CHAPTER VII

　　12.  O madness that knows not how to love men as they should be loved!  O foolish man that I was then, enduring with so much rebellion the lot of every man!  Thus I fretted, sighed, wept, tormented myself, and took neither rest nor counsel, for I was dragging around my torn and bloody soul.  It was impatient of my dragging it around, and yet I could not find a place to lay it down.  Not in pleasant groves, nor in sport or song, nor in fragrant bowers, nor in magnificent banquetings, nor in the pleasures of the bed or the couch; not even in books or poetry did it find rest.  All things looked gloomy, even the very light itself.  Whatsoever was not what he was, was now repulsive and hateful, except my groans and tears, for in those alone I found a little rest.  But when my soul left off weeping, a heavy burden of misery weighed me down.  It should have been raised up to thee, O

　　Lord, for thee to lighten and to lift.  This I knew, but I was neither willing nor able to do; especially since, in my thoughts of thee, thou wast not thyself but only an empty fantasm.  Thus my error was my god.  If I tried to cast off my burden on this fantasm, that it might find rest there, it sank through the vacuum and came rushing down again upon me.  Thus I remained to myself an unhappy lodging where I could neither stay nor leave.  For where could my heart fly from my heart?  Where could I fly from my own self?  Where would I not follow myself?  And yet I did flee from my native place so that my eyes would look for him less in a place where they were not accustomed to see him.  Thus I left the town of Tagaste and returned to Carthage.

　　CHAPTER VIII

　　13.  Time never lapses, nor does it glide at leisure through our sense perceptions.  It does strange things in the mind.  Lo, time came and went from day to day, and by coming and going it brought to my mind other ideas and remembrances, and little by little they patched me up again with earlier kinds of pleasure and my sorrow yielded a bit to them.  But yet there followed after this sorrow, not other sorrows just like it, but the causes of other sorrows.  For why had that first sorrow so easily penetrated to the quick except that I had poured out my soul onto the dust, by loving a man as if he would never die who nevertheless had to die?  What revived and refreshed me, more than anything else, was the consolation of other friends, with whom I went on loving the things I loved instead of thee.  This was a monstrous fable and a tedious lie which was corrupting my soul with its "itching ears"[99] by its adulterous rubbing.  And that fable would not die to me as often as one of my friends died.  And there were other things in our companionship that took strong hold of my mind: to discourse and jest with him; to indulge in courteous exchanges; to read pleasant books together; to trifle together; to be earnest together; to differ at times without ill-humor, as a man might do with himself, and even through these infrequent dissensions to find zest in our more frequent agreements; sometimes teaching, sometimes being taught; longing for someone absent with impatience and welcoming the homecomer with joy.  These and similar tokens of friendship, which spring spontaneously from the hearts of those who love and are loved in return -- in countenance, tongue, eyes, and a thousand ingratiating gestures -- were all so much fuel to melt our souls together, and out of the many made us one.

　　CHAPTER IX

　　14.  This is what we love in our friends, and we love it so much that a man's conscience accuses itself if he does not love one who loves him, or respond in love to love, seeking nothing from the other but the evidences of his love.  This is the source of our moaning when one dies -- the gloom of sorrow, the steeping of the heart in tears, all sweetness turned to bitterness -- and the feeling of death in the living, because of the loss of the life of the dying.

　　Blessed is he who loves thee, and who loves his friend in thee, and his enemy also, for thy sake; for he alone loses none dear to him, if all are dear in Him who cannot be lost.  And who is this but our God: the God that created heaven and earth, and filled them because he created them by filling them up?  None loses thee but he who leaves thee; and he who leaves thee, where does he go, or where can he flee but from thee well-pleased to thee offended?  For where does he not find thy law fulfilled in his own punishment?  "Thy law is the truth"[100] and thou art Truth.

　　CHAPTER X

　　15.  "Turn us again, O Lord God of Hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved."[101]  For wherever the soul of man turns itself, unless toward thee, it is enmeshed in sorrows, even though it is surrounded by beautiful things outside thee and outside itself.  For lovely things would simply not be unless they were from thee.  They come to be and they pass away, and by coming they begin to be, and they grow toward perfection.  Then, when perfect, they begin to wax old and perish, and, if all do not wax old, still all perish.  Therefore, when they rise and grow toward being, the more rapidly they grow to maturity, so also the more rapidly they hasten back toward nonbeing.  This is the way of things.  This is the lot thou hast given them, because they are part of things which do not all exist at the same time, but by passing away and succeeding each other they all make up the universe, of which they are all parts.  For example, our speech is accomplished by sounds which signify meanings, but a meaning is not complete unless one word passes away, when it has sounded its part, so that the next may follow after it.  Let my soul praise thee, in all these things, O God, the Creator of all; but let not my soul be stuck to these things by the glue of love, through the senses of the body.  For they go where they were meant to go, that they may exist no longer.  And they rend the soul with pestilent desires because she longs to be and yet loves to rest secure in the created things she loves.  But in these things there is no resting place to be found.  They do not abide.  They flee away;

　　and who is he who can follow them with his physical senses?  Or who can grasp them, even when they are present?  For our physical sense is slow because it is a physical sense and bears its own limitations in itself.  The physical sense is quite sufficient for what it was made to do; but it is not sufficient to stay things from running their courses from the beginning appointed to the end appointed.  For in thy word, by which they were created, they hear their appointed bound: "From there -- to here!"

　　CHAPTER XI

　　16.  Be not foolish, O my soul, and do not let the tumult of your vanity deafen the ear of your heart.  Be attentive.  The Word itself calls you to return, and with him is a place of unperturbed rest, where love is not forsaken unless it first forsakes.

　　Behold, these things pass away that others may come to be in their place.  Thus even this lowest level of unity[102] may be made complete in all its parts.  "But do I ever pass away?"  asks the Word of God.  Fix your habitation in him.  O my soul, commit whatsoever you have to him.  For at long last you are now becoming tired of deceit.  Commit to truth whatever you have received from the truth, and you will lose nothing.  What is decayed will flourish again; your diseases will be healed; your perishable parts shall be reshaped and renovated, and made whole again in you.  And these perishable things will not carry you with them down to where they go when they perish, but shall stand and abide, and you with them, before God, who abides and continues forever.

　　17.  Why then, my perverse soul, do you go on following your flesh?  Instead, let it be converted so as to follow you.

　　Whatever you feel through it is but partial.  You do not know the whole, of which sensations are but parts; and yet the parts delight you.  But if my physical senses had been able to comprehend the whole -- and had not as a part of their punishment received only a portion of the whole as their own province -- you would then desire that whatever exists in the present time should also pass away so that the whole might please you more.  For what we speak, you also hear through physical sensation, and yet you would not wish that the syllables should remain.  Instead, you wish them to fly past so that others may follow them, and the whole be heard.  Thus it is always that when any single thing is composed of many parts which do not coexist simultaneously, the whole gives more delight than the parts could ever do perceived separately.  But far better than all this is He who made it all.

　　He is our God and he does not pass away, for there is nothing to take his place.

　　CHAPTER XII

　　18.  If physical objects please you, praise God for them, but turn back your love to their Creator, lest, in those things which please you, you displease him.  If souls please you, let them be loved in God; for in themselves they are mutable, but in him firmly established -- without him they would simply cease to exist.  In him, then, let them be loved; and bring along to him with yourself as many souls as you can, and say to them: "Let us love him, for he himself created all these, and he is not far away from them.  For he did not create them, and then go away.  They are of him and in him.  Behold, there he is, wherever truth is known.  He is within the inmost heart, yet the heart has wandered away from him.  Return to your heart, O you transgressors, and hold fast to him who made you.  Stand with him and you shall stand fast.  Rest in him and you shall be at rest.  Where do you go along these rugged paths?  Where are you going?  The good that you love is from him, and insofar as it is also for him, it is both good and pleasant.  But it will rightly be turned to bitterness if whatever comes from him is not rightly loved and if he is deserted for the love of the creature.  Why then will you wander farther and farther in these difficult and toilsome ways?  There is no rest where you seek it.  Seek what you seek; but remember that it is not where you seek it.  You seek for a blessed life in the land of death.  It is not there.  For how can there be a blessed life where life itself is not?"

　　19.  But our very Life came down to earth and bore our death, and slew it with the very abundance of his own life.  And, thundering, he called us to return to him into that secret place from which he came forth to us -- coming first into the virginal womb, where the human creature, our mortal flesh, was joined to him that it might not be forever mortal -- and came "as a bridegroom coming out his chamber, rejoicing as a strong man to run a race."[103]  For he did not delay, but ran through the world, crying out by words, deeds, death, life, descent, ascension -- crying aloud to us to return to him.  And he departed from our sight that we might return to our hearts and find him there.  For he left us, and behold, he is here.  He could not be with us long, yet he did not leave us.  He went back to the place that he had never left, for "the world was made by him."[104]  In this world he was, and into this world he came, to save sinners.  To him my soul confesses, and he heals it, because it had sinned against him.  O sons of men, how long will you be so slow of heart?  Even now after Life itself has come down to you, will you not ascend and live?  But where will you climb if you are already on a pinnacle and have set your mouth against the heavens?  First come down that you may climb up, climb up to God.  For you have fallen by trying to climb against him.  Tell this to the souls you love that they may weep in the valley of tears, and so bring them along with you to God, because it is by his spirit that you speak thus to them, if, as you speak, you burn with the fire of love.

　　CHAPTER XIII

　　20.  These things I did not understand at that time, and I

　　loved those inferior beauties, and I was sinking down to the very depths.  And I said to my friends: "Do we love anything but the beautiful?  What then is the beautiful?  And what is beauty?  What is it that allures and unites us to the things we love; for unless there were a grace and beauty in them, they could not possibly attract us to them?"  And I reflected on this and saw that in the objects themselves there is a kind of beauty which comes from their forming a whole and another kind of beauty that comes from mutual fitness -- as the harmony of one part of the body with its whole, or a shoe with a foot, and so on.  And this idea sprang up in my mind out of my inmost heart, and I wrote some books -- two or three, I think -- On the Beautiful and the Fitting.[105]  Thou knowest them, O Lord; they have escaped my memory.  I no longer have them; somehow they have been mislaid.

　　CHAPTER XIV

　　21.  What was it, O Lord my God, that prompted me to dedicate these books to Hierius, an orator of Rome, a man I did not know by sight but whom I loved for his reputation of learning, in which he was famous -- and also for some words of his that I had heard which had pleased me?  But he pleased me more because he pleased others, who gave him high praise and expressed amazement that a Syrian, who had first studied Greek eloquence, should thereafter become so wonderful a Latin orator and also so well versed in philosophy.  Thus a man we have never seen is commended and loved.

　　Does a love like this come into the heart of the hearer from the mouth of him who sings the other's praise?  Not so.  Instead, one catches the spark of love from one who loves.  This is why we love one who is praised when the eulogist is believed to give his praise from an unfeigned heart; that is, when he who loves him praises him.

　　22.  Thus it was that I loved men on the basis of other men's judgment, and not thine, O my God, in whom no man is deceived.

　　But why is it that the feeling I had for such men was not like my feeling toward the renowned charioteer, or the great gladiatorial hunter, famed far and wide and popular with the mob?  Actually, I

　　admired the orator in a different and more serious fashion, as I

　　would myself desire to be admired.  For I did not want them to praise and love me as actors were praised and loved -- although I

　　myself praise and love them too.  I would prefer being unknown than known in that way, or even being hated than loved that way.

　　How are these various influences and divers sorts of loves distributed within one soul?  What is it that I am in love with in another which, if I did not hate, I should neither detest nor repel from myself, seeing that we are equally men?  For it does not follow that because the good horse is admired by a man who would not be that horse -- even if he could -- the same kind of admiration should be given to an actor, who shares our nature.  Do I then love that in a man, which I also, a man, would hate to be?

　　Man is himself a great deep.  Thou dost number his very hairs, O

　　Lord, and they do not fall to the ground without thee, and yet the hairs of his head are more readily numbered than are his affections and the movements of his heart.

　　23.  But that orator whom I admired so much was the kind of man I wished myself to be.  Thus I erred through a swelling pride and "was carried about with every wind,"[106] but through it all I

　　was being piloted by thee, though most secretly.  And how is it that I know -- whence comes my confident confession to thee --

　　that I loved him more because of the love of those who praised him than for the things they praised in him?  Because if he had gone unpraised, and these same people had criticized him and had spoken the same things of him in a tone of scorn and disapproval, I

　　should never have been kindled and provoked to love him.  And yet his qualities would not have been different, nor would he have been different himself; only the appraisals of the spectators.

　　See where the helpless soul lies prostrate that is not yet sustained by the stability of truth!  Just as the breezes of speech blow from the breast of the opinionated, so also the soul is tossed this way and that, driven forward and backward, and the light is obscured to it and the truth not seen.  And yet, there it is in front of us.  And to me it was a great matter that both my literary work and my zest for learning should be known by that man.  For if he approved them, I would be even more fond of him;

　　but if he disapproved, this vain heart of mine, devoid of thy steadfastness, would have been offended.  And so I meditated on the problem "of the beautiful and the fitting" and dedicated my essay on it to him.  I regarded it admiringly, though no one else joined me in doing so.

　　CHAPTER XV

　　24.  But I had not seen how the main point in these great issues [concerning the nature of beauty] lay really in thy craftsmanship, O Omnipotent One, "who alone doest great wonders."[107]  And so my mind ranged through the corporeal forms, and I defined and distinguished as "beautiful" that which is so in itself and as "fit" that which is beautiful in relation to some other thing.  This argument I supported by corporeal examples.

　　And I turned my attention to the nature of the mind, but the false opinions which I held concerning spiritual things prevented me from seeing the truth.  Still, the very power of truth forced itself on my gaze, and I turned my throbbing soul away from incorporeal substance to qualities of line and color and shape, and, because I could not perceive these with my mind, I concluded that I could not perceive my mind.  And since I loved the peace which is in virtue, and hated the discord which is in vice, I

　　distinguished between the unity there is in virtue and the discord there is in vice.  I conceived that unity consisted of the rational soul and the nature of truth and the highest good.  But I

　　imagined that in the disunity there was some kind of substance of irrational life and some kind of entity in the supreme evil.  This evil I thought was not only a substance but real life as well, and yet I believed that it did not come from thee, O my God, from whom are all things.  And the first I called a Monad, as if it were a soul without sex.  The other I called a Dyad, which showed itself in anger in deeds of violence, in deeds of passion and lust -- but I did not know what I was talking about.  For I had not understood nor had I been taught that evil is not a substance at all and that our soul is not that supreme and unchangeable good.

　　25.  For just as in violent acts, if the emotion of the soul from whence the violent impulse springs is depraved and asserts itself insolently and mutinously -- and just as in the acts of passion, if the affection of the soul which gives rise to carnal desires is unrestrained -- so also, in the same way, errors and false opinions contaminate life if the rational soul itself is depraved.  Thus it was then with me, for I was ignorant that my soul had to be enlightened by another light, if it was to be partaker of the truth, since it is not itself the essence of truth.  "For thou wilt light my lamp; the Lord my God will lighten my darkness"[108]; and "of his fullness have we all received,"[109] for "that was the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world"[110]; for "in thee there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."[111]

　　26.  But I pushed on toward thee, and was pressed back by thee that I might know the taste of death, for "thou resistest the proud."[112]  And what greater pride could there be for me than, with a marvelous madness, to assert myself to be that nature which thou art?  I was mutable -- this much was clear enough to me because my very longing to become wise arose out of a wish to change from worse to better -- yet I chose rather to think thee mutable than to think that I was not as thou art.  For this reason I was thrust back; thou didst resist my fickle pride.  Thus I went on imagining corporeal forms, and, since I was flesh I accused the flesh, and, since I was "a wind that passes away,"[113] I did not return to thee but went wandering and wandering on toward those things that have no being -- neither in thee nor in me, nor in the body.  These fancies were not created for me by thy truth but conceived by my own vain conceit out of sensory notions.  And I

　　used to ask thy faithful children -- my own fellow citizens, from whom I stood unconsciously exiled -- I used flippantly and foolishly to ask them, "Why, then, does the soul, which God created, err?"  But I would not allow anyone to ask me, "Why, then, does God err?"  I preferred to contend that thy immutable substance was involved in error through necessity rather than admit that my own mutable substance had gone astray of its own free will and had fallen into error as its punishment.

　　27.  I was about twenty-six or twenty-seven when I wrote those books, analyzing and reflecting upon those sensory images which clamored in the ears of my heart.  I was straining those ears to hear thy inward melody, O sweet Truth, pondering on "the beautiful and the fitting" and longing to stay and hear thee, and to rejoice greatly at "the Bridegroom's voice."[114]  Yet I could not, for by the clamor of my own errors I was hurried outside myself, and by the weight of my own pride I was sinking ever lower.  You did not "make me to hear joy and gladness," nor did the bones rejoice which were not yet humbled.[115]

　　28.  And what did it profit me that, when I was scarcely twenty years old, a book of Aristotle's entitled The Ten Categories[116] fell into my hands?  On the very title of this I

　　hung as on something great and divine, since my rhetoric master at Carthage and others who had reputations for learning were always referring to it with such swelling pride.  I read it by myself and understood it.  And what did it mean that when I discussed it with others they said that even with the assistance of tutors -- who not only explained it orally, but drew many diagrams in the sand -- they scarcely understood it and could tell me no more about it than I had acquired in the reading of it by myself alone?  For the book appeared to me to speak plainly enough about substances, such as a man; and of their qualities, such as the shape of a man, his kind, his stature, how many feet high, and his family relationship, his status, when born, whether he is sitting or standing, is shod or armed, or is doing something or having something done to him -- and all the innumerable things that are classified under these nine categories (of which I have given some examples) or under the chief category of substance.

　　29.  What did all this profit me, since it actually hindered me when I imagined that whatever existed was comprehended within those ten categories?  I tried to interpret them, O my God, so that even thy wonderful and unchangeable unity could be understood as subjected to thy own magnitude or beauty, as if they existed in thee as their Subject -- as they do in corporeal bodies -- whereas thou art thyself thy own magnitude and beauty.  A body is not great or fair because it is a body, because, even if it were less great or less beautiful, it would still be a body.  But my conception of thee was falsity, not truth.  It was a figment of my own misery, not the stable ground of thy blessedness.  For thou hadst commanded, and it was carried out in me, that the earth should bring forth briars and thorns for me, and that with heavy labor I should gain my bread.[117]

　　30.  And what did it profit me that I could read and understand for myself all the books I could get in the so-called "liberal arts," when I was actually a worthless slave of wicked lust?  I took delight in them, not knowing the real source of what it was in them that was true and certain.  For I had my back toward the light, and my face toward the things on which the light falls, so that my face, which looked toward the illuminated things, was not itself illuminated.  Whatever was written in any of the fields of rhetoric or logic, geometry, music, or arithmetic, I could understand without any great difficulty and without the instruction of another man.  All this thou knowest, O

　　Lord my God, because both quickness in understanding and acuteness in insight are thy gifts.  Yet for such gifts I made no thank offering to thee.  Therefore, my abilities served not my profit but rather my loss, since I went about trying to bring so large a part of my substance into my own power.  And I did not store up my strength for thee, but went away from thee into the far country to prostitute my gifts in disordered appetite.[118]  And what did these abilities profit me, if I did not put them to good use?  I

　　did not realize that those arts were understood with great difficulty, even by the studious and the intelligent, until I

　　tried to explain them to others and discovered that even the most proficient in them followed my explanations all too slowly.

　　31.  And yet what did this profit me, since I still supposed that thou, O Lord God, the Truth, wert a bright and vast body and that I was a particle of that body?  O perversity gone too far!

　　But so it was with me.  And I do not blush, O my God, to confess thy mercies to me in thy presence, or to call upon thee -- any more than I did not blush when I openly avowed my blasphemies before men, and bayed, houndlike, against thee.  What good was it for me that my nimble wit could run through those studies and disentangle all those knotty volumes, without help from a human teacher, since all the while I was erring so hatefully and with such sacrilege as far as the right substance of pious faith was concerned?  And what kind of burden was it for thy little ones to have a far slower wit, since they did not use it to depart from thee, and since they remained in the nest of thy Church to become safely fledged and to nourish the wings of love by the food of a sound faith.

　　O Lord our God, under the shadow of thy wings let us hope --

　　defend us and support us.[119]  Thou wilt bear us up when we are little and even down to our gray hairs thou wilt carry us.  For our stability, when it is in thee, is stability indeed; but when it is in ourselves, then it is all unstable.  Our good lives forever with thee, and when we turn from thee with aversion, we fall into our own perversion.  Let us now, O Lord, return that we be not overturned, because with thee our good lives without blemish -- for our good is thee thyself.  And we need not fear that we shall find no place to return to because we fell away from it.  For, in our absence, our home -- which is thy eternity --

　　does not fall away.

　　BOOK FIVE

　　A year of decision.  Faustus comes to Carthage and Augustine is disenchanted in his hope for solid demonstration of the truth of Manichean doctrine.  He decides to flee from his known troubles at Carthage to troubles yet unknown at Rome.  His experiences at Rome prove disappointing and he applies for a teaching post at Milan.  Here he meets Ambrose, who confronts him as an impressive witness for Catholic Christianity and opens out the possibilities of the allegorical interpretation of Scripture.  Augustine decides to become a Christian catechumen.

　　CHAPTER I

　　1.  Accept this sacrifice of my confessions from the hand of my tongue.  Thou didst form it and hast prompted it to praise thy name.  Heal all my bones and let them say, "O Lord, who is like unto thee?"[120]  It is not that one who confesses to thee instructs thee as to what goes on within him.  For the closed heart does not bar thy sight into it, nor does the hardness of our heart hold back thy hands, for thou canst soften it at will, either by mercy or in vengeance, "and there is no one who can hide himself from thy heat."[121]  But let my soul praise thee, that it may love thee, and let it confess thy mercies to thee, that it may praise thee.  Thy whole creation praises thee without ceasing: the spirit of man, by his own lips, by his own voice, lifted up to thee; animals and lifeless matter by the mouths of those who meditate upon them.  Thus our souls may climb out of their weariness toward thee and lean on those things which thou hast created and pass through them to thee, who didst create them in a marvelous way.  With thee, there is refreshment and true strength.

　　CHAPTER II

　　2.  Let the restless and the unrighteous depart, and flee away from thee.  Even so, thou seest them and thy eye pierces through the shadows in which they run.  For lo, they live in a world of beauty and yet are themselves most foul.  And how have they harmed thee?  Or in what way have they discredited thy power, which is just and perfect in its rule even to the last item in creation?  Indeed, where would they fly when they fled from thy presence?  Wouldst thou be unable to find them?  But they fled that they might not see thee, who sawest them; that they might be blinded and stumble into thee.  But thou forsakest nothing that thou hast made.  The unrighteous stumble against thee that they may be justly plagued, fleeing from thy gentleness and colliding with thy justice, and falling on their own rough paths.  For in truth they do not know that thou art everywhere; that no place contains thee, and that only thou art near even to those who go farthest from thee.  Let them, therefore, turn back and seek thee, because even if they have abandoned thee, their Creator, thou hast not abandoned thy creatures.  Let them turn back and seek thee --

　　and lo, thou art there in their hearts, there in the hearts of those who confess to thee.  Let them cast themselves upon thee, and weep on thy bosom, after all their weary wanderings; and thou wilt gently wipe away their tears.[122]  And they weep the more and rejoice in their weeping, since thou, O Lord, art not a man of flesh and blood.  Thou art the Lord, who canst remake what thou didst make and canst comfort them.  And where was I when I was seeking thee?  There thou wast, before me; but I had gone away, even from myself, and I could not find myself, much less thee.

　　CHAPTER III

　　3.  Let me now lay bare in the sight of God the twenty-ninth year of my age.  There had just come to Carthage a certain bishop of the Manicheans, Faustus by name, a great snare of the devil;

　　and many were entangled by him through the charm of his eloquence.

　　Now, even though I found this eloquence admirable, I was beginning to distinguish the charm of words from the truth of things, which I was eager to learn.  Nor did I consider the dish as much as I

　　did the kind of meat that their famous Faustus served up to me in it.  His fame had run before him, as one very skilled in an honorable learning and pre-eminently skilled in the liberal arts.

　　And as I had already read and stored up in memory many of the injunctions of the philosophers, I began to compare some of their doctrines with the tedious fables of the Manicheans; and it struck me that the probability was on the side of the philosophers, whose power reached far enough to enable them to form a fair judgment of the world, even though they had not discovered the sovereign Lord of it all.  For thou art great, O Lord, and thou hast respect unto the lowly, but the proud thou knowest afar off.[123]  Thou drawest near to none but the contrite in heart, and canst not be found by the proud, even if in their inquisitive skill they may number the stars and the sands, and map out the constellations, and trace the courses of the planets.

　　4.  For it is by the mind and the intelligence which thou gavest them that they investigate these things.  They have discovered much; and have foretold, many years in advance, the day, the hour, and the extent of the eclipses of those luminaries, the sun and the moon.  Their calculations did not fail, and it came to pass as they predicted.  And they wrote down the rules they had discovered, so that to this day they may be read and from them may be calculated in what year and month and day and hour of the day, and at what quarter of its light, either the moon or the sun will be eclipsed, and it will come to pass just as predicted.

　　And men who are ignorant in these matters marvel and are amazed;

　　and those who understand them exult and are exalted.  Both, by an impious pride, withdraw from thee and forsake thy light.  They foretell an eclipse of the sun before it happens, but they do not see their own eclipse which is even now occurring.  For they do not ask, as religious men should, what is the source of the intelligence by which they investigate these matters.  Moreover, when they discover that thou didst make them, they do not give themselves up to thee that thou mightest preserve what thou hast made.  Nor do they offer, as sacrifice to thee, what they have made of themselves.  For they do not slaughter their own pride --

　　as they do the sacrificial fowls -- nor their own curiosities by which, like the fishes of the sea, they wander through the unknown paths of the deep.  Nor do they curb their own extravagances as they do those of "the beasts of the field,"[124] so that thou, O

　　Lord, "a consuming fire,"[125] mayest burn up their mortal cares and renew them unto immortality.

　　5.  They do not know the way which is thy word, by which thou didst create all the things that are and also the men who measure them, and the senses by which they perceive what they measure, and the intelligence whereby they discern the patterns of measure.

　　Thus they know not that thy wisdom is not a matter of measure.[126]  But the Only Begotten hath been "made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification"[127] and hath been numbered among us and paid tribute to Caesar.[128]  And they do not know this "Way" by which they could descend from themselves to him in order to ascend through him to him.  They did not know this "Way," and so they fancied themselves exalted to the stars and the shining heavens.  And lo, they fell upon the earth, and "their foolish heart was darkened."[129]  They saw many true things about the creature but they do not seek with true piety for the Truth, the Architect of Creation, and hence they do not find him.  Or, if they do find him, and know that he is God, they do not glorify him as God; neither are they thankful but become vain in their imagination, and say that they themselves are wise, and attribute to themselves what is thine.  At the same time, with the most perverse blindness, they wish to attribute to thee their own quality -- so that they load their lies on thee who art the Truth, "changing the glory of the incorruptible God for an image of corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things."[130]  "They exchanged thy truth for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator."[131]

　　6.  Yet I remembered many a true saying of the philosophers about the creation, and I saw the confirmation of their calculations in the orderly sequence of seasons and in the visible evidence of the stars.  And I compared this with the doctrines of Mani, who in his voluminous folly wrote many books on these subjects.  But I could not discover there any account, of either the solstices or the equinoxes, or the eclipses of the sun and moon, or anything of the sort that I had learned in the books of secular philosophy.  But still I was ordered to believe, even where the ideas did not correspond with -- even when they contradicted -- the rational theories established by mathematics and my own eyes, but were very different.

　　CHAPTER IV

　　7.  Yet, O Lord God of Truth, is any man pleasing to thee because he knows these things?  No, for surely that man is unhappy who knows these things and does not know thee.  And that man is happy who knows thee, even though he does not know these things.

　　He who knows both thee and these things is not the more blessed for his learning, for thou only art his blessing, if knowing thee as God he glorifies thee and gives thanks and does not become vain in his thoughts.

　　For just as that man who knows how to possess a tree, and give thanks to thee for the use of it -- although he may not know how many feet high it is or how wide it spreads -- is better than the man who can measure it and count all its branches, but neither owns it nor knows or loves its Creator: just so is a faithful man who possesses the world's wealth as though he had nothing, and possesses all things through his union through thee, whom all things serve, even though he does not know the circlings of the Great Bear.  Just so it is foolish to doubt that this faithful man may truly be better than the one who can measure the heavens and number the stars and weigh the elements, but who is forgetful of thee "who hast set in order all things in number, weight, and measure."[132]

　　CHAPTER V

　　8.  And who ordered this Mani to write about these things, knowledge of which is not necessary to piety?  For thou hast said to man, "Behold, godliness is wisdom"[133] -- and of this he might have been ignorant, however perfectly he may have known these other things.  Yet, since he did not know even these other things, and most impudently dared to teach them, it is clear that he had no knowledge of piety.  For, even when we have a knowledge of this worldly lore, it is folly to make a _profession_ of it, when piety comes from _confession_ to thee.  From piety, therefore, Mani had gone astray, and all his show of learning only enabled the truly learned to perceive, from his ignorance of what they knew, how little he was to be trusted to make plain these more really difficult matters.  For he did not aim to be lightly esteemed, but went around trying to persuade men that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter and Enricher of thy faithful ones, was personally resident in him with full authority.  And, therefore, when he was detected in manifest errors about the sky, the stars, the movements of the sun and moon, even though these things do not relate to religious doctrine, the impious presumption of the man became clearly evident; for he not only taught things about which he was ignorant but also perverted them, and this with pride so foolish and mad that he sought to claim that his own utterances were as if they had been those of a divine person.

　　9.  When I hear of a Christian brother, ignorant of these things, or in error concerning them, I can tolerate his uninformed opinion; and I do not see that any lack of knowledge as to the form or nature of this material creation can do him much harm, as long as he does not hold a belief in anything which is unworthy of thee, O Lord, the Creator of all.  But if he thinks that his secular knowledge pertains to the essence of the doctrine of piety, or ventures to assert dogmatic opinions in matters in which he is ignorant -- there lies the injury.  And yet even a weakness such as this, in the infancy of our faith, is tolerated by our Mother Charity until the new man can grow up "unto a perfect man,"

　　and not be "carried away with every wind of doctrine."[134]

　　But Mani had presumed to be at once the teacher, author, guide, and leader of all whom he could persuade to believe this, so that all who followed him believed that they were following not an ordinary man but thy Holy Spirit.  And who would not judge that such great madness, when it once stood convicted of false teaching, should then be abhorred and utterly rejected?  But I had not yet clearly decided whether the alternation of day and night, and of longer and shorter days and nights, and the eclipses of sun and moon, and whatever else I read about in other books could be explained consistently with his theories.  If they could have been so explained, there would still have remained a doubt in my mind whether the theories were right or wrong.  Yet I was prepared, on the strength of his reputed godliness, to rest my faith on his authority.

　　CHAPTER VI

　　10.  For almost the whole of the nine years that I listened with unsettled mind to the Manichean teaching I had been looking forward with unbounded eagerness to the arrival of this Faustus.

　　For all the other members of the sect that I happened to meet, when they were unable to answer the questions I raised, always referred me to his coming.  They promised that, in discussion with him, these and even greater difficulties, if I had them, would be quite easily and amply cleared away.  When at last he did come, I

　　found him to be a man of pleasant speech, who spoke of the very same things they themselves did, although more fluently and in a more agreeable style.  But what profit was there to me in the elegance of my cupbearer, since he could not offer me the more precious draught for which I thirsted?  My ears had already had their fill of such stuff, and now it did not seem any better because it was better expressed nor more true because it was dressed up in rhetoric; nor could I think the man's soul necessarily wise because his face was comely and his language eloquent.  But they who extolled him to me were not competent judges.  They thought him able and wise because his eloquence delighted them.  At the same time I realized that there is another kind of man who is suspicious even of truth itself, if it is expressed in smooth and flowing language.  But thou, O my God, hadst already taught me in wonderful and marvelous ways, and therefore I believed -- because it is true -- that thou didst teach me and that beside thee there is no other teacher of truth, wherever truth shines forth.  Already I had learned from thee that because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true; nor because it is uttered with stammering lips should it be supposed false.  Nor, again, is it necessarily true because rudely uttered, nor untrue because the language is brilliant.  Wisdom and folly both are like meats that are wholesome and unwholesome, and courtly or simple words are like town-made or rustic vessels -- both kinds of food may be served in either kind of dish.

　　11.  That eagerness, therefore, with which I had so long awaited this man, was in truth delighted with his action and feeling in a disputation, and with the fluent and apt words with which he clothed his ideas.  I was delighted, therefore, and I

　　joined with others -- and even exceeded them -- in exalting and praising him.  Yet it was a source of annoyance to me that, in his lecture room, I was not allowed to introduce and raise any of those questions that troubled me, in a familiar exchange of discussion with him.  As soon as I found an opportunity for this, and gained his ear at a time when it was not inconvenient for him to enter into a discussion with me and my friends, I laid before him some of my doubts.  I discovered at once that he knew nothing of the liberal arts except grammar, and that only in an ordinary way.  He had, however, read some of Tully's orations, a very few books of Seneca, and some of the poets, and such few books of his own sect as were written in good Latin.  With this meager learning and his daily practice in speaking, he had acquired a sort of eloquence which proved the more delightful and enticing because it was under the direction of a ready wit and a sort of native grace.

　　Was this not even as I now recall it, O Lord my God, Judge of my conscience?  My heart and my memory are laid open before thee, who wast even then guiding me by the secret impulse of thy providence and wast setting my shameful errors before my face so that I might see and hate them.

　　CHAPTER VII

　　12.  For as soon as it became plain to me that Faustus was ignorant in those arts in which I had believed him eminent, I

　　began to despair of his being able to clarify and explain all these perplexities that troubled me -- though I realized that such ignorance need not have affected the authenticity of his piety, if he had not been a Manichean.  For their books are full of long fables about the sky and the stars, the sun and the moon; and I

　　had ceased to believe him able to show me in any satisfactory fashion what I so ardently desired: whether the explanations contained in the Manichean books were better or at least as good as the mathematical explanations I had read elsewhere.  But when I

　　proposed that these subjects should be considered and discussed, he quite modestly did not dare to undertake the task, for he was aware that he had no knowledge of these things and was not ashamed to confess it.  For he was not one of those talkative people --

　　from whom I had endured so much -- who undertook to teach me what I wanted to know, and then said nothing.  Faustus had a heart which, if not right toward thee, was at least not altogether false toward himself; for he was not ignorant of his own ignorance, and he did not choose to be entangled in a controversy from which he could not draw back or retire gracefully.  For this I liked him all the more.  For the modesty of an ingenious mind is a finer thing than the acquisition of that knowledge I desired; and this I

　　found to be his attitude toward all abstruse and difficult questions.

　　13.  Thus the zeal with which I had plunged into the Manichean system was checked, and I despaired even more of their other teachers, because Faustus who was so famous among them had turned out so poorly in the various matters that puzzled me.  And so I began to occupy myself with him in the study of his own favorite pursuit, that of literature, in which I was already teaching a class as a professor of rhetoric among the young Carthaginian students.  With Faustus then I read whatever he himself wished to read, or what I judged suitable to his bent of mind.  But all my endeavors to make further progress in Manicheism came completely to an end through my acquaintance with that man.

　　I did not wholly separate myself from them, but as one who had not yet found anything better I decided to content myself, for the time being, with what I had stumbled upon one way or another, until by chance something more desirable should present itself.

　　Thus that Faustus who had entrapped so many to their death --

　　though neither willing nor witting it -- now began to loosen the snare in which I had been caught.  For thy hands, O my God, in the hidden design of thy providence did not desert my soul; and out of the blood of my mother's heart, through the tears that she poured out by day and by night, there was a sacrifice offered to thee for me, and by marvelous ways thou didst deal with me.  For it was thou, O my God, who didst it: for "the steps of a man are ordered by the Lord, and he shall choose his way."[135]  How shall we attain salvation without thy hand remaking what it had already made?

　　CHAPTER VIII

　　14.  Thou didst so deal with me, therefore, that I was persuaded to go to Rome and teach there what I had been teaching at Carthage.  And how I was persuaded to do this I will not omit to confess to thee, for in this also the profoundest workings of thy wisdom and thy constant mercy toward us must be pondered and acknowledged.  I did not wish to go to Rome because of the richer fees and the higher dignity which my friends promised me there --

　　though these considerations did affect my decision.  My principal and almost sole motive was that I had been informed that the students there studied more quietly and were better kept under the control of stern discipline, so that they did not capriciously and impudently rush into the classroom of a teacher not their own --

　　indeed, they were not admitted at all without the permission of the teacher.  At Carthage, on the contrary, there was a shameful and intemperate license among the students.  They burst in rudely and, with furious gestures, would disrupt the discipline which the teacher had established for the good of his pupils.  Many outrages they perpetrated with astounding effrontery, things that would be punishable by law if they were not sustained by custom.  Thus custom makes plain that such behavior is all the more worthless because it allows men to do what thy eternal law never will allow.

　　They think that they act thus with impunity, though the very blindness with which they act is their punishment, and they suffer far greater harm than they inflict.

　　The manners that I would not adopt as a student I was compelled as a teacher to endure in others.  And so I was glad to go where all who knew the situation assured me that such conduct was not allowed.  But thou, "O my refuge and my portion in the land of the living,"[136] didst goad me thus at Carthage so that I

　　might thereby be pulled away from it and change my worldly habitation for the preservation of my soul.  At the same time, thou didst offer me at Rome an enticement, through the agency of men enchanted with this death-in-life -- by their insane conduct in the one place and their empty promises in the other.  To correct my wandering footsteps, thou didst secretly employ their perversity and my own.  For those who disturbed my tranquillity were blinded by shameful madness and also those who allured me elsewhere had nothing better than the earth's cunning.  And I who hated actual misery in the one place sought fictitious happiness in the other.

　　15.  Thou knewest the cause of my going from one country to the other, O God, but thou didst not disclose it either to me or to my mother, who grieved deeply over my departure and followed me down to the sea.  She clasped me tight in her embrace, willing either to keep me back or to go with me, but I deceived her, pretending that I had a friend whom I could not leave until he had a favorable wind to set sail.  Thus I lied to my mother -- and such a mother! -- and escaped.  For this too thou didst mercifully pardon me -- fool that I was -- and didst preserve me from the waters of the sea for the water of thy grace; so that, when I was purified by that, the fountain of my mother's eyes, from which she had daily watered the ground for me as she prayed to thee, should be dried.  And, since she refused to return without me, I

　　persuaded her, with some difficulty, to remain that night in a place quite close to our ship, where there was a shrine in memory of the blessed Cyprian.  That night I slipped away secretly, and she remained to pray and weep.  And what was it, O Lord, that she was asking of thee in such a flood of tears but that thou wouldst not allow me to sail?  But thou, taking thy own secret counsel and noting the real point to her desire, didst not grant what she was then asking in order to grant to her the thing that she had always been asking.

　　The wind blew and filled our sails, and the shore dropped out of sight.  Wild with grief, she was there the next morning and filled thy ears with complaints and groans which thou didst disregard, although, at the very same time, thou wast using my longings as a means and wast hastening me on to the fulfillment of all longing.  Thus the earthly part of her love to me was justly purged by the scourge of sorrow.  Still, like all mothers --

　　though even more than others -- she loved to have me with her, and did not know what joy thou wast preparing for her through my going away.  Not knowing this secret end, she wept and mourned and saw in her agony the inheritance of Eve -- seeking in sorrow what she had brought forth in sorrow.  And yet, after accusing me of perfidy and cruelty, she still continued her intercessions for me to thee.  She returned to her own home, and I went on to Rome.

　　CHAPTER IX

　　16.  And lo, I was received in Rome by the scourge of bodily sickness; and I was very near to falling into hell, burdened with all the many and grievous sins I had committed against thee, myself, and others -- all over and above that fetter of original sin whereby we all die in Adam.  For thou hadst forgiven me none of these things in Christ, neither had he abolished by his cross the enmity[137] that I had incurred from thee through my sins.

　　For how could he do so by the crucifixion of a phantom, which was all I supposed him to be?  The death of my soul was as real then as the death of his flesh appeared to me unreal.  And the life of my soul was as false, because it was as unreal as the death of his flesh was real, though I believed it not.

　　My fever increased, and I was on the verge of passing away and perishing; for, if I had passed away then, where should I have gone but into the fiery torment which my misdeeds deserved, measured by the truth of thy rule?  My mother knew nothing of this; yet, far away, she went on praying for me.  And thou, present everywhere, didst hear her where she was and had pity on me where I was, so that I regained my bodily health, although I

　　was still disordered in my sacrilegious heart.  For that peril of death did not make me wish to be baptized.  I was even better when, as a lad, I entreated baptism of my mother's devotion, as I

　　have already related and confessed.[138]  But now I had since increased in dishonor, and I madly scoffed at all the purposes of thy medicine which would not have allowed me, though a sinner such as I was, to die a double death.  Had my mother's heart been pierced with this wound, it never could have been cured, for I

　　cannot adequately tell of the love she had for me, or how she still travailed for me in the spirit with a far keener anguish than when she bore me in the flesh.

　　17.  I cannot conceive, therefore, how she could have been healed if my death (still in my sins) had pierced her inmost love.

　　Where, then, would have been all her earnest, frequent, and ceaseless prayers to thee?  Nowhere but with thee.  But couldst thou, O most merciful God, despise the "contrite and humble heart"[139] of that pure and prudent widow, who was so constant in her alms, so gracious and attentive to thy saints, never missing a visit to church twice a day, morning and evening -- and this not for vain gossiping, nor old wives' fables, but in order that she might listen to thee in thy sermons, and thou to her in her prayers?  Couldst thou, by whose gifts she was so inspired, despise and disregard the tears of such a one without coming to her aid -- those tears by which she entreated thee, not for gold or silver, and not for any changing or fleeting good, but for the salvation of the soul of her son?  By no means, O Lord.  It is certain that thou wast near and wast hearing and wast carrying out the plan by which thou hadst predetermined it should be done.  Far be it from thee that thou shouldst have deluded her in those visions and the answers she had received from thee -- some of which I have mentioned, and others not -- which she kept in her faithful heart, and, forever beseeching, urged them on thee as if they had thy own signature.  For thou, "because thy mercy endureth forever,"[140] hast so condescended to those whose debts thou hast pardoned that thou likewise dost become a debtor by thy promises.

　　CHAPTER X

　　18.  Thou didst restore me then from that illness, and didst heal the son of thy handmaid in his body, that he might live for thee and that thou mightest endow him with a better and more certain health.  After this, at Rome, I again joined those deluding and deluded "saints"; and not their "hearers" only, such as the man was in whose house I had fallen sick, but also with those whom they called "the elect." For it still seemed to me "that it is not we who sin, but some other nature sinned in us."

　　And it gratified my pride to be beyond blame, and when _I_ did anything wrong not to have to confess that _I_ had done wrong --

　　"that thou mightest heal my soul because it had sinned against thee"[141] -- and I loved to excuse my soul and to accuse something else inside me (I knew not what) but which was not I.

　　But, assuredly, it was I, and it was my impiety that had divided me against myself.  That sin then was all the more incurable because I did not deem myself a sinner.  It was an execrable iniquity, O God Omnipotent, that I would have preferred to have thee defeated in me, to my destruction, than to be defeated by thee to my salvation.  Not yet, therefore, hadst thou set a watch upon my mouth and a door around my lips that my heart might not incline to evil speech, to make excuse for sin with men that work iniquity.[142]  And, therefore, I continued still in the company of their "elect."

　　19.  But now, hopeless of gaining any profit from that false doctrine, I began to hold more loosely and negligently even to those points which I had decided to rest content with, if I could find nothing better.  I was now half inclined to believe that those philosophers whom they call "The Academics"[143] were wiser than the rest in holding that we ought to doubt everything, and in maintaining that man does not have the power of comprehending any certain truth, for, although I had not yet understood their meaning, I was fully persuaded that they thought just as they are commonly reputed to do.  And I did not fail openly to dissuade my host from his confidence which I observed that he had in those fictions of which the works of Mani are full.  For all this, I was still on terms of more intimate friendship with these people than with others who were not of their heresy.  I did not indeed defend it with my former ardor; but my familiarity with that group -- and there were many of them concealed in Rome at that time[144] --

　　made me slower to seek any other way.  This was particularly easy since I had no hope of finding in thy Church the truth from which they had turned me aside, O Lord of heaven and earth, Creator of all things visible and invisible.  And it still seemed to me most unseemly to believe that thou couldst have the form of human flesh and be bounded by the bodily shape of our limbs.  And when I

　　desired to meditate on my God, I did not know what to think of but a huge extended body -- for what did not have bodily extension did not seem to me to exist -- and this was the greatest and almost the sole cause of my unavoidable errors.

　　20.  And thus I also believed that evil was a similar kind of substance, and that it had its own hideous and deformed extended body -- either in a dense form which they called the earth or in a thin and subtle form as, for example, the substance of the air, which they imagined as some malignant spirit penetrating that earth.  And because my piety -- such as it was -- still compelled me to believe that the good God never created any evil substance, I formed the idea of two masses, one opposed to the other, both infinite but with the evil more contracted and the good more expansive.  And from this diseased beginning, the other sacrileges followed after.

　　For when my mind tried to turn back to the Catholic faith, I

　　was cast down, since the Catholic faith was not what I judged it to be.  And it seemed to me a greater piety to regard thee, my God -- to whom I make confession of thy mercies -- as infinite in all respects save that one: where the extended mass of evil stood opposed to thee, where I was compelled to confess that thou art finite -- than if I should think that thou couldst be confined by the form of a human body on every side.  And it seemed better to me to believe that no evil had been created by thee -- for in my ignorance evil appeared not only to be some kind of substance but a corporeal one at that.  This was because I had, thus far, no conception of mind, except as a subtle body diffused throughout local spaces.  This seemed better than to believe that anything could emanate from thee which had the character that I considered evil to be in its nature.  And I believed that our Saviour himself also -- thy Only Begotten -- had been brought forth, as it were, for our salvation out of the mass of thy bright shining substance.

　　So that I could believe nothing about him except what I was able to harmonize with these vain imaginations.  I thought, therefore, that such a nature could not be born of the Virgin Mary without being mingled with the flesh, and I could not see how the divine substance, as I had conceived it, could be mingled thus without being contaminated.  I was afraid, therefore, to believe that he had been born in the flesh, lest I should also be compelled to believe that he had been contaminated by the flesh.  Now will thy spiritual ones smile blandly and lovingly at me if they read these confessions.  Yet such was I.

　　CHAPTER XI

　　21.  Furthermore, the things they censured in thy Scriptures I thought impossible to be defended.  And yet, occasionally, I

　　desired to confer on various matters with someone well learned in those books, to test what he thought of them.  For already the words of one Elpidius, who spoke and disputed face to face against these same Manicheans, had begun to impress me, even when I was at Carthage; because he brought forth things out of the Scriptures that were not easily withstood, to which their answers appeared to me feeble.  One of their answers they did not give forth publicly, but only to us in private -- when they said that the writings of the New Testament had been tampered with by unknown persons who desired to ingraft the Jewish law into the Christian faith.  But they themselves never brought forward any uncorrupted copies.

　　Still thinking in corporeal categories and very much ensnared and to some extent stifled, I was borne down by those conceptions of bodily substance.  I panted under this load for the air of thy truth, but I was not able to breathe it pure and undefiled.

　　CHAPTER XII

　　22.  I set about diligently to practice what I came to Rome to do -- the teaching of rhetoric.  The first task was to bring together in my home a few people to whom and through whom I had begun to be known.  And lo, I then began to learn that other offenses were committed in Rome which I had not had to bear in Africa.  Just as I had been told, those riotous disruptions by young blackguards were not practiced here.  Yet, now, my friends told me, many of the Roman students -- breakers of faith, who, for the love of money, set a small value on justice -- would conspire together and suddenly transfer to another teacher, to evade paying their master's fees.  My heart hated such people, though not with a "perfect hatred"[145]; for doubtless I hated them more because I

　　was to suffer from them than on account of their own illicit acts.

　　Still, such people are base indeed; they fornicate against thee, for they love the transitory mockeries of temporal things and the filthy gain which begrimes the hand that grabs it; they embrace the fleeting world and scorn thee, who abidest and invitest us to return to thee and who pardonest the prostituted human soul when it does return to thee.  Now I hate such crooked and perverse men, although I love them if they will be corrected and come to prefer the learning they obtain to money and, above all, to prefer thee to such learning, O God, the truth and fullness of our positive good, and our most pure peace.  But then the wish was stronger in me for my own sake not to suffer evil from them than was my desire that they should become good for thy sake.

　　CHAPTER XIII

　　23.  When, therefore, the officials of Milan sent to Rome, to the prefect of the city, to ask that he provide them with a teacher of rhetoric for their city and to send him at the public expense, I applied for the job through those same persons, drunk with the Manichean vanities, to be freed from whom I was going away -- though neither they nor I were aware of it at the time.

　　They recommended that Symmachus, who was then prefect, after he had proved me by audition, should appoint me.

　　And to Milan I came, to Ambrose the bishop, famed through the whole world as one of the best of men, thy devoted servant.  His eloquent discourse in those times abundantly provided thy people with the flour of thy wheat, the gladness of thy oil, and the sober intoxication of thy wine.[146]  To him I was led by thee without my knowledge, that by him I might be led to thee in full knowledge.  That man of God received me as a father would, and welcomed my coming as a good bishop should.  And I began to love him, of course, not at the first as a teacher of the truth, for I

　　had entirely despaired of finding that in thy Church -- but as a friendly man.  And I studiously listened to him -- though not with the right motive -- as he preached to the people.  I was trying to discover whether his eloquence came up to his reputation, and whether it flowed fuller or thinner than others said it did.  And thus I hung on his words intently, but, as to his subject matter, I was only a careless and contemptuous listener.  I was delighted with the charm of his speech, which was more erudite, though less cheerful and soothing, than Faustus' style.  As for subject matter, however, there could be no comparison, for the latter was wandering around in Manichean deceptions, while the former was teaching salvation most soundly.  But "salvation is far from the wicked,"[147] such as I was then when I stood before him.  Yet I

　　was drawing nearer, gradually and unconsciously.

　　CHAPTER XIV

　　24.  For, although I took no trouble to learn what he said, but only to hear how he said it -- for this empty concern remained foremost with me as long as I despaired of finding a clear path from man to thee -- yet, along with the eloquence I prized, there also came into my mind the ideas which I ignored; for I could not separate them.  And, while I opened my heart to acknowledge how skillfully he spoke, there also came an awareness of how _truly_

　　he spoke -- but only gradually.  First of all, his ideas had already begun to appear to me defensible; and the Catholic faith, for which I supposed that nothing could be said against the onslaught of the Manicheans, I now realized could be maintained without presumption.  This was especially clear after I had heard one or two parts of the Old Testament explained allegorically --

　　whereas before this, when I had interpreted them literally, they had "killed" me spiritually.[148]  However, when many of these passages in those books were expounded to me thus, I came to blame my own despair for having believed that no reply could be given to those who hated and scoffed at the Law and the Prophets.  Yet I

　　did not see that this was reason enough to follow the Catholic way, just because it had learned advocates who could answer objections adequately and without absurdity.  Nor could I see that what I had held to heretofore should now be condemned, because both sides were equally defensible.  For that way did not appear to me yet vanquished; but neither did it seem yet victorious.

　　25.  But now I earnestly bent my mind to require if there was possible any way to prove the Manicheans guilty of falsehood.  If I could have conceived of a spiritual substance, all their strongholds would have collapsed and been cast out of my mind.

　　But I could not.  Still, concerning the body of this world, nature as a whole -- now that I was able to consider and compare such things more and more -- I now decided that the majority of the philosophers held the more probable views.  So, in what I thought was the method of the Academics -- doubting everything and fluctuating between all the options -- I came to the conclusion that the Manicheans were to be abandoned.  For I judged, even in that period of doubt, that I could not remain in a sect to which I

　　preferred some of the philosophers.  But I refused to commit the cure of my fainting soul to the philosophers, because they were without the saving name of Christ.  I resolved, therefore, to become a catechumen in the Catholic Church -- which my parents had so much urged upon me -- until something certain shone forth by which I might guide my course.

　　BOOK SIX

　　Turmoil in the twenties.  Monica follows Augustine to Milan and finds him a catechumen in the Catholic Church. Both admire Ambrose but Augustine gets no help from him on his personal problems.  Ambition spurs and Alypius and Nebridius join him in a confused quest for the happy life.  Augustine becomes engaged, dismisses his first mistress, takes another, and continues his fruitless search for truth.

　　CHAPTER I

　　1.  O Hope from my youth,[149] where wast thou to me and where hadst thou gone away?[150]  For hadst thou not created me and differentiated me from the beasts of the field and the birds of the air, making me wiser than they?  And yet I was wandering about in a dark and slippery way, seeking thee outside myself and thus not finding the God of my heart.  I had gone down into the depths of the sea and had lost faith, and had despaired of ever finding the truth.

　　By this time my mother had come to me, having mustered the courage of piety, following over sea and land, secure in thee through all the perils of the journey.  For in the dangers of the voyage she comforted the sailors -- to whom the inexperienced voyagers, when alarmed, were accustomed to go for comfort -- and assured them of a safe arrival because she had been so assured by thee in a vision.

　　She found me in deadly peril through my despair of ever finding the truth.  But when I told her that I was now no longer a Manichean, though not yet a Catholic Christian, she did not leap for joy as if this were unexpected; for she had already been reassured about that part of my misery for which she had mourned me as one dead, but also as one who would be raised to thee.  She had carried me out on the bier of her thoughts, that thou mightest say to the widow's son, "Young man, I say unto you, arise!"[151]

　　and then he would revive and begin to speak, and thou wouldst deliver him to his mother.  Therefore, her heart was not agitated with any violent exultation when she heard that so great a part of what she daily entreated thee to do had actually already been done -- that, though I had not yet grasped the truth, I was rescued from falsehood.  Instead, she was fully confident that thou who hadst promised the whole would give her the rest, and thus most calmly, and with a fully confident heart, she replied to me that she believed, in Christ, that before she died she would see me a faithful Catholic.  And she said no more than this to me.  But to thee, O Fountain of mercy, she poured out still more frequent prayers and tears that thou wouldst hasten thy aid and enlighten my darkness, and she hurried all the more zealously to the church and hung upon the words of Ambrose, praying for the fountain of water that springs up into everlasting life.[152]  For she loved that man as an angel of God, since she knew that it was by him that I had been brought thus far to that wavering state of agitation I was now in, through which she was fully persuaded I

　　should pass from sickness to health, even though it would be after a still sharper convulsion which physicians call "the crisis."

　　CHAPTER II

　　2.  So also my mother brought to certain oratories, erected in the memory of the saints, offerings of porridge, bread, and wine -- as had been her custom in Africa -- and she was forbidden to do so by the doorkeeper [ostiarius].  And as soon as she learned that it was the bishop who had forbidden it, she acquiesced so devoutly and obediently that I myself marveled how readily she could bring herself to turn critic of her own customs, rather than question his prohibition.  For winebibbing had not taken possession of her spirit, nor did the love of wine stimulate her to hate the truth, as it does too many, both male and female, who turn as sick at a hymn to sobriety as drunkards do at a draught of water.  When she had brought her basket with the festive gifts, which she would taste first herself and give the rest away, she would never allow herself more than one little cup of wine, diluted according to her own temperate palate, which she would taste out of courtesy.  And, if there were many oratories of departed saints that ought to be honored in the same way, she still carried around with her the same little cup, to be used everywhere.  This became not only very much watered but also quite tepid with carrying it about.  She would distribute it by small sips to those around, for she sought to stimulate their devotion, not pleasure.

　　But as soon as she found that this custom was forbidden by that famous preacher and most pious prelate, even to those who would use it in moderation, lest thereby it might be an occasion of gluttony for those who were already drunken (and also because these funereal memorials were very much like some of the superstitious practices of the pagans), she most willingly abstained from it.  And, in place of a basket filled with fruits of the earth, she had learned to bring to the oratories of the martyrs a heart full of purer petitions, and to give all that she could to the poor -- so that the Communion of the Lord's body might be rightly celebrated in those places where, after the example of his Passion, the martyrs had been sacrificed and crowned.  But yet it seems to me, O Lord my God -- and my heart thinks of it this way in thy sight -- that my mother would probably not have given way so easily to the rejection of this custom if it had been forbidden by another, whom she did not love as she did Ambrose.  For, out of her concern for my salvation, she loved him most dearly; and he loved her truly, on account of her faithful religious life, in which she frequented the church with good works, "fervent in spirit."[153]  Thus he would, when he saw me, often burst forth into praise of her, congratulating me that I

　　had such a mother -- little knowing what a son she had in me, who was still a skeptic in all these matters and who could not conceive that the way of life could be found out.

　　CHAPTER III

　　3.  Nor had I come yet to groan in my prayers that thou wouldst help me.  My mind was wholly intent on knowledge and eager for disputation.  Ambrose himself I esteemed a happy man, as the world counted happiness, because great personages held him in honor.  Only his celibacy appeared to me a painful burden.  But what hope he cherished, what struggles he had against the temptations that beset his high station, what solace in adversity, and what savory joys thy bread possessed for the hidden mouth of his heart when feeding on it, I could neither conjecture nor experience.

　　Nor did he know my own frustrations, nor the pit of my danger.  For I could not request of him what I wanted as I wanted it, because I was debarred from hearing and speaking to him by crowds of busy people to whose infirmities he devoted himself.

　　And when he was not engaged with them -- which was never for long at a time -- he was either refreshing his body with necessary food or his mind with reading.

　　Now, as he read, his eyes glanced over the pages and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent.  Often when we came to his room -- for no one was forbidden to enter, nor was it his custom that the arrival of visitors should be announced to him -- we would see him thus reading to himself.  After we had sat for a long time in silence -- for who would dare interrupt one so intent? -- we would then depart, realizing that he was unwilling to be distracted in the little time he could gain for the recruiting of his mind, free from the clamor of other men's business.  Perhaps he was fearful lest, if the author he was studying should express himself vaguely, some doubtful and attentive hearer would ask him to expound it or discuss some of the more abstruse questions, so that he could not get over as much material as he wished, if his time was occupied with others.  And even a truer reason for his reading to himself might have been the care for preserving his voice, which was very easily weakened.  Whatever his motive was in so doing, it was doubtless, in such a man, a good one.

　　4.  But actually I could find no opportunity of putting the questions I desired to that holy oracle of thine in his heart, unless it was a matter which could be dealt with briefly.

　　However, those surgings in me required that he should give me his full leisure so that I might pour them out to him; but I never found him so.  I heard him, indeed, every Lord's Day, "rightly dividing the word of truth"[154] among the people.  And I became all the more convinced that all those knots of crafty calumnies which those deceivers of ours had knit together against the divine books could be unraveled.

　　I soon understood that the statement that man was made after the image of Him that created him[155] was not understood by thy spiritual sons -- whom thou hadst regenerated through the Catholic Mother[156] through grace -- as if they believed and imagined that thou wert bounded by a human form, although what was the nature of a spiritual substance I had not the faintest or vaguest notion.

　　Still rejoicing, I blushed that for so many years I had bayed, not against the Catholic faith, but against the fables of fleshly imagination.  For I had been both impious and rash in this, that I

　　had condemned by pronouncement what I ought to have learned by inquiry.  For thou, O Most High, and most near, most secret, yet most present, who dost not have limbs, some of which are larger and some smaller, but who art wholly everywhere and nowhere in space, and art not shaped by some corporeal form: thou didst create man after thy own image and, see, he dwells in space, both head and feet.

　　CHAPTER IV

　　5.  Since I could not then understand how this image of thine could subsist, I should have knocked on the door and propounded the doubt as to how it was to be believed, and not have insultingly opposed it as if it were actually believed.

　　Therefore, my anxiety as to what I could retain as certain gnawed all the more sharply into my soul, and I felt quite ashamed because during the long time I had been deluded and deceived by the [Manichean] promises of certainties, I had, with childish petulance, prated of so many uncertainties as if they were certain.  That they were falsehoods became apparent to me only afterward.  However, I was certain that they were uncertain and since I had held them as certainly uncertain I had accused thy Catholic Church with a blind contentiousness.  I had not yet discovered that it taught the truth, but I now knew that it did not teach what I had so vehemently accused it of.  In this respect, at least, I was confounded and converted; and I rejoiced, O my God, that the one Church, the body of thy only Son -- in which the name of Christ had been sealed upon me as an infant --

　　did not relish these childish trifles and did not maintain in its sound doctrine any tenet that would involve pressing thee, the Creator of all, into space, which, however extended and immense, would still be bounded on all sides -- like the shape of a human body.

　　6.  I was also glad that the old Scriptures of the Law and the Prophets were laid before me to be read, not now with an eye to what had seemed absurd in them when formerly I censured thy holy ones for thinking thus, when they actually did not think in that way.  And I listened with delight to Ambrose, in his sermons to the people, often recommending this text most diligently as a rule: "The letter kills, but the spirit gives life,"[157] while at the same time he drew aside the mystic veil and opened to view the spiritual meaning of what seemed to teach perverse doctrine if it were taken according to the letter.  I found nothing in his teachings that offended me, though I could not yet know for certain whether what he taught was true.  For all this time I

　　restrained my heart from assenting to anything, fearing to fall headlong into error.  Instead, by this hanging in suspense, I was being strangled.[158]  For my desire was to be as certain of invisible things as I was that seven and three are ten.  I was not so deranged as to believe that _this_ could not be comprehended, but my desire was to have other things as clear as this, whether they were physical objects, which were not present to my senses, or spiritual objects, which I did not know how to conceive of except in physical terms.

　　If I could have believed, I might have been cured, and, with the sight of my soul cleared up, it might in some way have been directed toward thy truth, which always abides and fails in nothing.  But, just as it happens that a man who has tried a bad physician fears to trust himself with a good one, so it was with the health of my soul, which could not be healed except by believing.  But lest it should believe falsehoods, it refused to be cured, resisting thy hand, who hast prepared for us the medicines of faith and applied them to the maladies of the whole world, and endowed them with such great efficacy.

　　CHAPTER V

　　7.  Still, from this time forward, I began to prefer the Catholic doctrine.  I felt that it was with moderation and honesty that it commanded things to be believed that were not demonstrated -- whether they could be demonstrated, but not to everyone, or whether they could not be demonstrated at all.  This was far better than the method of the Manicheans, in which our credulity was mocked by an audacious promise of knowledge and then many fabulous and absurd things were forced upon believers _because_

　　they were incapable of demonstration.  After that, O Lord, little by little, with a gentle and most merciful hand, drawing and calming my heart, thou didst persuade me that, if I took into account the multitude of things I had never seen, nor been present when they were enacted -- such as many of the events of secular history; and the numerous reports of places and cities which I had not seen; or such as my relations with many friends, or physicians, or with these men and those -- that unless we should believe, we should do nothing at all in this life.[159]  Finally, I was impressed with what an unalterable assurance I believed which two people were my parents, though this was impossible for me to know otherwise than by hearsay.  By bringing all this into my consideration, thou didst persuade me that it was not the ones who believed thy books -- which with so great authority thou hast established among nearly all nations -- but those who did not believe them who were to be blamed.  Moreover, those men were not to be listened to who would say to me, "How do you know that those Scriptures were imparted to mankind by the Spirit of the one and most true God?"  For this was the point that was most of all to be believed, since no wranglings of blasphemous questions such as I

　　had read in the books of the self-contradicting philosophers could once snatch from me the belief that thou dost exist -- although _what_ thou art I did not know -- and that to thee belongs the governance of human affairs.

　　8.  This much I believed, some times more strongly than other times.  But I always believed both that thou art and that thou hast a care for us,[160] although I was ignorant both as to what should be thought about thy substance and as to which way led, or led back, to thee.  Thus, since we are too weak by unaided reason to find out truth, and since, because of this, we need the authority of the Holy Writings, I had now begun to believe that thou wouldst not, under any circumstances, have given such eminent authority to those Scriptures throughout all lands if it had not been that through them thy will may be believed in and that thou mightest be sought.  For, as to those passages in the Scripture which had heretofore appeared incongruous and offensive to me, now that I had heard several of them expounded reasonably, I could see that they were to be resolved by the mysteries of spiritual interpretation.  The authority of Scripture seemed to me all the more revered and worthy of devout belief because, although it was visible for all to read, it reserved the full majesty of its secret wisdom within its spiritual profundity.  While it stooped to all in the great plainness of its language and simplicity of style, it yet required the closest attention of the most serious-

　　minded -- so that it might receive all into its common bosom, and direct some few through its narrow passages toward thee, yet many more than would have been the case had there not been in it such a lofty authority, which nevertheless allured multitudes to its bosom by its holy humility.  I continued to reflect upon these things, and thou wast with me.  I sighed, and thou didst hear me.

　　I vacillated, and thou guidedst me.  I roamed the broad way of the world, and thou didst not desert me.

　　CHAPTER VI

　　9.  I was still eagerly aspiring to honors, money, and matrimony; and thou didst mock me.  In pursuit of these ambitions I endured the most bitter hardships, in which thou wast being the more gracious the less thou wouldst allow anything that was not thee to grow sweet to me.  Look into my heart, O Lord, whose prompting it is that I should recall all this, and confess it to thee.  Now let my soul cleave to thee, now that thou hast freed her from that fast-sticking glue of death.

　　How wretched she was!  And thou didst irritate her sore wound so that she might forsake all else and turn to thee -- who art above all and without whom all things would be nothing at all --

　　so that she should be converted and healed.  How wretched I was at that time, and how thou didst deal with me so as to make me aware of my wretchedness, I recall from the incident of the day on which I was preparing to recite a panegyric on the emperor.  In it I was to deliver many a lie, and the lying was to be applauded by those who knew I was lying.  My heart was agitated with this sense of guilt and it seethed with the fever of my uneasiness.  For, while walking along one of the streets of Milan, I saw a poor beggar --

　　with what I believe was a full belly -- joking and hilarious.  And I sighed and spoke to the friends around me of the many sorrows that flowed from our madness, because in spite of all our exertions -- such as those I was then laboring in, dragging the burden of my unhappiness under the spur of ambition, and, by dragging it, increasing it at the same time -- still and all we aimed only to attain that very happiness which this beggar had reached before us; and there was a grim chance that we should never attain it!  For what he had obtained through a few coins, got by his begging, I was still scheming for by many a wretched and tortuous turning -- namely, the joy of a passing felicity.  He had not, indeed, gained true joy, but, at the same time, with all my ambitions, I was seeking one still more untrue.  Anyhow, he was now joyous and I was anxious.  He was free from care, and I was full of alarms.  Now, if anyone should inquire of me whether I

　　should prefer to be merry or anxious, I would reply, "Merry."

　　Again, if I had been asked whether I should prefer to be as he was or as I myself then was, I would have chosen to be myself; though I was beset with cares and alarms.  But would not this have been a false choice?  Was the contrast valid?  Actually, I ought not to prefer myself to him because I happened to be more learned than he was; for I got no great pleasure from my learning, but sought, rather, to please men by its exhibition -- and this not to instruct, but only to please.  Thus thou didst break my bones with the rod of thy correction.

　　10.  Let my soul take its leave of those who say: "It makes a difference as to the object from which a man derives his joy.  The beggar rejoiced in drunkenness; you longed to rejoice in glory."

　　What glory, O Lord?  The kind that is not in thee, for, just as his was no true joy, so was mine no true glory; but it turned my head all the more.  He would get over his drunkenness that same night, but I had slept with mine many a night and risen again with it, and was to sleep again and rise again with it, I know not how many times.  It does indeed make a difference as to the object from which a man's joy is gained.  I know this is so, and I know that the joy of a faithful hope is incomparably beyond such vanity.  Yet, at the same time, this beggar was beyond me, for he truly was the happier man -- not only because he was thoroughly steeped in his mirth while I was torn to pieces with my cares, but because he had gotten his wine by giving good wishes to the passers-by while I was following after the ambition of my pride by lying.  Much to this effect I said to my good companions, and I

　　saw how readily they reacted pretty much as I did.  Thus I found that it went ill with me; and I fretted, and doubled that very ill.  And if any prosperity smiled upon me, I loathed to seize it, for almost before I could grasp it, it would fly away.

　　CHAPTER VII

　　11.  Those of us who were living like friends together used to bemoan our lot in our common talk; but I discussed it with Alypius and Nebridius more especially and in very familiar terms.

　　Alypius had been born in the same town as I; his parents were of the highest rank there, but he was a bit younger than I.  He had studied under me when I first taught in our town, and then afterward at Carthage.  He esteemed me highly because I appeared to him good and learned, and I esteemed him for his inborn love of virtue, which was uncommonly marked in a man so young.  But in the whirlpool of Carthaginian fashion -- where frivolous spectacles are hotly followed -- he had been inveigled into the madness of the gladiatorial games.  While he was miserably tossed about in this fad, I was teaching rhetoric there in a public school.  At that time he was not attending my classes because of some ill feeling that had arisen between me and his father.  I then came to discover how fatally he doted upon the circus, and I was deeply grieved, for he seemed likely to cast away his very great promise -- if, indeed, he had not already done so.  Yet I had no means of advising him, or any way of reclaiming him through restraint, either by the kindness of a friend or by the authority of a teacher.  For I imagined that his feelings toward me were the same as his father's.  But this turned out not to be the case.  Indeed, disregarding his father's will in the matter, he began to be friendly and to visit my lecture room, to listen for a while and then depart.

　　12.  But it slipped my memory to try to deal with his problem, to prevent him from ruining his excellent mind in his blind and headstrong passion for frivolous sport.  But thou, O

　　Lord, who holdest the helm of all that thou hast created,[161]

　　thou hadst not forgotten him who was one day to be numbered among thy sons, a chief minister of thy sacrament.[162]  And in order that his amendment might plainly be attributed to thee, thou broughtest it about through me while I knew nothing of it.

　　One day, when I was sitting in my accustomed place with my scholars before me, he came in, greeted me, sat himself down, and fixed his attention on the subject I was then discussing.  It so happened that I had a passage in hand and, while I was interpreting it, a simile occurred to me, taken from the gladiatorial games.  It struck me as relevant to make more pleasant and plain the point I wanted to convey by adding a biting gibe at those whom that madness had enthralled.  Thou knowest, O

　　our God, that I had no thought at that time of curing Alypius of that plague.  But he took it to himself and thought that I would not have said it but for his sake.  And what any other man would have taken as an occasion of offense against me, this worthy young man took as a reason for being offended at himself, and for loving me the more fervently.  Thou hast said it long ago and written in thy Book, "Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you."[163]  Now I

　　had not rebuked him; but thou who canst make use of everything, both witting and unwitting, and in the order which thou thyself knowest to be best -- and that order is right -- thou madest my heart and tongue into burning coals with which thou mightest cauterize and cure the hopeful mind thus languishing.  Let him be silent in thy praise who does not meditate on thy mercy, which rises up in my inmost parts to confess to thee.  For after that speech Alypius rushed up out of that deep pit into which he had willfully plunged and in which he had been blinded by its miserable pleasures.  And he roused his mind with a resolve to moderation.  When he had done this, all the filth of the gladiatorial pleasures dropped away from him, and he went to them no more.  Then he also prevailed upon his reluctant father to let him be my pupil.  And, at the son's urging, the father at last consented.  Thus Alypius began again to hear my lectures and became involved with me in the same superstition, loving in the Manicheans that outward display of ascetic discipline which he believed was true and unfeigned.  It was, however, a senseless and seducing continence, which ensnared precious souls who were not able as yet to reach the height of true virtue, and who were easily beguiled with the veneer of what was only a shadowy and feigned virtue.

　　CHAPTER VIII

　　13.  He had gone on to Rome before me to study law -- which was the worldly way which his parents were forever urging him to pursue -- and there he was carried away again with an incredible passion for the gladiatorial shows.  For, although he had been utterly opposed to such spectacles and detested them, one day he met by chance a company of his acquaintances and fellow students returning from dinner; and, with a friendly violence, they drew him, resisting and objecting vehemently, into the amphitheater, on a day of those cruel and murderous shows.  He protested to them:

　　"Though you drag my body to that place and set me down there, you cannot force me to give my mind or lend my eyes to these shows.

　　Thus I will be absent while present, and so overcome both you and them." When they heard this, they dragged him on in, probably interested to see whether he could do as he said.  When they got to the arena, and had taken what seats they could get, the whole place became a tumult of inhuman frenzy.  But Alypius kept his eyes closed and forbade his mind to roam abroad after such wickedness.  Would that he had shut his ears also!  For when one of the combatants fell in the fight, a mighty cry from the whole audience stirred him so strongly that, overcome by curiosity and still prepared (as he thought) to despise and rise superior to it no matter what it was, he opened his eyes and was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the victim whom he desired to see had been in his body.  Thus he fell more miserably than the one whose fall had raised that mighty clamor which had entered through his ears and unlocked his eyes to make way for the wounding and beating down of his soul, which was more audacious than truly valiant -- also it was weaker because it presumed on its own strength when it ought to have depended on Thee.  For, as soon as he saw the blood, he drank in with it a savage temper, and he did not turn away, but fixed his eyes on the bloody pastime, unwittingly drinking in the madness -- delighted with the wicked contest and drunk with blood lust.  He was now no longer the same man who came in, but was one of the mob he came into, a true companion of those who had brought him thither.  Why need I say more?  He looked, he shouted, he was excited, and he took away with him the madness that would stimulate him to come again: not only with those who first enticed him, but even without them;

　　indeed, dragging in others besides.  And yet from all this, with a most powerful and most merciful hand, thou didst pluck him and taught him not to rest his confidence in himself but in thee --

　　but not till long after.

　　CHAPTER IX

　　14.  But this was all being stored up in his memory as medicine for the future.  So also was that other incident when he was still studying under me at Carthage and was meditating at noonday in the market place on what he had to recite -- as scholars usually have to do for practice -- and thou didst allow him to be arrested by the police officers in the market place as a thief.  I believe, O my God, that thou didst allow this for no other reason than that this man who was in the future to prove so great should now begin to learn that, in making just decisions, a man should not readily be condemned by other men with reckless credulity.

　　For as he was walking up and down alone before the judgment seat with his tablets and pen, lo, a young man -- another one of the scholars, who was the real thief -- secretly brought a hatchet and, without Alypius seeing him, got in as far as the leaden bars which protected the silversmith shop and began to hack away at the lead gratings.  But when the noise of the hatchet was heard the silversmiths below began to call to each other in whispers and sent men to arrest whomsoever they should find.  The thief heard their voices and ran away, leaving his hatchet because he was afraid to be caught with it.  Now Alypius, who had not seen him come in, got a glimpse of him as he went out and noticed that he went off in great haste.  Being curious to know the reasons, he went up to the place, where he found the hatchet, and stood wondering and pondering when, behold, those that were sent caught him alone, holding the hatchet which had made the noise which had startled them and brought them there.  They seized him and dragged him away, gathering the tenants of the market place about them and boasting that they had caught a notorious thief.  Thereupon he was led away to appear before the judge.

　　15.  But this is as far as his lesson was to go.  For immediately, O Lord, thou didst come to the rescue of his innocence, of which thou wast the sole witness.  As he was being led off to prison or punishment, they were met by the master builder who had charge of the public buildings.  The captors were especially glad to meet him because he had more than once suspected them of stealing the goods that had been lost out of the market place.  Now, at last, they thought they could convince him who it was that had committed the thefts.  But the custodian had often met Alypius at the house of a certain senator, whose receptions he used to attend.  He recognized him at once and, taking his hand, led him apart from the throng, inquired the cause of all the trouble, and learned what had occurred.  He then commanded all the rabble still around -- and very uproarious and full of threatenings they were -- to come along with him, and they came to the house of the young man who had committed the deed.

　　There, before the door, was a slave boy so young that he was not restrained from telling the whole story by fear of harming his master.  And he had followed his master to the market place.

　　Alypius recognized him, and whispered to the architect, who showed the boy the hatchet and asked whose it was.  "Ours," he answered directly.  And, being further questioned, he disclosed the whole affair.  Thus the guilt was shifted to that household and the rabble, who had begun to triumph over Alypius, were shamed.  And so he went away home, this man who was to be the future steward of thy Word and judge of so many causes in thy Church -- a wiser and more experienced man.

　　CHAPTER X

　　16.  I found him at Rome, and he was bound to me with the strongest possible ties, and he went with me to Milan, in order that he might not be separated from me, and also that he might obtain some law practice, for which he had qualified with a view to pleasing his parents more than himself.  He had already sat three times as assessor, showing an integrity that seemed strange to many others, though he thought them strange who could prefer gold to integrity.  His character had also been tested, not only by the bait of covetousness, but by the spur of fear.  At Rome he was assessor to the secretary of the Italian Treasury.  There was at that time a very powerful senator to whose favors many were indebted, and of whom many stood in fear.  In his usual highhanded way he demanded to have a favor granted him that was forbidden by the laws.  This Alypius resisted.  A bribe was promised, but he scorned it with all his heart.  Threats were employed, but he trampled them underfoot -- so that all men marveled at so rare a spirit, which neither coveted the friendship nor feared the enmity of a man at once so powerful and so widely known for his great resources of helping his friends and doing harm to his enemies.

　　Even the official whose counselor Alypius was -- although he was unwilling that the favor should be granted -- would not openly refuse the request, but passed the responsibility on to Alypius, alleging that he would not permit him to give his assent.  And the truth was that even if the judge had agreed, Alypius would have simply left the court.

　　There was one matter, however, which appealed to his love of learning, in which he was very nearly led astray.  He found out that he might have books copied for himself at praetorian rates [i.e., at public expense].  But his sense of justice prevailed, and he changed his mind for the better, thinking that the rule that forbade him was still more profitable than the privilege that his office would have allowed him.  These are little things, but "he that is faithful in a little matter is faithful also in a great one."[164]  Nor can that possibly be void which was uttered by the mouth of Thy truth: "If, therefore, you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?  And if you have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?"[165]

　　Such a man was Alypius, who clung to me at that time and who wavered in his purpose, just as I did, as to what course of life to follow.

　　17.  Nebridius also had come to Milan for no other reason than that he might live with me in a most ardent search after truth and wisdom.  He had left his native place near Carthage --

　　and Carthage itself, where he usually lived -- leaving behind his fine family estate, his house, and his mother, who would not follow him.  Like me, he sighed; like me, he wavered; an ardent seeker after the true life and a most acute analyst of the most abstruse questions.  So there were three begging mouths, sighing out their wants one to the other, and waiting upon thee, that thou mightest give them their meat in due season.[166]  And in all the vexations with which thy mercy followed our worldly pursuits, we sought for the reason why we suffered so -- and all was darkness!

　　We turned away groaning and exclaiming, "How long shall these things be?"  And this we often asked, yet for all our asking we did not relinquish them; for as yet we had not discovered anything certain which, when we gave those others up, we might grasp in their stead.

　　CHAPTER XI

　　18.  And I especially puzzled and wondered when I remembered how long a time had passed since my nineteenth year, in which I

　　had first fallen in love with wisdom and had determined as soon as I could find her to abandon the empty hopes and mad delusions of vain desires.  Behold, I was now getting close to thirty, still stuck fast in the same mire, still greedy of enjoying present goods which fly away and distract me; and I was still saying, "Tomorrow I shall discover it; behold, it will become plain, and I

　　shall see it; behold, Faustus will come and explain everything."

　　Or I would say[167]:"O you mighty Academics, is there no certainty that man can grasp for the guidance of his life?  No, let us search the more diligently, and let us not despair.  See, the things in the Church's books that appeared so absurd to us before do not appear so now, and may be otherwise and honestly interpreted.  I will set my feet upon that step where, as a child, my parents placed me, until the clear truth is discovered.  But where and when shall it be sought?  Ambrose has no leisure -- we have no leisure to read.  Where are we to find the books?  How or where could I get hold of them?  From whom could I borrow them?

　　Let me set a schedule for my days and set apart certain hours for the health of the soul.  A great hope has risen up in us, because the Catholic faith does not teach what we thought it did, and vainly accused it of.  Its teachers hold it as an abomination to believe that God is limited by the form of a human body.  And do I

　　doubt that I should 'knock' in order for the rest also to be 'opened' unto me?  My pupils take up the morning hours; what am I

　　doing with the rest of the day?  Why not do this?  But, then, when am I to visit my influential friends, whose favors I need?  When am I to prepare the orations that I sell to the class?  When would I get some recreation and relax my mind from the strain of work?

　　19.  "Perish everything and let us dismiss these idle triflings.  Let me devote myself solely to the search for truth.

　　This life is unhappy, death uncertain.  If it comes upon me suddenly, in what state shall I go hence and where shall I learn what here I have neglected?  Should I not indeed suffer the punishment of my negligence here?  But suppose death cuts off and finishes all care and feeling.  This too is a question that calls for inquiry.  God forbid that it should be so.  It is not without reason, it is not in vain, that the stately authority of the Christian faith has spread over the entire world, and God would never have done such great things for us if the life of the soul perished with the death of the body.  Why, therefore, do I delay in abandoning my hopes of this world and giving myself wholly to seek after God and the blessed life?

　　"But wait a moment.  This life also is pleasant, and it has a sweetness of its own, not at all negligible.  We must not abandon it lightly, for it would be shameful to lapse back into it again.

　　See now, it is important to gain some post of honor.  And what more should I desire?  I have crowds of influential friends, if nothing else; and, if I push my claims, a governorship may be offered me, and a wife with some money, so that she would not be an added expense.  This would be the height of my desire.  Many men, who are great and worthy of imitation, have combined the pursuit of wisdom with a marriage life."

　　20.  While I talked about these things, and the winds of opinions veered about and tossed my heart hither and thither, time was slipping away.  I delayed my conversion to the Lord; I

　　postponed from day to day the life in thee, but I could not postpone the daily death in myself.  I was enamored of a happy life, but I still feared to seek it in its own abode, and so I

　　fled from it while I sought it.  I thought I should be miserable if I were deprived of the embraces of a woman, and I never gave a thought to the medicine that thy mercy has provided for the healing of that infirmity, for I had never tried it.  As for continence, I imagined that it depended on one's own strength, though I found no such strength in myself, for in my folly I knew not what is written, "None can be continent unless thou dost grant it."[168]  Certainly thou wouldst have given it, if I had beseeched thy ears with heartfelt groaning, and if I had cast my care upon thee with firm faith.

　　CHAPTER XII

　　21.  Actually, it was Alypius who prevented me from marrying, urging that if I did so it would not be possible for us to live together and to have as much undistracted leisure in the love of wisdom as we had long desired.  For he himself was so chaste that it was wonderful, all the more because in his early youth he had entered upon the path of promiscuity, but had not continued in it.

　　Instead, feeling sorrow and disgust at it, he had lived from that time down to the present most continently.  I quoted against him the examples of men who had been married and still lovers of wisdom, who had pleased God and had been loyal and affectionate to their friends.  I fell far short of them in greatness of soul, and, enthralled with the disease of my carnality and its deadly sweetness, I dragged my chain along, fearing to be loosed of it.

　　Thus I rejected the words of him who counseled me wisely, as if the hand that would have loosed the chain only hurt my wound.

　　Moreover, the serpent spoke to Alypius himself by me, weaving and lying in his path, by my tongue to catch him with pleasant snares in which his honorable and free feet might be entangled.

　　22.  For he wondered that I, for whom he had such a great esteem, should be stuck so fast in the gluepot of pleasure as to maintain, whenever we discussed the subject, that I could not possibly live a celibate life.  And when I urged in my defense against his accusing questions that the hasty and stolen delight, which he had tasted and now hardly remembered, and therefore too easily disparaged, was not to be compared with a settled acquaintance with it; and that, if to this stable acquaintance were added the honorable name of marriage, he would not then be astonished at my inability to give it up -- when I spoke thus, then he also began to wish to be married, not because he was overcome by the lust for such pleasures, but out of curiosity.

　　For, he said, he longed to know what that could be without which my life, which he thought was so happy, seemed to me to be no life at all, but a punishment.  For he who wore no chain was amazed at my slavery, and his amazement awoke the desire for experience, and from that he would have gone on to the experiment itself, and then perhaps he would have fallen into the very slavery that amazed him in me, since he was ready to enter into "a covenant with death,"[169] for "he that loves danger shall fall into it."[170]

　　Now, the question of conjugal honor in the ordering of a good married life and the bringing up of children interested us but slightly.  What afflicted me most and what had made me already a slave to it was the habit of satisfying an insatiable lust; but Alypius was about to be enslaved by a merely curious wonder.  This is the state we were in until thou, O Most High, who never forsakest our lowliness, didst take pity on our misery and didst come to our rescue in wonderful and secret ways.

　　CHAPTER XIII

　　23.  Active efforts were made to get me a wife.  I wooed; I

　　was engaged; and my mother took the greatest pains in the matter.

　　For her hope was that, when I was once married, I might be washed clean in health-giving baptism for which I was being daily prepared, as she joyfully saw, taking note that her desires and promises were being fulfilled in my faith.  Yet, when, at my request and her own impulse, she called upon thee daily with strong, heartfelt cries, that thou wouldst, by a vision, disclose unto her a leading about my future marriage, thou wouldst not.

　　She did, indeed, see certain vain and fantastic things, such as are conjured up by the strong preoccupation of the human spirit, and these she supposed had some reference to me.  And she told me about them, but not with the confidence she usually had when thou hadst shown her anything.  For she always said that she could distinguish, by a certain feeling impossible to describe, between thy revelations and the dreams of her own soul.  Yet the matter was pressed forward, and proposals were made for a girl who was as yet some two years too young to marry.[171]  And because she pleased me, I agreed to wait for her.

　　CHAPTER XIV

　　24.  Many in my band of friends, consulting about and abhorring the turbulent vexations of human life, had often considered and were now almost determined to undertake a peaceful life, away from the turmoil of men.  This we thought could be obtained by bringing together what we severally owned and thus making of it a common household, so that in the sincerity of our friendship nothing should belong more to one than to the other;

　　but all were to have one purse and the whole was to belong to each and to all.  We thought that this group might consist of ten persons, some of whom were very rich -- especially Romanianus, my fellow townsman, an intimate friend from childhood days.  He had been brought up to the court on grave business matters and he was the most earnest of us all about the project and his voice was of great weight in commending it because his estate was far more ample than that of the others.  We had resolved, also, that each year two of us should be managers and provide all that was needful, while the rest were left undisturbed.  But when we began to reflect whether this would be permitted by our wives, which some of us had already and others hoped to have, the whole plan, so excellently framed, collapsed in our hands and was utterly wrecked and cast aside.  From this we fell again into sighs and groans, and our steps followed the broad and beaten ways of the world; for many thoughts were in our hearts, but "Thy counsel standeth fast forever."[172]  In thy counsel thou didst mock ours, and didst prepare thy own plan, for it was thy purpose "to give us meat in due season, to open thy hand, and to fill our souls with blessing."[173]

　　CHAPTER XV

　　25.  Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied.  My mistress was torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, and my heart which clung to her was torn and wounded till it bled.  And she went back to Africa, vowing to thee never to know any other man and leaving with me my natural son by her.  But I, unhappy as I was, and weaker than a woman, could not bear the delay of the two years that should elapse before I could obtain the bride I

　　sought.  And so, since I was not a lover of wedlock so much as a slave of lust, I procured another mistress -- not a wife, of course.  Thus in bondage to a lasting habit, the disease of my soul might be nursed up and kept in its vigor or even increased until it reached the realm of matrimony.  Nor indeed was the wound healed that had been caused by cutting away my former mistress;

　　only it ceased to burn and throb, and began to fester, and was more dangerous because it was less painful.

　　CHAPTER XVI

　　26.  Thine be the praise; unto thee be the glory, O Fountain of mercies.  I became more wretched and thou didst come nearer.

　　Thy right hand was ever ready to pluck me out of the mire and to cleanse me, but I did not know it.  Nor did anything call me back from a still deeper plunge into carnal pleasure except the fear of death and of thy future judgment, which, amid all the waverings of my opinions, never faded from my breast.  And I discussed with my friends, Alypius and Nebridius, the nature of good and evil, maintaining that, in my judgment, Epicurus would have carried off the palm if I had not believed what Epicurus would not believe:

　　that after death there remains a life for the soul, and places of recompense.  And I demanded of them: "Suppose we are immortal and live in the enjoyment of perpetual bodily pleasure, and that without any fear of losing it -- why, then, should we not be happy, or why should we search for anything else?"  I did not know that this was in fact the root of my misery: that I was so fallen and blinded that I could not discern the light of virtue and of beauty which must be embraced for its own sake, which the eye of flesh cannot see, and only the inner vision can see.  Nor did I, alas, consider the reason why I found delight in discussing these very perplexities, shameful as they were, with my friends.  For I

　　could not be happy without friends, even according to the notions of happiness I had then, and no matter how rich the store of my carnal pleasures might be.  Yet of a truth I loved my friends for their own sakes, and felt that they in turn loved me for my own sake.

　　O crooked ways!  Woe to the audacious soul which hoped that by forsaking thee it would find some better thing!  It tossed and turned, upon back and side and belly -- but the bed is hard, and thou alone givest it rest.[174]  And lo, thou art near, and thou deliverest us from our wretched wanderings and establishest us in thy way, and thou comfortest us and sayest, "Run, I will carry you; yea, I will lead you home and then I will set you free."[175]

　　BOOK SEVEN

　　The conversion to Neoplatonism.  Augustine traces his growing disenchantment with the Manichean conceptions of God and evil and the dawning understanding of God's incorruptibility.  But his thought is still bound by his materialistic notions of reality.

　　He rejects astrology and turns to the stud of Neoplatonism.  There follows an analysis of the differences between Platonism and Christianity and a remarkable account of his appropriation of Plotinian wisdom and his experience of a Plotinian ecstasy.  From this, he comes finally to the diligent study of the Bible, especially the writings of the apostle Paul.  His pilgrimage is drawing toward its goal, as he begins to know Jesus Christ and to be drawn to him in hesitant faith.

　　CHAPTER I

　　1.  Dead now was that evil and shameful youth of mine, and I

　　was passing into full manhood.[176]  As I increased in years, the worse was my vanity.  For I could not conceive of any substance but the sort I could see with my own eyes.  I no longer thought of thee, O God, by the analogy of a human body.  Ever since I

　　inclined my ear to philosophy I had avoided this error -- and the truth on this point I rejoiced to find in the faith of our spiritual mother, thy Catholic Church. Yet I could not see how else to conceive thee.  And I, a man -- and such a man! -- sought to conceive thee, the sovereign and only true God.  In my inmost heart, I believed that thou art incorruptible and inviolable and unchangeable, because -- though I knew not how or why -- I could still see plainly and without doubt that the corruptible is inferior to the incorruptible, the inviolable obviously superior to its opposite, and the unchangeable better than the changeable.

　　My heart cried out violently against all fantasms,[177] and with this one clear certainty I endeavored to brush away the swarm of unclean flies that swarmed around the eyes of my mind.  But behold they were scarcely scattered before they gathered again, buzzed against my face, and beclouded my vision.  I no longer thought of God in the analogy of a human body, yet I was constrained to conceive thee to be some kind of body in space, either infused into the world, or infinitely diffused beyond the world -- and this was the incorruptible, inviolable, unchangeable substance, which I thought was better than the corruptible, the violable, and the changeable.[178]  For whatever I conceived to be deprived of the dimensions of space appeared to me to be nothing, absolutely nothing; not even a void, for if a body is taken out of space, or if space is emptied of all its contents (of earth, water, air, or heaven), yet it remains an empty space -- a spacious nothing, as it were.

　　2.  Being thus gross-hearted and not clear even to myself, I

　　then held that whatever had neither length nor breadth nor density nor solidity, and did not or could not receive such dimensions, was absolutely nothing.  For at that time my mind dwelt only with ideas, which resembled the forms with which my eyes are still familiar, nor could I see that the act of thought, by which I

　　formed those ideas, was itself immaterial, and yet it could not have formed them if it were not itself a measurable entity.

　　So also I thought about thee, O Life of my life, as stretched out through infinite space, interpenetrating the whole mass of the world, reaching out beyond in all directions, to immensity without end; so that the earth should have thee, the heaven have thee, all things have thee, and all of them be limited in thee, while thou art placed nowhere at all.  As the body of the air above the earth does not bar the passage of the light of the sun, so that the light penetrates it, not by bursting nor dividing, but filling it entirely, so I imagined that the body of heaven and air and sea, and even of the earth, was all open to thee and, in all its greatest parts as well as the smallest, was ready to receive thy presence by a secret inspiration which, from within or without all, orders all things thou hast created.  This was my conjecture, because I was unable to think of anything else; yet it was untrue.

　　For in this way a greater part of the earth would contain a greater part of thee; a smaller part, a smaller fraction of thee.

　　All things would be full of thee in such a sense that there would be more of thee in an elephant than in a sparrow, because one is larger than the other and fills a larger space.  And this would make the portions of thyself present in the several portions of the world in fragments, great to the great, small to the small.

　　But thou art not such a one.  But as yet thou hadst not enlightened my darkness.

　　CHAPTER II

　　3.  But it was not sufficient for me, O Lord, to be able to oppose those deceived deceivers and those dumb orators -- dumb because thy Word did not sound forth from them -- to oppose them with the answer which, in the old Carthaginian days, Nebridius used to propound, shaking all of us who heard it: "What could this imaginary people of darkness, which the Manicheans usually set up as an army opposed to thee, have done to thee if thou hadst declined the combat?"  If they replied that it could have hurt thee, they would then have made thee violable and corruptible.

　　If, on the other hand, the dark could have done thee no harm, then there was no cause for any battle at all; there was less cause for a battle in which a part of thee, one of thy members, a child of thy own substance, should be mixed up with opposing powers, not of thy creation; and should be corrupted and deteriorated and changed by them from happiness into misery, so that it could not be delivered and cleansed without thy help.  This offspring of thy substance was supposed to be the human soul to which thy Word --

　　free, pure, and entire -- could bring help when it was being enslaved, contaminated, and corrupted.  But on their hypothesis that Word was itself corruptible because it is one and the same substance as the soul.

　　And therefore if they admitted that thy nature -- whatsoever thou art -- is incorruptible, then all these assertions of theirs are false and should be rejected with horror.  But if thy substance is corruptible, then this is self-evidently false and should be abhorred at first utterance.  This line of argument, then, was enough against those deceivers who ought to be cast forth from a surfeited stomach -- for out of this dilemma they could find no way of escape without dreadful sacrilege of mind and tongue, when they think and speak such things about thee.

　　CHAPTER III

　　4.  But as yet, although I said and was firmly persuaded that thou our Lord, the true God, who madest not only our souls but our bodies as well -- and not only our souls and bodies but all creatures and all things -- wast free from stain and alteration and in no way mutable, yet I could not readily and clearly understand what was the cause of evil.  Whatever it was, I

　　realized that the question must be so analyzed as not to constrain me by any answer to believe that the immutable God was mutable, lest I should myself become the thing that I was seeking out.  And so I pursued the search with a quiet mind, now in a confident feeling that what had been said by the Manicheans -- and I shrank from them with my whole heart -- could not be true.  I now realized that when they asked what was the origin of evil their answer was dictated by a wicked pride, which would rather affirm that thy nature is capable of suffering evil than that their own nature is capable of doing it.

　　5.  And I directed my attention to understand what I now was told, that free will is the cause of our doing evil and that thy just judgment is the cause of our having to suffer from its consequences.  But I could not see this clearly.  So then, trying to draw the eye of my mind up out of that pit, I was plunged back into it again, and trying often was just as often plunged back down.  But one thing lifted me up toward thy light: it was that I

　　had come to know that I had a will as certainly as I knew that I

　　had life.  When, therefore, I willed or was unwilling to do something, I was utterly certain that it was none but myself who willed or was unwilling -- and immediately I realized that there was the cause of my sin.  I could see that what I did against my will I suffered rather than did; and I did not regard such actions as faults, but rather as punishments in which I might quickly confess that I was not unjustly punished, since I believed thee to be most just.  Who was it that put this in me, and implanted in me the root of bitterness, in spite of the fact that I was altogether the handiwork of my most sweet God?  If the devil is to blame, who made the devil himself?  And if he was a good angel who by his own wicked will became the devil, how did there happen to be in him that wicked will by which he became a devil, since a good Creator made him wholly a good angel?  By these reflections was I again cast down and stultified.  Yet I was not plunged into that hell of error -- where no man confesses to thee -- where I thought that thou didst suffer evil, rather than that men do it.

　　CHAPTER IV

　　6.  For in my struggle to solve the rest of my difficulties, I now assumed henceforth as settled truth that the incorruptible must be superior to the corruptible, and I did acknowledge that thou, whatever thou art, art incorruptible.  For there never yet was, nor will be, a soul able to conceive of anything better than thee, who art the highest and best good.[179]  And since most truly and certainly the incorruptible is to be placed above the corruptible -- as I now admit it -- it followed that I could rise in my thoughts to something better than my God, if thou wert not incorruptible.  When, therefore, I saw that the incorruptible was to be preferred to the corruptible, I saw then where I ought to seek thee, and where I should look for the source of evil: that is, the corruption by which thy substance can in no way be profaned.  For it is obvious that corruption in no way injures our God, by no inclination, by no necessity, by no unforeseen chance -- because he is our God, and what he wills is good, and he himself is that good.  But to be corrupted is not good.  Nor art thou compelled to do anything against thy will, since thy will is not greater than thy power.  But it would have to be greater if thou thyself wert greater than thyself -- for the will and power of God are God himself.  And what can take thee by surprise, since thou knowest all, and there is no sort of nature but thou knowest it?  And what more should we say about why that substance which God is cannot be corrupted; because if this were so it could not be God?

　　CHAPTER V

　　7.  And I kept seeking for an answer to the question, Whence is evil?  And I sought it in an evil way, and I did not see the evil in my very search. I marshaled before the sight of my spirit all creation: all that we see of earth and sea and air and stars and trees and animals; and all that we do not see, the firmament of the sky above and all the angels and all spiritual things, for my imagination arranged these also, as if they were bodies, in this place or that.  And I pictured to myself thy creation as one vast mass, composed of various kinds of bodies -- some of which were actually bodies, some of those which I imagined spirits were like.  I pictured this mass as vast -- of course not in its full dimensions, for these I could not know -- but as large as I could possibly think, still only finite on every side.  But thou, O

　　Lord, I imagined as environing the mass on every side and penetrating it, still infinite in every direction -- as if there were a sea everywhere, and everywhere through measureless space nothing but an infinite sea; and it contained within itself some sort of sponge, huge but still finite, so that the sponge would in all its parts be filled from the immeasurable sea.[180]

　　Thus I conceived thy creation itself to be finite, and filled by thee, the infinite.  And I said, "Behold God, and behold what God hath created!"  God is good, yea, most mightily and incomparably better than all his works.  But yet he who is good has created them good; behold how he encircles and fills them.

　　Where, then, is evil, and whence does it come and how has it crept in?  What is its root and what its seed?  Has it no being at all?

　　Why, then, do we fear and shun what has no being?  Or if we fear it needlessly, then surely that fear is evil by which the heart is unnecessarily stabbed and tortured -- and indeed a greater evil since we have nothing real to fear, and yet do fear.  Therefore, either that is evil which we fear, or the act of fearing is in itself evil.  But, then, whence does it come, since God who is good has made all these things good?  Indeed, he is the greatest and chiefest Good, and hath created these lesser goods; but both Creator and created are all good.  Whence, then, is evil?  Or, again, was there some evil matter out of which he made and formed and ordered it, but left something in his creation that he did not convert into good?  But why should this be?  Was he powerless to change the whole lump so that no evil would remain in it, if he is the Omnipotent?  Finally, why would he make anything at all out of such stuff?  Why did he not, rather, annihilate it by his same almighty power?  Could evil exist contrary to his will?  And if it were from eternity, why did he permit it to be nonexistent for unmeasured intervals of time in the past, and why, then, was he pleased to make something out of it after so long a time?  Or, if he wished now all of a sudden to create something, would not an almighty being have chosen to annihilate this evil matter and live by himself -- the perfect, true, sovereign, and infinite Good?

　　Or, if it were not good that he who was good should not also be the framer and creator of what was good, then why was that evil matter not removed and brought to nothing, so that he might form good matter, out of which he might then create all things?  For he would not be omnipotent if he were not able to create something good without being assisted by that matter which had not been created by himself.

　　Such perplexities I revolved in my wretched breast, overwhelmed with gnawing cares lest I die before I discovered the truth.  And still the faith of thy Christ, our Lord and Saviour, as it was taught me by the Catholic Church, stuck fast in my heart.  As yet it was unformed on many points and diverged from the rule of right doctrine, but my mind did not utterly lose it, and every day drank in more and more of it.

　　CHAPTER VI

　　8.  By now I had also repudiated the lying divinations and impious absurdities of the astrologers.  Let thy mercies, out of the depth of my soul, confess this to thee also, O my God.  For thou, thou only (for who else is it who calls us back from the death of all errors except the Life which does not know how to die and the Wisdom which gives light to minds that need it, although it itself has no need of light -- by which the whole universe is governed, even to the fluttering leaves of the trees?) -- thou alone providedst also for my obstinacy with which I struggled against Vindicianus, a sagacious old man, and Nebridius, that remarkably talented young man.  The former declared vehemently and the latter frequently -- though with some reservation -- that no art existed by which we foresee future things.  But men's surmises have oftentimes the help of chance, and out of many things which they foretold some came to pass unawares to the predictors, who lighted on the truth by making so many guesses.

　　And thou also providedst a friend for me, who was not a negligent consulter of the astrologers even though he was not thoroughly skilled in the art either -- as I said, one who consulted them out of curiosity.  He knew a good, deal about it, which, he said, he had heard from his father, and he never realized how far his ideas would help to overthrow my estimation of that art.  His name was Firminus and he had received a liberal education and was a cultivated rhetorician.  It so happened that he consulted me, as one very dear to him, as to what I thought about some affairs of his in which his worldly hopes had risen, viewed in the light of his so-called horoscope.  Although I had now begun to learn in this matter toward Nebridius' opinion, I did not quite decline to speculate about the matter or to tell him what thoughts still came into my irresolute mind, although I did add that I was almost persuaded now that these were but empty and ridiculous follies.  He then told me that his father had been very much interested in such books, and that he had a friend who was as much interested in them as he was himself.  They, in combined study and consultation, fanned the flame of their affection for this folly, going so far as to observe the moment when the dumb animals which belonged to their household gave birth to young, and then observed the position of the heavens with regard to them, so as to gather fresh evidence for this so-called art.  Moreover, he reported that his father had told him that, at the same time his mother was about to give birth to him [Firminus], a female slave of a friend of his father's was also pregnant.  This could not be hidden from her master, who kept records with the most diligent exactness of the birth dates even of his dogs.  And so it happened to pass that -- under the most careful observations, one for his wife and the other for his servant, with exact calculations of the days, hours, and minutes -- both women were delivered at the same moment, so that both were compelled to cast the selfsame horoscope, down to the minute: the one for his son, the other for his young slave.  For as soon as the women began to be in labor, they each sent word to the other as to what was happening in their respective houses and had messengers ready to dispatch to one another as soon as they had information of the actual birth -- and each, of course, knew instantly the exact time.  It turned out, Firminus said, that the messengers from the respective houses met one another at a point equidistant from either house, so that neither of them could discern any difference either in the position of the stars or any other of the most minute points.  And yet Firminus, born in a high estate in his parents' house, ran his course through the prosperous paths of this world, was increased in wealth, and elevated to honors.  At the same time, the slave, the yoke of his condition being still unrelaxed, continued to serve his masters as Firminus, who knew him, was able to report.

　　9.  Upon hearing and believing these things related by so reliable a person all my resistance melted away.  First, I

　　endeavored to reclaim Firminus himself from his superstition by telling him that after inspecting his horoscope, I ought, if I

　　could foretell truly, to have seen in it parents eminent among their neighbors, a noble family in its own city, a good birth, a proper education, and liberal learning.  But if that servant had consulted me with the same horoscope, since he had the same one, I

　　ought again to tell him likewise truly that I saw in it the lowliness of his origin, the abjectness of his condition, and everything else different and contrary to the former prediction.

　　If, then, by casting up the same horoscopes I should, in order to speak the truth, make contrary analyses, or else speak falsely if I made identical readings, then surely it followed that whatever was truly foretold by the analysis of the horoscopes was not by art, but by chance.  And whatever was said falsely was not from incompetence in the art, but from the error of chance.

　　10.  An opening being thus made in my darkness, I began to consider other implications involved here.  Suppose that one of the fools -- who followed such an occupation and whom I longed to assail, and to reduce to confusion -- should urge against me that Firminus had given me false information, or that his father had informed him falsely.  I then turned my thoughts to those that are born twins, who generally come out of the womb so near the one to the other that the short interval between them -- whatever importance they may ascribe to it in the nature of things --

　　cannot be noted by human observation or expressed in those tables which the astrologer uses to examine when he undertakes to pronounce the truth.  But such pronouncements cannot be true.  For looking into the same horoscopes, he must have foretold the same future for Esau and Jacob,[181] whereas the same future did not turn out for them.  He must therefore speak falsely.  If he is to speak truly, then he must read contrary predictions into the same horoscopes.  But this would mean that it was not by art, but by chance, that he would speak truly.

　　For thou, O Lord, most righteous ruler of the universe, dost work by a secret impulse -- whether those who inquire or those inquired of know it or not -- so that the inquirer may hear what, according to the secret merit of his soul, he ought to hear from the deeps of thy righteous judgment.  Therefore let no man say to thee, "What is this?" or, "Why is that?" Let him not speak thus, for he is only a man.

　　CHAPTER VII

　　11.  By now, O my Helper, thou hadst freed me from those fetters.  But still I inquired, "Whence is evil?" -- and found no answer.  But thou didst not allow me to be carried away from the faith by these fluctuations of thought.  I still believed both that thou dost exist and that thy substance is immutable, and that thou dost care for and wilt judge all men, and that in Christ, thy Son our Lord, and the Holy Scriptures, which the authority of thy Catholic Church pressed on me, thou hast planned the way of man's salvation to that life which is to come after this death.

　　With these convictions safe and immovably settled in my mind, I eagerly inquired, "Whence is evil?"  What torments did my travailing heart then endure!  What sighs, O my God!  Yet even then thy ears were open and I knew it not, and when in stillness I

　　sought earnestly, those silent contritions of my soul were loud cries to thy mercy.  No man knew, but thou knewest what I endured.

　　How little of it could I express in words to the ears of my dearest friends!  How could the whole tumult of my soul, for which neither time nor speech was sufficient, come to them?  Yet the whole of it went into thy ears, all of which I bellowed out in the anguish of my heart.  My desire was before thee, and the light of my eyes was not with me; for it was within and I was without.  Nor was that light in any place; but I still kept thinking only of things that are contained in a place, and could find among them no place to rest in.  They did not receive me in such a way that I

　　could say, "It is sufficient; it is well." Nor did they allow me to turn back to where it might be well enough with me.  For I was higher than they, though lower than thou.  Thou art my true joy if I depend upon thee, and thou hadst subjected to me what thou didst create lower than I.  And this was the true mean and middle way of salvation for me, to continue in thy image and by serving thee have dominion over the body.  But when I lifted myself proudly against thee, and "ran against the Lord, even against his neck, with the thick bosses of my buckler,"[182] even the lower things were placed above me and pressed down on me, so that there was no respite or breathing space.  They thrust on my sight on every side, in crowds and masses, and when I tried to think, the images of bodies obtruded themselves into my way back to thee, as if they would say to me, "Where are you going, unworthy and unclean one?"

　　And all these had sprung out of my wound, for thou hadst humbled the haughty as one that is wounded.  By my swelling pride I was separated from thee, and my bloated cheeks blinded my eyes.

　　CHAPTER VIII

　　12.  But thou, O Lord, art forever the same, yet thou art not forever angry with us, for thou hast compassion on our dust and ashes.[183]  It was pleasing in thy sight to reform my deformity, and by inward stings thou didst disturb me so that I was impatient until thou wert made clear to my inward sight.  By the secret hand of thy healing my swelling was lessened, the disordered and darkened eyesight of my mind was from day to day made whole by the stinging salve of wholesome grief.

　　CHAPTER IX

　　13.  And first of all, willing to show me how thou dost "resist the proud, but give grace to the humble,"[184] and how mercifully thou hast made known to men the way of humility in that thy Word "was made flesh and dwelt among men,"[185] thou didst procure for me, through one inflated with the most monstrous pride, certain books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin.[186]  And therein I found, not indeed in the same words, but to the selfsame effect, enforced by many and various reasons that "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with God.

　　All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made." That which was made by him is "life, and the life was the light of men.  And the light shined in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." Furthermore, I read that the soul of man, though it "bears witness to the light," yet itself "is not the light; but the Word of God, being God, is that true light that lights every man who comes into the world." And further, that "he was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not."[187]  But that "he came unto his own, and his own received him not.  And as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on his name"[188] -- this I did not find there.

　　14.  Similarly, I read there that God the Word was born "not of flesh nor of blood, nor of the will of man, nor the will of the flesh, but of God."[189]  But, that "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us"[190] -- I found this nowhere there.  And I

　　discovered in those books, expressed in many and various ways, that "the Son was in the form of God and thought it not robbery to be equal in God,"[191] for he was naturally of the same substance.

　　But, that "he emptied himself and took upon himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.  Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him" from the dead, "and given him a name above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;

　　and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father"[192] -- this those books have not.  I

　　read further in them that before all times and beyond all times, thy only Son remaineth unchangeably coeternal with thee, and that of his fullness all souls receive that they may be blessed, and that by participation in that wisdom which abides in them, they are renewed that they may be wise.  But, that "in due time, Christ died for the ungodly" and that thou "sparedst not thy only Son, but deliveredst him up for us all"[193] -- this is not there.

　　"For thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes"[194]; that they "that labor and are heavy laden" might "come unto him and he might refresh them"

　　because he is "meek and lowly in heart."[195]  "The meek will he guide in judgment; and the meek will he teach his way; beholding our lowliness and our trouble and forgiving all our sins."[196]

　　But those who strut in the high boots of what they deem to be superior knowledge will not hear Him who says, "Learn of me, for I

　　am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls."[197]  Thus, though they know God, yet they do not glorify him as God, nor are they thankful.  Therefore, they "become vain in their imaginations; their foolish heart is darkened, and professing themselves to be wise they become fools."[198]

　　15.  And, moreover, I also read there how "they changed the glory of thy incorruptible nature into idols and various images --

　　into an image made like corruptible man and to birds and four-

　　footed beasts, and creeping things"[199]: namely, into that Egyptian food[200] for which Esau lost his birthright; so that thy first-born people worshiped the head of a four-footed beast instead of thee, turning back in their hearts toward Egypt and prostrating thy image (their own soul) before the image of an ox that eats grass.  These things I found there, but I fed not on them.  For it pleased thee, O Lord, to take away the reproach of his minority from Jacob, that the elder should serve the younger and thou mightest call the Gentiles, and I had sought strenuously after that gold which thou didst allow thy people to take from Egypt, since wherever it was it was thine.[201]  And thou saidst unto the Athenians by the mouth of thy apostle that in thee "we live and move and have our being," as one of their own poets had said.[202]  And truly these books came from there.  But I did not set my mind on the idols of Egypt which they fashioned of gold, "changing the truth of God into a lie and worshiping and serving the creature more than the Creator."[203]