(Augustine, Confessions. part 9)
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."[164] Nor can that possibly be void which was uttered
by the mouth of Thy truth: "If, therefore, you have not been
faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust
the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which
is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?"[165]
Such a man was Alypius, who clung to me at that time and who
wavered in his purpose, just as I did, as to what course of life
to follow.
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.[166] And in all the
vexations with which thy mercy followed our worldly pursuits, we
sought for the reason why we suffered so -- and all was darkness!
We turned away groaning and exclaiming, "How long shall these
things be?" And this we often asked, yet for all our asking we
did not relinquish them; for as yet we had not discovered anything
certain which, when we gave those others up, we might grasp in
their stead.
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[167]:"O you mighty Academics, is there no certainty
that man can grasp for the guidance of his life? No, let us
search the more diligently, and let us not despair. See, the
things in the Church's books that appeared so absurd to us before
do not appear so now, and may be otherwise and honestly
interpreted. I will set my feet upon that step where, as a child,
my parents placed me, until the clear truth is discovered. But
where and when shall it be sought? Ambrose has no leisure -- we
have no leisure to read. Where are we to find the books? How or
where could I get hold of them? From whom could I borrow them?
Let me set a schedule for my days and set apart certain hours for
the health of the soul. A great hope has risen up in us, because
the Catholic faith does not teach what we thought it did, and
vainly accused it of. Its teachers hold it as an abomination to
believe that God is limited by the form of a human body. And do I
doubt that I should 'knock' in order for the rest also to be
'opened' unto me? My pupils take up the morning hours; what am I
doing with the rest of the day? Why not do this? But, then, when
am I to visit my influential friends, whose favors I need? When
am I to prepare the orations that I sell to the class? When would
I get some recreation and relax my mind from the strain of work?
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."[168] Certainly thou wouldst have given it, if I had
beseeched thy ears with heartfelt groaning, and if I had cast my
care upon thee with firm faith.
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,"[169] for "he that loves danger shall fall into it."[170]
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.[171] And because she
pleased me, I agreed to wait for her.
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."[172] In thy counsel thou didst mock ours,
and didst prepare thy own plan, for it was thy purpose "to give us
meat in due season, to open thy hand, and to fill our souls with
blessing."[173]
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.[174] And lo, thou art near, and thou
deliverest us from our wretched wanderings and establishest us in
thy way, and thou comfortest us and sayest, "Run, I will carry
you; yea, I will lead you home and then I will set you free."[175]
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.[176] As I increased in years, the
worse was my vanity. For I could not conceive of any substance
but the sort I could see with my own eyes. I no longer thought of
thee, O God, by the analogy of a human body. Ever since I
inclined my ear to philosophy I had avoided this error -- and the
truth on this point I rejoiced to find in the faith of our
spiritual mother, thy Catholic Church. Yet I could not see how
else to conceive thee. And I, a man -- and such a man! -- sought
to conceive thee, the sovereign and only true God. In my inmost
heart, I believed that thou art incorruptible and inviolable and
unchangeable, because -- though I knew not how or why -- I could
still see plainly and without doubt that the corruptible is
inferior to the incorruptible, the inviolable obviously superior
to its opposite, and the unchangeable better than the changeable.
My heart cried out violently against all fantasms,[177] and
with this one clear certainty I endeavored to brush away the swarm
of unclean flies that swarmed around the eyes of my mind. But
behold they were scarcely scattered before they gathered again,
buzzed against my face, and beclouded my vision. I no longer
thought of God in the analogy of a human body, yet I was
constrained to conceive thee to be some kind of body in space,
either infused into the world, or infinitely diffused beyond the
world -- and this was the incorruptible, inviolable, unchangeable
substance, which I thought was better than the corruptible, the
violable, and the changeable.[178] For whatever I conceived to be
deprived of the dimensions of space appeared to me to be nothing,
absolutely nothing; not even a void, for if a body is taken out of
space, or if space is emptied of all its contents (of earth,
water, air, or heaven), yet it remains an empty space -- a
spacious nothing, as it were.
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.[179] And since most
truly and certainly the incorruptible is to be placed above the
corruptible -- as I now admit it -- it followed that I could rise
in my thoughts to something better than my God, if thou wert not
incorruptible. When, therefore, I saw that the incorruptible was
to be preferred to the corruptible, I saw then where I ought to
seek thee, and where I should look for the source of evil: that
is, the corruption by which thy substance can in no way be
profaned. For it is obvious that corruption in no way injures our
God, by no inclination, by no necessity, by no unforeseen chance
-- because he is our God, and what he wills is good, and he
himself is that good. But to be corrupted is not good. Nor art
thou compelled to do anything against thy will, since thy will is
not greater than thy power. But it would have to be greater if
thou thyself wert greater than thyself -- for the will and power
of God are God himself. And what can take thee by surprise, since
thou knowest all, and there is no sort of nature but thou knowest
it? And what more should we say about why that substance which
God is cannot be corrupted; because if this were so it could not
be God?
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.[180]
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
(continued in part 10 ...)
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