BOOK ONE. To follow and to hold the order of things, Zenobius — an order proper both to each individual and indeed to that universal order by which this world is held together and governed — either to see it or to disclose it is a most difficult and most rare thing for men. To this is added that, even if anyone should be able to do this, he is not likewise able to bring it about that he should find a worthy hearer for matters so divine and obscure, either by the merit of his life or by a certain habit of learning. And yet there is nothing
which all the best minds more eagerly seek after, and are more zealous to hear and to learn — those who, with head as it were erect (so far as is allowed), look upon the crags and storms of this life — than how it comes to pass that God cares for human affairs, and yet so great a perversity is everywhere diffused throughout human matters, that it seems to be attributable not to a divine, nor even to any servile administration, if such great power were given to it. Wherefore this is left, as though necessary, to be believed by those to whom such things are a care: either that divine providence does not extend even to these last and lowest things, or certainly that all evils are committed by the will of God — both impious, but the latter more so.
For although to believe anything to be deserted by God is both most ignorant and also most dangerous to the soul, yet among men themselves no one has accused anyone of having been unable to do something. But the reproach of negligence is far more pardonable than that of malice and cruelty. And so reason is, as it were, compelled — not unmindful of piety — to hold either that these earthly things cannot be administered by divine things, or that they are rather neglected and despised than so governed that every complaint about God should be mild and blameworthy. But who is so blind in mind that he would hesitate to attribute to divine power and governance whatever, in the movements of bodies, is beyond human arrangement and will?
unless perhaps either the limbs of even the tiniest of animals are fashioned by chance with so fixed and subtle a proportion — but what one denies to be by chance, he cannot but confess to have been made by reason; or else, throughout universal nature, that which in each single thing we marvel to be ordered without any human art busying itself about it, we shall dare, by some trifles of vain opinion, to alienate from the most secret judgement of majesty. But indeed this very thing is more full of questions: that the limbs of a flea are arranged wonderfully and distinctly, while in the meantime human life is tossed and fluctuates in the inconstancy of innumerable disturbances.
But in this manner: if anyone should discern things so minutely that in a mosaic pavement the edge of his sight could compass nothing beyond the size of a single tessera, he would blame the craftsman as though ignorant of ordering and composition, because he thought the variety of the little stones confused — the craftsman by whom those inlaid figures, converging into the appearance of a single beauty, could not be beheld and surveyed all at once. For nothing else happens to less-educated men, who, being unable with a feeble mind to grasp and consider the entire fitting-together and design of things, if anything offend them, think — because it is great to their own thought — that a great foulness inheres in things. Of which error the greatest cause is that man is unknown to himself.
Yet, in order to know himself, he has need of a great habit of withdrawing from the senses, and of gathering the mind into itself and retaining it within itself. This only those attain who cauterize certain blows of opinions, which the course of daily life inflicts, either by solitude or heal them by the liberal disciplines. For thus the mind, restored to itself, understands what is the beauty of the universe — which indeed is named from the One (unum), and therefore it is not permitted to be seen by the soul that goes forth into multiplicity and pursues, in its greed, a poverty which it knows not can be avoided only by separation from the multitude. But by multitude I speak not of men, but of all things that the senses reach.
Nor should you marvel that it suffers want the more, the more it desires to embrace more things. For as in a circle, however vast, there is one centre to which all things converge — which the geometers call the 'kentron' — and although the parts of the whole circumference can be divided innumerably, yet there is nothing except that one, by which the rest are equally measured, and which dominates them all as it were by a certain right of equality; but from here, if you should wish to go out into any part whatever, all things are lost the further one proceeds into the many — so the mind, poured out from itself, is battered by a certain immensity and is worn away by true beggary, when its own nature compels it to seek the One everywhere, and multitude does not permit it to find it.
But even these things which I have said — of what kind they are, and what cause there is for the error of souls, and in what manner all things both harmonize into one and are perfect, and yet sins are to be shunned — you will surely attain, my Zenobius; for so is your character known to me, a soul that loves beauty of every kind without immoderation of lust and without filth — which is a sign in you that divine right prescribes a future wisdom against pernicious desires, lest, allured by false pleasures, you desert your own cause, than which transgression nothing more base and more dangerous can be found. You will attain these things, then, believe me, when you have devoted your effort to that learning by which the mind is purged and cultivated, being in no way fit beforehand to have divine seeds committed to it.
What that whole matter is of, and what order it demands, and what reason promises to the studious and the good, and what kind of life we lead — we, your dear ones — and what fruit we gather from our liberal leisure: these books will sufficiently teach you, as I think, being sweeter to us for your name's sake than for our own elaboration, especially if, choosing better things, you should wish to insert and fit yourself into that very order concerning which I write to you. For when a pain of the stomach had compelled me to abandon the school — I who already, as you know, even without any such necessity was contriving to take refuge in philosophy — at once I betook myself to the country house of our most intimate friend Verecundus. What shall I say, he being so willing? You know very well the man's singular benevolence, both toward all and indeed toward us.
There we discussed among ourselves whatever seemed useful, with the pen duly employed, by which all things might be taken down — a thing which I saw to be conducive to my health. For since I was detained by some care of speaking, no immoderate contention crept in during our disputation; and at the same time, so that, if it pleased us to commit anything of ours to writing, there might be neither the necessity of speaking otherwise nor the labour of recollection. These things carried on with me Alypius, and Navigius my brother, and Licentius, suddenly and admirably devoted to poetry; Trygetius likewise had military service restored to us, who, as though a veteran, fell in love with history; also we had something in books.
But on a certain night, when I had awakened after my custom and was turning over silently within myself the things which came into my mind from I know not where — for this had already become a habit for me, from love of finding the truth, that either the first part of the night (if such cares were present) or at least the last, yet nearly the half of the night, I should keep vigil pondering whatever I might, nor would I suffer myself to be called away from myself by the young men's lucubrations, because they too were doing so much throughout the whole day that it seemed too much to me if they should also usurp any of the night for the labour of studies, and they had this too as a precept from me, that they should carry on something even apart from their books, and accustom the mind to dwell with itself — therefore, as I said, I was awake, when lo, the sound of water behind the baths, which it flowed past, drew me into my ears, and was noticed more attentively than usual.
It seemed exceedingly strange to me that the same water now more clearly, now more subduedly, made its noise as it rushed against the stones. I began to ask myself what the cause might be. I confess, nothing occurred to me, when Licentius, striking a piece of wood beside his bed, frightened away the troublesome mice, and thus indicated that he was awake. To whom I said: 'Do you notice, Licentius — for I see that your Muse has kindled a lamp for you to work by night — how inconstantly that channel sounds?' 'Already,' said he, 'this is nothing new to me. For out of desire for clear weather, when once, being awakened, I had put my ear to it, lest a shower should come on, this water was doing what it does now.' Trygetius approved.
For he too, lying on his bed in the same chamber, was awake without our knowing it — for it was dark, which in Italy is almost a necessity even for the well-to-do. Therefore, when I saw that our school, however small it was present — for both Alypius and Navigius had gone into the city — was even at those hours not lulled to sleep, and that that course of the waters was admonishing me to say something about it: 'What,' said I, 'does there seem to us to be the cause, that this sound thus alternates? For we do not suppose that anyone at these hours, either by passing through or by some thing to be washed, so often interrupts that channel.'
'What do you suppose,' said Licentius, 'except that somewhere leaves of some kind or other — which in autumn continually and copiously fall — thrust into the narrows of the channel are at times overcome and give way; but when the wave, which was pressing, has passed through, they are again collected and packed together; or that something else happens by the various chance of the floating leaves, which likewise avails now to check, now to release, that flow?' It seemed probable to me, having nothing else, and I confessed, praising his talent, that I had found nothing, though I had long sought why it should be so. Then, after a little silence interposed: 'Rightly,' said I, 'did you marvel at nothing, and kept yourself within, with Calliope.' 'Rightly,' said he, 'but just now you have plainly given me something great to marvel at.' 'What then is this?'
'That you,' said he, 'marvelled at these things.' 'Whence,' said I, 'is wonder wont to arise, or what is the mother of this fault, except an unusual thing beyond the manifest order of causes?' And he: '"Beyond the manifest" I accept,' said he; 'for nothing seems to me to happen beyond order.' Here I, more erect with a livelier hope than I am wont to have when I inquire something of these young men — because so great a matter, and so suddenly (having yesterday almost turned to such things), the young man's mind had conceived, though no question about these matters had ever before been stirred among us — 'Well,' said I, 'well; but you have felt much, and altogether well, and much you have dared. This, believe me, transcends by a long interval Helicon, to whose summit you strive to arrive as though to heaven.'
'But I could well wish you were present to this opinion, for I shall attempt to shake it.' 'Leave me,' said he, 'just now to myself, I beseech you; for I have strongly bent my mind to another thing.' Here I, fearing somewhat lest, utterly rolled forward by his zeal for poetry, he should be carried far away from philosophy: 'I am provoked,' said I, 'by you to harass those verses of yours by singing and howling them in every kind of metre — verses which attempt to raise between you and truth a wall more monstrous than that between your lovers; for they at least breathed through even an inborn little chink.' For he had then set himself to sing of Pyramus. And when I had said this with a voice sterner than he thought, he was silent for a while. And I had already left off what I had begun, and had returned to myself, lest in vain and ineptly I should wish to occupy one already preoccupied; then he:
'I myself, by my own token, like a shrew-mouse,' said he — 'it was not said more aptly in Terence than it can now be said by me of myself; but perhaps that last part will be turned to the contrary. For what he says: "Today I have perished," I perhaps today shall be found. For if you do not despise — as the superstitious are wont — even to take auguries from mice: if I warned that mouse or shrew, which betrayed me to you as being awake, by my noise, that (if it has any sense) it should return to its lair and rest quietly with itself, why should not I myself be warned by this noise of your voice to philosophize rather than to sing? For that is — as I have now begun to believe, since you daily prove it — our true and unshaken dwelling.'
'Wherefore, if it is not troublesome to you, and you judge that it ought to be done, ask what you will; I shall defend, as much as I can, the order of things, and shall assert that nothing can happen beyond order. For I have so imbibed and drunk it into my mind that, even if anyone should overcome me in this disputation, I shall attribute even this not to any rashness but to the order of things. For it is not the matter itself, but Licentius, that will be overcome.' Rejoicing, I restored myself to them again. Then to Trygetius: 'What,' said I, 'seems to you?' 'I favour the order much indeed,' said he, 'but I am nevertheless uncertain, and I desire so great a matter to be most diligently discussed.' 'Let that party, then,' said I, 'have your favour; for as to your being uncertain, I think you have this in common with Licentius and with myself too.'
'Absolutely,' said Licentius, 'I am certain of this opinion. For why should I hesitate to demolish the wall, of which you made mention, before it has plainly raised itself up? For poetry cannot truly turn me away from philosophy so much as distrust of finding the truth can.' Then Trygetius, with rejoicing words: 'We have now,' said he, 'what is more, a Licentius who is no Academic; for those he used most zealously to defend.' 'Omit these things now, I beseech you,' said he, 'lest this cunning and captious something from I know not what divine thing, which has begun to show itself to me, and toward which I hang gaping, should twist me aside and break me off.'
Here I, perceiving my joys to abound far more richly than I ever once dared even to wish, exultingly poured forth that verse: 'So may that father God bring it to pass!' For He Himself will lead — if we follow — whither He bids us go, and where to set our seat, He who now gives augury and glides into our minds. For it is not the lofty Apollo who, in caves, on mountains, in groves, stirred up by the smoke of incense and the slaughter of cattle, fills the frenzied ones; but another, assuredly, is another — that other lofty and truth-speaking one, and truth itself (for why should I go about with words?) — whose seers are whoever can be wise. Therefore let us go forward, Licentius; relying on piety, as worshippers let us, with our footsteps, crush out the destructive fire of smoky lusts.
'Now,' said he, 'ask, I pray you, whether I can unfold this something, I know not what, so great, both in words and in my own words.' 'Answer me this very thing,' said I: 'first, whence it seems to you that this water flows not at random thus, but in order. For that it glides over the little wooden channels and is led as far as our uses may pertain to order; for it was done by men using reason, that by one course of it they might at once both drink and wash, and, according to the conveniences of the places, it was consequent that it should so be done. But as to those leaves which, as you say, so fell in that this thing which we marvelled at should come about — by what order of things, pray, and not rather by chance, shall we suppose it to have been done?'
'As though indeed,' said he, 'it could seem to anyone gazing most serenely — that nothing can happen without a cause — that they ought to have, or could have, fallen otherwise than they did fall. What? Do you now wish me to pursue the positions of the trees and the branches, and the very weight, as much as nature imposed upon the leaves? What? The mobility of the air, by which they flutter, or the softness, by which they descend, and the various fallings according to the disposition of the sky, according to the burden, according to their shapes, and the other innumerable and more obscure causes — what concern is it of mine to inquire? These things lie hidden from our senses, deeply hidden; yet that which is enough for the question undertaken does not, in some way I know not, lie hidden from the mind: that nothing happens without a cause. For an odious questioner can go on to ask:
what was the cause that trees should be placed there? I shall answer that men followed the richness of the soil. What, if the trees are not fruitful and have grown up at random? Here too I shall answer that we see too little; for the nature that begot them is by no means rash. Why say more? Either let me be taught that something happens without a cause, or believe that nothing happens except by a fixed order of causes.' To whom I: 'You may,' said I, 'call me an odious questioner — for I can scarcely not be one, having stormed the wall so that you might not converse with Pyramus and Thisbe — yet I shall go on to inquire of you. This nature, which you would have seem ordered, for whose good — to be silent about the other innumerable things — did it bring forth these very trees which bear no fruit?'
But while he was considering what to say, Trygetius said: 'Is the usefulness of groves furnished to men in fruits alone? How many other things there are, which come about by shade, by timber, and, however lastly, by the very foliage or leaves?' 'Do not, I beseech,' said he, 'give these answers to his questions. For there are innumerable things which can be brought forward, from which there is no usefulness to men, or which certainly lie so hidden or are so feeble that they cannot be dug out or defended by men, especially by us. Let him rather teach us how anything comes about which no cause has preceded.' 'Afterward,' said I, 'we shall see these things.'
For it is no longer necessary that I be the teacher, since you, who have already professed yourself certain of so great a matter, have so far taught nothing to me, who am exceedingly eager to learn and who for this reason alone keep watch day and night. 'Where are you sending me?' he says; 'or is it because I follow you more lightly than those leaves follow the winds, leaves which are cast into the flowing stream so that it is not enough for them to fall unless they are also dragged along? For what else will it be, when Licentius teaches both Augustine and the very matters that lie in the midst of philosophy?' 'Do not, I beg you,' I said, 'either cast yourself down so low or exalt me. For I too am but a child in philosophy, and I do not much care, when I put a question, through whom that One answers me who receives me daily as a complainer, and of whom indeed I believe you will one day be the prophet;
and this 'one day' is perhaps not far off. Yet even others, though far removed from studies of this kind, are able to teach something, when they are constrained, as if by the fetters of questions, into the fellowship of those who reason. And to teach something is not to teach nothing. Do you not see — for I would gladly use your own comparison — those very leaves that are borne along by the winds, that float upon the waves, resisting a little the river that hurls them headlong, and reminding men of the order of things, if indeed that which you maintain is true?' At this he, leaping up even from his bed for joy, said: 'Who could deny, O great God, that You administer all things in order? How all things hold together! By what fixed successions they are pressed on into their own knots!
How great and how many things have come to pass, that we might speak these words! How great things are happening, that we might find You! For whence does this very thing flow and derive, except from the order of things — that we awoke, that you noticed that sound, that you sought within yourself the cause, that you did not find the cause of so tiny a matter? Even a shrew-mouse comes forth, that I, being awake, might be brought forth. Finally your very own discourse, perhaps without your intending it — for it is not in anyone's power what comes into his mind — is somehow so turned about that it itself teaches me what I ought to answer you.'
'For I beseech you: if these things which have been said by us should, committed to writing as you have arranged, spread somewhat more widely into the knowledge of men, does not the matter seem so great that some mighty seer or Chaldean, when consulted about it, ought to have given an answer long before it came to pass? And if he had answered, he would be called so divine, he would be so extolled with everyone's praises, that yet no one from this would ask why a leaf fell from a tree, or whether a mouse running about was a nuisance to a man lying down. For did any of them ever say of his own accord that such things would come to pass, or was he compelled by an inquirer to say it?
And yet if he were to say that some not undistinguished book would exist in the future, and were to see that it would necessarily come to pass — for otherwise he could not divine it — then assuredly whatever tossing of leaves in a field, whatever the meanest little creature does in a house, is as necessary in the order of things as those writings. For by these words they come to be, words which, without those preceding, meanest of things, could neither come into the mind nor issue from the mouth nor be handed down to posterity. Wherefore now, I ask, let no one seek from me why each thing comes to pass. It is enough that nothing comes to be, nothing is begotten, which some cause has not begotten and set in motion.' 'It is plain,' I said, 'young man, that you do not know how many things, and by what sort of men, have been said against divination.'
'But answer now — not whether anything comes to pass without a cause, for I already see that you are unwilling to answer that — but whether this order you have taken up seems to you to be something good or something bad.' And he, hesitating a little: 'You did not,' he said, 'so put the question that I can answer one of the two. For here I see a certain middle ground. For order seems to me neither good nor bad.' 'What at least,' I said, 'do you judge to be contrary to order?' 'Nothing,' he said; 'for how can anything be contrary to that thing which has occupied the whole, has taken possession of the whole? For whatever shall be contrary to order must needs be outside order; but I see that nothing is outside order: therefore one ought to think nothing contrary to order.'
'Is not then error contrary to order?' said Trygetius. 'By no means,' he said; 'for I see that no one errs without a cause; and the chain of causes is included in order, and error itself is not only begotten by a cause but also begets something, for which it becomes a cause. For which reason, insofar as it is not outside order, so far it cannot be contrary to order.'
And when Trygetius had fallen silent, and I could scarcely contain myself for joy, because I saw the young man, the son of a most dear friend, becoming even my own — and not only that, but truly rising up and growing into a friend to me — and because he whose zeal I had despaired of even for middling letters was, as if with an eye to his own possession, coming with all his impetus into the very midst of philosophy — while I silently marvel at this and burn inwardly with congratulation, suddenly he, as if seized by some inspiration of mind, cried out: 'Oh, if only I could say what I wish! I beg you, wherever you are, O words, come to my aid. Both good things and evil things are in order. Believe it, if you will; for how to explain it I do not know.' I was marveling, and kept silent.
But Trygetius, when he saw the man become somewhat affable again, as if his intoxication had been digested, and restored to conversation, said: 'It seems to me absurd, Licentius, and plainly foreign to the truth, what you say; but I beg you to allow me a little, and not to overwhelm me with shouting.' 'Say what you will,' he said; 'for I do not fear that you will carry me away from that which I see and almost hold.' 'Would,' he said, 'that you were not straying from the very order you defend! May you not be borne along in such — to speak more mildly — carelessness toward God. For what could be said more impious than that even evils are contained in order? For surely God loves order.' 'Truly He loves it,' he said; 'from Him it flows, with Him it is; and if anything can be said more fitly about a matter so lofty, ponder it yourself, I pray, within your own mind.
For I am not fit to teach you these things now.' 'What should I ponder?' said Trygetius; 'I accept outright what you say, and it is enough for me in what I understand. For surely you have said both that evils are contained in order, and that order itself flows from the most high God and is loved by Him. From which it follows that both evils are from the most high God, and that God loves evils.' At this conclusion I feared for Licentius. But he, groaning at the difficulty of the words, and not at all seeking what he should answer but in what manner he might bring forth what had to be answered, said: 'God does not love evils, and for no other reason than because it is not of order that God should love evils; and He therefore greatly loves order, because through it He does not love evils.
But how can evils themselves not be in order, since God does not love them? For this very thing is the order of evils, that they be not loved by God. Or does it seem to you a small order of things, that God both loves goods and does not love evils? Thus evils, which God does not love, are not outside order, and yet He loves the order itself; for this very thing He loves — to love goods and not to love evils — which belongs to the great order and the divine disposition. And because this order and disposition preserves the harmony of the universe by that very distinction, it comes about that it is even necessary that evils exist. Thus, as it were from antitheses, in a certain manner which is pleasing to us even in speech, out of opposites the beauty of all things together is fashioned.
After this he paused moderately, and suddenly raising himself up toward the side where Trygetius had his bed: 'For I ask of you, I beg,' he said, 'whether God is just.' The other was silent for a very long time, as he afterwards related, marveling and shuddering at the utterance of his fellow-pupil and intimate friend, breathed upon by a new inspiration. And as he kept silent, the other continued thus: 'For if you shall have answered that God is not just, look you to what you are doing, you who a little while ago were accusing me of impiety. But if — as it is handed down to us and as we ourselves perceive by the very necessity of order — God is just, then by distributing to each his own He is assuredly just. But what distribution can be spoken of where there is no distinction? Or what distinction, if all things are good?
Or what can be found outside order, if by the justice of God, according to the merits of good and evil men, to each his own is rendered? But that God is just we all confess: therefore the whole is included in order.' Having said this, he sank back upon his couch, and now in a gentler voice, since no one made a word to him: 'Do you make me no answer,' he said, 'not even you, who compelled me to these things?' To whom I: 'This new religiousness has now come upon you; give way, I say. But what shall seem good, I will answer by daylight, which now seems to me to be returning — unless it is the moon's radiance that is poured in through the windows. At the same time we must be silent, lest oblivion swallow up such great goods of yours, Licentius. For when will our writings not demand that these things be committed to them? I will plainly tell you what I feel.
I will dispute against you, as much as I can; for no greater triumph can be given me than if you overcome me. But if your weakness — which, being less nourished by the training of the disciplines, will perhaps not be able to sustain so great a God — should yield to the craftiness or to some sharp error of men, whose part I shall try to take up, the matter itself will remind you how great strength you must prepare, that you may return the stronger against it. At the same time, I wish this disputation of ours to come out more polished; for I ought not to entrust it to coarse ears. For our friend Zenobius has often conferred much with me about the order of things, and, though he questioned me on lofty matters, I could never satisfy him, whether because of the obscurity of the things or because of the shortness of time.
But he was so impatient of frequent postponements that, in order to compel me to answer more carefully and copiously, he even challenged me with verse — and with good verse, for which you love him the more. But it could not be read to you then, so utterly removed as you were from the study of these matters, nor can it now. For his departure was so sudden and so disturbed by that tumult that none of these things could come into our minds; for he had arranged to leave it for me to answer, and many considerations concur why this discourse should be sent to him. The first is that it is owed him; then, that it is fitting his good will toward us should be shown even in this way — namely, what sort of life we now lead; lastly, that in joy over your hope he yields to no one.
For even when he was present, out of his intimacy with your father — or rather with all of us — he was much concerned lest certain sparks of your talent, which he diligently observed, should not so much be fanned into flame by my care as be extinguished by your own carelessness; and when he shall have learned that you are devoted to poetry as well, he will so rejoice that I already seem to see him exulting before me.' 'You will do nothing more pleasing to me indeed,' he said; 'but whether you will laugh at my fickleness and boyish levity, or whether it comes to pass in us by some truly divine nod and order, I would not hesitate to tell you: I have become suddenly more sluggish toward those meters; something else, far, far different, has now shone out upon me with some light or other.
Philosophy is fairer, I confess, than Thisbe, than Pyramus, than that Venus and Cupid and all such loves of every kind.' And with a sigh he was giving thanks to Christ. I received these things — what shall I say I gladly received, or what shall I not say? Let each take it as he will, I care nothing, save that perhaps I rejoiced immoderately. Meanwhile, after a little while, the day disclosed itself. They rose, and I, shedding many tears, prayed much, when I heard Licentius singing softly and gaily that prophetic verse: 'O God of hosts, turn us, and show us Thy face, and we shall be saved.' And this, the day before, when after supper he had gone outside for the needs of nature, he had sung a little too loudly for our mother to bear, in that such things should be repeated in continuous song in that place.
For he sang nothing else, since he had lately imbibed the very tune of the melody and loved, as happens, the unaccustomed strain. That most religious woman, as you know, rebuked him for this very thing, that the place was unbecoming for a song. Then he had said jestingly: 'As if indeed, if some enemy were to shut me in here, God would not be going to hear my voice.' So in the morning, when he had returned alone — for both had gone forth for the same cause — he came to my little bed: 'Tell me truly,' he said, 'so may that which you wish come to pass for us, what you think of me.' And I, taking the young man's right hand: 'What I think,' I said, 'you feel, you believe, you understand. For I do not suppose that yesterday you sang so long in vain, that the God of hosts, being turned toward you, might show Himself to you.'
But he, recalling it with admiration: 'You say,' he said, 'a great thing and a true one. For it moves me not a little that just now I was so unwillingly called away from those trifles of my song, and now I am both loath and ashamed to return to them; so wholly am I borne up into certain great and wondrous things. Is not this truly to be turned toward God? At the same time I rejoice also in this, that a scruple of superstition was cast into me in vain — that I was singing such things in such a place.' 'To me,' I said, 'this too is not displeasing, and I think it pertains to that order, that we should say something even from this. For I see that both the very place at which she was offended, and the night, agree with that song.
For from what things do you think we pray that we may be turned toward God and see His face, if not from a certain mire of the body and its filth, and likewise from the darkness in which error has enwrapped us? Or what else is it to be turned, if not to raise oneself up out of the immoderation of vices by virtue and temperance? And what else is the face of God than that very Truth, for which we sigh, and to which, being loved by it, we render ourselves clean and beautiful?' 'It cannot be said better,' he said, exclaiming; then, more softly, as if into my ear: 'See, I pray, how many things have occurred, so that I may believe that something is now being done toward us in a more prosperous order.' 'If you care for order,' I said, 'you must return to those verses.
For the training of the liberal disciplines, sober indeed and concise, makes the lovers of the truth that is to be embraced both more eager and more persevering and more refined, so that they may more ardently desire it, more constantly pursue it, and at last more sweetly cling to it — that which is called, Licentius, the blessed life. At the naming of which, all men raise themselves up and, as it were, reach out their hands, to see whether you have something you can give to the needy and to those hindered by various diseases.
To whom, when wisdom has begun to prescribe that they endure the physician and suffer themselves to be cured with some patience, they fall back into their rags, warmed by which and putrefying, they more gladly scratch the itch of their wretched pleasures than, by enduring and undergoing the physician's admonitions — a little harsh and burdensome to their diseases — be restored to the health of the whole and to the light. And so, content as with a dole under that name and notion of the most high God, they live wretched — yet they live. But other men, or, to speak more truly, other souls, while they drive this body about, that best and most beautiful Spouse seeks out as already worthy of His bridal chamber — souls to whom not to live, but to live blessedly, is enough. Go therefore meanwhile to those Muses. But yet do you know what I would have you do?
'Command,' he said, 'what pleases you.' 'When,' I said, 'Pyramus and that woman of his shall have slain themselves one upon the other, as you are about to sing, in that very grief, with which your song ought to be the more vehemently kindled, you have a most convenient opportunity. Seize upon the execration of that foul lust and of the poisoned fires by which those pitiable things befall them; then rise up wholly into the praise of pure and sincere love, by which souls, learned in the disciplines and beautiful with virtue, are joined to the understanding through philosophy, and not only flee death but also enjoy to the full the most blessed life.' At this he, silent and for a long time nodding in consideration, departed with his head shaking. Then I too arose, and having rendered our daily vows to God,
we set about going into the baths — for that place, when we could by no means be out in the fields under a gloomy sky, was suited to us and familiar for disputing — when, behold, before the doors we noticed dunghill-cocks entering upon an all-too-fierce battle. It pleased us to observe. For what do the eyes of lovers not compass, over what do they not range, lest by some means or other from any source the beauty of reason should give a hint — reason that with all knowing and not-knowing measures and governs, and draws its followers who gape after it wherever, and bids itself be sought in every place? For whence or where can it not give a sign?
As in those very cocks it was possible to see the heads thrust forward, the ruffled feathers, the vehement blows, the most cautious evasions, and in every movement of animals devoid of reason nothing that was not comely — since another Reason from above moderates all things; and finally the very law of the victor: the proud crowing and the limbs gathered as if into one orb, as though into the haughtiness of dominion; but the sign of the vanquished: the little feathers raised from his neck, and in voice and movement everything unshapely — and by that very fact somehow, according to the laws of nature, harmonious and beautiful.
We asked many questions: why all cocks are so; why for the sake of dominion over the females subject to them; why then the very sight of the fight led us somewhat, even apart from that loftier consideration, into the pleasure of the spectacle; what there was in us that sought after many things removed from the senses; what again there was that was captivated by the very invitation of the senses. We said to ourselves: where is there not law? Where is not command owed to the better? Where is not a shadow of constancy? Where is not an imitation of that most true beauty? Where is not measure?
And thence admonished that there should be a measure of watching, we proceeded to where we had purposed; and there, as best we could, indeed diligently — for the things were fresh, and when could such notable matters escape the memory of three zealous students? — we gathered all the little works of our lucubration into this part of the little book, and nothing else was done by me that day, to spare my health, except that before supper I was accustomed daily to hear with them half a volume of Virgil, we everywhere considering nothing other than the measure of things, which no one can fail to approve, but to perceive it, when anyone does anything zealously, is most difficult and most rare. Then on the next day, quite early, brisk, we assembled at our accustomed place and sat down in it.
And I, with both attentive upon me: 'Be here,' I said, 'Licentius, as fully as you can, and you too, Trygetius; for it is no small matter that is at stake: we are inquiring about order. Why should I now, as if set in that school from which I rejoice to have escaped by whatever means, praise order to you copiously and in orderly fashion? Receive, if you will — nay rather, make it that you will — that than which nothing can be said more briefly about the praise of this thing, nor, as it seems to me, more truly. Order is that which, if we shall have held it in life, will lead to God, and which, unless we shall have held it in life, we shall not come to God. But that we shall come, unless my mind deceives me about us, we presume and hope. Most diligently, therefore, ought this question to be handled among us and resolved.
I could wish the others were present, who are wont to take part with us in these pursuits; I could wish, if it might be, to have with me not only these, but at least all our intimate friends, whose genius I always admire, now as intent as you are — or at any rate Zenobius alone, whom, laboring over this so great a matter, I never received at leisure in proportion to its greatness. But because that does not come to pass, they will read our writings, since we have now resolved not to lose words about these matters, and to bind the things themselves, fleeting from memory, with the fetter, as it were, of writings, by which they may be brought back. And thus perhaps order itself demanded it, order which brought about their absence.
For you too, assuredly, into so great a matter — because it is laid upon us alone to be carried through — rise up with a more erect mind; and when those shall have read who are our greatest care, if anything shall move them to contradiction, this disputation will beget for us other disputations, and the very succession of discourses will insert itself into the order of the discipline. But now, as I had promised, I will oppose Licentius, as far as the matter allows — Licentius who has now almost completed the whole cause, if only he can steadfastly and firmly wall it round with the rampart of defense.' Here, when I perceived that by their silence, by their countenance, by their eyes, by the suspense and immobility of their limbs they were sufficiently moved by the greatness of the matter and inflamed with the desire of hearing:
'Therefore, Licentius,' I said, 'if it seems good to you, collect within yourself whatever of strength you can, sharpen whatever of keenness you have, and embrace by a definition what this order is.' Then he, when he heard himself compelled to define, shuddered as if sprinkled with cold water, and gazing at me with a more troubled countenance and, as happens, smiling at his very trepidation: 'What matter is this?' he said. 'Why do I seem to you, as it were, to nod assent? I know not with what adventitious spirit you believe me inflated.' And straightway rousing himself: 'Or perhaps,' he said, 'something is with me?' And he was silent a little, that whatever notion of order he had might be gathered into a definition; then, more erect: 'Order,' he said, 'is that through which are done all the things which God has established.' 'What?
Does God Himself,' I said, 'not seem to you to be moved by order?' 'Absolutely,' he said, 'He seems so.' 'Then is God moved?' said Trygetius. And he: 'For what then?' he said; 'do you deny that Christ is God, who both came to us in order and says that He was sent by God the Father? If therefore God sent Christ to us in order, and we do not deny that Christ is God, then God not only does all things but is even moved in order.' Here Trygetius, hesitating: 'I know not,' he said, 'how I am to accept this. For when we name God, it is not Christ Himself who as it were meets our minds, but the Father. But He meets us then, when we name the Son of God.' 'You do a fine thing,' said Licentius. 'Shall we then deny that the Son of God is God?'
Here the other, though it seemed perilous to answer, yet forced himself and said: 'This one also indeed is God, but nevertheless we properly call the Father God.' To whom I: 'Restrain yourself rather,' I said; 'for the Son is not improperly called God.' But he, moved by religious scruple, when he did not even wish his words to be written down, Licentius urged that they should remain — after the manner of boys, to be sure, or rather of men — O the shame! — of almost all — as if indeed for the sake of boasting that matter were being carried on among us. When I rebuked his agitation of mind with graver words, he blushed. At which perturbation of his I noticed Trygetius laughing and rejoicing, and to both of them: 'Is it thus you carry on?' I said;
'does it not move you, by what masses of vices and by what darkness of ignorance we are pressed down and covered over? Is this that attention of yours a little while ago, over which I foolishly rejoiced, and that rising up toward God and the truth? O if you could see, even with eyes so bleared as mine, in what perils we lie, of what disease this laughter of yours betrays the madness! O if you could see! How quickly, how instantly, and with what greater length you would turn it into weeping! Wretches, do you not know where we are? That the souls of all the foolish and unlearned are indeed submerged is common to them; but wisdom does not extend aid and hand to those submerged in one and the same manner. There are some, believe me, there are some, who are called upward; others who are let loose into the depths.
Do not, I beseech you, redouble my miseries. Let my own wounds suffice me, wounds which, that they may be healed, I daily beg God with almost daily tears, yet often convict my very self that I am too unworthy to be healed as quickly as I wish. Do not, I beseech you — if you owe me anything of love, anything of bond, if you understand how much I love you, how much I esteem you, how much care for your characters torments me, if I am worthy that you not neglect me, if finally, with God as witness, I lie not that I desire nothing more for myself than for you — repay me the benefit; and if you gladly call me master, render me my wage: be good!'
Here, when tears set a limit upon my speaking that I should say no more, Licentius, bearing it most grievously that everything was being written down: 'What indeed,' he said, 'have we done, I ask you?' 'Do you still,' I said, 'not even confess your fault? Do you not know that in that school I was wont to be gravely vexed, because boys were led on, not by the usefulness and beauty of the disciplines, but by love of the emptiest praise, so that some were not even ashamed to recite the words of others and received applause — O evil to be groaned over! — from those very men whose were the things they were reciting?
So you, although you have never, as I think, done any such thing, nevertheless are attempting to introduce and sow, both into philosophy and into that life which I rejoice to have at last taken up, the last but more harmful plague of all — that of pestilential rivalry and of empty boasting; and perhaps, because I deter you from that vanity and disease, you will be the more sluggish toward the studies of learning, and, repelled from the ardor of windy fame, you will freeze into the torpor of inertia. Wretched me, if it shall be necessary to endure even now such men, from whom vices cannot depart without the succession of other vices!' 'You shall prove,' said Licentius, 'how much purer we shall be in the future.'
'Only this we beseech, by all that you love, that you be willing that it remain unknown to us, and that you command all those things to be deleted, and at the same time that you spare even the tablets, which we no longer have. For nothing has been transferred into the books of those many things which have been discussed by us.' 'By all means,' said Trygetius, 'let our penalty remain, that that very fame which entices us may, by its own scourge, deter us from love of it. For that these writings may become known only to our friends and intimates, we shall sweat not a little.' He assented. And meanwhile our mother entered and inquired of us what progress we had made; for the question was known to her too. When I had ordered both her entrance and her question to be written down after our manner: 'What are you doing?' she said;
in those books which you read, did I ever hear that even women were brought into disputations of this kind?' To whom I: 'I do not much care,' I said, 'for the judgments of the proud and the ignorant, who rush upon books to be read just as upon men to be greeted. For they do not consider what the men themselves are, but with what sort of garments they are clad, and with how great a pomp of estate and fortune they glitter. For such men, in writings, do not much attend either whence a question arises, or whither those reasoning strive to arrive, or what has been unfolded and completed by them.
Yet since among them are found not a few whose minds are not to be despised — for they are sprinkled with certain seasonings of humane culture, and are easily led through golden and painted doors to the sacrosanct inner shrines of philosophy — both our forebears have done enough for them, whose books I see are known to you from our reading, and in these times — to pass over the rest — a man most excellent in genius and in eloquence and in the very insignia and offices of fortune, and, what is before all things, in mind, Theodorus, whom you yourself know well, is bringing it about that neither now nor among posterity shall any kind of men justly complain about the letters of our times. But my books, if the hands of any shall perhaps have touched them, and having read my name they shall not have said:
'Who is this fellow?' and cast the book aside; but if instead, whether from curiosity or from excessive zeal, they scorn the meanness of the threshold and press on to enter, they will not take it ill that I philosophize together with you, nor will they perhaps despise any of those whose discourse is mingled with my writings. For these men are not only free-born — which is enough for any liberal discipline, let alone for philosophy — but were born in the highest rank among their own people. Moreover, the writings of the most learned men include even cobblers who took to philosophy, and men of far humbler conditions of fortune, who nevertheless shone with so great a light of genius and virtue that on no terms would they be willing, even if they could, to exchange their own goods for any nobility whatsoever of this kind.
Nor will there be lacking, believe me, such a kind of men to whom this very thing is more pleasing — that you philosophize with me — than if they had found here anything else, whether of charm or of gravity. For among the ancients there were also women who philosophized, and your philosophy pleases me exceedingly. For, mother, that you may not be ignorant of anything: this Greek word by which philosophy is named is in Latin called the love of wisdom. Whence even the divine Scriptures, which you so vehemently embrace, enjoin us to shun and deride, not philosophers absolutely, but the philosophers of this world. And that there is another world, most remote from these bodily eyes, which the understanding of a few sound minds beholds, Christ himself sufficiently signifies, who does not say, 'My kingdom is not of the world,' but:
'My kingdom is not of this world.' For whoever thinks that all philosophy is to be fled from wills nothing else of us than that we should not love wisdom. I would therefore despise you in these writings of mine if you did not love wisdom; but I would not despise you if you loved it moderately, and much less if you loved wisdom as much as I do. But as it is, since I know that you love it much more than you love your very self — for I have come to know how much you love me — and since you have advanced so far in it that now you are terrified by the dread neither of any chance misfortune nor even of death itself (a thing most difficult even for the most learned men), which all confess to be the highest citadel of philosophy: shall I not gladly give myself to you even as a disciple?
Here, when she had said gently and reverently that I had never told so great a lie, and when I saw that we had poured out so many words that they both ought not to be left unwritten and the book had already reached its measure, and no more tablets remained, it seemed good to defer the question — at the same time that I might spare my stomach. For the things which it seemed to me necessary to spew out against those young men had disturbed it more than I would have wished. But when we had begun to depart, Licentius said: 'Remember how many and how necessary things are supplied to us to be received from you, through that most hidden and divine order, even without your knowing it.' — 'I see it,' I said, 'and I am not ungrateful to God; and I presume that you yourselves, who observe these things, will for that very reason become better.'
This was the whole of my business on that day. BOOK TWO. Then, after a few days had intervened, Alypius came; and as a most brilliant sun rose, the brightness of the sky and — as far as was possible in those places in winter — a caressing mildness invited us to go down into the meadow which we used rather often and familiarly. With us was also our mother, whose native talent and whose spirit inflamed toward divine things I had already perceived both from long-standing companionship and careful consideration; but above all, in a certain discussion of no small matter which I held with my guests on my birthday and set down in a little book, so great a mind of hers had appeared to me that nothing seemed more fitted to true philosophy.
And so I had resolved, when she should have leisure to spare, to see to it that she was not absent from our conversation. And this too you came to know even in the first book of this work. When therefore we had seated ourselves in the aforesaid place, as conveniently as we could, I said to those two young men: 'Although I was angry with you for dealing childishly with great matters, yet it seems to me to have happened not without a favorable order, since in the discourse by which I was drawing you back from that levity, the time was so consumed that so great a matter seems to have been postponed to Alypius' arrival. Wherefore, since I have now made the question well known to him and have shown how far we advanced in it, are you prepared, Licentius, to defend the cause you undertook out of that definition of yours?'
For I think I remember that you said order is that through which God does all things. — 'I am prepared,' he said, 'as far as I am able.' — 'How then,' I said, 'does God do all things by order? In such a way that he does even himself by order? Or, apart from himself, are the rest of things governed by him through order?' — 'Where all things are good,' he said, 'there is no order. For there is the highest equality, which desires no order.' — 'Do you deny,' I said, 'that with God all things are good?' — 'I do not deny it,' he said. — 'It is concluded, then,' I said, 'that neither God nor those things which are with God are administered by order.' — He conceded it. — 'Surely,' I said, 'do all good things seem to you to be nothing?' — 'On the contrary,' he said, 'those very things truly are.'
'Where then,' I said, 'is that saying of yours, that all things which are, are administered by order, and that there is nothing at all which is separated from order?' — 'But there are,' he said, 'also evils, through which it has come about that order should embrace goods as well; for goods alone are not ruled by order, but goods and evils together. Now when we say "all things that are," we surely do not mean goods alone. Whence it comes about that all things together which God administers are administered by order.' To him I said: 'The things which are administered and done — do they seem to you to be moved, or do you think them immovable?' — 'Those things,' he said, 'which come to be in this world, I admit are moved.' — 'The rest,' I said, 'do you deny it?' — 'Those which are with God,' he said, 'are not moved; all the rest I judge to be moved.'
'Since therefore,' I said, 'you think that those things which are with God are not moved, but you grant that the rest are moved, you show that all things which are moved are not with God.' — 'Repeat this very point,' he said, 'a little more plainly.' — And this, it seemed to me, he wished not from any difficulty of understanding, but to gain a space for inquiry in which he might find what to answer. — 'You said,' I said, 'that those things which are with God are not moved, but that the rest are moved. If therefore these things which are moved would not be moved if they were with God — since you deny that all things which are with God are moved — it remains that the things which are moved are apart from God.' — When these things had been said, he still kept silent, until at last: 'It seems to me,' he said, 'that in this world too, if any things are not moved, they are with God.' — 'This is nothing to my point,' I said;
'for you confess, as I suppose, that not all things which are in this world are unmoved. Whence it is concluded that not all things of this world are with God.' — 'I confess,' he said, 'that not all are.' — 'Therefore is there anything without God?' — 'No,' he said. — 'Then all things are with God.' — Here, hesitating, he said: 'I beg that I may not have said that without God there is nothing; for it does not seem to me at all that things which are moved are with God.' — 'Then,' I said, 'this heaven, which no one doubts is moved, is without God.' — 'Heaven is not without God,' he said. — 'Then there is something with God which is moved?' — 'I cannot,' he said, 'as I wish, explain what I feel; yet what I am striving to say I beg that, without waiting for my words, you may most shrewdly understand, if you can.'
'For both nothing seems to me to be without God, and that which is with God seems in turn to remain unshaken; yet I cannot say that heaven is without God — not only because I judge that nothing is without God, but because I think that heaven has something which is not moved, something which is either God or is with God, although I do not doubt that heaven itself is turned and moved.' — 'Define then,' I said, 'if you please, what it is to be with God and what it is not to be without God. For if the controversy between us is about words, it will easily be despised, provided we see the very thing which you have conceived in your mind.' — 'I hate,' he said, 'to define.' — 'What then shall we do?' I said. — 'You,' he said, 'define, I beg.'
'For it is easier for me to see in another's definition what I do not approve, than to explain anything by defining it well.' — 'I will humor you,' I said. 'Does it seem to you that that is with God which is ruled and administered by him?' — 'That is not,' said he, 'what I had conceived in my mind when I said that things which are not moved are with God.' — 'See then,' I said, 'whether at least this definition pleases you: that is with God which understands God.' — 'I grant it,' he said. — 'What then?' I said; 'does the wise man not seem to you to understand God?' — 'He does seem to,' he said. — 'Since therefore wise men are moved not only within one house or city, but even by traveling and voyaging through immense stretches of regions, how will it be true that whatever is with God is not moved?'
'You have moved me to laughter,' he said, 'as though I had said that what the wise man does is with God. What is with God is that which he knows.' — 'Does not the wise man know,' I said, 'his book, his cloak, his tunic, his furniture, if he has any, and the rest of that kind, which even fools know well?' — 'I confess,' he said, 'that to know a tunic and to know a cloak is not to be with God.' — 'This then,' I said, 'is what you say: that not everything which the wise man knows is with God, but that nevertheless whatever of the wise man's is with God, that the wise man knows.' — 'Excellently,' he said; 'for whatever he knows by that bodily sense is not with God, but that which he perceives by the mind. Perhaps I even dare to say something more, but I will say it nonetheless; for with you as judges I shall either confirm it or learn.'
'Whoever knows those things alone which the sense of the body attains, seems to me to be not only not with God, but not even with himself.' — Here, when I had noticed Trygetius with such an expression on his face that he seemed to wish to say something in reply, but to be held back by modesty lest he should burst in as it were into another's place, I gave him leave, Licentius now falling silent, to bring forth what he wished. And he said: 'Those things which pertain to the senses of the body, no one at all seems to me to know. For it is one thing to sense, another to know. Wherefore, if we know anything, I think it is contained by the intellect alone and can be comprehended by that alone. Whence it comes about that, if that is with God which the wise man knows by understanding, the whole of what the wise man knows can be with God.'
When Licentius had approved this, he added another point which I could in no way despise. For he said: 'The wise man himself is entirely with God; for the wise man understands even himself. And this is concluded both from what I received from you — that that is with God which understands God — and from what has been said by us — that that is with God which is understood by the wise man. But that part of him through which he uses these senses — for I do not think it is to be reckoned in when we call him wise — I confess that I do not know, nor can I even conjecture at all of what kind it is.' — 'Do you deny then,' I said, 'that the wise man consists not only of body and soul, but even of the whole soul, if indeed to deny that this part, by which he uses the senses, belongs to the soul is the mark of a madman?'
'For it is not the eyes themselves or the ears, but I know not what other thing that senses through the eyes. Now if we do not grant this act of sensing to the intellect, we do not grant it to any part of the soul. It remains that it be attributed to the body — than which nothing meanwhile seems to me more absurd to be said.' — 'The soul of the wise man,' he said, 'thoroughly purged by the virtues and now cleaving to God, is worthy even of the name of the wise man, and nothing else of his does one delight to call "the wise man"; but nevertheless, certain, so to speak, filth and cast-off skins, as it were, from which he has cleansed himself and, as it were, withdrawn into himself, serve that soul — or, if this whole is to be called soul, they at least serve and are subject to that part of the soul which alone it is fitting to name wise.'
'In which subject part I think that memory itself also dwells. The wise man therefore uses this as a servant, so as to command it these things and, once it is now tamed and subdued, to impose upon it the bounds of law: so that, while he uses these senses for the sake of those things which now are necessary not to the wise man but to himself, he may not dare to exalt himself nor to be proud toward his master, nor to use even these things which belong to him at random and immoderately. For to that most worthless part can pertain those things which pass away. And to whom is memory necessary but to things passing away and, as it were, fleeing? That wise man therefore embraces God and enjoys him to the full — him who ever remains, and is not awaited that he may be, nor feared lest he fail, but by that very fact by which he truly is, is ever present.'
'But immovable, and remaining in himself, he takes care of his servant's peculium, as it were, so that he may use it well, as a thrifty and diligent household servant would, and guard it sparingly.' As I considered this opinion of his with admiration, I recalled that I myself had once said this very thing briefly in his hearing. Then, smiling, I said: 'Give thanks, Licentius, to this servant of yours, who, unless he had ministered to you something from his own peculium, you would now perhaps not have had wherewith to bring forth what you did. For if memory pertains to that part which yields itself as a maidservant to be ruled by the good mind, believe me, you have now been aided by it in order to say this.'
'Therefore, before I return to that matter of order — does it not seem to you that, precisely because of such things, that is, because of honorable and necessary disciplines, memory is needful to the wise man?' — 'Why,' he said, 'is memory needful, since he has and holds all his things present? For not even in sense itself do we call upon memory as a help for that which is before our eyes. To the wise man therefore, who has before those inner eyes of the intellect all things — that is, who gazes fixedly and immovably upon God himself, with whom are all things which the intellect sees and possesses — what need, I ask, is there of memory?'
'But that memory should be needful to me, for retaining these things which I had heard from you — I am not yet the master of that servant, but sometimes I serve him, sometimes I fight that I may not serve, and I dare, as it were, to claim myself into my own liberty; and if perchance at some time I command and he obeys me and often makes me think that I have conquered, in other matters again he so raises himself up that I lie wretched beneath his feet. Wherefore, when we inquire about the wise man, I do not wish you to name me.' — 'Nor me,' I said; 'but nevertheless, can that wise man of yours desert his own people, or in any way, while he governs this body in which he holds that servant bound by his law, abandon the duty of bestowing benefits upon those he can — and above all that which is most vehemently demanded of him, of teaching wisdom itself?'
'When he does this, in order to teach fittingly and be less inept, he often prepares something beforehand which, from his arrangement, he may utter and discuss — which, unless he has committed it to memory, must necessarily perish. Therefore either you will deny that the duties of benevolence belong to the wise man, or you will confess that certain things of the wise man are guarded by memory. Or perhaps he commits some of his affairs to be kept by that servant — not indeed for his own sake, but for the sake of his people, yet necessary to himself — so that the servant, as one sober and of his master's best training, may guard, not indeed what is his to guard except for the sake of leading fools to wisdom, but what nevertheless that master has commanded him to guard?'
'And I judge,' he said, 'that nothing at all is committed to this servant by the wise man, if indeed the wise man is ever fixed upon God, whether silent or speaking with men; but that servant, now well instructed, diligently guards what it may from time to time suggest to its master as he discusses, and, as to a most just one, may render its duty a welcome service — under whose power it sees itself to live — and does this not as it were by reasoning, but as that highest law and highest order prescribes.' — 'I now offer no resistance,' I said, 'to your reasonings, that what we have undertaken may rather be carried through. But about that matter — how it stands — we shall see at another time (for it is no small matter, nor contained in so small a discourse), when God himself shall have given opportunity by his order.'
'Now it has been defined what it is to be with God; and when it was said by me that that is with God which understands God, you also added something more — that there also are those things which are understood by the wise man. In which matter this much moves me: how you have suddenly placed folly together with God. For if whatever the wise man understands is with God, and folly cannot be escaped unless it is understood, then there will also be — a thing wicked to say — that pestilence together with God.' — Disturbed by this conclusion, when they had kept themselves for some while in silence, Trygetius said: 'Let him too answer, upon whose most opportune arrival for this disputation we did not, I think, congratulate ourselves rashly.' — Then Alypius: 'God grant better things!' he said;
'was so great a silence of mine at last being prepared for this? But my repose is now broken in upon. Yet now I will strive somehow to satisfy this question, once I have first looked ahead to what is to come and have obtained from you that you demand nothing further of me by way of this response.' — 'By no means,' I said, 'Alypius, does it befit your benevolence and humanity to deny to our discourse your voice, which has moreover been longed for. But only go on; accomplish what you have begun; the rest, as that order now stands, will come forth.' — 'Equally,' he said, 'I have to hope for better things concerning order, in whose defense you wished meanwhile to put me in your place.'
'But, if I am not mistaken, you thought that folly was, by that conclusion of yours, coupled with God by these men, because they said that all the things which the wise man understands are with God. But to what extent this is to be accepted, I now leave aside; attend a little to that reasoning of yours. For you said: "For if whatever the wise man understands is with God, and folly cannot be escaped unless it is understood" — as though indeed it were obscure that, before anyone shuns folly, he is not to be reckoned by the name of a wise man — and it was said that things understood by the wise man are with God. Since therefore, for the sake of avoiding folly, each one understands that same folly, he is not yet wise. But when he shall have become so, folly is not to be numbered among those things which he understands.'
'Wherefore, since those things which the wise man now understands are joined to God, folly will rightly be severed from God.' — 'Acutely indeed,' I said, 'as is your wont, Alypius, have you answered; but as though thrust into another man's straits. Yet since, as I think, you still deign to be a fool along with me, what shall we do if we happen upon some wise man who would gladly free us from so great an evil by teaching and disputing? For nothing, as I judge, shall I sooner entreat of him than that he show me what folly is, what kind of thing, of what character it is altogether. For about you I would not easily affirm it; yet it detains me so long, in so far as it is not understood by me. He will therefore say, on your authority:
"That I might teach you this, you ought to have come to me when I was a fool; but now you can be your own teachers, for I no longer understand folly." And if indeed I heard this from him, I would not be afraid to admonish the man to become our companion, and at the same time to seek another teacher. For although I do not fully understand folly, I nevertheless see that nothing is more foolish than this answer. But perhaps he will be ashamed either thus to leave us or to follow us. He will therefore dispute and will most copiously heap up the evils of folly. But we, providing well for ourselves, will either listen attentively to a man who does not know what he is saying, or believe that he knows that which he does not understand — or else folly is still, by the reasoning of those you have taken up, coupled to God.
'But there is nothing of the foregoing which I see can be defended: it remains therefore that the last option, which you do not wish, stands.' — 'I had never,' he said, 'perceived you to be envious. For if from these men whom, as you say, I have taken up, I had received any fee, as is customary, then, while you are too tenacious of this reasoning, I would just now be compelled to render it back to them. Wherefore let them be content either with this, that, while I labor with you, I have given them no little time to think it over; or, if these vanquished clients, by no fault of their own, gladly hearken to counsel, let them in this too yield to you now, and be more cautious in the rest.' — 'I will not despise,' I said, 'what Trygetius, making I know not what noise, was also desiring to say in your defense; and I will do it with your good leave;
'for perhaps you are not well instructed, since you have come recently and unexpectedly upon this business, so that, with patronage set aside, I may patiently hear them pleading their own cause, as I had begun.' — Then Trygetius, Licentius being now entirely absent, said: 'Take it however you please, and laugh at my folly. It does not seem to me that that ought to be called an understanding, by which folly itself is understood — folly which is either the sole or the greatest cause of not understanding.' — 'Not easily,' I said, 'do I refuse to accept that.
'For although I am much moved by what Alypius feels — how anyone can rightly teach of what sort a thing is which he does not understand, and how great a ruin it brings to the mind that it does not see with the mind (for it was surely attending to that which you said that he was afraid to speak, since that opinion is known to him even from the books of the learned) — yet, considering the bodily sense itself (for the soul uses even this, and it alone is, in a manner of speaking, a comparison with the intellect), I am led to say that no one can see darkness. Wherefore, if to understand is to the mind what to see is to the sense, and although anyone may have his eyes open, sound, and clear, yet cannot see darkness, it is not absurdly said that folly cannot be understood;
'for we name no other darkness of the mind. Nor will that now trouble us, how folly can be avoided while not understood. For as we avoid darkness with the eyes by the very fact that we are unwilling not to see, so whoever wishes to avoid folly, let him not try to understand it, but let him grieve, over those things which can be understood, that through this folly he does not understand them, and let him perceive that it is present to him — not in that he understands it the more, but in that he understands other things the less. But let us return to order, that Licentius may at length be restored to us. For this I now require of you: whether whatever a fool does seems to you to be done by order. For see what snares the question holds. If you say "by order," where will that definition be:
"order is that by which God does all things which are" — if even a fool does by order what he does? But if there is no order in these things which are done by the fool, there will be something which order does not hold; yet you wish neither. See, I beg, lest by the very defense of order you throw all things into confusion.' — Here again Trygetius — for that other was still entirely absent — said: 'It is easy, indeed, to answer this complex of yours; but for the present a simile fails me, by which I see that my opinion ought to be asserted and illustrated. Yet I will say what I feel; for you will do what you did a little while ago. For that reminder about darkness brought us no little light upon that which had been wrapped up by me.'
'For the whole life of fools, although through those fools themselves it is least consistent and least ordered, is nevertheless, through divine providence, necessarily included in the order of things, and, by places, as it were, disposed by that ineffable and everlasting law, is in no way allowed to be where it ought not to be. Thus it comes about that each one, considering it alone with a narrow mind, as though struck back by its great foulness, turns away from it. But if, raising and diffusing the eyes of the mind, he should at the same time survey all things universally, he will find nothing not ordered and always distinguished and disposed, as it were, in its own seats.' — 'How great,' I said, 'how wonderful an order of things — some hidden order, I know not what — does that God, and God himself (as I am led more and more to believe), answer me through you!
'For you say things which I neither see how they are said, nor understand how you see them; so I suspect that they are both true and profound. But some one thing similar for that opinion you were perhaps seeking. Yet to me now there occur innumerable things which draw me utterly toward consent. For what is more hideous than an executioner? What is more truculent and more grim than that mind of his? Yet among the very laws he holds a necessary place, and is inserted into the order of a well-regulated city, and is harmful in his own mind, but by another's order the punishment of the harmful. What can be said to be more sordid, more empty, fuller of disgrace and baseness, than prostitutes, pimps, and the rest of the plagues of this kind? Take away prostitutes from human affairs, and you will have thrown everything into confusion by lusts;
'set them in the place of matrons, and you will have defiled all with stain and disgrace. Thus therefore this kind of men is, through their own morals, most impure in life, but through the laws of order, most vile in condition. Are there not, in the bodies of living creatures, certain members which, if you attend to them alone, you could not attend to? Yet the order of nature willed neither that they be lacking, because they are necessary, nor permitted them to be prominent, because they are unseemly. These deformed things, nevertheless, by holding their own places, have yielded the better place to the better. What was sweeter to us, what more fitting as a spectacle for field and farmhouse, than that fight and clash of dunghill cocks, which we mentioned in the previous book? What, nevertheless, did we see more abject than the deformity of the one subdued?
'And yet through that very thing a more perfect beauty of that same contest had come forth. Such, I believe, are all things, but they require eyes. The solecisms and barbarisms, as they are called, poets have fallen in love with; and these, by changing their names, they prefer to call figures (schemata) and metaplasms rather than to flee them as manifest faults. Yet take these away from songs, and we shall miss the sweetest seasonings. Heap many of them into one place, and I shall loathe the whole as harsh, rank, and rancid. Transfer them into free and forensic speech, and who will not bid it flee and hide itself in the theaters? Order, therefore, governing and moderating these things, will suffer them to be neither too many with itself nor foreign anywhere at all.
'Speech, interposing certain lowly and, as it were, most unpolished passages, illuminates the very leaps and its own charming places. And if such speech should exist alone, you cast it aside as worthless; but if it be lacking, those beautiful things do not stand out, do not hold sway in their own regions and possessions, as it were, and stand in the way of their own proper light and confound the whole. Great thanks are due here too to order. Deceptive conclusions, creeping in little by little, either by diminishing or by adding, into assent to falsehood — who would not fear them, who would not hate them? Yet often in disputations, placed in fixed and fitting seats, they avail so much that, I know not how, through them the deception itself grows sweet. Will not this order too, here also, be praised?
'Now in music, in geometry, in the motions of the stars, in the necessities of numbers, order so holds sway that, if anyone should desire to see, as it were, its fountain and its very inmost sanctuary, he either finds it in these things, or is led through these things to it without any error.
'For such erudition, if anyone should use it with moderation — for nothing there is to be dreaded except excess — nourishes such a soldier of philosophy, or even a leader, that toward that highest measure, beyond which he can neither, ought not, nor desires to seek anything further, he may fly whither he wills and arrive, and may lead many thither; whence now, while he is held by human affairs themselves, he so despises them and so discerns all things, that in no way is he moved as to why one man should wish to have children and not have them, another be tormented by his wife's excessive fecundity; that this one should lack money, who
'is ready to bestow many things liberally, while over his buried hoard a lean and scurvy usurer broods; that luxury should scatter and squander ample patrimonies, while a beggar scarcely, weeping all day long, obtains a coin; that honor should exalt an unworthy man, while bright characters are hidden in the crowd. These and other things in the life of men compel men for the most part impiously to believe that we are governed by no order of divine providence; while others, pious and good and endowed with splendid genius, who can neither bring themselves to think that we are deserted by the most high God, and yet, disturbed as it were by so great a fog and confusion of things, see no order, and, wishing the most hidden causes to be laid bare to them, often bewail their errors even in verse.
If they were to ask only this — why the Italians always pray for mild winters, while our wretched Gaetulia is likewise always athirst — who would readily answer them? Or where among us would even a suspicion of that order be traced out? But for my part, if I can offer my friends any counsel, then, so far as it appears to me and so far as I perceive, I judge that they ought to be schooled in every discipline. For otherwise these matters can in no way be so understood as to become clearer than daylight. If, however, they are either too lazy, or preoccupied with other affairs, or already too hardened for learning, let them furnish themselves with the safeguards of faith, that by this bond He may draw them to Himself and free them from these dreadful and most tangled evils — He who suffers none who rightly believe in Him through the mysteries to perish.
For twofold is the way we follow when the obscurity of things stirs us: either reason or at all events authority. Philosophy promises reason, and sets free scarcely the very fewest.
Yet philosophy compels these few not merely not to despise those mysteries, but to understand them alone as they ought to be understood; and it has no other business — this true and, so to speak, genuine philosophy — than to teach what is the beginning of all things, a beginning without beginning, and how great an understanding abides in it, and what has flowed thence, without any degeneration, unto our salvation. This one omnipotent God, together with whom the thrice-powerful Father and Son and Holy Spirit are the venerable mysteries, which by a sincere and unshaken faith set the peoples free — philosophy proclaims neither confusedly, as certain men do, nor contumeliously, as many do.
But how great a thing this is — that so great a God deigned, for our sake, even to assume and to bear a body of this our race — the more lowly it seems, the more full it is of clemency, and the more remotely and loftily removed from a certain pride of the clever. As for the soul, whence it draws its origin, and what it does here, and how far it acts from God, and what it has that is its own, which alternates into either nature, and to what extent it dies and how it is proved immortal — of how great an order do you think it is, that these things be learned? Of a great order indeed and a sure one, concerning which we shall speak briefly hereafter, if there be time.
Now I would have you receive this from me: if anyone dares to rush rashly and without the order of the disciplines into the knowledge of these things, he becomes, instead of studious, merely curious; instead of learned, credulous; instead of cautious, incredulous. And so, as to the fact that you just now answer me so well and aptly when I question you, I both marvel whence it comes and am compelled to inquire. Let us see, nonetheless, how far your hidden application can advance. Let words now be returned to us by Licentius too, who for so long, occupied by I know not what care, has been a stranger to this conversation — so that I believe he will read these things no differently than our intimates who are not present. But return to us, I beg, Licentius, and see that you are here whole and entire; for it is to you that I speak.
For you approved my definition, by which it was stated what it is to be with God — with whom the mind of the wise man abides immovable, so far as I am able to attain it. You wished me to teach this. But this troubles me: how, since this wise man, so long as he lives among men, is not denied to be in a body, it comes about that, while his body wanders hither and thither, his mind abides immovable. For in that manner you might say, when a ship is moved, that the men who are in it are not moved, although we confess that it is possessed and steered by them. And indeed, if they governed it by thought alone and made it go where they willed, nevertheless, when it is moved, those who are set within it cannot but be moved.
«No,» said Licentius, «the soul is in the body in such a way that the body commands the soul.» — «Neither do I say this,» I said; «but a horseman too is not in a horse in such a way that the horse commands him, and yet, although he drives the horse wherever he wills, when the horse is moved it is necessary that he be moved.» — «He can,» he said, «sit still himself, unmoved.» — «You compel us,» I said, «to define what it is to be moved; and if you can, I would have you do it.» — «By all means,» he said, «let your kindness remain, I beg; for my request remains — and, lest you keep on asking whether it pleases me to make the definition, when I shall be able to do it, I myself will declare it.» — When these things had been said, the boy from the house, to whom we had given that task, ran to us and announced that it was the hour of the midday meal. Then I:
«What it is to be moved,» I said, «this boy compels us not to define, but to show with our very eyes. Let us go, then, and pass over from this place into another place; for to be moved, unless I am mistaken, is nothing else than this.» — When at this they had smiled, we departed. And when we had refreshed our bodies, since clouds had overspread the sky, we sat down in our accustomed place in the bath. And I: «Do you grant, then, Licentius, that motion is nothing else than a passage from place to place?» — «I grant it,» he said. — «Do you grant, then,» I said, «that no one is in a place in which he had not been, and yet was not moved?» — «I do not understand,» he said. — «If a thing,» I said, «was in another place a while ago and now is in another, do you grant that it has been moved?» — He assented.
«Therefore,» I said, «could some wise man's living body be here with us just now, while his mind were absent hence?» — «It could,» he said. — «Even,» I said, «if it were conversing with us and teaching us something?» — «Even,» he said, «if it were teaching us wisdom itself, I would not say that he was with us, but with himself.» — «Not in the body, then?» I said. — «Not,» he said. — To whom I: «That body which lacks a mind — do you not confess it dead, whereas I proposed it as living?» — «I do not know,» he said, «how to unravel it. For I both see that a man's body cannot be living if a mind be not in it, and I cannot say that, wherever the wise man's body may be, his mind is not with God.» — «I,» I said, «will bring it about that you unravel this.»
For perhaps, because God is everywhere, wherever the wise man goes he finds God, with whom he may be. Thus it comes about that we can both not deny that he passes from place to place — which is to be moved — and yet that he is always with God. — «I confess,» he said, «that that body makes a passage from place to place, but I deny it of the mind itself, upon which the name of wise man has been imposed.» — «For now I yield to you,» I said, «lest a matter most obscure and requiring longer and more careful treatment hinder for the present our proposed aim. But let us look at this: since it has been defined by us what it is to be with God, whether we can also know what it is to be without God — although I think it is already manifest. For I believe it seems to you that those who are not with God are without God.»
«If words could supply me,» he said, «I would say something that perhaps would not displease you. But I beg you to bear with my inarticulateness, and, as befits you, to snatch beforehand with swift mind the matters themselves. For these men seem to me neither to be with God, and yet to be held by God; and so I cannot say that those whom God holds are without God. Likewise I do not say they are with God, because they themselves do not have God — since indeed to have God, as was agreed among us long ago in that most delightful conversation which we held on your birthday, pleased us to be nothing else than to enjoy God. But I confess that I dread these contraries: how anyone is neither without God nor with God.» — «Let not these things move you,» I said. «For where the matter agrees, who would not scorn words?»
«Therefore let us at last return to that definition of order. For you said that order is that by which God does all things. But nothing, as I see, does God not do; for from this it seemed to you that nothing could be found apart from order.» — «My opinion stands,» he said; «but now I see what you are about to say: whether God does those things which we confess are not well done.» — «Excellent,» I said; «you have cast your eye squarely into my mind. But as you have seen what I was about to say, so I ask you to see what must be answered.» — And he, nodding with his head and shoulders: «We are thrown into confusion,» he said. — And his mother had by chance come upon this question. And he, after some silence, asks that this very thing be put to him again as a question by me;
to which passage he had not at all attended when it had earlier been answered by Trygetius. Then I: «Why,» I said, «or to what end should I repeat it for you? What is done, they say, is not to be done again. Wherefore I rather advise that you take care either to read, if you were unable to hear, the things that were said above. And indeed I have not taken your mind's absence from our conversation amiss, and I have long borne it so, that I neither hindered those things which, intent and withdrawn from us, you were doing on your own behalf, nor pursued those things which that pen of yours would not let you lose. Now I inquire into that which we have not yet attempted to discuss by careful reasoning.»
For as soon as I know not what order gave birth for us to that question about order, I remember you said that this was the justice of God, by which He separates between the good and the evil and renders to each his own. For this is, so far as I perceive, a rather manifest definition of justice; and so I would have you answer whether it seems to you that at some time God was not just. — «Never,» he said. — «If then always,» I said, «God is just, always good and evil have existed.» — «Assuredly,» said the mother, «I see nothing else that follows. For there was no judgment of God when there was no evil; nor, if He did not at some time render to good and evil each his own, can He be seen to have been just.» — To whom Licentius: «Do you then judge that we must say that evil has always existed?»
«I do not dare,» she said, «to say this.» — «What then shall we say?» I said. «If God is just because He judges between the good and the evil, then, when there was no evil, He was not just.» — Here, while they were silent, I noticed that Trygetius wished to answer, and I gave leave. But he: «Assuredly,» he said, «God was just. For He was able to separate good and evil, if it had existed; and by that very power by which He was able, He was just.»
For when we say that Cicero prudently investigated the conspiracy of Catiline, that he showed self-restraint, that he was corrupted by no bribe whereby he might spare the wicked, that he justly by the authority of the Senate put those men to death with the supreme penalty, that he bravely endured all the weapons of his enemies and the massive weight, as he himself said, of ill-will — these virtues would not have been in him, had not Catiline contrived so great a ruin for the commonwealth. For virtue is to be considered in itself, not through any work of this kind, both in a man and — how much the more — in God, if nevertheless we are permitted, in the straits of things and of words, to arrange these matters for those men in whatever way we can.
For that we may understand that God was always just: when evil arose, which He might sunder from the good, He delayed in nothing to render to each his own; for justice was not then to be learned by Him, but then to be used — that justice which He always had. When both Licentius and the mother had approved this under the pressure of the intent necessity, I said: «What do you say, Licentius? Where is that which you so greatly asserted — that nothing happens apart from order? For the fact that it came about that evil was born was assuredly not brought about by the order of God; but once it had been born, it was enclosed within the order of God.» — And he, wondering and taking it ill that so good a cause had so suddenly slipped from his hands, said: «Assuredly I say that order began from that point at which evil began to be.»
«Therefore,» I said, «that evil itself should exist was not brought about by order, if, after evil arose, order began to be. [Order always existed with God, and either there was always nothing which is called evil, or, if it is found to have begun at some time, then — since order itself is either good or from the good — never was anything without order, nor will anything ever be. Although yet I know not what rather occurs to me, but it has slipped away through that habit of forgetfulness; which I believe came about by order, according to merit or grade or the order of life.]» — «Somehow,» he said, «that opinion which I now scorn has escaped me;
for I ought not to have said that order began after evil was born, but rather — as with that justice, of which Trygetius discoursed — that order too existed with God, but did not come into use except after evils began to be.» — «You slip back,» I said, «into the same thing; for that which you least wish stands unshaken. For whether order existed with God, or began to be from that time from which evil also did, nevertheless that evil was born apart from order. And if you grant this, you confess that something can happen apart from order — which weakens and lops off your cause; but if you do not grant it, evil begins to seem born by the order of God, and you will confess God to be the author of evils — a sacrilege than which nothing more detestable occurs to me.»
When I had turned this over rather often and revolved it — whether to one who did not understand or to one who was dissembling that he had understood — he had nothing else to say, and gave himself over to silence. Then the mother: «I,» she said, «do not think that nothing could happen apart from the order of God, because that evil itself which was born was in no way born by the order of God; but that justice did not suffer it to be disordered, and reduced and compelled it into the order merited by itself.» Here I, when I saw that all were seeking God most studiously and each according to his own powers, but were not holding to that very order about which we were treating, by which one arrives at the understanding of that ineffable majesty, said: «I beg you — if, as I see, you greatly love order — do not suffer us to be preposterous and disordered.
For although a most hidden reason promises that it will demonstrate that nothing happens apart from the divine order, nevertheless, if we were to hear some schoolmaster attempting to teach a boy syllables whom no one had first taught his letters, we would think him — I do not say to be laughed at as a fool, but to be bound as a madman — for no other cause, I suppose, than that he did not keep to the order of teaching.
But that both the unskilled do many such things which are reproved and derided by the learned, and that demented men do things which do not even escape the judgment of fools — of this no one doubts; and yet even all these things which we confess to be perverse are not apart from the divine order — this a certain lofty discipline, most remote even from the suspicion of the multitude, promises that it will make manifest to minds thus studious and loving only God and souls, so much so that nothing can be more certain to us than the sums of numbers.
But this very discipline is the law of God, which, fixed with Him and abiding ever unshaken, is as it were transcribed into wise souls, so that they know themselves to live the better and the more sublimely, the more perfectly they contemplate it by understanding and the more diligently they keep it by living. This discipline, then, for those who desire to know it, bids them follow at once a twofold order, one part of which is of life, the other of erudition.
Young men, therefore, who are studious of it must so live that they abstain from venereal matters, from the enticements of the belly and the gullet, from immoderate care and adornment of the body, from the vain pursuits of games and from the torpor of sleep and sloth, from rivalry, disparagement, and envy, from the ambitions of honors and powers, and even from an immoderate desire of praise itself; and let them believe that the love of money is the most certain poison of all their hope. Let them do nothing weakly, nothing rashly. In the sins of their own people, let them either drive off anger altogether, or so bridle it that it be like anger driven off. Let them hate no one; let them wish to leave no vices uncared for. Let them greatly take heed, when they punish, that it be not too much; when they pardon, that it be not too little.
Let them punish nothing which does not avail unto the better; let them indulge nothing which turns unto the worse. Let them regard as their own all over whom power has been given to them. Let them so serve as to be ashamed to lord it over them; let them so lord it as to delight to serve them. But in the sins of others let them not be troublesome against the other's will. Let them shun enmities most cautiously, bear them most equably, end them most swiftly. And in every dealing and intercourse with men it is enough to observe this one common proverb: let them do to no one what they are unwilling to suffer. Let them not wish to administer the commonwealth unless perfect, but let them hasten to be perfected either within the senatorial age or at least within youth. But whosoever turns himself to these things late, let him not think that nothing has been enjoined upon him;
for these things he will assuredly keep more easily when his age is well seasoned. But in all his life, place, and time, let them either have friends or press on to have them. Let them comply with the worthy even when these do not expect it, care less for the proud, and be least so themselves. Let them live fitly and harmoniously, and worship, ponder, and seek God, upheld by faith, hope, and charity. Let them wish for tranquility and a sure course of their own study and of all their companions', and let them wish for each and every one, so far as they can, a good mind and a peaceful life. It follows that I should say how the studious ought to be schooled, who, as has been said, have resolved to live thus. To learning, likewise, we are necessarily led in a twofold manner, by authority and by reason. In time authority is prior, but in the thing itself reason is prior.
For one thing is what is put first in acting, another what is esteemed of more worth in seeking. And so, although the authority of good men may seem more salutary to the unskilled multitude, while reason is more fitting to the erudite, nevertheless, because no man becomes skilled except from being unskilled, and no unskilled man knows how he ought to present himself to teachers, or by what kind of life he may become teachable, it comes about that to all who desire to learn great and hidden goods, nothing but authority opens the door.
Having entered by this door, whoever without any doubting follows the precepts of the best life — through which, when he has been made teachable, he then at last will learn both by how great a reason those very things are endowed which he followed before reason, and what reason itself is, which after the cradle of authority he now, firm and fit, follows and comprehends, and what understanding is, in which all things are — or rather which is itself all things — and what, beyond all things, is the principle of all things. To which knowledge in this life few can attain, but beyond which no one, even after this life, can advance.
But those who, content with authority alone, have steadfastly devoted their effort to good morals and right desires only, either despising or being unable to be schooled in the liberal and best disciplines — these, while they live among men, I know not in what way I should call blessed; yet I unshakenly believe that, as soon as they leave this body, they are set free the more easily or the more difficultly according as they lived better or less well. But authority is partly divine, partly human; yet the true, firm, and highest is that which is called divine.
In which one must beware the wondrous deceit of the airy creatures, which, through certain divinations concerning things that pertain to these bodily senses and through some pronouncements, have become most easily accustomed to deceive souls — souls either curious about perishing fortunes, or covetous of fragile powers, or fearful of empty marvels. That, therefore, is to be called divine authority which not only transcends every human faculty in sensible signs, but also, driving the man himself, shows him how far it has abased itself for his sake, and bids him not be held by the senses, to which those marvels appear, but to fly up to the understanding — at the same time demonstrating both how great things it can do here, and why it does these, and how little it reckons them.
For it behooves it to teach both its power by deeds, and its clemency by humility, and its nature by precept — all of which are handed down more secretly and more firmly in the sacred rites into which we are initiated, in which the life of the good is most easily purged, not by the windings of disputations, but by the authority of the mysteries. But human authority for the most part deceives; yet among such men it is rightly seen to excel who, so far as the sense of the unskilled can grasp, give many indications of their doctrines and do not live otherwise than they teach that one must live. And if to these there be added also certain gifts of fortune — from the use of which they appear great, and from their contempt of which greater still — it is altogether most difficult that anyone believing those who give precepts of living should rightly be reproached. Here Alypius:
«A very great image of life,» he said, «has been set up by you before our eyes, both fully and yet briefly; and although we hang upon your daily precepts concerning it, nevertheless you have today made us more desirous and more ardent. To which, if it could be done, I would that not only we but all men might now attain and cleave to it — if only, as these things are marvelous in the hearing, they were likewise easy in the imitating. For somehow — which would that it were far from us! — while the human mind, in hearing these heavenly things, proclaims them to be divine and utterly true, in desiring it bears itself otherwise; so that it seems to me most true that men either must be divine, or not without divine help live so.» — To whom I:
«These precepts of living, which, as always, please you most greatly, Alypius, although here they have been expressed in my words as the occasion demanded, you know very well were not, for all that, invented by me. For with these the books of great and almost divine men are most full — which I thought I had to say, not on your account, but on account of these young men, lest in these matters they rightly despise, as it were, my authority. For I by no means wish them to believe those men unless he teaches and renders a reason — and it is on their account, in order that they be roused in proportion to the greatness of the subject, that I judge you too introduced this discourse.»
For these things are not difficult for you to follow, which you seized with such great avidity and entered upon with such great impetus into that admirable nature, so that I have been made your master in words, you mine in things. For there is now no cause for lying, or at least no occasion; for I do not think that you become more studious by false praise of yourself, and these are present who know both, and this discourse will be sent to one to whom none of us is unknown. But good men and those devoted to the best morals — if you do not think otherwise than you have said — I judge you to believe to be fewer than is probable to me; but many lie utterly hidden, and likewise, of many who are not hidden, those very things which are marvelous lie hidden;
for these things are in the mind, which can neither be received by sense, and which for the most part, while it wishes to conform to the conversations of vicious men, says those things which it may seem either to approve or to desire. It also does many things not willingly, either for the sake of avoiding men's hatred or of fleeing folly — of which we, hearing or seeing them, hardly judge otherwise than that sense reports; and thereby it comes about that we believe many not to be such as both they themselves and their own intimates have known them to be. Of which I would have you persuade yourself from certain great goods of soul in some of our friends, which we alone know.
For this error rests not least upon this cause too, that not a few suddenly and wondrously convert themselves to the good life, and, until they become known by some more notable deeds, are believed to be such as they were. For, not to go too far afield — who, of those who had known these young men before, would easily believe that they so studiously seek great things, that at this age they have suddenly declared such great enmities against pleasures? Therefore let us drive this opinion from our mind; for that divine aid too, which, as was fitting, you religiously placed at the end of your discourse, exercises the office of its clemency more widely than some suppose, throughout all peoples.
But let us return, if you please, to the order of our disputation; and, since enough has been said about authority, let us see what reason means for itself. Reason is that motion of the mind which is capable of distinguishing and connecting the things that are learned; and under its guidance, to use it for understanding God, or the soul itself, whether it be in us or everywhere — of this the rarest kind of men is capable, for no other cause than that, once one has advanced into the affairs of these senses, it is difficult for each to return into himself. And so, although men strive in things themselves — deceptive things — to do everything by reason, yet what reason itself is and of what kind, all but very few are utterly ignorant. It seems marvelous, and yet so the matter stands. It is enough to have said this for the present;
for if I should now desire to show you so great a matter as it ought to be understood, I would be as inept as arrogant, were I even to profess that I had already grasped it. Nevertheless, so far as it has deigned to proceed into things that seem known to us, let us track it down, if we can, meanwhile, as the discourse we have undertaken requires. And first let us see where this word which is called «reason» is wont to be in frequent use; for that ought most of all to move us, that man himself was defined by the ancient sages thus: man is a rational, mortal animal. Here, the genus being posited, which was called «animal,» we see two differences added, by which, I believe, man had to be admonished both whither he must return to himself and whence he must flee.
For as the soul's advance has slipped down even to mortal things, so its regress ought to be into reason; by one word it is separated from the beasts, in that it is «rational,» by another from things divine, in that it is called «mortal.» Unless, therefore, it holds fast to the former, it will be a beast; unless it turns itself away from the latter, it will not be divine. But since most learned men are wont to distinguish acutely and subtly what lies between «rational» and «rationabile» (reasonable), it must by no means be neglected for that which we have undertaken. For they said that «rational» is that which uses reason or can use it, but «rationabile» (reasonable) is that which has been made or said by reason. And so we can call these baths «reasonable,» and our discourse too; but «rational» either him who made them, or us who speak.
Reason, therefore, proceeds from the rational soul — namely, into those things which are either made or said reasonably. Two things, then, I see, in which the potency and power of reason can be brought to bear even upon the senses themselves: the works of men, which are seen, and words, which are heard. In both, moreover, the mind uses a twofold messenger according to the body's necessity: one which is of the eyes, the other of the ears. And so, when we see something figured with parts congruent with one another, we say, not absurdly, that it appears reasonably; and likewise, when we hear something harmonize well, we do not hesitate to say that it sounds reasonably. But everyone would be laughed at, were he to say:
We do not say 'it smells rationally' or 'it tastes rationally' or 'it is rationally seasoned' — except perhaps in the case of those things which men have prepared for some purpose, so that they might give off such a scent or taste or heat or the like. Thus, if someone were to say of a place from which serpents are driven away by strong odours that it smells so 'rationally', he is looking to the reason why it was made so; or of a draught which a physician has compounded, that it is 'rationally' bitter or sweet; or of a bath which the doctor has ordered to be warmed for an invalid, that it is 'rationally' hot or lukewarm. But no one, on entering a garden and lifting a rose to his nostrils, dares to praise it thus: how rationally it is fragrant!
Nor even if a physician has ordered him to smell it — for then the command or prescription is called rational, yet the smelling itself is not called rational — nor is it so on the ground that the odour is natural. For although a dish is seasoned by a cook, we can say it is rationally seasoned, but that it rationally tastes so, when there is no external cause but only a present pleasure to be satisfied, is by no means said in the ordinary usage of speech. For if one asks concerning the man to whom the physician has given a draught, why he ought to perceive it as sweet, some further thing is brought in on account of which it is so — namely the kind of disease, which no longer lies in that sensation itself but is otherwise disposed in the body.
But if one who is nibbling, stirred by the goad of appetite, be asked why the thing is so sweet, and he answers 'because it pleases me' or 'because I am delighted', no one will call that sweetness rational — unless perhaps his delight be necessary for some purpose and the thing he chews were prepared precisely for this. We hold, so far as we have been able to investigate, certain traces of reason in the senses, and, as regards sight and hearing, in the very pleasure itself. But the other senses are wont to demand this name not for their own pleasure but for the sake of something else; and that something else is the act of a rational living being done for some end.
But as regards the eyes, in which the harmony of parts is called rational, it is customarily termed 'beautiful'; and as regards the ears, when we call a harmony rational and a measured song rationally composed, it is called by its own proper name 'sweetness' (suavitas). Yet neither in beautiful things, in that which allures us, nor in the sweetness of the ears, when the struck strings sound as it were smoothly and purely, are we accustomed to call that thing rational. It remains, then, that we confess that in the pleasure of these senses that pertains to reason wherein there is a certain proportion and modulation. And so in this very building, when we consider each part well, we cannot but be offended that we see one door in the side, another almost in the middle yet not set in the middle.
For in things fabricated, when no necessity compels it, an unequal proportion of parts seems to do a kind of injury, as it were, to the very sight. But when within, three windows — one in the middle, two at the sides with equal intervals — pour light upon the bath, how it delights us when we gaze more attentively, and how it seizes the mind to itself! The matter is manifest and need not be laid open to you with many words. Hence the architects themselves already call this by their own word 'reason', and they say that parts arranged discordantly 'have no reason'. And this holds widely and is diffused through almost all the arts and works of men.
Now in songs, in which likewise we say there is a reason pertaining to the pleasure of the ears, who would not perceive that proportion is the fashioner of all this sweetness? Yet when an actor dances, though for good spectators all his gestures are signs of things, and although a certain measured movement of the limbs delights the eyes by that same proportion, still that dancing is called rational because it well signifies and shows something, apart from the pleasure of the senses. For if he should represent a winged Venus and a cloaked Cupid — though he depict it with wonderful movement and arrangement of limbs — he does not seem to offend the eyes, but through the eyes the mind, to which those signs of things are shown; for the eyes would be offended if he were not moving beautifully.
For this pertained to sense, in which the soul, by the very fact that it is mingled with the body, perceives pleasure. One thing, then, is the sense, another that which is through the sense; for beautiful movement soothes the sense, but a beautiful signification in the movement soothes, through the sense, the mind alone. This is even more easily observed in the ears; for whatever sounds pleasantly, that very thing pleases and allures the hearing; but that which is well signified through the same sound, is indeed announced by the ears yet is referred to the mind alone. And so, when we hear those verses, 'Why do the winter suns so hasten to plunge themselves in the Ocean, or what delay holds back the lingering nights,' we praise the metre in one way and the sense in another, nor do we say 'it sounds rationally' and 'it is rationally spoken' under the same meaning.
Therefore there are now three kinds of things in which that rational element appears: one is in deeds referred to some end, another in learning, the third in giving pleasure. The first admonishes us to do nothing rashly, the second to teach rightly, the last to contemplate blessedly. The first belongs to morals; but these two belong to the disciplines with which we are now dealing.
For that which in us is rational — that is, which uses reason and either makes or follows rational things — since by a certain natural bond it was bound in the fellowship of those with whom reason itself was in common (nor could man be most firmly joined to man unless they might converse and thus, as it were, pour their minds and thoughts into one another) — it saw that names must be imposed on things, that is, certain significant sounds, so that, since they could not perceive one another's minds, they might use the sense as an interpreter, so to speak, to couple themselves together. But the words of those absent could not be heard; therefore that reason brought forth letters, having marked and distinguished all the sounds of the mouth and tongue.
But it could do none of these things if the multitude of things seemed to lie open to infinity without some fixed limit. Therefore the usefulness of counting was noticed with great necessity. When these two were discovered, there was born that profession of scribes and reckoners, a kind of infancy, as it were, of grammar, which Varro calls 'litteratio'; but how it is called in Greek I do not at present sufficiently recall.
Then reason, having advanced further, noticed that those same sounds of the mouth with which we speak and which it had already marked with letters were of different kinds: some flowed forth freely from the throat, as it were unknotted and simple, with a varied but measured opening and without any collision; others held some sound with a different pressure of the mouth; and the last could not burst forth unless the first were joined to them. And so it named the letters, in this order in which they have been set out, vowels, semivowels, and mutes; then it marked off syllables. Then words were distributed into eight kinds and forms, and all their inflection, integrity, and joining were skilfully and subtly distinguished.
Thence, not unmindful of number and proportion, it turned its attention to the very various durations of sounds and syllables, and thereupon discovered that the spans of time were, some double, some single, by which long and short syllables were extended. It marked these too and arranged them into fixed rules. Grammar could now have been complete; but because by its very name it proclaims itself to be about letters — whence in Latin it is also called 'litteratura' — it came about that whatever was worthy of memory and committed to letters necessarily pertained to it. And so there acceded to this discipline one name indeed, but a matter boundless and manifold, fuller of cares than of pleasantness or truth: history, laborious not so much to the historians themselves as to the grammarians.
For who could endure that a man be thought unlearned who has not heard that Daedalus flew — that he who invented the tale is a liar, that he who believed it is a fool, that he who asked about it is shameless — or, another point on which I am wont gravely to pity our friends, who, if they cannot answer what was the name of Euryalus's mother, are accused of ignorance, while they themselves dare not call those of whom these things are asked vain, foolish, or overcurious? That reason, then, having perfected and arranged grammar, was admonished to seek out and attend to this very power by which it had brought forth the art; for by defining, distributing, and collecting it had not only digested and ordered it but had also defended it from every creeping-in of falsehood.
When, then, would it pass over to fashioning other things, unless it first distinguished, marked, digested, and set forth its own instruments and tools, as it were — that discipline of disciplines which they call dialectic? This teaches how to teach, this teaches how to learn; in it reason shows and opens itself, revealing what it is, what it wills, what it avails. It knows to know, and alone it not only wills but is also able to make men knowing. But since for the most part foolish men, in regard to those things which are rightly, usefully, and honourably urged upon them, follow not that most sincere truth which few minds behold, but their own feelings and custom, it was fitting that they be not only taught, as far as they are able, but often and above all be stirred.
This part of itself which should accomplish that — fuller of necessity than of purity, with a bosom crammed full of the delights which it scatters upon the people, so that it may deign to be led toward its own advantage — it called rhetoric. Thus far that part which is called rational in signifying has been advanced by liberal studies and disciplines. Hence that reason willed to seize itself away to the most blessed contemplation of divine things themselves. But lest it fall from on high, it sought steps and contrived for itself a way through its own possessions and their order. For it desired beauty, which alone and simple it could behold without these eyes; but it was hindered by the senses.
And so it turned its gaze a little upon those very senses which, crying out that they possessed the truth, kept calling back with importunate din the reason that was hastening to press on to other things. And first it began with the ears, because they said that the words were their very own, out of which it had already made grammar and dialectic and rhetoric. But that reason, most powerful in discerning, quickly saw what difference there was between a sound and that of which it was the sign. It understood that nothing else pertained to the judgment of the ears than sound, and that this was threefold: either in the voice of a living being, or in that which breath produced in instruments, or in that which was uttered by a stroke;
to the first belong tragedians, comedians, choruses of every kind, and absolutely all who sing with their own voice; the second is assigned to flutes and similar instruments; to the third are given citharas, lyres, cymbals, and everything that is tuneful by striking. But it saw that this material was most worthless, unless it were shaped by a fixed measurement of times and by a modulated variety of high and low pitch of sound.
It recognized that hence came those seeds which, in grammar, when it turned over the syllables with diligent consideration, it had called feet and accents; and because in the words themselves it was easy to attend to the shortnesses and lengths of syllables scattered through discourse in nearly equal number, it attempted to arrange those feet in fixed rows and to join them together. And in this, first following the sense itself, it impressed measured joints, which they name 'cuts' (caesa) and 'members' (membra). And lest the course of the feet roll on further than its judgment could sustain, it set a measure whence it should return, and from that very thing it called it 'verse' (versus).
But that which was not measured by a fixed end, yet ran on with rationally ordered feet, it marked with the name of 'rhythm', which in Latin could be called nothing else than 'number' (numerus). Thus from it the poets were born, in whom, when it saw great importance not only of sounds but also of words and matters, it honoured them greatly and granted to them the power of such rational falsehoods as they wished. And because they drew their stock from that first discipline, it permitted the grammarians to be judges over them. In this fourth step, then, whether in rhythms or in modulation itself, it understood that numbers reigned and perfected the whole; it inspected most diligently of what sort they were;
it found them divine and everlasting, especially because it was by their aid that it had woven together all the higher things. And now it could most grievously endure that their splendour and serenity should be discoloured by the bodily material of sounds. And because that which the mind sees is always present and is proved to be immortal — of which kind the numbers appeared — while sound, being a sensible thing, passes away with time and is imprinted on the memory, reason itself now favouring the poets' rational falsehood, it was feigned that the Muses were daughters of Jove and of Memory. Whence this discipline, sharing in sense and intellect, found the name of 'music'.
Setting out thence, reason came into the resources of the eyes and, surveying earth and heaven, perceived that nothing else pleased it than beauty, and in beauty figures, in figures dimensions, in dimensions numbers; and it asked within itself whether there existed there such a line and such a roundness or any other form and figure as intelligence might contain. It found what the eyes saw far inferior, and in no part to be compared with what the mind discerned. These things too, distinguished and arranged, it reduced into a discipline and called it geometry. The motion of the heaven greatly moved it and invited it to consider it diligently.
There too, through the most constant vicissitudes of the seasons, through the fixed and defined courses of the stars, through the measured spaces of the intervals, it understood that nothing else held sway than that same dimension and numbers, which, by likewise defining and separating, binding them into order, gave birth to astronomy — a great argument for the religious and a torment for the curious. In all these disciplines, then, all things numerical met it, which nevertheless shone forth more manifestly in those dimensions which, by thinking and revolving them within itself, it beheld as most true, while in these things which are perceived by the senses it rather recollected their shadows and traces. Here it raised itself much and presumed much, and dared to prove the soul immortal.
It treated all things diligently and perceived plainly that it could do very much, and that whatever it could do, it could do by numbers. A certain wonder moved it, and it began to suspect that perhaps it was itself that very number by which all things are numbered; or, if that were not so, that it was nevertheless there where it strove to arrive. But this it grasped with all its strength, that number which, being now destined to be the index of universal truth — the one of which Alypius made mention when we were inquiring about the Academics — was, like Proteus, in its hands. For the false images of those things which we number, flowing down from that most hidden thing by which we number, snatch our thought to themselves and often make it slip away even when it is already held.
If anyone shall not yield to these images, and shall reduce all those things which are spread widely and variously through so many disciplines to one single, true, and certain thing, he is most worthy of the name of learned; and not rashly does he now seek out those divine things — no longer only to be believed, but also to be contemplated, understood, and retained.
But whoever, whether still a slave of his desires and gaping after perishing things, or already fleeing these things and living chastely, yet not knowing what is nothing, what is formless matter, what is a formed thing without life, what is body, what is the lifeless in a body, what is place, what is time, what is in place, what is in time, what is motion according to place, what is motion not according to place, what is stable motion, what is eternity, what it is to be neither in place nor nowhere, what it is to be beyond time and always, what it is both to be nowhere and to be nowhere not, and never to be and never not to be — whoever, then, being ignorant of these things, I do not say concerning that supreme God,
who is better known by being unknown, but should wish even to inquire and dispute about his own soul, he will err as greatly as it is possible to err. But he will come to know these things easily who has grasped the simple and intelligible numbers; and those he will grasp who, being both strong in native talent and at leisure by the privilege of age or of any kind of good fortune, and vehemently kindled with zeal, shall have pursued, as far as is sufficient, the aforesaid order of the disciplines. For since all those liberal arts are learned partly for the use of life, partly for the knowledge and contemplation of things, to attain the use of them is most difficult save for him who, most talented from his very boyhood, has given his labour most urgently and most constantly.
But as for what is needful out of these things for that which we seek, I beg you, mother, let not this immeasurable forest, as it were, of matters deter you. For certain things, very few in number, will be chosen out of them all: you, most powerful, though in knowledge they are indeed arduous to many — yet to you, whose native talent is daily new to me, and whose mind I know to have risen much within itself, most remote whether by age or by admirable temperance from all trifling, and emerging from the great defilement of the body — they will be as easy as they are difficult to those who live most slowly and most wretchedly. For if I should say that you will easily come to that speech which is free of the fault of diction and language, I should surely lie.
For even I myself, who had great necessity to learn these things thoroughly, am still harassed by the Italians in many of my word-sounds, and am in turn reproached by them as regards pronunciation itself. For it is one thing to be secure by art, another to be secure by birth. As for the solecisms which we call by that name, perhaps any learned man attending diligently will find them in my speech; for there was no lack of one who most expertly persuaded me that Cicero himself committed not a few faults of this kind. But of barbarism such a kind has been discovered in our own times that even that very oration by which Rome was saved seems barbarous.
But you, despising these things as either childish or as not pertaining to you, will so come to know the almost divine power and nature of grammar that you may seem to have grasped its soul and to have left its body to the eloquent. This I would say also of the other arts of this kind, which, if perhaps you utterly despise them, I admonish you — as much as I, your son, dare, and as much as you permit — that you firmly and warily guard that faith of yours which you have received through the venerable mysteries, and then that you constantly and vigilantly persevere in this life and in these morals.
But concerning matters most obscure and yet divine — how God both does no evil and is omnipotent, and yet such great evils come to pass; and for whose benefit He made the world, He who was in no need; and whether evil always existed or began in time; and, if it always existed, whether it existed under the condition of God; and, if it existed, whether this world too always existed, in which that evil might be tamed by the divine order — but if this world at some time began to be, how, before it existed, was evil held under the power of God, and what need was there to fashion a world in which the evil that God's power was already curbing should be shut up for the punishment of souls? But if there was a time in which under God's dominion there was no evil, what suddenly happened, which had not happened through all the ages before?
For to say that a new counsel arose in God — not to say an impious thing — is most absurd. But if we say that evil was importunate and, as it were, wicked toward God, as some think, then no learned man will restrain his laughter, and no unlearned man will fail to be indignant; for what harm could that I-know-not-what nature of evil do to God? For if they say it could not, there will be no cause for fashioning the world; if they say it could, it is an inexpiable crime to believe God violable — and not even in such a way that He might at least have provided by His power that His own substance not be violated; for they confess that the soul here pays penalties, though they hold that between its substance and God's there is no difference whatever.
But if we should say that this world was not made, it is impious and ungrateful to believe it, lest that consequence follow — that God did not fashion it. Therefore, concerning these and suchlike matters, either something must be inquired by that order of erudition, or in no way at all. And lest anyone suppose that we have embraced something very vast, this I say more plainly and briefly: to the knowledge of these things no one ought to aspire without that, as it were, twofold science of good disputation and of the power of numbers. If anyone thinks even this too much, let him know most excellently the numbers alone, or dialectic alone.
If even this is unbounded, let him at least know perfectly what the one is in numbers and how much it avails — not yet in that supreme law and supreme order of all things, but in these things which we daily and everywhere perceive and do. For the very discipline of philosophy takes up this erudition, and in it it will find nothing more than what the one is, but far more loftily and far more divinely. Its inquiry is twofold: one concerning the soul, the other concerning God. The first brings it about that we know ourselves, the second that we know our origin. The first is sweeter to us, the second dearer; the first makes us worthy of the blessed life, the second makes us blessed; the first is for those who are learning, the second for those already learned.
This is the order of the studies of wisdom, through which each one becomes fit for understanding the order of things — that is, for discerning the two worlds and the very Parent of the universe, of whom there is no knowledge in the soul save to know how it does not know Him. Holding this order, then, the soul, now handed over to philosophy, first inspects itself; and to it, once that erudition has persuaded it that reason is either its own or is itself, and that in reason either nothing is better and more powerful than numbers, or that reason is nothing else than number, it thus speaks with itself: I can, by a certain interior and hidden motion of mine, distinguish or connect those things which are to be learned, and this power of mine is called reason.
But what is to be distinguished, except what is thought to be one and is not, or is certainly not so much one as it is thought to be? Likewise, why is anything to be connected, except that it may become one, as far as it can? Therefore both in distinguishing and in connecting I will one thing and I love one thing; but when I distinguish, I will the purified, and when I connect, I will the whole. In the former part alien things are avoided; in the latter, proper things are joined, so that some one perfect thing may come to be. That a stone might be a stone, all its parts and all its nature are consolidated into one. What of a tree? Would not a tree not be a tree if it were not one? What of the limbs of any living being, and the inward parts, and whatever those are of which it consists? Surely, if they suffer a divorce of unity, it will not be an animal. What else do friends strive for than to be one?
And the more they are one, the more they are friends. A people is one city, to which dissension is perilous. But what is it to dissent, except not to feel as one? Out of many soldiers one army is made. Is not any multitude the less easily conquered the more it comes together into one? Whence that coming-together into one is called a 'wedge' (cuneus), as it were 'co-one' (couneus). What of all love? Does it not will to become one with that which it loves, and, if it befall it, does it become one with it? Pleasure itself delights the more vehemently for no other reason than that loving bodies are forced together into one. Whence is pain destructive? Because that which was one strives to be scattered. Therefore it is troublesome and perilous to become one with that which can be separated.
Out of many things lying scattered about before me, then gathered into one form, I make one house. I am the better, since it is I who make it; it becomes so, and it is the better for this, that I make it. There is no doubt that I am therefore better than the house is. But I am not therefore better than the swallow or the little bee — for the swallow too builds its nest artfully, and the bee its honeycombs — but I am better than these because I am a rational animal. But if reason lies in fixed dimensions, is not what the birds fashion measured no less aptly and congruously? Nay, it is most full of number. Therefore I am the better not by making numerical things, but by knowing numbers. What then? Could those birds, without knowing, produce numerical things? They certainly could. Whence is this taught?
From this: that we too fit our tongue to our teeth and palate in fixed dimensions, so that letters and words burst forth from the mouth, and yet we do not think, while we speak, by what movement of the mouth we ought to do it. Then, what good singer, even if he be unskilled in music, does not, by that very natural sense, keep both rhythm and melody, grasped by memory, in his singing — than which what can be done more numerically? He knows not, being unlearned, yet he does it, with nature operating. But when is he better and to be preferred above the beasts? When he knows what he does. Nothing else prefers me above the beast except that I am a rational animal. How, then, is reason immortal, and I at once defined as something both rational and mortal? Or is reason not immortal?
But one to two, or two to four, is a most true ratio; nor was that ratio more true yesterday than today, nor will it be more true tomorrow or a year hence, nor, if this whole world should collapse, could that ratio fail to be. For it is always such, but this world had neither yesterday, nor will it have tomorrow, what it has today; nor on this very day did it have the sun in the same place even for the space of one hour. Thus, since nothing remains in it, it has nothing in the same manner even for a small span of time. Therefore, if reason is immortal, and I, who either distinguish or connect all these things, am reason, then that whereby I am called mortal is not my own;
or if the soul is not that which reason is, and yet I use reason and through reason am the better, then from the worse to the better, from the mortal to the immortal, must I flee. These and many other things the well-instructed soul speaks and revolves within itself, which I do not wish to pursue further, lest, while I desire to teach you order, I exceed measure, which is the father of order. For step by step it leads itself even to the best morals and life, no longer by faith alone but by sure reason. To one who diligently beholds the force and power of numbers, it will seem exceedingly unworthy and exceedingly to be lamented that, through its own knowledge, a verse should run well and a cithara sound in harmony, while its own life and its very self, which is the soul, should follow a devious path and, with lust lording it over it, should jar out of tune with the most shameful din of the vices.
But when the soul has composed and ordered itself, and rendered itself harmonious and fair, it will then dare to behold God, and the very fountain from which all truth flows, and the Father of truth Himself. O great God, what eyes those will be — how sound, how comely, how strong, how steadfast, how serene, how blessed! And what is that which they behold? What, I ask, are we to think it, how are we to reckon it, what are we to say of it? Everyday words come to hand, and they are all soiled by the basest of things. I will say nothing further than that there is promised to us the sight of a Beauty, in imitation of which all other things are fair, and in comparison with which all else is foul.
Whoever shall have seen this Beauty — and he shall see it who lives well, prays well, studies well — when will it move him to ask why one man who longs to have children has none, while another has them in abundance yet exposes them, hating those about to be born and neglecting those already born? How shall it not conflict with the truth that nothing can come to be which is not already present with God, and that from this it follows of necessity that all things happen according to an order, and yet God is not besought in vain? Finally, when shall any burdens, any dangers, any weariness, or any allurements of fortune move such a man?
For in this sensible world one must consider most carefully what time and place are, so that whatever delights us in a part of place or time may nevertheless be understood to be far better as a whole, of which that thing is but a part; and again, that whatever offends in a part may be evident to the learned man as offending for no other reason than that the whole is not seen, to which that part marvelously belongs; whereas in that intelligible world any part whatsoever is beautiful and perfect as a whole. These things will be treated more fully, if your studies shall have set themselves to hold — as I exhort and hope — the right order, whether this one recounted by us, or perhaps some other briefer and more convenient one, and shall have held to it altogether diligently and steadfastly.
That this may be granted us, the utmost effort must be given to the best of morals; for our God will not otherwise be able to hear us, but will most readily hear us if we live well. Let us pray, therefore, not that riches or honours or things of this sort — fleeting and tottering and passing away at the least resistance — may come to us, but that those things may come to pass which make us good and blessed. And that these prayers may be most devoutly fulfilled, this task I lay chiefly upon you, mother; for by your prayers I undoubtedly believe, and I affirm, that God has given me this mind: that I set absolutely nothing before the finding of truth, that I will nothing else, think of nothing else, love nothing else; nor do I cease to believe that this so great a good, which we have desired through your deserving, we shall obtain through your entreaty.
And now, Alypius, with what shall I exhort you, of what shall I admonish you? You are not excessive in this, since to love such things, however much, can perhaps always be called too little, but never rightly too much. Here he said: You have truly brought it about that the memory of those most learned and great men — which once, on account of the greatness of the matter, seemed incredible — we now, both by daily reflection and by this present admiration which we have for you, not only do not hold in doubt, but could even, if need be, swear to it. For what more?
Has not that venerable and almost divine discipline of Pythagoras — which has rightly been both held and approved — been today unlocked to us by you, almost before our very eyes, when you signified, both briefly and yet so plainly, both the rules of life and, of knowledge, not so much the paths as the very fields themselves and the clear open seas, and — what was to that man an object of great veneration — even the very sanctuaries of truth: where they were, of what kind they were, what kind of men sought them; so that, although we suspect and believe that there are still more secret things known to you, we should nevertheless think it not without shamelessness if we judged that anything more ought to be demanded?
I accept these words gladly, said I — for it is not so much your words, which are not true, that delight and stir me, as the true spirit in your words — and it is well that we have decided to send this letter to one who is wont to tell many lies about us gladly. But if perhaps any others shall have read it, neither do I fear these, that they should be angry at you. For who would not most kindly pardon the error of a lover in judging? And as for your having made mention of Pythagoras, I believe it came into your mind by some hidden divine ordering unknown to me. For a matter much needful to me had quite slipped away, which in that man — if any credence is to be given to things committed to writing in letters; and yet who would not believe Varro? —
— I am wont to admire, and, as you know, almost daily to extol with praises: namely, that he handed on the discipline of governing the commonwealth as the last thing to his hearers, when they were already learned, already perfected, already wise, already blessed. For he saw there such great waves that he was unwilling to entrust it to any but the man who both in governing might almost divinely avoid the rocks, and, if all else should fail, might himself become as it were a rock to those waves. For of the wise man alone it can most truly be said: 'He, like a sea-cliff, stands unmoved and resists,' and the rest, which have been spoken in splendid verses to this effect. Here an end was made of the discussion, and, all being glad and full of much hope, we dismissed the assembly, since by now the nocturnal light had been brought in. FROM AUGUSTINE'S BOOK OF RETRACTATIONS.
Book I, Chapter III (page 19, line 8, ed. Knoell): CONCERNING ORDER, TWO BOOKS. During the same period, among those which were written about the Academics, I also wrote two books On Order, in which a great question is treated: whether the order of divine providence contains all things good and evil. But since I saw the matter to be difficult enough to understand, and that those with whom I was dealing could scarcely be brought by argument to grasp it, I chose rather to speak of the order of studying, by which one can advance from bodily things to incorporeal things. But in these books too it displeases me that the word 'fortune' is so often interposed; and that I did not add 'of the body' when I named 'the sense of the body';
and that I attributed much to the liberal disciplines, of which many holy men are much ignorant, while some who know them are not holy; and that I made mention of the Muses as though they were certain goddesses, albeit in jest; and that I called admiration a vice; and that I said that philosophers not endowed with true piety had shone with the light of virtue; and that I commended two worlds — one sensible, the other intelligible — not from the person of Plato or of the Platonists, but from my own, as though the Lord too had wished to signify this, since He does not say 'My kingdom is not of the world,' but:
'My kingdom is not of this world' — although it can be found to have been said also by some manner of speech, and, if another world was signified by the Lord Christ, that world could be more fittingly understood in which there will be a new heaven and a new earth, when there shall be fulfilled what we pray when we say: 'Thy kingdom come.' Nor indeed did Plato err in this, in that he said there is an intelligible world, if we are willing to attend not to the term — which is unusual to ecclesiastical custom in that matter — but to the thing itself. For that man named the intelligible world that very eternal and unchangeable Reason by which God made the world.
Whoever denies that this exists, it follows that he must say that God irrationally made what He made, or that, while He was making it or before He made it, He did not know what He was making, if there was in Him no reason for making. But if there was — as there was — Plato seems to have called this very thing the intelligible world. Yet we would not have used this name had we already been sufficiently instructed in ecclesiastical writings. Nor does that please me, that when I had said 'the utmost effort must be given to the best of morals,' I straightway added: 'for our God cannot otherwise hear us; but He will most readily hear those who live well.' For it was so said as though God does not hear sinners;
which indeed was said in the Gospel, but by one who had not yet known Christ, though he had already been enlightened in body by Him. Nor does that please me, that I gave so much praise to the philosopher Pythagoras that one who hears or reads this might suppose me to have believed that there were no errors in the Pythagorean doctrine, whereas there are several, and those capital ones. This work begins thus: 'Concerning the order of things, O Zenobius.'