AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS
BOOK FOUR
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."1 For what am I to myself without thee but a guide to my
own downfall? Or what am I, even at the best, but one suckled on thy
milk and feeding on thee, O Food that never perishes?2 What indeed is
any man, seeing that he is but a man? Therefore, let the strong and the
mighty laugh at us, but let us who are "poor and needy"3 confess to
thee.
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1 Ps. 50:14.
2 Cf. John 6:27.
3 Ps. 74:21.
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,4 being myself their companion.
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,5 and answered "that, even if the garland was of
imperishable gold, I would still not permit a fly to be killed to win
it for me." For he would have slain certain living creatures in his
sacrifices, and by those honors would have invited the devils to help
me. This evil thing I refused, but not out of a pure love of thee, O
God of my heart, for I knew not how to love thee because I knew not how
to conceive of anything beyond corporeal splendors. And does not a
soul, sighing after such idle fictions, commit fornication against
thee, trust in false things, and "feed on the winds"6 ? But still I
would not have sacrifices offered to devils on my behalf, though I was
myself still offering them sacrifices of a sort by my own [Manichean]
superstition. For what else is it "to feed on the winds" but to feed on
the devils, that is, in our wanderings to become their sport and
mockery?
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4 Cf. Ps. 4:2.
5 The rites of the soothsayers, in which animals were killed, for
auguries and propitiation of the gods.
6 Cf. Hos. 12:1.
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"7 --not to abuse thy goodness as a
license to sin, but to remember the words of the Lord, "Behold, you are
made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing befall you."8 All this
wholesome advice [the astrologers] labor to destroy when they say, "The
cause of your sin is inevitably fixed in the heavens," and, "This is
the doing of Venus, or of Saturn, or of Mars"--all this in order that a
man, who is only flesh and blood and proud corruption, may regard
himself as blameless, while the Creator and Ordainer of heaven and the
stars must bear the blame of our ills and misfortunes. But who is this
Creator but thou, our God, the sweetness and wellspring of
righteousness, who renderest to every man according to his works and
despisest not "a broken and a contrite heart"9 ?
5. There was at that time a wise man, very skillful and quite famous in
medicine.10 He was proconsul then, and with his own hand he placed on
my distempered head the crown I had won in a rhetorical contest. He did
not do this as a physician, however; and for this distemper "only thou
canst heal who resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble."11
But didst thou fail me in that old man, or forbear from healing my
soul? Actually when I became better acquainted with him, I used to
listen, rapt and eager, to his words; for, though he spoke in simple
language, his conversation was replete with vivacity, life, and
earnestness. He recognized from my own talk that I was given to books
of the horoscope-casters, but he, in a kind and fatherly way, advised
me to throw them away and not to spend idly on these vanities care and
labor that might otherwise go into useful things. He said that he
himself in his earlier years had studied the astrologers' art with a
view to gaining his living by it as a profession. Since he had already
understood Hippocrates, he was fully qualified to understand this too.
Yet, he had given it up and followed medicine for the simple reason
that he had discovered astrology to be utterly false and, as a man of
honest character, he was unwilling to gain his living by beguiling
people. "But you," he said, "have the profession of rhetoric to support
yourself by, so that you are following this delusion in free will and
not necessity. All the more, therefore, you ought to believe me, since
I worked at it to learn the art perfectly because I wished to gain my
living by it." When I asked him to account for the fact that many true
things are foretold by astrology, he answered me, reasonably enough,
that the force of chance, diffused through the whole order of nature,
brought these things about. For when a man, by accident, opens the
leaves of some poet (who sang and intended something far different) a
verse oftentimes turns out to be wondrously apposite to the reader's
present business. "It is not to be wondered at," he continued, "if out
of the human mind, by some higher instinct which does not know what
goes on within itself, an answer should be arrived at, by chance and
not art, which would fit both the business and the action of the
inquirer."
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.
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7 Ps. 41:4.
8 John 5:14.
9 Ps. 51:17.
10 Vindicianus; see below, Bk. VII, Ch. VI, 8.
11 James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5.
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."12 Still, it
was a sweet friendship, being ripened by the zeal of common studies.
Moreover, I had turned him away from the true faith--which he had not
soundly and thoroughly mastered as a youth--and turned him toward those
superstitious and harmful fables which my mother mourned in me. With me
this man went wandering off in error and my soul could not exist
without him. But behold thou wast close behind thy fugitives--at once a
God of vengeance and a Fountain of mercies, who dost turn us to thyself
by ways that make us marvel. Thus, thou didst take that man out of this
life when he had scarcely completed one whole year of friendship with
me, sweeter to me than all the sweetness of my life thus far.
8. Who can show forth all thy praise13 for that which he has
experienced in himself alone? What was it that thou didst do at that
time, O my God; how unsearchable are the depths of thy judgments! For
when, sore sick of a fever, he long lay unconscious in a death sweat
and everyone despaired of his recovery, he was baptized without his
knowledge. And I myself cared little, at the time, presuming that his
soul would retain what it had taken from me rather than what was done
to his unconscious body. It turned out, however, far differently, for
he was revived and restored. Immediately, as soon as I could talk to
him--and I did this as soon as he was able, for I never left him and we
hung on each other overmuch--I tried to jest with him, supposing that
he also would jest in return about that baptism which he had received
when his mind and senses were inactive, but which he had since learned
that he had received. But he recoiled from me, as if I were his enemy,
and, with a remarkable and unexpected freedom, he admonished me that,
if I desired to continue as his friend, I must cease to say such
things. Confounded and confused, I concealed my feelings till he should
get well and his health recover enough to allow me to deal with him as
I wished. But he was snatched away from my madness, that with thee he
might be preserved for my consolation. A few days after, during my
absence, the fever returned and he died.
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.14 But she did not know how to answer me.
And if I said, "Hope thou in God,"15 she very properly disobeyed me,
because that dearest friend she had lost was as an actual man, both
truer and better than the imagined deity she was ordered to put her
hope in. Nothing but tears were sweet to me and they took my friend's
place in my heart's desire.
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12 Rom. 5:5.
13 Cf. Ps. 106:2.
14 Cf. Ps. 42:5; 43:5.
15 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 Pylades16 ; they would have
gladly died for one another, or both together, because not to love
together was worse than death to them. But a strange kind of feeling
had come over me, quite different from this, for now it was wearisome
to live and a fearful thing to die. I suppose that the more I loved him
the more I hated and feared, as the most cruel enemy, that death which
had robbed me of him. I even imagined that it would suddenly annihilate
all men, since it had had such a power over him. This is the way I
remember it was with me.
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"17 --for I felt that my soul and his soul were
but one soul in two bodies. Consequently, my life was now a horror to
me because I did not want to live as a half self. But it may have been
that I was afraid to die, lest he should then die wholly whom I had so
greatly loved.
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16 Cf. Ovid, Tristia, IV, 4:74.
17 Cf. Horace, Ode I, 3:8, where he speaks of Virgil, et serves 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"18 by its adulterous rubbing. And that fable would not die to me
as often as one of my friends died. And there were other things in our
companionship that took strong hold of my mind: to discourse and jest
with him; to indulge in courteous exchanges; to read pleasant books
together; to trifle together; to be earnest together; to differ at
times without ill-humor, as a man might do with himself, and even
through these infrequent dissensions to find zest in our more frequent
agreements; sometimes teaching, sometimes being taught; longing for
someone absent with impatience and welcoming the homecomer with joy.
These and similar tokens of friendship, which spring spontaneously from
the hearts of those who love and are loved in return--in countenance,
tongue, eyes, and a thousand ingratiating gestures--were all so much
fuel to melt our souls together, and out of the many made us one.
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18 2 Tim. 4:3.
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"19 and thou art
Truth.
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19 Ps. 119:142.
CHAPTER X
15. "Turn us again, O Lord God of Hosts, cause thy face to shine; and
we shall be saved."20 For wherever the soul of man turns itself,
unless toward thee, it is enmeshed in sorrows, even though it is
surrounded by beautiful things outside thee and outside itself. For
lovely things would simply not be unless they were from thee. They come
to be and they pass away, and by coming they begin to be, and they grow
toward perfection. Then, when perfect, they begin to wax old and
perish, and, if all do not wax old, still all perish. Therefore, when
they rise and grow toward being, the more rapidly they grow to
maturity, so also the more rapidly they hasten back toward nonbeing.
This is the way of things. This is the lot thou hast given them,
because they are part of things which do not all exist at the same
time, but by passing away and succeeding each other they all make up
the universe, of which they are all parts. For example, our speech is
accomplished by sounds which signify meanings, but a meaning is not
complete unless one word passes away, when it has sounded its part, so
that the next may follow after it. Let my soul praise thee, in all
these things, O God, the Creator of all; but let not my soul be stuck
to these things by the glue of love, through the senses of the body.
For they go where they were meant to go, that they may exist no longer.
And they rend the soul with pestilent desires because she longs to be
and yet loves to rest secure in the created things she loves. But in
these things there is no resting place to be found. They do not abide.
They flee away; and who is he who can follow them with his physical
senses? Or who can grasp them, even when they are present? For our
physical sense is slow because it is a physical sense and bears its own
limitations in itself. The physical sense is quite sufficient for what
it was made to do; but it is not sufficient to stay things from running
their courses from the beginning appointed to the end appointed. For in
thy word, by which they were created, they hear their appointed bound:
"From there--to here!"
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20 Ps. 80:3.
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 unity21 may be made complete in all its parts. "But do I ever pass
away?" asks the Word of God. Fix your habitation in him. O my soul,
commit whatsoever you have to him. For at long last you are now
becoming tired of deceit. Commit to truth whatever you have received
from the truth, and you will lose nothing. What is decayed will
flourish again; your diseases will be healed; your perishable parts
shall be reshaped and renovated, and made whole again in you. And these
perishable things will not carry you with them down to where they go
when they perish, but shall stand and abide, and you with them, before
God, who abides and continues forever.
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.
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21 That is, our physical universe.
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."22 For he did not delay, but ran through the world,
crying out by words, deeds, death, life, descent, ascension--crying
aloud to us to return to him. And he departed from our sight that we
might return to our hearts and find him there. For he left us, and
behold, he is here. He could not be with us long, yet he did not leave
us. He went back to the place that he had never left, for "the world
was made by him."23 In this world he was, and into this world he came,
to save sinners. To him my soul confesses, and he heals it, because it
had sinned against him. O sons of men, how long will you be so slow of
heart? Even now after Life itself has come down to you, will you not
ascend and live? But where will you climb if you are already on a
pinnacle and have set your mouth against the heavens? First come down
that you may climb up, climb up to God. For you have fallen by trying
to climb against him. Tell this to the souls you love that they may
weep in the valley of tears, and so bring them along with you to God,
because it is by his spirit that you speak thus to them, if, as you
speak, you burn with the fire of love.
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22 Ps. 19:5.
23 John 1:10.
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.24 Thou
knowest them, O Lord; they have escaped my memory. I no longer have
them; somehow they have been mislaid.
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24 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,"25 but through it all I was being piloted by
thee, though most secretly. And how is it that I know--whence comes my
confident confession to thee--that I loved him more because of the love
of those who praised him than for the things they praised in him?
Because if he had gone unpraised, and these same people had criticized
him and had spoken the same things of him in a tone of scorn and
disapproval, I should never have been kindled and provoked to love him.
And yet his qualities would not have been different, nor would he have
been different himself; only the appraisals of the spectators. See
where the helpless soul lies prostrate that is not yet sustained by the
stability of truth! Just as the breezes of speech blow from the breast
of the opinionated, so also the soul is tossed this way and that,
driven forward and backward, and the light is obscured to it and the
truth not seen. And yet, there it is in front of us. And to me it was a
great matter that both my literary work and my zest for learning should
be known by that man. For if he approved them, I would be even more
fond of him; but if he disapproved, this vain heart of mine, devoid of
thy steadfastness, would have been offended. And so I meditated on the
problem "of the beautiful and the fitting" and dedicated my essay on it
to him. I regarded it admiringly, though no one else joined me in doing
so.
-----------------
25 Eph. 4:14.
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."26 And so my mind
ranged through the corporeal forms, and I defined and distinguished as
"beautiful" that which is so in itself and as "fit" that which is
beautiful in relation to some other thing. This argument I supported by
corporeal examples. And I turned my attention to the nature of the
mind, but the false opinions which I held concerning spiritual things
prevented me from seeing the truth. Still, the very power of truth
forced itself on my gaze, and I turned my throbbing soul away from
incorporeal substance to qualities of line and color and shape, and,
because I could not perceive these with my mind, I concluded that I
could not perceive my mind. And since I loved the peace which is in
virtue, and hated the discord which is in vice, I distinguished between
the unity there is in virtue and the discord there is in vice. I
conceived that unity consisted of the rational soul and the nature of
truth and the highest good. But I imagined that in the disunity there
was some kind of substance of irrational life and some kind of entity
in the supreme evil. This evil I thought was not only a substance but
real life as well, and yet I believed that it did not come from thee, O
my God, from whom are all things. And the first I called a Monad, as if
it were a soul without sex. The other I called a Dyad, which showed
itself in anger in deeds of violence, in deeds of passion and lust--but
I did not know what I was talking about. For I had not understood nor
had I been taught that evil is not a substance at all and that our soul
is not that supreme and unchangeable good.
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"27 ; and "of his fullness have we all received,"28 for "that
was the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the
world"29 ; for "in thee there is no variableness, neither shadow of
turning."30
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."31 And
what greater pride could there be for me than, with a marvelous
madness, to assert myself to be that nature which thou art? I was
mutable--this much was clear enough to me because my very longing to
become wise arose out of a wish to change from worse to better--yet I
chose rather to think thee mutable than to think that I was not as thou
art. For this reason I was thrust back; thou didst resist my fickle
pride. Thus I went on imagining corporeal forms, and, since I was flesh
I accused the flesh, and, since I was "a wind that passes away,"32 I
did not return to thee but went wandering and wandering on toward those
things that have no being--neither in thee nor in me, nor in the body.
These fancies were not created for me by thy truth but conceived by my
own vain conceit out of sensory notions. And I used to ask thy faithful
children--my own fellow citizens, from whom I stood unconsciously
exiled--I used flippantly and foolishly to ask them, "Why, then, does
the soul, which God created, err?" But I would not allow anyone to ask
me, "Why, then, does God err?" I preferred to contend that thy
immutable substance was involved in error through necessity rather than
admit that my own mutable substance had gone astray of its own free
will and had fallen into error as its punishment.
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."33 Yet I could not, for by the clamor of my own
errors I was hurried outside myself, and by the weight of my own pride
I was sinking ever lower. You did not "make me to hear joy and
gladness," nor did the bones rejoice which were not yet humbled.34
28. And what did it profit me that, when I was scarcely twenty years
old, a book of Aristotle's entitled The Ten Categories35 fell into my
hands? On the very title of this I hung as on something great and
divine, since my rhetoric master at Carthage and others who had
reputations for learning were always referring to it with such swelling
pride. I read it by myself and understood it. And what did it mean that
when I discussed it with others they said that even with the assistance
of tutors--who not only explained it orally, but drew many diagrams in
the sand--they scarcely understood it and could tell me no more about
it than I had acquired in the reading of it by myself alone? For the
book appeared to me to speak plainly enough about substances, such as a
man; and of their qualities, such as the shape of a man, his kind, his
stature, how many feet high, and his family relationship, his status,
when born, whether he is sitting or standing, is shod or armed, or is
doing something or having something done to him--and all the
innumerable things that are classified under these nine categories (of
which I have given some examples) or under the chief category of
substance.
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.36
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.37 And what did these abilities profit me, if I did not put
them to good use? I did not realize that those arts were understood
with great difficulty, even by the studious and the intelligent, until
I tried to explain them to others and discovered that even the most
proficient in them followed my explanations all too slowly.
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.38 Thou wilt bear us up when we are little and even
down to our gray hairs thou wilt carry us. For our stability, when it
is in thee, is stability indeed; but when it is in ourselves, then it
is all unstable. Our good lives forever with thee, and when we turn
from thee with aversion, we fall into our own perversion. Let us now, O
Lord, return that we be not overturned, because with thee our good
lives without blemish--for our good is thee thyself. And we need not
fear that we shall find no place to return to because we fell away from
it. For, in our absence, our home--which is thy eternity--does not fall
away.
-----------------
26 Ps. 72:18.
27 Ps. 18:28.
28 John 1:16.
29 John 1:9.
30 Cf. James 1:17.
31 Cf. James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5.
32 Ps. 78:39.
33 Cf. Jer. 25:10; 33:11; John 3:29; Rev. 18:23.
34 Cf. Ps. 51:8.
35 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.
36 Cf. Gen. 3:18.
37 Again, the Prodigal Son theme; cf. Luke 15:13.
38 Cf. Ps. 17:8.
------------------------
Source: kuyper.cs.pitt.edu ebooks/RTF/augustine/confessions.1.0.RTF
Translated and edited by ALBERT C. OUTLER, Ph.D., D.D.
Scanned to RTF format by Harry Plantinga (planting@cs.pitt.edu)
Translated to ASCII and reformated by John Brubaker
31-mar-94