AUGUSTINE: CONFESSIONS & ENCHIRIDION (忏悔录)    translated and edited by ALBERT C. OUTLER

　　AUGUSTINE'S TESTIMONY CONCERNING THE CONFESSIONS

　　introduction:

　　In the book, Augustine gave us a thorough survey of aesthetics, and he combined religious stories and Plato’s theory to create a theory that influenced the people followed. He was commencing an undertaking, hitherto without precedent, and which will never find an imitator. I desire to set before my fellows the likeness of a man in all the truth of nature, and that man myself. If he have occasionally made use of some immaterial embellishments, this has only been in order to fill a gap caused by lack of memory. Gather round he the countless host of my fellow-men; let them hear his confessions, lament for his unworthiness, and blush for my imperfections.

　　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]

　　even as far as the reference to the Sabbath rest.[3]

　　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 which I was laying waste with a very wretched and wild verbal assault,[4

　　]do you not remember how the narration shows that I was given as a gift to the faithful and daily tears of my mother, who had been promised that I should not perish?  I certainly declared there that God by his grace turns men's wills to the true faith when they are not only averse to it, but actually adverse.  As for the other ways in which I sought God's aid in my growth in perseverance, you either know or can review them as you wish (PL, 45, c.  1025).

　　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."[5]

　　Indeed, we were ourselves quite lost; but he who made us, remade us [sed qui fecit, refecit].  As, then, you find me in these pages, pray for me that I shall not fail but that I may go on to be perfected.  Pray for me, my son, pray for me! (Epist. CCXXXI, PL, 33, c.  1025).

　　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."[6]  And man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and the proof that thou dost resist the proud.  Still he desires to praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation.

　　Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.  Grant me, O Lord, to know and understand whether first to invoke thee or to praise thee; whether first to know thee or call upon thee.  But who can invoke thee, knowing thee not?  For he who knows thee not may invoke thee as another than thou art.  It may be that we should invoke thee in order that we may come to know thee.  But "how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?  Or how shall they believe without a preacher?"[7]  Now, "they shall praise the Lord who seek him,"[8]

　　for "those who seek shall find him,"[9] and, finding him, shall praise him.  I will seek thee, O Lord, and call upon thee.  I call upon thee, O Lord, in my faith which thou hast given me, which thou hast inspired in me through the humanity of thy Son, and through the ministry of thy preacher.[10]

　　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."[11]

　　Therefore I would not exist -- I would simply not be at all --

　　unless I exist in thee, from whom and by whom and in whom all things are.  Even so, Lord; even so.  Where do I call thee to, when I am already in thee?  Or from whence wouldst thou come into me?  Where, beyond heaven and earth, could I go that there my God might come to me -- he who hath said, "I fill heaven and earth"?[12]

　　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?"[13]  Most high, most excellent, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful and most just; most secret and most truly present; most beautiful and most strong; stable, yet not supported; unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never old; making all things new, yet bringing old age upon the proud, and they know it not; always working, ever at rest; gathering, yet needing nothing; sustaining, pervading, and protecting; creating, nourishing, and developing; seeking, and yet possessing all things.  Thou dost love, but without passion; art jealous, yet free from care; dost repent without remorse; art angry, yet remainest serene.  Thou changest thy ways, leaving thy plans unchanged; thou recoverest what thou hast never really lost.  Thou art never in need but still thou dost rejoice at thy gains; art never greedy, yet demandest dividends.  Men pay more than is required so that thou dost become a debtor; yet who can possess anything at all which is not already thine?  Thou owest men nothing, yet payest out to them as if in debt to thy creature, and when thou dost cancel debts thou losest nothing thereby.  Yet, O

　　my God, my life, my holy Joy, what is this that I have said?  What can any man say when he speaks of thee?  But woe to them that keep silence -- since even those who say most are dumb.

　　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."[14]  So speak that I may hear.  Behold, the ears of my heart are before thee, O Lord; open them and "say to my soul, I am your salvation." I will hasten after that voice, and I will lay hold upon thee.  Hide not thy face from me.  Even if I die, let me see thy face lest I die.

　　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."[15]  "I believe, and therefore do I speak."[16]  But thou, O Lord, thou knowest.

　　Have I not confessed my transgressions unto thee, O my God; and hast thou not put away the iniquity of my heart?[17]  I do not contend in judgment with thee,[18] who art truth itself; and I

　　would not deceive myself, lest my iniquity lie even to itself.  I

　　do not, therefore, contend in judgment with thee, for "if thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?"[19]

　　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,"[20]

　　thy years are an ever-present day.  And how many of ours and our fathers' days have passed through this thy day and have received from it what measure and fashion of being they had?  And all the days to come shall so receive and so pass away.  "But thou art the same"![21]  And all the things of tomorrow and the days yet to come, and all of yesterday and the days that are past, thou wilt gather into this thy day.  What is it to me if someone does not understand this?  Let him still rejoice and continue to ask, "What is this?"  Let him also rejoice and prefer to seek thee, even if he fails to find an answer, rather than to seek an answer and not find thee!

　　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.[22]  For thou art God, omnipotent and good, even if thou hadst done no more than these things, which no other but thou canst do -- thou alone who madest all things fair and didst order everything according to thy law.

　　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,"[23] where, I pray thee, O my God, where, O Lord, or when was I, thy servant, ever innocent?

　　But see now, I pass over that period, for what have I to do with a time from which I can recall no memories?

　　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.[24]

　　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."[25]  Those first lessons were better, assuredly, because they were more certain, and through them I acquired, and still retain, the power of reading what I find written and of writing for myself what I

　　will.  In the other subjects, however, I was compelled to learn about the wanderings of a certain Aeneas, oblivious of my own wanderings, and to weep for Dido dead, who slew herself for love.

　　And all this while I bore with dry eyes my own wretched self dying to thee, O God, my life, in the midst of these things.

　　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.[26]  Those around me, also sinning, thus cried out: "Well done!  Well done!"  The friendship of this world is fornication against thee; and "Well done!  Well done!"  is cried until one feels ashamed not to show himself a man in this way.  For my own condition I shed no tears, though I wept for Dido, who "sought death at the sword's point,"[27] while I myself was seeking the lowest rung of thy creation, having forsaken thee; earth sinking back to earth again.  And, if I had been forbidden to read these poems, I would have grieved that I was not allowed to read what grieved me.  This sort of madness is considered more honorable and more fruitful learning than the beginner's course in which I

　　learned to read and write.

　　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![28]

　　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)[29] can scarcely pass over?  Do I not read in you the stories of Jove the thunderer --

　　and the adulterer?[30]  How could he be both?  But so it says, and the sham thunder served as a cloak for him to play at real adultery.  Yet which of our gowned masters will give a tempered hearing to a man trained in their own schools who cries out and says: "These were Homer's fictions; he transfers things human to the gods.  I could have wished that he would transfer divine things to us."[31]  But it would have been more true if he said, "These are, indeed, his fictions, but he attributed divine attributes to sinful men, that crimes might not be accounted crimes, and that whoever committed such crimes might appear to imitate the celestial gods and not abandoned men."

　　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 "Of Jove's descending in a golden shower Into Danae's bosom...

　　With a woman to intrigue."

　　See how he excites himself to lust, as if by a heavenly authority, when he says:

　　"Great Jove, Who shakes the highest heavens with his thunder;

　　Shall I, poor mortal man, not do the same?

　　I've done it, and with all my heart, I'm glad."[32]

　　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 "Bar off Italy From all the approaches of the Teucrian king."[33]

　　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"[34] as thou art.  Wilt thou keep silence forever?  Even now thou drawest from that vast deep the soul that seeks thee and thirsts after thy delight, whose "heart said unto thee, ?I have sought thy face; thy face, Lord, will I

　　seek.'"[35] For I was far from thy face in the dark shadows of passion.  For it is not by our feet, nor by change of place, that we either turn from thee or return to thee.  That younger son did not charter horses or chariots, or ships, or fly away on visible wings, or journey by walking so that in the far country he might prodigally waste all that thou didst give him when he set out.[36]

　　A kind Father when thou gavest; and kinder still when he returned destitute!  To be wanton, that is to say, to be darkened in heart -- this is to be far from thy face.

　　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"[37] in silence.  O thou, the only great God, who by an unwearied law hurlest down the penalty of blindness to unlawful desire!  When a man seeking the reputation of eloquence stands before a human judge, while a thronging multitude surrounds him, and inveighs against his enemy with the most fierce hatred, he takes most vigilant heed that his tongue does not slip in a grammatical error, for example, and say inter hominibus [instead of inter homines], but he takes no heed lest, in the fury of his spirit, he cut off a man from his fellow men [ex hominibus].

　　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."[38]

　　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.[39]  I kept watch, by my inner sense, over the integrity of my outer senses, and even in these trifles and also in my thoughts about trifles, I learned to take pleasure in truth.  I was averse to being deceived; I had a vigorous memory; I was gifted with the power of speech, was softened by friendship, shunned sorrow, meanness, ignorance.  Is not such an animated creature as this wonderful and praiseworthy?

　　But all these are gifts of my God; I did not give them to myself.

　　Moreover, they are good, and they all together constitute myself.

　　Good, then, is he that made me, and he is my God; and before him will I rejoice exceedingly for every good gift which, even as a boy, I had.  But herein lay my sin, that it was not in him, but in his creatures -- myself and the rest -- that I sought for pleasures, honors, and truths.  And I fell thereby into sorrows, troubles, and errors.  Thanks be to thee, my joy, my pride, my confidence, my God -- thanks be to thee for thy gifts; but do thou preserve them in me.  For thus wilt thou preserve me; and those things which thou hast given me shall be developed and perfected, and I myself shall be with thee, for from thee is my being.

　　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."[40]  For as I became a youth, I longed to be satisfied with worldly things, and I dared to grow wild in a succession of various and shadowy loves.  My form wasted away, and I became corrupt in thy eyes, yet I was still pleasing to my own eyes --

　　and eager to please the eyes of men.

　　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![41]  For thy omnipotence is not far from us even when we are far from thee.

　　Now, on the other hand, I might have given more vigilant heed to the voice from the clouds: "Nevertheless, such shall have trouble in the flesh, but I spare you,"[42] and, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman,"[43] and, "He that is unmarried cares for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he that is married cares for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife."[44]  I should have listened more attentively to these words, and, thus having been "made a eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake,"[45] I would have with greater happiness expected thy embraces.

　　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[46] where I had gone to study grammar and rhetoric; and the money for a further term at Carthage was being got together for me.  This project was more a matter of my father's ambition than of his means, for he was only a poor citizen of Tagaste.

　　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.[47]  For what is more surely heard in thy ear than a confessing heart and a faithful life?

　　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.[48]

　　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."[49]  But I did not realize this, and rushed on headlong with such blindness that, among my friends, I was ashamed to be less shameless than they, when I heard them boasting of their disgraceful exploits -- yes, and glorying all the more the worse their baseness was.  What is worse, I took pleasure in such exploits, not for the pleasure's sake only but mostly for praise.  What is worthy of vituperation except vice itself?  Yet I made myself out worse than I was, in order that I

　　might not go lacking for praise.  And when in anything I had not sinned as the worst ones in the group, I would still say that I

　　had done what I had not done, in order not to appear contemptible because I was more innocent than they; and not to drop in their esteem because I was more chaste.

　　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[50] and was progressing, albeit slowly, toward its outskirts.  For in counseling me to chastity, she did not bear in mind what her husband had told her about me.  And although she knew that my passions were destructive even then and dangerous for the future, she did not think they should be restrained by the bonds of conjugal affection -- if, indeed, they could not be cut away to the quick.  She took no heed of this, for she was afraid lest a wife should prove a hindrance and a burden to my hopes.  These were not her hopes of the world to come, which my mother had in thee, but the hope of learning, which both my parents were too anxious that I should acquire -- my father, because he had little or no thought of thee, and only vain thoughts for me; my mother, because she thought that the usual course of study would not only be no hindrance but actually a furtherance toward my eventual return to thee.  This much I

　　conjecture, recalling as well as I can the temperaments of my parents.  Meantime, the reins of discipline were slackened on me, so that without the restraint of due severity, I might play at whatsoever I fancied, even to the point of dissoluteness.  And in all this there was that mist which shut out from my sight the brightness of thy truth, O my God; and my iniquity bulged out, as it were, with fatness![51]

　　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."[52]  And to what purpose?  Why, even this:

　　that, having once got possession of the city through his practice of his wicked ways, he might gain honors, empire, and wealth, and thus be exempt from the fear of the laws and from financial difficulties in supplying the needs of his family -- and from the consciousness of his own wickedness.  So it seems that even Catiline himself loved not his own villainies, but something else, and it was this that gave him the motive for his crimes.

　　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.[53]  Those pears were truly pleasant to the sight, but it was not for them that my miserable soul lusted, for I had an abundance of better pears.  I stole those simply that I might steal, for, having stolen them, I threw them away.  My sole gratification in them was my own sin, which I was pleased to enjoy; for, if any one of these pears entered my mouth, the only good flavor it had was my sin in eating it.  And now, O Lord my God, I ask what it was in that theft of mine that caused me such delight; for behold it had no beauty of its own -- certainly not the sort of beauty that exists in justice and wisdom, nor such as is in the mind, memory senses, and the animal life of man; nor yet the kind that is the glory and beauty of the stars in their courses; nor the beauty of the earth, or the sea -- teeming with spawning life, replacing in birth that which dies and decays.  Indeed, it did not have that false and shadowy beauty which attends the deceptions of vice.

　　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,[54] and seeks apart from thee what she cannot find pure and untainted until she returns to thee.  All things thus imitate thee -- but pervertedly -- when they separate themselves far from thee and raise themselves up against thee.  But, even in this act of perverse imitation, they acknowledge thee to be the Creator of all nature, and recognize that there is no place whither they can altogether separate themselves from thee.  What was it, then, that I loved in that theft?  And wherein was I imitating my Lord, even in a corrupted and perverted way?  Did I wish, if only by gesture, to rebel against thy law, even though I had no power to do so actually -- so that, even as a captive, I might produce a sort of counterfeit liberty, by doing with impunity deeds that were forbidden, in a deluded sense of omnipotence?  Behold this servant of thine, fleeing from his Lord and following a shadow!  O

　　rottenness!  O monstrousness of life and abyss of death!  Could I

　　find pleasure only in what was unlawful, and only because it was unlawful?

　　CHAPTER VII

　　15.  "What shall I render unto the Lord"[55] for the fact that while my memory recalls these things my soul no longer fears them?  I will love thee, O Lord, and thank thee, and confess to thy name, because thou hast put away from me such wicked and evil deeds.  To thy grace I attribute it and to thy mercy, that thou hast melted away my sin as if it were ice.  To thy grace also I

　　attribute whatsoever of evil I did _not_ commit -- for what might I not have done, loving sin as I did, just for the sake of sinning?  Yea, all the sins that I confess now to have been forgiven me, both those which I committed willfully and those which, by thy providence, I did not commit.  What man is there who, when reflecting upon his own infirmity, dares to ascribe his chastity and innocence to his own powers, so that he should love thee less -- as if he were in less need of thy mercy in which thou forgivest the transgressions of those that return to thee?  As for that man who, when called by thee, obeyed thy voice and shunned those things which he here reads of me as I recall and confess them of myself, let him not despise me -- for I, who was sick, have been healed by the same Physician by whose aid it was that he did not fall sick, or rather was less sick than I.  And for this let him love thee just as much -- indeed, all the more -- since he sees me restored from such a great weakness of sin by the selfsame Saviour by whom he sees himself preserved from such a weakness.

　　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?"[56]

　　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,[57] and shall have no fear and shall achieve excellence in the Excellent.  I fell away from thee, O my God, and in my youth I

　　wandered too far from thee, my true support.  And I became to myself a wasteland.

　　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.[58]  Yet, had these things no soul, they would certainly not inspire our love.

　　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?"[59]

　　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"[60] (for this stupid and diabolical name was regarded as the very badge of gallantry) among whom I lived with a sort of ashamed embarrassment that I was not even as they were.  But I

　　lived with them, and at times I was delighted with their friendship, even when I abhorred their acts (that is, their "wrecking") in which they insolently attacked the modesty of strangers, tormenting them by uncalled-for jeers, gratifying their mischievous mirth.  Nothing could more nearly resemble the actions of devils than these fellows.  By what name, therefore, could they be more aptly called than "wreckers"? -- being themselves wrecked first, and altogether turned upside down.  They were secretly mocked at and seduced by the deceiving spirits, in the very acts by which they amused themselves in jeering and horseplay at the expense of others.

　　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.[61]  Now it was this book which quite definitely changed my whole attitude and turned my prayers toward thee, O Lord, and gave me new hope and new desires.  Suddenly every vain hope became worthless to me, and with an incredible warmth of heart I yearned for an immortality of wisdom and began now to arise that I might return to thee.  It was not to sharpen my tongue further that I made use of that book.  I was now nineteen; my father had been dead two years,[62] and my mother was providing the money for my study of rhetoric.  What won me in it [i.e., the Hortensius] was not its style but its substance.

　　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."[63]

　　Since at that time, as thou knowest, O Light of my heart, the words of the apostle were unknown to me, I was delighted with Cicero's exhortation, at least enough so that I was stimulated by it, and enkindled and inflamed to love, to seek, to obtain, to hold, and to embrace, not this or that sect, but wisdom itself, wherever it might be.  Only this checked my ardor: that the name of Christ was not in it.  For this name, by thy mercy, O Lord, this name of my Saviour thy Son, my tender heart had piously drunk in, deeply treasured even with my mother's milk.  And whatsoever was lacking that name, no matter how erudite, polished, and truthful, did not quite take complete hold of me.

　　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.[64]  For my inflated pride was repelled by their style, nor could the sharpness of my wit penetrate their inner meaning.  Truly they were of a sort to aid the growth of little ones, but I scorned to be a little one and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as fully grown.

　　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.[65]  These names were never out of their mouths, but only as sound and the clatter of tongues, for their heart was empty of truth.  Still they cried, "Truth, Truth," and were forever speaking the word to me.  But the thing itself was not in them.  Indeed, they spoke falsely not only of thee -- who truly art the Truth -- but also about the basic elements of this world, thy creation.  And, indeed, I should have passed by the philosophers themselves even when they were speaking truth concerning thy creatures, for the sake of thy love, O

　　Highest Good, and my Father, O Beauty of all things beautiful.

　　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."[66]  Yet they still served me glowing fantasies in those dishes.  And, truly, it would have been better to have loved this very sun -- which at least is true to our sight -- than those illusions of theirs which deceive the mind through the eye.  And yet because I supposed the illusions to be from thee I fed on them -- not with avidity, for thou didst not taste in my mouth as thou art, and thou wast not these empty fictions.  Neither was I nourished by them, but was instead exhausted.  Food in dreams appears like our food awake;

　　yet the sleepers are not nourished by it, for they are asleep.

　　But the fantasies of the Manicheans were not in any way like thee as thou hast spoken to me now.  They were simply fantastic and false.  In comparison to them the actual bodies which we see with our fleshly sight, both celestial and terrestrial, are far more certain.  These true bodies even the beasts and birds perceive as well as we do and they are more certain than the images we form about them.  And again, we do with more certainty form our conceptions about them than, from them, we go on by means of them to imagine of other greater and infinite bodies which have no existence.  With such empty husks was I then fed, and yet was not fed.

　　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.[67]

　　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.[68]  For how much better were the fables of the grammarians and poets than these snares [of the Manicheans]!  For verses and poems and "the flying Medea"[69] are still more profitable truly than these men's "five elements," with their various colors, answering to "the five caves of darkness"[70] (none of which exist and yet in which they slay the one who believes in them).  For verses and poems I can turn into food for the mind, for though I sang about "the flying Medea"

　　I never believed it, but those other things [the fantasies of the Manicheans] I did believe.  Woe, woe, by what steps I was dragged down to "the depths of hell"[71] -- toiling and fuming because of my lack of the truth, even when I was seeking after thee, my God!

　　To thee I now confess it, for thou didst have mercy on me when I

　　had not yet confessed it.  I sought after thee, but not according to the understanding of the mind, by means of which thou hast willed that I should excel the beasts, but only after the guidance of my physical senses.  Thou wast more inward to me than the most inward part of me; and higher than my highest reach. I came upon that brazen woman, devoid of prudence, who, in Solomon's obscure parable, sits at the door of the house on a seat and says, "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant."[72]

　　This woman seduced me, because she found my soul outside its own door, dwelling on the sensations of my flesh and ruminating on such food as I had swallowed through these physical senses.

　　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)[73]; and how should I have seen this when the sight of my eyes went no farther than physical objects, and the sight of my mind reached no farther than to fantasms?  And I

　　did not know that God is a spirit who has no parts extended in length and breadth, whose being has no mass -- for every mass is less in a part than in a whole -- and if it be an infinite mass it must be less in such parts as are limited by a certain space than in its infinity.  It cannot therefore be wholly everywhere as Spirit is, as God is.  And I was entirely ignorant as to what is that principle within us by which we are like God, and which is rightly said in Scripture to be made "after God's image."

　　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?[74]  Similarly, offenses against nature are everywhere and at all times to be held in detestation and should be punished.  Such offenses, for example, were those of the Sodomites; and, even if all nations should commit them, they would all be judged guilty of the same crime by the divine law, which has not made men so that they should ever abuse one another in that way.  For the fellowship that should be between God and us is violated whenever that nature of which he is the author is polluted by perverted lust.  But these offenses against customary morality are to be avoided according to the variety of such customs.  Thus, what is agreed upon by convention, and confirmed by custom or the law of any city or nation, may not be violated at the lawless pleasure of any, whether citizen or stranger.  For any part that is not consistent with its whole is unseemly.  Nevertheless, when God commands anything contrary to the customs or compacts of any nation, even though it were never done by them before, it is to be done; and if it has been interrupted, it is to be restored; and if it has never been established, it is to be established.  For it is lawful for a king, in the state over which he reigns, to command that which neither he himself nor anyone before him had commanded.  And if it cannot be held to be inimical to the public interest to obey him -- and, in truth, it would be inimical if he were not obeyed, since obedience to princes is a general compact of human society -- how much more, then, ought we unhesitatingly to obey God, the Governor of all his creatures!  For, just as among the authorities in human society, the greater authority is obeyed before the lesser, so also must God be above all.

　　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.[75]

　　Sometimes there is just one; sometimes two together; sometimes all of them at once.  Thus we live, offending against the Three and the Seven, that harp of ten strings, thy Decalogue, O God most high and most sweet.[76]  But now how can offenses of vileness harm thee who canst not be defiled; or how can deeds of violence harm thee who canst not be harmed?  Still thou dost punish these sins which men commit against themselves because, even when they sin against thee, they are also committing impiety against their own souls.  Iniquity gives itself the lie, either by corrupting or by perverting that nature which thou hast made and ordained.  And they do this by an immoderate use of lawful things; or by lustful desire for things forbidden, as "against nature"; or when they are guilty of sin by raging with heart and voice against thee, rebelling against thee, "kicking against the pricks"[77]; or when they cast aside respect for human society and take audacious delight in conspiracies and feuds according to their private likes and dislikes.

　　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[78] -- who doubts but that it should be done because only that society of men is righteous which obeys thee?

　　But blessed are they who know what thou dost command.  For all things done by those who obey thee either exhibit something necessary at that particular time or they foreshow things to come.

　　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"[79]!  And, wretch that I was, I believed that more mercy was to be shown to the fruits of the earth than unto men, for whom these fruits were created.  For, if a hungry man -- who was not a Manichean -- should beg for any food, the morsel that we gave to him would seem condemned, as it were, to capital punishment.

　　CHAPTER XI

　　19.  And now thou didst "stretch forth thy hand from above"[80] and didst draw up my soul out of that profound darkness [of Manicheism] because my mother, thy faithful one, wept to thee on my behalf more than mothers are accustomed to weep for the bodily deaths of their children.  For by the light of the faith and spirit which she received from thee, she saw that I was dead.

　　And thou didst hear her, O Lord, thou didst hear her and despised not her tears when, pouring down, they watered the earth under her eyes in every place where she prayed.  Thou didst truly hear her.

　　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[81] -- for it was his habit to do this when he found people ready to receive it --

　　he refused, very prudently, as I afterward realized.  For he answered that I was still unteachable, being inflated with the novelty of that heresy, and that I had already perplexed divers inexperienced persons with vexatious questions, as she herself had told him.  "But let him alone for a time," he said, "only pray God for him.  He will of his own accord, by reading, come to discover what an error it is and how great its impiety is." He went on to tell her at the same time how he himself, as a boy, had been given over to the Manicheans by his misguided mother and not only had read but had even copied out almost all their books.  Yet he had come to see, without external argument or proof from anyone else, how much that sect was to be shunned -- and had shunned it.  When he had said this she was not satisfied, but repeated more earnestly her entreaties, and shed copious tears, still beseeching him to see and talk with me.  Finally the bishop, a little vexed at her importunity, exclaimed, "Go your way; as you live, it cannot be that the son of these tears should perish." As she often told me afterward, she accepted this answer as though it were a voice from heaven.

　　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."[82]  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?[83]  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"[84] confess to thee.

　　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,[85] 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,[86] 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"[87]?  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?

　　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"[88] -- 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."[89]  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"[90]?

　　5.  There was at that time a wise man, very skillful and quite famous in medicine.[91]  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."[92]  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.

　　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."[93]  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 praise[94] 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.[95]  But she did not know how to answer me.  And if I said, "Hope thou in God,"[96] 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.

　　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[97]; 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"[98] -- 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.