-for-nothing youth upon the stage, setting up a picture of Jove as his example of lewdness and telling the tale
See how he excites himself to lust, as if by a heavenly authority, when he says:
Terence, Eunuch.,
584-591; quoted again in
These words are not learned one whit more easily because of this vileness, but through them the vileness is more boldly perpetrated. I do not blame the words, for they are, as it were, choice and precious vessels, but I do deplore the wine of error which was poured out to us by teachers already drunk. And, unless we also drank we were beaten, without liberty of appeal to a sober judge. And yet, O my God, in whose presence I can now with security recall this, I learned these things willingly and with delight, and for it I was called a boy of good promise.
CHAPTER XVII
27. Bear with me, O my God, while I speak a little of those talents, thy gifts, and of the follies on which I wasted them. For a lesson was given me that sufficiently disturbed my soul, for in it there was both hope of praise and fear of shame or stripes. The assignment was that I should declaim the words of Juno, as she raged and sorrowed that she could not
Aeneid, I, 38.
I had learned that Juno had never uttered these words. Yet we were compelled to stray in the footsteps of these poetic fictions, and to turn into prose what the poet had said in verse. In the declamation, the boy won most applause who most strikingly reproduced the passions of anger and sorrow according to the “character” of the persons presented and who clothed it all in the most suitable language. What is it now to me, O my true Life, my God, that my declaiming was applauded above that of many of my classmates and fellow students? Actually, was not all that smoke and wind? Besides, was there nothing else on which I could have exercised my wit and tongue? Thy praise, O Lord, thy praises might have propped up the tendrils of my heart by thy Scriptures; and it would not have been dragged away by these empty trifles, a shameful prey to the spirits of the air. For there is more than one way in which men sacrifice to the fallen angels.
CHAPTER XVIII
28. But it was no wonder that I was thus carried toward
vanity and was estranged from thee, O my God, when men were held up as
models to me who, when relating a deed of theirs--not in itself
evil--were covered with confusion if found guilty of a barbarism or a
solecism; but who could tell of their own licentiousness and be
applauded for it, so long as they did it in a full and ornate oration
of well-chosen words. Thou seest all this, O Lord, and dost keep
silence--“long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and
truth” Cf. An interesting mixed
reminiscence of Enneads, I, 5:8 and
29. Look down, O Lord God, and see patiently, as thou art wont to do, how diligently the sons of men observe the conventional rules of letters and syllables, taught them by those who learned their letters beforehand, while they neglect the eternal rules of everlasting salvation taught by thee. They carry it so far that if he who practices or teaches the established rules of pronunciation should speak (contrary to grammatical usage) without aspirating the first syllable of “hominem” [“ominem,” and thus make it “a ‘uman being”], he will offend men more than if he, a human being, were to hate another human being contrary to thy commandments. It is as if he should feel that there is an enemy who could be more destructive to himself than that hatred which excites him against his fellow man; or that he could destroy him whom he hates more completely than he destroys his own soul by this same hatred. Now, obviously, there is no knowledge of letters more innate than the writing of conscience--against doing unto another what one would not have done to himself.
How mysterious thou art, who “dwellest on
high”
30. These were the customs in the midst of which I was cast, an unhappy boy. This was the wrestling arena in which I was more fearful of perpetrating a barbarism than, having done so, of envying those who had not. These things I declare and confess to thee, my God. I was applauded by those whom I then thought it my whole duty to please, for I did not perceive the gulf of infamy wherein I was cast away from thy eyes.
For in thy eyes, what was more infamous than I was
already, since I displeased even my own kind and deceived, with endless
lies, my tutor, my masters and parents--all from a love of play, a
craving for frivolous spectacles, a stage-struck restlessness to
imitate what I saw in these shows? I pilfered from my parents’
cellar and table, sometimes driven by gluttony, sometimes just to have
something to give to other boys in exchange for their baubles, which
they were prepared to sell even though they liked them as well as I.
Moreover, in this kind of play, I often sought dishonest victories,
being myself conquered by the vain desire for pre-eminence. And what
was I so unwilling to endure, and what was it that I censured so
violently when I caught anyone, except the very things I did to others?
And, when I was myself detected and censured, I preferred to quarrel
rather than to yield. Is this the innocence of childhood? It is not, O
Lord, it is not. I entreat thy mercy, O my God, for these same sins as
we grow older are transferred from tutors and masters; they pass from
nuts and balls and sparrows, to magistrates and kings, to gold and
lands and slaves, just as the rod is succeeded by more severe
chastisements. It was, then, the fact of humility in childhood that
thou, O our King, didst approve as a symbol of humility when thou
saidst, “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
CHAPTER XIX
31. However, O Lord, to thee most excellent and most
good, thou Architect and Governor of the universe, thanks would be due
thee, O our God, even if thou hadst not willed that I should survive my
boyhood. For I existed even then; I lived and felt and was solicitous
about my own well-being--a trace of that most mysterious unity from
whence I had my being. Another Plotinian echo;
cf. Enneads, III, 8:10.
BOOK TWO
He concentrates here on his sixteenth year, a year of idleness, lust, and adolescent mischief. The memory of stealing some pears prompts a deep probing of the motives and aims of sinful acts. “I became to myself a wasteland.”
CHAPTER I
1. I wish now to review in memory my past wickedness
and the carnal corruptions of my soul--not because I still love them,
but that I may love thee, O my God. For love of thy love I do this,
recalling in the bitterness of self-examination my wicked ways, that
thou mayest grow sweet to me, thou sweetness without deception! Thou
sweetness happy and assured! Thus thou mayest gather me up out of those
fragments in which I was torn to pieces, while I turned away from thee,
O Unity, and lost myself among “the many.” Yet another Plotinian
phrase; cf. Enneads, I, 6, 9:1-2.
CHAPTER II
2. But what was it that delighted me save to love and to be loved? Still I did not keep the moderate way of the love of mind to mind--the bright path of friendship. Instead, the mists of passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence of the flesh, and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and overcast my heart that I was unable to distinguish pure affection from unholy desire. Both boiled confusedly within me, and dragged my unstable youth down over the cliffs of unchaste desires and plunged me into a gulf of infamy. Thy anger had come upon me, and I knew it not. I had been deafened by the clanking of the chains of my mortality, the punishment for my soul’s pride, and I wandered farther from thee, and thou didst permit me to do so. I was tossed to and fro, and wasted, and poured out, and I boiled over in my fornications--and yet thou didst hold thy peace, O my tardy Joy! Thou didst still hold thy peace, and I wandered still farther from thee into more and yet more barren fields of sorrow, in proud dejection and restless lassitude.
3. If only there had been someone to regulate my
disorder and turn to my profit the fleeting beauties of the things
around me, and to fix a bound to their sweetness, so that the tides of
my youth might have spent themselves upon the shore of marriage! Then
they might have been tranquilized and satisfied with having children,
as thy law prescribes, O Lord--O thou who dost form the offspring of
our death and art able also with a tender hand to blunt the thorns
which were excluded from thy paradise! Cf. Cf.
4. But, fool that I was, I foamed in my wickedness as the sea and, forsaking thee, followed the rushing of my own tide, and burst out of all thy bounds. But I did not escape thy scourges. For what mortal can do so? Thou wast always by me, mercifully angry and flavoring all my unlawful pleasures with bitter discontent, in order that I might seek pleasures free from discontent. But where could I find such pleasure save in thee, O Lord--save in thee, who dost teach us by sorrow, who woundest us to heal us, and dost kill us that we may not die apart from thee. Where was I, and how far was I exiled from the delights of thy house, in that sixteenth year of the age of my flesh, when the madness of lust held full sway in me--that madness which grants indulgence to human shamelessness, even though it is forbidden by thy laws--and I gave myself entirely to it? Meanwhile, my family took no care to save me from ruin by marriage, for their sole care was that I should learn how to make a powerful speech and become a persuasive orator.
CHAPTER III
5. Now, in that year my studies were interrupted. I had
come back from Madaura, a neighboring city Twenty miles from Tagaste,
famed as the birthplace of Apuleius, the only notable classical author
produced by the province of Africa.
To whom am I narrating all this? Not to thee, O my God,
but to my own kind in thy presence--to that small part of the human
race who may chance to come upon these writings. And to what end? That
I and all who read them may understand what depths there are from which
we are to cry unto thee. Another echo of the De
profundis (
Who did not extol and praise my father, because he went
quite beyond his means to supply his son with the necessary expenses
for a far journey in the interest of his education? For many far richer
citizens did not do so much for their children. Still, this same father
troubled himself not at all as to how I was progressing toward thee nor
how chaste I was, just so long as I was skillful in speaking--no matter
how barren I was to thy tillage, O God, who art the one true and good
Lord of my heart, which is thy field. Cf.
6. During that sixteenth year of my age, I lived with my parents, having a holiday from school for a time--this idleness imposed upon me by my parents’ straitened finances. The thornbushes of lust grew rank about my head, and there was no hand to root them out. Indeed, when my father saw me one day at the baths and perceived that I was becoming a man, and was showing the signs of adolescence, he joyfully told my mother about it as if already looking forward to grandchildren, rejoicing in that sort of inebriation in which the world so often forgets thee, its Creator, and falls in love with thy creature instead of thee--the inebriation of that invisible wine of a perverted will which turns and bows down to infamy. But in my mother’s breast thou hadst already begun to build thy temple and the foundation of thy holy habitation--whereas my father was only a catechumen, and that but recently. She was, therefore, startled with a holy fear and trembling: for though I had not yet been baptized, she feared those crooked ways in which they walk who turn their backs to thee and not their faces.
7. Woe is me! Do I dare affirm that thou didst hold thy
peace, O my God, while I wandered farther away from thee? Didst thou
really then hold thy peace? Then whose words were they but thine which
by my mother, thy faithful handmaid, thou didst pour into my ears? None
of them, however, sank into my heart to make me do anything. She
deplored and, as I remember, warned me privately with great solicitude,
“not to commit fornication; but above all things never to defile
another man’s wife.” These appeared to me but womanish
counsels, which I would have blushed to obey. Yet they were from thee,
and I knew it not. I thought that thou wast silent and that it was only
she who spoke. Yet it was through her that thou didst not keep silence
toward me; and in rejecting her counsel I was rejecting thee--I, her
son, “the son of thy handmaid, thy servant.”
8. Behold with what companions I walked the streets of
Babylon! I rolled in its mire and lolled about on it, as if on a bed of
spices and precious ointments. And, drawing me more closely to the very
center of that city, my invisible enemy trod me down and seduced me,
for I was easy to seduce. My mother had already fled out of the midst
of Babylon Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER IV
9. Theft is punished by thy law, O Lord, and by the law written in men’s hearts, which not even ingrained wickedness can erase. For what thief will tolerate another thief stealing from him? Even a rich thief will not tolerate a poor thief who is driven to theft by want. Yet I had a desire to commit robbery, and did so, compelled to it by neither hunger nor poverty, but through a contempt for well-doing and a strong impulse to iniquity. For I pilfered something which I already had in sufficient measure, and of much better quality. I did not desire to enjoy what I stole, but only the theft and the sin itself.
There was a pear tree close to our own vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was not tempting either for its color or for its flavor. Late one night--having prolonged our games in the streets until then, as our bad habit was--a group of young scoundrels, and I among them, went to shake and rob this tree. We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart--which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error--not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself.
CHAPTER V
10. Now there is a comeliness in all beautiful bodies, and in gold and silver and all things. The sense of touch has its own power to please and the other senses find their proper objects in physical sensation. Worldly honor also has its own glory, and so do the powers to command and to overcome: and from these there springs up the desire for revenge. Yet, in seeking these pleasures, we must not depart from thee, O Lord, nor deviate from thy law. The life which we live here has its own peculiar attractiveness because it has a certain measure of comeliness of its own and a harmony with all these inferior values. The bond of human friendship has a sweetness of its own, binding many souls together as one. Yet because of these values, sin is committed, because we have an inordinate preference for these goods of a lower order and neglect the better and the higher good--neglecting thee, O our Lord God, and thy truth and thy law. For these inferior values have their delights, but not at all equal to my God, who hath made them all. For in him do the righteous delight and he is the sweetness of the upright in heart.
11. When, therefore, we inquire why a crime was
committed, we do not accept the explanation unless it appears that
there was the desire to obtain some of those values which we designate
inferior, or else a fear of losing them. For truly they are beautiful
and comely, though in comparison with the superior and celestial goods
they are abject and contemptible. A man has murdered another man--what
was his motive? Either he desired his wife or his property or else he
would steal to support himself; or else he was afraid of losing
something to him; or else, having been injured, he was burning to be
revenged. Would a man commit murder without a motive, taking delight
simply in the act of murder? Who would believe such a thing? Even for
that savage and brutal man [Catiline], of whom it was said that he was
gratuitously wicked and cruel, there is still a motive assigned to his
deeds. “Lest through idleness,” he says, “hand or
heart should grow inactive.” Cicero, De
Catiline, 16.
CHAPTER VI
12. What was it in you, O theft of mine, that I, poor
wretch, doted on--you deed of darkness--in that sixteenth year of my
age? Beautiful you were not, for you were a theft. But are you anything
at all, so that I could analyze the case with you? Those pears that we
stole were fair to the sight because they were thy creation, O Beauty
beyond compare, O Creator of all, O thou good God--God the highest good
and my true good. Deus summum bonum et
bonum verum meum.
13. For thus we see pride wearing the mask of high-spiritedness, although only thou, O God, art high above all. Ambition seeks honor and glory, whereas only thou shouldst be honored above all, and glorified forever. The powerful man seeks to be feared, because of his cruelty; but who ought really to be feared but God only? What can be forced away or withdrawn out of his power--when or where or whither or by whom? The enticements of the wanton claim the name of love; and yet nothing is more enticing than thy love, nor is anything loved more healthfully than thy truth, bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity prompts a desire for knowledge, whereas it is only thou who knowest all things supremely. Indeed, ignorance and foolishness themselves go masked under the names of simplicity and innocence; yet there is no being that has true simplicity like thine, and none is innocent as thou art. Thus it is that by a sinner’s own deeds he is himself harmed. Human sloth pretends to long for rest, but what sure rest is there save in the Lord? Luxury would fain be called plenty and abundance; but thou art the fullness and unfailing abundance of unfading joy. Prodigality presents a show of liberality; but thou art the most lavish giver of all good things. Covetousness desires to possess much; but thou art already the possessor of all things. Envy contends that its aim is for excellence; but what is so excellent as thou? Anger seeks revenge; but who avenges more justly than thou? Fear recoils at the unfamiliar and the sudden changes which threaten things beloved, and is wary for its own security; but what can happen that is unfamiliar or sudden to thee? Or who can deprive thee of what thou lovest? Where, really, is there unshaken security save with thee? Grief languishes for things lost in which desire had taken delight, because it wills to have nothing taken from it, just as nothing can be taken from thee.
14. Thus the soul commits fornication when she is
turned from thee, Avertitur, the
opposite of convertitur: the evil will turns the soul
away from God; this is sin. By grace it is turned to God;
this is conversion.
CHAPTER VII
15. “What shall I render unto the
Lord”
CHAPTER VIII
16. What profit did I, a wretched one, receive from those things which, when I remember them now, cause me shame--above all, from that theft, which I loved only for the theft’s sake? And, as the theft itself was nothing, I was all the more wretched in that I loved it so. Yet by myself alone I would not have done it--I still recall how I felt about this then--I could not have done it alone. I loved it then because of the companionship of my accomplices with whom I did it. I did not, therefore, love the theft alone--yet, indeed, it was only the theft that I loved, for the companionship was nothing. What is this paradox? Who is it that can explain it to me but God, who illumines my heart and searches out the dark corners thereof? What is it that has prompted my mind to inquire about it, to discuss and to reflect upon all this? For had I at that time loved the pears that I stole and wished to enjoy them, I might have done so alone, if I could have been satisfied with the mere act of theft by which my pleasure was served. Nor did I need to have that itching of my own passions inflamed by the encouragement of my accomplices. But since the pleasure I got was not from the pears, it was in the crime itself, enhanced by the companionship of my fellow sinners.
CHAPTER IX
17. By what passion, then, was I animated? It was
undoubtedly depraved and a great misfortune for me to feel it. But
still, what was it? “Who can understand his
errors?”
We laughed because our hearts were tickled at the thought of deceiving the owners, who had no idea of what we were doing and would have strenuously objected. Yet, again, why did I find such delight in doing this which I would not have done alone? Is it that no one readily laughs alone? No one does so readily; but still sometimes, when men are by themselves and no one else is about, a fit of laughter will overcome them when something very droll presents itself to their sense or mind. Yet alone I would not have done it--alone I could not have done it at all.
Behold, my God, the lively review of my soul’s career is laid bare before thee. I would not have committed that theft alone. My pleasure in it was not what I stole but, rather, the act of stealing. Nor would I have enjoyed doing it alone--indeed I would not have done it! O friendship all unfriendly! You strange seducer of the soul, who hungers for mischief from impulses of mirth and wantonness, who craves another’s loss without any desire for one’s own profit or revenge--so that, when they say, “Let’s go, let’s do it,” we are ashamed not to be shameless.
CHAPTER X
18. Who can unravel such a twisted and tangled
knottiness? It is unclean. I hate to reflect upon it. I hate to look on
it. But I do long for thee, O Righteousness and Innocence, so beautiful
and comely to all virtuous eyes--I long for thee with an insatiable
satiety. With thee is perfect rest, and life unchanging. He who enters
into thee enters into the joy of his Lord, Cf.
BOOK THREE
The story of his student days in Carthage, his discovery of Cicero’s Hortensius, the enkindling of his philosophical interest, his infatuation with the Manichean heresy, and his mother’s dream which foretold his eventual return to the true faith and to God.
CHAPTER I
1. I came to Carthage, where a caldron of unholy loves
was seething and bubbling all around me. I was not in love as yet, but
I was in love with love; and, from a hidden hunger, I hated myself for
not feeling more intensely a sense of hunger. I was looking for
something to love, for I was in love with loving, and I hated security
and a smooth way, free from snares. Within me I had a dearth of that
inner food which is thyself, my God--although that dearth caused me no
hunger. And I remained without any appetite for incorruptible food--not
because I was already filled with it, but because the emptier I became
the more I loathed it. Because of this my soul was unhealthy; and, full
of sores, it exuded itself forth, itching to be scratched by scraping
on the things of the senses. Cf.
To love and to be loved was sweet to me, and all the more when I gained the enjoyment of the body of the person I loved. Thus I polluted the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence and I dimmed its luster with the slime of lust. Yet, foul and unclean as I was, I still craved, in excessive vanity, to be thought elegant and urbane. And I did fall precipitately into the love I was longing for. My God, my mercy, with how much bitterness didst thou, out of thy infinite goodness, flavor that sweetness for me! For I was not only beloved but also I secretly reached the climax of enjoyment; and yet I was joyfully bound with troublesome tics, so that I could be scourged with the burning iron rods of jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger, and strife.
CHAPTER II
2. Stage plays also captivated me, with their sights full of the images of my own miseries: fuel for my own fire. Now, why does a man like to be made sad by viewing doleful and tragic scenes, which he himself could not by any means endure? Yet, as a spectator, he wishes to experience from them a sense of grief, and in this very sense of grief his pleasure consists. What is this but wretched madness? For a man is more affected by these actions the more he is spuriously involved in these affections. Now, if he should suffer them in his own person, it is the custom to call this “misery.” But when he suffers with another, then it is called “compassion.” But what kind of compassion is it that arises from viewing fictitious and unreal sufferings? The spectator is not expected to aid the sufferer but merely to grieve for him. And the more he grieves the more he applauds the actor of these fictions. If the misfortunes of the characters--whether historical or entirely imaginary--are represented so as not to touch the feelings of the spectator, he goes away disgusted and complaining. But if his feelings are deeply touched, he sits it out attentively, and sheds tears of joy.
3. Tears and sorrow, then, are loved. Surely every man
desires to be joyful. And, though no one is willingly miserable, one
may, nevertheless, be pleased to be merciful so that we love their
sorrows because without them we should have nothing to pity. This also
springs from that same vein of friendship. But whither does it go?
Whither does it flow? Why does it run into that torrent of pitch which
seethes forth those huge tides of loathsome lusts in which it is
changed and altered past recognition, being diverted and corrupted from
its celestial purity by its own will? Shall, then, compassion be
repudiated? By no means! Let us, however, love the sorrows of others.
But let us beware of uncleanness, O my soul, under the protection of my
God, the God of our fathers, who is to be praised and exalted--let us
beware of uncleanness. I have not yet ceased to have compassion. But in
those days in the theaters I sympathized with lovers when they sinfully
enjoyed one another, although this was done fictitiously in the play.
And when they lost one another, I grieved with them, as if pitying
them, and yet had delight in both grief and pity. Nowadays I feel much
more pity for one who delights in his wickedness than for one who
counts himself unfortunate because he fails to obtain some harmful
pleasure or suffers the loss of some miserable felicity. This, surely,
is the truer compassion, but the sorrow I feel in it has no delight for
me. For although he that grieves with the unhappy should be commended
for his work of love, yet he who has the power of real compassion would
still prefer that there be nothing for him to grieve about. For if good
will were to be ill will--which it cannot be--only then could he who is
truly and sincerely compassionate wish that there were some unhappy
people so that he might commiserate them. Some grief may then be
justified, but none of it loved. Thus it is that thou dost act, O Lord
God, for thou lovest souls far more purely than we do and art more
incorruptibly compassionate, although thou art never wounded by any
sorrow. Now “who is sufficient for these things?”
4. But at that time, in my wretchedness, I loved to grieve; and I sought for things to grieve about. In another man’s misery, even though it was feigned and impersonated on the stage, that performance of the actor pleased me best and attracted me most powerfully which moved me to tears. What marvel then was it that an unhappy sheep, straying from thy flock and impatient of thy care, I became infected with a foul disease? This is the reason for my love of griefs: that they would not probe into me too deeply (for I did not love to suffer in myself such things as I loved to look at), and they were the sort of grief which came from hearing those fictions, which affected only the surface of my emotion. Still, just as if they had been poisoned fingernails, their scratching was followed by inflammation, swelling, putrefaction, and corruption. Such was my life! But was it life, O my God?
CHAPTER III
5. And still thy faithful mercy hovered over me from afar. In what unseemly iniquities did I wear myself out, following a sacrilegious curiosity, which, having deserted thee, then began to drag me down into the treacherous abyss, into the beguiling obedience of devils, to whom I made offerings of my wicked deeds. And still in all this thou didst not fail to scourge me. I dared, even while thy solemn rites were being celebrated inside the walls of thy church, to desire and to plan a project which merited death as its fruit. For this thou didst chastise me with grievous punishments, but nothing in comparison with my fault, O thou my greatest mercy, my God, my refuge from those terrible dangers in which I wandered with stiff neck, receding farther from thee, loving my own ways and not thine--loving a vagrant liberty!
6. Those studies I was then pursuing, generally
accounted as respectable, were aimed at distinction in the courts of
law--to excel in which, the more crafty I was, the more I should be
praised. Such is the blindness of men that they even glory in their
blindness. And by this time I had become a master in the School of
Rhetoric, and I rejoiced proudly in this honor and became inflated with
arrogance. Still I was relatively sedate, O Lord, as thou knowest, and
had no share in the wreckings of “The Wreckers” Eversores,
"overturners," from overtere, to overthrow or ruin. This was the
nickname of a gang of young hoodlums in Carthage, made up largely, it
seems, of students in the schools.
CHAPTER IV
7. Among such as these, in that unstable period of my
life, I studied the books of eloquence, for it was in eloquence that I
was eager to be eminent, though from a reprehensible and vainglorious
motive, and a delight in human vanity. In the ordinary course of study
I came upon a certain book of Cicero’s, whose language almost all
admire, though not his heart. This particular book of his contains an
exhortation to philosophy and was called Hortensius. A minor essay now lost. We
know of its existence from other writers, but the only fragments that
remain are in Augustine's works: Contra Academicos, III, 14:31;
De beata vita, X; Soliloquia, I, 17; De civitate
Dei, III, 15; Contra Julianum, IV, 15:78; De
Trinitate, XIII, 4:7, 5:8; XIV, 9:12, 19:26; Epist. CXXX,
10. Note this merely
parenthetical reference to his father's death and contrast it with the
account of his mother's death in Bk. IX, Chs. X-XII.
8. How ardent was I then, my God, how ardent to fly
from earthly things to thee! Nor did I know how thou wast even then
dealing with me. For with thee is wisdom. In Greek the love of wisdom
is called “philosophy,” and it was with this love that that
book inflamed me. There are some who seduce through philosophy, under a
great, alluring, and honorable name, using it to color and adorn their
own errors. And almost all who did this, in Cicero’s own time and
earlier, are censored and pointed out in his book. In it there is also
manifest that most salutary admonition of thy Spirit, spoken by thy
good and pious servant: “Beware lest any man spoil you through
philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the
rudiments of the world, and not after Christ: for in him all the
fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily.”
CHAPTER V
9. I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind to the Holy
Scriptures, that I might see what they were. And behold, I saw
something not comprehended by the proud, not disclosed to children,
something lowly in the hearing, but sublime in the doing, and veiled in
mysteries. Yet I was not of the number of those who could enter into it
or bend my neck to follow its steps. For then it was quite different
from what I now feel. When I then turned toward the Scriptures, they
appeared to me to be quite unworthy to be compared with the dignity of
Tully. I.e., Marcus Tullius
Cicero.
CHAPTER VI
10. Thus I fell among men, delirious in their pride,
carnal and voluble, whose mouths were the snares of the devil--a trap
made out of a mixture of the syllables of thy name and the names of our
Lord Jesus Christ and of the Paraclete. These were the Manicheans,
a pseudo-Christian sect founded by a Persian religious teacher, Mani
(c. A.D. 216-277). They professed a highly eclectic religious system
chiefly distinguished by its radical dualism and its elaborate
cosmogony in which good was co-ordinated with light and evil with
darkness. In the sect, there was an esoteric minority called
perfecti, who were supposed to obey the strict rules of an
ascetic ethic; the rest were auditores, who followed, at a
distance, the doctrines of the perfecti but not their rules. The
chief attraction of Manicheism lay in the fact that it appeared to
offer a straightforward, apparently profound and rational solution to
the problem of evil, both in nature and in human experience. Cf. H.C.
Puech, Le Manichéisme, son fondateur--sa doctrine (Paris,
1949); F.C. Burkitt, The Religion of the Manichees (Cambridge,
1925); and Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee (Cambridge,
1947).
O Truth, Truth, how inwardly even then did the marrow
of my soul sigh for thee when, frequently and in manifold ways, in
numerous and vast books, [the Manicheans] sounded out thy name though
it was only a sound! And in these dishes--while I starved for
thee--they served up to me, in thy stead, the sun and moon thy
beauteous works--but still only thy works and not thyself; indeed, not
even thy first work. For thy spiritual works came before these material
creations, celestial and shining though they are. But I was hungering
and thirsting, not even after those first works of thine, but after
thyself the Truth, “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow
of turning.”
But thou, my Love, for whom I longed in order that I
might be strong, neither art those bodies that we see in heaven nor art
thou those which we do not see there, for thou hast created them all
and yet thou reckonest them not among thy greatest works. How far,
then, art thou from those fantasies of mine, fantasies of bodies which
have no real being at all! The images of those bodies which actually
exist are far more certain than these fantasies. The bodies themselves
are more certain than the images, yet even these thou art not. Thou art
not even the soul, which is the life of bodies; and, clearly, the life
of the body is better than the body itself. But thou art the life of
souls, life of lives, having life in thyself, and never changing, O
Life of my soul. Cf. Plotinus,
Enneads, V, 3:14.
11. Where, then, wast thou and how far from me? Far,
indeed, was I wandering away from thee, being barred even from the
husks of those swine whom I fed with husks. Cf. Cf. Ovid,
Metamorphoses, VII, 219-224. For the details of the
Manichean cosmogony, see Burkitt, op. cit., ch. 4. Cf.
CHAPTER VII
12. For I was ignorant of that other reality, true
Being. And so it was that I was subtly persuaded to agree with these
foolish deceivers when they put their questions to me: “Whence
comes evil?” and, “Is God limited by a bodily shape, and
has he hairs and nails?” and, “Are those patriarchs to be
esteemed righteous who had many wives at one time, and who killed men
and who sacrificed living creatures?” In my ignorance I was much
disturbed over these things and, though I was retreating from the
truth, I appeared to myself to be going toward it, because I did not
yet know that evil was nothing but a privation of good (that, indeed,
it has no being) Cf. Enchiridion,
IV.
13. Nor did I know that true inner righteousness--which does not judge according to custom but by the measure of the most perfect law of God Almighty--by which the mores of various places and times were adapted to those places and times (though the law itself is the same always and everywhere, not one thing in one place and another in another). By this inner righteousness Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob and Moses and David, and all those commended by the mouth of God were righteous and were judged unrighteous only by foolish men who were judging by human judgment and gauging their judgment of the mores of the whole human race by the narrow norms of their own mores. It is as if a man in an armory, not knowing what piece goes on what part of the body, should put a greave on his head and a helmet on his shin and then complain because they did not fit. Or as if, on some holiday when afternoon business was forbidden, one were to grumble at not being allowed to go on selling as it had been lawful for him to do in the forenoon. Or, again, as if, in a house, he sees a servant handle something that the butler is not permitted to touch, or when something is done behind a stable that would be prohibited in a dining room, and then a person should be indignant that in one house and one family the same things are not allowed to every member of the household. Such is the case with those who cannot endure to hear that something was lawful for righteous men in former times that is not so now; or that God, for certain temporal reasons, commanded then one thing to them and another now to these: yet both would be serving the same righteous will. These people should see that in one man, one day, and one house, different things are fit for different members; and a thing that was formerly lawful may become, after a time, unlawful--and something allowed or commanded in one place that is justly prohibited and punished in another. Is justice, then, variable and changeable? No, but the times over which she presides are not all alike because they are different times. But men, whose days upon the earth are few, cannot by their own perception harmonize the causes of former ages and other nations, of which they had no experience, and compare them with these of which they do have experience; although in one and the same body, or day, or family, they can readily see that what is suitable for each member, season, part, and person may differ. To the one they take exception; to the other they submit.
14. These things I did not know then, nor had I observed their import. They met my eyes on every side, and I did not see. I composed poems, in which I was not free to place each foot just anywhere, but in one meter one way, and in another meter another way, nor even in any one verse was the same foot allowed in all places. Yet the art by which I composed did not have different principles for each of these different cases, but the same law throughout. Still I did not see how, by that righteousness to which good and holy men submitted, all those things that God had commanded were gathered, in a far more excellent and sublime way, into one moral order; and it did not vary in any essential respect, though it did not in varying times prescribe all things at once but, rather, distributed and prescribed what was proper for each. And, being blind, I blamed those pious fathers, not only for making use of present things as God had commanded and inspired them to do, but also for foreshadowing things to come, as God revealed it to them.
CHAPTER VIII
15. Can it ever, at any time or place, be unrighteous
for a man to love God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with
all his mind; and his neighbor as himself? Cf.
16. This applies as well to deeds of violence where
there is a real desire to harm another, either by humiliating treatment
or by injury. Either of these may be done for reasons of revenge, as
one enemy against another, or in order to obtain some advantage over
another, as in the case of the highwayman and the traveler; else they
may be done in order to avoid some other evil, as in the case of one
who fears another; or through envy as, for example, an unfortunate man
harming a happy one just because he is happy; or they may be done by a
prosperous man against someone whom he fears will become equal to
himself or whose equality he resents. They may even be done for the
mere pleasure in another man’s pain, as the spectators of
gladiatorial shows or the people who deride and mock at others. These
are the major forms of iniquity that spring out of the lust of the
flesh, and of the eye, and of power. Cf. Cf.
This is what happens whenever thou art forsaken, O Fountain of Life, who art the one and true Creator and Ruler of the universe. This is what happens when through self-willed pride a part is loved under the false assumption that it is the whole. Therefore, we must return to thee in humble piety and let thee purge us from our evil ways, and be merciful to those who confess their sins to thee, and hear the groanings of the prisoners and loosen us from those fetters which we have forged for ourselves. This thou wilt do, provided we do not raise up against thee the arrogance of a false freedom--for thus we lose all through craving more, by loving our own good more than thee, the common good of all.
CHAPTER IX
17. But among all these vices and crimes and manifold
iniquities, there are also the sins that are committed by men who are,
on the whole, making progress toward the good. When these are judged
rightly and after the rule of perfection, the sins are censored but the
men are to be commended because they show the hope of bearing fruit,
like the green shoot of the growing corn. And there are some deeds that
resemble vice and crime and yet are not sin because they offend neither
thee, our Lord God, nor social custom. For example, when suitable
reserves for hard times are provided, we cannot judge that this is done
merely from a hoarding impulse. Or, again, when acts are punished by
constituted authority for the sake of correction, we cannot judge that
they are done merely out of a desire to inflict pain. Thus, many a deed
which is disapproved in man’s sight may be approved by thy
testimony. And many a man who is praised by men is condemned--as thou
art witness--because frequently the deed itself, the mind of the doer,
and the hidden exigency of the situation all vary among themselves. But
when, contrary to human expectation, thou commandest something unusual
or unthought of--indeed, something thou mayest formerly have forbidden,
about which thou mayest conceal the reason for thy command at that
particular time; and even though it may be contrary to the ordinance of
some society of men An example of this which
Augustine doubtless had in mind is God's command to Abraham to offer up
his son Isaac as a human sacrifice. Cf.
CHAPTER X
18. But I was ignorant of all this, and so I mocked
those holy servants and prophets of thine. Yet what did I gain by
mocking them save to be mocked in turn by thee? Insensibly and little
by little, I was led on to such follies as to believe that a fig tree
wept when it was plucked and that the sap of the mother tree was tears.
Notwithstanding this, if a fig was plucked, by not his own but another
man’s wickedness, some Manichean saint might eat it, digest it in
his stomach, and breathe it out again in the form of angels. Indeed, in
his prayers he would assuredly groan and sigh forth particles of God,
although these particles of the most high and true God would have
remained bound in that fig unless they had been set free by the teeth
and belly of some “elect saint” Electisancti. Another Manichean
term for the perfecti, the elite and "perfect" among them.
CHAPTER XI
19. And now thou didst “stretch forth thy hand
from above”
For what other source was there for that dream by which thou didst console her, so that she permitted me to live with her, to have my meals in the same house at the table which she had begun to avoid, even while she hated and detested the blasphemies of my error? In her dream she saw herself standing on a sort of wooden rule, and saw a bright youth approaching her, joyous and smiling at her, while she was grieving and bowed down with sorrow. But when he inquired of her the cause of her sorrow and daily weeping (not to learn from her, but to teach her, as is customary in visions), and when she answered that it was my soul’s doom she was lamenting, he bade her rest content and told her to look and see that where she was there I was also. And when she looked she saw me standing near her on the same rule.
Whence came this vision unless it was that thy ears were inclined toward her heart? O thou Omnipotent Good, thou carest for every one of us as if thou didst care for him only, and so for all as if they were but one!
20. And what was the reason for this also, that, when she told me of this vision, and I tried to put this construction on it: “that she should not despair of being someday what I was,” she replied immediately, without hesitation, “No; for it was not told me that ‘where he is, there you shall be’ but ‘where you are, there he will be’“? I confess my remembrance of this to thee, O Lord, as far as I can recall it--and I have often mentioned it. Thy answer, given through my watchful mother, in the fact that she was not disturbed by the plausibility of my false interpretation but saw immediately what should have been seen--and which I certainly had not seen until she spoke--this answer moved me more deeply than the dream itself. Still, by that dream, the joy that was to come to that pious woman so long after was predicted long before, as a consolation for her present anguish.
Nearly nine years passed in which I wallowed in the mud of that deep pit and in the darkness of falsehood, striving often to rise, but being all the more heavily dashed down. But all that time this chaste, pious, and sober widow--such as thou dost love--was now more buoyed up with hope, though no less zealous in her weeping and mourning; and she did not cease to bewail my case before thee, in all the hours of her supplication. Her prayers entered thy presence, and yet thou didst allow me still to tumble and toss around in that darkness.
CHAPTER XII
21. Meanwhile, thou gavest her yet another answer, as I
remember--for I pass over many things, hastening on to those things
which more strongly impel me to confess to thee--and many things I have
simply forgotten. But thou gavest her then another answer, by a priest
of thine, a certain bishop reared in thy Church and well versed in thy
books. When that woman had begged him to agree to have some discussion
with me, to refute my errors, to help me to unlearn evil and to learn
the good Dedocereme mala
ac docere bona; a typical Augustinian wordplay.
BOOK FOUR
This is the story of his years among the Manicheans. It includes the account of his teaching at Tagaste, his taking a mistress, the attractions of astrology, the poignant loss of a friend which leads to a searching analysis of grief and transience. He reports on his first book, De pulchro et apto, and his introduction to Aristotle’s Categories and other books of philosophy and theology, which he mastered with great ease and little profit.
CHAPTER I
1. During this period of nine years, from my nineteenth
year to my twenty-eighth, I went astray and led others astray. I was
deceived and deceived others, in varied lustful projects--sometimes
publicly, by the teaching of what men style “the liberal
arts”; sometimes secretly, under the false guise of religion. In
the one, I was proud of myself; in the other, superstitious; in all,
vain! In my public life I was striving after the emptiness of popular
fame, going so far as to seek theatrical applause, entering poetic
contests, striving for the straw garlands and the vanity of theatricals
and intemperate desires. In my private life I was seeking to be purged
from these corruptions of ours by carrying food to those who were
called “elect” and “holy,” which, in the
laboratory of their stomachs, they should make into angels and gods for
us, and by them we might be set free. These projects I followed out and
practiced with my friends, who were both deceived with me and by me.
Let the proud laugh at me, and those who have not yet been savingly
cast down and stricken by thee, O my God. Nevertheless, I would confess
to thee my shame to thy glory. Bear with me, I beseech thee, and give
me the grace to retrace in my present memory the devious ways of my
past errors and thus be able to “offer to thee the sacrifice of
thanksgiving.” Cf.
CHAPTER II
2. During those years I taught the art of rhetoric.
Conquered by the desire for gain, I offered for sale speaking skills
with which to conquer others. And yet, O Lord, thou knowest that I
really preferred to have honest scholars (or what were esteemed as
such) and, without tricks of speech, I taught these scholars the tricks
of speech--not to be used against the life of the innocent, but
sometimes to save the life of a guilty man. And thou, O God, didst see
me from afar, stumbling on that slippery path and sending out some
flashes of fidelity amid much smoke--guiding those who loved vanity and
sought after lying, Cf.
In those years I had a mistress, to whom I was not joined in lawful marriage. She was a woman I had discovered in my wayward passion, void as it was of understanding, yet she was the only one; and I remained faithful to her and with her I discovered, by my own experience, what a great difference there is between the restraint of the marriage bond contracted with a view to having children and the compact of a lustful love, where children are born against the parents’ will--although once they are born they compel our love.
3. I remember too that, when I decided to compete for a
theatrical prize, some magician--I do not remember him now--asked me
what I would give him to be certain to win. But I detested and
abominated such filthy mysteries, The rites of the
soothsayers, in which animals were killed, for auguries and
propitiation of the gods. Cf.
CHAPTER III
4. And yet, without scruple, I consulted those other impostors, whom they call “astrologers” [mathematicos], because they used no sacrifices and invoked the aid of no spirit for their divinations. Still, true Christian piety must necessarily reject and condemn their art.
It is good to confess to thee and to say, “Have
mercy on me; heal my soul; for I have sinned against
thee”
5. There was at that time a wise man, very skillful and
quite famous in medicine. Vindicianus; see below,
Bk. VII, Ch. VI, 8.
6. And thus truly, either by him or through him, thou wast looking after me. And thou didst fix all this in my memory so that afterward I might search it out for myself.
But at that time, neither the proconsul nor my most dear Nebridius--a splendid youth and most circumspect, who scoffed at the whole business of divination--could persuade me to give it up, for the authority of the astrological authors influenced me more than they did. And, thus far, I had come upon no certain proof--such as I sought--by which it could be shown without doubt that what had been truly foretold by those consulted came from accident or chance, and not from the art of the stargazers.
CHAPTER IV
7. In those years, when I first began to teach rhetoric
in my native town, I had gained a very dear friend, about my own age,
who was associated with me in the same studies. Like myself, he was
just rising up into the flower of youth. He had grown up with me from
childhood and we had been both school fellows and playmates. But he was
not then my friend, nor indeed ever became my friend, in the true sense
of the term; for there is no true friendship save between those thou
dost bind together and who cleave to thee by that love which is
“shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given
to us.”
8. Who can show forth all thy praise Cf.
9. My heart was utterly darkened by this sorrow and
everywhere I looked I saw death. My native place was a torture room to
me and my father’s house a strange unhappiness. And all the
things I had done with him--now that he was gone--became a frightful
torment. My eyes sought him everywhere, but they did not see him; and I
hated all places because he was not in them, because they could not say
to me, “Look, he is coming,” as they did when he was alive
and absent. I became a hard riddle to myself, and I asked my soul why
she was so downcast and why this disquieted me so sorely. Cf. Ibid.
CHAPTER V
10. But now, O Lord, these things are past and time has healed my wound. Let me learn from thee, who art Truth, and put the ear of my heart to thy mouth, that thou mayest tell me why weeping should be so sweet to the unhappy. Hast thou--though omnipresent--dismissed our miseries from thy concern? Thou abidest in thyself while we are disquieted with trial after trial. Yet unless we wept in thy ears, there would be no hope for us remaining. How does it happen that such sweet fruit is plucked from the bitterness of life, from groans, tears, sighs, and lamentations? Is it the hope that thou wilt hear us that sweetens it? This is true in the case of prayer, for in a prayer there is a desire to approach thee. But is it also the case in grief for a lost love, and in the kind of sorrow that had then overwhelmed me? For I had neither a hope of his coming back to life, nor in all my tears did I seek this. I simply grieved and wept, for I was miserable and had lost my joy. Or is weeping a bitter thing that gives us pleasure because of our aversion to the things we once enjoyed and this only as long as we loathe them?
CHAPTER VI
11. But why do I speak of these things? Now is not the
time to ask such questions, but rather to confess to thee. I was
wretched; and every soul is wretched that is fettered in the friendship
of mortal things--it is torn to pieces when it loses them, and then
realizes the misery which it had even before it lost them. Thus it was
at that time with me. I wept most bitterly, and found a rest in
bitterness. I was wretched, and yet that wretched life I still held
dearer than my friend. For though I would willingly have changed it, I
was still more unwilling to lose it than to have lost him. Indeed, I
doubt whether I was willing to lose it, even for him--as they tell
(unless it be fiction) of the friendship of Orestes and
Pylades Cf. Ovid, Tristia,
IV, 4:74.
Look into my heart, O God! Behold and look deep within
me, for I remember it well, O my Hope who cleansest me from the
uncleanness of such affections, directing my eyes toward thee and
plucking my feet out of the snare. And I marveled that other mortals
went on living since he whom I had loved as if he would never die was
now dead. And I marveled all the more that I, who had been a second
self to him, could go on living when he was dead. Someone spoke rightly
of his friend as being “his soul’s other
half” Cf. Horace, Ode I, 3:8,
where he speaks of Virgil, etserves animae dimidium meae.
Augustine's memory changes the text here to dimidium animae
suae.
CHAPTER VII
12. O madness that knows not how to love men as they should be loved! O foolish man that I was then, enduring with so much rebellion the lot of every man! Thus I fretted, sighed, wept, tormented myself, and took neither rest nor counsel, for I was dragging around my torn and bloody soul. It was impatient of my dragging it around, and yet I could not find a place to lay it down. Not in pleasant groves, nor in sport or song, nor in fragrant bowers, nor in magnificent banquetings, nor in the pleasures of the bed or the couch; not even in books or poetry did it find rest. All things looked gloomy, even the very light itself. Whatsoever was not what he was, was now repulsive and hateful, except my groans and tears, for in those alone I found a little rest. But when my soul left off weeping, a heavy burden of misery weighed me down. It should have been raised up to thee, O Lord, for thee to lighten and to lift. This I knew, but I was neither willing nor able to do; especially since, in my thoughts of thee, thou wast not thyself but only an empty fantasm. Thus my error was my god. If I tried to cast off my burden on this fantasm, that it might find rest there, it sank through the vacuum and came rushing down again upon me. Thus I remained to myself an unhappy lodging where I could neither stay nor leave. For where could my heart fly from my heart? Where could I fly from my own self? Where would I not follow myself? And yet I did flee from my native place so that my eyes would look for him less in a place where they were not accustomed to see him. Thus I left the town of Tagaste and returned to Carthage.
CHAPTER VIII
13. Time never lapses, nor does it glide at leisure
through our sense perceptions. It does strange things in the mind. Lo,
time came and went from day to day, and by coming and going it brought
to my mind other ideas and remembrances, and little by little they
patched me up again with earlier kinds of pleasure and my sorrow
yielded a bit to them. But yet there followed after this sorrow, not
other sorrows just like it, but the causes of other sorrows. For why
had that first sorrow so easily penetrated to the quick except that I
had poured out my soul onto the dust, by loving a man as if he would
never die who nevertheless had to die? What revived and refreshed me,
more than anything else, was the consolation of other friends, with
whom I went on loving the things I loved instead of thee. This was a
monstrous fable and a tedious lie which was corrupting my soul with its
“itching ears”
CHAPTER IX
14. This is what we love in our friends, and we love it so much that a man’s conscience accuses itself if he does not love one who loves him, or respond in love to love, seeking nothing from the other but the evidences of his love. This is the source of our moaning when one dies--the gloom of sorrow, the steeping of the heart in tears, all sweetness turned to bitterness--and the feeling of death in the living, because of the loss of the life of the dying.
Blessed is he who loves thee, and who loves his friend
in thee, and his enemy also, for thy sake; for he alone loses none dear
to him, if all are dear in Him who cannot be lost. And who is this but
our God: the God that created heaven and earth, and filled them because
he created them by filling them up? None loses thee but he who leaves
thee; and he who leaves thee, where does he go, or where can he flee
but from thee well-pleased to thee offended? For where does he not find
thy law fulfilled in his own punishment? “Thy law is the
truth”
CHAPTER X
15. “Turn us again, O Lord God of Hosts, cause
thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.”
CHAPTER XI
16. Be not foolish, O my soul, and do not let the
tumult of your vanity deafen the ear of your heart. Be attentive. The
Word itself calls you to return, and with him is a place of unperturbed
rest, where love is not forsaken unless it first forsakes. Behold,
these things pass away that others may come to be in their place. Thus
even this lowest level of unity That is, our physical
universe.
17. Why then, my perverse soul, do you go on following your flesh? Instead, let it be converted so as to follow you. Whatever you feel through it is but partial. You do not know the whole, of which sensations are but parts; and yet the parts delight you. But if my physical senses had been able to comprehend the whole--and had not as a part of their punishment received only a portion of the whole as their own province--you would then desire that whatever exists in the present time should also pass away so that the whole might please you more. For what we speak, you also hear through physical sensation, and yet you would not wish that the syllables should remain. Instead, you wish them to fly past so that others may follow them, and the whole be heard. Thus it is always that when any single thing is composed of many parts which do not coexist simultaneously, the whole gives more delight than the parts could ever do perceived separately. But far better than all this is He who made it all. He is our God and he does not pass away, for there is nothing to take his place.
CHAPTER XII
18. If physical objects please you, praise God for them, but turn back your love to their Creator, lest, in those things which please you, you displease him. If souls please you, let them be loved in God; for in themselves they are mutable, but in him firmly established--without him they would simply cease to exist. In him, then, let them be loved; and bring along to him with yourself as many souls as you can, and say to them: “Let us love him, for he himself created all these, and he is not far away from them. For he did not create them, and then go away. They are of him and in him. Behold, there he is, wherever truth is known. He is within the inmost heart, yet the heart has wandered away from him. Return to your heart, O you transgressors, and hold fast to him who made you. Stand with him and you shall stand fast. Rest in him and you shall be at rest. Where do you go along these rugged paths? Where are you going? The good that you love is from him, and insofar as it is also for him, it is both good and pleasant. But it will rightly be turned to bitterness if whatever comes from him is not rightly loved and if he is deserted for the love of the creature. Why then will you wander farther and farther in these difficult and toilsome ways? There is no rest where you seek it. Seek what you seek; but remember that it is not where you seek it. You seek for a blessed life in the land of death. It is not there. For how can there be a blessed life where life itself is not?”
19. But our very Life came down to earth and bore our
death, and slew it with the very abundance of his own life. And,
thundering, he called us to return to him into that secret place from
which he came forth to us--coming first into the virginal womb, where
the human creature, our mortal flesh, was joined to him that it might
not be forever mortal--and came “as a bridegroom coming out his
chamber, rejoicing as a strong man to run a race.”
CHAPTER XIII
20. These things I did not understand at that time, and
I loved those inferior beauties, and I was sinking down to the very
depths. And I said to my friends: “Do we love anything but the
beautiful? What then is the beautiful? And what is beauty? What is it
that allures and unites us to the things we love; for unless there were
a grace and beauty in them, they could not possibly attract us to
them?” And I reflected on this and saw that in the objects
themselves there is a kind of beauty which comes from their forming a
whole and another kind of beauty that comes from mutual fitness--as the
harmony of one part of the body with its whole, or a shoe with a foot,
and so on. And this idea sprang up in my mind out of my inmost heart,
and I wrote some books--two or three, I think--On the Beautiful and
the Fitting. De pulchro et
apto; a lost essay with no other record save echoes in the rest of
Augustine's aesthetic theories. Cf. The Nature of the Good Against
the Manicheans, VIII-XV; City of God, XI, 18; De
ordine, I, 7:18; II, 19:51; Enchiridion, III, 10; I, 5.
CHAPTER XIV
21. What was it, O Lord my God, that prompted me to dedicate these books to Hierius, an orator of Rome, a man I did not know by sight but whom I loved for his reputation of learning, in which he was famous--and also for some words of his that I had heard which had pleased me? But he pleased me more because he pleased others, who gave him high praise and expressed amazement that a Syrian, who had first studied Greek eloquence, should thereafter become so wonderful a Latin orator and also so well versed in philosophy. Thus a man we have never seen is commended and loved. Does a love like this come into the heart of the hearer from the mouth of him who sings the other’s praise? Not so. Instead, one catches the spark of love from one who loves. This is why we love one who is praised when the eulogist is believed to give his praise from an unfeigned heart; that is, when he who loves him praises him.
22. Thus it was that I loved men on the basis of other men’s judgment, and not thine, O my God, in whom no man is deceived. But why is it that the feeling I had for such men was not like my feeling toward the renowned charioteer, or the great gladiatorial hunter, famed far and wide and popular with the mob? Actually, I admired the orator in a different and more serious fashion, as I would myself desire to be admired. For I did not want them to praise and love me as actors were praised and loved--although I myself praise and love them too. I would prefer being unknown than known in that way, or even being hated than loved that way. How are these various influences and divers sorts of loves distributed within one soul? What is it that I am in love with in another which, if I did not hate, I should neither detest nor repel from myself, seeing that we are equally men? For it does not follow that because the good horse is admired by a man who would not be that horse--even if he could--the same kind of admiration should be given to an actor, who shares our nature. Do I then love that in a man, which I also, a man, would hate to be? Man is himself a great deep. Thou dost number his very hairs, O Lord, and they do not fall to the ground without thee, and yet the hairs of his head are more readily numbered than are his affections and the movements of his heart.
23. But that orator whom I admired so much was the kind
of man I wished myself to be. Thus I erred through a swelling pride and
“was carried about with every wind,”
CHAPTER XV
24. But I had not seen how the main point in these
great issues [concerning the nature of beauty] lay really in thy
craftsmanship, O Omnipotent One, “who alone doest great
wonders.”
25. For just as in violent acts, if the emotion of the
soul from whence the violent impulse springs is depraved and asserts
itself insolently and mutinously--and just as in the acts of passion,
if the affection of the soul which gives rise to carnal desires is
unrestrained--so also, in the same way, errors and false opinions
contaminate life if the rational soul itself is depraved. Thus it was
then with me, for I was ignorant that my soul had to be enlightened by
another light, if it was to be partaker of the truth, since it is not
itself the essence of truth. “For thou wilt light my lamp; the
Lord my God will lighten my darkness” Cf.
26. But I pushed on toward thee, and was pressed back
by thee that I might know the taste of death, for “thou resistest
the proud.” Cf.
27. I was about twenty-six or twenty-seven when I wrote
those books, analyzing and reflecting upon those sensory images which
clamored in the ears of my heart. I was straining those ears to hear
thy inward melody, O sweet Truth, pondering on “the beautiful and
the fitting” and longing to stay and hear thee, and to rejoice
greatly at “the Bridegroom’s voice.” Cf. Cf.
28. And what did it profit me that, when I was scarcely
twenty years old, a book of Aristotle’s entitled The Ten
Categories The first section of the
Organon, which analyzes the problem of predication and develops
"the ten categories" of essence and the nine "accidents." This
existed in a Latin translation by Victorinus, who also translated the
Enneads of Plotinus, to which Augustine refers infra, Bk. VIII,
Ch. II, 3.
29. What did all this profit me, since it actually
hindered me when I imagined that whatever existed was comprehended
within those ten categories? I tried to interpret them, O my God, so
that even thy wonderful and unchangeable unity could be understood as
subjected to thy own magnitude or beauty, as if they existed in thee as
their Subject--as they do in corporeal bodies--whereas thou art thyself
thy own magnitude and beauty. A body is not great or fair because it is
a body, because, even if it were less great or less beautiful, it would
still be a body. But my conception of thee was falsity, not truth. It
was a figment of my own misery, not the stable ground of thy
blessedness. For thou hadst commanded, and it was carried out in me,
that the earth should bring forth briars and thorns for me, and that
with heavy labor I should gain my bread. Cf.
30. And what did it profit me that I could read and
understand for myself all the books I could get in the so-called
“liberal arts,” when I was actually a worthless slave of
wicked lust? I took delight in them, not knowing the real source of
what it was in them that was true and certain. For I had my back toward
the light, and my face toward the things on which the light falls, so
that my face, which looked toward the illuminated things, was not
itself illuminated. Whatever was written in any of the fields of
rhetoric or logic, geometry, music, or arithmetic, I could understand
without any great difficulty and without the instruction of another
man. All this thou knowest, O Lord my God, because both quickness in
understanding and acuteness in insight are thy gifts. Yet for such
gifts I made no thank offering to thee. Therefore, my abilities served
not my profit but rather my loss, since I went about trying to bring so
large a part of my substance into my own power. And I did not store up
my strength for thee, but went away from thee into the far country to
prostitute my gifts in disordered appetite. Again, the Prodigal Son
theme; cf.
31. And yet what did this profit me, since I still supposed that thou, O Lord God, the Truth, wert a bright and vast body and that I was a particle of that body? O perversity gone too far! But so it was with me. And I do not blush, O my God, to confess thy mercies to me in thy presence, or to call upon thee--any more than I did not blush when I openly avowed my blasphemies before men, and bayed, houndlike, against thee. What good was it for me that my nimble wit could run through those studies and disentangle all those knotty volumes, without help from a human teacher, since all the while I was erring so hatefully and with such sacrilege as far as the right substance of pious faith was concerned? And what kind of burden was it for thy little ones to have a far slower wit, since they did not use it to depart from thee, and since they remained in the nest of thy Church to become safely fledged and to nourish the wings of love by the food of a sound faith.
O Lord our God, under the shadow of thy wings let us
hope--defend us and support us. Cf.
BOOK FIVE
A year of decision. Faustus comes to Carthage and Augustine is disenchanted in his hope for solid demonstration of the truth of Manichean doctrine. He decides to flee from his known troubles at Carthage to troubles yet unknown at Rome. His experiences at Rome prove disappointing and he applies for a teaching post at Milan. Here he meets Ambrose, who confronts him as an impressive witness for Catholic Christianity and opens out the possibilities of the allegorical interpretation of Scripture. Augustine decides to become a Christian catechumen.
CHAPTER I
1. Accept this sacrifice of my confessions from the
hand of my tongue. Thou didst form it and hast prompted it to praise
thy name. Heal all my bones and let them say, “O Lord, who is
like unto thee?” Cf.
CHAPTER II
2. Let the restless and the unrighteous depart, and
flee away from thee. Even so, thou seest them and thy eye pierces
through the shadows in which they run. For lo, they live in a world of
beauty and yet are themselves most foul. And how have they harmed thee?
Or in what way have they discredited thy power, which is just and
perfect in its rule even to the last item in creation? Indeed, where
would they fly when they fled from thy presence? Wouldst thou be unable
to find them? But they fled that they might not see thee, who sawest
them; that they might be blinded and stumble into thee. But thou
forsakest nothing that thou hast made. The unrighteous stumble against
thee that they may be justly plagued, fleeing from thy gentleness and
colliding with thy justice, and falling on their own rough paths. For
in truth they do not know that thou art everywhere; that no place
contains thee, and that only thou art near even to those who go
farthest from thee. Let them, therefore, turn back and seek thee,
because even if they have abandoned thee, their Creator, thou hast not
abandoned thy creatures. Let them turn back and seek thee--and lo, thou
art there in their hearts, there in the hearts of those who confess to
thee. Let them cast themselves upon thee, and weep on thy bosom, after
all their weary wanderings; and thou wilt gently wipe away their
tears. Cf.
CHAPTER III
3. Let me now lay bare in the sight of God the twenty-ninth year of my age. There had just come to Carthage a certain bishop of the Manicheans, Faustus by name, a great snare of the devil; and many were entangled by him through the charm of his eloquence. Now, even though I found this eloquence admirable, I was beginning to distinguish the charm of words from the truth of things, which I was eager to learn. Nor did I consider the dish as much as I did the kind of meat that their famous Faustus served up to me in it. His fame had run before him, as one very skilled in an honorable learning and pre-eminently skilled in the liberal arts.
And as I had already read and stored up in memory many
of the injunctions of the philosophers, I began to compare some of
their doctrines with the tedious fables of the Manicheans; and it
struck me that the probability was on the side of the philosophers,
whose power reached far enough to enable them to form a fair judgment
of the world, even though they had not discovered the sovereign Lord of
it all. For thou art great, O Lord, and thou hast respect unto the
lowly, but the proud thou knowest afar off. Cf.
4. For it is by the mind and the intelligence which
thou gavest them that they investigate these things. They have
discovered much; and have foretold, many years in advance, the day, the
hour, and the extent of the eclipses of those luminaries, the sun and
the moon. Their calculations did not fail, and it came to pass as they
predicted. And they wrote down the rules they had discovered, so that
to this day they may be read and from them may be calculated in what
year and month and day and hour of the day, and at what quarter of its
light, either the moon or the sun will be eclipsed, and it will come to
pass just as predicted. And men who are ignorant in these matters
marvel and are amazed; and those who understand them exult and are
exalted. Both, by an impious pride, withdraw from thee and forsake thy
light. They foretell an eclipse of the sun before it happens, but they
do not see their own eclipse which is even now occurring. For they do
not ask, as religious men should, what is the source of the
intelligence by which they investigate these matters. Moreover, when
they discover that thou didst make them, they do not give themselves up
to thee that thou mightest preserve what thou hast made. Nor do they
offer, as sacrifice to thee, what they have made of themselves. For
they do not slaughter their own pride--as they do the sacrificial
fowls--nor their own curiosities by which, like the fishes of the sea,
they wander through the unknown paths of the deep. Nor do they curb
their own extravagances as they do those of “the beasts of the
field,”
5. They do not know the way which is thy word, by which
thou didst create all the things that are and also the men who measure
them, and the senses by which they perceive what they measure, and the
intelligence whereby they discern the patterns of measure. Thus they
know not that thy wisdom is not a matter of measure. An echo of the opening
sentence, Bk. I, Ch. I, 1. Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf.
6. Yet I remembered many a true saying of the philosophers about the creation, and I saw the confirmation of their calculations in the orderly sequence of seasons and in the visible evidence of the stars. And I compared this with the doctrines of Mani, who in his voluminous folly wrote many books on these subjects. But I could not discover there any account, of either the solstices or the equinoxes, or the eclipses of the sun and moon, or anything of the sort that I had learned in the books of secular philosophy. But still I was ordered to believe, even where the ideas did not correspond with--even when they contradicted--the rational theories established by mathematics and my own eyes, but were very different.
CHAPTER IV
7. Yet, O Lord God of Truth, is any man pleasing to thee because he knows these things? No, for surely that man is unhappy who knows these things and does not know thee. And that man is happy who knows thee, even though he does not know these things. He who knows both thee and these things is not the more blessed for his learning, for thou only art his blessing, if knowing thee as God he glorifies thee and gives thanks and does not become vain in his thoughts.
For just as that man who knows how to possess a tree,
and give thanks to thee for the use of it--although he may not know how
many feet high it is or how wide it spreads--is better than the man who
can measure it and count all its branches, but neither owns it nor
knows or loves its Creator: just so is a faithful man who possesses the
world’s wealth as though he had nothing, and possesses all things
through his union through thee, whom all things serve, even though he
does not know the circlings of the Great Bear. Just so it is foolish to
doubt that this faithful man may truly be better than the one who can
measure the heavens and number the stars and weigh the elements, but
who is forgetful of thee “who hast set in order all things in
number, weight, and measure.”
CHAPTER V
8. And who ordered this Mani to write about these
things, knowledge of which is not necessary to piety? For thou hast
said to man, “Behold, godliness is wisdom” Cf.
9. When I hear of a Christian brother, ignorant of
these things, or in error concerning them, I can tolerate his
uninformed opinion; and I do not see that any lack of knowledge as to
the form or nature of this material creation can do him much harm, as
long as he does not hold a belief in anything which is unworthy of
thee, O Lord, the Creator of all. But if he thinks that his secular
knowledge pertains to the essence of the doctrine of piety, or ventures
to assert dogmatic opinions in matters in which he is ignorant--there
lies the injury. And yet even a weakness such as this, in the infancy
of our faith, is tolerated by our Mother Charity until the new man can
grow up “unto a perfect man,” and not be “carried
away with every wind of doctrine.”
But Mani had presumed to be at once the teacher, author, guide, and leader of all whom he could persuade to believe this, so that all who followed him believed that they were following not an ordinary man but thy Holy Spirit. And who would not judge that such great madness, when it once stood convicted of false teaching, should then be abhorred and utterly rejected? But I had not yet clearly decided whether the alternation of day and night, and of longer and shorter days and nights, and the eclipses of sun and moon, and whatever else I read about in other books could be explained consistently with his theories. If they could have been so explained, there would still have remained a doubt in my mind whether the theories were right or wrong. Yet I was prepared, on the strength of his reputed godliness, to rest my faith on his authority.
CHAPTER VI
10. For almost the whole of the nine years that I listened with unsettled mind to the Manichean teaching I had been looking forward with unbounded eagerness to the arrival of this Faustus. For all the other members of the sect that I happened to meet, when they were unable to answer the questions I raised, always referred me to his coming. They promised that, in discussion with him, these and even greater difficulties, if I had them, would be quite easily and amply cleared away. When at last he did come, I found him to be a man of pleasant speech, who spoke of the very same things they themselves did, although more fluently and in a more agreeable style. But what profit was there to me in the elegance of my cupbearer, since he could not offer me the more precious draught for which I thirsted? My ears had already had their fill of such stuff, and now it did not seem any better because it was better expressed nor more true because it was dressed up in rhetoric; nor could I think the man’s soul necessarily wise because his face was comely and his language eloquent. But they who extolled him to me were not competent judges. They thought him able and wise because his eloquence delighted them. At the same time I realized that there is another kind of man who is suspicious even of truth itself, if it is expressed in smooth and flowing language. But thou, O my God, hadst already taught me in wonderful and marvelous ways, and therefore I believed--because it is true--that thou didst teach me and that beside thee there is no other teacher of truth, wherever truth shines forth. Already I had learned from thee that because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true; nor because it is uttered with stammering lips should it be supposed false. Nor, again, is it necessarily true because rudely uttered, nor untrue because the language is brilliant. Wisdom and folly both are like meats that are wholesome and unwholesome, and courtly or simple words are like town-made or rustic vessels--both kinds of food may be served in either kind of dish.
11. That eagerness, therefore, with which I had so long awaited this man, was in truth delighted with his action and feeling in a disputation, and with the fluent and apt words with which he clothed his ideas. I was delighted, therefore, and I joined with others--and even exceeded them--in exalting and praising him. Yet it was a source of annoyance to me that, in his lecture room, I was not allowed to introduce and raise any of those questions that troubled me, in a familiar exchange of discussion with him. As soon as I found an opportunity for this, and gained his ear at a time when it was not inconvenient for him to enter into a discussion with me and my friends, I laid before him some of my doubts. I discovered at once that he knew nothing of the liberal arts except grammar, and that only in an ordinary way. He had, however, read some of Tully’s orations, a very few books of Seneca, and some of the poets, and such few books of his own sect as were written in good Latin. With this meager learning and his daily practice in speaking, he had acquired a sort of eloquence which proved the more delightful and enticing because it was under the direction of a ready wit and a sort of native grace. Was this not even as I now recall it, O Lord my God, Judge of my conscience? My heart and my memory are laid open before thee, who wast even then guiding me by the secret impulse of thy providence and wast setting my shameful errors before my face so that I might see and hate them.
CHAPTER VII
12. For as soon as it became plain to me that Faustus was ignorant in those arts in which I had believed him eminent, I began to despair of his being able to clarify and explain all these perplexities that troubled me--though I realized that such ignorance need not have affected the authenticity of his piety, if he had not been a Manichean. For their books are full of long fables about the sky and the stars, the sun and the moon; and I had ceased to believe him able to show me in any satisfactory fashion what I so ardently desired: whether the explanations contained in the Manichean books were better or at least as good as the mathematical explanations I had read elsewhere. But when I proposed that these subjects should be considered and discussed, he quite modestly did not dare to undertake the task, for he was aware that he had no knowledge of these things and was not ashamed to confess it. For he was not one of those talkative people--from whom I had endured so much--who undertook to teach me what I wanted to know, and then said nothing. Faustus had a heart which, if not right toward thee, was at least not altogether false toward himself; for he was not ignorant of his own ignorance, and he did not choose to be entangled in a controversy from which he could not draw back or retire gracefully. For this I liked him all the more. For the modesty of an ingenious mind is a finer thing than the acquisition of that knowledge I desired; and this I found to be his attitude toward all abstruse and difficult questions.
13. Thus the zeal with which I had plunged into the
Manichean system was checked, and I despaired even more of their other
teachers, because Faustus who was so famous among them had turned out
so poorly in the various matters that puzzled me. And so I began to
occupy myself with him in the study of his own favorite pursuit, that
of literature, in which I was already teaching a class as a professor
of rhetoric among the young Carthaginian students. With Faustus then I
read whatever he himself wished to read, or what I judged suitable to
his bent of mind. But all my endeavors to make further progress in
Manicheism came completely to an end through my acquaintance with that
man. I did not wholly separate myself from them, but as one who had not
yet found anything better I decided to content myself, for the time
being, with what I had stumbled upon one way or another, until by
chance something more desirable should present itself. Thus that
Faustus who had entrapped so many to their death--though neither
willing nor witting it--now began to loosen the snare in which I had
been caught. For thy hands, O my God, in the hidden design of thy
providence did not desert my soul; and out of the blood of my
mother’s heart, through the tears that she poured out by day and
by night, there was a sacrifice offered to thee for me, and by
marvelous ways thou didst deal with me. For it was thou, O my God, who
didst it: for “the steps of a man are ordered by the Lord, and he
shall choose his way.”
CHAPTER VIII
14. Thou didst so deal with me, therefore, that I was persuaded to go to Rome and teach there what I had been teaching at Carthage. And how I was persuaded to do this I will not omit to confess to thee, for in this also the profoundest workings of thy wisdom and thy constant mercy toward us must be pondered and acknowledged. I did not wish to go to Rome because of the richer fees and the higher dignity which my friends promised me there--though these considerations did affect my decision. My principal and almost sole motive was that I had been informed that the students there studied more quietly and were better kept under the control of stern discipline, so that they did not capriciously and impudently rush into the classroom of a teacher not their own--indeed, they were not admitted at all without the permission of the teacher. At Carthage, on the contrary, there was a shameful and intemperate license among the students. They burst in rudely and, with furious gestures, would disrupt the discipline which the teacher had established for the good of his pupils. Many outrages they perpetrated with astounding effrontery, things that would be punishable by law if they were not sustained by custom. Thus custom makes plain that such behavior is all the more worthless because it allows men to do what thy eternal law never will allow. They think that they act thus with impunity, though the very blindness with which they act is their punishment, and they suffer far greater harm than they inflict.
The manners that I would not adopt as a student I was
compelled as a teacher to endure in others. And so I was glad to go
where all who knew the situation assured me that such conduct was not
allowed. But thou, “O my refuge and my portion in the land of the
living,”
15. Thou knewest the cause of my going from one country to the other, O God, but thou didst not disclose it either to me or to my mother, who grieved deeply over my departure and followed me down to the sea. She clasped me tight in her embrace, willing either to keep me back or to go with me, but I deceived her, pretending that I had a friend whom I could not leave until he had a favorable wind to set sail. Thus I lied to my mother--and such a mother!--and escaped. For this too thou didst mercifully pardon me--fool that I was--and didst preserve me from the waters of the sea for the water of thy grace; so that, when I was purified by that, the fountain of my mother’s eyes, from which she had daily watered the ground for me as she prayed to thee, should be dried. And, since she refused to return without me, I persuaded her, with some difficulty, to remain that night in a place quite close to our ship, where there was a shrine in memory of the blessed Cyprian. That night I slipped away secretly, and she remained to pray and weep. And what was it, O Lord, that she was asking of thee in such a flood of tears but that thou wouldst not allow me to sail? But thou, taking thy own secret counsel and noting the real point to her desire, didst not grant what she was then asking in order to grant to her the thing that she had always been asking.
The wind blew and filled our sails, and the shore dropped out of sight. Wild with grief, she was there the next morning and filled thy ears with complaints and groans which thou didst disregard, although, at the very same time, thou wast using my longings as a means and wast hastening me on to the fulfillment of all longing. Thus the earthly part of her love to me was justly purged by the scourge of sorrow. Still, like all mothers--though even more than others--she loved to have me with her, and did not know what joy thou wast preparing for her through my going away. Not knowing this secret end, she wept and mourned and saw in her agony the inheritance of Eve--seeking in sorrow what she had brought forth in sorrow. And yet, after accusing me of perfidy and cruelty, she still continued her intercessions for me to thee. She returned to her own home, and I went on to Rome.
CHAPTER IX
16. And lo, I was received in Rome by the scourge of
bodily sickness; and I was very near to falling into hell, burdened
with all the many and grievous sins I had committed against thee,
myself, and others--all over and above that fetter of original sin
whereby we all die in Adam. For thou hadst forgiven me none of these
things in Christ, neither had he abolished by his cross the
enmity Cf.
My fever increased, and I was on the verge of passing
away and perishing; for, if I had passed away then, where should I have
gone but into the fiery torment which my misdeeds deserved, measured by
the truth of thy rule? My mother knew nothing of this; yet, far away,
she went on praying for me. And thou, present everywhere, didst hear
her where she was and had pity on me where I was, so that I regained my
bodily health, although I was still disordered in my sacrilegious
heart. For that peril of death did not make me wish to be baptized. I
was even better when, as a lad, I entreated baptism of my
mother’s devotion, as I have already related and
confessed. Bk. I, Ch. XI, 17.
17. I cannot conceive, therefore, how she could have
been healed if my death (still in my sins) had pierced her inmost love.
Where, then, would have been all her earnest, frequent, and ceaseless
prayers to thee? Nowhere but with thee. But couldst thou, O most
merciful God, despise the “contrite and humble
heart” Cf. A constant theme in The
Psalms and elsewhere; cf.
CHAPTER X
18. Thou didst restore me then from that illness, and
didst heal the son of thy handmaid in his body, that he might live for
thee and that thou mightest endow him with a better and more certain
health. After this, at Rome, I again joined those deluding and deluded
“saints”; and not their “hearers” only, such as
the man was in whose house I had fallen sick, but also with those whom
they called “the elect.” For it still seemed to me
“that it is not we who sin, but some other nature sinned in
us.” And it gratified my pride to be beyond blame, and when
I did anything wrong not to have to confess that I had
done wrong--“that thou mightest heal my soul because it had
sinned against thee” Cf. Cf.
19. But now, hopeless of gaining any profit from that
false doctrine, I began to hold more loosely and negligently even to
those points which I had decided to rest content with, if I could find
nothing better. I was now half inclined to believe that those
philosophers whom they call “The Academics” Followers of the
skeptical tradition established in the Platonic Academy by Arcesilaus
and Carneades in the third century B.C. They taught the necessity of
εποχη, suspended
judgment, in all questions of truth, and would allow nothing more than
the consent of probability. This tradition was known in Augustine's
time chiefly through the writings of Cicero; cf. his Academica.
This kind of skepticism shook Augustine's complacency severely, and he
wrote one of his first dialogues, Contra Academicos, in an
effort to clear up the problem posed thereby. The Manicheans were
under an official ban in Rome.
20. And thus I also believed that evil was a similar kind of substance, and that it had its own hideous and deformed extended body--either in a dense form which they called the earth or in a thin and subtle form as, for example, the substance of the air, which they imagined as some malignant spirit penetrating that earth. And because my piety--such as it was--still compelled me to believe that the good God never created any evil substance, I formed the idea of two masses, one opposed to the other, both infinite but with the evil more contracted and the good more expansive. And from this diseased beginning, the other sacrileges followed after.
For when my mind tried to turn back to the Catholic faith, I was cast down, since the Catholic faith was not what I judged it to be. And it seemed to me a greater piety to regard thee, my God--to whom I make confession of thy mercies--as infinite in all respects save that one: where the extended mass of evil stood opposed to thee, where I was compelled to confess that thou art finite--than if I should think that thou couldst be confined by the form of a human body on every side. And it seemed better to me to believe that no evil had been created by thee--for in my ignorance evil appeared not only to be some kind of substance but a corporeal one at that. This was because I had, thus far, no conception of mind, except as a subtle body diffused throughout local spaces. This seemed better than to believe that anything could emanate from thee which had the character that I considered evil to be in its nature. And I believed that our Saviour himself also--thy Only Begotten--had been brought forth, as it were, for our salvation out of the mass of thy bright shining substance. So that I could believe nothing about him except what I was able to harmonize with these vain imaginations. I thought, therefore, that such a nature could not be born of the Virgin Mary without being mingled with the flesh, and I could not see how the divine substance, as I had conceived it, could be mingled thus without being contaminated. I was afraid, therefore, to believe that he had been born in the flesh, lest I should also be compelled to believe that he had been contaminated by the flesh. Now will thy spiritual ones smile blandly and lovingly at me if they read these confessions. Yet such was I.
CHAPTER XI
21. Furthermore, the things they censured in thy Scriptures I thought impossible to be defended. And yet, occasionally, I desired to confer on various matters with someone well learned in those books, to test what he thought of them. For already the words of one Elpidius, who spoke and disputed face to face against these same Manicheans, had begun to impress me, even when I was at Carthage; because he brought forth things out of the Scriptures that were not easily withstood, to which their answers appeared to me feeble. One of their answers they did not give forth publicly, but only to us in private--when they said that the writings of the New Testament had been tampered with by unknown persons who desired to ingraft the Jewish law into the Christian faith. But they themselves never brought forward any uncorrupted copies. Still thinking in corporeal categories and very much ensnared and to some extent stifled, I was borne down by those conceptions of bodily substance. I panted under this load for the air of thy truth, but I was not able to breathe it pure and undefiled.
CHAPTER XII
22. I set about diligently to practice what I came to
Rome to do--the teaching of rhetoric. The first task was to bring
together in my home a few people to whom and through whom I had begun
to be known. And lo, I then began to learn that other offenses were
committed in Rome which I had not had to bear in Africa. Just as I had
been told, those riotous disruptions by young blackguards were not
practiced here. Yet, now, my friends told me, many of the Roman
students--breakers of faith, who, for the love of money, set a small
value on justice--would conspire together and suddenly transfer to
another teacher, to evade paying their master’s fees. My heart
hated such people, though not with a “perfect
hatred”
CHAPTER XIII
23. When, therefore, the officials of Milan sent to Rome, to the prefect of the city, to ask that he provide them with a teacher of rhetoric for their city and to send him at the public expense, I applied for the job through those same persons, drunk with the Manichean vanities, to be freed from whom I was going away--though neither they nor I were aware of it at the time. They recommended that Symmachus, who was then prefect, after he had proved me by audition, should appoint me.
And to Milan I came, to Ambrose the bishop, famed
through the whole world as one of the best of men, thy devoted servant.
His eloquent discourse in those times abundantly provided thy people
with the flour of thy wheat, the gladness of thy oil, and the sober
intoxication of thy wine. A mixed figure here, put
together from
CHAPTER XIV
24. For, although I took no trouble to learn what he
said, but only to hear how he said it--for this empty concern remained
foremost with me as long as I despaired of finding a clear path from
man to thee--yet, along with the eloquence I prized, there also came
into my mind the ideas which I ignored; for I could not separate them.
And, while I opened my heart to acknowledge how skillfully he spoke,
there also came an awareness of how truly he spoke--but only
gradually. First of all, his ideas had already begun to appear to me
defensible; and the Catholic faith, for which I supposed that nothing
could be said against the onslaught of the Manicheans, I now realized
could be maintained without presumption. This was especially clear
after I had heard one or two parts of the Old Testament explained
allegorically--whereas before this, when I had interpreted them
literally, they had “killed” me spiritually. Cf.
25. But now I earnestly bent my mind to require if there was possible any way to prove the Manicheans guilty of falsehood. If I could have conceived of a spiritual substance, all their strongholds would have collapsed and been cast out of my mind. But I could not. Still, concerning the body of this world, nature as a whole--now that I was able to consider and compare such things more and more--I now decided that the majority of the philosophers held the more probable views. So, in what I thought was the method of the Academics--doubting everything and fluctuating between all the options--I came to the conclusion that the Manicheans were to be abandoned. For I judged, even in that period of doubt, that I could not remain in a sect to which I preferred some of the philosophers. But I refused to commit the cure of my fainting soul to the philosophers, because they were without the saving name of Christ. I resolved, therefore, to become a catechumen in the Catholic Church--which my parents had so much urged upon me--until something certain shone forth by which I might guide my course.
BOOK SIX
Turmoil in the twenties. Monica follows Augustine to Milan and finds him a catechumen in the Catholic Church. Both admire Ambrose but Augustine gets no help from him on his personal problems. Ambition spurs and Alypius and Nebridius join him in a confused quest for the happy life. Augustine becomes engaged, dismisses his first mistress, takes another, and continues his fruitless search for truth.
CHAPTER I
1. O Hope from my youth, Cf. Cf.
By this time my mother had come to me, having mustered the courage of piety, following over sea and land, secure in thee through all the perils of the journey. For in the dangers of the voyage she comforted the sailors--to whom the inexperienced voyagers, when alarmed, were accustomed to go for comfort--and assured them of a safe arrival because she had been so assured by thee in a vision.
She found me in deadly peril through my despair of ever
finding the truth. But when I told her that I was now no longer a
Manichean, though not yet a Catholic Christian, she did not leap for
joy as if this were unexpected; for she had already been reassured
about that part of my misery for which she had mourned me as one dead,
but also as one who would be raised to thee. She had carried me out on
the bier of her thoughts, that thou mightest say to the widow’s
son, “Young man, I say unto you, arise!” Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER II
2. So also my mother brought to certain oratories, erected in the memory of the saints, offerings of porridge, bread, and wine--as had been her custom in Africa--and she was forbidden to do so by the doorkeeper [ostiarius]. And as soon as she learned that it was the bishop who had forbidden it, she acquiesced so devoutly and obediently that I myself marveled how readily she could bring herself to turn critic of her own customs, rather than question his prohibition. For winebibbing had not taken possession of her spirit, nor did the love of wine stimulate her to hate the truth, as it does too many, both male and female, who turn as sick at a hymn to sobriety as drunkards do at a draught of water. When she had brought her basket with the festive gifts, which she would taste first herself and give the rest away, she would never allow herself more than one little cup of wine, diluted according to her own temperate palate, which she would taste out of courtesy. And, if there were many oratories of departed saints that ought to be honored in the same way, she still carried around with her the same little cup, to be used everywhere. This became not only very much watered but also quite tepid with carrying it about. She would distribute it by small sips to those around, for she sought to stimulate their devotion, not pleasure.
But as soon as she found that this custom was forbidden
by that famous preacher and most pious prelate, even to those who would
use it in moderation, lest thereby it might be an occasion of gluttony
for those who were already drunken (and also because these funereal
memorials were very much like some of the superstitious practices of
the pagans), she most willingly abstained from it. And, in place of a
basket filled with fruits of the earth, she had learned to bring to the
oratories of the martyrs a heart full of purer petitions, and to give
all that she could to the poor--so that the Communion of the
Lord’s body might be rightly celebrated in those places where,
after the example of his Passion, the martyrs had been sacrificed and
crowned. But yet it seems to me, O Lord my God--and my heart thinks of
it this way in thy sight--that my mother would probably not have given
way so easily to the rejection of this custom if it had been forbidden
by another, whom she did not love as she did Ambrose. For, out of her
concern for my salvation, she loved him most dearly; and he loved her
truly, on account of her faithful religious life, in which she
frequented the church with good works, “fervent in
spirit.”
CHAPTER III
3. Nor had I come yet to groan in my prayers that thou wouldst help me. My mind was wholly intent on knowledge and eager for disputation. Ambrose himself I esteemed a happy man, as the world counted happiness, because great personages held him in honor. Only his celibacy appeared to me a painful burden. But what hope he cherished, what struggles he had against the temptations that beset his high station, what solace in adversity, and what savory joys thy bread possessed for the hidden mouth of his heart when feeding on it, I could neither conjecture nor experience.
Nor did he know my own frustrations, nor the pit of my danger. For I could not request of him what I wanted as I wanted it, because I was debarred from hearing and speaking to him by crowds of busy people to whose infirmities he devoted himself. And when he was not engaged with them--which was never for long at a time--he was either refreshing his body with necessary food or his mind with reading.
Now, as he read, his eyes glanced over the pages and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent. Often when we came to his room--for no one was forbidden to enter, nor was it his custom that the arrival of visitors should be announced to him--we would see him thus reading to himself. After we had sat for a long time in silence--for who would dare interrupt one so intent?--we would then depart, realizing that he was unwilling to be distracted in the little time he could gain for the recruiting of his mind, free from the clamor of other men’s business. Perhaps he was fearful lest, if the author he was studying should express himself vaguely, some doubtful and attentive hearer would ask him to expound it or discuss some of the more abstruse questions, so that he could not get over as much material as he wished, if his time was occupied with others. And even a truer reason for his reading to himself might have been the care for preserving his voice, which was very easily weakened. Whatever his motive was in so doing, it was doubtless, in such a man, a good one.
4. But actually I could find no opportunity of putting
the questions I desired to that holy oracle of thine in his heart,
unless it was a matter which could be dealt with briefly. However,
those surgings in me required that he should give me his full leisure
so that I might pour them out to him; but I never found him so. I heard
him, indeed, every Lord’s Day, “rightly dividing the word
of truth”
I soon understood that the statement that man was made
after the image of Him that created him Cf. The Church.
CHAPTER IV
5. Since I could not then understand how this image of thine could subsist, I should have knocked on the door and propounded the doubt as to how it was to be believed, and not have insultingly opposed it as if it were actually believed. Therefore, my anxiety as to what I could retain as certain gnawed all the more sharply into my soul, and I felt quite ashamed because during the long time I had been deluded and deceived by the [Manichean] promises of certainties, I had, with childish petulance, prated of so many uncertainties as if they were certain. That they were falsehoods became apparent to me only afterward. However, I was certain that they were uncertain and since I had held them as certainly uncertain I had accused thy Catholic Church with a blind contentiousness. I had not yet discovered that it taught the truth, but I now knew that it did not teach what I had so vehemently accused it of. In this respect, at least, I was confounded and converted; and I rejoiced, O my God, that the one Church, the body of thy only Son--in which the name of Christ had been sealed upon me as an infant--did not relish these childish trifles and did not maintain in its sound doctrine any tenet that would involve pressing thee, the Creator of all, into space, which, however extended and immense, would still be bounded on all sides--like the shape of a human body.
6. I was also glad that the old Scriptures of the Law
and the Prophets were laid before me to be read, not now with an eye to
what had seemed absurd in them when formerly I censured thy holy ones
for thinking thus, when they actually did not think in that way. And I
listened with delight to Ambrose, in his sermons to the people, often
recommending this text most diligently as a rule: “The letter
kills, but the spirit gives life,” Another reference to the
Academic doctrine of suspendium (εποχη); cf. Bk. V, Ch. X, 19,
and also Enchiridion, VII, 20.
If I could have believed, I might have been cured, and, with the sight of my soul cleared up, it might in some way have been directed toward thy truth, which always abides and fails in nothing. But, just as it happens that a man who has tried a bad physician fears to trust himself with a good one, so it was with the health of my soul, which could not be healed except by believing. But lest it should believe falsehoods, it refused to be cured, resisting thy hand, who hast prepared for us the medicines of faith and applied them to the maladies of the whole world, and endowed them with such great efficacy.
CHAPTER V
7. Still, from this time forward, I began to prefer the
Catholic doctrine. I felt that it was with moderation and honesty that
it commanded things to be believed that were not demonstrated--whether
they could be demonstrated, but not to everyone, or whether they could
not be demonstrated at all. This was far better than the method of the
Manicheans, in which our credulity was mocked by an audacious promise
of knowledge and then many fabulous and absurd things were forced upon
believers because they were incapable of demonstration. After
that, O Lord, little by little, with a gentle and most merciful hand,
drawing and calming my heart, thou didst persuade me that, if I took
into account the multitude of things I had never seen, nor been present
when they were enacted--such as many of the events of secular history;
and the numerous reports of places and cities which I had not seen; or
such as my relations with many friends, or physicians, or with these
men and those--that unless we should believe, we should do nothing at
all in this life. Nisi crederentur,
omnino in hac vita nihil ageremus, which should be set alongside
the more famous nisi crederitis, non intelligetis
(Enchiridion, XIII, 14). This is the basic assumption of
Augustine's whole epistemology. See Robert E. Cushman, "Faith and
Reason in the Thought of St. Augustine," in Church History (XIX,
4, 1950), pp. 271-294.
8. This much I believed, some times more strongly than
other times. But I always believed both that thou art and that thou
hast a care for us, Cf.
CHAPTER VI
9. I was still eagerly aspiring to honors, money, and matrimony; and thou didst mock me. In pursuit of these ambitions I endured the most bitter hardships, in which thou wast being the more gracious the less thou wouldst allow anything that was not thee to grow sweet to me. Look into my heart, O Lord, whose prompting it is that I should recall all this, and confess it to thee. Now let my soul cleave to thee, now that thou hast freed her from that fast-sticking glue of death.
How wretched she was! And thou didst irritate her sore wound so that she might forsake all else and turn to thee--who art above all and without whom all things would be nothing at all--so that she should be converted and healed. How wretched I was at that time, and how thou didst deal with me so as to make me aware of my wretchedness, I recall from the incident of the day on which I was preparing to recite a panegyric on the emperor. In it I was to deliver many a lie, and the lying was to be applauded by those who knew I was lying. My heart was agitated with this sense of guilt and it seethed with the fever of my uneasiness. For, while walking along one of the streets of Milan, I saw a poor beggar--with what I believe was a full belly--joking and hilarious. And I sighed and spoke to the friends around me of the many sorrows that flowed from our madness, because in spite of all our exertions--such as those I was then laboring in, dragging the burden of my unhappiness under the spur of ambition, and, by dragging it, increasing it at the same time--still and all we aimed only to attain that very happiness which this beggar had reached before us; and there was a grim chance that we should never attain it! For what he had obtained through a few coins, got by his begging, I was still scheming for by many a wretched and tortuous turning--namely, the joy of a passing felicity. He had not, indeed, gained true joy, but, at the same time, with all my ambitions, I was seeking one still more untrue. Anyhow, he was now joyous and I was anxious. He was free from care, and I was full of alarms. Now, if anyone should inquire of me whether I should prefer to be merry or anxious, I would reply, “Merry.” Again, if I had been asked whether I should prefer to be as he was or as I myself then was, I would have chosen to be myself; though I was beset with cares and alarms. But would not this have been a false choice? Was the contrast valid? Actually, I ought not to prefer myself to him because I happened to be more learned than he was; for I got no great pleasure from my learning, but sought, rather, to please men by its exhibition--and this not to instruct, but only to please. Thus thou didst break my bones with the rod of thy correction.
10. Let my soul take its leave of those who say: “It makes a difference as to the object from which a man derives his joy. The beggar rejoiced in drunkenness; you longed to rejoice in glory.” What glory, O Lord? The kind that is not in thee, for, just as his was no true joy, so was mine no true glory; but it turned my head all the more. He would get over his drunkenness that same night, but I had slept with mine many a night and risen again with it, and was to sleep again and rise again with it, I know not how many times. It does indeed make a difference as to the object from which a man’s joy is gained. I know this is so, and I know that the joy of a faithful hope is incomparably beyond such vanity. Yet, at the same time, this beggar was beyond me, for he truly was the happier man--not only because he was thoroughly steeped in his mirth while I was torn to pieces with my cares, but because he had gotten his wine by giving good wishes to the passers-by while I was following after the ambition of my pride by lying. Much to this effect I said to my good companions, and I saw how readily they reacted pretty much as I did. Thus I found that it went ill with me; and I fretted, and doubled that very ill. And if any prosperity smiled upon me, I loathed to seize it, for almost before I could grasp it, it would fly away.
CHAPTER VII
11. Those of us who were living like friends together used to bemoan our lot in our common talk; but I discussed it with Alypius and Nebridius more especially and in very familiar terms. Alypius had been born in the same town as I; his parents were of the highest rank there, but he was a bit younger than I. He had studied under me when I first taught in our town, and then afterward at Carthage. He esteemed me highly because I appeared to him good and learned, and I esteemed him for his inborn love of virtue, which was uncommonly marked in a man so young. But in the whirlpool of Carthaginian fashion--where frivolous spectacles are hotly followed--he had been inveigled into the madness of the gladiatorial games. While he was miserably tossed about in this fad, I was teaching rhetoric there in a public school. At that time he was not attending my classes because of some ill feeling that had arisen between me and his father. I then came to discover how fatally he doted upon the circus, and I was deeply grieved, for he seemed likely to cast away his very great promise--if, indeed, he had not already done so. Yet I had no means of advising him, or any way of reclaiming him through restraint, either by the kindness of a friend or by the authority of a teacher. For I imagined that his feelings toward me were the same as his father’s. But this turned out not to be the case. Indeed, disregarding his father’s will in the matter, he began to be friendly and to visit my lecture room, to listen for a while and then depart.
12. But it slipped my memory to try to deal with his
problem, to prevent him from ruining his excellent mind in his blind
and headstrong passion for frivolous sport. But thou, O Lord, who
holdest the helm of all that thou hast created, Cf. Plato,
Politicus, 273 D. Alypius was more than
Augustine's close friend; he became bishop of Tagaste and was prominent
in local Church affairs in the province of Africa.
One day, when I was sitting in my accustomed place with
my scholars before me, he came in, greeted me, sat himself down, and
fixed his attention on the subject I was then discussing. It so
happened that I had a passage in hand and, while I was interpreting it,
a simile occurred to me, taken from the gladiatorial games. It struck
me as relevant to make more pleasant and plain the point I wanted to
convey by adding a biting gibe at those whom that madness had
enthralled. Thou knowest, O our God, that I had no thought at that time
of curing Alypius of that plague. But he took it to himself and thought
that I would not have said it but for his sake. And what any other man
would have taken as an occasion of offense against me, this worthy
young man took as a reason for being offended at himself, and for
loving me the more fervently. Thou hast said it long ago and written in
thy Book, “Rebuke a wise man, and he will love
you.”
CHAPTER VIII
13. He had gone on to Rome before me to study law--which was the worldly way which his parents were forever urging him to pursue--and there he was carried away again with an incredible passion for the gladiatorial shows. For, although he had been utterly opposed to such spectacles and detested them, one day he met by chance a company of his acquaintances and fellow students returning from dinner; and, with a friendly violence, they drew him, resisting and objecting vehemently, into the amphitheater, on a day of those cruel and murderous shows. He protested to them: “Though you drag my body to that place and set me down there, you cannot force me to give my mind or lend my eyes to these shows. Thus I will be absent while present, and so overcome both you and them.” When they heard this, they dragged him on in, probably interested to see whether he could do as he said. When they got to the arena, and had taken what seats they could get, the whole place became a tumult of inhuman frenzy. But Alypius kept his eyes closed and forbade his mind to roam abroad after such wickedness. Would that he had shut his ears also! For when one of the combatants fell in the fight, a mighty cry from the whole audience stirred him so strongly that, overcome by curiosity and still prepared (as he thought) to despise and rise superior to it no matter what it was, he opened his eyes and was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the victim whom he desired to see had been in his body. Thus he fell more miserably than the one whose fall had raised that mighty clamor which had entered through his ears and unlocked his eyes to make way for the wounding and beating down of his soul, which was more audacious than truly valiant--also it was weaker because it presumed on its own strength when it ought to have depended on Thee. For, as soon as he saw the blood, he drank in with it a savage temper, and he did not turn away, but fixed his eyes on the bloody pastime, unwittingly drinking in the madness--delighted with the wicked contest and drunk with blood lust. He was now no longer the same man who came in, but was one of the mob he came into, a true companion of those who had brought him thither. Why need I say more? He looked, he shouted, he was excited, and he took away with him the madness that would stimulate him to come again: not only with those who first enticed him, but even without them; indeed, dragging in others besides. And yet from all this, with a most powerful and most merciful hand, thou didst pluck him and taught him not to rest his confidence in himself but in thee--but not till long after.
CHAPTER IX
14. But this was all being stored up in his memory as medicine for the future. So also was that other incident when he was still studying under me at Carthage and was meditating at noonday in the market place on what he had to recite--as scholars usually have to do for practice--and thou didst allow him to be arrested by the police officers in the market place as a thief. I believe, O my God, that thou didst allow this for no other reason than that this man who was in the future to prove so great should now begin to learn that, in making just decisions, a man should not readily be condemned by other men with reckless credulity.
For as he was walking up and down alone before the judgment seat with his tablets and pen, lo, a young man--another one of the scholars, who was the real thief--secretly brought a hatchet and, without Alypius seeing him, got in as far as the leaden bars which protected the silversmith shop and began to hack away at the lead gratings. But when the noise of the hatchet was heard the silversmiths below began to call to each other in whispers and sent men to arrest whomsoever they should find. The thief heard their voices and ran away, leaving his hatchet because he was afraid to be caught with it. Now Alypius, who had not seen him come in, got a glimpse of him as he went out and noticed that he went off in great haste. Being curious to know the reasons, he went up to the place, where he found the hatchet, and stood wondering and pondering when, behold, those that were sent caught him alone, holding the hatchet which had made the noise which had startled them and brought them there. They seized him and dragged him away, gathering the tenants of the market place about them and boasting that they had caught a notorious thief. Thereupon he was led away to appear before the judge.
15. But this is as far as his lesson was to go. For immediately, O Lord, thou didst come to the rescue of his innocence, of which thou wast the sole witness. As he was being led off to prison or punishment, they were met by the master builder who had charge of the public buildings. The captors were especially glad to meet him because he had more than once suspected them of stealing the goods that had been lost out of the market place. Now, at last, they thought they could convince him who it was that had committed the thefts. But the custodian had often met Alypius at the house of a certain senator, whose receptions he used to attend. He recognized him at once and, taking his hand, led him apart from the throng, inquired the cause of all the trouble, and learned what had occurred. He then commanded all the rabble still around--and very uproarious and full of threatenings they were--to come along with him, and they came to the house of the young man who had committed the deed. There, before the door, was a slave boy so young that he was not restrained from telling the whole story by fear of harming his master. And he had followed his master to the market place. Alypius recognized him, and whispered to the architect, who showed the boy the hatchet and asked whose it was. “Ours,” he answered directly. And, being further questioned, he disclosed the whole affair. Thus the guilt was shifted to that household and the rabble, who had begun to triumph over Alypius, were shamed. And so he went away home, this man who was to be the future steward of thy Word and judge of so many causes in thy Church--a wiser and more experienced man.
CHAPTER X
16. I found him at Rome, and he was bound to me with the strongest possible ties, and he went with me to Milan, in order that he might not be separated from me, and also that he might obtain some law practice, for which he had qualified with a view to pleasing his parents more than himself. He had already sat three times as assessor, showing an integrity that seemed strange to many others, though he thought them strange who could prefer gold to integrity. His character had also been tested, not only by the bait of covetousness, but by the spur of fear. At Rome he was assessor to the secretary of the Italian Treasury. There was at that time a very powerful senator to whose favors many were indebted, and of whom many stood in fear. In his usual highhanded way he demanded to have a favor granted him that was forbidden by the laws. This Alypius resisted. A bribe was promised, but he scorned it with all his heart. Threats were employed, but he trampled them underfoot--so that all men marveled at so rare a spirit, which neither coveted the friendship nor feared the enmity of a man at once so powerful and so widely known for his great resources of helping his friends and doing harm to his enemies. Even the official whose counselor Alypius was--although he was unwilling that the favor should be granted--would not openly refuse the request, but passed the responsibility on to Alypius, alleging that he would not permit him to give his assent. And the truth was that even if the judge had agreed, Alypius would have simply left the court.
There was one matter, however, which appealed to his
love of learning, in which he was very nearly led astray. He found out
that he might have books copied for himself at praetorian rates [i.e.,
at public expense]. But his sense of justice prevailed, and he changed
his mind for the better, thinking that the rule that forbade him was
still more profitable than the privilege that his office would have
allowed him. These are little things, but “he that is faithful in
a little matter is faithful also in a great one.”
17. Nebridius also had come to Milan for no other
reason than that he might live with me in a most ardent search after
truth and wisdom. He had left his native place near Carthage--and
Carthage itself, where he usually lived--leaving behind his fine family
estate, his house, and his mother, who would not follow him. Like me,
he sighed; like me, he wavered; an ardent seeker after the true life
and a most acute analyst of the most abstruse questions. So there were
three begging mouths, sighing out their wants one to the other, and
waiting upon thee, that thou mightest give them their meat in due
season. Cf.
CHAPTER XI
18. And I especially puzzled and wondered when I
remembered how long a time had passed since my nineteenth year, in
which I had first fallen in love with wisdom and had determined as soon
as I could find her to abandon the empty hopes and mad delusions of
vain desires. Behold, I was now getting close to thirty, still stuck
fast in the same mire, still greedy of enjoying present goods which fly
away and distract me; and I was still saying, “Tomorrow I shall
discover it; behold, it will become plain, and I shall see it; behold,
Faustus will come and explain everything.” Or I would
say Here begins a long
soliloquy which sums up his turmoil over the past decade and his
present plight of confusion and indecision.
19. “Perish everything and let us dismiss these idle triflings. Let me devote myself solely to the search for truth. This life is unhappy, death uncertain. If it comes upon me suddenly, in what state shall I go hence and where shall I learn what here I have neglected? Should I not indeed suffer the punishment of my negligence here? But suppose death cuts off and finishes all care and feeling. This too is a question that calls for inquiry. God forbid that it should be so. It is not without reason, it is not in vain, that the stately authority of the Christian faith has spread over the entire world, and God would never have done such great things for us if the life of the soul perished with the death of the body. Why, therefore, do I delay in abandoning my hopes of this world and giving myself wholly to seek after God and the blessed life?
“But wait a moment. This life also is pleasant, and it has a sweetness of its own, not at all negligible. We must not abandon it lightly, for it would be shameful to lapse back into it again. See now, it is important to gain some post of honor. And what more should I desire? I have crowds of influential friends, if nothing else; and, if I push my claims, a governorship may be offered me, and a wife with some money, so that she would not be an added expense. This would be the height of my desire. Many men, who are great and worthy of imitation, have combined the pursuit of wisdom with a marriage life.”
20. While I talked about these things, and the winds of
opinions veered about and tossed my heart hither and thither, time was
slipping away. I delayed my conversion to the Lord; I postponed from
day to day the life in thee, but I could not postpone the daily death
in myself. I was enamored of a happy life, but I still feared to seek
it in its own abode, and so I fled from it while I sought it. I thought
I should be miserable if I were deprived of the embraces of a woman,
and I never gave a thought to the medicine that thy mercy has provided
for the healing of that infirmity, for I had never tried it. As for
continence, I imagined that it depended on one’s own strength,
though I found no such strength in myself, for in my folly I knew not
what is written, “None can be continent unless thou dost grant
it.” Cf.
CHAPTER XII
21. Actually, it was Alypius who prevented me from marrying, urging that if I did so it would not be possible for us to live together and to have as much undistracted leisure in the love of wisdom as we had long desired. For he himself was so chaste that it was wonderful, all the more because in his early youth he had entered upon the path of promiscuity, but had not continued in it. Instead, feeling sorrow and disgust at it, he had lived from that time down to the present most continently. I quoted against him the examples of men who had been married and still lovers of wisdom, who had pleased God and had been loyal and affectionate to their friends. I fell far short of them in greatness of soul, and, enthralled with the disease of my carnality and its deadly sweetness, I dragged my chain along, fearing to be loosed of it. Thus I rejected the words of him who counseled me wisely, as if the hand that would have loosed the chain only hurt my wound. Moreover, the serpent spoke to Alypius himself by me, weaving and lying in his path, by my tongue to catch him with pleasant snares in which his honorable and free feet might be entangled.
22. For he wondered that I, for whom he had such a
great esteem, should be stuck so fast in the gluepot of pleasure as to
maintain, whenever we discussed the subject, that I could not possibly
live a celibate life. And when I urged in my defense against his
accusing questions that the hasty and stolen delight, which he had
tasted and now hardly remembered, and therefore too easily disparaged,
was not to be compared with a settled acquaintance with it; and that,
if to this stable acquaintance were added the honorable name of
marriage, he would not then be astonished at my inability to give it
up--when I spoke thus, then he also began to wish to be married, not
because he was overcome by the lust for such pleasures, but out of
curiosity. For, he said, he longed to know what that could be without
which my life, which he thought was so happy, seemed to me to be no
life at all, but a punishment. For he who wore no chain was amazed at
my slavery, and his amazement awoke the desire for experience, and from
that he would have gone on to the experiment itself, and then perhaps
he would have fallen into the very slavery that amazed him in me, since
he was ready to enter into “a covenant with
death,”
Now, the question of conjugal honor in the ordering of a good married life and the bringing up of children interested us but slightly. What afflicted me most and what had made me already a slave to it was the habit of satisfying an insatiable lust; but Alypius was about to be enslaved by a merely curious wonder. This is the state we were in until thou, O Most High, who never forsakest our lowliness, didst take pity on our misery and didst come to our rescue in wonderful and secret ways.
CHAPTER XIII
23. Active efforts were made to get me a wife. I wooed;
I was engaged; and my mother took the greatest pains in the matter. For
her hope was that, when I was once married, I might be washed clean in
health-giving baptism for which I was being daily prepared, as she
joyfully saw, taking note that her desires and promises were being
fulfilled in my faith. Yet, when, at my request and her own impulse,
she called upon thee daily with strong, heartfelt cries, that thou
wouldst, by a vision, disclose unto her a leading about my future
marriage, thou wouldst not. She did, indeed, see certain vain and
fantastic things, such as are conjured up by the strong preoccupation
of the human spirit, and these she supposed had some reference to me.
And she told me about them, but not with the confidence she usually had
when thou hadst shown her anything. For she always said that she could
distinguish, by a certain feeling impossible to describe, between thy
revelations and the dreams of her own soul. Yet the matter was pressed
forward, and proposals were made for a girl who was as yet some two
years too young to marry. The normal minimum legal
age for marriage was twelve! Cf. Justinian, Institutiones, I,
10:22.
CHAPTER XIV
24. Many in my band of friends, consulting about and
abhorring the turbulent vexations of human life, had often considered
and were now almost determined to undertake a peaceful life, away from
the turmoil of men. This we thought could be obtained by bringing
together what we severally owned and thus making of it a common
household, so that in the sincerity of our friendship nothing should
belong more to one than to the other; but all were to have one purse
and the whole was to belong to each and to all. We thought that this
group might consist of ten persons, some of whom were very
rich--especially Romanianus, my fellow townsman, an intimate friend
from childhood days. He had been brought up to the court on grave
business matters and he was the most earnest of us all about the
project and his voice was of great weight in commending it because his
estate was far more ample than that of the others. We had resolved,
also, that each year two of us should be managers and provide all that
was needful, while the rest were left undisturbed. But when we began to
reflect whether this would be permitted by our wives, which some of us
had already and others hoped to have, the whole plan, so excellently
framed, collapsed in our hands and was utterly wrecked and cast aside.
From this we fell again into sighs and groans, and our steps followed
the broad and beaten ways of the world; for many thoughts were in our
hearts, but “Thy counsel standeth fast forever.” Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER XV
25. Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied. My mistress was torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, and my heart which clung to her was torn and wounded till it bled. And she went back to Africa, vowing to thee never to know any other man and leaving with me my natural son by her. But I, unhappy as I was, and weaker than a woman, could not bear the delay of the two years that should elapse before I could obtain the bride I sought. And so, since I was not a lover of wedlock so much as a slave of lust, I procured another mistress--not a wife, of course. Thus in bondage to a lasting habit, the disease of my soul might be nursed up and kept in its vigor or even increased until it reached the realm of matrimony. Nor indeed was the wound healed that had been caused by cutting away my former mistress; only it ceased to burn and throb, and began to fester, and was more dangerous because it was less painful.
CHAPTER XVI
26. Thine be the praise; unto thee be the glory, O Fountain of mercies. I became more wretched and thou didst come nearer. Thy right hand was ever ready to pluck me out of the mire and to cleanse me, but I did not know it. Nor did anything call me back from a still deeper plunge into carnal pleasure except the fear of death and of thy future judgment, which, amid all the waverings of my opinions, never faded from my breast. And I discussed with my friends, Alypius and Nebridius, the nature of good and evil, maintaining that, in my judgment, Epicurus would have carried off the palm if I had not believed what Epicurus would not believe: that after death there remains a life for the soul, and places of recompense. And I demanded of them: “Suppose we are immortal and live in the enjoyment of perpetual bodily pleasure, and that without any fear of losing it--why, then, should we not be happy, or why should we search for anything else?” I did not know that this was in fact the root of my misery: that I was so fallen and blinded that I could not discern the light of virtue and of beauty which must be embraced for its own sake, which the eye of flesh cannot see, and only the inner vision can see. Nor did I, alas, consider the reason why I found delight in discussing these very perplexities, shameful as they were, with my friends. For I could not be happy without friends, even according to the notions of happiness I had then, and no matter how rich the store of my carnal pleasures might be. Yet of a truth I loved my friends for their own sakes, and felt that they in turn loved me for my own sake.
O crooked ways! Woe to the audacious soul which hoped
that by forsaking thee it would find some better thing! It tossed and
turned, upon back and side and belly--but the bed is hard, and thou
alone givest it rest. A variation on "restless
is our heart until it comes to find rest in Thee," Bk. I, Ch. I, 1.
BOOK SEVEN
The conversion to Neoplatonism. Augustine traces his growing disenchantment with the Manichean conceptions of God and evil and the dawning understanding of God’s incorruptibility. But his thought is still bound by his materialistic notions of reality. He rejects astrology and turns to the stud of Neoplatonism. There follows an analysis of the differences between Platonism and Christianity and a remarkable account of his appropriation of Plotinian wisdom and his experience of a Plotinian ecstasy. From this, he comes finally to the diligent study of the Bible, especially the writings of the apostle Paul. His pilgrimage is drawing toward its goal, as he begins to know Jesus Christ and to be drawn to him in hesitant faith.
CHAPTER I
1. Dead now was that evil and shameful youth of mine,
and I was passing into full manhood. Thirty years old;
although the term "youth" (juventus) normally included the years
twenty to forty.
My heart cried out violently against all
fantasms, Phantasmata,
mental constructs, which may be internally coherent but correspond to
no reality outside the mind. Echoes here of Plato's
Timaeus and Plotinus' Enneads, although with no effort to
recall the sources or elaborate the ontological theory.
2. Being thus gross-hearted and not clear even to myself, I then held that whatever had neither length nor breadth nor density nor solidity, and did not or could not receive such dimensions, was absolutely nothing. For at that time my mind dwelt only with ideas, which resembled the forms with which my eyes are still familiar, nor could I see that the act of thought, by which I formed those ideas, was itself immaterial, and yet it could not have formed them if it were not itself a measurable entity.
So also I thought about thee, O Life of my life, as stretched out through infinite space, interpenetrating the whole mass of the world, reaching out beyond in all directions, to immensity without end; so that the earth should have thee, the heaven have thee, all things have thee, and all of them be limited in thee, while thou art placed nowhere at all. As the body of the air above the earth does not bar the passage of the light of the sun, so that the light penetrates it, not by bursting nor dividing, but filling it entirely, so I imagined that the body of heaven and air and sea, and even of the earth, was all open to thee and, in all its greatest parts as well as the smallest, was ready to receive thy presence by a secret inspiration which, from within or without all, orders all things thou hast created. This was my conjecture, because I was unable to think of anything else; yet it was untrue. For in this way a greater part of the earth would contain a greater part of thee; a smaller part, a smaller fraction of thee. All things would be full of thee in such a sense that there would be more of thee in an elephant than in a sparrow, because one is larger than the other and fills a larger space. And this would make the portions of thyself present in the several portions of the world in fragments, great to the great, small to the small. But thou art not such a one. But as yet thou hadst not enlightened my darkness.
CHAPTER II
3. But it was not sufficient for me, O Lord, to be able to oppose those deceived deceivers and those dumb orators--dumb because thy Word did not sound forth from them--to oppose them with the answer which, in the old Carthaginian days, Nebridius used to propound, shaking all of us who heard it: “What could this imaginary people of darkness, which the Manicheans usually set up as an army opposed to thee, have done to thee if thou hadst declined the combat?” If they replied that it could have hurt thee, they would then have made thee violable and corruptible. If, on the other hand, the dark could have done thee no harm, then there was no cause for any battle at all; there was less cause for a battle in which a part of thee, one of thy members, a child of thy own substance, should be mixed up with opposing powers, not of thy creation; and should be corrupted and deteriorated and changed by them from happiness into misery, so that it could not be delivered and cleansed without thy help. This offspring of thy substance was supposed to be the human soul to which thy Word--free, pure, and entire--could bring help when it was being enslaved, contaminated, and corrupted. But on their hypothesis that Word was itself corruptible because it is one and the same substance as the soul.
And therefore if they admitted that thy nature--whatsoever thou art--is incorruptible, then all these assertions of theirs are false and should be rejected with horror. But if thy substance is corruptible, then this is self-evidently false and should be abhorred at first utterance. This line of argument, then, was enough against those deceivers who ought to be cast forth from a surfeited stomach--for out of this dilemma they could find no way of escape without dreadful sacrilege of mind and tongue, when they think and speak such things about thee.
CHAPTER III
4. But as yet, although I said and was firmly persuaded that thou our Lord, the true God, who madest not only our souls but our bodies as well--and not only our souls and bodies but all creatures and all things--wast free from stain and alteration and in no way mutable, yet I could not readily and clearly understand what was the cause of evil. Whatever it was, I realized that the question must be so analyzed as not to constrain me by any answer to believe that the immutable God was mutable, lest I should myself become the thing that I was seeking out. And so I pursued the search with a quiet mind, now in a confident feeling that what had been said by the Manicheans--and I shrank from them with my whole heart--could not be true. I now realized that when they asked what was the origin of evil their answer was dictated by a wicked pride, which would rather affirm that thy nature is capable of suffering evil than that their own nature is capable of doing it.
5. And I directed my attention to understand what I now was told, that free will is the cause of our doing evil and that thy just judgment is the cause of our having to suffer from its consequences. But I could not see this clearly. So then, trying to draw the eye of my mind up out of that pit, I was plunged back into it again, and trying often was just as often plunged back down. But one thing lifted me up toward thy light: it was that I had come to know that I had a will as certainly as I knew that I had life. When, therefore, I willed or was unwilling to do something, I was utterly certain that it was none but myself who willed or was unwilling--and immediately I realized that there was the cause of my sin. I could see that what I did against my will I suffered rather than did; and I did not regard such actions as faults, but rather as punishments in which I might quickly confess that I was not unjustly punished, since I believed thee to be most just. Who was it that put this in me, and implanted in me the root of bitterness, in spite of the fact that I was altogether the handiwork of my most sweet God? If the devil is to blame, who made the devil himself? And if he was a good angel who by his own wicked will became the devil, how did there happen to be in him that wicked will by which he became a devil, since a good Creator made him wholly a good angel? By these reflections was I again cast down and stultified. Yet I was not plunged into that hell of error--where no man confesses to thee--where I thought that thou didst suffer evil, rather than that men do it.
CHAPTER IV
6. For in my struggle to solve the rest of my
difficulties, I now assumed henceforth as settled truth that the
incorruptible must be superior to the corruptible, and I did
acknowledge that thou, whatever thou art, art incorruptible. For there
never yet was, nor will be, a soul able to conceive of anything better
than thee, who art the highest and best good. Cf. the famous
"definition" of God in Anselm's ontological argument: "that being than
whom no greater can be conceived." Cf. Proslogium, II-V.
CHAPTER V
7. And I kept seeking for an answer to the question,
Whence is evil? And I sought it in an evil way, and I did not see the
evil in my very search. I marshaled before the sight of my spirit all
creation: all that we see of earth and sea and air and stars and trees
and animals; and all that we do not see, the firmament of the sky above
and all the angels and all spiritual things, for my imagination
arranged these also, as if they were bodies, in this place or that. And
I pictured to myself thy creation as one vast mass, composed of various
kinds of bodies--some of which were actually bodies, some of those
which I imagined spirits were like. I pictured this mass as vast--of
course not in its full dimensions, for these I could not know--but as
large as I could possibly think, still only finite on every side. But
thou, O Lord, I imagined as environing the mass on every side and
penetrating it, still infinite in every direction--as if there were a
sea everywhere, and everywhere through measureless space nothing but an
infinite sea; and it contained within itself some sort of sponge, huge
but still finite, so that the sponge would in all its parts be filled
from the immeasurable sea. This simile is
Augustine's apparently original improvement on Plotinus' similar figure
of the net in the sea; Enneads, IV, 3:9.
Thus I conceived thy creation itself to be finite, and filled by thee, the infinite. And I said, “Behold God, and behold what God hath created!” God is good, yea, most mightily and incomparably better than all his works. But yet he who is good has created them good; behold how he encircles and fills them. Where, then, is evil, and whence does it come and how has it crept in? What is its root and what its seed? Has it no being at all? Why, then, do we fear and shun what has no being? Or if we fear it needlessly, then surely that fear is evil by which the heart is unnecessarily stabbed and tortured--and indeed a greater evil since we have nothing real to fear, and yet do fear. Therefore, either that is evil which we fear, or the act of fearing is in itself evil. But, then, whence does it come, since God who is good has made all these things good? Indeed, he is the greatest and chiefest Good, and hath created these lesser goods; but both Creator and created are all good. Whence, then, is evil? Or, again, was there some evil matter out of which he made and formed and ordered it, but left something in his creation that he did not convert into good? But why should this be? Was he powerless to change the whole lump so that no evil would remain in it, if he is the Omnipotent? Finally, why would he make anything at all out of such stuff? Why did he not, rather, annihilate it by his same almighty power? Could evil exist contrary to his will? And if it were from eternity, why did he permit it to be nonexistent for unmeasured intervals of time in the past, and why, then, was he pleased to make something out of it after so long a time? Or, if he wished now all of a sudden to create something, would not an almighty being have chosen to annihilate this evil matter and live by himself--the perfect, true, sovereign, and infinite Good? Or, if it were not good that he who was good should not also be the framer and creator of what was good, then why was that evil matter not removed and brought to nothing, so that he might form good matter, out of which he might then create all things? For he would not be omnipotent if he were not able to create something good without being assisted by that matter which had not been created by himself.
Such perplexities I revolved in my wretched breast, overwhelmed with gnawing cares lest I die before I discovered the truth. And still the faith of thy Christ, our Lord and Saviour, as it was taught me by the Catholic Church, stuck fast in my heart. As yet it was unformed on many points and diverged from the rule of right doctrine, but my mind did not utterly lose it, and every day drank in more and more of it.
CHAPTER VI
8. By now I had also repudiated the lying divinations and impious absurdities of the astrologers. Let thy mercies, out of the depth of my soul, confess this to thee also, O my God. For thou, thou only (for who else is it who calls us back from the death of all errors except the Life which does not know how to die and the Wisdom which gives light to minds that need it, although it itself has no need of light--by which the whole universe is governed, even to the fluttering leaves of the trees?)--thou alone providedst also for my obstinacy with which I struggled against Vindicianus, a sagacious old man, and Nebridius, that remarkably talented young man. The former declared vehemently and the latter frequently--though with some reservation--that no art existed by which we foresee future things. But men’s surmises have oftentimes the help of chance, and out of many things which they foretold some came to pass unawares to the predictors, who lighted on the truth by making so many guesses.
And thou also providedst a friend for me, who was not a negligent consulter of the astrologers even though he was not thoroughly skilled in the art either--as I said, one who consulted them out of curiosity. He knew a good, deal about it, which, he said, he had heard from his father, and he never realized how far his ideas would help to overthrow my estimation of that art. His name was Firminus and he had received a liberal education and was a cultivated rhetorician. It so happened that he consulted me, as one very dear to him, as to what I thought about some affairs of his in which his worldly hopes had risen, viewed in the light of his so-called horoscope. Although I had now begun to learn in this matter toward Nebridius’ opinion, I did not quite decline to speculate about the matter or to tell him what thoughts still came into my irresolute mind, although I did add that I was almost persuaded now that these were but empty and ridiculous follies. He then told me that his father had been very much interested in such books, and that he had a friend who was as much interested in them as he was himself. They, in combined study and consultation, fanned the flame of their affection for this folly, going so far as to observe the moment when the dumb animals which belonged to their household gave birth to young, and then observed the position of the heavens with regard to them, so as to gather fresh evidence for this so-called art. Moreover, he reported that his father had told him that, at the same time his mother was about to give birth to him [Firminus], a female slave of a friend of his father’s was also pregnant. This could not be hidden from her master, who kept records with the most diligent exactness of the birth dates even of his dogs. And so it happened to pass that--under the most careful observations, one for his wife and the other for his servant, with exact calculations of the days, hours, and minutes--both women were delivered at the same moment, so that both were compelled to cast the selfsame horoscope, down to the minute: the one for his son, the other for his young slave. For as soon as the women began to be in labor, they each sent word to the other as to what was happening in their respective houses and had messengers ready to dispatch to one another as soon as they had information of the actual birth--and each, of course, knew instantly the exact time. It turned out, Firminus said, that the messengers from the respective houses met one another at a point equidistant from either house, so that neither of them could discern any difference either in the position of the stars or any other of the most minute points. And yet Firminus, born in a high estate in his parents’ house, ran his course through the prosperous paths of this world, was increased in wealth, and elevated to honors. At the same time, the slave, the yoke of his condition being still unrelaxed, continued to serve his masters as Firminus, who knew him, was able to report.
9. Upon hearing and believing these things related by so reliable a person all my resistance melted away. First, I endeavored to reclaim Firminus himself from his superstition by telling him that after inspecting his horoscope, I ought, if I could foretell truly, to have seen in it parents eminent among their neighbors, a noble family in its own city, a good birth, a proper education, and liberal learning. But if that servant had consulted me with the same horoscope, since he had the same one, I ought again to tell him likewise truly that I saw in it the lowliness of his origin, the abjectness of his condition, and everything else different and contrary to the former prediction. If, then, by casting up the same horoscopes I should, in order to speak the truth, make contrary analyses, or else speak falsely if I made identical readings, then surely it followed that whatever was truly foretold by the analysis of the horoscopes was not by art, but by chance. And whatever was said falsely was not from incompetence in the art, but from the error of chance.
10. An opening being thus made in my darkness, I began
to consider other implications involved here. Suppose that one of the
fools--who followed such an occupation and whom I longed to assail, and
to reduce to confusion--should urge against me that Firminus had given
me false information, or that his father had informed him falsely. I
then turned my thoughts to those that are born twins, who generally
come out of the womb so near the one to the other that the short
interval between them--whatever importance they may ascribe to it in
the nature of things--cannot be noted by human observation or expressed
in those tables which the astrologer uses to examine when he undertakes
to pronounce the truth. But such pronouncements cannot be true. For
looking into the same horoscopes, he must have foretold the same future
for Esau and Jacob,
For thou, O Lord, most righteous ruler of the universe, dost work by a secret impulse--whether those who inquire or those inquired of know it or not--so that the inquirer may hear what, according to the secret merit of his soul, he ought to hear from the deeps of thy righteous judgment. Therefore let no man say to thee, “What is this?” or, “Why is that?” Let him not speak thus, for he is only a man.
CHAPTER VII
11. By now, O my Helper, thou hadst freed me from those fetters. But still I inquired, “Whence is evil?”--and found no answer. But thou didst not allow me to be carried away from the faith by these fluctuations of thought. I still believed both that thou dost exist and that thy substance is immutable, and that thou dost care for and wilt judge all men, and that in Christ, thy Son our Lord, and the Holy Scriptures, which the authority of thy Catholic Church pressed on me, thou hast planned the way of man’s salvation to that life which is to come after this death.
With these convictions safe and immovably settled in my
mind, I eagerly inquired, “Whence is evil?” What torments
did my travailing heart then endure! What sighs, O my God! Yet even
then thy ears were open and I knew it not, and when in stillness I
sought earnestly, those silent contritions of my soul were loud cries
to thy mercy. No man knew, but thou knewest what I endured. How little
of it could I express in words to the ears of my dearest friends! How
could the whole tumult of my soul, for which neither time nor speech
was sufficient, come to them? Yet the whole of it went into thy ears,
all of which I bellowed out in the anguish of my heart. My desire was
before thee, and the light of my eyes was not with me; for it was
within and I was without. Nor was that light in any place; but I still
kept thinking only of things that are contained in a place, and could
find among them no place to rest in. They did not receive me in such a
way that I could say, “It is sufficient; it is well.” Nor
did they allow me to turn back to where it might be well enough with
me. For I was higher than they, though lower than thou. Thou art my
true joy if I depend upon thee, and thou hadst subjected to me what
thou didst create lower than I. And this was the true mean and middle
way of salvation for me, to continue in thy image and by serving thee
have dominion over the body. But when I lifted myself proudly against
thee, and “ran against the Lord, even against his neck, with the
thick bosses of my buckler,” Cf.
CHAPTER VIII
12. But thou, O Lord, art forever the same, yet thou
art not forever angry with us, for thou hast compassion on our dust and
ashes. Cf.
CHAPTER IX
13. And first of all, willing to show me how thou dost
“resist the proud, but give grace to the humble,” Cf. It is not altogether
clear as to which "books" and which "Platonists" are here referred to.
The succeeding analysis of "Platonism" does not resemble any
single known text closely enough to allow for identification. The most
reasonable conjecture, as most authorities agree, is that the "books"
here mentioned were the Enneads of Plotinus, which Marius
Victorinus (q.v. infra, Bk. VIII, Ch. II, 3-5) had translated
into Latin several years before; cf. M.P. Garvey, St. Augustine:
Christian or Neo-Platonist (Milwaukee, 1939). There is also a
fair probability that Augustine had acquired some knowledge of the
Didaskalikos of Albinus; cf. R.E. Witt, Albinus and the
History of Middle Platonism (Cambridge, 1937). Cf. this mixed quotation
of
14. Similarly, I read there that God the Word was born
“not of flesh nor of blood, nor of the will of man, nor the will
of the flesh, but of God.” Cf. Cf.
15. And, moreover, I also read there how “they
changed the glory of thy incorruptible nature into idols and various
images--into an image made like corruptible man and to birds and
four-footed beasts, and creeping things” An echo of Porphyry's
De abstinentia ab esu animalium. The allegorical
interpretation of the Israelites' despoiling the Egyptians ( Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER X
16. And being admonished by these books to return into
myself, I entered into my inward soul, guided by thee. This I could do
because thou wast my helper. And I entered, and with the eye of my
soul--such as it was--saw above the same eye of my soul and above my
mind the Immutable Light. It was not the common light, which all flesh
can see; nor was it simply a greater one of the same sort, as if the
light of day were to grow brighter and brighter, and flood all space.
It was not like that light, but different, yea, very different from all
earthly light whatever. Nor was it above my mind in the same way as oil
is above water, or heaven above earth, but it was higher, because it
made me, and I was below it, because I was made by it. He who knows the
Truth knows that Light, and he who knows it knows eternity. Love knows
it, O Eternal Truth and True Love and Beloved Eternity! Thou art my
God, to whom I sigh both night and day. When I first knew thee, thou
didst lift me up, that I might see that there was something to be seen,
though I was not yet fit to see it. And thou didst beat back the
weakness of my sight, shining forth upon me thy dazzling beams of
light, and I trembled with love and fear. I realized that I was far
away from thee in the land of unlikeness, as if I heard thy voice from
on high: “I am the food of strong men; grow and you shall feed on
me; nor shall you change me, like the food of your flesh into yourself,
but you shall be changed into my likeness.” And I understood that
thou chastenest man for his iniquity, and makest my soul to be eaten
away as though by a spider. Cf. Some MSS. add "immo
vero" ("yea, verily"), but not the best ones; cf. De Labriolle,
op. cit., I, p. 162.
CHAPTER XI
17. And I viewed all the other things that are beneath thee, and I realized that they are neither wholly real nor wholly unreal. They are real in so far as they come from thee; but they are unreal in so far as they are not what thou art. For that is truly real which remains immutable. It is good, then, for me to hold fast to God, for if I do not remain in him, neither shall I abide in myself; but he, remaining in himself, renews all things. And thou art the Lord my God, since thou standest in no need of my goodness.
CHAPTER XII
18. And it was made clear to me that all things are
good even if they are corrupted. They could not be corrupted if they
were supremely good; but unless they were good they could not be
corrupted. If they were supremely good, they would be incorruptible; if
they were not good at all, there would be nothing in them to be
corrupted. For corruption harms; but unless it could diminish goodness,
it could not harm. Either, then, corruption does not harm--which cannot
be--or, as is certain, all that is corrupted is thereby deprived of
good. But if they are deprived of all good, they will cease to be. For
if they are at all and cannot be at all corrupted, they will become
better, because they will remain incorruptible. Now what can be more
monstrous than to maintain that by losing all good they have become
better? If, then, they are deprived of all good, they will cease to
exist. So long as they are, therefore, they are good. Therefore,
whatsoever is, is good. Evil, then, the origin of which I had been
seeking, has no substance at all; for if it were a substance, it would
be good. For either it would be an incorruptible substance and so a
supreme good, or a corruptible substance, which could not be corrupted
unless it were good. I understood, therefore, and it was made clear to
me that thou madest all things good, nor is there any substance at all
not made by thee. And because all that thou madest is not equal, each
by itself is good, and the sum of all of them is very good, for our God
made all things very good. A locus classicus
of the doctrine of the privative character of evil and the positive
character of the good. This is a fundamental premise in
Augustine's metaphysics: it reappears in Bks. XII-XIII, in the
Enchiridion, and elsewhere (see note, infra, p. 343).
This doctrine of the goodness of all creation is taken up into the
scholastic metaphysics; cf. Confessions, Bks. XII-XIII, and
Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentes, II: 45.
CHAPTER XIII
19. To thee there is no such thing as evil, and even in
thy whole creation taken as a whole, there is not; because there is
nothing from beyond it that can burst in and destroy the order which
thou hast appointed for it. But in the parts of creation, some things,
because they do not harmonize with others, are considered evil. Yet
those same things harmonize with others and are good, and in themselves
are good. And all these things which do not harmonize with each other
still harmonize with the inferior part of creation which we call the
earth, having its own cloudy and windy sky of like nature with itself.
Far be it from me, then, to say, “These things should not
be.” For if I could see nothing but these, I should indeed desire
something better--but still I ought to praise thee, if only for these
created things. For that thou art to be praised is shown from the fact
that “earth, dragons, and all deeps; fire, and hail, snow and
vapors, stormy winds fulfilling thy word; mountains, and all hills,
fruitful trees, and all cedars; beasts and all cattle; creeping things,
and flying fowl; things of the earth, and all people; princes, and all
judges of the earth; both young men and maidens, old men and
children,”
CHAPTER XIV
20. There is no health in those who find fault with any part of thy creation; as there was no health in me when I found fault with so many of thy works. And, because my soul dared not be displeased with my God, it would not allow that the things which displeased me were from thee. Hence it had wandered into the notion of two substances, and could find no rest, but talked foolishly, And turning from that error, it had then made for itself a god extended through infinite space; and it thought this was thou and set it up in its heart, and it became once more the temple of its own idol, an abomination to thee. But thou didst soothe my brain, though I was unaware of it, and closed my eyes lest they should behold vanity; and thus I ceased from preoccupation with self by a little and my madness was lulled to sleep; and I awoke in thee, and beheld thee as the Infinite, but not in the way I had thought--and this vision was not derived from the flesh.
CHAPTER XV
21. And I looked around at other things, and I saw that it was to thee that all of them owed their being, and that they were all finite in thee; yet they are in thee not as in a space, but because thou holdest all things in the hand of thy truth, and because all things are true in so far as they are; and because falsehood is nothing except the existence in thought of what does not exist in fact. And I saw that all things harmonize, not only in their places but also in their seasons. And I saw that thou, who alone art eternal, didst not begin to work after unnumbered periods of time--because all ages, both those which are past and those which shall pass, neither go nor come except through thy working and abiding.
CHAPTER XVI
22. And I saw and found it no marvel that bread which
is distasteful to an unhealthy palate is pleasant to a healthy one; or
that the light, which is painful to sore eyes, is a delight to sound
ones. Thy righteousness displeases the wicked, and they find even more
fault with the viper and the little worm, which thou hast created good,
fitting in as they do with the inferior parts of creation. The wicked
themselves also fit in here, and proportionately more so as they become
unlike thee--but they harmonize with the higher creation
proportionately as they become like thee. And I asked what wickedness
was, and I found that it was no substance, but a perversion of the will
bent aside from thee, O God, the supreme substance, toward these lower
things, casting away its inmost treasure and becoming bloated with
external good. "The evil which
overtakes us has its source in self-will, in the entry into the sphere
of process and in the primal assertion of the desire for
self-ownership" (Plotinus, Enneads, V, 1:1).
CHAPTER XVII
23. And I marveled that I now loved thee, and no
fantasm in thy stead, and yet I was not stable enough to enjoy my God
steadily. Instead I was transported to thee by thy beauty, and then
presently torn away from thee by my own weight, sinking with grief into
these lower things. This weight was carnal habit. But thy memory dwelt
with me, and I never doubted in the least that there was One for me to
cleave to; but I was not yet ready to cleave to thee firmly. For the
body which is corrupted presses down the soul, and the earthly dwelling
weighs down the mind, which muses upon many things. "We have gone weighed
down from beneath; the vision is frustrated" (Enneads, VI,
9:4).
And thus by degrees I was led upward from bodies to the
soul which perceives them by means of the bodily senses, and from there
on to the soul’s inward faculty, to which the bodily senses
report outward things--and this belongs even to the capacities of the
beasts--and thence on up to the reasoning power, to whose judgment is
referred the experience received from the bodily sense. And when this
power of reason within me also found that it was changeable, it raised
itself up to its own intellectual principle, The Plotinian
Nous. This is an astonishingly
candid and plain account of a Plotinian ecstasy, the pilgrimage of the
soul from its absorption in things to its rapturous but momentary
vision of the One; cf. especially the Sixth Ennead, 9:3-11, for
very close parallels in thought and echoes of language. This is one of
two ecstatic visions reported in the Confessions; the other is,
of course, the last great moment with his mother at Ostia (Bk. IX, Ch.
X, 23-25). One comes before the "conversion" in the Milanese garden
(Bk. VIII, Ch. XII, 28-29); the other, after. They ought to be compared
with particular interest in their similarities as well as their
significant differences. Cf. also K.E. Kirk, The Vision of God
(London, 1932), pp. 319‑346.
CHAPTER XVIII
24. I sought, therefore, some way to acquire the
strength sufficient to enjoy thee; but I did not find it until I
embraced that “Mediator between God and man, the man Christ
Jesus,”
CHAPTER XIX
25. But I thought otherwise. I saw in our Lord Christ only a man of eminent wisdom to whom no other man could be compared--especially because he was miraculously born of a virgin--sent to set us an example of despising worldly things for the attainment of immortality, and thus exhibiting his divine care for us. Because of this, I held that he had merited his great authority as leader. But concerning the mystery contained in “the Word was made flesh,” I could not even form a notion. From what I learned from what has been handed down to us in the books about him--that he ate, drank, slept, walked, rejoiced in spirit, was sad, and discoursed with his fellows--I realized that his flesh alone was not bound unto thy Word, but also that there was a bond with the human soul and body. Everyone knows this who knows the unchangeableness of thy Word, and this I knew by now, as far as I was able, and I had no doubts at all about it. For at one time to move the limbs by an act of will, at another time not; at one time to feel some emotion, at another time not; at one time to speak intelligibly through verbal signs, at another, not--these are all properties of a soul and mind subject to change. And if these things were falsely written about him, all the rest would risk the imputation of falsehood, and there would remain in those books no saving faith for the human race.
Therefore, because they were written truthfully, I acknowledged a perfect man to be in Christ--not the body of a man only, nor, in the body, an animal soul without a rational one as well, but a true man. And this man I held to be superior to all others, not only because he was a form of the Truth, but also because of the great excellence and perfection of his human nature, due to his participation in wisdom.
Alypius, on the other hand, supposed the Catholics to
believe that God was so clothed with flesh that besides God and the
flesh there was no soul in Christ, and he did not think that a human
mind was ascribed to him. An interesting reminder
that the Apollinarian heresy was condemned but not extinct. It is worth remembering
that both Augustine and Alypius were catechumens and had presumably
been receiving doctrinal instruction in preparation for their eventual
baptism and full membership in the Catholic Church. That their ideas on
the incarnation, at this stage, were in such confusion raises an
interesting problem. Cf. Augustine's The
Christian Combat as an example of "the refutation of heretics." Cf.
CHAPTER XX
26. By having thus read the books of the Platonists, and having been taught by them to search for the incorporeal Truth, I saw how thy invisible things are understood through the things that are made. And, even when I was thrown back, I still sensed what it was that the dullness of my soul would not allow me to contemplate. I was assured that thou wast, and wast infinite, though not diffused in finite space or infinity; that thou truly art, who art ever the same, varying neither in part nor motion; and that all things are from thee, as is proved by this sure cause alone: that they exist.
Of all this I was convinced, yet I was too weak to
enjoy thee. I chattered away as if I were an expert; but if I had not
sought thy Way in Christ our Saviour, my knowledge would have turned
out to be not instruction but destruction. Non peritus, sed
periturus essem. Cf.
CHAPTER XXI
27. With great eagerness, then, I fastened upon the
venerable writings of thy Spirit and principally upon the apostle Paul.
I had thought that he sometimes contradicted himself and that the text
of his teaching did not agree with the testimonies of the Law and the
Prophets; but now all these doubts vanished away. And I saw that those
pure words had but one face, and I learned to rejoice with trembling.
So I began, and I found that whatever truth I had read [in the
Platonists] was here combined with the exaltation of thy grace. Thus,
he who sees must not glory as if he had not received, not only the
things that he sees, but the very power of sight--for what does he have
that he has not received as a gift? By this he is not only exhorted to
see, but also to be cleansed, that he may grasp thee, who art ever the
same; and thus he who cannot see thee afar off may yet enter upon the
road that leads to reaching, seeing, and possessing thee. For although
a man may “delight in the law of God after the inward man,”
what shall he do with that other “law in his members which wars
against the law of his mind, and brings him into captivity under the
law of sin, which is in his members”? Cf.
The books of the Platonists tell nothing of this. Their
pages do not contain the expression of this kind of godliness--the
tears of confession, thy sacrifice, a troubled spirit, a broken and a
contrite heart, the salvation of thy people, the espoused City, the
earnest of the Holy Spirit, the cup of our redemption. In them, no man
sings: “Shall not my soul be subject unto God, for from him comes
my salvation? He is my God and my salvation, my defender; I shall no
more be moved.” Cf. Cf. A figure that compares
the dangers of the solitary traveler in a bandit-infested land
and the safety of an imperial convoy on a main highway to the capital
city. Cf.
BOOK EIGHT
Conversion to Christ. Augustine is deeply impressed by Simplicianus’ story of the conversion to Christ of the famous orator and philosopher, Marius Victorinus. He is stirred to emulate him, but finds himself still enchained by his incontinence and preoccupation with worldly affairs. He is then visited by a court official, Ponticianus, who tells him and Alypius the stories of the conversion of Anthony and also of two imperial “secret service agents.” These stories throw him into a violent turmoil, in which his divided will struggles against himself. He almost succeeds in making the decision for continence, but is still held back. Finally, a child’s song, overheard by chance, sends him to the Bible; a text from Paul resolves the crisis; the conversion is a fact. Alypius also makes his decision, and the two inform the rejoicing Monica.
CHAPTER I
1. O my God, let me remember with gratitude and confess
to thee thy mercies toward me. Let my bones be bathed in thy love, and
let them say: “Lord, who is like unto thee? Cf. Cf.
Thy words had stuck fast in my breast, and I was hedged
round about by thee on every side. Of thy eternal life I was now
certain, although I had seen it “through a glass
darkly.”
But as for my temporal life, everything was uncertain, and my heart had to be purged of the old leaven. “The Way”--the Saviour himself--pleased me well, but as yet I was reluctant to pass through the strait gate.
And thou didst put it into my mind, and it seemed good in my own sight, to go to Simplicianus, who appeared to me a faithful servant of thine, and thy grace shone forth in him. I had also been told that from his youth up he had lived in entire devotion to thee. He was already an old man, and because of his great age, which he had passed in such a zealous discipleship in thy way, he appeared to me likely to have gained much wisdom--and, indeed, he had. From all his experience, I desired him to tell me--setting before him all my agitations--which would be the most fitting way for one who felt as I did to walk in thy way.
2. For I saw the Church full; and one man was going this way and another that. Still, I could not be satisfied with the life I was living in the world. Now, indeed, my passions had ceased to excite me as of old with hopes of honor and wealth, and it was a grievous burden to go on in such servitude. For, compared with thy sweetness and the beauty of thy house--which I loved--those things delighted me no longer. But I was still tightly bound by the love of women; nor did the apostle forbid me to marry, although he exhorted me to something better, wishing earnestly that all men were as he himself was.
But I was weak and chose the easier way, and for this
single reason my whole life was one of inner turbulence and listless
indecision, because from so many influences I was compelled--even
though unwilling--to agree to a married life which bound me hand and
foot. I had heard from the mouth of Truth that “there are eunuchs
who have made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s
sake”
CHAPTER II
3. I went, therefore, to Simplicianus, the spiritual
father of Ambrose (then a bishop), whom Ambrose truly loved as a
father. I recounted to him all the mazes of my wanderings, but when I
mentioned to him that I had read certain books of the Platonists which
Victorinus--formerly professor of rhetoric at Rome, who died a
Christian, as I had been told--had translated into Latin, Simplicianus
congratulated me that I had not fallen upon the writings of other
philosophers, which were full of fallacies and deceit, “after the
beggarly elements of this world,”
Then, to encourage me to copy the humility of Christ, which is hidden from the wise and revealed to babes, he told me about Victorinus himself, whom he had known intimately at Rome. And I cannot refrain from repeating what he told me about him. For it contains a glorious proof of thy grace, which ought to be confessed to thee: how that old man, most learned, most skilled in all the liberal arts; who had read, criticized, and explained so many of the writings of the philosophers; the teacher of so many noble senators; one who, as a mark of his distinguished service in office had both merited and obtained a statue in the Roman Forum--which men of this world esteem a great honor--this man who, up to an advanced age, had been a worshiper of idols, a communicant in the sacrilegious rites to which almost all the nobility of Rome were wedded; and who had inspired the people with the love of Osiris and
Virgil, Aeneid, VIII, 698.
whom Rome once conquered, and now worshiped; all of which old Victorinus had with thundering eloquence defended for so many years--despite all this, he did not blush to become a child of thy Christ, a babe at thy font, bowing his neck to the yoke of humility and submitting his forehead to the ignominy of the cross.
4. O Lord, Lord, “who didst bow the heavens and
didst descend, who didst touch the mountains and they
smoked,”
But he steadily gained strength from reading and inquiry, and came to fear lest he should be denied by Christ before the holy angels if he now was afraid to confess him before men. Thus he came to appear to himself guilty of a great fault, in being ashamed of the sacraments of the humility of thy Word, when he was not ashamed of the sacrilegious rites of those proud demons, whose pride he had imitated and whose rites he had shared. From this he became bold-faced against vanity and shamefaced toward the truth. Thus, suddenly and unexpectedly, he said to Simplicianus--as he himself told me--“Let us go to the church; I wish to become a Christian.” Simplicianus went with him, scarcely able to contain himself for joy. He was admitted to the first sacraments of instruction, and not long afterward gave in his name that he might receive the baptism of regeneration. At this Rome marveled and the Church rejoiced. The proud saw and were enraged; they gnashed their teeth and melted away! But the Lord God was thy servant’s hope and he paid no attention to their vanity and lying madness.
5. Finally, when the hour arrived for him to make a public profession of his faith--which at Rome those who are about to enter into thy grace make from a platform in the full sight of the faithful people, in a set form of words learned by heart--the presbyters offered Victorinus the chance to make his profession more privately, for this was the custom for some who were likely to be afraid through bashfulness. But Victorinus chose rather to profess his salvation in the presence of the holy congregation. For there was no salvation in the rhetoric which he taught: yet he had professed that openly. Why, then, should he shrink from naming thy Word before the sheep of thy flock, when he had not shrunk from uttering his own words before the mad multitude?
So, then, when he ascended the platform to make his profession, everyone, as they recognized him, whispered his name one to the other, in tones of jubilation. Who was there among them that did not know him? And a low murmur ran through the mouths of all the rejoicing multitude: “Victorinus! Victorinus!” There was a sudden burst of exaltation at the sight of him, and suddenly they were hushed that they might hear him. He pronounced the true faith with an excellent boldness, and all desired to take him to their very heart--indeed, by their love and joy they did take him to their heart. And they received him with loving and joyful hands.
CHAPTER III
6. O good God, what happens in a man to make him
rejoice more at the salvation of a soul that has been despaired of and
then delivered from greater danger than over one who has never lost
hope, or never been in such imminent danger? For thou also, O most
merciful Father, “dost rejoice more over one that repents than
over ninety and nine just persons that need no
repentance.” Cf. Luke, ch. 15.
7. What, then, happens in the soul when it takes more delight at finding or having restored to it the things it loves than if it had always possessed them? Indeed, many other things bear witness that this is so--all things are full of witnesses, crying out, “So it is.” The commander triumphs in victory; yet he could not have conquered if he had not fought; and the greater the peril of the battle, the more the joy of the triumph. The storm tosses the voyagers, threatens shipwreck, and everyone turns pale in the presence of death. Then the sky and sea grow calm, and they rejoice as much as they had feared. A loved one is sick and his pulse indicates danger; all who desire his safety are themselves sick at heart; he recovers, though not able as yet to walk with his former strength; and there is more joy now than there was before when he walked sound and strong. Indeed, the very pleasures of human life--not only those which rush upon us unexpectedly and involuntarily, but also those which are voluntary and planned--men obtain by difficulties. There is no pleasure in caring and drinking unless the pains of hunger and thirst have preceded. Drunkards even eat certain salt meats in order to create a painful thirst--and when the drink allays this, it causes pleasure. It is also the custom that the affianced bride should not be immediately given in marriage so that the husband may not esteem her any less, whom as his betrothed he longed for.
8. This can be seen in the case of base and dishonorable pleasure. But it is also apparent in pleasures that are permitted and lawful: in the sincerity of honest friendship; and in him who was dead and lived again, who had been lost and was found. The greater joy is everywhere preceded by the greater pain. What does this mean, O Lord my God, when thou art an everlasting joy to thyself, and some creatures about thee are ever rejoicing in thee? What does it mean that this portion of creation thus ebbs and flows, alternately in want and satiety? Is this their mode of being and is this all thou hast allotted to them: that, from the highest heaven to the lowest earth, from the beginning of the world to the end, from the angels to the worm, from the first movement to the last, thou wast assigning to all their proper places and their proper seasons--to all the kinds of good things and to all thy just works? Alas, how high thou art in the highest and how deep in the deepest! Thou never departest from us, and yet only with difficulty do we return to thee.
CHAPTER IV
9. Go on, O Lord, and act: stir us up and call us back;
inflame us and draw us to thee; stir us up and grow sweet to us; let us
now love thee, let us run to thee. Are there not many men who, out of a
deeper pit of darkness than that of Victorinus, return to thee--who
draw near to thee and are illuminated by that light which gives those
who receive it power from thee to become thy sons? But if they are less
well-known, even those who know them rejoice less for them. For when
many rejoice together the joy of each one is fuller, in that they warm
one another, catch fire from each other; moreover, those who are
well-known influence many toward salvation and take the lead with many
to follow them. Therefore, even those who took the way before them
rejoice over them greatly, because they do not rejoice over them alone.
But it ought never to be that in thy tabernacle the persons of the rich
should be welcome before the poor, or the nobly born before the
rest--since “thou hast rather chosen the weak things of the world
to confound the strong; and hast chosen the base things of the world
and things that are despised, and the things that are not, in order to
bring to nought the things that are.” A garbled reference to
the story of the conversion of Sergius Paulus, proconsul of
Cyprus, in
CHAPTER V
10. Now when this man of thine, Simplicianus, told me the story of Victorinus, I was eager to imitate him. Indeed, this was Simplicianus’ purpose in telling it to me. But when he went on to tell how, in the reign of the Emperor Julian, there was a law passed by which Christians were forbidden to teach literature and rhetoric; and how Victorinus, in ready obedience to the law, chose to abandon his “school of words” rather than thy Word, by which thou makest eloquent the tongues of the dumb--he appeared to me not so much brave as happy, because he had found a reason for giving his time wholly to thee. For this was what I was longing to do; but as yet I was bound by the iron chain of my own will. The enemy held fast my will, and had made of it a chain, and had bound me tight with it. For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity. By these links, as it were, forged together--which is why I called it “a chain”--a hard bondage held me in slavery. But that new will which had begun to spring up in me freely to worship thee and to enjoy thee, O my God, the only certain Joy, was not able as yet to overcome my former willfulness, made strong by long indulgence. Thus my two wills--the old and the new, the carnal and the spiritual--were in conflict within me; and by their discord they tore my soul apart.
11. Thus I came to understand from my own experience
what I had read, how “the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the
Spirit against the flesh.”
Who, then, can with any justice speak against it, when just punishment follows the sinner? I had now no longer my accustomed excuse that, as yet, I hesitated to forsake the world and serve thee because my perception of the truth was uncertain. For now it was certain. But, still bound to the earth, I refused to be thy soldier; and was as much afraid of being freed from all entanglements as we ought to fear to be entangled.
12. Thus with the baggage of the world I was sweetly
burdened, as one in slumber, and my musings on thee were like the
efforts of those who desire to awake, but who are still overpowered
with drowsiness and fall back into deep slumber. And as no one wishes
to sleep forever (for all men rightly count waking better)--yet a man
will usually defer shaking off his drowsiness when there is a heavy
lethargy in his limbs; and he is glad to sleep on even when his reason
disapproves, and the hour for rising has struck--so was I assured that
it was much better for me to give myself up to thy love than to go on
yielding myself to my own lust. Thy love satisfied and vanquished me;
my lust pleased and fettered me. The text here is a
typical example of Augustine's love of wordplay and assonance, as a
conscious literary device: tuae caritati me dedere
quam meae cupiditati cedere; sed illud placebat et
vincebat, hoc libebat et vinciebat.
CHAPTER VI
13. And now I will tell and confess unto thy name, O
Lord, my helper and my redeemer, how thou didst deliver me from the
chain of sexual desire by which I was so tightly held, and from the
slavery of worldly business. The last obstacles that
remained. His intellectual difficulties had been cleared away and the
intention to become a Christian had become strong. But incontinence and
immersion in his career were too firmly fixed in habit to be overcome
by an act of conscious resolution.
14. On a certain day, then, when Nebridius was away--for some reason I cannot remember--there came to visit Alypius and me at our house one Ponticianus, a fellow countryman of ours from Africa, who held high office in the emperor’s court. What he wanted with us I do not know; but we sat down to talk together, and it chanced that he noticed a book on a game table before us. He took it up, opened it, and, contrary to his expectation, found it to be the apostle Paul, for he imagined that it was one of my wearisome rhetoric textbooks. At this, he looked up at me with a smile and expressed his delight and wonder that he had so unexpectedly found this book and only this one, lying before my eyes; for he was indeed a Christian and a faithful one at that, and often he prostrated himself before thee, our God, in the church in constant daily prayer. When I had told him that I had given much attention to these writings, a conversation followed in which he spoke of Anthony, the Egyptian monk, whose name was in high repute among thy servants, although up to that time not familiar to me. When he learned this, he lingered on the topic, giving us an account of this eminent man, and marveling at our ignorance. We in turn were amazed to hear of thy wonderful works so fully manifested in recent times--almost in our own--occurring in the true faith and the Catholic Church. We all wondered--we, that these things were so great, and he, that we had never heard of them.
15. From this, his conversation turned to the
multitudes in the monasteries and their manners so fragrant to thee,
and to the teeming solitudes of the wilderness, of which we knew
nothing at all. There was even a monastery at Milan, outside the
city’s walls, full of good brothers under the fostering care of
Ambrose--and we were ignorant of it. He went on with his story, and we
listened intently and in silence. He then told us how, on a certain
afternoon, at Trier, Trèves, an
important imperial town on the Moselle; the emperor referred to here
was probably Gratian. Cf. E.A. Freeman, "Augusta Trevororum," in the
British Quarterly Review (1875), 62, pp. 1-45. Agentes in rebus,
government agents whose duties ranged from postal inspection and tax
collection to espionage and secret police work. They were ubiquitous
and generally dreaded by the populace; cf. J.S. Reid, "Reorganization
of the Empire," in Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I, pp.
36-38. The inner circle of
imperial advisers; usually rather informally appointed and usually with
precarious tenure. Cf.
CHAPTER VII
16. Such was the story Ponticianus told. But while he was speaking, thou, O Lord, turned me toward myself, taking me from behind my back, where I had put myself while unwilling to exercise self-scrutiny. And now thou didst set me face to face with myself, that I might see how ugly I was, and how crooked and sordid, bespotted and ulcerous. And I looked and I loathed myself; but whither to fly from myself I could not discover. And if I sought to turn my gaze away from myself, he would continue his narrative, and thou wouldst oppose me to myself and thrust me before my own eyes that I might discover my iniquity and hate it. I had known it, but acted as though I knew it not--I winked at it and forgot it.
17. But now, the more ardently I loved those whose wholesome affections I heard reported--that they had given themselves up wholly to thee to be cured--the more did I abhor myself when compared with them. For many of my years--perhaps twelve--had passed away since my nineteenth, when, upon the reading of Cicero’s Hortensius, I was roused to a desire for wisdom. And here I was, still postponing the abandonment of this world’s happiness to devote myself to the search. For not just the finding alone, but also the bare search for it, ought to have been preferred above the treasures and kingdoms of this world; better than all bodily pleasures, though they were to be had for the taking. But, wretched youth that I was--supremely wretched even in the very outset of my youth--I had entreated chastity of thee and had prayed, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” For I was afraid lest thou shouldst hear me too soon, and too soon cure me of my disease of lust which I desired to have satisfied rather than extinguished. And I had wandered through perverse ways of godless superstition--not really sure of it, either, but preferring it to the other, which I did not seek in piety, but opposed in malice.
18. And I had thought that I delayed from day to day in rejecting those worldly hopes and following thee alone because there did not appear anything certain by which I could direct my course. And now the day had arrived in which I was laid bare to myself and my conscience was to chide me: “Where are you, O my tongue? You said indeed that you were not willing to cast off the baggage of vanity for uncertain truth. But behold now it is certain, and still that burden oppresses you. At the same time those who have not worn themselves out with searching for it as you have, nor spent ten years and more in thinking about it, have had their shoulders unburdened and have received wings to fly away.” Thus was I inwardly confused, and mightily confounded with a horrible shame, while Ponticianus went ahead speaking such things. And when he had finished his story and the business he came for, he went his way. And then what did I not say to myself, within myself? With what scourges of rebuke did I not lash my soul to make it follow me, as I was struggling to go after thee? Yet it drew back. It refused. It would not make an effort. All its arguments were exhausted and confuted. Yet it resisted in sullen disquiet, fearing the cutting off of that habit by which it was being wasted to death, as if that were death itself.
CHAPTER VIII
19. Then, as this vehement quarrel, which I waged with my soul in the chamber of my heart, was raging inside my inner dwelling, agitated both in mind and countenance, I seized upon Alypius and exclaimed: “What is the matter with us? What is this? What did you hear? The uninstructed start up and take heaven, and we--with all our learning but so little heart--see where we wallow in flesh and blood! Because others have gone before us, are we ashamed to follow, and not rather ashamed at our not following?” I scarcely knew what I said, and in my excitement I flung away from him, while he gazed at me in silent astonishment. For I did not sound like myself: my face, eyes, color, tone expressed my meaning more clearly than my words.
There was a little garden belonging to our lodging, of which we had the use--as of the whole house--for the master, our landlord, did not live there. The tempest in my breast hurried me out into this garden, where no one might interrupt the fiery struggle in which I was engaged with myself, until it came to the outcome that thou knewest though I did not. But I was mad for health, and dying for life; knowing what evil thing I was, but not knowing what good thing I was so shortly to become.
I fled into the garden, with Alypius following step by step; for I had no secret in which he did not share, and how could he leave me in such distress? We sat down, as far from the house as possible. I was greatly disturbed in spirit, angry at myself with a turbulent indignation because I had not entered thy will and covenant, O my God, while all my bones cried out to me to enter, extolling it to the skies. The way therein is not by ships or chariots or feet--indeed it was not as far as I had come from the house to the place where we were seated. For to go along that road and indeed to reach the goal is nothing else but the will to go. But it must be a strong and single will, not staggering and swaying about this way and that--a changeable, twisting, fluctuating will, wrestling with itself while one part falls as another rises.
20. Finally, in the very fever of my indecision, I made many motions with my body; like men do when they will to act but cannot, either because they do not have the limbs or because their limbs are bound or weakened by disease, or incapacitated in some other way. Thus if I tore my hair, struck my forehead, or, entwining my fingers, clasped my knee, these I did because I willed it. But I might have willed it and still not have done it, if the nerves had not obeyed my will. Many things then I did, in which the will and power to do were not the same. Yet I did not do that one thing which seemed to me infinitely more desirable, which before long I should have power to will because shortly when I willed, I would will with a single will. For in this, the power of willing is the power of doing; and as yet I could not do it. Thus my body more readily obeyed the slightest wish of the soul in moving its limbs at the order of my mind than my soul obeyed itself to accomplish in the will alone its great resolve.
CHAPTER IX
21. How can there be such a strange anomaly? And why is it? Let thy mercy shine on me, that I may inquire and find an answer, amid the dark labyrinth of human punishment and in the darkest contritions of the sons of Adam. Whence such an anomaly? And why should it be? The mind commands the body, and the body obeys. The mind commands itself and is resisted. The mind commands the hand to be moved and there is such readiness that the command is scarcely distinguished from the obedience in act. Yet the mind is mind, and the hand is body. The mind commands the mind to will, and yet though it be itself it does not obey itself. Whence this strange anomaly and why should it be? I repeat: The will commands itself to will, and could not give the command unless it wills; yet what is commanded is not done. But actually the will does not will entirely; therefore it does not command entirely. For as far as it wills, it commands. And as far as it does not will, the thing commanded is not done. For the will commands that there be an act of will--not another, but itself. But it does not command entirely. Therefore, what is commanded does not happen; for if the will were whole and entire, it would not even command it to be, because it would already be. It is, therefore, no strange anomaly partly to will and partly to be unwilling. This is actually an infirmity of mind, which cannot wholly rise, while pressed down by habit, even though it is supported by the truth. And so there are two wills, because one of them is not whole, and what is present in this one is lacking in the other.
CHAPTER X
22. Let them perish from thy presence, O God, as vain
talkers, and deceivers of the soul perish, who, when they observe that
there are two wills in the act of deliberation, go on to affirm that
there are two kinds of minds in us: one good, the other evil. They are
indeed themselves evil when they hold these evil opinions--and they
shall become good only when they come to hold the truth and consent to
the truth that thy apostle may say to them: “You were formerly in
darkness, but now are you in the light in the Lord.” Cf.
While I was deliberating whether I would serve the Lord my God now, as I had long purposed to do, it was I who willed and it was also I who was unwilling. In either case, it was I. I neither willed with my whole will nor was I wholly unwilling. And so I was at war with myself and torn apart by myself. And this strife was against my will; yet it did not show the presence of another mind, but the punishment of my own. Thus it was no more I who did it, but the sin that dwelt in me--the punishment of a sin freely committed by Adam, and I was a son of Adam.
23. For if there are as many opposing natures as there are opposing wills, there will not be two but many more. If any man is trying to decide whether he should go to their conventicle or to the theater, the Manicheans at once cry out, “See, here are two natures--one good, drawing this way, another bad, drawing back that way; for how else can you explain this indecision between conflicting wills?” But I reply that both impulses are bad--that which draws to them and that which draws back to the theater. But they do not believe that the will which draws to them can be anything but good. Suppose, then, that one of us should try to decide, and through the conflict of his two wills should waver whether he should go to the theater or to our Church. Would not those also waver about the answer here? For either they must confess, which they are unwilling to do, that the will that leads to our church is as good as that which carries their own adherents and those captivated by their mysteries; or else they must imagine that there are two evil natures and two evil minds in one man, both at war with each other, and then it will not be true what they say, that there is one good and another bad. Else they must be converted to the truth, and no longer deny that when anyone deliberates there is one soul fluctuating between conflicting wills.
24. Let them no longer maintain that when they perceive two wills to be contending with each other in the same man the contest is between two opposing minds, of two opposing substances, from two opposing principles, the one good and the other bad. Thus, O true God, thou dost reprove and confute and convict them. For both wills may be bad: as when a man tries to decide whether he should kill a man by poison or by the sword; whether he should take possession of this field or that one belonging to someone else, when he cannot get both; whether he should squander his money to buy pleasure or hold onto his money through the motive of covetousness; whether he should go to the circus or to the theater, if both are open on the same day; or, whether he should take a third course, open at the same time, and rob another man’s house; or, a fourth option, whether he should commit adultery, if he has the opportunity--all these things concurring in the same space of time and all being equally longed for, although impossible to do at one time. For the mind is pulled four ways by four antagonistic wills--or even more, in view of the vast range of human desires--but even the Manicheans do not affirm that there are these many different substances. The same principle applies as in the action of good wills. For I ask them, “Is it a good thing to have delight in reading the apostle, or is it a good thing to delight in a sober psalm, or is it a good thing to discourse on the gospel?” To each of these, they will answer, “It is good.” But what, then, if all delight us equally and all at the same time? Do not different wills distract the mind when a man is trying to decide what he should choose? Yet they are all good, and are at variance with each other until one is chosen. When this is done the whole united will may go forward on a single track instead of remaining as it was before, divided in many ways. So also, when eternity attracts us from above, and the pleasure of earthly delight pulls us down from below, the soul does not will either the one or the other with all its force, but still it is the same soul that does not will this or that with a united will, and is therefore pulled apart with grievous perplexities, because for truth’s sake it prefers this, but for custom’s sake it does not lay that aside.
CHAPTER XI
25. Thus I was sick and tormented, reproaching myself more bitterly than ever, rolling and writhing in my chain till it should be utterly broken. By now I was held but slightly, but still was held. And thou, O Lord, didst press upon me in my inmost heart with a severe mercy, redoubling the lashes of fear and shame; lest I should again give way and that same slender remaining tie not be broken off, but recover strength and enchain me yet more securely.
I kept saying to myself, “See, let it be done now; let it be done now.” And as I said this I all but came to a firm decision. I all but did it--yet I did not quite. Still I did not fall back to my old condition, but stood aside for a moment and drew breath. And I tried again, and lacked only a very little of reaching the resolve--and then somewhat less, and then all but touched and grasped it. Yet I still did not quite reach or touch or grasp the goal, because I hesitated to die to death and to live to life. And the worse way, to which I was habituated, was stronger in me than the better, which I had not tried. And up to the very moment in which I was to become another man, the nearer the moment approached, the greater horror did it strike in me. But it did not strike me back, nor turn me aside, but held me in suspense.
26. It was, in fact, my old mistresses, trifles of trifles and vanities of vanities, who still enthralled me. They tugged at my fleshly garments and softly whispered: “Are you going to part with us? And from that moment will we never be with you any more? And from that moment will not this and that be forbidden you forever?” What were they suggesting to me in those words “this or that”? What is it they suggested, O my God? Let thy mercy guard the soul of thy servant from the vileness and the shame they did suggest! And now I scarcely heard them, for they were not openly showing themselves and opposing me face to face; but muttering, as it were, behind my back; and furtively plucking at me as I was leaving, trying to make me look back at them. Still they delayed me, so that I hesitated to break loose and shake myself free of them and leap over to the place to which I was being called--for unruly habit kept saying to me, “Do you think you can live without them?”
27. But now it said this very faintly; for in the direction I had set my face, and yet toward which I still trembled to go, the chaste dignity of continence appeared to me--cheerful but not wanton, modestly alluring me to come and doubt nothing, extending her holy hands, full of a multitude of good examples--to receive and embrace me. There were there so many young men and maidens, a multitude of youth and every age, grave widows and ancient virgins; and continence herself in their midst: not barren, but a fruitful mother of children--her joys--by thee, O Lord, her husband. And she smiled on me with a challenging smile as if to say: “Can you not do what these young men and maidens can? Or can any of them do it of themselves, and not rather in the Lord their God? The Lord their God gave me to them. Why do you stand in your own strength, and so stand not? Cast yourself on him; fear not. He will not flinch and you will not fall. Cast yourself on him without fear, for he will receive and heal you.” And I blushed violently, for I still heard the muttering of those “trifles” and hung suspended. Again she seemed to speak: “Stop your ears against those unclean members of yours, that they may be mortified. They tell you of delights, but not according to the law of the Lord thy God.” This struggle raging in my heart was nothing but the contest of self against self. And Alypius kept close beside me, and awaited in silence the outcome of my extraordinary agitation.
CHAPTER XII
28. Now when deep reflection had drawn up out of the
secret depths of my soul all my misery and had heaped it up before the
sight of my heart, there arose a mighty storm, accompanied by a mighty
rain of tears. That I might give way fully to my tears and
lamentations, I stole away from Alypius, for it seemed to me that
solitude was more appropriate for the business of weeping. I went far
enough away that I could feel that even his presence was no restraint
upon me. This was the way I felt at the time, and he realized it. I
suppose I had said something before I started up and he noticed that
the sound of my voice was choked with weeping. And so he stayed alone,
where we had been sitting together, greatly astonished. I flung myself
down under a fig tree--how I know not--and gave free course to my
tears. The streams of my eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to
thee. And, not indeed in these words, but to this effect, I cried to
thee: “And thou, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord? Wilt thou be
angry forever? Oh, remember not against us our former
iniquities.” Cf.
29. I was saying these things and weeping in the most
bitter contrition of my heart, when suddenly I heard the voice of a boy
or a girl I know not which--coming from the neighboring house, chanting
over and over again, “Pick it up, read it; pick it up, read
it.” This is the famous
Tolle, lege; tolle, lege. Doubtless from
Ponticianus, in their earlier conversation.
So I quickly returned to the bench where Alypius was
sitting, for there I had put down the apostle’s book when I had
left there. I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the
paragraph on which my eyes first fell: “Not in rioting and
drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and
envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for
the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.” Note the parallels here
to the conversion of Anthony and the agentesin rebus.
30. Closing the book, then, and putting my finger or
something else for a mark I began--now with a tranquil countenance--to
tell it all to Alypius. And he in turn disclosed to me what had been
going on in himself, of which I knew nothing. He asked to see what I
had read. I showed him, and he looked on even further than I had read.
I had not known what followed. But indeed it was this, “Him that
is weak in the faith, receive.”
Then we went in to my mother, and told her what
happened, to her great joy. We explained to her how it had
occurred--and she leaped for joy triumphant; and she blessed thee, who
art “able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or
think.”
BOOK NINE
The end of the autobiography. Augustine tells of his resigning from his professorship and of the days at Cassiciacum in preparation for baptism. He is baptized together with Adeodatus and Alypius. Shortly thereafter, they start back for Africa. Augustine recalls the ecstasy he and his mother shared in Ostia and then reports her death and burial and his grief. The book closes with a moving prayer for the souls of Monica, Patricius, and all his fellow citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem.
CHAPTER I
1. “O Lord, I am thy servant; I am thy servant
and the son of thy handmaid. Thou hast loosed my bonds. I will offer to
thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving.”
Who am I, and what is my nature? What evil is there not in me and my deeds; or if not in my deeds, my words; or if not in my words, my will? But thou, O Lord, art good and merciful, and thy right hand didst reach into the depth of my death and didst empty out the abyss of corruption from the bottom of my heart. And this was the result: now I did not will to do what I willed, and began to will to do what thou didst will.
But where was my free will during all those years and from what deep and secret retreat was it called forth in a single moment, whereby I gave my neck to thy “easy yoke” and my shoulders to thy “light burden,” O Christ Jesus, “my Strength and my Redeemer”? How sweet did it suddenly become to me to be without the sweetness of trifles! And it was now a joy to put away what I formerly feared to lose. For thou didst cast them away from me, O true and highest Sweetness. Thou didst cast them away, and in their place thou didst enter in thyself--sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood; brighter than all light, but more veiled than all mystery; more exalted than all honor, though not to them that are exalted in their own eyes. Now was my soul free from the gnawing cares of seeking and getting, of wallowing in the mire and scratching the itch of lust. And I prattled like a child to thee, O Lord my God--my light, my riches, and my salvation.
CHAPTER II
2. And it seemed right to me, in thy sight, not to
snatch my tongue’s service abruptly out of the speech market, but
to withdraw quietly, so that the young men who were not concerned about
thy law or thy peace, but with mendacious follies and forensic strifes,
might no longer purchase from my mouth weapons for their frenzy.
Fortunately, there were only a few days before the “vintage
vacation” An imperial holiday
season, from late August to the middle of October.
My plan was known to thee, but, save for my own friends, it was not known to other men. For we had agreed that it should not be made public; although, in our ascent from the “valley of tears” and our singing of “the song of degrees,” thou hadst given us sharp arrows and hot burning coals to stop that deceitful tongue which opposes under the guise of good counsel, and devours what it loves as though it were food.
3. Thou hadst pierced our heart with thy love, and we carried thy words, as it were, thrust through our vitals. The examples of thy servants whom thou hadst changed from black to shining white, and from death to life, crowded into the bosom of our thoughts and burned and consumed our sluggish temper, that we might not topple back into the abyss. And they fired us exceedingly, so that every breath of the deceitful tongue of our detractors might fan the flame and not blow it out.
Though this vow and purpose of ours should find those who would loudly praise it--for the sake of thy name, which thou hast sanctified throughout the earth--it nevertheless looked like a self-vaunting not to wait until the vacation time now so near. For if I had left such a public office ahead of time, and had made the break in the eye of the general public, all who took notice of this act of mine and observed how near was the vintage time that I wished to anticipate would have talked about me a great deal, as if I were trying to appear a great person. And what purpose would it serve that people should consider and dispute about my conversion so that my good should be evil spoken of?
4. Furthermore, this same summer my lungs had begun to
be weak from too much literary labor. Breathing was difficult; the
pains in my chest showed that the lungs were affected and were soon
fatigued by too loud or prolonged speaking. This had at first been a
trial to me, for it would have compelled me almost of necessity to lay
down that burden of teaching; or, if I was to be cured and become
strong again, at least to take a leave for a while. But as soon as the
full desire to be still that I might know that thou art the
Lord Cf.
Full of joy, then, I bore it until my time ran out--it
was perhaps some twenty days--yet it was some strain to go through with
it, for the greediness which helped to support the drudgery had gone,
and I would have been overwhelmed had not its place been taken by
patience. Some of thy servants, my brethren, may say that I sinned in
this, since having once fully and from my heart enlisted in thy
service, I permitted myself to sit a single hour in the chair of
falsehood. I will not dispute it. But hast thou not, O most merciful
Lord, pardoned and forgiven this sin in the holy water His subsequent baptism;
see below, Ch. VI.
CHAPTER III
5. Verecundus was severely disturbed by this new
happiness of mine, since he was still firmly held by his bonds and saw
that he would lose my companionship. For he was not yet a Christian,
though his wife was; and, indeed, he was more firmly enchained by her
than by anything else, and held back from that journey on which we had
set out. Furthermore, he declared he did not wish to be a Christian on
any terms except those that were impossible. However, he invited us
most courteously to make use of his country house so long as we would
stay there. O Lord, thou wilt recompense him for this “in the
resurrection of the just,”
6. Thus Verecundus was full of grief; but Nebridius was
joyous. For he was not yet a Christian, and had fallen into the pit of
deadly error, believing that the flesh of thy Son, the Truth, was a
phantom. The heresy of Docetism,
one of the earliest and most persistent of all Christological
errors.
Thus, then, we were comforting the unhappy
Verecundus--our friendship untouched--reconciling him to our conversion
and exhorting him to a faith fit for his condition (that is, to his
being married). We tarried for Nebridius to follow us, since he was so
close, and this he was just about to do when at last the interim ended.
The days had seemed long and many because of my eagerness for leisure
and liberty in which I might sing to thee from my inmost part,
“My heart has said to thee, I have sought thy face; thy face, O
Lord, will I seek.” Cf.
CHAPTER IV
7. Finally the day came on which I was actually to be
relieved from the professorship of rhetoric, from which I had already
been released in intention. And it was done. And thou didst deliver my
tongue as thou hadst already delivered my heart; and I blessed thee for
it with great joy, and retired with my friends to the villa. The group included
Monica, Adeodatus (Augustine's fifteen-year-old son), Navigius
(Augustine's brother), Rusticus and Fastidianus (relatives), Alypius,
Trygetius, and Licentius (former pupils). A somewhat oblique
acknowledgment of the fact that none of the Cassiciacum dialogues has
any distinctive or substantial Christian content. This has often been
pointed to as evidence that Augustine's conversion thus far had brought
him no farther than to a kind of Christian Platonism; cf. P. Alfaric,
L'Évolution intellectuelle de Saint Augustin (Paris,
1918). The dialogues written
during this stay at Cassiciacum: Contra Academicos, De beata
vita, De ordine, Soliloquia. See, in this series,
Vol. VI, pp. 17-63, for an English translation of the
Soliloquies. Cf. Epistles II
and III.
When would there be enough time to recount all thy
great blessings which thou didst bestow on us in that time, especially
as I am hastening on to still greater mercies? For my memory recalls
them to me and it is pleasant to confess them to thee, O Lord: the
inward goads by which thou didst subdue me and how thou broughtest me
low, leveling the mountains and hills of my thoughts, straightening my
crookedness, and smoothing my rough ways. And I remember by what means
thou also didst subdue Alypius, my heart’s brother, to the name
of thy only Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ--which he at first
refused to have inserted in our writings. For at first he preferred
that they should smell of the cedars of the schools A symbolic reference to
the "cedars of Lebanon"; cf. There is perhaps a
remote connection here with
8. O my God, how did I cry to thee when I read the
psalms of David, those hymns of faith, those paeans of devotion which
leave no room for swelling pride! I was still a novice in thy true
love, a catechumen keeping holiday at the villa, with Alypius, a
catechumen like myself. My mother was also with us--in woman’s
garb, but with a man’s faith, with the peacefulness of age and
the fullness of motherly love and Christian piety. What cries I used to
send up to thee in those songs, and how I was enkindled toward thee by
them! I burned to sing them if possible, throughout the whole world,
against the pride of the human race. And yet, indeed, they are sung
throughout the whole world, and none can hide himself from thy heat.
With what strong and bitter regret was I indignant at the Manicheans!
Yet I also pitied them; for they were ignorant of those sacraments,
those medicines Ever since the time of
Ignatius of Antioch who referred to the Eucharist as "the medicine of
immortality," this had been a popular metaphor to refer to the
sacraments; cf. Ignatius, Ephesians 20:2. Here follows (8-11) a
brief devotional commentary on
9. By turns I trembled with fear and warmed with hope
and rejoiced in thy mercy, O Father. And all these feelings showed
forth in my eyes and voice when thy good Spirit turned to us and said,
“O sons of men, how long will you be slow of heart, how long will
you love vanity, and seek after falsehood?” For I had loved
vanity and sought after falsehood. And thou, O Lord, had already
magnified thy Holy One, raising him from the dead and setting him at
thy right hand, that thence he should send forth from on high his
promised “Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth.” Already he had
sent him, and I knew it not. He had sent him because he was now
magnified, rising from the dead and ascending into heaven. For till
then “the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not
yet glorified.”
10. I read on further, “Be angry, and sin not.” And how deeply was I touched, O my God; for I had now learned to be angry with myself for the things past, so that in the future I might not sin. Yes, to be angry with good cause, for it was not another nature out of the race of darkness that had sinned for me--as they affirm who are not angry with themselves, and who store up for themselves dire wrath against the day of wrath and the revelation of thy righteous judgment. Nor were the good things I saw now outside me, nor were they to be seen with the eyes of flesh in the light of the earthly sun. For they that have their joys from without sink easily into emptiness and are spilled out on those things that are visible and temporal, and in their starving thoughts they lick their very shadows. If only they would grow weary with their hunger and would say, “Who will show us any good?” And we would answer, and they would hear, “O Lord, the light of thy countenance shines bright upon us.” For we are not that Light that enlightens every man, but we are enlightened by thee, so that we who were formerly in darkness may now be alight in thee. If only they could behold the inner Light Eternal which, now that I had tasted it, I gnashed my teeth because I could not show it to them unless they brought me their heart in their eyes--their roving eyes--and said, “Who will show us any good?” But even there, in the inner chamber of my soul--where I was angry with myself; where I was inwardly pricked, where I had offered my sacrifice, slaying my old man, and hoping in thee with the new resolve of a new life with my trust laid in thee--even there thou hadst begun to grow sweet to me and to “put gladness in my heart.” And thus as I read all this, I cried aloud and felt its inward meaning. Nor did I wish to be increased in worldly goods which are wasted by time, for now I possessed, in thy eternal simplicity, other corn and wine and oil.
11. And with a loud cry from my heart, I read the
following verse: “Oh, in peace! Oh, in the
Selfsame!” Idipsum--the
oneness and immutability of God. Cf. v. 9.
These things I read and was enkindled--but still I could not discover what to do with those deaf and dead Manicheans to whom I myself had belonged; for I had been a bitter and blind reviler against these writings, honeyed with the honey of heaven and luminous with thy light. And I was sorely grieved at these enemies of this Scripture.
12. When shall I call to mind all that happened during those holidays? I have not forgotten them; nor will I be silent about the severity of thy scourge, and the amazing quickness of thy mercy. During that time thou didst torture me with a toothache; and when it had become so acute that I was not able to speak, it came into my heart to urge all my friends who were present to pray for me to thee, the God of all health. And I wrote it down on the tablet and gave it to them to read. Presently, as we bowed our knees in supplication, the pain was gone. But what pain? How did it go? I confess that I was terrified, O Lord my God, because from my earliest years I had never experienced such pain. And thy purposes were profoundly impressed upon me; and rejoicing in faith, I praised thy name. But that faith allowed me no rest in respect of my past sins, which were not yet forgiven me through thy baptism.
CHAPTER V
13. Now that the vintage vacation was ended, I gave notice to the citizens of Milan that they might provide their scholars with another word-merchant. I gave as my reasons my determination to serve thee and also my insufficiency for the task, because of the difficulty in breathing and the pain in my chest.
And by letters I notified thy bishop, the holy man Ambrose, of my former errors and my present resolution. And I asked his advice as to which of thy books it was best for me to read so that I might be the more ready and fit for the reception of so great a grace. He recommended Isaiah the prophet; and I believe it was because Isaiah foreshows more clearly than others the gospel, and the calling of the Gentiles. But because I could not understand the first part and because I imagined the rest to be like it, I laid it aside with the intention of taking it up again later, when better practiced in our Lord’s words.
CHAPTER VI
14. When the time arrived for me to give in my name, we
left the country and returned to Milan. Alypius also resolved to be
born again in thee at the same time. He was already clothed with the
humility that befits thy sacraments, and was so brave a tamer of his
body that he would walk the frozen Italian soil with his naked feet,
which called for unusual fortitude. We took with us the boy Adeodatus,
my son after the flesh, the offspring of my sin. Thou hadst made of him
a noble lad. He was barely fifteen years old, but his intelligence
excelled that of many grave and learned men. I confess to thee thy
gifts, O Lord my God, creator of all, who hast power to reform our
deformities--for there was nothing of me in that boy but the sin. For
it was thou who didst inspire us to foster him in thy discipline, and
none other--thy gifts I confess to thee. There is a book of mine,
entitled De Magistro. Concerning the
Teacher; cf. Vol. VI of this series, pp. 64-101.
Nor did I ever have enough in those days of the wondrous sweetness of meditating on the depth of thy counsels concerning the salvation of the human race. How freely did I weep in thy hymns and canticles; how deeply was I moved by the voices of thy sweet-speaking Church! The voices flowed into my ears; and the truth was poured forth into my heart, where the tide of my devotion overflowed, and my tears ran down, and I was happy in all these things.
CHAPTER VII
15. The church of Milan had only recently begun to employ this mode of consolation and exaltation with all the brethren singing together with great earnestness of voice and heart. For it was only about a year--not much more--since Justina, the mother of the boy-emperor Valentinian, had persecuted thy servant Ambrose on behalf of her heresy, in which she had been seduced by the Arians. The devoted people kept guard in the church, prepared to die with their bishop, thy servant. Among them my mother, thy handmaid, taking a leading part in those anxieties and vigils, lived there in prayer. And even though we were still not wholly melted by the heat of thy Spirit, we were nevertheless excited by the alarmed and disturbed city.
This was the time that the custom began, after the
manner of the Eastern Church, that hymns and psalms should be sung, so
that the people would not be worn out with the tedium of lamentation.
This custom, retained from then till now, has been imitated by many,
indeed, by almost all thy congregations throughout the rest of the
world. This was apparently the
first introduction into the West of antiphonal chanting, which was
already widespread in the East. Ambrose brought it in; Gregory brought
it to perfection.
16. Then by a vision thou madest known to thy renowned bishop the spot where lay the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, the martyrs, whom thou hadst preserved uncorrupted for so many years in thy secret storehouse, so that thou mightest produce them at a fit time to check a woman’s fury--a woman indeed, but also a queen! When they were discovered and dug up and brought with due honor to the basilica of Ambrose, as they were borne along the road many who were troubled by unclean spirits--the devils confessing themselves--were healed. And there was also a certain man, a well-known citizen of the city, blind many years, who, when he had asked and learned the reason for the people’s tumultuous joy, rushed out and begged his guide to lead him to the place. When he arrived there, he begged to be permitted to touch with his handkerchief the bier of thy saints, whose death is precious in thy sight. When he had done this, and put it to his eyes, they were immediately opened. The fame of all this spread abroad; from this thy glory shone more brightly. And also from this the mind of that angry woman, though not enlarged to the sanity of a full faith, was nevertheless restrained from the fury of persecution.
Thanks to thee, O my God. Whence and whither hast thou
led my memory, that I should confess such things as these to thee--for
great as they were, I had forgetfully passed them over? And yet at that
time, when the sweet savor of thy ointment was so fragrant, I did not
run after thee. Cf. S. of Sol. 1:3,
4. Cf.
CHAPTER VIII
17. Thou, O Lord, who makest men of one mind to dwell in a single house, also broughtest Evodius to join our company. He was a young man of our city, who, while serving as a secret service agent, was converted to thee and baptized before us. He had relinquished his secular service, and prepared himself for thine. We were together, and we were resolved to live together in our devout purpose.
We cast about for some place where we might be most useful in our service to thee, and had planned on going back together to Africa. And when we had got as far as Ostia on the Tiber, my mother died.
I am passing over many things, for I must hasten. Receive, O my God, my confessions and thanksgiving for the unnumbered things about which I am silent. But I will not omit anything my mind has brought back concerning thy handmaid who brought me forth--in her flesh, that I might be born into this world’s light, and in her heart, that I might be born to life eternal. I will not speak of her gifts, but of thy gift in her; for she neither made herself nor trained herself. Thou didst create her, and neither her father nor her mother knew what kind of being was to come forth from them. And it was the rod of thy Christ, the discipline of thy only Son, that trained her in thy fear, in the house of one of thy faithful ones who was a sound member of thy Church. Yet my mother did not attribute this good training of hers as much to the diligence of her own mother as to that of a certain elderly maidservant who had nursed her father, carrying him around on her back, as big girls carried babies. Because of her long-time service and also because of her extreme age and excellent character, she was much respected by the heads of that Christian household. The care of her master’s daughters was also committed to her, and she performed her task with diligence. She was quite earnest in restraining them with a holy severity when necessary and instructing them with a sober sagacity. Thus, except at mealtimes at their parents’ table--when they were fed very temperately--she would not allow them to drink even water, however parched they were with thirst. In this way she took precautions against an evil custom and added the wholesome advice: “You drink water now only because you don’t control the wine; but when you are married and mistresses of pantry and cellar, you may not care for water, but the habit of drinking will be fixed.” By such a method of instruction, and her authority, she restrained the longing of their tender age, and regulated even the thirst of the girls to such a decorous control that they no longer wanted what they ought not to have.
18. And yet, as thy handmaid related to me, her son,
there had stolen upon her a love of wine. For, in the ordinary course
of things, when her parents sent her as a sober maiden to draw wine
from the cask, she would hold a cup under the tap; and then, before she
poured the wine into the bottle, she would wet the tips of her lips
with a little of it, for more than this her taste refused. She did not
do this out of any craving for drink, but out of the overflowing
buoyancy of her time of life, which bubbles up with sportiveness and
youthful spirits, but is usually borne down by the gravity of the old
folks. And so, adding daily a little to that little--for “he that
contemns small things shall fall by a little here and a little
there”
Where now was that wise old woman and her strict prohibition? Could anything prevail against our secret disease if thy medicine, O Lord, did not watch over us? Though father and mother and nurturers are absent, thou art present, who dost create, who callest, and who also workest some good for our salvation, through those who are set over us. What didst thou do at that time, O my God? How didst thou heal her? How didst thou make her whole? Didst thou not bring forth from another woman’s soul a hard and bitter insult, like a surgeon’s knife from thy secret store, and with one thrust drain off all that putrefaction? For the slave girl who used to accompany her to the cellar fell to quarreling with her little mistress, as it sometimes happened when she was alone with her, and cast in her teeth this vice of hers, along with a very bitter insult: calling her “a drunkard.” Stung by this taunt, my mother saw her own vileness and immediately condemned and renounced it.
As the flattery of friends corrupts, so often do the taunts of enemies instruct. Yet thou repayest them, not for the good thou workest through their means, but for the malice they intended. That angry slave girl wanted to infuriate her young mistress, not to cure her; and that is why she spoke up when they were alone. Or perhaps it was because their quarrel just happened to break out at that time and place; or perhaps she was afraid of punishment for having told of it so late.
But thou, O Lord, ruler of heaven and earth, who changest to thy purposes the deepest floods and controls the turbulent tide of the ages, thou healest one soul by the unsoundness of another; so that no man, when he hears of such a happening, should attribute it to his own power if another person whom he wishes to reform is reformed through a word of his.
CHAPTER IX
19. Thus modestly and soberly brought up, she was made subject to her parents by thee, rather more than by her parents to thee. She arrived at a marriageable age, and she was given to a husband whom she served as her lord. And she busied herself to gain him to thee, preaching thee to him by her behavior, in which thou madest her fair and reverently amiable, and admirable to her husband. For she endured with patience his infidelity and never had any dissension with her husband on this account. For she waited for thy mercy upon him until, by believing in thee, he might become chaste.
Moreover, even though he was earnest in friendship, he was also violent in anger; but she had learned that an angry husband should not be resisted, either in deed or in word. But as soon as he had grown calm and was tranquil, and she saw a fitting moment, she would give him a reason for her conduct, if he had been excited unreasonably. As a result, while many matrons whose husbands were more gentle than hers bore the marks of blows on their disfigured faces, and would in private talk blame the behavior of their husbands, she would blame their tongues, admonishing them seriously--though in a jesting manner--that from the hour they heard what are called the matrimonial tablets read to them, they should think of them as instruments by which they were made servants. So, always being mindful of their condition, they ought not to set themselves up in opposition to their lords. And, knowing what a furious, bad-tempered husband she endured, they marveled that it had never been rumored, nor was there any mark to show, that Patricius had ever beaten his wife, or that there had been any domestic strife between them, even for a day. And when they asked her confidentially the reason for this, she taught them the rule I have mentioned. Those who observed it confirmed the wisdom of it and rejoiced; those who did not observe it were bullied and vexed.
20. Even her mother-in-law, who was at first prejudiced against her by the whisperings of malicious servants, she conquered by submission, persevering in it with patience and meekness; with the result that the mother-in-law told her son of the tales of the meddling servants which had disturbed the domestic peace between herself and her daughter-in-law and begged him to punish them for it. In conformity with his mother’s wish, and in the interest of family discipline to insure the future harmony of its members, he had those servants beaten who were pointed out by her who had discovered them; and she promised a similar reward to anyone else who, thinking to please her, should say anything evil of her daughter-in-law. After this no one dared to do so, and they lived together with a wonderful sweetness of mutual good will.
21. This other great gift thou also didst bestow, O my God, my Mercy, upon that good handmaid of thine, in whose womb thou didst create me. It was that whenever she could she acted as a peacemaker between any differing and discordant spirits, and when she heard very bitter things on either side of a controversy--the kind of bloated and undigested discord which often belches forth bitter words, when crude malice is breathed out by sharp tongues to a present friend against an absent enemy--she would disclose nothing about the one to the other except what might serve toward their reconciliation. This might seem a small good to me if I did not know to my sorrow countless persons who, through the horrid and far-spreading infection of sin, not only repeat to enemies mutually enraged things said in passion against each other, but also add some things that were never said at all. It ought not to be enough in a truly humane man merely not to incite or increase the enmities of men by evil-speaking; he ought likewise to endeavor by kind words to extinguish them. Such a one was she--and thou, her most intimate instructor, didst teach her in the school of her heart.
22. Finally, her own husband, now toward the end of his
earthly existence, she won over to thee. Henceforth, she had no cause
to complain of unfaithfulness in him, which she had endured before he
became one of the faithful. She was also the servant of thy servants.
All those who knew her greatly praised, honored, and loved thee in her
because, through the witness of the fruits of a holy life, they
recognized thee present in her heart. For she had “been the wife
of one man,”
CHAPTER X
23. As the day now approached on which she was to depart this life--a day which thou knewest, but which we did not--it happened (though I believe it was by thy secret ways arranged) that she and I stood alone, leaning in a certain window from which the garden of the house we occupied at Ostia could be seen. Here in this place, removed from the crowd, we were resting ourselves for the voyage after the fatigues of a long journey.
We were conversing alone very pleasantly and
“forgetting those things which are past, and reaching forward
toward those things which are future.” Cf.
24. And when our conversation had brought us to the
point where the very highest of physical sense and the most intense
illumination of physical light seemed, in comparison with the sweetness
of that life to come, not worthy of comparison, nor even of mention, we
lifted ourselves with a more ardent love toward the Selfsame, Idipsum.
And we came at last to our own minds and went beyond them, that we might climb as high as that region of unfailing plenty where thou feedest Israel forever with the food of truth, where life is that Wisdom by whom all things are made, both which have been and which are to be. Wisdom is not made, but is as she has been and forever shall be; for “to have been” and “to be hereafter” do not apply to her, but only “to be,” because she is eternal and “to have been” and “to be hereafter” are not eternal.
And while we were thus speaking and straining after
her, we just barely touched her with the whole effort of our hearts.
Then with a sigh, leaving the first fruits of the Spirit bound to that
ecstasy, we returned to the sounds of our own tongue, where the spoken
word had both beginning and end. Cf. this report of a
"Christian ecstasy" with the Plotinian ecstasy recounted in Bk. VII,
Ch. XVII, 23, above. Cf.
25. What we said went something like this: “If to
any man the tumult of the flesh were silenced; and the phantoms of
earth and waters and air were silenced; and the poles were silent as
well; indeed, if the very soul grew silent to herself, and went beyond
herself by not thinking of herself; if fancies and imaginary
revelations were silenced; if every tongue and every sign and every
transient thing--for actually if any man could hear them, all these
would say, ‘We did not create ourselves, but were created by Him
who abides forever’--and if, having uttered this, they too should
be silent, having stirred our ears to hear him who created them; and if
then he alone spoke, not through them but by himself, that we might
hear his word, not in fleshly tongue or angelic voice, nor sound of
thunder, nor the obscurity of a parable, but might hear him--him for
whose sake we love these things--if we could hear him without these, as
we two now strained ourselves to do, we then with rapid thought might
touch on that Eternal Wisdom which abides over all. And if this could
be sustained, and other visions of a far different kind be taken away,
and this one should so ravish and absorb and envelop its beholder in
these inward joys that his life might be eternally like that one moment
of knowledge which we now sighed after--would not this be the
reality of the saying, ‘Enter into the joy of thy
Lord’
26. Such a thought I was expressing, and if not in this manner and in these words, still, O Lord, thou knowest that on that day we were talking thus and that this world, with all its joys, seemed cheap to us even as we spoke. Then my mother said: “Son, for myself I have no longer any pleasure in anything in this life. Now that my hopes in this world are satisfied, I do not know what more I want here or why I am here. There was indeed one thing for which I wished to tarry a little in this life, and that was that I might see you a Catholic Christian before I died. My God hath answered this more than abundantly, so that I see you now made his servant and spurning all earthly happiness. What more am I to do here?”
CHAPTER XI
27. I do not well remember what reply I made to her
about this. However, it was scarcely five days later--certainly not
much more--that she was prostrated by fever. While she was sick, she
fainted one day and was for a short time quite unconscious. We hurried
to her, and when she soon regained her senses, she looked at me and my
brother Navigius, who had joined
them in Milan, but about whom Augustine is curiously silent save for
the brief and unrevealing references in De beata vita, I, 6, to
II, 7, and De ordine, I, 2-3.
28. But as I thought about thy gifts, O invisible God, which thou plantest in the heart of thy faithful ones, from which such marvelous fruits spring up, I rejoiced and gave thanks to thee, remembering what I had known of how she had always been much concerned about her burial place, which she had provided and prepared for herself by the body of her husband. For as they had lived very peacefully together, her desire had always been--so little is the human mind capable of grasping things divine--that this last should be added to all that happiness, and commented on by others: that, after her pilgrimage beyond the sea, it would be granted her that the two of them, so united on earth, should lie in the same grave.
When this vanity, through the bounty of thy goodness,
had begun to be no longer in her heart, I do not know; but I joyfully
marveled at what she had thus disclosed to me--though indeed in our
conversation in the window, when she said, “What is there here
for me to do any more?” she appeared not to desire to die in her
own country. I heard later on that, during our stay in Ostia, she had
been talking in maternal confidence to some of my friends about her
contempt of this life and the blessing of death. When they were amazed
at the courage which was given her, a woman, and had asked her whether
she did not dread having her body buried so far from her own city, she
replied: “Nothing is far from God. I do not fear that, at the end
of time, he should not know the place whence he is to resurrect
me.” And so on the ninth day of her sickness, in the fifty-sixth
year of her life and the thirty-third of mine, A.D. 387.
CHAPTER XII
29. I closed her eyes; and there flowed in a great
sadness on my heart and it was passing into tears, when at the strong
behest of my mind my eyes sucked back the fountain dry, and sorrow was
in me like a convulsion. As soon as she breathed her last, the boy
Adeodatus burst out wailing; but he was checked by us all, and became
quiet. Likewise, my own childish feeling which was, through the
youthful voice of my heart, seeking escape in tears, was held back and
silenced. For we did not consider it fitting to celebrate that death
with tearful wails and groanings. This is the way those who die unhappy
or are altogether dead are usually mourned. But she neither died
unhappy nor did she altogether die. Nec omnino
moriebatur. Is this an echo of Horace's famous memorial ode,
Exegi monumentum aere perennius . . . non omnis moriar? Cf.
Odes, Book III, Ode XXX.
30. What was it, then, that hurt me so grievously in my
heart except the newly made wound, caused from having the sweet and
dear habit of living together with her suddenly broken? I was full of
joy because of her testimony in her last illness, when she praised my
dutiful attention and called me kind, and recalled with great affection
of love that she had never heard any harsh or reproachful sound from my
mouth against her. But yet, O my God who made us, how can that honor I
paid her be compared with her service to me? I was then left destitute
of a great comfort in her, and my soul was stricken; and that life was
torn apart, as it were, which had been made but one out of hers and
mine together. Cf. this passage, as
Augustine doubtless intended, with the story of his morbid and
immoderate grief at the death of his boyhood friend, above, Bk. IV,
Chs. IV, 9, to VII, 12.
31. When the boy was restrained from weeping, Evodius
took up the Psalter and began to sing, with the whole household
responding, the psalm, “I will sing of mercy and judgment unto
thee, O Lord.”
32. So, when the body was carried forth, we both went
and returned without tears. For neither in those prayers which we
poured forth to thee, when the sacrifice of our redemption was offered
up to thee for her--with the body placed by the side of the grave as
the custom is there, before it is lowered down into it--neither in
those prayers did I weep. But I was most grievously sad in secret all
the day, and with a troubled mind entreated thee, as I could, to heal
my sorrow; but thou didst not. I now believe that thou wast fixing in
my memory, by this one lesson, the power of the bonds of all habit,
even on a mind which now no longer feeds upon deception. It then
occurred to me that it would be a good thing to go and bathe, for I had
heard that the word for bath [balneum] took its name from the
Greek balaneion [βαλανειον],
because it washes anxiety from the mind. Now see, this also I confess
to thy mercy, “O Father of the fatherless”
Then I slept, and when I awoke I found my grief not a little assuaged. And as I lay there on my bed, those true verses of Ambrose came to my mind, for thou art truly,
Sir Tobie Matthew (adapted). For Augustine's own analysis of the scansion and structure of this hymn, see De musica, VI, 2:2-3; for a brief commentary on the Latin text, see A. S. Walpole, Early Latin Hymns (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 44-49.
33. And then, little by little, there came back to me my former memories of thy handmaid: her devout life toward thee, her holy tenderness and attentiveness toward us, which had suddenly been taken away from me--and it was a solace for me to weep in thy sight, for her and for myself, about her and about myself. Thus I set free the tears which before I repressed, that they might flow at will, spreading them out as a pillow beneath my heart. And it rested on them, for thy ears were near me--not those of a man, who would have made a scornful comment about my weeping. But now in writing I confess it to thee, O Lord! Read it who will, and comment how he will, and if he finds me to have sinned in weeping for my mother for part of an hour--that mother who was for a while dead to my eyes, who had for many years wept for me that I might live in thy eyes--let him not laugh at me; but if he be a man of generous love, let him weep for my sins against thee, the Father of all the brethren of thy Christ.
CHAPTER XIII
34. Now that my heart is healed of that wound--so far
as it can be charged against me as a carnal affection--I pour out to
thee, O our God, on behalf of thy handmaid, tears of a very different
sort: those which flow from a spirit broken by the thoughts of the
dangers of every soul that dies in Adam. And while she had been
“made alive” in Christ
35. Thus now, O my Praise and my Life, O God of my
heart, forgetting for a little her good deeds for which I give joyful
thanks to thee, I now beseech thee for the sins of my mother. Hearken
unto me, through that Medicine of our wounds, who didst hang upon the
tree and who sittest at thy right hand “making intercession for
us.” Cf. Cf.
36. Indeed, I believe thou hast already done what I ask
of thee, but “accept the freewill offerings of my mouth, O
Lord.”
Who will restore to him the innocent blood? Who will repay him the price with which he bought us, so as to take us from him? Thus to the sacrament of our redemption did thy hand maid bind her soul by the bond of faith. Let none separate her from thy protection. Let not the “lion” and “dragon” bar her way by force or fraud. For she will not reply that she owes nothing, lest she be convicted and duped by that cunning deceiver. Rather, she will answer that her sins are forgiven by Him to whom no one is able to repay the price which he, who owed us nothing, laid down for us all.
37. Therefore, let her rest in peace with her husband, before and after whom she was married to no other man; whom she obeyed with patience, bringing fruit to thee that she might also win him for thee. And inspire, O my Lord my God, inspire thy servants, my brothers; thy sons, my masters, who with voice and heart and writings I serve, that as many of them as shall read these confessions may also at thy altar remember Monica, thy handmaid, together with Patricius, once her husband; by whose flesh thou didst bring me into this life, in a manner I know not. May they with pious affection remember my parents in this transitory life, and remember my brothers under thee our Father in our Catholic mother; and remember my fellow citizens in the eternal Jerusalem, for which thy people sigh in their pilgrimage from birth until their return. So be fulfilled what my mother desired of me--more richly in the prayers of so many gained for her through these confessions of mine than by my prayers alone.
BOOK TEN
From autobiography to self-analysis. Augustine turns from his memories of the past to the inner mysteries of memory itself. In doing so, he reviews his motives for these written “confessions,” and seeks to chart the path by which men come to God. But this brings him into the intricate analysis of memory and its relation to the self and its powers. This done, he explores the meaning and mode of true prayer. In conclusion, he undertakes a detailed analysis of appetite and the temptations to which the flesh and the soul are heirs, and comes finally to see how necessary and right it was for the Mediator between God and man to have been the God-Man.
CHAPTER I
1. Let me know thee, O my Knower; let me know thee even
as I am known. Cf.
CHAPTER II
2. And what is there in me that could be hidden from thee, Lord, to whose eyes the abysses of man’s conscience are naked, even if I were unwilling to confess it to thee? In doing so I would only hide thee from myself, not myself from thee. But now that my groaning is witness to the fact that I am dissatisfied with myself, thou shinest forth and satisfiest. Thou art beloved and desired; so that I blush for myself, and renounce myself and choose thee, for I can neither please thee nor myself except in thee. To thee, then, O Lord, I am laid bare, whatever I am, and I have already said with what profit I may confess to thee. I do not do it with words and sounds of the flesh but with the words of the soul, and with the sound of my thoughts, which thy ear knows. For when I am wicked, to confess to thee means nothing less than to be dissatisfied with myself; but when I am truly devout, it means nothing less than not to attribute my virtue to myself; because thou, O Lord, blessest the righteous, but first thou justifiest him while he is yet ungodly. My confession therefore, O my God, is made unto thee silently in thy sight--and yet not silently. As far as sound is concerned, it is silent. But in strong affection it cries aloud. For neither do I give voice to something that sounds right to men, which thou hast not heard from me before, nor dost thou hear anything of the kind from me which thou didst not first say to me.
CHAPTER III
3. What is it to me that men should hear my confessions
as if it were they who were going to cure all my infirmities? People
are curious to know the lives of others, but slow to correct their own.
Why are they anxious to hear from me what I am, when they are unwilling
to hear from thee what they are? And how can they tell when they hear
what I say about myself whether I speak the truth, since no man knows
what is in a man “save the spirit of man which is in
him”
4. But wilt thou, O my inner Physician, make clear to
me what profit I am to gain in doing this? For the confessions of my
past sins (which thou hast “forgiven and covered”
CHAPTER IV
5. But for what profit do they desire this? Will they
wish me happiness when they learn how near I have approached thee, by
thy gifts? And will they pray for me when they learn how much I am
still kept back by my own weight? To such as these I will declare
myself. For it is no small profit, O Lord my God, that many people
should give thanks to thee on my account and that many should entreat
thee for my sake. Let the brotherly soul love in me what thou teachest
him should be loved, and let him lament in me what thou teachest him
should be lamented. Let it be the soul of a brother that does this, and
not a stranger--not one of those “strange children, whose mouth
speaks vanity, and whose right hand is the right hand of
falsehood.” Cf.
6. This, then, is the fruit of my confessions (not of what I was, but of what I am), that I may not confess this before thee alone, in a secret exultation with trembling and a secret sorrow with hope, but also in the ears of the believing sons of men--who are the companions of my joy and sharers of my mortality, my fellow citizens and fellow pilgrims--those who have gone before and those who are to follow after, as well as the comrades of my present way. These are thy servants, my brothers, whom thou desirest to be thy sons. They are my masters, whom thou hast commanded me to serve if I desire to live with and in thee. But this thy Word would mean little to me if it commanded in words alone, without thy prevenient action. I do this, then, both in act and word. I do this under thy wings, in a danger too great to risk if it were not that under thy wings my soul is subject to thee, and my weakness known to thee. I am insufficient, but my Father liveth forever, and my Defender is sufficient for me. For he is the Selfsame who didst beget me and who watcheth over me; thou art the Selfsame who art all my good. Thou art the Omnipotent, who art with me, even before I am with thee. To those, therefore, whom thou commandest me to serve, I will declare, not what I was, but what I now am and what I will continue to be. But I do not judge myself. Thus, therefore, let me be heard.
CHAPTER V
7. For it is thou, O Lord, who judgest me. For although
no man “knows the things of a man, save the spirit of the man
which is in him,”
CHAPTER VI
8. It is not with a doubtful consciousness, but one
fully certain that I love thee, O Lord. Thou hast smitten my heart with
thy Word, and I have loved thee. And see also the heaven, and earth,
and all that is in them--on every side they tell me to love thee, and
they do not cease to tell this to all men, “so that they are
without excuse.” Cf.
But what is it that I love in loving thee? Not physical beauty, nor the splendor of time, nor the radiance of the light--so pleasant to our eyes--nor the sweet melodies of the various kinds of songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers and ointments and spices; not manna and honey, not the limbs embraced in physical love--it is not these I love when I love my God. Yet it is true that I love a certain kind of light and sound and fragrance and food and embrace in loving my God, who is the light and sound and fragrance and food and embracement of my inner man--where that light shines into my soul which no place can contain, where time does not snatch away the lovely sound, where no breeze disperses the sweet fragrance, where no eating diminishes the food there provided, and where there is an embrace that no satiety comes to sunder. This is what I love when I love my God.
9. And what is this God? I asked the earth, and it
answered, “I am not he”; and everything in the earth made
the same confession. I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping
things, and they replied, “We are not your God; seek above
us.” I asked the fleeting winds, and the whole air with its
inhabitants answered, “Anaximenes One of the pre-Socratic
"physiologers" who taught that αιθηρ was the primary element
in η
φυσιγζ. Cf. Cicero's On the
Nature of the Gods (a likely source for Augustine's knowledge of
early Greek philosophy), I, 10: "After Anaximander comes Anaximenes,
who taught that the air is God. . . ." An important text for
Augustine's conception of sensation and the relation of body and mind.
Cf. On Music, VI, 5:10; The Magnitude of the Soul, 25:48;
On the Trinity, XII, 2:2; see also F. Coplestone, A History
of Philosophy (London, 1950), II, 51-60, and E. Gilson,
Introduction à l'étude de Saint Augustin, pp.
74-87.
10. Is not this beauty of form visible to all whose
senses are unimpaired? Why, then, does it not say the same things to
all? Animals, both small and great, see it but they are unable to
interrogate its meaning, because their senses are not endowed with the
reason that would enable them to judge the evidence which the senses
report. But man can interrogate it, so that “the invisible things
of him . . . are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made.” Reading videnti
(with De Labriolle) instead of vident (as in Skutella).
CHAPTER VII
11. What is it, then, that I love when I love my God?
Who is he that is beyond the topmost point of my soul? Yet by this very
soul will I mount up to him. I will soar beyond that power of mine by
which I am united to the body, and by which the whole structure of it
is filled with life. Yet it is not by that vital power that I find my
God. For then “the horse and the mule, that have no
understanding,”
CHAPTER VIII
12. I will soar, then, beyond this power of my nature also, still rising by degrees toward him who made me. And I enter the fields and spacious halls of memory, where are stored as treasures the countless images that have been brought into them from all manner of things by the senses. There, in the memory, is likewise stored what we cogitate, either by enlarging or reducing our perceptions, or by altering one way or another those things which the senses have made contact with; and everything else that has been entrusted to it and stored up in it, which oblivion has not yet swallowed up and buried.
When I go into this storehouse, I ask that what I want should be brought forth. Some things appear immediately, but others require to be searched for longer, and then dragged out, as it were, from some hidden recess. Other things hurry forth in crowds, on the other hand, and while something else is sought and inquired for, they leap into view as if to say, “Is it not we, perhaps?” These I brush away with the hand of my heart from the face of my memory, until finally the thing I want makes its appearance out of its secret cell. Some things suggest themselves without effort, and in continuous order, just as they are called for--the things that come first give place to those that follow, and in so doing are treasured up again to be forthcoming when I want them. All of this happens when I repeat a thing from memory.
13. All these things, each one of which came into memory in its own particular way, are stored up separately and under the general categories of understanding. For example, light and all colors and forms of bodies came in through the eyes; sounds of all kinds by the ears; all smells by the passages of the nostrils; all flavors by the gate of the mouth; by the sensation of the whole body, there is brought in what is hard or soft, hot or cold, smooth or rough, heavy or light, whether external or internal to the body. The vast cave of memory, with its numerous and mysterious recesses, receives all these things and stores them up, to be recalled and brought forth when required. Each experience enters by its own door, and is stored up in the memory. And yet the things themselves do not enter it, but only the images of the things perceived are there for thought to remember. And who can tell how these images are formed, even if it is evident which of the senses brought which perception in and stored it up? For even when I am in darkness and silence I can bring out colors in my memory if I wish, and discern between black and white and the other shades as I wish; and at the same time, sounds do not break in and disturb what is drawn in by my eyes, and which I am considering, because the sounds which are also there are stored up, as it were, apart. And these too I can summon if I please and they are immediately present in memory. And though my tongue is at rest and my throat silent, yet I can sing as I will; and those images of color, which are as truly present as before, do not interpose themselves or interrupt while another treasure which had flowed in through the ears is being thought about. Similarly all the other things that were brought in and heaped up by all the other senses, I can recall at my pleasure. And I distinguish the scent of lilies from that of violets while actually smelling nothing; and I prefer honey to mead, a smooth thing to a rough, even though I am neither tasting nor handling them, but only remembering them.
14. All this I do within myself, in that huge hall of
my memory. For in it, heaven, earth, and sea are present to me, and
whatever I can cogitate about them--except what I have forgotten. There
also I meet myself and recall myself The notion of the soul's
immediate self-knowledge is a basic conception in Augustine's
psychology and epistemology; cf. the refutation of skepticism, Si
fallor, sum in On Free Will, II, 3:7; see also the
City of God, XI, 26.
15. Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, O my God--a large and boundless inner hall! Who has plumbed the depths of it? Yet it is a power of my mind, and it belongs to my nature. But I do not myself grasp all that I am. Thus the mind is far too narrow to contain itself. But where can that part of it be which it does not contain? Is it outside and not in itself? How can it be, then, that the mind cannot grasp itself? A great marvel rises in me; astonishment seizes me. Men go forth to marvel at the heights of mountains and the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the orbits of the stars, and yet they neglect to marvel at themselves. Nor do they wonder how it is that, when I spoke of all these things, I was not looking at them with my eyes--and yet I could not have spoken about them had it not been that I was actually seeing within, in my memory, those mountains and waves and rivers and stars which I have seen, and that ocean which I believe in--and with the same vast spaces between them as when I saw them outside me. But when I saw them outside me, I did not take them into me by seeing them; and the things themselves are not inside me, but only their images. And yet I knew through which physical sense each experience had made an impression on me.
CHAPTER IX
16. And yet this is not all that the unlimited capacity of my memory stores up. In memory, there are also all that one has learned of the liberal sciences, and has not forgotten--removed still further, so to say, into an inner place which is not a place. Of these things it is not the images that are retained, but the things themselves. For what literature and logic are, and what I know about how many different kinds of questions there are--all these are stored in my memory as they are, so that I have not taken in the image and left the thing outside. It is not as though a sound had sounded and passed away like a voice heard by the ear which leaves a trace by which it can be called into memory again, as if it were still sounding in mind while it did so no longer outside. Nor is it the same as an odor which, even after it has passed and vanished into the wind, affects the sense of smell--which then conveys into the memory the image of the smell which is what we recall and re-create; or like food which, once in the belly, surely now has no taste and yet does have a kind of taste in the memory; or like anything that is felt by the body through the sense of touch, which still remains as an image in the memory after the external object is removed. For these things themselves are not put into the memory. Only the images of them are gathered with a marvelous quickness and stored, as it were, in the most wonderful filing system, and are thence produced in a marvelous way by the act of remembering.
CHAPTER X
17. But now when I hear that there are three kinds of questions--“Whether a thing is? What it is? Of what kind it is?”--I do indeed retain the images of the sounds of which these words are composed and I know that those sounds pass through the air with a noise and now no longer exist. But the things themselves which were signified by those sounds I never could reach by any sense of the body nor see them at all except by my mind. And what I have stored in my memory was not their signs, but the things signified.
How they got into me, let them tell who can. For I examine all the gates of my flesh, but I cannot find the door by which any of them entered. For the eyes say, “If they were colored, we reported that.” The ears say, “If they gave any sound, we gave notice of that.” The nostrils say, “If they smell, they passed in by us.” The sense of taste says, “If they have no flavor, don’t ask me about them.” The sense of touch says, “If it had no bodily mass, I did not touch it, and if I never touched it, I gave no report about it.”
Whence and how did these things enter into my memory? I do not know. For when I first learned them, it was not that I believed them on the credit of another man’s mind, but I recognized them in my own; and I saw them as true, took them into my mind and laid them up, so to say, where I could get at them again whenever I willed. There they were, then, even before I learned them, but they were not in my memory. Where were they, then? How does it come about that when they were spoken of, I could acknowledge them and say, “So it is, it is true,” unless they were already in the memory, though far back and hidden, as it were, in the more secret caves, so that unless they had been drawn out by the teaching of another person, I should perhaps never have been able to think of them at all?
CHAPTER XI
18. Thus we find that learning those things whose images we do not take in by our senses, but which we intuit within ourselves without images and as they actually are, is nothing else except the gathering together of those same things which the memory already contains--but in an indiscriminate and confused manner--and putting them together by careful observation as they are at hand in the memory; so that whereas they formerly lay hidden, scattered, or neglected, they now come easily to present themselves to the mind which is now familiar with them. And how many things of this sort my memory has stored up, which have already been discovered and, as I said, laid up for ready reference. These are the things we may be said to have learned and to know. Yet, if I cease to recall them even for short intervals of time, they are again so submerged--and slide back, as it were, into the further reaches of the memory--that they must be drawn out again as if new from the same place (for there is nowhere else for them to have gone) and must be collected [cogenda] so that they can become known. In other words, they must be gathered up [colligenda] from their dispersion. This is where we get the word cogitate [cogitare]. For cogo [collect] and cogito [to go on collecting] have the same relation to each other as ago [do] and agito [do frequently], and facio [make] and factito [make frequently]. But the mind has properly laid claim to this word [cogitate] so that not everything that is gathered together anywhere, but only what is collected and gathered together in the mind, is properly said to be “cogitated.”
CHAPTER XII
19. The memory also contains the principles and the unnumbered laws of numbers and dimensions. None of these has been impressed on the memory by a physical sense, because they have neither color nor sound, nor taste, nor sense of touch. I have heard the sound of the words by which these things are signified when they are discussed: but the sounds are one thing, the things another. For the sounds are one thing in Greek, another in Latin; but the things themselves are neither Greek nor Latin nor any other language. I have seen the lines of the craftsmen, the finest of which are like a spider’s web, but mathematical lines are different. They are not the images of such things as the eye of my body has showed me. The man who knows them does so without any cogitation of physical objects whatever, but intuits them within himself. I have perceived with all the senses of my body the numbers we use in counting; but the numbers by which we count are far different from these. They are not the images of these; they simply are. Let the man who does not see these things mock me for saying them; and I will pity him while he laughs at me.
CHAPTER XIII
20. All these things I hold in my memory, and I remember how I learned them. I also remember many things that I have heard quite falsely urged against them, which, even if they are false, yet it is not false that I have remembered them. And I also remember that I have distinguished between the truths and the false objections, and now I see that it is one thing to distinguish these things and another to remember that I did distinguish them when I have cogitated on them. I remember, then, both that I have often understood these things and also that I am now storing away in my memory what I distinguish and comprehend of them so that later on I may remember just as I understand them now. Therefore, I remember that I remembered, so that if afterward I call to mind that I once was able to remember these things it will be through the power of memory that I recall it.
CHAPTER XIV
21. This same memory also contains the feelings of my mind; not in the manner in which the mind itself experienced them, but very differently according to a power peculiar to memory. For without being joyous now, I can remember that I once was joyous, and without being sad, I can recall my past sadness. I can remember past fears without fear, and former desires without desire. Again, the contrary happens. Sometimes when I am joyous I remember my past sadness, and when sad, remember past joy.
This is not to be marveled at as far as the body is
concerned; for the mind is one thing and the body another. Again, the mind-body
dualism typical of the Augustinian tradition. Cf. E. Gilson, The
Spirit of Medieval Philosophy (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York,
1940), pp. 173-188; and E. Gilson, The Philosophy of Saint
Bonaventure (Sheed & Ward, New York, 1938), ch. XI.
Since this is so, how does it happen that when I am joyful I can still remember past sorrow? Thus the mind has joy, and the memory has sorrow; and the mind is joyful from the joy that is in it, yet the memory is not sad from the sadness that is in it. Is it possible that the memory does not belong to the mind? Who will say so? The memory doubtless is, so to say, the belly of the mind: and joy and sadness are like sweet and bitter food, which when they are committed to the memory are, so to say, passed into the belly where they can be stored but no longer tasted. It is ridiculous to consider this an analogy; yet they are not utterly unlike.
22. But look, it is from my memory that I produce it when I say that there are four basic emotions of the mind: desire, joy, fear, sadness. Whatever kind of analysis I may be able to make of these, by dividing each into its particular species, and by defining it, I still find what to say in my memory and it is from my memory that I draw it out. Yet I am not moved by any of these emotions when I call them to mind by remembering them. Moreover, before I recalled them and thought about them, they were there in the memory; and this is how they could be brought forth in remembrance. Perhaps, therefore, just as food is brought up out of the belly by rumination, so also these things are drawn up out of the memory by recall. But why, then, does not the man who is thinking about the emotions, and is thus recalling them, feel in the mouth of his reflection the sweetness of joy or the bitterness of sadness? Is the comparison unlike in this because it is not complete at every point? For who would willingly speak on these subjects, if as often as we used the term sadness or fear, we should thereby be compelled to be sad or fearful? And yet we could never speak of them if we did not find them in our memories, not merely as the sounds of the names, as their images are impressed on it by the physical senses, but also the notions of the things themselves--which we did not receive by any gate of the flesh, but which the mind itself recognizes by the experience of its own passions, and has entrusted to the memory; or else which the memory itself has retained without their being entrusted to it.
CHAPTER XV
23. Now whether all this is by means of images or not, who can rightly affirm? For I name a stone, I name the sun, and those things themselves are not present to my senses, but their images are present in my memory. I name some pain of the body, yet it is not present when there is no pain; yet if there were not some such image of it in my memory, I could not even speak of it, nor should I be able to distinguish it from pleasure. I name bodily health when I am sound in body, and the thing itself is indeed present in me. At the same time, unless there were some image of it in my memory, I could not possibly call to mind what the sound of this name signified. Nor would sick people know what was meant when health was named, unless the same image were preserved by the power of memory, even though the thing itself is absent from the body. I can name the numbers we use in counting, and it is not their images but themselves that are in my memory. I name the image of the sun, and this too is in my memory. For I do not recall the image of that image, but that image itself, for the image itself is present when I remember it. I name memory and I know what I name. But where do I know it, except in the memory itself? Is it also present to itself by its image, and not by itself?
CHAPTER XVI
24. When I name forgetfulness, and understand what I mean by the name, how could I understand it if I did not remember it? And if I refer not to the sound of the name, but to the thing which the term signifies, how could I know what that sound signified if I had forgotten what the name means? When, therefore, I remember memory, then memory is present to itself by itself, but when I remember forgetfulness then both memory and forgetfulness are present together--the memory by which I remember the forgetfulness which I remember. But what is forgetfulness except the privation of memory? How, then, is that present to my memory which, when it controls my mind, I cannot remember? But if what we remember we store up in our memory; and if, unless we remembered forgetfulness, we could never know the thing signified by the term when we heard it--then, forgetfulness is contained in the memory. It is present so that we do not forget it, but since it is present, we do forget.
From this it is to be inferred that when we remember forgetfulness, it is not present to the memory through itself, but through its image; because if forgetfulness were present through itself, it would not lead us to remember, but only to forget. Now who will someday work this out? Who can understand how it is?
25. Truly, O Lord, I toil with this and labor in myself. I have become a troublesome field that requires hard labor and heavy sweat. For we are not now searching out the tracts of heaven, or measuring the distances of the stars or inquiring about the weight of the earth. It is I myself--I, the mind--who remember. This is not much to marvel at, if what I myself am is not far from me. And what is nearer to me than myself? For see, I am not able to comprehend the force of my own memory, though I could not even call my own name without it. But what shall I say, when it is clear to me that I remember forgetfulness? Should I affirm that what I remember is not in my memory? Or should I say that forgetfulness is in my memory to the end that I should not forget? Both of these views are most absurd. But what third view is there? How can I say that the image of forgetfulness is retained by my memory, and not forgetfulness itself, when I remember it? How can I say this, since for the image of anything to be imprinted on the memory the thing itself must necessarily have been present first by which the image could have been imprinted? Thus I remember Carthage; thus, also, I remember all the other places where I have been. And I remember the faces of men whom I have seen and things reported by the other senses. I remember the health or sickness of the body. And when these objects were present, my memory received images from them so that they remain present in order for me to see them and reflect upon them in my mind, if I choose to remember them in their absence. If, therefore, forgetfulness is retained in the memory through its image and not through itself, then this means that it itself was once present, so that its image might have been imprinted. But when it was present, how did it write its image on the memory, since forgetfulness, by its presence, blots out even what it finds already written there? And yet in some way or other, even though it is incomprehensible and inexplicable, I am still quite certain that I also remember forgetfulness, by which we remember that something is blotted out.
CHAPTER XVII
26. Great is the power of memory. It is a true marvel, O my God, a profound and infinite multiplicity! And this is the mind, and this I myself am. What, then, am I, O my God? Of what nature am I? A life various, and manifold, and exceedingly vast. Behold in the numberless halls and caves, in the innumerable fields and dens and caverns of my memory, full without measure of numberless kinds of things--present there either through images as all bodies are; or present in the things themselves as are our thoughts; or by some notion or observation as our emotions are, which the memory retains even though the mind feels them no longer, as long as whatever is in the memory is also in the mind--through all these I run and fly to and fro. I penetrate into them on this side and that as far as I can and yet there is nowhere any end.
So great is the power of memory, so great the power of life in man whose life is mortal! What, then, shall I do, O thou my true life, my God? I will pass even beyond this power of mine that is called memory--I will pass beyond it, that I may come to thee, O lovely Light. And what art thou saying to me? See, I soar by my mind toward thee, who remainest above me. I will also pass beyond this power of mine that is called memory, desiring to reach thee where thou canst be reached, and wishing to cleave to thee where it is possible to cleave to thee. For even beasts and birds possess memory, or else they could never find their lairs and nests again, nor display many other things they know and do by habit. Indeed, they could not even form their habits except by their memories. I will therefore pass even beyond memory that I may reach Him who has differentiated me from the four-footed beasts and the fowls of the air by making me a wiser creature. Thus I will pass beyond memory; but where shall I find thee, who art the true Good and the steadfast Sweetness? But where shall I find thee? If I find thee without memory, then I shall have no memory of thee; and how could I find thee at all, if I do not remember thee?
CHAPTER XVIII
27. For the woman who lost her small coin
CHAPTER XIX
28. But what happens when the memory itself loses something, as when we forget anything and try to recall it? Where, finally, do we search, but in the memory itself? And there, if by chance one thing is offered for another, we refuse it until we meet with what we are looking for; and when we do, we recognize that this is it. But we could not do this unless we recognized it, nor could we have recognized it unless we remembered it. Yet we had indeed forgotten it.
Perhaps the whole of it had not slipped out of our memory; but a part was retained by which the other lost part was sought for, because the memory realized that it was not operating as smoothly as usual and was being held up by the crippling of its habitual working; hence, it demanded the restoration of what was lacking.
For example, if we see or think of some man we know, and, having forgotten his name, try to recall it--if some other thing presents itself, we cannot tie it into the effort to remember, because it was not habitually thought of in association with him. It is consequently rejected, until something comes into the mind on which our knowledge can rightly rest as the familiar and sought-for object. And where does this name come back from, save from the memory itself? For even when we recognize it by another’s reminding us of it, still it is from the memory that this comes, for we do not believe it as something new; but when we recall it, we admit that what was said was correct. But if the name had been entirely blotted out of the mind, we should not be able to recollect it even when reminded of it. For we have not entirely forgotten anything if we can remember that we have forgotten it. For a lost notion, one that we have entirely forgotten, we cannot even search for.
CHAPTER XX
29. How, then, do I seek thee, O Lord? For when I seek
thee, my God, I seek a happy life. I will seek thee that my soul may
live. Cf. Cf. the early dialogue
"On the Happy Life" in Vol. I of The Fathers of the Church (New York,
1948).
There is, indeed, a sense in which when anyone has his desire he is happy. And then there are some who are happy in hope. These are happy in an inferior degree to those that are actually happy; yet they are better off than those who are happy neither in actuality nor in hope. But even these, if they had not known happiness in some degree, would not then desire to be happy. And yet it is most certain that they do so desire. How they come to know happiness, I cannot tell, but they have it by some kind of knowledge unknown to me, for I am very much in doubt as to whether it is in the memory. For if it is in there, then we have been happy once on a time--either each of us individually or all of us in that man who first sinned and in whom also we all died and from whom we are all born in misery. How this is, I do not now ask; but I do ask whether the happy life is in the memory. For if we did not know it, we should not love it. We hear the name of it, and we all acknowledge that we desire the thing, for we are not delighted with the name only. For when a Greek hears it spoken in Latin, he does not feel delighted, for he does not know what has been spoken. But we are as delighted as he would be in turn if he heard it in Greek, because the thing itself is neither Greek nor Latin, this happiness which Greeks and Latins and men of all the other tongues long so earnestly to obtain. It is, then, known to all; and if all could with one voice be asked whether they wished to be happy, there is no doubt they would all answer that they would. And this would not be possible unless the thing itself, which we name “happiness,” were held in the memory.
CHAPTER XXI
30. But is it the same kind of memory as one who having seen Carthage remembers it? No, for the happy life is not visible to the eye, since it is not a physical object. Is it the sort of memory we have for numbers? No, for the man who has these in his understanding does not keep striving to attain more. Now we know something about the happy life and therefore we love it, but still we wish to go on striving for it that we may be happy. Is the memory of happiness, then, something like the memory of eloquence? No, for although some, when they hear the term eloquence, call the thing to mind, even if they are not themselves eloquent--and further, there are many people who would like to be eloquent, from which it follows that they must know something about it--nevertheless, these people have noticed through their senses that others are eloquent and have been delighted to observe this and long to be this way themselves. But they would not be delighted if it were not some interior knowledge; and they would not desire to be delighted unless they had been delighted. But as for a happy life, there is no physical perception by which we experience it in others.
Do we remember happiness, then, as we remember joy? It may be so, for I remember my joy even when I am sad, just as I remember a happy life when I am miserable. And I have never, through physical perception, either seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched my joy. But I have experienced it in my mind when I rejoiced; and the knowledge of it clung to my memory so that I can call it to mind, sometimes with disdain and at other times with longing, depending on the different kinds of things I now remember that I rejoiced in. For I have been bathed with a certain joy even by unclean things, which I now detest and execrate as I call them to mind. At other times, I call to mind with longing good and honest things, which are not any longer near at hand, and I am therefore saddened when I recall my former joy.
31. Where and when did I ever experience my happy life that I can call it to mind and love it and long for it? It is not I alone or even a few others who wish to be happy, but absolutely everybody. Unless we knew happiness by a knowledge that is certain, we should not wish for it with a will which is so certain. Take this example: If two men were asked whether they wished to serve as soldiers, one of them might reply that he would, and the other that he would not; but if they were asked whether they wished to be happy, both of them would unhesitatingly say that they would. But the first one would wish to serve as a soldier and the other would not wish to serve, both from no other motive than to be happy. Is it, perhaps, that one finds his joy in this and another in that? Thus they agree in their wish for happiness just as they would also agree, if asked, in wishing for joy. Is this joy what they call a happy life? Although one could choose his joy in this way and another in that, all have one goal which they strive to attain, namely, to have joy. This joy, then, being something that no one can say he has not experienced, is therefore found in the memory and it is recognized whenever the phrase “a happy life” is heard.
CHAPTER XXII
32. Forbid it, O Lord, put it far from the heart of thy servant, who confesses to thee--far be it from me to think I am happy because of any and all the joy I have. For there is a joy not granted to the wicked but only to those who worship thee thankfully--and this joy thou thyself art. The happy life is this--to rejoice to thee, in thee, and for thee. This it is and there is no other. But those who think there is another follow after other joys, and not the true one. But their will is still not moved except by some image or shadow of joy.
CHAPTER XXIII
33. Is it, then, uncertain that all men wish to be
happy, since those who do not wish to find their joy in thee--which is
alone the happy life--do not actually desire the happy life? Or, is it
rather that all desire this, but because “the flesh lusts against
the spirit and the spirit against the flesh,” so that they
“prevent you from doing what you would,”
Now I ask all men whether they would rather rejoice in
truth or in falsehood. They will no more hesitate to answer, “In
truth,” than to say that they wish to be happy. For a happy life
is joy in the truth. Yet this is joy in thee, who art the Truth, O God
my Light, “the health of my countenance and my
God.”
I have had experience with many who wished to deceive,
but not one who wished to be deceived. Cf.
Enchiridion, VI, 19ff.
Why, then, do they not rejoice in it? Why are they not happy? Because they are so fully preoccupied with other things which do more to make them miserable than those which would make them happy, which they remember so little about. Yet there is a little light in men. Let them walk--let them walk in it, lest the darkness overtake them.
34. Why, then, does truth generate hatred, and why does thy servant who preaches the truth come to be an enemy to them who also love the happy life, which is nothing else than joy in the truth--unless it be that truth is loved in such a way that those who love something else besides her wish that to be the truth which they do love. Since they are unwilling to be deceived, they are unwilling to be convinced that they have been deceived. Therefore, they hate the truth for the sake of whatever it is that they love in place of the truth. They love truth when she shines on them; and hate her when she rebukes them. And since they are not willing to be deceived, but do wish to deceive, they love truth when she reveals herself and hate her when she reveals them. On this account, she will so repay them that those who are unwilling to be exposed by her she will indeed expose against their will, and yet will not disclose herself to them.
Thus, thus, truly thus: the human mind so blind and sick, so base and ill-mannered, desires to lie hidden, but does not wish that anything should be hidden from it. And yet the opposite is what happens--the mind itself is not hidden from the truth, but the truth is hidden from it. Yet even so, for all its wretchedness, it still prefers to rejoice in truth rather than in known falsehoods. It will, then, be happy only when without other distractions it comes to rejoice in that single Truth through which all things else are true.
CHAPTER XXIV
35. Behold how great a territory I have explored in my memory seeking thee, O Lord! And in it all I have still not found thee. Nor have I found anything about thee, except what I had already retained in my memory from the time I learned of thee. For where I found Truth, there found I my God, who is the Truth. From the time I learned this I have not forgotten. And thus since the time I learned of thee, thou hast dwelt in my memory, and it is there that I find thee whenever I call thee to remembrance, and delight in thee. These are my holy delights, which thou hast bestowed on me in thy mercy, mindful of my poverty.
CHAPTER XXV
36. But where in my memory dost thou abide, O Lord? Where dost thou dwell there? What sort of lodging hast thou made for thyself there? What kind of sanctuary hast thou built for thyself? Thou hast done this honor to my memory to take up thy abode in it, but I must consider further in what part of it thou dost abide. For in calling thee to mind, I soared beyond those parts of memory which the beasts also possess, because I did not find thee there among the images of corporeal things. From there I went on to those parts where I had stored the remembered affections of my mind, and I did not find thee there. And I entered into the inmost seat of my mind, which is in my memory, since the mind remembers itself also--and thou wast not there. For just as thou art not a bodily image, nor the emotion of a living creature (such as we feel when we rejoice or are grief-stricken, when we desire, or fear, or remember, or forget, or anything of that kind), so neither art thou the mind itself. For thou art the Lord God of the mind and of all these things that are mutable; but thou abidest immutable over all. Yet thou hast elected to dwell in my memory from the time I learned of thee. But why do I now inquire about the part of my memory thou dost dwell in, as if indeed there were separate parts in it? Assuredly, thou dwellest in it, since I have remembered thee from the time I learned of thee, and I find thee in my memory when I call thee to mind.
CHAPTER XXVI
37. Where, then, did I find thee so as to be able to
learn of thee? For thou wast not in my memory before I learned of thee.
Where, then, did I find thee so as to be able to learn of thee--save in
thyself beyond me. When he is known at all,
God is known as the Self-evident. This is, of course, not a doctrine of
innate ideas but rather of the necessity, and reality, of divine
illumination as the dynamic source of all our knowledge of
divine reality. Cf. Coplestone, op. cit., ch. IV, and Cushman,
op. cit.
CHAPTER XXVII
38. Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.
CHAPTER XXVIII
39. When I come to be united to thee with all my being, then there will be no more pain and toil for me, and my life shall be a real life, being wholly filled by thee. But since he whom thou fillest is the one thou liftest up, I am still a burden to myself because I am not yet filled by thee. Joys of sorrow contend with sorrows of joy, and on which side the victory lies I do not know.
Woe is me! Lord, have pity on me; my evil sorrows contend with my good joys, and on which side the victory lies I do not know. Woe is me! Lord, have pity on me. Woe is me! Behold, I do not hide my wounds. Thou art the Physician, I am the sick man; thou art merciful, I need mercy. Is not the life of man on earth an ordeal? Who is he that wishes for vexations and difficulties? Thou commandest them to be endured, not to be loved. For no man loves what he endures, though he may love to endure. Yet even if he rejoices to endure, he would prefer that there were nothing for him to endure. In adversity, I desire prosperity; in prosperity, I fear adversity. What middle place is there, then, between these two, where human life is not an ordeal? There is woe in the prosperity of this world; there is woe in the fear of misfortune; there is woe in the distortion of joy. There is woe in the adversities of this world--a second woe, and a third, from the desire of prosperity--because adversity itself is a hard thing to bear and makes shipwreck of endurance. Is not the life of man upon the earth an ordeal, and that without surcease?
CHAPTER XXIX
40. My whole hope is in thy exceeding great mercy and
that alone. Give what thou commandest and command what thou wilt. Thou
commandest continence from us, and when I knew, as it is said, that no
one could be continent unless God gave it to him, even this was a point
of wisdom to know whose gift it was. Cf. Cf. Enneads, VI,
9:4.
CHAPTER XXX
41. Obviously thou commandest that I should be
continent from “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life.”
Where, then, is the power of reason which resists such suggestions when I am awake--for even if the things themselves be forced upon it I remain unmoved? Does reason cease when the eyes close? Is it put to sleep with the bodily senses? But in that case how does it come to pass that even in slumber we often resist, and with our conscious purposes in mind, continue most chastely in them, and yield no assent to such allurements? Yet there is at least this much difference: that when it happens otherwise in dreams, when we wake up, we return to peace of conscience. And it is by this difference between sleeping and waking that we discover that it was not we who did it, while we still feel sorry that in some way it was done in us.
42. Is not thy hand, O Almighty God, able to heal all
the diseases of my soul and, by thy more and more abundant grace, to
quench even the lascivious motions of my sleep? Thou wilt increase thy
gifts in me more and more, O Lord, that my soul may follow me to thee,
wrenched free from the sticky glue of lust so that it is no longer in
rebellion against itself, even in dreams; that it neither commits nor
consents to these debasing corruptions which come through sensual
images and which result in the pollution of the flesh. For it is no
great thing for the Almighty, who is “able to do . . . more than
we can ask or think,”
CHAPTER XXXI
43. There is yet another “evil of the
day” Cf.
44. This much thou hast taught me: that I should learn to take food as medicine. But during that time when I pass from the pinch of emptiness to the contentment of fullness, it is in that very moment that the snare of appetite lies baited for me. For the passage itself is pleasant; there is no other way of passing thither, and necessity compels us to pass. And while health is the reason for our eating and drinking, yet a perilous delight joins itself to them as a handmaid; and indeed, she tries to take precedence in order that I may want to do for her sake what I say I want to do for health’s sake. They do not both have the same limit either. What is sufficient for health is not enough for pleasure. And it is often a matter of doubt whether it is the needful care of the body that still calls for food or whether it is the sensual snare of desire still wanting to be served. In this uncertainty my unhappy soul rejoices, and uses it to prepare an excuse as a defense. It is glad that it is not clear as to what is sufficient for the moderation of health, so that under the pretense of health it may conceal its projects for pleasure. These temptations I daily endeavor to resist and I summon thy right hand to my help and cast my perplexities onto thee, for I have not yet reached a firm conclusion in this matter.
45. I hear the voice of my God commanding: “Let
not your heart be overcharged with surfeiting and
drunkenness.” Cf. Cf.
I heard another voice of thine: “Do not follow
your lusts and refrain yourself from your pleasures.” Cf.
46. Thou hast taught me, good Father, that “to
the pure all things are pure” Cf.
It is not the uncleanness of meat that I fear, but the uncleanness of an incontinent appetite. I know that permission was granted Noah to eat every kind of flesh that was good for food; that Elijah was fed with flesh; that John, blessed with a wonderful abstinence, was not polluted by the living creatures (that is, the locusts) on which he fed. And I also know that Esau was deceived by his hungering after lentils and that David blamed himself for desiring water, and that our King was tempted not by flesh but by bread. And, thus, the people in the wilderness truly deserved their reproof, not because they desired meat, but because in their desire for food they murmured against the Lord.
47. Set down, then, in the midst of these temptations,
I strive daily against my appetite for food and drink. For it is not
the kind of appetite I am able to deal with by cutting it off once for
all, and thereafter not touching it, as I was able to do with
fornication. The bridle of the throat, therefore, must be held in the
mean between slackness and tightness. And who, O Lord, is he who is not
in some degree carried away beyond the bounds of necessity? Whoever he
is, he is great; let him magnify thy name. But I am not such a one,
“for I am a sinful man.” Cf.
CHAPTER XXXII
48. I am not much troubled by the allurement of odors. When they are absent, I do not seek them; when they are present, I do not refuse them; and I am always prepared to go without them. At any rate, I appear thus to myself; it is quite possible that I am deceived. For there is a lamentable darkness in which my capabilities are concealed, so that when my mind inquires into itself concerning its own powers, it does not readily venture to believe itself, because what already is in it is largely concealed unless experience brings it to light. Thus no man ought to feel secure in this life, the whole of which is called an ordeal, ordered so that the man who could be made better from having been worse may not also from having been better become worse. Our sole hope, our sole confidence, our only assured promise, is thy mercy.
CHAPTER XXXIII
49. The delights of the ear drew and held me much more powerfully, but thou didst unbind and liberate me. In those melodies which thy words inspire when sung with a sweet and trained voice, I still find repose; yet not so as to cling to them, but always so as to be able to free myself as I wish. But it is because of the words which are their life that they gain entry into me and strive for a place of proper honor in my heart; and I can hardly assign them a fitting one. Sometimes, I seem to myself to give them more respect than is fitting, when I see that our minds are more devoutly and earnestly inflamed in piety by the holy words when they are sung than when they are not. And I recognize that all the diverse affections of our spirits have their appropriate measures in the voice and song, to which they are stimulated by I know not what secret correlation. But the pleasures of my flesh--to which the mind ought never to be surrendered nor by them enervated--often beguile me while physical sense does not attend on reason, to follow her patiently, but having once gained entry to help the reason, it strives to run on before her and be her leader. Thus in these things I sin unknowingly, but I come to know it afterward.
50. On the other hand, when I avoid very earnestly this kind of deception, I err out of too great austerity. Sometimes I go to the point of wishing that all the melodies of the pleasant songs to which David’s Psalter is adapted should be banished both from my ears and from those of the Church itself. In this mood, the safer way seemed to me the one I remember was once related to me concerning Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who required the readers of the psalm to use so slight an inflection of the voice that it was more like speaking than singing.
However, when I call to mind the tears I shed at the
songs of thy Church at the outset of my recovered faith, and how even
now I am moved, not by the singing but by what is sung (when they are
sung with a clear and skillfully modulated voice), I then come to
acknowledge the great utility of this custom. Thus I vacillate between
dangerous pleasure and healthful exercise. I am inclined--though I
pronounce no irrevocable opinion on the subject--to approve of the use
of singing in the church, so that by the delights of the ear the weaker
minds may be stimulated to a devotional mood. Cf. the evidence for
Augustine's interest and proficiency in music in his essay De
musica, written a decade earlier.
CHAPTER XXXIV
51. There remain the delights of these eyes of my
flesh, about which I must make my confession in the hearing of the ears
of thy temple, brotherly and pious ears. Thus I will finish the list of
the temptations of carnal appetite which still assail me--groaning and
desiring as I am to be clothed upon with my house from heaven. Cf.
The eyes delight in fair and varied forms, and bright and pleasing colors. Let these not take possession of my soul! Rather let God possess it, he who didst make all these things very good indeed. He is still my good, and not these. The pleasures of sight affect me all the time I am awake. There is no rest from them given me, as there is from the voices of melody, which I can occasionally find in silence. For daylight, that queen of the colors, floods all that we look upon everywhere I go during the day. It flits about me in manifold forms and soothes me even when I am busy about other things, not noticing it. And it presents itself so forcibly that if it is suddenly withdrawn it is looked for with longing, and if it is long absent the mind is saddened.
52. O Light, which Tobit saw even with his eyes closed
in blindness, when he taught his son the way of life--and went before
him himself in the steps of love and never went astray Cf. Tobit, chs. 2 to
4. Cf. Gen., ch. 48.
But that corporeal light, of which I was speaking,
seasons the life of the world for her blind lovers with a tempting and
fatal sweetness. Those who know how to praise thee for it, “O
God, Creator of Us All,” take it up in thy hymn, Again, Ambrose, Deus,
creator omnium, an obvious favorite of Augustine's. See above, Bk.
IX, Ch. XII, 32.
53. What numberless things there are: products of the various arts and manufactures in our clothes, shoes, vessels, and all such things; besides such things as pictures and statuary--and all these far beyond the necessary and moderate use of them or their significance for the life of piety--which men have added for the delight of the eye, copying the outward forms of the things they make; but inwardly forsaking Him by whom they were made and destroying what they themselves have been made to be!
And I, O my God and my Joy, I also raise a hymn to thee
for all these things, and offer a sacrifice of praise to my Sanctifier,
because those beautiful forms which pass through the medium of the
human soul into the artist’s hands come from that beauty which is
above our minds, which my soul sighs for day and night. But the
craftsmen and devotees of these outward beauties discover the norm by
which they judge them from that higher beauty, but not the measure of
their use. Still, even if they do not see it, it is there nevertheless,
to guard them from wandering astray, and to keep their strength for
thee, and not dissipate it in delights that pass into boredom. And for
myself, though I can see and understand this, I am still entangled in
my own course with such beauty, but thou wilt rescue me, O Lord, thou
wilt rescue me, “for thy loving-kindness is before my
eyes.”
CHAPTER XXXV
54. Besides this there is yet another form of
temptation still more complex in its peril. For in addition to the
fleshly appetite which strives for the gratification of all senses and
pleasures--in which its slaves perish because they separate themselves
from thee--there is also a certain vain and curious longing in the
soul, rooted in the same bodily senses, which is cloaked under the name
of knowledge and learning; not having pleasure in the flesh, but
striving for new experiences through the flesh. This longing--since its
origin is our appetite for learning, and since the sight is the chief
of our senses in the acquisition of knowledge--is called in the divine
language “the lust of the eyes.”
55. From this, then, one can the more clearly distinguish whether it is pleasure or curiosity that is being pursued by the senses. For pleasure pursues objects that are beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savory, soft. But curiosity, seeking new experiences, will even seek out the contrary of these, not with the purpose of experiencing the discomfort that often accompanies them, but out of a passion for experimenting and knowledge.
For what pleasure is there in the sight of a lacerated corpse, which makes you shudder? And yet if there is one lying close by we flock to it, as if to be made sad and pale. People fear lest they should see such a thing even in sleep, just as they would if, when awake, someone compelled them to go and see it or if some rumor of its beauty had attracted them.
This is also the case with the other senses; it would be tedious to pursue a complete analysis of it. This malady of curiosity is the reason for all those strange sights exhibited in the theater. It is also the reason why we proceed to search out the secret powers of nature--those which have nothing to do with our destiny--which do not profit us to know about, and concerning which men desire to know only for the sake of knowing. And it is with this same motive of perverted curiosity for knowledge that we consult the magical arts. Even in religion itself, this prompting drives us to make trial of God when signs and wonders are eagerly asked of him--not desired for any saving end, but only to make trial of him.
56. In such a wilderness so vast, crammed with snares and dangers, behold how many of them I have lopped off and cast from my heart, as thou, O God of my salvation, hast enabled me to do. And yet, when would I dare to say, since so many things of this sort still buzz around our daily lives--when would I dare to say that no such motive prompts my seeing or creates a vain curiosity in me? It is true that now the theaters never attract me, nor do I now care to inquire about the courses of the stars, and my soul has never sought answers from the departed spirits. All sacrilegious oaths I abhor. And yet, O Lord my God, to whom I owe all humble and singlehearted service, with what subtle suggestion the enemy still influences me to require some sign from thee! But by our King, and by Jerusalem, our pure and chaste homeland, I beseech thee that where any consenting to such thoughts is now far from me, so may it always be farther and farther. And when I entreat thee for the salvation of any man, the end I aim at is something more than the entreating: let it be that as thou dost what thou wilt, thou dost also give me the grace willingly to follow thy lead.
57. Now, really, in how many of the most minute and trivial things my curiosity is still daily tempted, and who can keep the tally on how often I succumb? How often, when people are telling idle tales, we begin by tolerating them lest we should give offense to the sensitive; and then gradually we come to listen willingly! I do not nowadays go to the circus to see a dog chase a rabbit, but if by chance I pass such a race in the fields, it quite easily distracts me even from some serious thought and draws me after it--not that I turn aside with my horse, but with the inclination of my mind. And unless, by showing me my weakness, thou dost speedily warn me to rise above such a sight to thee by a deliberate act of thought--or else to despise the whole thing and pass it by--then I become absorbed in the sight, vain creature that I am.
How is it that when I am sitting at home a lizard catching flies, or a spider entangling them as they fly into her webs, oftentimes arrests me? Is the feeling of curiosity not the same just because these are such tiny creatures? From them I proceed to praise thee, the wonderful Creator and Disposer of all things; but it is not this that first attracts my attention. It is one thing to get up quickly and another thing not to fall--and of both such things my life is full and my only hope is in thy exceeding great mercy. For when this heart of ours is made the depot of such things and is overrun by the throng of these abounding vanities, then our prayers are often interrupted and disturbed by them. Even while we are in thy presence and direct the voice of our hearts to thy ears, such a great business as this is broken off by the inroads of I know not what idle thoughts.
CHAPTER XXXVI
58. Shall we, then, also reckon this vain curiosity
among the things that are to be but lightly esteemed? Shall anything
restore us to hope except thy complete mercy since thou hast begun to
change us? Thou knowest to what extent thou hast already changed me,
for first of all thou didst heal me of the lust for vindicating myself,
so that thou mightest then forgive all my remaining iniquities and heal
all my diseases, and “redeem my life from corruption and crown me
with loving-kindness and tender mercies, and satisfy my desires with
good things.” Cf. Cf.
59. But, O Lord--thou who alone reignest without pride,
because thou alone art the true Lord, who hast no Lord--has this third
kind of temptation left me, or can it leave me during this life: the
desire to be feared and loved of men, with no other view than that I
may find in it a joy that is no joy? It is, rather, a wretched life and
an unseemly ostentation. It is a special reason why we do not love
thee, nor devotedly fear thee. Therefore “thou resistest the
proud but givest grace to the humble.” Cf.
And yet certain offices in human society require the
officeholder to be loved and feared of men, and through this the
adversary of our true blessedness presses hard upon us, scattering
everywhere his snares of “well done, well done”; so that
while we are eagerly picking them up, we may be caught unawares and
split off our joy from thy truth and fix it on the deceits of men. In
this way we come to take pleasure in being loved and feared, not for
thy sake but in thy stead. By such means as this, the adversary makes
men like himself, that he may have them as his own, not in the harmony
of love, but in the fellowship of punishment--the one who aspired to
exalt his throne in the north, Cf.
But see, O Lord, we are thy little flock. Possess us, stretch thy wings above us, and let us take refuge under them. Be thou our glory; let us be loved for thy sake, and let thy word be feared in us. Those who desire to be commended by the men whom thou condemnest will not be defended by men when thou judgest, nor will they be delivered when thou dost condemn them. But when--not as a sinner is praised in the wicked desires of his soul nor when the unrighteous man is blessed in his unrighteousness--a man is praised for some gift that thou hast given him, and he is more gratified at the praise for himself than because he possesses the gift for which he is praised, such a one is praised while thou dost condemn him. In such a case the one who praised is truly better than the one who was praised. For the gift of God in man was pleasing to the one, while the other was better pleased with the gift of man than with the gift of God.
CHAPTER XXXVII
60. By these temptations we are daily tried, O Lord; we
are tried unceasingly. Our daily “furnace” is the human
tongue. Cf. Cf.
But if we desire to test our power of doing without praise, must we then live wickedly or lead a life so atrocious and abandoned that everyone who knows us will detest us? What greater madness than this can be either said or conceived? And yet if praise, both by custom and right, is the companion of a good life and of good works, we should as little forgo its companionship as the good life itself. But unless a thing is absent I do not know whether I should be contented or troubled at having to do without it.
61. What is it, then, that I am confessing to thee, O Lord, concerning this sort of temptation? What else, than that I am delighted with praise, but more with the truth itself than with praise. For if I were to have any choice whether, if I were mad or utterly in the wrong, I would prefer to be praised by all men or, if I were steadily and fully confident in the truth, would prefer to be blamed by all, I see which I should choose. Yet I wish I were unwilling that the approval of others should add anything to my joy for any good I have. Yet I admit that it does increase it; and, more than that, dispraise diminishes it. Then, when I am disturbed over this wretchedness of mine, an excuse presents itself to me, the value of which thou knowest, O God, for it renders me uncertain. For since it is not only continence that thou hast enjoined on us--that is, what things to hold back our love from--but righteousness as well--that is, what to bestow our love upon--and hast wished us to love not only thee, but also our neighbor, it often turns out that when I am gratified by intelligent praise I seem to myself to be gratified by the competence or insight of my neighbor; or, on the other hand, I am sorry for the defect in him when I hear him dispraise either what he does not understand or what is good. For I am sometimes grieved at the praise I get, either when those things that displease me in myself are praised in me, or when lesser and trifling goods are valued more highly than they should be. But, again, how do I know whether I feel this way because I am unwilling that he who praises me should differ from me concerning myself not because I am moved with any consideration for him, but because the good things that please me in myself are more pleasing to me when they also please another? For in a way, I am not praised when my judgment of myself is not praised, since either those things which are displeasing to me are praised, or those things which are less pleasing to me are more praised. Am I not, then, quite uncertain of myself in this respect?
62. Behold, O Truth, it is in thee that I see that I ought not to be moved at my own praises for my own sake, but for the sake of my neighbor’s good. And whether this is actually my way, I truly do not know. On this score I know less of myself than thou dost. I beseech thee now, O my God, to reveal myself to me also, that I may confess to my brethren, who are to pray for me in those matters where I find myself weak.
Let me once again examine myself the more diligently.
If, in my own praise, I am moved with concern for my neighbor, why am I
less moved if some other man is unjustly dispraised than when it
happens to me? Why am I more irritated at that reproach which is cast
on me than at one which is, with equal injustice, cast upon another in
my presence? Am I ignorant of this also? Or is it still true that I am
deceiving myself, and do not keep the truth before thee in my heart and
tongue? Put such madness far from me, O Lord, lest my mouth be to me
“the oil of sinners, to anoint my head.” Cf.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
63. “I am needy and poor.”
CHAPTER XXXIX
64. Within us there is yet another evil arising from the same sort of temptation. By it they become empty who please themselves in themselves, although they do not please or displease or aim at pleasing others. But in pleasing themselves they displease thee very much, not merely taking pleasure in things that are not good as if they were good, but taking pleasure in thy good things as if they were their own; or even as if they were thine but still as if they had received them through their own merit; or even as if they had them through thy grace, still without this grace with their friends, but as if they envied that grace to others. In all these and similar perils and labors, thou perceivest the agitation of my heart, and I would rather feel my wounds being cured by thee than not inflicted by me on myself.
CHAPTER XL
65. Where hast thou not accompanied me, O Truth, teaching me both what to avoid and what to desire, when I have submitted to thee what I could understand about matters here below, and have sought thy counsel about them?
With my external senses I have viewed the world as I was able and have noticed the life which my body derives from me and from these senses of mine. From that stage I advanced inwardly into the recesses of my memory--the manifold chambers of my mind, marvelously full of unmeasured wealth. And I reflected on this and was afraid, and could understand none of these things without thee and found thee to be none of them. Nor did I myself discover these things--I who went over them all and labored to distinguish and to value everything according to its dignity, accepting some things upon the report of my senses and questioning about others which I thought to be related to my inner self, distinguishing and numbering the reporters themselves; and in that vast storehouse of my memory, investigating some things, depositing other things, taking out still others. Neither was I myself when I did this--that is, that ability of mine by which I did it--nor was it thou, for thou art that never-failing light from which I took counsel about them all; whether they were what they were, and what was their real value. In all this I heard thee teaching and commanding me. And this I often do--and this is a delight to me--and as far as I can get relief from my necessary duties, I resort to this kind of pleasure. But in all these things which I review when I consult thee, I still do not find a secure place for my soul save in thee, in whom my scattered members may be gathered together and nothing of me escape from thee. And sometimes thou introducest me to a most rare and inward feeling, an inexplicable sweetness. If this were to come to perfection in me I do not know to what point life might not then arrive. But still, by these wretched weights of mine, I relapse into these common things, and am sucked in by my old customs and am held. I sorrow much, yet I am still closely held. To this extent, then, the burden of habit presses us down. I can exist in this fashion but I do not wish to do so. In that other way I wish I were, but cannot be--in both ways I am wretched.
CHAPTER XLI
66. And now I have thus considered the infirmities of
my sins, under the headings of the three major “lusts,” and
I have called thy right hand to my aid. For with a wounded heart I have
seen thy brightness, and having been beaten back I cried: “Who
can attain to it? I am cut off from before thy eyes.”
CHAPTER XLII
67. Whom could I find to reconcile me to thee? Should I
have approached the angels? What kind of prayer? What kind of rites?
Many who were striving to return to thee and were not able of
themselves have, I am told, tried this and have fallen into a longing
for curious visions and deserved to be deceived. Being exalted, they
sought thee in their pride of learning, and they thrust themselves
forward rather than beating their breasts. Cf. the parable of the
Pharisee and the Publican, Cf.
They were mortal and sinful, but thou, O Lord, to whom
they arrogantly sought to be reconciled, art immortal and sinless. But
a mediator between God and man ought to have something in him like God
and something in him like man, lest in being like man he should be far
from God, or if only like God he should be far from man, and so should
not be a mediator. That deceitful mediator, then, by whom, by thy
secret judgment, human pride deserves to be deceived, had one thing in
common with man, that is, his sin. In another respect, he would seem to
have something in common with God, for not being clothed with the
mortality of the flesh, he could boast that he was immortal. But since
“the wages of sin is death,”
CHAPTER XLIII
68. But the true Mediator, whom thou in thy secret
mercy hast revealed to the humble, and hast sent to them so that
through his example they also might learn the same humility--that
“Mediator between God and man, the man Christ
Jesus,”
69. How hast thou loved us, O good Father, who didst
not spare thy only Son, but didst deliver him up for us wicked
ones! Cf. Cf. Cf.
70. Terrified by my sins and the load of my misery, I
had resolved in my heart and considered flight into the wilderness. But
thou didst forbid me, and thou didst strengthen me, saying that
“since Christ died for all, they who live should not henceforth
live unto themselves, but unto him who died for them.” Cf.
BOOK ELEVEN
The eternal Creator and the Creation in time.
Augustine ties together his memory of his past life, his present
experience, and his ardent desire to comprehend the mystery of
creation. This leads him to the questions of the mode and time of
creation. He ponders the mode of creation and shows that it was de
nihilo and involved no alteration in the being of God. He then
considers the question of the beginning of the world and time and shows
that time and creation are cotemporal. But what is time? To this
Augustine devotes a brilliant analysis of the subjectivity of time and
the relation of all temporal process to the abiding eternity of God.
From this, he prepares to turn to a detailed interpretation of
CHAPTER I
1. Is it possible, O Lord, that, since thou art in
eternity, thou art ignorant of what I am saying to thee? Or, dost thou
see in time an event at the time it occurs? If not, then why am I
recounting such a tale of things to thee? Certainly not in order to
acquaint thee with them through me; but, instead, that through them I
may stir up my own love and the love of my readers toward thee, so that
all may say, “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.”
I have said this before In the very first
sentence of Confessions, Bk. I, Ch. I. Here we have a basic and
recurrent motif of the Confessions from beginning to end: the
celebration and praise of the greatness and goodness of God--Creator
and Redeemer. The repetition of it here connects this concluding
section of the Confessions, Bks. XI-XIII, with the preceding
part. The "virtues" of the
Beatitudes, the reward for which is blessedness; cf.
CHAPTER II
2. But how long would it take for the voice of my pen
to tell enough of thy exhortations and of all thy terrors and comforts
and leadings by which thou didst bring me to preach thy Word and to
administer thy sacraments to thy people? And even if I could do this
sufficiently, the drops of time An interesting symbol of
time's ceaseless passage; the reference is to a water clock
(clepsydra).
3. O Lord my God, hear my prayer and let thy mercy
attend my longing. It does not burn for itself alone but longs as well
to serve the cause of fraternal love. Thou seest in my heart that this
is so. Let me offer the service of my mind and my tongue--and give me
what I may in turn offer back to thee. For “I am needy and
poor”; thou art rich to all who call upon thee--thou who, in thy
freedom from care, carest for us. Trim away from my lips, inwardly and
outwardly, all rashness and lying. Let thy Scriptures be my chaste
delight. Let me not be deceived in them, nor deceive others from them.
O Lord, hear and pity! O Lord my God, light of the blind, strength of
the weak--and also the light of those who see and the strength of the
strong--hearken to my soul and hear it crying from the depths. Cf.
“Thine is the day and the night is thine as
well.” This metaphor is
probably from A repetition of the
metaphor above, Bk. IX, Ch. VII, 16.
4. O Lord, have mercy on me and hear my petition. For
my prayer is not for earthly things, neither gold nor silver and
precious stones, nor gorgeous apparel, nor honors and power, nor
fleshly pleasures, nor of bodily necessities in this life of our
pilgrimage: all of these things are “added” to those who
seek thy Kingdom and thy righteousness. Cf.
Observe, O God, from whence comes my desire. The
unrighteous have told me of delights but not such as those in thy law,
O Lord. Behold, this is the spring of my desire. See, O Father, look
and see--and approve! Let it be pleasing in thy mercy’s sight
that I should find favor with thee--that the secret things of thy Word
may be opened to me when I knock. I beg this of thee by our Lord Jesus
Christ, thy Son, the Man of thy right hand, the Son of Man; whom thou
madest strong for thy purpose as Mediator between thee and us; through
whom thou didst seek us when we were not seeking thee, but didst seek
us so that we might seek thee; thy Word, through whom thou madest all
things, and me among them; thy only Son, through whom thou hast called
thy faithful people to adoption, and me among them. I beseech it of
thee through him who sitteth at thy right hand and maketh intercession
for us, “in whom are hid all treasures of wisdom and
knowledge.”
CHAPTER III
5. Let me hear and understand how in the beginning thou
madest heaven and earth. Augustine was profoundly
stirred, in mind and heart, by the great mystery of creation and the
Scriptural testimony about it. In addition to this long and involved
analysis of time and creation which follows here, he returned to the
story in Genesis repeatedly: e.g., De Genesi contra Manicheos;
De Genesi ad litteram, liber imperfectus (both written
before the Confessions); De Genesi ad litteram,
libri XII and De civitate Dei, XI-XII (both written
after the Confessions). The final test of truth,
for Augustine, is self-evidence and the final source of truth is the
indwelling Logos.
CHAPTER IV
6. Look around; there are the heaven and the earth. They cry aloud that they were made, for they change and vary. Whatever there is that has not been made, and yet has being, has nothing in it that was not there before. This having something not already existent is what it means to be changed and varied. Heaven and earth thus speak plainly that they did not make themselves: “We are, because we have been made; we did not exist before we came to be so that we could have made ourselves!” And the voice with which they speak is simply their visible presence. It was thou, O Lord, who madest these things. Thou art beautiful; thus they are beautiful. Thou art good, thus they are good. Thou art; thus they are. But they are not as beautiful, nor as good, nor as truly real as thou their Creator art. Compared with thee, they are neither beautiful nor good, nor do they even exist. These things we know, thanks be to thee. Yet our knowledge is ignorance when it is compared with thy knowledge.
CHAPTER V
7. But how didst thou make the heaven and the earth, and what was the tool of such a mighty work as thine? For it was not like a human worker fashioning body from body, according to the fancy of his mind, able somehow or other to impose on it a form which the mind perceived in itself by its inner eye (yet how should even he be able to do this, if thou hadst not made that mind?). He imposes the form on something already existing and having some sort of being, such as clay, or stone or wood or gold or such like (and where would these things come from if thou hadst not furnished them?). For thou madest his body for the artisan, and thou madest the mind which directs the limbs; thou madest the matter from which he makes anything; thou didst create the capacity by which he understands his art and sees within his mind what he may do with the things before him; thou gavest him his bodily sense by which, as if he had an interpreter, he may communicate from mind to matter what he proposes to do and report back to his mind what has been done, that the mind may consult with the Truth which presideth over it as to whether what is done is well done.
All these things praise thee, the Creator of them all.
But how didst thou make them? How, O God, didst thou make the heaven
and earth? For truly, neither in heaven nor on earth didst thou make
heaven and earth--nor in the air nor in the waters, since all of these
also belong to the heaven and the earth. Nowhere in the whole world
didst thou make the whole world, because there was no place where it
could be made before it was made. And thou didst not hold anything in
thy hand from which to fashion the heaven and the earth, Cf. the notion of
creation in Plato's Timaeus (29D-30C; 48E-50C), in which the
Demiurgos (craftsman) fashions the universe from pre-existent
matter (το
υποδοχη) and imposes as much
form as the Receptacle will receive. The notion of the world fashioned
from pre-existent matter of some sort was a universal idea in
Greco-Roman cosmology. Cf.
CHAPTER VI
8. But how didst thou speak? Was it in the same manner
in which the voice came from the cloud saying, “This is my
beloved Son”
CHAPTER VII
9. Thou dost call us, then, to understand the Word--the God who is God with thee--which is spoken eternally and by which all things are spoken eternally. For what was first spoken was not finished, and then something else spoken until the whole series was spoken; but all things, at the same time and forever. For, otherwise, we should have time and change and not a true eternity, nor a true immortality.
This I know, O my God, and I give thanks. I know, I confess to thee, O Lord, and whoever is not ungrateful for certain truths knows and blesses thee along with me. We know, O Lord, this much we know: that in the same proportion as anything is not what it was, and is what it was not, in that very same proportion it passes away or comes to be. But there is nothing in thy Word that passes away or returns to its place; for it is truly immortal and eternal. And, therefore, unto the Word coeternal with thee, at the same time and always thou sayest all that thou sayest. And whatever thou sayest shall be made is made, and thou makest nothing otherwise than by speaking. Still, not all the things that thou dost make by speaking are made at the same time and always.
CHAPTER VIII
10. Why is this, I ask of thee, O Lord my God? I see it
after a fashion, but I do not know how to express it, unless I say that
everything that begins to be and then ceases to be begins and ceases
when it is known in thy eternal Reason that it ought to begin or
cease--in thy eternal Reason where nothing begins or ceases. And this
is thy Word, which is also “the Beginning,” because it also
speaks to us. Cf. the Vulgate of Cf. Augustine's emphasis
on Christ as true Teacher in De Magistro. Cf.
CHAPTER IX
11. In this Beginning, O God, thou hast made heaven and
earth--through thy Word, thy Son, thy Power, thy Wisdom, thy Truth: all
wondrously speaking and wondrously creating. Who shall comprehend such
things and who shall tell of it? What is it that shineth through me and
striketh my heart without injury, so that I both shudder and burn? I
shudder because I am unlike it; I burn because I am like it. It is
Wisdom itself that shineth through me, clearing away my fog, which so
readily overwhelms me so that I faint in it, in the darkness and burden
of my punishment. For my strength is brought down in neediness, so that
I cannot endure even my blessings until thou, O Lord, who hast been
gracious to all my iniquities, also healest all my infirmities--for it
is thou who “shalt redeem my life from corruption, and crown me
with loving-kindness and tender mercy, and shalt satisfy my desire with
good things so that my youth shall be renewed like the
eagle’s.” Cf.
CHAPTER X
12. Now, are not those still full of their old carnal
nature Plenivetustatis suae. In
Sermon CCLXVII, 2 (PL 38, c. 1230), Augustine has a
similar usage. Speaking of those who pour new wine into old containers,
he says: Carnalitasvetustas est, gratia novitas est, "Carnality
is the old nature; grace is the new"; cf. The notion of the
eternity of this world was widely held in Greek philosophy, in
different versions, and was incorporated into the Manichean rejection
of the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo which
Augustine is citing here. He returns to the question, and his answer to
it, again in De civitate Dei, XI, 4-8.
CHAPTER XI
13. Those who say these things do not yet understand
thee, O Wisdom of God, O Light of souls. They do not yet understand how
the things are made that are made by and in thee. They endeavor to
comprehend eternal things, but their heart still flies about in the
past and future motions of created things, and is still unstable. Who
shall hold it and fix it so that it may come to rest for a little; and
then, by degrees, glimpse the glory of that eternity which abides
forever; and then, comparing eternity with the temporal process in
which nothing abides, they may see that they are incommensurable? They
would see that a long time does not become long, except from the many
separate events that occur in its passage, which cannot be
simultaneous. In the Eternal, on the other hand, nothing passes away,
but the whole is simultaneously present. But no temporal process is
wholly simultaneous. Therefore, let it The unstable "heart" of
those who confuse time and eternity.
CHAPTER XII
14. How, then, shall I respond to him who asks, “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?” I do not answer, as a certain one is reported to have done facetiously (shrugging off the force of the question). “He was preparing hell,” he said, “for those who pry too deep.” It is one thing to see the answer; it is another to laugh at the questioner--and for myself I do not answer these things thus. More willingly would I have answered, “I do not know what I do not know,” than cause one who asked a deep question to be ridiculed--and by such tactics gain praise for a worthless answer.
Rather, I say that thou, our God, art the Creator of every creature. And if in the term “heaven and earth” every creature is included, I make bold to say further: “Before God made heaven and earth, he did not make anything at all. For if he did, what did he make unless it were a creature?” I do indeed wish that I knew all that I desire to know to my profit as surely as I know that no creature was made before any creature was made.
CHAPTER XIII
15. But if the roving thought of someone should wander over the images of past time, and wonder that thou, the Almighty God, the All-creating and All-sustaining, the Architect of heaven and earth, didst for ages unnumbered abstain from so great a work before thou didst actually do it, let him awake and consider that he wonders at illusions. For in what temporal medium could the unnumbered ages that thou didst not make pass by, since thou art the Author and Creator of all the ages? Or what periods of time would those be that were not made by thee? Or how could they have already passed away if they had not already been? Since, therefore, thou art the Creator of all times, if there was any time before thou madest heaven and earth, why is it said that thou wast abstaining from working? For thou madest that very time itself, and periods could not pass by before thou madest the whole temporal procession. But if there was no time before heaven and earth, how, then, can it be asked, “What wast thou doing then?” For there was no “then” when there was no time.
16. Nor dost thou precede any given period of time by
another period of time. Else thou wouldst not precede all periods of
time. In the eminence of thy ever-present eternity, thou precedest all
times past, and extendest beyond all future times, for they are still
to come--and when they have come, they will be past. But “Thou
art always the Selfsame and thy years shall have no
end.” Cf.
CHAPTER XIV
17. There was no time, therefore, when thou hadst not made anything, because thou hadst made time itself. And there are no times that are coeternal with thee, because thou dost abide forever; but if times should abide, they would not be times.
For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who can even comprehend it in thought or put the answer into words? Yet is it not true that in conversation we refer to nothing more familiarly or knowingly than time? And surely we understand it when we speak of it; we understand it also when we hear another speak of it.
What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know. Yet I say with confidence that I know that if nothing passed away, there would be no past time; and if nothing were still coming, there would be no future time; and if there were nothing at all, there would be no present time.
But, then, how is it that there are the two times, past and future, when even the past is now no longer and the future is now not yet? But if the present were always present, and did not pass into past time, it obviously would not be time but eternity. If, then, time present--if it be time--comes into existence only because it passes into time past, how can we say that even this is, since the cause of its being is that it will cease to be? Thus, can we not truly say that time is only as it tends toward nonbeing?
CHAPTER XV
18. And yet we speak of a long time and a short time; but never speak this way except of time past and future. We call a hundred years ago, for example, a long time past. In like manner, we should call a hundred years hence a long time to come. But we call ten days ago a short time past; and ten days hence a short time to come. But in what sense is something long or short that is nonexistent? For the past is not now, and the future is not yet. Therefore, let us not say, “It is long”; instead, let us say of the past, “It was long,” and of the future, “It will be long.” And yet, O Lord, my Light, shall not thy truth make mockery of man even here? For that long time past: was it long when it was already past, or when it was still present? For it might have been long when there was a period that could be long, but when it was past, it no longer was. In that case, that which was not at all could not be long. Let us not, therefore, say, “Time past was long,” for we shall not discover what it was that was long because, since it is past, it no longer exists. Rather, let us say that “time present was long, because when it was present it was long.” For then it had not yet passed on so as not to be, and therefore it still was in a state that could be called long. But after it passed, it ceased to be long simply because it ceased to be.
19. Let us, therefore, O human soul, see whether present time can be long, for it has been given you to feel and measure the periods of time. How, then, will you answer me?
Is a hundred years when present a long time? But, first, see whether a hundred years can be present at once. For if the first year in the century is current, then it is present time, and the other ninety and nine are still future. Therefore, they are not yet. But, then, if the second year is current, one year is already past, the second present, and all the rest are future. And thus, if we fix on any middle year of this century as present, those before it are past, those after it are future. Therefore, a hundred years cannot be present all at once.
Let us see, then, whether the year that is now current can be present. For if its first month is current, then the rest are future; if the second, the first is already past, and the remainder are not yet. Therefore, the current year is not present all at once. And if it is not present as a whole, then the year is not present. For it takes twelve months to make the year, from which each individual month which is current is itself present one at a time, but the rest are either past or future.
20. Thus it comes out that time present, which we found
was the only time that could be called “long,” has been cut
down to the space of scarcely a single day. But let us examine even
that, for one day is never present as a whole. For it is made up of
twenty-four hours, divided between night and day. The first of these
hours has the rest of them as future, and the last of them has the rest
as past; but any of those between has those that preceded it as past
and those that succeed it as future. And that one hour itself passes
away in fleeting fractions. The part of it that has fled is past; what
remains is still future. If any fraction of time be conceived that
cannot now be divided even into the most minute momentary point, this
alone is what we may call time present. But this flies so rapidly from
future to past that it cannot be extended by any delay. For if it is
extended, it is then divided into past and future. But the present has
no extension Spatium, which
means extension either in space or time.
Where, therefore, is that time which we may call “long”? Is it future? Actually we do not say of the future, “It is long,” for it has not yet come to be, so as to be long. Instead, we say, “It will be long.” When will it be? For since it is future, it will not be long, for what may be long is not yet. It will be long only when it passes from the future which is not as yet, and will have begun to be present, so that there can be something that may be long. But in that case, time present cries aloud, in the words we have already heard, that it cannot be “long.”
CHAPTER XVI
21. And yet, O Lord, we do perceive intervals of time, and we compare them with each other, and we say that some are longer and others are shorter. We even measure how much longer or shorter this time may be than that time. And we say that this time is twice as long, or three times as long, while this other time is only just as long as that other. But we measure the passage of time when we measure the intervals of perception. But who can measure times past which now are no longer, or times future which are not yet--unless perhaps someone will dare to say that what does not exist can be measured? Therefore, while time is passing, it can be perceived and measured; but when it is past, it cannot, since it is not.
CHAPTER XVII
22. I am seeking the truth, O Father; I am not affirming it. O my God, direct and rule me.
Who is there who will tell me that there are not three times--as we learned when boys and as we have also taught boys--time past, time present, and time future? Who can say that there is only time present because the other two do not exist? Or do they also exist; but when, from the future, time becomes present, it proceeds from some secret place; and when, from times present, it becomes past, it recedes into some secret place? For where have those men who have foretold the future seen the things foretold, if then they were not yet existing? For what does not exist cannot be seen. And those who tell of things past could not speak of them as if they were true, if they did not see them in their minds. These things could in no way be discerned if they did not exist. There are therefore times present and times past.
CHAPTER XVIII
23. Give me leave, O Lord, to seek still further. O my Hope, let not my purpose be confounded. For if there are times past and future, I wish to know where they are. But if I have not yet succeeded in this, I still know that wherever they are, they are not there as future or past, but as present. For if they are there as future, they are there as “not yet”; if they are there as past, they are there as “no longer.” Wherever they are and whatever they are they exist therefore only as present. Although we tell of past things as true, they are drawn out of the memory--not the things themselves, which have already passed, but words constructed from the images of the perceptions which were formed in the mind, like footprints in their passage through the senses. My childhood, for instance, which is no longer, still exists in time past, which does not now exist. But when I call to mind its image and speak of it, I see it in the present because it is still in my memory. Whether there is a similar explanation for the foretelling of future events--that is, of the images of things which are not yet seen as if they were already existing--I confess, O my God, I do not know. But this I certainly do know: that we generally think ahead about our future actions, and this premeditation is in time present; but that the action which we premeditate is not yet, because it is still future. When we shall have started the action and have begun to do what we were premeditating, then that action will be in time present, because then it is no longer in time future.
24. Whatever may be the manner of this secret foreseeing of future things, nothing can be seen except what exists. But what exists now is not future, but present. When, therefore, they say that future events are seen, it is not the events themselves, for they do not exist as yet (that is, they are still in time future), but perhaps, instead, their causes and their signs are seen, which already do exist. Therefore, to those already beholding these causes and signs, they are not future, but present, and from them future things are predicted because they are conceived in the mind. These conceptions, however, exist now, and those who predict those things see these conceptions before them in time present.
Let me take an example from the vast multitude and
variety of such things. I see the dawn; I predict that the sun is about
to rise. What I see is in time present, what I predict is in time
future--not that the sun is future, for it already exists; but its
rising is future, because it is not yet. Yet I could not predict even
its rising, unless I had an image of it in my mind; as, indeed, I do
even now as I speak. But that dawn which I see in the sky is not the
rising of the sun (though it does precede it), nor is it a conception
in my mind. These two The breaking light and
the image of the rising sun.
Future events, therefore, are not yet. And if they are not yet, they do not exist. And if they do not exist, they cannot be seen at all, but they can be predicted from things present, which now are and are seen.
CHAPTER XIX
25. Now, therefore, O Ruler of thy creatures, what is
the mode by which thou teachest souls those things which are still
future? For thou hast taught thy prophets. How dost thou, to whom
nothing is future, teach future things--or rather teach things present
from the signs of things future? For what does not exist certainly
cannot be taught. This way of thine is too far from my sight; it is too
great for me, I cannot attain to it. Cf.
CHAPTER XX
26. But even now it is manifest and clear that there
are neither times future nor times past. Thus it is not properly said
that there are three times, past, present, and future. Perhaps it might
be said rightly that there are three times: a time present of things
past; a time present of things present; and a time present of things
future. For these three do coexist somehow in the soul, for otherwise I
could not see them. The time present of things past is memory; the time
present of things present is direct experience; the time present of
things future is expectation. Memoria,
contuitus, and expectatio: a pattern that corresponds
vaguely to the movement of Augustine's thought in the
Confessions: from direct experience back to the supporting
memories and forward to the outreach of hope and confidence in God's
provident grace.
CHAPTER XXI
27. I have said, then, that we measure periods of time as they pass so that we can say that this time is twice as long as that one or that this is just as long as that, and so on for the other fractions of time which we can count by measuring.
So, then, as I was saying, we measure periods of time as they pass. And if anyone asks me, “How do you know this?”, I can answer: “I know because we measure. We could not measure things that do not exist, and things past and future do not exist.” But how do we measure present time since it has no extension? It is measured while it passes, but when it has passed it is not measured; for then there is nothing that could be measured. But whence, and how, and whither does it pass while it is being measured? Whence, but from the future? Which way, save through the present? Whither, but into the past? Therefore, from what is not yet, through what has no length, it passes into what is now no longer. But what do we measure, unless it is a time of some length? For we cannot speak of single, and double, and triple, and equal, and all the other ways in which we speak of time, except in terms of the length of the periods of time. But in what “length,” then, do we measure passing time? Is it in the future, from which it passes over? But what does not yet exist cannot be measured. Or, is it in the present, through which it passes? But what has no length we cannot measure. Or is it in the past into which it passes? But what is no longer we cannot measure.
CHAPTER XXII
28. My soul burns ardently to understand this most
intricate enigma. O Lord my God, O good Father, I beseech thee through
Christ, do not close off these things, both the familiar and the
obscure, from my desire. Do not bar it from entering into them; but let
their light dawn by thy enlightening mercy, O Lord. Of whom shall I
inquire about these things? And to whom shall I confess my ignorance of
them with greater profit than to thee, to whom these studies of mine
(ardently longing to understand thy Scriptures) are not a bore? Give me
what I love, for I do love it; and this thou hast given me. O Father,
who truly knowest how to give good gifts to thy children, give this to
me. Grant it, since I have undertaken to understand it, and hard labor
is my lot until thou openest it. I beseech thee, through Christ and in
his name, the Holy of Holies, let no man interrupt me. “For I
have believed, and therefore do I speak.” Cf. Cf.
We speak of this time and that time, and these times and those times: “How long ago since he said this?” “How long ago since he did this?” “How long ago since I saw that?” “This syllable is twice as long as that single short syllable.” These words we say and hear, and we are understood and we understand. They are quite commonplace and ordinary, and still the meaning of these very same things lies deeply hid and its discovery is still to come.
CHAPTER XXIII
29. I once heard a learned man say that the motions of
the sun, moon, and stars constituted time; and I did not agree. For why
should not the motions of all bodies constitute time? What if the
lights of heaven should cease, and a potter’s wheel still turn
round: would there be no time by which we might measure those rotations
and say either that it turned at equal intervals, or, if it moved now
more slowly and now more quickly, that some rotations were longer and
others shorter? And while we were saying this, would we not also be
speaking in time? Or would there not be in our words some syllables
that were long and others short, because the first took a longer time
to sound, and the others a shorter time? O God, grant men to see in a
small thing the notions that are common Communes
notitias, the universal principles of "common sense." This idea
became a basic category in scholastic epistemology.
30. I thirst to know the power and the nature of time, by which we measure the motions of bodies, and say, for example, that this motion is twice as long as that. For I ask, since the word “day” refers not only to the length of time that the sun is above the earth (which separates day from night), but also refers to the sun’s entire circuit from east all the way around to east--on account of which we can say, “So many days have passed” (the nights being included when we say, “So many days,” and their lengths not counted separately)--since, then, the day is ended by the motion of the sun and by his passage from east to east, I ask whether the motion itself is the day, or whether the day is the period in which that motion is completed; or both? For if the sun’s passage is the day, then there would be a day even if the sun should finish his course in as short a period as an hour. If the motion itself is the day, then it would not be a day if from one sunrise to another there were a period no longer than an hour. But the sun would have to go round twenty-four times to make just one day. If it is both, then that could not be called a day if the sun ran his entire course in the period of an hour; nor would it be a day if, while the sun stood still, as much time passed as the sun usually covered during his whole course, from morning to morning. I shall, therefore, not ask any more what it is that is called a day, but rather what time is, for it is by time that we measure the circuit of the sun, and would be able to say that it was finished in half the period of time that it customarily takes if it were completed in a period of only twelve hours. If, then, we compare these periods, we could call one of them a single and the other a double period, as if the sun might run his course from east to east sometimes in a single period and sometimes in a double period.
Let no man tell me, therefore, that the motions of the
heavenly bodies constitute time. For when the sun stood still at the
prayer of a certain man in order that he might gain his victory in
battle, the sun stood still but time went on. For in as long a span of
time as was sufficient the battle was fought and ended. Cf.
I see, then, that time is a certain kind of extension. But do I see it, or do I only seem to? Thou, O Light and Truth, wilt show me.
CHAPTER XXIV
31. Dost thou command that I should agree if anyone says that time is “the motion of a body”? Thou dost not so command. For I hear that no body is moved but in time; this thou tellest me. But that the motion of a body itself is time I do not hear; thou dost not say so. For when a body is moved, I measure by time how long it was moving from the time when it began to be moved until it stopped. And if I did not see when it began to be moved, and if it continued to move so that I could not see when it stopped, I could not measure the movement, except from the time when I began to see it until I stopped. But if I look at it for a long time, I can affirm only that the time is long but not how long it may be. This is because when we say, “How long?”, we are speaking comparatively as: “This is as long as that,” or, “This is twice as long as that”; or other such similar ratios. But if we were able to observe the point in space where and from which the body, which is moved, comes and the point to which it is moved; or if we can observe its parts moving as in a wheel, we can say how long the movement of the body took or the movement of its parts from this place to that. Since, therefore, the motion of a body is one thing, and the norm by which we measure how long it takes is another thing, we cannot see which of these two is to be called time. For, although a body is sometimes moved and sometimes stands still, we measure not only its motion but also its rest as well; and both by time! Thus we say, “It stood still as long as it moved,” or, “It stood still twice or three times as long as it moved”--or any other ratio which our measuring has either determined or imagined, either roughly or precisely, according to our custom. Therefore, time is not the motion of a body.
CHAPTER XXV
32. And I confess to thee, O Lord, that I am still
ignorant as to what time is. And again I confess to thee, O Lord, that
I know that I am speaking all these things in time, and that I have
already spoken of time a long time, and that “very long” is
not long except when measured by the duration of time. How, then, do I
know this, when I do not know what time is? Or, is it possible that I
do not know how I can express what I do know? Alas for me! I do not
even know the extent of my own ignorance. Behold, O my God, in thy
presence I do not lie. As my heart is, so I speak. Thou shalt light my
candle; thou, O Lord my God, wilt enlighten my darkness. Cf.
CHAPTER XXVI
33. Does not my soul most truly confess to thee that I do measure intervals of time? But what is it that I thus measure, O my God, and how is it that I do not know what I measure? I measure the motion of a body by time, but the time itself I do not measure. But, truly, could I measure the motion of a body--how long it takes, how long it is in motion from this place to that--unless I could measure the time in which it is moving?
How, then, do I measure this time itself? Do we measure
a longer time by a shorter time, as we measure the length of a
crossbeam in terms of cubits? Cubitum,
literally the distance between the elbow and the tip of the middle
finger; in the imperial system of weights and measures it was 17.5
inches.
But no certain measure of time is obtained this way;
since it is possible that if a shorter verse is pronounced slowly, it
may take up more time than a longer one if it is pronounced hurriedly.
The same would hold for a stanza, or a foot, or a syllable. From this
it appears to me that time is nothing other than extendedness; Distentionem,
"spread-out-ness"; cf. Descartes' notion of res extensae, and
its relation to time.
CHAPTER XXVII
34. Press on, O my mind, and attend with all your
power. God is our Helper: “it is he that hath made us and not we
ourselves.” Here Augustine begins to
summarize his own answers to the questions he has raised in his
analysis of time.
35. Deus Creator omnium The same hymn of Ambrose
quoted above, Bk. IX, Ch. XII, 39, and analyzed again in De
musica, VI, 2:2.
What is it, then, that I can measure? Where is the short syllable by which I measure? Where is the long one that I am measuring? Both have sounded, have flown away, have passed on, and are no longer. And still I measure, and I confidently answer--as far as a trained ear can be trusted--that this syllable is single and that syllable double. And I could not do this unless they both had passed and were ended. Therefore I do not measure them, for they do not exist any more. But I measure something in my memory which remains fixed.
36. It is in you, O mind of mine, that I measure the periods of time. Do not shout me down that it exists [objectively]; do not overwhelm yourself with the turbulent flood of your impressions. In you, as I have said, I measure the periods of time. I measure as time present the impression that things make on you as they pass by and what remains after they have passed by--I do not measure the things themselves which have passed by and left their impression on you. This is what I measure when I measure periods of time. Either, then, these are the periods of time or else I do not measure time at all.
What are we doing when we measure silence, and say that
this silence has lasted as long as that voice lasts? Do we not project
our thought to the measure of a sound, as if it were then sounding, so
that we can say something concerning the intervals of silence in a
given span of time? For, even when both the voice and the tongue are
still, we review--in thought--poems and verses, and discourse of
various kinds or various measures of motions, and we specify their time
spans--how long this is in relation to that--just as if we were
speaking them aloud. If anyone wishes to utter a prolonged sound, and
if, in forethought, he has decided how long it should be, that man has
already in silence gone through a span of time, and committed his sound
to memory. Thus he begins to speak and his voice sounds until it
reaches the predetermined end. It has truly sounded and will go on
sounding. But what is already finished has already sounded and what
remains will still sound. Thus it passes on, until the present
intention carries the future over into the past. The past increases by
the diminution of the future until by the consumption of all the future
all is past. This theory of time is
worth comparing with its most notable restatement in modern poetry, in
T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets and especially "Burnt Norton."
CHAPTER XXVIII
37. But how is the future diminished or consumed when it does not yet exist? Or how does the past, which exists no longer, increase, unless it is that in the mind in which all this happens there are three functions? For the mind expects, it attends, and it remembers; so that what it expects passes into what it remembers by way of what it attends to. Who denies that future things do not exist as yet? But still there is already in the mind the expectation of things still future. And who denies that past things now exist no longer? Still there is in the mind the memory of things past. Who denies that time present has no length, since it passes away in a moment? Yet, our attention has a continuity and it is through this that what is present may proceed to become absent. Therefore, future time, which is nonexistent, is not long; but “a long future” is “a long expectation of the future.” Nor is time past, which is now no longer, long; a “long past” is “a long memory of the past.”
38. I am about to repeat a psalm that I know. Before I begin, my attention encompasses the whole, but once I have begun, as much of it as becomes past while I speak is still stretched out in my memory. The span of my action is divided between my memory, which contains what I have repeated, and my expectation, which contains what I am about to repeat. Yet my attention is continually present with me, and through it what was future is carried over so that it becomes past. The more this is done and repeated, the more the memory is enlarged--and expectation is shortened--until the whole expectation is exhausted. Then the whole action is ended and passed into memory. And what takes place in the entire psalm takes place also in each individual part of it and in each individual syllable. This also holds in the even longer action of which that psalm is only a portion. The same holds in the whole life of man, of which all the actions of men are parts. The same holds in the whole age of the sons of men, of which all the lives of men are parts.
CHAPTER XXIX
39. But “since thy loving-kindness is better than
life itself,” Cf.
But now my years are spent in mourning. Cf.
CHAPTER XXX
40. And I will be immovable and fixed in thee, and thy truth will be my mold. And I shall not have to endure the questions of those men who, as if in a morbid disease, thirst for more than they can hold and say, “What did God make before he made heaven and earth?” or, “How did it come into his mind to make something when he had never before made anything?” Grant them, O Lord, to consider well what they are saying; and grant them to see that where there is no time they cannot say “never.” When, therefore, he is said “never to have made” something--what is this but to say that it was made in no time at all? Let them therefore see that there could be no time without a created world, and let them cease to speak vanity of this kind. Let them also be stretched out to those things which are before them, and understand that thou, the eternal Creator of all times, art before all times and that no times are coeternal with thee; nor is any creature, even if there is a creature “above time.”
CHAPTER XXXI
41. O Lord my God, what a chasm there is in thy deep
secret! How far short of it have the consequences of my sins cast me?
Heal my eyes, that I may enjoy thy light. Surely, if there is a mind
that so greatly abounds in knowledge and foreknowledge, to which all
things past and future are as well known as one psalm is well known to
me, that mind would be an exceeding marvel and altogether astonishing.
For whatever is past and whatever is yet to come would be no more
concealed from him than the past and future of that psalm were hidden
from me when I was chanting it: how much of it had been sung from the
beginning and what and how much still remained till the end. But far be
it from thee, O Creator of the universe, and Creator of our souls and
bodies--far be it from thee that thou shouldst merely know all things
past and future. Far, far more wonderfully, and far more mysteriously
thou knowest them. For it is not as the feelings of one singing
familiar songs, or hearing a familiar song in which, because of his
expectation of words still to come and his remembrance of those that
are past, his feelings are varied and his senses are divided. This is
not the way that anything happens to thee, who art unchangeably
eternal, that is, the truly eternal Creator of minds. As in the
beginning thou knewest both the heaven and the earth without any change
in thy knowledge, so thou didst make heaven and earth in their
beginnings without any division in thy action. Note here the
preparation for the transition from this analysis of time in Bk. XI to
the exploration of the mystery of creation in Bks. XII and XIII. Celsitudo, an
honorific title, somewhat like "Your Highness."
BOOK TWELVE
The mode of creation and the truth of Scripture.
Augustine explores the relation of the visible and formed matter of
heaven and earth to the prior matrix from which it was formed. This
leads to an intricate analysis of “unformed matter” and the
primal “possibility” from which God created, itself created
de nihilo. He finds a reference to this in the
misconstrued Scriptural phrase “the heaven of heavens.”
Realizing that his interpretation of
CHAPTER I
1. My heart is deeply stirred, O Lord, when in this
poor life of mine the words of thy Holy Scripture strike upon it. This
is why the poverty of the human intellect expresses itself in an
abundance of language. Inquiry is more loquacious than discovery.
Demanding takes longer than obtaining; and the hand that knocks is more
active than the hand that receives. But we have the promise, and who
shall break it? “If God be for us, who can be against
us?”
CHAPTER II
2. In lowliness my tongue confesses to thy exaltation, for thou madest heaven and earth. This heaven which I see, and this earth on which I walk--from which came this “earth” that I carry about me--thou didst make.
But where is that heaven of heavens, O Lord, of which
we hear in the words of the psalm, “The heaven of heavens is the
Lord’s, but the earth he hath given to the children of
men”? Vulgate, Earth and sky.
CHAPTER III
3.
And truly this earth was invisible and unformed, It is interesting that
Augustine should have preferred the invisibiliset incomposita of
the Old Latin version of Abyssus,
literally, the unplumbed depths of the sea, and as a constant meaning
here, "the depths beyond measure."
CHAPTER IV
4. What, then, should that formlessness be called so that somehow it might be indicated to those of sluggish mind, unless we use some word in common speech? But what can be found anywhere in the world nearer to a total formlessness than the earth and the abyss? Because of their being on the lowest level, they are less beautiful than are the other and higher parts, all translucent and shining. Therefore, why may I not consider the formlessness of matter--which thou didst create without shapely form, from which to make this shapely world--as fittingly indicated to men by the phrase, “The earth invisible and unformed”?
CHAPTER V
5. When our thought seeks something for our sense to fasten to [in this concept of unformed matter], and when it says to itself, “It is not an intelligible form, such as life or justice, since it is the material for bodies; and it is not a former perception, for there is nothing in the invisible and unformed which can be seen and felt”--while human thought says such things to itself, it may be attempting either to know by being ignorant or by knowing how not to know.
CHAPTER VI
6. But if, O Lord, I am to confess to thee, by my mouth and my pen, the whole of what thou hast taught me concerning this unformed matter, I must say first of all that when I first heard of such matter and did not understand it--and those who told me of it could not understand it either--I conceived of it as having countless and varied forms. Thus, I did not think about it rightly. My mind in its agitation used to turn up all sorts of foul and horrible “forms”; but still they were “forms.” And still I called it formless, not because it was unformed, but because it had what seemed to me a kind of form that my mind turned away from, as bizarre and incongruous, before which my human weakness was confused. And even what I did conceive of as unformed was so, not because it was deprived of all form, but only as it compared with more beautiful forms. Right reason, then, persuaded me that I ought to remove altogether all vestiges of form whatever if I wished to conceive matter that was wholly unformed; and this I could not do. For I could more readily imagine that what was deprived of all form simply did not exist than I could conceive of anything between form and nothing--something which was neither formed nor nothing, something that was unformed and nearly nothing.
Thus my mind ceased to question my spirit--filled as it
was with the images of formed bodies, changing and varying them
according to its will. And so I applied myself to the bodies themselves
and looked more deeply into their mutability, by which they cease to be
what they had been and begin to be what they were not. This transition
from form to form I had regarded as involving something like a formless
condition, though not actual nothingness. Augustine may not have
known the Platonic doctrine of nonbeing (cf. Sophist,
236C-237B), but he clearly is deeply influenced here by Plotinus; cf.
Enneads, II, 4:8f., where matter is analyzed as a substratum
without quantity or quality; and 4:15: "Matter, then, must be described
as το
απειρον (the indefinite). . .
. Matter is indeterminateness and nothing else." In short,
materiainformis is sheer possibility; not anything and not
nothing!
But I desired to know, not to guess. And, if my voice
and my pen were to confess to thee all the various knots thou hast
untied for me about this question, who among my readers could endure to
grasp the whole of the account? Still, despite this, my heart will not
cease to give honor to thee or to sing thy praises concerning those
things which it is not able to express. Dictare: was
Augustine dictating his Confessions? It is very probable.
For the mutability of mutable things carries with it
the possibility of all those forms into which mutable things can be
changed. But this mutability--what is it? Is it soul? Is it body? Is it
the external appearance of soul or body? Could it be said,
“Nothing was something,” and “That which is, is
not”? If this were possible, I would say that this was it, and in
some such manner it must have been in order to receive these visible
and composite forms. Visibiles et
compositas, the opposite of "invisible and unformed."
CHAPTER VII
7. Whence and how was this, unless it came from thee, from whom all things are, in so far as they are? But the farther something is from thee, the more unlike thee it is--and this is not a matter of distance or place.
Thus it was that thou, O Lord, who art not one thing in
one place and another thing in another place but the Selfsame, and the
Selfsame, and the Selfsame--“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God
Almighty” De nihilo. Trina unitas.
CHAPTER VIII
8. That heaven of heavens was thine, O Lord, but the
earth which thou didst give to the sons of men to be seen and touched
was not then in the same form as that in which we now see it and touch
it. For then it was invisible and unformed and there was an abyss over
which there was no light. The darkness was truly over the abyss,
that is, more than just in the abyss. For this abyss of waters
which now is visible has even in its depths a certain light appropriate
to its nature, perceptible in some fashion to fishes and the things
that creep about on the bottom of it. But then the entire abyss was
almost nothing, since it was still altogether unformed. Yet even there,
there was something that had the possibility of being formed. For thou,
O Lord, hadst made the world out of unformed matter, and this thou
didst make out of nothing and didst make it into almost nothing. From
it thou hast then made these great things which we, the sons of men,
marvel at. For this corporeal heaven is truly marvelous, this firmament
between the water and the waters which thou didst make on the second
day after the creation of light, saying, “Let it be done,”
and it was done. Cf.
But this earth itself which thou hadst made was
unformed matter; it was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over
the abyss. Out of this invisible and unformed earth, out of this
formlessness which is almost nothing, thou didst then make all these
things of which the changeable world consists--and yet does not fully
consist in itself Constat et non
constat, the created earth really exists but never is
self-sufficient.
CHAPTER IX
9. And therefore the Spirit, the Teacher of thy
servant, Moses.
CHAPTER X
10. O Truth, O Light of my heart, let not my own darkness speak to me! I had fallen into that darkness and was darkened thereby. But in it, even in its depths, I came to love thee. I went astray and still I remembered thee. I heard thy voice behind me, bidding me return, though I could scarcely hear it for the tumults of my boisterous passions. And now, behold, I am returning, burning and thirsting after thy fountain. Let no one hinder me; here will I drink and so have life. Let me not be my own life; for of myself I have lived badly. I was death to myself; in thee I have revived. Speak to me; converse with me. I have believed thy books, and their words are very deep.
CHAPTER XI
11. Thou hast told me already, O Lord, with a strong voice in my inner ear, that thou art eternal and alone hast immortality. Thou art not changed by any shape or motion, and thy will is not altered by temporal process, because no will that changes is immortal. This is clear to me, in thy sight; let it become clearer and clearer, I beseech thee. In that light let me abide soberly under thy wings.
Thou hast also told me, O Lord, with a strong voice in my inner ear, that thou hast created all natures and all substances, which are not what thou art thyself; and yet they do exist. Only that which is nothing at all is not from thee, and that motion of the will away from thee, who art, toward something that exists only in a lesser degree--such a motion is an offense and a sin. No one’s sin either hurts thee or disturbs the order of thy rule, either first or last. All this, in thy sight, is clear to me. Let it become clearer and clearer, I beseech thee, and in that light let me abide soberly under thy wings.
12. Likewise, thou hast told me, with a strong voice in my inner ear, that this creation--whose delight thou alone art--is not coeternal with thee. With a most persevering purity it draws its support from thee and nowhere and never betrays its own mutability, for thou art ever present with it; and it cleaves to thee with its entire affection, having no future to expect and no past that it remembers; it is varied by no change and is extended by no time.
O blessed one--if such there be--clinging to thy blessedness! It is blest in thee, its everlasting Inhabitant and its Light. I cannot find a term that I would judge more fitting for “the heaven of the heavens of the Lord” than “Thy house”--which contemplates thy delights without any declination toward anything else and which, with a pure mind in most harmonious stability, joins all together in the peace of those saintly spirits who are citizens of thy city in those heavens that are above this visible heaven.
13. From this let the soul that has wandered far away
from thee understand--if now it thirsts for thee; if now its tears have
become its bread, while daily they say to it, “Where is your
God?”
14. Now I do not know what kind of formlessness there is in these mutations of these last and lowest creatures. Yet who will tell me, unless it is someone who, in the emptiness of his own heart, wanders about and begins to be dizzy in his own fancies? Who except such a one would tell me whether, if all form were diminished and consumed, formlessness alone would remain, through which a thing was changed and turned from one species into another, so that sheer formlessness would then be characterized by temporal change? And surely this could not be, because without motion there is no time, and where there is no form there is no change.
CHAPTER XII
15. These things I have considered as thou hast given me ability, O my God, as thou hast excited me to knock, and as thou hast opened to me when I knock. Two things I find which thou hast made, not within intervals of time, although neither is coeternal with thee. One of them is so formed that, without any wavering in its contemplation, without any interval of change--mutable but not changed--it may fully enjoy thy eternity and immutability. The other is so formless that it could not change from one form to another (either of motion or of rest), and so time has no hold upon it. But thou didst not leave this formless, for, before any “day” in the beginning, thou didst create heaven and earth--these are the two things of which I spoke.
But “the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss.” By these words its formlessness is indicated to us--so that by degrees they may be led forward who cannot wholly conceive of the privation of all form without arriving at nothing. From this formlessness a second heaven might be created and a second earth--visible and well formed, with the ordered beauty of the waters, and whatever else is recorded as created (though not without days) in the formation of this world. And all this because such things are so ordered that in them the changes of time may take place through the ordered processes of motion and form.
CHAPTER XIII
16. Meanwhile this is what I understand, O my God, when
I hear thy Scripture saying, “In the beginning God made the
heaven and the earth, but the earth was invisible and unformed, and
darkness was over the abyss.” It does not say on what day thou
didst create these things. Thus, for the time being I understand that
“heaven of heavens” to mean the intelligible heaven, where
to understand is to know all at once--not “in part,” not
“darkly,” not “through a glass”--but as a
simultaneous whole, in full sight, “face to face.” Cor. 13:12.
CHAPTER XIV
17. Marvelous is the depth of thy oracles. Their surface is before us, inviting the little ones; and yet wonderful is their depth, O my God, marvelous is their depth! It is a fearful thing to look into them: an awe of honor and a tremor of love. Their enemies I hate vehemently. Oh, if thou wouldst slay them with thy two-edged sword, so that they should not be enemies! For I would prefer that they should be slain to themselves, that they might live to thee. But see, there are others who are not critics but praisers of the book of Genesis; they say: “The Spirit of God who wrote these things by his servant Moses did not wish these words to be understood like this. He did not wish to have it understood as you say, but as we say.” To them, O God of us all, thyself being the judge, I give answer.
CHAPTER XV
18. “Will you say that these things are false which Truth tells me, with a loud voice in my inner ear, about the very eternity of the Creator: that his essence is changed in no respect by time and that his will is not distinct from his essence? Thus, he doth not will one thing now and another thing later, but he willeth once and for all everything that he willeth--not again and again; and not now this and now that. Nor does he will afterward what he did not will before, nor does he cease to will what he had willed before. Such a will would be mutable and no mutable thing is eternal. But our God is eternal.
“Again, he tells me in my inner ear that the expectation of future things is turned to sight when they have come to pass. And this same sight is turned into memory when they have passed. Moreover, all thought that varies thus is mutable, and nothing mutable is eternal. But our God is eternal.” These things I sum up and put together, and I conclude that my God, the eternal God, hath not made any creature by any new will, and his knowledge does not admit anything transitory.
19. “What, then, will you say to this, you objectors? Are these things false?” “No,” they say. “What then? Is it false that every entity already formed and all matter capable of receiving form is from him alone who is supremely good, because he is supreme?” “We do not deny this, either,” they say. “What then? Do you deny this: that there is a certain sublime created order which cleaves with such a chaste love to the true and truly eternal God that, although it is not coeternal with him, yet it does not separate itself from him, and does not flow away into any mutation of change or process but abides in true contemplation of him alone?” If thou, O God, dost show thyself to him who loves thee as thou hast commanded--and art sufficient for him--then, such a one will neither turn himself away from thee nor turn away toward himself. This is “the house of God.” It is not an earthly house and it is not made from any celestial matter; but it is a spiritual house, and it partakes in thy eternity because it is without blemish forever. For thou hast made it steadfast forever and ever; thou hast given it a law which will not be removed. Still, it is not coeternal with thee, O God, since it is not without beginning--it was created.
20. For, although we can find no time before it (for
wisdom was created before all things), Cf. Cf.
21. Thus it is that the intelligible heaven came to be
from thee, our God, but in such a way that it is quite another being
than thou art; it is not the Selfsame. Yet we find that time is not
only not before it, but not even in it, thus making it
able to behold thy face forever and not ever be turned aside. Thus, it
is varied by no change at all. But there is still in it that mutability
in virtue of which it could become dark and cold, if it did not, by
cleaving to thee with a supernal love, shine and glow from thee like a
perpetual noon. O house full of light and splendor! “I have loved
your beauty and the place of the habitation of the glory of my
Lord,” Cf. To "the house of
God."
22. “What will you say to me now, you objectors to whom I spoke, who still believe that Moses was the holy servant of God, and that his books were the oracles of the Holy Spirit? Is it not in this ‘house of God’--not coeternal with God, yet in its own mode ‘eternal in the heavens’--that you vainly seek for temporal change? You will not find it there. It rises above all extension and every revolving temporal period, and it rises to what is forever good and cleaves fast to God.”
“It is so,” they reply. “What, then, about those things which my heart cried out to my God, when it heard, within, the voice of his praise? What, then, do you contend is false in them? Is it because matter was unformed, and since there was no form there was no order? But where there was no order there could have been no temporal change. Yet even this ‘almost nothing,’ since it was not altogether nothing, was truly from him from whom everything that exists is in whatever state it is.” “This also,” they say, “we do not deny.”
CHAPTER XVI
23. Now, I would like to discuss a little further, in
thy presence, O my God, with those who admit that all these things are
true that thy Truth has indicated to my mind. Let those who deny these
things bark and drown their own voices with as much clamor as they
please. I will endeavor to persuade them to be quiet and to permit thy
word to reach them. But if they are unwilling, and if they repel me, I
ask of thee, O my God, that thou shouldst not be silent to me. Cf. Cubile, i.e., the
heart. Cf. The heavenly Jerusalem
of
CHAPTER XVII
24. For they say: “Even if these things are true, still Moses did not refer to these two things when he said, by divine revelation, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ By the term ‘heaven’ he did not mean that spiritual or intelligible created order which always beholds the face of God. And by the term ‘earth’ he was not referring to unformed matter.”
“What then do these terms mean?”
They reply, “That man [Moses] meant what we mean; this is what he was saying in those terms.” “What is that?”
“By the terms of heaven and earth,” they say, “he wished first to indicate universally and briefly this whole visible world; then after this, by an enumeration of the days, he could point out, one by one, all the things that it has pleased the Holy Spirit to reveal in this way. For the people to whom he spoke were rude and carnal, so that he judged it prudent that only those works of God which were visible should be mentioned to them.”
But they do agree that the phrases, “The earth was invisible and unformed,” and “The darkened abyss,” may not inappropriately be understood to refer to this unformed matter--and that out of this, as it is subsequently related, all the visible things which are known to all were made and set in order during those specified “days.”
25. But now, what if another one should say, “This same formlessness and chaos of matter was first mentioned by the name of heaven and earth because, out of it, this visible world--with all its entities which clearly appear in it and which we are accustomed to be called by the name of heaven and earth--was created and perfected”? And what if still another should say: “The invisible and visible nature is quite fittingly called heaven and earth. Thus, the whole creation which God has made in his wisdom--that is, in the beginning--was included under these two terms. Yet, since all things have been made, not from the essence of God, but from nothing; and because they are not the same reality that God is; and because there is in them all a certain mutability, whether they abide as the eternal house of God abides or whether they are changed as the soul and body of man are changed--then the common matter of all things invisible and visible (still formless but capable of receiving form) from which heaven and earth were to be created (that is, the creature already fashioned, invisible as well as visible)--all this was spoken of in the same terms by which the invisible and unformed earth and the darkness over the abyss would be called. There was this difference, however: that the invisible and unformed earth is to be understood as having corporeal matter before it had any manner of form; but the darkness over the abyss was spiritual matter, before its unlimited fluidity was harnessed, and before it was enlightened by Wisdom.”
26. And if anyone wished, he might also say, “The entities already perfected and formed, invisible and visible, are not signified by the terms ‘heaven and earth,’ when it reads, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’; instead, the unformed beginning of things, the matter capable of receiving form and being made was called by these terms--because the chaos was contained in it and was not yet distinguished by qualities and forms, which have now been arranged in their own orders and are called heaven and earth: the former a spiritual creation, the latter a physical creation.”
CHAPTER XVIII
27. When all these things have been said and
considered, I am unwilling to contend about words, for such contention
is profitable for nothing but the subverting of the hearer. Cf. This is the basis of
Augustine's defense of allegory as both legitimate and profitable in
the interpretation of Scripture. He did not mean that there is a
plurality of literal truths in Scripture but a multiplicity of
perspectives on truth which amounted to different levels and
interpretations of truth. This gave Augustine the basis for a positive
tolerance of varying interpretations which did hold fast to the
essential common premises about God's primacy as Creator; cf. M.
Pontet, L'Exégèsede Saint Augustin prédicateur
(Lyons, 1944), chs. II and III.
CHAPTER XIX In this chapter,
Augustine summarizes what he takes to be the Christian consensus on the
questions he has explored about the relation of the intellectual and
corporeal creations.
28. For it is certainly true, O Lord, that thou didst
create the heaven and the earth. It is also true that “the
beginning” is thy wisdom in which thou didst create all things.
It is likewise true that this visible world has its own great division
(the heaven and the earth) and these two terms include all entities
that have been made and created. It is further true that everything
mutable confronts our minds with a certain lack of form, whereby it
receives form, or whereby it is capable of taking form. It is true, yet
again, that what cleaves to the changeless form so closely that even
though it is mutable it is not changed is not subject to temporal
process. It is true that the formlessness which is almost nothing
cannot have temporal change in it. It is true that that from which
something is made can, in a manner of speaking, be called by the same
name as the thing that is made from it. Thus that formlessness of which
heaven and earth were made might be called “heaven and
earth.” It is true that of all things having form nothing is
nearer to the unformed than the earth and the abyss. It is true that
not only every created and formed thing but also everything capable of
creation and of form were created by Thee, from whom all things
are. Cf.
CHAPTER XX
29. From all these truths, which are not doubted by
those to whom thou hast granted insight in such things in their inner
eye and who believe unshakably that thy servant Moses spoke in the
spirit of truth--from all these truths, then, one man takes the sense
of “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”
to mean, “In his Word, coeternal with himself, God made both the
intelligible and the tangible, the spiritual and the corporeal
creation.” Another takes it in a different sense, that “In
the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” means,
“In his Word, coeternal with himself, God made the universal mass
of this corporeal world, with all the observable and known entities
that it contains.” Still another finds a different meaning, that
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”
means, “In his Word, coeternal with himself, God made the
unformed matter of the spiritual and corporeal creation.” Another
can take the sense that “In the beginning God created the heaven
and the earth” means, “In his Word, coeternal with himself,
God made the unformed matter of the physical creation, in which heaven
and earth were as yet indistinguished; but now that they have come to
be separated and formed, we can now perceive them both in the mighty
mass of this world.” Mole mundi.
CHAPTER XXI
30. Again, regarding the interpretation of the following words, one man selects for himself, from all the various truths, the interpretation that “the earth was invisible and unformed and darkness was over the abyss” means, “That corporeal entity which God made was as yet the formless matter of physical things without order and without light.” Another takes it in a different sense, that “But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss” means, “This totality called heaven and earth was as yet unformed and lightless matter, out of which the corporeal heaven and the corporeal earth were to be made, with all the things in them that are known to our physical senses.” Another takes it still differently and says that “But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss” means, “This totality called heaven and earth was as yet an unformed and lightless matter, from which were to be made that intelligible heaven (which is also called ‘the heaven of heavens’) and the earth (which refers to the whole physical entity, under which term may be included this corporeal heaven)--that is, He made the intelligible heaven from which every invisible and visible creature would be created.” He takes it in yet another sense who says that “But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss” means, “The Scripture does not refer to that formlessness by the term ‘heaven and earth’; that formlessness itself already existed. This it called the invisible ‘earth’ and the unformed and lightless ‘abyss,’ from which--as it had said before--God made the heaven and the earth (namely, the spiritual and the corporeal creation).” Still another says that “But the earth was invisible and formless, and darkness was over the abyss” means, “There was already an unformed matter from which, as the Scripture had already said, God made heaven and earth, namely, the entire corporeal mass of the world, divided into two very great parts, one superior, the other inferior, with all those familiar and known creatures that are in them.”
CHAPTER XXII
31. Now suppose that someone tried to argue against
these last two opinions as follows: “If you will not admit that
this formlessness of matter appears to be called by the term
‘heaven and earth,’ then there was something that God had
not made out of which he did make heaven and earth. And Scripture has
not told us that God made this matter, unless we understand that
it is implied in the term ‘heaven and earth’ (or the term
‘earth’ alone) when it is said, ‘In the beginning God
created the heaven and earth.’ Thus, in what follows--’the
earth was invisible and unformed’--even though it pleased Moses
thus to refer to unformed matter, yet we can only understand by it that
which God himself hath made, as it stands written in the previous
verse, ‘God made heaven and earth.’” Those who
maintain either one or the other of these two opinions which we have
set out above will answer to such objections: “We do not deny at
all that this unformed matter was created by God, from whom all things
are, and are very good--because we hold that what is created and
endowed with form is a higher good; and we also hold that what is made
capable of being created and endowed with form, though it is a lesser
good, is still a good. But the Scripture has not said specifically that
God made this formlessness--any more than it has said it specifically
of many other things, such as the orders of ‘cherubim’ and
‘seraphim’ and those others of which the apostle distinctly
speaks: ‘thrones,’ ‘dominions,’
‘principalities,’ ‘powers’ Cf.
CHAPTER XXIII
32. I have heard and considered these theories as well as my weak apprehension allows, and I confess my weakness to Thee, O Lord, though already thou knowest it. Thus I see that two sorts of disagreements may arise when anything is related by signs, even by trustworthy reporters. There is one disagreement about the truth of the things involved; the other concerns the meaning of the one who reports them. It is one thing to inquire as to what is true about the formation of the Creation. It is another thing, however, to ask what that excellent servant of thy faith, Moses, would have wished for the reader and hearer to understand from these words. As for the first question, let all those depart from me who imagine that Moses spoke things that are false. But let me be united with them in thee, O Lord, and delight myself in thee with those who feed on thy truth in the bond of love. Let us approach together the words of thy book and make diligent inquiry in them for thy meaning through the meaning of thy servant by whose pen thou hast given them to us.
CHAPTER XXIV
33. But in the midst of so many truths which occur to
the interpreters of these words (understood as they can be in different
ways), which one of us can discover that single interpretation which
warrants our saying confidently that Moses thought thus and that
in this narrative he wishes this to be understood, as
confidently as he would say that this is true, whether Moses
thought the one or the other. For see, O my God, I am thy servant, and
I have vowed in this book an offering of confession to thee, Note how this reiterates
a constant theme in the Confessions as a whole; a further
indication that Bk. XII is an integral part of the single whole.
CHAPTER XXV
34. Let no man fret me now by saying, “Moses did
not mean what you say, but what I say.” Now if he
asks me, “How do you know that Moses meant what you deduce from
his words?”, I ought to respond calmly and reply as I have
already done, or even more fully if he happens to be untrained. But
when he says, “Moses did not mean what you say, but what
I say,” and then does not deny what either of us says but
allows that both are true--then, O my God, life of the poor, in
whose breast there is no contradiction, pour thy soothing balm into my
heart that I may patiently bear with people who talk like this! It is
not because they are godly men and have seen in the heart of thy
servant what they say, but rather they are proud men and have not
considered Moses’ meaning, but only love their own--not because
it is true but because it is their own. Otherwise they could equally
love another true opinion, as I love what they say when what they speak
is true--not because it is theirs but because it is true, and therefore
not theirs but true. And if they love an opinion because it is true, it
becomes both theirs and mine, since it is the common property of all
lovers of the truth. Cf. De libero
arbitrio, II, 8:20, 10:28.
And therefore, O Lord, thy judgments should be held in
awe, because thy truth is neither mine nor his nor anyone else’s;
but it belongs to all of us whom thou hast openly called to have it in
common; and thou hast warned us not to hold on to it as our own special
property, for if we do we lose it. For if anyone arrogates to himself
what thou hast bestowed on all to enjoy, and if he desires something
for his own that belongs to all, he is forced away from what is common
to all to what is, indeed, his very own--that is, from truth to
falsehood. For he who tells a lie speaks of his own thought. Cf.
35. Hear, O God, best judge of all! O Truth itself, hear what I say to this disputant. Hear it, because I say it in thy presence and before my brethren who use the law rightly to the end of love. Hear and give heed to what I shall say to him, if it pleases thee.
For I would return this brotherly and peaceful word to
him: “If we both see that what you say is true, and if we both
say that what I say is true, where is it, I ask you, that we see this?
Certainly, I do not see it in you, and you do not see it in me, but
both of us see it in the unchangeable truth itself, which is above our
minds.” The essential thesis of
the De Magistro; it has important implications both for
Augustine's epistemology and for his theory of Christian nurture; cf.
the De catechizandis rudibus. Cf.
CHAPTER XXVI
36. And yet, O my God, thou exaltation of my humility
and rest of my toil, who hearest my confessions and forgivest my sins,
since thou commandest me to love my neighbor as myself, I cannot
believe that thou gavest thy most faithful servant Moses a lesser gift
than I should wish and desire for myself from thee, if I had been born
in his time, and if thou hadst placed me in the position where, by the
use of my heart and my tongue, those books might be produced which so
long after were to profit all nations throughout the whole world--from
such a great pinnacle of authority--and were to surmount the words of
all false and proud teachings. If I had been Moses--and we all come
from the same mass, Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER XXVII
37. For just as a spring dammed up is more plentiful
and affords a larger supply of water for more streams over wider fields
than any single stream led off from the same spring over a long
course--so also is the narration of thy minister: it is intended to
benefit many who are likely to discourse about it and, with an economy
of language, it overflows into various streams of clear truth, from
which each one may draw out for himself that particular truth which he
can about these topics--this one that truth, that one another truth, by
the broader survey of various interpretations. For some people, when
they read or hear these words, "In the beginning God
created," etc.
In these people, who are still little children and
whose weakness is borne up by this humble language as if on a
mother’s breast, their faith is built up healthfully and they
come to possess and to hold as certain the conviction that God made all
entities that their senses perceive all around them in such marvelous
variety. And if one despises these words as if they were trivial, and
with proud weakness stretches himself beyond his fostering cradle, he
will, alas, fall away wretchedly. Have pity, O Lord God, lest those who
pass by trample on the unfledged bird, An echo of
CHAPTER XXVIII
38. But others, to whom these words are no longer a nest but, rather, a shady thicket, spy the fruits concealed in them and fly around rejoicing and search among them and pluck them with cheerful chirpings: For when they read or hear these words, O God, they see that all times past and times future are transcended by thy eternal and stable permanence, and they see also that there is no temporal creature that is not of thy making. By thy will, since it is the same as thy being, thou hast created all things, not by any mutation of will and not by any will that previously was nonexistent--and not out of thyself, but in thy own likeness, thou didst make from nothing the form of all things. This was an unlikeness which was capable of being formed by thy likeness through its relation to thee, the One, as each thing has been given form appropriate to its kind according to its preordained capacity. Thus, all things were made very good, whether they remain around thee or whether, removed in time and place by various degrees, they cause or undergo the beautiful changes of natural process.
They see these things and they rejoice in the light of thy truth to whatever degree they can.
39. Again, one of these men The thicket denizens
mentioned above.
CHAPTER XXIX
40. But he who understands “In the beginning he made” as if it meant, “At first he made,” can truly interpret the phrase “heaven and earth” as referring only to the “matter” of heaven and earth, namely, of the prior universal, which is the intelligible and corporeal creation. For if he would try to interpret the phrase as applying to the universe already formed, it then might rightly be asked of him, “If God first made this, what then did he do afterward?” And, after the universe, he will find nothing. But then he must, however unwillingly, face the question, How is this the first if there is nothing afterward? But when he said that God made matter first formless and then formed, he is not being absurd if he is able to discern what precedes by eternity, and what proceeds in time; what comes from choice, and what comes from origin. In eternity, God is before all things; in the temporal process, the flower is before the fruit; in the act of choice, the fruit is before the flower; in the case of origin, sound is before the tune. Of these four relations, the first and last that I have referred to are understood with much difficulty. The second and third are very easily understood. For it is an uncommon and lofty vision, O Lord, to behold thy eternity immutably making mutable things, and thereby standing always before them. Whose mind is acute enough to be able, without great labor, to discover how the sound comes before the tune? For a tune is a formed sound; and an unformed thing may exist, but a thing that does not exist cannot be formed. In the same way, matter is prior to what is made from it. It is not prior because it makes its product, for it is itself made; and its priority is not that of a time interval. For in time we do not first utter formless sounds without singing and then adapt or fashion them into the form of a song, as wood or silver from which a chest or vessel is made. Such materials precede in time the forms of the things which are made from them. But in singing this is not so. For when a song is sung, its sound is heard at the same time. There is not first a formless sound, which afterward is formed into a song; but just as soon as it has sounded it passes away, and you cannot find anything of it which you could gather up and shape. Therefore, the song is absorbed in its own sound and the “sound” of the song is its “matter.” But the sound is formed in order that it may be a tune. This is why, as I was saying, the matter of the sound is prior to the form of the tune. It is not “before” in the sense that it has any power of making a sound or tune. Nor is the sound itself the composer of the tune; rather, the sound is sent forth from the body and is ordered by the soul of the singer, so that from it he may form a tune. Nor is the sound first in time, for it is given forth together with the tune. Nor is it first in choice, because a sound is no better than a tune, since a tune is not merely a sound but a beautiful sound. But it is first in origin, because the tune is not formed in order that it may become a sound, but the sound is formed in order that it may become a tune.
From this example, let him who is able to understand see that the matter of things was first made and was called “heaven and earth” because out of it the heaven and earth were made. This primal formlessness was not made first in time, because the form of things gives rise to time; but now, in time, it is intuited together with its form. And yet nothing can be related of this unformed matter unless it is regarded as if it were the first in the time series though the last in value--because things formed are certainly superior to things unformed--and it is preceded by the eternity of the Creator, so that from nothing there might be made that from which something might be made.
CHAPTER XXX
41. In this discord of true opinions let Truth itself bring concord, and may our God have mercy on us all, that we may use the law rightly to the end of the commandment which is pure love. Thus, if anyone asks me which of these opinions was the meaning of thy servant Moses, these would not be my confessions did I not confess to thee that I do not know. Yet I do know that those opinions are true--with the exception of the carnal ones--about which I have said what I thought was proper. Yet those little ones of good hope are not frightened by these words of thy Book, for they speak of high things in a lowly way and of a few basic things in many varied ways. But let all of us, whom I acknowledge to see and speak the truth in these words, love one another and also love thee, our God, O Fountain of Truth--as we will if we thirst not after vanity but for the Fountain of Truth. Indeed, let us so honor this servant of thine, the dispenser of this Scripture, full of thy Spirit, so that we will believe that when thou didst reveal thyself to him, and he wrote these things down, he intended through them what will chiefly minister both for the light of truth and to the increase of our fruitfulness.
CHAPTER XXXI
42. Thus, when one man says, “Moses meant what I mean,” and another says, “No, he meant what I do,” I think that I speak more faithfully when I say, “Why could he not have meant both if both opinions are true?” And if there should be still a third truth or a fourth one, and if anyone should seek a truth quite different in those words, why would it not be right to believe that Moses saw all these different truths, since through him the one God has tempered the Holy Scriptures to the understanding of many different people, who should see truths in it even if they are different? Certainly--and I say this fearlessly and from my heart--if I were to write anything on such a supreme authority, I would prefer to write it so that, whatever of truth anyone might apprehend from the matter under discussion, my words should re-echo in the several minds rather than that they should set down one true opinion so clearly on one point that I should exclude the rest, even though they contained no falsehood that offended me. Therefore, I am unwilling, O my God, to be so headstrong as not to believe that this man [Moses] has received at least this much from thee. Surely when he was writing these words, he saw fully and understood all the truth we have been able to find in them, and also much besides that we have not been able to discern, or are not yet able to find out, though it is there in them still to be found.
CHAPTER XXXII
43. Finally, O Lord--who art God and not flesh and
blood--if any man sees anything less, can anything lie hid from
“thy good Spirit” who shall “lead me into the land of
uprightness,” Cf. Something of an
understatement! It is interesting to note that Augustine devotes more
time and space to these opening verses of Genesis than to any other
passage in the entire Bible--and he never commented on the full
text of Genesis. Cf. Karl Barth's 274 pages devoted to Gen., chs. 1;2,
in the Kirchliche Dogmatik, III, I, pp. 103-377. Transition, in
preparation for the concluding book (XIII), which undertakes a
constructive resolution to the problem of the analysis of the mode of
creation made here in Bk. XII.
BOOK THIRTEEN
The mysteries and allegories of the days of
creation. Augustine undertakes to interpret
CHAPTER I
1. I call on thee, my God, my Mercy, who madest me and
didst not forget me, though I was forgetful of thee. I call thee into
my soul, which thou didst prepare for thy reception by the desire which
thou inspirest in it. Do not forsake me when I call on thee, who didst
anticipate me before I called and who didst repeatedly urge with
manifold calling that I should hear thee afar off and be turned and
call upon thee, who callest me. For thou, O Lord, hast blotted out all
my evil deserts, not punishing me for what my hands have done; and thou
hast anticipated all my good deserts so as to recompense me for what
thy hands have done--the hands which made me. Before I was, thou wast,
and I was not anything at all that thou shouldst grant me being. Yet,
see how I exist by reason of thy goodness, which made provision for all
that thou madest me to be and all that thou madest me from. For thou
didst not stand in need of me, nor am I the kind of good entity which
could be a help to thee, my Lord and my God. It is not that I may serve
thee as if thou wert fatigued in working, or as if thy power would be
the less if it lacked my assistance. Nor is the service I pay thee like
the cultivation of a field, so that thou wouldst go untended if I did
not tend thee. This is a compound--and
untranslatable--Latin pun: nequeut sic te colam quasi terram, ut sis
uncultus si non te colam.
CHAPTER II
2. Indeed, it is from the fullness of thy goodness that thy creation exists at all: to the end that the created good might not fail to be, even though it can profit thee nothing, and is nothing of thee nor equal to thee--since its created existence comes from thee.
For what did the heaven and earth, which thou didst make in the beginning, ever deserve from thee? Let them declare--these spiritual and corporeal entities, which thou madest in thy wisdom--let them declare what they merited at thy hands, so that the inchoate and the formless, whether spiritual or corporeal, would deserve to be held in being in spite of the fact that they tend toward disorder and extreme unlikeness to thee? An unformed spiritual entity is more excellent than a formed corporeal entity; and the corporeal, even when unformed, is more excellent than if it were simply nothing at all. Still, these formless entities are held in their state of being by thee, until they are recalled to thy unity and receive form and being from thee, the one sovereign Good. What have they deserved of thee, since they would not even be unformed entities except from thee?
3. What has corporeal matter deserved of thee--even in its invisible and unformed state--since it would not exist even in this state if thou hadst not made it? And, if it did not exist, it could not merit its existence from thee.
Or, what has that formless spiritual creation deserved
of thee--that it should flow lightlessly like the abyss--since it is so
unlike thee and would not exist at all if it had not been turned by the
Word which made it that same Word, and, illumined by that Word, had
been “made light” Cf. Enneads, I,
2:4: "What the soul now sees, it certainly always possessed, but as
lying in the darkness. . . . To dispel the darkness and thus come
to knowledge of its inner content, it must thrust toward the light."
Compare the notions of the initiative of such movements in the
soul in Plotinus and Augustine.
As for ourselves, who are a spiritual creation by
virtue of our souls, when we turned away from thee, O Light, we were in
that former life of darkness; and we toil amid the shadows of our
darkness until--through thy only Son--we become thy
righteousness, Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER III
4. Now what thou saidst in the beginning of the creation--“Let there be light: and there was light”--I interpret, not unfitly, as referring to the spiritual creation, because it already had a kind of life which thou couldst illuminate. But, since it had not merited from thee that it should be a life capable of enlightenment, so neither, when it already began to exist, did it merit from thee that it should be enlightened. For neither could its formlessness please thee until it became light--and it became light, not from the bare fact of existing, but by the act of turning its face to the light which enlightened it, and by cleaving to it. Thus it owed the fact that it lived, and lived happily, to nothing whatsoever but thy grace, since it had been turned, by a change for the better, toward that which cannot be changed for either better or worse. Thou alone art, because thou alone art without complication. For thee it is not one thing to live and another thing to live in blessedness; for thou art thyself thy own blessedness.
CHAPTER IV
5. What, therefore, would there have been lacking in
thy good, which thou thyself art, even if these things had never been
made or had remained unformed? Thou didst not create them out of any
lack but out of the plenitude of thy goodness, ordering them and
turning them toward form, Cf. Timaeus,
29D-30A, "He [the Demiurge-Creator] was good: and in the good no
jealousy . . . can ever arise. So, being without jealousy, he desired
that all things should come as near as possible to being like himself.
. . . He took over all that is visible . . . and brought it from order
to order, since he judged that order was in every way better" (F. M.
Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, New York, 1937, p. 33). Cf.
Enneads, V, 4:1, and Athanasius, On the Incarnation, III,
3. Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER V
6. See now, In this passage in
Genesis on the creation. Cf.
And now I came to recognize, in the name of God, the Father who made all these things, and in the term “the Beginning” to recognize the Son, through whom he made all these things; and since I did believe that my God was the Trinity, I sought still further in his holy Word, and, behold, “Thy Spirit moved over the waters.” Thus, see the Trinity, O my God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Creator of all creation!
CHAPTER VI
7. But why, O truth-speaking Light? To thee I lift up my heart--let it not teach me vain notions. Disperse its shadows and tell me, I beseech thee, by that Love which is our mother; tell me, I beseech thee, the reason why--after the reference to heaven and to the invisible and unformed earth, and darkness over the abyss--thy Scripture should then at long last refer to thy Spirit? Was it because it was appropriate that he should first be shown to us as “moving over”; and this could not have been said unless something had already been mentioned over which thy Spirit could be understood as “moving”? For he did not “move over” the Father and the Son, and he could not properly be said to be “moving over” if he were “moving over” nothing. Thus, what it was he was “moving over” had to be mentioned first and he whom it was not proper to mention otherwise than as “moving over” could then be mentioned. But why was it not fitting that he should have been introduced in some other way than in this context of “moving over’’?
CHAPTER VII
8. Now let him who is able follow thy apostle with his
understanding when he says, “Thy love is shed abroad in our
hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us” Cf.
To whom shall I tell this? How can I speak of the
weight of concupiscence which drags us downward into the deep abyss,
and of the love which lifts us up by thy Spirit who moved over the
waters? To whom shall I tell this? How shall I tell it? For
concupiscence and love are not certain “places” into which
we are plunged and out of which we are lifted again. What could be more
like, and yet what more unlike? They are both feelings; they are both
loves. The uncleanness of our own spirit flows downward with the love
of worldly care; and the sanctity of thy Spirit raises us upward by the
love of release from anxiety--that we may lift our hearts to thee where
thy Spirit is “moving over the waters.” Thus, we shall have
come to that supreme rest where our souls shall have passed through the
waters which give no standing ground. Cf. the Old Latin
version of
CHAPTER VIII
9. The angels fell, and the soul of man fell; thus they
indicate to us the deep darkness of the abyss, which would have still
contained the whole spiritual creation if thou hadst not said, in the
beginning, “Let there be light: and there was light”--and
if every obedient mind in thy heavenly city had not adhered to thee and
had not reposed in thy Spirit, which moved immutable over all things
mutable. Otherwise, even the heaven of heavens itself would have been a
dark shadow, instead of being, as it is now, light in the
Lord. Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER IX
10. But was neither the Father nor the Son “moving over the waters”? If we understand this as a motion in space, as a body moves, then not even the Holy Spirit “moved.” But if we understand the changeless supereminence of the divine Being above every changeable thing, then Father, Son, and Holy Spirit “moved over the waters.”
Why, then, is this said of thy Spirit alone? Why is it
said of him only--as if he had been in a “place” that is
not a place--about whom alone it is written, “He is thy
gift”? It is in thy gift that we rest. It is there that we enjoy
thee. Our rest is our “place.” Love lifts us up toward that
place, and thy good Spirit lifts our lowliness from the gates of
death. Cf. The Holy Spirit. Canticumgraduum. Tongues of fire, symbol
of the descent of the Holy Spirit; cf. Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER X
11. Happy would be that creature who, though it was in
itself other than thou, still had known no other state than this from
the time it was made, so that it was never without thy gift which moves
over everything mutable--who had been borne up by the call in which
thou saidst, “Let there be light: and there was
light.”
CHAPTER XI
12. Who can understand the omnipotent Trinity? And yet who does not speak about it, if indeed it is of it that he speaks? Rare is the soul who, when he speaks of it, also knows of what he speaks. And men contend and strive, but no man sees the vision of it without peace.
I could wish that men would consider three things which
are within themselves. These three things are quite different from the
Trinity, but I mention them in order that men may exercise their minds
and test themselves and come to realize how different from it they
are. Cf. the detailed analogy
from self to Trinity in De Trinitate, IX-XII.
The three things I speak of are: to be, to know, and to will. For I am, and I know, and I will. I am a knowing and a willing being; I know that I am and that I will; and I will to be and to know. In these three functions, therefore, let him who can see how integral a life is; for there is one life, one mind, one essence. Finally, the distinction does not separate the things, and yet it is a distinction. Surely a man has this distinction before his mind; let him look into himself and see, and tell me. But when he discovers and can say anything about any one of these, let him not think that he has thereby discovered what is immutable above them all, which is immutably and knows immutably and wills immutably. But whether there is a Trinity there because these three functions exist in the one God, or whether all three are in each Person so that they are each threefold, or whether both these notions are true and, in some mysterious manner, the Infinite is in itself its own Selfsame object--at once one and many, so that by itself it is and knows itself and suffices to itself without change, so that the Selfsame is the abundant magnitude of its Unity--who can readily conceive? Who can in any fashion express it plainly? Who can in any way rashly make a pronouncement about it?
CHAPTER XII
13. Go forward in your confession, O my faith; say to
the Lord your God, “Holy, holy, holy, O Lord my God, in thy name
we have been baptized, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit.” In thy name we baptize, in the name of the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit. For among us also God in his Christ made
“heaven and earth,” namely, the spiritual and carnal
members of his Church. And true it is that before it received
“the form of doctrine,” our “earth” I.e., the Church. Cf. Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER XIII
14. But even so, we still live by faith and not by
sight, for we are saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope.
Thus far deep calls unto deep, but now in “the noise of thy
waterfalls.” Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf.
For that city and for him sighs the Bridegroom’s
friend, Cf. Cf. I.e., the Body of
Christ.
CHAPTER XIV
15. And I myself say: “O my God, where art thou?
See now, where art thou?” In thee I take my breath for a little
while, when I pour out my soul beyond myself in the voice of joy and
praise, in the voice of him that keeps holyday. Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf. S. of Sol. 2:17. Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER XV
16. Now who but thee, our God, didst make for us that
firmament of the authority of thy divine Scripture to be over us? For
“the heaven shall be folded up like a scroll” Cf.
17. Let us see, O Lord, “the heavens, the work of
thy fingers,” "The heavens," i.e. the
Scriptures. Cf.
18. There are other waters that are above this
firmament, and I believe that they are immortal and removed from
earthly corruption. Let them praise thy name--this super-celestial
society, thy angels, who have no need to look up at this firmament or
to gain a knowledge of thy Word by reading it--let them praise thee.
For they always behold thy face and read therein, without any syllables
in time, what thy eternal will intends. They read, they choose, they
love. Legunt, eligunt,
diligunt. Cf. Cf. Cf. Retia, literally
"a net"; such as those used by retiarii, the gladiators who used
nets to entangle their opponents. Cf. S. of Sol. 1:3,
4.
CHAPTER XVI
19. For just as thou art the utterly Real, thou alone
dost fully know, since thou art immutably, and thou knowest immutably,
and thou willest immutably. And thy Essence knows and wills immutably.
Thy Knowledge is and wills immutably. Thy Will is and knows immutably.
And it does not seem right to thee that the immutable Light should be
known by the enlightened but mutable creature in the same way as it
knows itself. Therefore, to thee my soul is as a land where no water
is Cf.
CHAPTER XVII
20. Who has gathered the “embittered
ones” Amaricantes, a
figure which Augustine develops both in the Exposition of the
Psalms and TheCity of God. Commenting on Cf.
21. But as for the souls that thirst after thee and who
appear before thee--separated from “the society of the [bitter]
sea” by reason of their different ends--thou waterest them by a
secret and sweet spring, so that “the earth” may bring
forth her fruit and--thou, O Lord, commanding it--our souls may bud
forth in works of mercy after their kind. Cf. In this way, Augustine
sees an analogy between the good earth bearing its fruits and the
ethical "fruit-bearing" of the Christian love of neighbor.
CHAPTER XVIII
22. Thus, O Lord, thus I beseech thee: let it happen as
thou hast prepared it, as thou givest joy and the capacity for joy. Let
truth spring up out of the earth, and let righteousness look down from
heaven, Cf. Cf.
Let us break our bread with the hungry, let us bring
the shelterless poor to our house; let us clothe the naked, and never
despise those of our own flesh. Cf. Cf.
For in it thou makest it plain to us how we may
distinguish between things intelligible and things tangible, as if
between the day and the night--and to distinguish between souls who
give themselves to things of the mind and others absorbed in things of
sense. Thus it is that now thou art not alone in the secret of thy
judgment as thou wast before the firmament was made, and before thou
didst divide between the light and the darkness. But now also thy
spiritual children, placed and ranked in this same firmament--thy grace
being thus manifest throughout the world--may shed light upon the
earth, and may divide between the day and night, and may be for the
signs of the times Cf. Cf. Cf.
23. For “to one there is given by thy Spirit the
word of wisdom” For this whole passage,
cf. the parallel developed here with In principio
diei, an obvious echo to the Vulgate ut praesset diei of
Sacramenta; but
cf. Augustine's discussion of sacramenta in the Old Testament in
the Exposition of the Psalms, LXXIV, 2: "The sacraments of the
Old Testament promised a Saviour; the sacraments of the New Testament
give salvation." Cf.
CHAPTER XIX
24. But, first, “wash yourselves and make you
clean; put away iniquity from your souls and from before my
eyes”
There was that rich man who asked of the good Teacher
what he should do to attain eternal life. Let the good Teacher (whom
the rich man thought a man and nothing more) give him an answer--he is
good for he is God. Let him answer him that, if he would enter into
life, he must keep the commandments: let him put away from himself the
bitterness of malice and wickedness; let him not kill, nor commit
adultery, nor steal, nor bear false witness Cf. for this syntaxis,
Cf. I.e., the rich young
ruler. Cf.
25. But you, O elect people, set in the firmament of
the world, Cf. Cf. Perfectorum. Is
this a conscious use, in a Christian context, of the distinction he had
known so well among the Manicheans--between the perfecti and the
auditores? Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER XX
26. Also let the sea conceive and bring forth your
works, and let the waters bear the moving creatures that have
life. Cf. Cf.
27. Am I speaking falsely? Am I mingling and confounding and not rightly distinguishing between the knowledge of these things in the firmament of heaven and those corporeal works in the swelling sea and beneath the firmament of heaven? For there are those things, the knowledge of which is solid and defined. It does not increase from generation to generation and thus they stand, as it were, as lights of wisdom and knowledge. But there are many and varied physical processes that manifest these selfsame principles. And thus one thing growing from another is multiplied by thy blessing, O God, who dost so refresh our easily wearied mortal senses that in our mental cognition a single thing may be figured and signified in many different ways by different bodily motions.
“The waters” have brought forth these mysteries, but only at thy word. The needs of the people who were alien to the eternity of thy truth have called them forth, but only in thy gospel, since it was these “waters” which cast them up--the waters whose stagnant bitterness was the reason why they came forth through thy Word.
28. Now all the things that thou hast made are fair, and yet, lo, thou who didst make all things art inexpressibly fairer. And if Adam had not fallen away from thee, that brackish sea--the human race--so deeply prying, so boisterously swelling, so restlessly moving, would never have flowed forth from his belly. Thus, there would have been no need for thy ministers to use corporeal and tangible signs in the midst of many “waters” in order to show forth their mystical deeds and words. For this is the way I interpret the phrases “creeping creatures” and “flying fowl.” Still, men who have been instructed and initiated and made dependent on thy corporeal mysteries would not be able to profit from them if it were not that their soul has a higher life and unless, after the word of its admission, it did not look beyond toward its perfection.
CHAPTER XXI
29. And thus, in thy Word, it was not the depth of the
sea but “the earth,” That is, the Church. An allegorical ideal
type of the perfecti in the Church.
And now this soul no longer has need of baptism, as the
heathen had, or as it did when it was covered with the waters--and
there can be no other entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, since thou
hast appointed that baptism should be the entrance. Nor does it seek
great, miraculous works by which to buttress faith. For such a soul
does not refuse to believe unless it sees signs and marvels, now that
“the faithful earth” is separated from “the
waters” of the sea, which have been made bitter by infidelity.
Thus, for them, “tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe
but to those who do not believe.”
And the earth which thou hast founded above the waters does not stand in need of those flying creatures which the waters brought forth at thy word. Send forth thy word into it by the agency of thy messengers. For we only tell of their works, but it is thou who dost the works in them, so that they may bring forth “a living soul” in the earth.
The earth brings forth “the living soul”
because “the earth” is the cause of such things being done
by thy messengers, just as the sea was the cause of the production of
the creeping creatures having life and the flying fowl under the
firmament of heaven. “The earth” no longer needs them,
although it feeds on the Fish which was taken out of the deep, The fish was an early
Christian rebus for "Jesus Christ." The Greek word for fish,
ιχθυζ, was arranged
acrostically to make the phrase Ιησουζ
Χριστοσ, Θεου
Υιοζ, Σωτηρ; cf.
Smith and Cheetham, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, pp.
673f.; see also Cabrol, Dictionnaired'archéologie
chrétienne, Vol. 14, cols. 1246-1252, for a full account of
the symbolism and pictures of early examples.
30. Now, therefore, let thy ministers do their work on “the earth”--not as they did formerly in “the waters” of infidelity, when they had to preach and speak by miracles and mysteries and mystical expressions, in which ignorance--the mother of wonder--gives them an attentive ear because of its fear of occult and strange things. For this is the entry into faith for the sons of Adam who are forgetful of thee, who hide themselves from thy face, and who have become a darkened abyss. Instead, let thy ministers work even as on “the dry land,” safe from the whirlpools of the abyss. Let them be an example unto the faithful by living before them and stirring them up to imitation.
For in such a setting, men will heed, not with the mere
intent to hear, but also to act. Seek the Lord and your soul shall
live Cf. Cf. Cf.
31. But thy Word, O God, is a fountain of life eternal,
and it does not pass away. Therefore, this desertion is restrained by
thy Word when it says to us, “Be not conformed to this
world,” to the end that “the earth” may bring forth a
“living soul” in the fountain of life--a soul disciplined
by thy Word, by thy evangelists, by the following of the followers of
thy Christ. For this is the meaning of “after his kind.” A
man tends to follow the example of his friend. Thus, he [Paul] says,
“Become as I am, because I have become as you
are.”
Thus, in this “living soul” there shall be
good beasts, acting meekly. For thou hast commanded this, saying:
“Do your work in meekness and you shall be loved by all
men.” Cf.
CHAPTER XXII
32. Thus, O Lord, our God, our Creator, when our
affections have been turned from the love of the world, in which we
died by living ill; and when we began to be “a living soul”
by living well; and when the word, “Be not conformed to this
world,” which thou didst speak through thy apostle, has been
fulfilled in us, then will follow what thou didst immediately add when
thou saidst, “But be transformed by the renewing of your
mind.”
This is why thy minister--begetting children by the
gospel so that he might not always have them babes whom he would have
to feed with milk and nurse as children--this is why he said, “Be
transformed by the renewing of your minds, that you may prove what is
the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
This is why the statement in the plural, “Let us
make man,” is also connected with the statement in the singular,
“And God made man.” Thus it is said in the plural,
“After our likeness,” and then in the singular,
“After the image of God.” Man is thus transformed in the
knowledge of God, according to the image of Him who created him. And
now, having been made spiritual, he judges all things--that is, all
things that are appropriate to be judged--and he himself is judged of
no man. Cf.
CHAPTER XXIII
33. Now this phrase, “he judges all
things,” means that man has dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air, and over all cattle and wild beasts, and
over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the
earth. And he does this by the power of reason in his mind by which he
perceives “the things of the Spirit of God.” Cf.
Therefore in thy Church, O our God, by the grace thou
hast given us--since we are thy workmanship, created in good works (not
only those who are in spiritual authority but also those who are
spiritually subject to them)--thou madest man male and female. Here all
are equal in thy spiritual grace where, as far as sex is concerned,
there is neither male nor female, just as there is neither Jew nor
Greek, nor bond nor free. Spiritual men, therefore, whether those who
are in authority or those who are subject to authority, judge
spiritually. They do not judge by the light of that spiritual knowledge
which shines in the firmament, for it is inappropriate for them to
judge by so sublime an authority. Nor does it behoove them to judge
concerning thy Book itself, although there are some things in it which
are not clear. Instead, we submit our understanding to it and believe
with certainty that what is hidden from our sight is still rightly and
truly spoken. In this way, even though a man is now spiritual and
renewed by the knowledge of God according to the image of him who
created him, he must be a doer of the law rather than its
judge. Cf.
34. Man, then, even if he was made after thy own image, did not receive the power of dominion over the lights of heaven, nor over the secret heaven, nor over the day and the night which thou calledst forth before the creation of the heaven, nor over the gathering together of the waters which is the sea. Instead, he received dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowls of the air; and over all cattle, and all the earth; and over all creeping things which creep on the earth.
Indeed, he judges and approves what he finds right and
disapproves what he finds amiss, whether in the celebration of those
mysteries by which are initiated those whom thy mercy hast sought out
in the midst of many waters; or in that sacrament in which is exhibited
the Fish itself See above, Ch. XXI,
30. I.e., the Church. Cf. Another reminder that,
ideally, knowledge is immediate and direct.
The spiritual man also judges by approving what is right and reproving what he finds amiss in the works and morals of the faithful, such as in their almsgiving, which is signified by the phrase, “The earth bringing forth its fruit.” And he judges of the “living soul,” which is then made to live by the disciplining of her affections in chastity, in fasting, and in holy meditation. And he also judges concerning all those things which are perceived by the bodily senses. For it can be said that he should judge in all matters about which he also has the power of correction.
CHAPTER XXIV
35. But what is this; what kind of mystery is this? Behold, O Lord, thou dost bless men in order that they may be “fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.” In this art thou not making a sign to us that we may understand something [allegorically]? Why didst thou not also bless the light, which thou calledst “the day,” nor the firmament of heaven, nor the lights, nor the stars, nor the earth, nor the sea? I might reply, O our God, that thou in creating us after thy own image--I might reply that thou didst will to bestow this gift of blessing upon man alone, if thou hadst not similarly blessed the fishes and the whales, so that they too should be fruitful and multiply and replenish the waters of the sea; and also the fowls, so that they should be multiplied on the earth. In like fashion, I might say that this blessing properly belonged only to such creatures as are propagated from their own kind, if I could find it given also as a blessing to trees, and plants, and the beasts of the earth. But this “increase and multiply” was not said to plants or trees or beasts or serpents--although all of these, along with fishes and birds and men, do actually increase by propagation and so preserve their species.
36. What, then, shall I say, O Truth, O my Life: that it was idly and vainly said? Surely not this, O Father of piety; far be it from a servant of thy Word to say anything like this! But if I do not understand what thou meanest by that phrase, let those who are better than I--that is, those more intelligent than I--interpret it better, in the degree that thou hast given each of us the ability to understand.
But let also my confession be pleasing in thy eyes, for
I confess to thee that I believe, O Lord, that thou hast not spoken
thus in vain. Nor will I be silent as to what my reading has suggested
to me. For it is valid, and I do not see anything to prevent me from
thus interpreting the figurative sayings in thy books. For I know that
a thing that is understood in only one way in the mind may be expressed
in many different ways by the body; and I know that a thing that has
only one manner of expression through the body may be understood in the
mind in many different ways. For consider this single example--the love
of God and of our neighbor--by how many different mysteries and
countless languages, and, in each language, by how many different ways
of speaking, this is signified corporeally! In similar fashion, the
“young fish” in “the waters” increase and
multiply. On the other hand, whoever you are who reads this, observe
and behold what Scripture declares, and how the voice pronounces it
in only one way, “In the beginning God created heaven and
earth.” Here, again, as in a
coda, Augustine restates his central theme and motif in the whole of
his "confessions": the primacy of God, His constant creativity, his
mysterious, unwearied, unfrustrated redemptive love. All are summed up
in this mystery of creation in which the purposes of God are announced
and from which all Christian hope takes its premise. That is, from basic and
essentially simple ideas, they proliferate multiple--and
valid--implications and corollaries.
37. If, then, we consider the nature of things, in their strictly literal sense, and not allegorically, the phrase, “Be fruitful and multiply,” applies to all things that are begotten by seed. But if we treat these words figuratively, as I judge that the Scripture intended them to be--since it cannot be for nothing that this blessing is attributed only to the offspring of marine life and man--then we discover that the characteristic of fecundity belongs also to the spiritual and physical creations (which are signified by “heaven and earth”), and also in righteous and unrighteous souls (which are signified by “light and darkness”) and in the sacred writers through whom the law is uttered (who are signified by “the firmament established between the waters and the waters”); and in the earthly commonwealth still steeped in their bitterness (which is signified by “the sea”); and in the zeal of holy souls (signified by “the dry land”); and the works of mercy done in this present life (signified by “the seed-bearing herbs and fruit-bearing trees”); and in spiritual gifts which shine out for our edification (signified by “the lights of heaven”); and to human affections ruled by temperance (signified by “the living soul”). In all these instances we meet with multiplicity and fertility and increase; but the particular way in which “Be fruitful and multiply” can be exemplified differs widely. Thus a single category may include many things, and we cannot discover them except through their signs displayed corporeally and by the things being excogitated by the mind.
We thus interpret the phrase, “The generation of the waters,” as referring to the corporeally expressed signs [of fecundity], since they are made necessary by the degree of our involvement in the flesh. But the power of human generation refers to the process of mental conception; this we see in the fruitfulness of reason. Therefore, we believe that to both of these two kinds it has been said by thee, O Lord, “Be fruitful and multiply.” In this blessing, I recognize that thou hast granted us the faculty and power not only to express what we understand by a single idea in many different ways but also to understand in many ways what we find expressed obscurely in a single statement. Thus the waters of the sea are replenished, and their waves are symbols of diverse meanings. And thus also the earth is also replenished with human offspring. Its dryness is the symbol of its thirst for truth, and of the fact that reason rules over it.
CHAPTER XXV
38. I also desire to say, O my Lord God, what the
following Scripture suggests to me. Indeed, I will speak without fear,
for I will speak the truth, as thou inspirest me to know what thou dost
will that I should say concerning these words. For I do not believe I
can speak the truth by any other inspiration than thine, since thou art
the Truth, and every man a liar. Cf.
Behold, thou hast given us for our food every
seed-bearing herb on the face of the earth, and all trees that bear in
themselves seed of their own kind; and not to us only, but to all the
fowls of the air and the beasts of the field and all creeping
things. Cf. Cf. Cf.
CHAPTER XXVI
39. Those who find their joy in it are fed by these
“fruits”; but those whose god is their belly find no joy in
them. For in those who offer these fruits, it is not the fruit itself
that matters, but the spirit in which they give them. Therefore, he who
serves God and not his own belly may rejoice in them, and I plainly see
why. I see it, and I rejoice with him greatly. For he [Paul] had
received from the Philippians the things they had sent by Epaphroditus;
yet I see why he rejoiced. He was fed by what he found his joy in; for,
speaking truly, he says, “I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now
at the last your care of me has flourished again, in which you were
once so careful, but it had become a weariness to you.
40. Where do you find joy in all things, O great Paul?
What is the cause of your joy? On what do you feed, O man, renewed now
in the knowledge of God after the image of him who created you, O
living soul of such great continence--O tongue like a winged bird,
speaking mysteries? What food is owed such creatures; what is it that
feeds you? It is joy! For hear what follows: “Nevertheless, you
have done well in that you have shared with me in my
affliction.”
41. Was it on account of his own needs alone that he
said, “You have sent me gifts according to my needs?” Does
he find joy in that? Certainly not for that alone. But how do we know
this? We know it because he himself adds, “Not because I desire a
gift, but because I desire fruit.”
Now I have learned from thee, O my God, how to
distinguish between the terms “gift” and
“fruit.” A “gift” is the thing itself, given by
one who bestows life’s necessities on another--such as money,
food, drink, clothing, shelter, and aid. But “the fruit” is
the good and right will of the giver. For the good Teacher not only
said, “He that receives a prophet,” but he added, “In
the name of a prophet.” And he did not say only, “He who
receives a righteous man,” but added, “In the name of a
righteous man.” Cf.
CHAPTER XXVII
42. Therefore I will speak before thee, O Lord, what is
true, in order that the uninstructed Idiotae: there is
some evidence that this term was used to designate pagans who had a
nominal connection with the Christian community but had not formally
enrolled as catechumens. See Th. Zahn in Neue kirkliche
Zeitschrift (1899), pp. 42-43.
CHAPTER XXVIII
43. And thou, O God, didst see everything that thou
hadst made and, behold, it was very good.
CHAPTER XXIX
44. And I looked attentively to find whether it was seven or eight times that thou didst see thy works were good, when they were pleasing to thee, but I found that there was no “time” in thy seeing which would help me to understand in what sense thou hadst looked so many “times” at what thou hadst made. And I said: “O Lord, is not this thy Scripture true, since thou art true, and thy truth doth set it forth? Why, then, dost thou say to me that in thy seeing there are no times, while this Scripture tells me that what thou madest each day thou didst see to be good; and when I counted them I found how many ‘times’?” To these things, thou didst reply to me, for thou art my God, and thou dost speak to thy servant with a strong voice in his inner ear, my deafness, and crying: “O man, what my Scripture says, I say. But it speaks in terms of time, whereas time does not affect my Word--my Word which exists coeternally with myself. Thus the things you see through my Spirit, I see; just as what you say through my Spirit, I say. But while you see those things in time, I do not see them in time; and when you speak those things in time, I do not speak them in time.”
CHAPTER XXX
45. And I heard this, O Lord my God, and drank up a
drop of sweetness from thy truth, and understood that there are some
men to whom thy works are displeasing, who say that many of them thou
didst make under the compulsion of necessity--such as the pattern of
the heavens and the courses of the stars--and that thou didst not make
them out of what was thine, but that they were already created
elsewhere and from other sources. It was thus [they say] that thou
didst collect and fashion and weave them together, as if from thy
conquered enemies thou didst raise up the walls of the universe; so
that, built into the ramparts of the building, they might not be able a
second time to rebel against thee. And, even of other things, they say
that thou didst neither make them nor arrange them--for example, all
flesh and all the very small living creatures, and all things fastened
to the earth by their roots. But [they say] a hostile mind and an alien
nature--not created by thee and in every way contrary to thee--begot
and framed all these things in the nether parts of the world. A reference to the
Manichean cosmogony and similar dualistic doctrines of "creation."
CHAPTER XXXI
46. But for those who see these things through thy
Spirit, it is thou who seest them in them. When, therefore, they see
that these things are good, it is thou who seest that they are good;
and whatsoever things are pleasing because of thee, it is thou who dost
give us pleasure in those things. Those things which please us through
thy Spirit are pleasing to thee in us. “For what man knows the
things of a man except the spirit of a man which is in him? Even so, no
man knows the things of God, but the Spirit of God. Now we have not
received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit of God, that we might
know the things that are freely given to us from God.”
It is, therefore, one thing to think like the men who
judge something to be bad when it is good, as do those whom we have
already mentioned. It is quite another thing that a man should see as
good what is good--as is the case with many whom thy creation pleases
because it is good, yet what pleases them in it is not thee, and so
they would prefer to find their joy in thy creatures rather than to
find their joy in thee. It is still another thing that when a man sees
a thing to be good, God should see in him that it is good--that truly
he may be loved in what he hath made, he who cannot be loved except
through the Holy Spirit which he hath given us: “Because the love
of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to
us.” Sed quod est,
est. Note the variant text in Skutella, op. cit.: sed
est, est. This is obviously an echo of the Vulgate
CHAPTER XXXII
47. Thanks be to thee, O Lord! We see the heaven and
the earth, either the corporeal part--higher and lower--or the
spiritual and physical creation. And we see the light made and divided
from the darkness for the adornment of these parts, from which the
universal mass of the world or the universal creation is constituted.
We see the firmament of heaven, either the original “body”
of the world between the spiritual (higher) waters and the corporeal
(lower) waters Augustine himself had
misgivings about this passage. In the Retractations, he says
that this statement was made "without due consideration." But he then
adds, with great justice: "However, the point in question is very
obscure" (res autem in abdito est valde); cf. Retract.,
2:6.
CHAPTER XXXIII
48. Let thy works praise thee, that we may love thee; and let us love thee that thy works may praise thee--those works which have a beginning and an end in time--a rising and a setting, a growth and a decay, a form and a privation. Thus, they have their successions of morning and evening, partly hidden, partly plain. For they were made from nothing by thee, and not from thyself, and not from any matter that is not thine, or that was created beforehand. They were created from concreated matter--that is, matter that was created by thee at the same time that thou didst form its formlessness, without any interval of time. Yet, since the matter of heaven and earth is one thing and the form of heaven and earth is another thing, thou didst create matter out of absolutely nothing (de omnino nihilo), but the form of the world thou didst form from formless matter (de informi materia). But both were done at the same time, so that form followed matter with no delaying interval.
CHAPTER XXXIV
49. We have also explored the question of what thou
didst desire to figure forth, both in the creation and in the
description of things in this particular order. And we have seen that
things taken separately are good, and all things taken together are
very good, both in heaven and earth. And we have seen that this was
wrought through thy Word, thy only Son, the head and the body of the
Church, and it signifies thy predestination before all times, without
morning and evening. But when, in time, thou didst begin to unfold the
things destined before time, so that thou mightest make hidden things
manifest and mightest reorder our disorders--since our sins were over
us and we had sunk into profound darkness away from thee, and thy good
Spirit was moving over us to help us in due season--thou didst justify
the ungodly and also didst divide them from the wicked; and thou madest
the authority of thy Book a firmament between those above who would be
amenable to thee and those beneath who would be subject to them. And
thou didst gather the society of unbelievers See above,
amaricantes, Ch. XVII, 20.
CHAPTER XXXV
50. O Lord God, grant us thy peace--for thou hast given us all things. Grant us the peace of quietness, the peace of the Sabbath, the peace without an evening. All this most beautiful array of things, all so very good, will pass away when all their courses are finished--for in them there is both morning and evening.
51. But the seventh day is without an evening, and it
has no setting, for thou hast sanctified it with an everlasting
duration. After all thy works of creation, which were very good, thou
didst rest on the seventh day, although thou hadst created them all in
unbroken rest--and this so that the voice of thy Book might speak to us
with the prior assurance that after our works--and they also are very
good because thou hast given them to us--we may find our rest in thee
in the Sabbath of life eternal. Cf. this requiescamus
in te with the requiescat in te in Bk. I, Ch. I.
CHAPTER XXXVII
52. For then also thou shalt so rest in us as now thou workest in us; and, thus, that will be thy rest through us, as these are thy works through us. But thou, O Lord, workest evermore and art always at rest. Thou seest not in time, thou movest not in time, thou restest not in time. And yet thou makest all those things which are seen in time--indeed, the very times themselves--and everything that proceeds in and from time.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
53. We can see all those things which thou hast made
because they are--but they are because thou seest them. Cf. The City of
God, XI, 10, on Augustine's notion that the world exists as a
thought in the mind of God.
And now, in this present time, we have been moved to do
well, now that our heart has been quickened by thy Spirit; but in the
former time, having forsaken thee, we were moved to do evil. Another conscious
connection between Bk. XIII and Bks. I-X.
What man will teach men to understand this? And what
angel will teach the angels? Or what angels will teach men? We must ask
it of thee; we must seek it in thee; we must knock for it at thy door.
Only thus shall we receive; only thus shall we find; only thus shall
thy door be opened. This final ending is an
antiphon to Bk. XII, Ch. I, 1 above.
Genesis
1:1 1:1 1:1 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:2-31 1:3 1:3 1:5 1:6 1:6 1:9 1:10 1:14 1:14 1:16 1:19 1:20 1:26 1:26 1:29 1:30 1:31 2:2 3:18 3:18 3:19 3:21 22:1 22:2 25:21 27:1
Exodus
3:14 12:35 12:36 20:3-8 20:13-16
Leviticus
Deuteronomy
Joshua
Job
2:7 2:8 9:2 15:26 28:28 28:28 39:13-16
Psalms
2:7 4 4:2 4:7 5:3 6:3 8:1 8:2 8:3 8:4 8:7 9:13 10:1 17:8 18:7 18:13 18:28 18:28 18:31 19:2 19:4 19:4 19:5 19:6 19:12 19:12 19:12 19:13 21:27 22:26 23:6 25:9 25:15 25:18 26:3 26:7 26:8 27:8 27:8 28:1 29:5 29:9 31:10 31:20 31:22 32:1 32:5 32:9 33:9 33:11 34:5 35:3 35:10 35:10 36:5 36:6 36:6 36:9 36:9 36:9 36:23 39:11 39:11 41:4 41:4 42:1 42:2 42:3 42:3 42:4 42:5 42:5 42:6 42:7 42:10 42:11 43:5 43:5 46:4 46:10 49:20 50:14 51:5 51:6 51:8 51:17 51:17 62:1 62:2 62:5 62:6 63:1 63:3 65 65:11 68:5 69:32 71:5 72:18 72:27 73:7 74:16 74:21 78:39 78:39 80:3 85:11 86:15 87:6 88:5 91:13 92:1 95:5 100:3 100:3 101:1 102:27 102:27 102:27 103:3 103:3-5 103:4 103:5 103:8 103:9-14 103:14 104:24 106:2 109:22 113:16 115:16 115:16 116:10 116:10 116:12 116:16 116:16 116:16 116:17 116:17 118:1 119 119:18 119:18 119:105 119:108 119:142 119:155 119:176 121:4 122:1 122:6 123:1 123:5 125:3 130:1 130:1 130:3 136 136 138:6 139:6 139:8 139:16 139:22 141:3 141:5 142:5 143:2 143:10 144:5 144:7 144:7 144:8 144:9 145:3 145:15 145:15 145:16 147:5 148:1-5 148:4 148:7-12
Proverbs
3:7 8:22 9:8 9:13 9:17 9:18 27:21
Isaiah
1:16 1:17 1:18 2:12-14 6:3 14:12-14 28:15 34:4 40:6 40:6-8 46:4 52:7 55:3 58:7 58:10
Jeremiah
Hosea
Matthew
3:17 4:17 5:1-11 5:7 5:14 5:15 5:22 6:8 6:12 6:21 6:33 6:34 7:7 7:7 7:8 9:17 10:41 10:42 11:28 11:29 11:29 11:30 13:7 19:12 19:12 19:14 19:16-22 19:21 22:21 22:37 22:37-39 22:39 24:35 25:21 25:21 25:21 25:23 97
Luke
5:8 7:11-17 10:18-20 10:21 14:14 14:28-33 15:4 15:8 15:13 15:13-24 15:16 15:24 16:10 16:11 16:12 18:9-14 21:34
John
1:1-10 1:9 1:9 1:10 1:11 1:12 1:13 1:14 1:14 1:14 1:16 3:21 3:29 3:29 3:29 4:14 5:14 6:27 7:39 8:25 8:44 14:6 16:33
Acts
2:2 2:3 2:3 2:4 9:1 9:5 13:4-12 17:28
Romans
1:20 1:20 1:20 1:20 1:20 1:21 1:21 1:21 1:22 1:22 1:23 1:23 1:25 1:25 3:4 5:5 5:5 5:5 5:6 6:23 7:22 7:22-25 7:23 7:24 7:25 8:10 8:11 8:23 8:26 8:31 8:32 8:34 8:34 9:5 9:15 9:15 9:21 9:21 10:14 12:2 12:2 12:2 12:2 12:11 13:11 13:12 13:13 13:13 14:1 14:3 14:20
1 Corinthians
1:27 1:30 2:9 2:11 2:11 2:11 2:12 2:14 2:15 3:1 3:1 3:9 3:11 4:6 7:1 7:28 7:32 7:33 8:6 8:8 8:8 9:27 11:19 12:1 12:7-11 13:7 13:12 13:12 13:12 14:16 14:20 14:22 15:9 15:22 15:51 15:54 15:54
2 Corinthians
2:16 3:6 3:6 5:1 5:1-4 5:2 5:15 5:17 5:21 5:21 10:17 11:14
Galatians
Ephesians
2:2 2:15 3:14 3:19 3:20 3:20 4:8 4:9 4:13 4:14 4:14 5:8 5:8 5:8 5:14 5:27
Philippians
2:6 2:6-8 2:7-11 2:15 3:12-14 3:13 3:13 4:10 4:11-13 4:11-13 4:14 4:15-17 4:17
Colossians
1:15 1:16 2:3 2:3 2:8 2:8 2:9 2:16
1 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Titus
Hebrews
James
1 Peter
1 John
Revelation
Wisdom of Solomon
Sirach