Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 20

[I] Since I see that I must next discourse upon the due ends of both cities, the earthly namely and the heavenly, there must first be set forth — as far as the plan of completing this work allows — the arguments of mortal men, by which they have striven to make happiness for themselves in the wretchedness of this life, so that it may become clear how our hope, which God has given us, differs from their vain devices, and how the thing itself, that is, the true happiness which He will give, differs — this being made clear not by divine authority alone, but by reason also brought to bear, such as we can bring to bear for the sake of unbelievers. For concerning the ends of good things and of evil, the philosophers have disputed among themselves much and in manifold ways;

and treating this question with the utmost intentness, they sought to discover what it is that makes a man happy. For that is the end of our good, for the sake of which other things are to be sought, while itself is to be sought for its own sake; and that is the end of evil, for the sake of avoiding which other things are to be shunned, while itself is to be shunned for its own sake. By the end of good, then, we now mean not that by which it is consumed so as to cease to be, but that by which it is brought to completion so as to be full; and by the end of evil, not that by which it ceases to exist, but that to which it leads in its work of harming. These ends, therefore, are the highest good and the highest evil. Concerning the finding of these, and the attaining of the highest good in this life, and the avoiding of the highest evil, those have laboured much, as I have said, who have professed the pursuit of wisdom amid the vanity of this world;

and yet the limit of nature did not permit them, however diversely they erred, to stray so far from the path of truth as not to place the ends of good and evil, some in the soul, some in the body, some in both. From this threefold distribution, as it were, of the general schools, Marcus Varro, in his book On Philosophy, having diligently and subtly scrutinized so great a variety of doctrines, observed that, by applying certain differentiae, he could most easily arrive at two hundred and eighty-eight schools — not such as already existed, but such as could exist.

That I may show this briefly, I must begin from that which he himself observed and set down in the aforesaid book: that there are four things which men, without a teacher, without any aid of instruction, without any diligence or art of living (which is called virtue and is beyond doubt learned), desire as it were naturally — either pleasure, by which the sense of the body is delightfully moved; or repose, by which it comes about that a man suffers no bodily annoyance; or both together, which nevertheless Epicurus calls by the one name of pleasure; or the primary things of nature taken universally, in which are both these and others, whether in the body, such as the soundness and health and integrity of its members, or in the soul, such as those endowments, whether small or great, that are found in the natural gifts of men.

These four, then — that is, pleasure, repose, both together, and the primary things of nature — are so present in us that either virtue, which instruction afterwards implants, is to be sought for their sake, or they for the sake of virtue, or both for their own sake; and by this there arise from here twelve schools. For by this reasoning each is tripled; and when I have demonstrated this in one, it will not be difficult to find it in the rest. When, therefore, bodily pleasure is either subordinated to the virtue of the soul, or preferred to it, or joined with it, it is varied by a threefold diversity of schools. It is subordinated to virtue when it is taken up for the use of virtue.

For it belongs to the office of virtue both to live for one's country and for the sake of one's country to beget children, neither of which can be done without bodily pleasure; for without it neither is food and drink taken that one may live, nor is intercourse had that offspring may be propagated. But when it is preferred to virtue, it is sought for its own sake, while virtue is believed to be taken up for its sake — that is, so that virtue does nothing except to attain or preserve bodily pleasure; and this life is indeed base, since there virtue is a slave to its mistress pleasure (though this ought in no wise to be called virtue); yet even this horrible turpitude has had certain philosophers as its patrons and defenders.

Pleasure, further, is joined with virtue when neither of them is sought for the sake of the other, but both for their own sake. Wherefore, just as pleasure, whether subordinated or preferred or joined to virtue, makes three schools, so repose, so both together, so the primary things of nature are found to make three each. For according to the variety of human opinions they are sometimes subordinated to virtue, sometimes preferred to it, sometimes joined with it, and thus one arrives at the number of twelve schools. But this number too is doubled by the application of one differentia, namely that of the social life; for whoever follows any one of these twelve schools assuredly does so either for himself alone, or also for the sake of a companion, to whom he owes it to wish that which he wishes for himself.

Therefore there are twelve of those who think each school is to be held for their own sake only, and another twelve of those who determine that one must philosophize in this way or that not only for themselves but also for the sake of others, whose good they desire as their own. But these twenty-four schools are again doubled by adding the differentia drawn from the New Academics, and become forty-eight. For each one of those twenty-four schools any man can so hold and defend as certain — in the way the Stoics defended that man's good, whereby he is happy, consists in the virtue of the soul alone; or another man can hold it as uncertain, as the New Academics defended, for to them it seemed, though not certain, yet like the truth.

Twenty-four, therefore, arise through those who hold them as it were certain on account of truth, and another twenty-four through those who think the same schools, though uncertain, are to be followed on account of their likeness to truth. Again, since any man can follow each one of these forty-eight schools in the manner of the other philosophers, and likewise another can follow it in the manner of the Cynics, by this differentia also they are doubled and become ninety-six.

Then, since men can uphold and follow each single one of them in such a way as either to love the leisured life — like those who wished, and were able, to devote themselves only to the pursuits of learning — or the busy life — like those who, while philosophizing, were nonetheless most fully occupied with the administration of the commonwealth and the governance of human affairs — or a life tempered from both kinds — like those who apportioned the seasons of their life partly to learned leisure, partly to necessary business: on account of these differentiae this number of schools can also be tripled and brought to two hundred and eighty-eight. These things from Varro's book I have set forth as briefly and clearly as I could, unfolding his opinions in my own words.

But by what manner, having refuted the rest, he chooses the one which he wishes to be that of the Old Academics (whom, from Plato's founding down to Polemon — who was the fourth after him to hold his school, which was called the Academy — he would have it seem to have held certain fixed doctrines, and on this account he distinguishes them from the New Academics, to whom all things are uncertain, which kind of philosophy began with Arcesilaus, the successor of Polemon), and how he judges that school — that is, of the Old Academics — to be as free of all error as of doubt: this it would be long to demonstrate in every point; nor yet is the matter to be wholly passed over. First, then, he removes all those differentiae which multiplied the number of schools, which he thinks are to be removed because in them there is no end of good.

For he does not think that any school of philosophy is to be so called which does not differ from the rest in this, that it holds different ends of good and evil. Since indeed there is for man no cause of philosophizing except that he may be happy; and that which makes him happy is itself the end of good; there is therefore no cause of philosophizing except the end of good: wherefore that which follows no end of good is to be called no school of philosophy. When, then, it is asked concerning the social life whether it is to be held by the wise man — so that he should wish and care for the highest good, whereby a man becomes happy, for his friend as much as for himself, or whether he does whatever he does only for the sake of his own happiness:

the question is not about the highest good itself, but about taking up or not taking up a companion to share in this good — not for its own sake, but for the sake of that same companion, that one may so rejoice in his good as one rejoices in one's own. Likewise, when the question is asked concerning the New Academics, to whom all things are uncertain, whether the matters in which one must philosophize are to be held as such, or whether, as it pleased other philosophers, we ought to hold them as certain: the question is not what is to be followed as the end of good, but concerns the very truth of that good which seems to be worth following — whether it is to be doubted of or not;

that is, to speak it more plainly, whether it is to be followed in such a way that he who follows it says it is true, or in such a way that he who follows it says it seems true to him — even though it should perchance be false — yet both follow one and the same good. In that differentia too which is drawn from the habit and custom of the Cynics, the question is not what is the end of good, but whether one must live in that habit and custom who follows the true good, whatever seems to him to be true and worth following. In short, there have been men who, though they pursued different final goods — some virtue, some pleasure — nevertheless held the same habit and custom, from which they were called Cynics.

Thus whatever that is by which the Cynic philosophers are distinguished from the rest, it availed nothing at all towards choosing and holding the good whereby they might become happy. For if it made any difference to this, assuredly the same habit would compel the pursuit of the same end, and a different habit would not allow the pursuit of the same end. [II] In those three kinds of life also — the one, not slothfully but leisured in the contemplation or inquiry of truth; the second, busied in the conduct of human affairs; the third, tempered from both kinds — when it is asked which of these is rather to be chosen, the end of good is not in controversy;

but what these three bring by way of difficulty or ease towards attaining or retaining the end of good, that is what is at issue in this question. For the end of good, when anyone has reached it, forthwith makes him happy; whereas in lettered leisure, or in public business, or when both are engaged in by turns, a man is not straightway happy. For many indeed can live in any one of these three, and yet err in seeking the end of good, whereby a man becomes happy.

Another question, therefore, is that concerning the ends of good and evil, which constitutes each school of philosophers; and other questions are those concerning the social life, concerning the hesitancy of the Academics, concerning the dress and diet of the Cynics, concerning the three kinds of life — the leisured, the active, and that moderated from both; of which there is none in which the ends of good and evil are disputed. Accordingly, since Marcus Varro, by applying these four differentiae — that is, from the social life, from the New Academics, from the Cynics, and from that threefold kind of life — arrived at two hundred and eighty-eight schools, and if any others can be similarly added:

all these being removed — since they introduce no question about following the highest good and therefore are not, and are not to be called, schools — he returns to those twelve in which it is asked what is the good of man, upon attaining which he becomes happy, that from them he may show one to be true and the rest false. For when that threefold kind of life is removed, two parts of this number are taken away, and ninety-six schools remain. And when the differentia added from the Cynics is removed, they are reduced to half and become forty-eight. Let us take away also what was applied from the New Academics: again half the part remains, that is, twenty-four. Let what had been added from the social life likewise be taken away:

twelve remain, which that differentia had doubled, that they might become twenty-four. Concerning these twelve, then, nothing can be said why they should not be reckoned as schools. For nothing else is sought in them than the end of goods and evils. And once the ends of goods are found, assuredly by contrast are found those of evils. But that these may become twelve schools, those four are tripled — pleasure, repose, both together, and the primary things of nature, which Varro calls the primigenia.

For these four, while singly they are sometimes subordinated to virtue, so as to seem to be sought not for their own sake but for the office of virtue; sometimes preferred, so that virtue is deemed necessary not for its own sake but for the attaining or preserving of these; sometimes joined, so that both virtue and these are believed to be sought for their own sake — they render the number four threefold and arrive at twelve schools. But from those four things Varro removes three — namely pleasure, repose, and both together — not because he disapproves of them, but because those primary things of nature contain in themselves both pleasure and repose.

What need, then, is there to make three things out of these two — namely two, when pleasure or repose is sought singly, and a third when both together — seeing that the primary things of nature contain both these themselves and, besides these, many others? Concerning three schools, then, it pleases him that there must be careful treatment as to which is rather to be chosen. For true reason permits no more than one to be true, whether it be among these three or somewhere else, which we shall see afterwards. Meanwhile, let us discuss, as briefly and clearly as we can, in what manner Varro chooses one of these three.

These three schools, indeed, arise thus: when either the primary things of nature are to be sought for the sake of virtue, or virtue for the sake of the primary things of nature, or both — that is, both virtue and the primary things of nature — for their own sake. [III] Which, then, of these three is true and to be followed, he tries to persuade us in this manner. First, since the highest good in philosophy is sought not of a tree, nor of a beast, nor of God, but of man, he thinks it must be asked what man himself is. He perceives, indeed, that in his nature there are two things, body and soul; and of these two he does not at all doubt that the soul is the better and by far the more excellent; but whether the soul alone is the man, so that the body is to him as a horse to a horseman (for the horseman is not man and horse, but man alone;

yet he is called a horseman because he stands in a certain relation to the horse), or whether the body alone is the man, standing in a certain relation to the soul, as a cup to the drink (for the cup and the drink which the cup contains are not together called a goblet, but the cup alone; yet it is so called because it is fitted for containing the drink), or whether in truth neither the soul alone nor the body alone, but both together are the man, of which the one part is either soul or body, while he himself, the whole, consists of both, so as to be man (just as we call two horses yoked together a pair, of which either the right or the left is a part of the pair, but one of them, in whatever relation it stands to the other, we do not call a pair, but both together) — this he weighs.

Of these three he chose this third, and judges that man is neither the soul alone nor the body alone, but the soul and body together. Accordingly he says that the highest good of man, whereby he becomes happy, consists of the goods of both things, namely of both soul and body. And by this he considers that those primary things of nature are to be sought for their own sake, and virtue itself likewise — virtue which instruction implants as it were the art of living, and which among the goods of the soul is the most excellent good.

Wherefore this same virtue, that is, the art of conducting life, when it has received the primary things of nature — which existed apart from it, and yet existed even when instruction was still lacking to them — seeks all things for their own sake, and at the same time itself also; and it uses all things at once, and itself too, with this end, that it may be delighted with all and fully enjoy all, more and less as some are among themselves greater and lesser, yet rejoicing in all, and scorning certain lesser things, if necessity demand it, for the sake of greater things to be attained or held. But of all goods, whether of soul or of body, virtue prefers nothing whatever to itself. For it makes good use both of itself and of the other goods that make a man happy.

But where virtue itself is not present, however many goods there may be, they are not goods to him whose they are; and by this they are not to be called even his goods, to whom, since he uses them ill, they cannot be of use. This life of man, therefore, which enjoys virtue and the other goods of soul and body, without which virtue cannot be, is said to be happy; but if it enjoys also other goods, without which virtue can be — whether any or several — it is happier; and if it enjoys absolutely all, so that no good whatever, of soul or of body, is lacking, it is most happy. For life is not the same thing as virtue, since not every life, but the wise life, is virtue; and yet any kind of life whatever can exist without any virtue, whereas virtue cannot exist without any life at all.

This I would say also of memory and reason, and of anything else of the kind that is in man. For these exist even before instruction, and without them no instruction can exist, and thereby neither virtue, which is assuredly learned. But to run well, to be beautiful in body, to excel in mighty strength, and other things of this kind are such that virtue can exist without them, and they without virtue; they are goods nonetheless, and according to these men virtue too loves them for their own sake, and uses and enjoys them as befits virtue. This happy life they declare to be also social, which loves the goods of friends for their own sake as its own, and wishes for them, for their own sake, that which it wishes for itself;

whether they be in the household, such as spouse and children and any domestics; or in the place where his house is, such as a city, as are those who are called citizens; or in the whole world, such as the nations which human society joins to him; or in the universe itself, which is comprised under the name of heaven and earth, such as they say the gods are, whom they will to be friends to the wise man, whom we more familiarly call angels. But concerning the ends of goods and, on the contrary, of evils, they deny that there is any doubt whatever, and they affirm that this is the distinction between themselves and the New Academics; nor does it matter to them at all whether one philosophizes in Cynic or in any other habit and manner of life, within those ends which they hold to be true.

Furthermore, of those three kinds of life — the leisured, the active, and that which is composed of both — they assert that this third pleases them. Varro affirms that the Old Academics thought and taught these things, on the authority of Antiochus, the teacher of Cicero and of himself — whom indeed Cicero would have it seem to have been in many points more a Stoic than an Old Academic. But what is that to us, who ought rather to judge concerning the things themselves than to hold it a great matter to know what each man thought about them? [IV] If, then, it be asked of us what the city of God answers when questioned about these several matters, and first what it holds concerning the ends of goods and evils: it will answer that eternal life is the highest good, and eternal death the highest evil;

and that, in order to attain the one and to shun the other, we must therefore live rightly. For this reason it is written: 'The just man lives by faith'; since we do not yet behold our good, whence it is needful that by believing we should seek it, nor is the very living rightly within our own power, unless He who has given us faith itself helps us as we believe and as we pray—the faith by which we believe that we must be helped by Him.

But those who supposed that the ends of good and evil lie in this present life—placing the supreme good either in the body, or in the soul, or in both; and, to speak more explicitly, either in pleasure or in virtue or in both, either in repose or in virtue or in both, either in pleasure and repose together or in virtue or in both, either in the primary things of nature or in virtue or in both—these, with marvellous vanity, wished to be blessed here and to be made blessed by their own selves. Truth mocked them through the prophet who says: 'The Lord knows the thoughts of men'; or, as the apostle Paul set down this testimony: 'The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.'

For who, with however great a flood of eloquence, is able to set forth the miseries of this life? Cicero lamented them in his Consolation on the death of his daughter, as best he could; but how little was that which he could do? For those things which are called the primary things of nature—when, where, in what manner can they be so well disposed in this life that they do not toss about beneath uncertain chances? For what pain contrary to pleasure, what unrest contrary to repose, cannot fall upon the body of the wise man? Surely the amputation or maiming of limbs assails a man's soundness, deformity his beauty, weakness his health, weariness his strength, torpor or slowness his mobility; and which of these is there that cannot rush upon the flesh of the wise man?

The bearing and movement of the body also, when they are seemly and fitting, are numbered among the primary things of nature; but what if some grievous sickness shakes the limbs with trembling? what if the spine of the back is so bent that the hands are set upon the ground, and a man is in a manner made four-footed? Will this not pervert every form and grace of standing and moving the body? What of the very primal goods of the mind itself, as they are called—where they set two things first, sense and understanding, for the grasping and perceiving of truth? But of what quality and extent does sense remain if—to say nothing of other things—a man becomes deaf and blind? And whither will reason and intelligence withdraw, where will they be lulled to sleep, if by some disease a man be rendered insane?

When the frenzied say or do many absurd things, for the most part alien to their good purpose and character—nay, contrary to their good purpose and character—if we either think upon or behold these things, and consider them worthily, we can scarcely hold back our tears, or perhaps cannot at all. What shall I say of those who suffer the assaults of demons? Where do they keep their understanding hidden or buried, while the malign spirit uses both their soul and their body according to its own will? And who is confident that this evil cannot befall the wise man in this life?

Then, what and how great is the perception of truth in this flesh, when, as we read in the truthful book of Wisdom, 'the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that muses on many things'? Furthermore, the impulse or appetite for action—if this is the right Latin term for that which the Greeks call horme, since they too reckon it among the primary goods of nature—is it not the very thing by which even the wretched motions and deeds of the insane are set in train, those things at which we shudder, when the senses are perverted and reason lulled to sleep?

Furthermore, virtue itself, which is not among the primary things of nature—since it comes upon them afterward, brought in by instruction—when it claims for itself the summit of human goods, what does it do here but wage perpetual wars with vices, and those not outward but inward, not another's but plainly our own and proper to us? Especially that virtue which in Greek is called sophrosyne, in Latin temperance, by which the desires of the flesh are bridled, lest they drag the consenting mind into all manner of shameful deeds. For there is no small vice, since, as the apostle says, 'the flesh lusts against the spirit'—the vice to which the contrary virtue is that of which the same apostle says, 'the spirit lusts against the flesh.' 'For these,' he says, 'are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you would.'

But what is it that we wish to do, when we wish to be made perfect by the end of the supreme good, save that the flesh should not lust against the spirit, and that there should not be in us this vice against which the spirit lusts? Yet since in this life, however much we may will it, we are unable to accomplish this, we do at least accomplish it by the help of God, that we may not yield, with the spirit succumbing to the flesh lusting against the spirit, and be dragged by our own consent to the committing of sin. Far be it, then, that so long as we are in this inner war, we should believe that we have already attained the blessedness to which we wish to come by conquering. And who is so wise as to have no conflict whatsoever against the lusts?

What of that virtue which is called prudence? Does it not with all its watchfulness discern good things from evil, so that no error may creep in as we seek the former and shun the latter, and by this very fact does it not testify that we are among evils, or that evils are within us? For it teaches that it is evil to consent to sinning, and good not to consent to lust for sinning. Yet that evil, to which prudence teaches us not to consent, temperance restrains—but neither prudence nor temperance takes it away from this life.

What of justice, whose office is to render to each his own—whence there arises in man himself a certain just order of nature, that the soul be subject to God, and the flesh to the soul, and thus both soul and flesh to God? Does it not show that it is still labouring at this task, rather than resting in the completed end of this work? For the soul is subject to God the less, the less it conceives of God in its very thoughts; and the flesh is subject to the soul the less, the more it lusts against the spirit. So long, then, as this infirmity, this plague, this languor is within us, how shall we dare to call ourselves already saved—and if not yet saved, how already blessed with that final blessedness?

Now that virtue whose name is fortitude, in however great a wisdom, is a most evident witness of human evils, which it is compelled to bear with patience. At these evils I marvel with what face the Stoic philosophers contend that they are not evils, seeing that they confess that, if they be so great that the wise man either cannot or ought not to endure them, he is compelled to inflict death upon himself and to depart from this life.

But so great is the stupor of pride in these men, who suppose that they have here the end of good and are made blessed by their own selves, that their wise man—that is, such as they describe him with marvellous vanity—even though he be blinded, deafened, struck dumb, crippled in his limbs, tortured with pains, and though any other of such evils that can be spoken or thought of fall upon him, so that he is compelled to inflict death upon himself: they are not ashamed to call this life, set amid such evils, blessed. O blessed life, that seeks the help of death in order to be ended! If it is blessed, let one abide in it!

How are those things not evils which overcome the good of fortitude and compel that same fortitude not only to yield to itself but even to rave, so that it calls the very same life blessed and yet persuades that it must be fled? Who is so blind as not to see that, if it were blessed, it would not be to be fled? But with the open voice of infirmity they confess it must be fled. What cause, then, is there why, with the neck of pride broken, they should not also confess it to be wretched? Was it, I ask, by patience or rather by impatience that the famous Cato slew himself? For he would not have done this had he not borne Caesar's victory impatiently. Where is fortitude? Surely it gave way, surely it succumbed, surely it was so overcome that it forsook, deserted, and fled the blessed life.

Or was it no longer blessed? Then it was wretched. How, then, were those things not evils which made life wretched and to be fled? Wherefore even those very men who confessed that these things are evils—as the Peripatetics did, as the old Academics whose school Varro defends—speak more tolerably; yet marvellous too is their error, in that they contend that amid these evils, even though they be so grievous that death, self-inflicted, must be fled to escape them, the life of him who suffers these things is nonetheless blessed. 'They are evils,' one says, 'the torments and torturings of the body, and they are the worse the greater they can be; to escape them one must flee from this life.' From what life, I ask?

'This life,' he says, 'which is weighed down by such great evils.' Surely, then, it is blessed amid those very evils on account of which you say it must be fled? Or do you call it blessed for this reason, that it is permitted you to depart from these evils by death? But what if you were held in them by some divine judgment, and neither permitted to die nor ever suffered to be without them? Surely then, at least, you would call such a life wretched. It is not, therefore, unwretched because it is quickly left behind. For if it were everlasting, it would be judged wretched even by your own self; and so it ought not to be reckoned no misery because it is brief, nor—what is more absurd—to be called blessedness for this reason, that it is a brief misery.

Great is the force in those evils which compel a man—even, according to these men, a wise man—to take away from himself that which he is a man; when they say, and say truly, that this is in a manner the first and greatest voice of nature, that a man be reconciled to himself and therefore naturally flee death, being so a friend to himself that he vehemently wills and craves to be a living being and to live in this conjunction of body and soul. Great is the force in those evils by which this feeling of nature is overcome, whereby death is shunned in every way with all one's strength and striving—and so overcome that what was shunned is chosen and craved, and, if it cannot come from elsewhere, is inflicted by the man upon himself. Great is the force in those evils which make fortitude a murderer;

if indeed it is still to be called fortitude, which is so overcome by these evils that it not only cannot guard through patience the man whom, as virtue, it undertook to rule and protect, but is itself moreover compelled to slay him. The wise man ought, indeed, to bear even death patiently, but a death that befalls from elsewhere. But if, according to these men, he is compelled to inflict it upon himself, then surely it must be confessed by them that these are not only evils, but even intolerable evils, which compel him to perpetrate this.

Life, therefore, which is either pressed down by the burdens or subject to the chances of such great and grievous evils, could in no way be called blessed—if only the men who say this, just as, being overcome by mounting evils, they yield to unhappiness when they bring death upon themselves, would likewise, being overcome by sure reasonings, deign to yield to truth when they seek the blessed life, and would not suppose that they must rejoice in the end of the supreme good in this mortality; where the very virtues, than which surely nothing better or more useful is found in man, the greater helps they are against the force of dangers, toils, and pains, so much the more faithful witnesses are they of miseries. For if they be true virtues—which cannot exist save in those in whom true piety dwells—

they do not profess that they can bring it about that the men in whom they are should suffer no miseries (for true virtues are not liars, that they should profess this), but rather that human life, which is compelled to be wretched by so many and so great evils of this world, should be blessed by the hope of the world to come, just as it is also saved. For how is that life blessed which is not yet saved? Whence also the apostle Paul, speaking not of imprudent, impatient, intemperate, and unjust men, but of those who lived according to true piety and therefore had, as the virtues they possessed, true virtues, says: 'For by hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man sees, why does he hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.'

As, therefore, we were saved by hope, so also we were made blessed by hope; and as we do not yet hold salvation as present but await it as future, so also blessedness—and this through patience, because we are amid evils which we ought patiently to endure, until we come to those goods where all things shall be that delight us ineffably, and there shall be nothing which we must any longer endure. Such salvation, which shall be in the world to come, shall itself be also the final blessedness. This blessedness these philosophers, because they do not see it and refuse to believe it, strive to fashion for themselves here—a most false one, by a virtue the more mendacious the prouder. But that they hold the life of the wise man to be social, we approve much more fully.

For whence would this City of God—of which we now handle in our hands the nineteenth book of this work—either take its beginning in its rising, or advance in its course, or attain its due ends, if the life of the saints were not social? But amid the affliction of this mortality, with how many and how great evils human society abounds, who is able to enumerate? who suffices to estimate? Let them hear, among their own comic poets, a man saying, with the sense and consent of all men: 'I took a wife; what misery I saw therein! Children were born—another care.' What likewise of those things which the same Terence recounts as the vices in love: 'wrongs, suspicions, enmities, war, and then peace again'—have they not everywhere filled human affairs?

Do they not for the most part occur even in the honourable loves of friends? Are not human affairs full of these on every side, where we feel wrongs, suspicions, enmities, war to be sure evils; but peace an uncertain good, since we do not know the hearts of those with whom we wish to keep it, and even if we could know them today, we should still be ignorant of what they would be tomorrow? Who, moreover, are wont, or ought, to be more friendly among themselves than those who are contained even within one household? And yet who is secure therein, when so often such great evils have arisen from their hidden treacheries—the more bitter as the peace was sweeter which was thought true, when it was most cunningly feigned? On which account that saying of Tully so touches the breasts of all as to force them into groaning:

'No treacheries are more hidden than those which lurk under the pretence of duty or under some name of kinship. For the man who is openly an adversary you can easily avoid by taking heed; but this hidden, inward, and domestic evil not only exists, but even overwhelms you before you can foresee and explore it.' On which account also that divine utterance:

'And a man's foes shall be they of his own household' is heard with great grief of heart; because, even if anyone be so brave that he bears it with equanimity, or so watchful that with provident counsel he guards against what a feigned friendship contrives against him, yet by the wickedness of those perfidious men, when he finds them to be most base—if he himself is good—he must needs be grievously tormented, whether they were always evil and feigned themselves good, or were changed into that malice out of goodness.

If, then, the home, the common refuge amid these evils of the human race, is not safe, what of the city, which, the greater it is, the more full is its forum of lawsuits both civil and criminal, even if there be no rest from seditions not only turbulent but often bloody, and from civil wars, from whose outcomes cities are sometimes free, but from whose perils never? What of the very judgments of men concerning men, which cannot be lacking in cities however great the peace that remains—of what sort do we think they are, how wretched, how lamentable? For those who judge cannot discern the consciences of those whom they judge. Whence they are often compelled by the tortures of innocent witnesses to seek out a truth pertaining to another's cause.

What of the case when someone is tortured in his own cause, and, while it is inquired whether he be guilty, he is tormented, and the innocent man pays most certain penalties for an uncertain crime—not because it is discovered that he committed it, but because it is not known that he did not commit it? And by this the ignorance of the judge is for the most part the calamity of the innocent. And what is yet more intolerable and more to be bewailed, and to be bathed, if it could be, in fountains of tears: when, for this reason, that the judge may not slay an innocent man unknowingly, he tortures the accused—it comes about, through the misery of ignorance, that he slays both the tortured and the innocent, whom he had tortured lest he should slay him innocent. For if, according to the wisdom of these men, the accused has chosen to flee from this life rather than to endure those torments longer, he says that he committed what he did not commit.

And when such a man has been condemned and slain, the judge still does not know whether he slew a guilty or an innocent man—the man whom he tortured lest he should unknowingly slay him innocent; and thus he both tortured the innocent in order to know, and, while he did not know, slew him. In these shadows of social life, will that wise judge sit in judgment, or will he not dare to? He will plainly sit. For human society constrains him and drags him to this office, which he deems it wickedness to forsake. For he does not deem it wickedness that innocent witnesses are tortured in the causes of others; that those who are accused, for the most part overcome by the force of pain and confessing falsehoods about themselves, are punished though innocent, after they have already been tortured though innocent; that, even if they be not punished with death, they for the most part die amid or from the very torments;

that sometimes even those very men who accuse, desiring perhaps to benefit human society lest crimes go unpunished, when the witnesses lie and the defendant himself holds out inhumanly against the torments and does not confess, though they have brought a true charge, being unable to prove what they allege, are condemned by an ignorant judge. These evils, so many and so great, he does not reckon to be sins; for the wise judge does not do these things with a will to harm, but from the necessity of not knowing, and yet, because human society compels him, from the necessity also of judging. This, then, is what we call the misery certainly of man, even if it be not the malice of the wise man.

But does he, from the necessity of not knowing and of judging, torture the guiltless, punish the guiltless—and is it too little for him that he is not guilty, if he be not moreover blessed as well? How much more considerately and worthily of a man does he acknowledge the misery in this necessity, and hate it in himself, and, if he is piously wise, cry out to God: 'Deliver me from my necessities'! After the city or town follows the world, in which they place the third degree of human society—beginning from the home, and thence coming to the city, and then advancing to the world; which world, like a heap of waters, the greater it is, the more full of perils. In this, first of all, the diversity of tongues estranges man from man.

For if two men, neither of whom knows the other's tongue, meet one another and, by some necessity, are compelled not to pass by but to be together, dumb animals, even of different kinds, more easily associate with one another than they, though both be men. For when they cannot communicate to one another the things they feel, by reason of the diversity of language alone, so great a likeness of nature avails nothing toward associating men, so that a man would more gladly be with his dog than with a foreign man. But, it is said, care has been taken that the imperial city should impose upon the subdued nations not only its yoke but also its language, through the peace of society, whereby there should be no lack—nay, even an abundance—of interpreters. True it is;

but with how many and how great wars, with how great a slaughter of men, with how great an outpouring of human blood was this procured? And when these were over, the misery of these same evils was nonetheless not ended. For although there have not been lacking, nor are lacking, foreign nations as enemies against whom wars have been and are being waged, yet the very breadth of empire has begotten wars of a worse kind—social, that is, and civil wars—by which the human race is more wretchedly shaken, whether when war is waged, that they may sometime rest, or when it is feared lest they rise up again. And if I should wish to speak, as is fitting, of the many and manifold disasters of these evils, the hard and dire necessities—though I could by no means do so as the matter demands—

what limit will there be to the lengthy disputation? But the wise man, they say, will wage just wars. As if, if he remembers that he is a man, he would not much rather grieve that the necessity of just wars has arisen for him; for unless they were just, he would not have to wage them, and thus for the wise man there would be no wars at all. For it is the iniquity of the opposing side that imposes just wars to be waged upon the wise man; which iniquity is surely to be grieved over by a man, because it is a man's iniquity, even if no necessity of warring were born from it. Whoever, then, considers with grief these evils, so great, so horrible, so savage, let him confess that this is misery; but whoever either endures them or thinks upon them without grief of soul, is by all means the more wretched for supposing himself blessed, precisely because he has lost even human feeling.

But if there does not befall a certain ignorance resembling madness—which nevertheless often befalls in the wretched condition of this life, so that one is believed to be a friend who is an enemy, or an enemy who is a friend—what consoles us in this human society, most full of errors and afflictions, save the unfeigned faith and mutual love of true and good friends? The more of these we have, and in the more places, the more widely and afar do we fear lest some evil befall them from the so great heaps of evils of this world. For we are anxious not only lest they be afflicted by famine, by wars, by diseases, by captivities—lest in that same servitude they suffer such things as we cannot even conceive;

but even—where the fear is much more bitter—lest they be changed into perfidy, malice, and wickedness. And when these things befall (the more assuredly, the more numerous they are) and are brought to our notice, by what lashes our heart is burned, who can perceive, save he who feels such things? For we would rather hear that they are dead, although even this we cannot hear without grief. For those whose life delighted us for the solace of friendship—whence can it come to pass that their death should bring us no sadness?

Let him who forbids this grief forbid, if he can, friendly conversations, let him interdict or cut off friendly affection, let him with unfeeling stupor burst asunder the bonds of all human ties of the mind, or let him decree that they are so to be used that no sweetness from them should suffuse the soul. But if this can in no way be done, how shall it come to pass that the death of one whose life is sweet to us should not be bitter to us? For hence it is that the mourning of a not inhuman heart is a kind of wound or ulcer, to whose healing dutiful consolations are applied. For it is not the case that there is nothing to be healed, merely because the better a soul is, the more quickly and easily it is healed therein.

Since, therefore, the life of mortals is afflicted—now more mildly, now more harshly—even by the deaths of those most dear to us, especially of those whose services are necessary to human society, we would nevertheless rather hear or see those whom we love dead than lapsed from faith or from good morals—that is, dead in the very soul. By which vast material of evils the earth is full, on account of which it is written: 'Is not the life of man upon the earth a trial?' and on account of which the Lord himself says: 'Woe to the world because of offences'; and again: 'Because iniquity has abounded,' he says, 'the love of many shall grow cold.'

Whence it comes to pass that we congratulate good friends when they die, and, though their death saddens us, that very thing more surely consoles us, since they have been freed from the evils by which, in this life, even good men are either worn down, or depraved, or endangered in both. But in the society of the holy angels—which those philosophers who wished the gods to be our friends placed in the fourth rank, as it were coming to the world from the earth, that they might thus in a manner embrace even heaven—we in no way fear lest such friends should sadden us either by their death or by their depravation.

But because they do not mingle with us in that familiarity with which men do (which itself also pertains to the afflictions of this life), and because sometimes Satan, as we read, transforms himself as it were into an angel of light, to tempt those whom it is either needful to instruct or just to deceive: great is the mercy of God that is necessary, lest anyone, while he supposes that he has good angels as friends, should have evil demons as feigned friends, and should suffer as enemies those the more harmful the craftier and more deceitful they are. And to whom is this great mercy of God necessary, save to great human misery, which is pressed down by so great an ignorance that it is easily deceived by the pretence of such beings?

And that those philosophers in the impious city, who said that the gods were their friends, fell in with malign demons, is most certain—demons to whom that whole city is subjected, and with whom it shall have everlasting punishment. For from their sacred rites, or rather sacrileges, by which they thought those beings were to be worshipped, and from the most filthy games in which their crimes are celebrated, by which they thought them to be appeased—the very beings being the authors and exactors of such and so great disgraces—it is made abundantly plain by them what those are who are worshipped. But neither are the holy and faithful worshippers of the one true and supreme God secure from their deceits and manifold temptation.

For in this place of infirmity and in these evil days, even this solicitude is not without use, that that security, where the peace is most full and most sure, may be sought with more fervent desire. For there shall be the gifts of nature—that is, those things which are bestowed upon our nature by the Creator of all natures—not only good but even everlasting, not only in the soul, which is healed through wisdom, but even in the body, which shall be renewed by resurrection; there shall be virtues, not contending against any vices or evils whatsoever, but possessing as the reward of victory an eternal peace which no adversary may disturb. For this itself is the final blessedness, this the end of perfection, which has no end that consumes it.

Here, indeed, we are said to be blessed when we have peace, however little of it can be had in this present good life; yet this blessedness, compared with that which we call final, is found to be sheer misery. When, therefore, we mortal men possess such peace as can be had here amid mortal things, if we live rightly, virtue rightly uses its goods; but when we do not possess it, virtue makes good use even of the evils which a man suffers. But then is virtue true when it refers both all the goods it uses well, and whatever it does in the good use of goods and evils, and its very self, to that end where there will be for us such and so great a peace that no better or greater can exist.

Wherefore we might say that the end of our goods is peace, just as we have said it is eternal life, especially since it is said to the very City of God, concerning which this most laborious discussion of ours is engaged, in the holy psalm: 「Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Zion. For he hath strengthened the bars of thy gates; he hath blessed thy children within thee; who hath set thy borders in peace.」 For when the bars of her gates shall have been strengthened, none shall any more enter into her, nor shall any go out from her. And on this account we ought here to understand her borders to be that peace which we wish to show to be final. For the very mystical name of the city itself, that is, Jerusalem, which we have already said before, is interpreted 「the vision of peace.」

But since the name of peace is frequently used even in these mortal affairs, where assuredly there is no eternal life, on that account we have preferred to speak of the end of this city, where its highest good will be, as eternal life rather than as peace. Concerning this end the Apostle says: 「But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end everlasting life.」

But again, since eternal life may be taken by those who are not familiar with the Holy Scriptures to mean even the life of the wicked—either according to certain philosophers on account of the immortality of the soul, or even according to our own faith on account of the unending punishments of the impious, who assuredly could not be tormented for ever unless they also lived for ever—the end of this city, in which it will possess its highest good, must therefore be called either peace in eternal life or eternal life in peace, so that it may more easily be understood by all. For so great is the good of peace that even in earthly and mortal affairs nothing is wont to be heard with more welcome, nothing more longingly desired, nothing, in short, that can be found better.

And if we choose to speak of this at somewhat greater length, we shall not, I think, be burdensome to our readers, both on account of the end of this city of which we are speaking, and on account of the very sweetness of peace, which is dear to all. Anyone who observes human affairs and our common nature in any degree will recognize this along with me; for just as there is no one who does not wish to rejoice, so there is no one who does not wish to have peace. For even those who wish for wars wish for nothing else than to conquer; therefore by warring they desire to arrive at a glorious peace. For what is victory but the subjugation of those who resist? And when this has been done, there will be peace.

With the intention of peace, therefore, wars too are waged, even by those who are eager to exercise warlike valor by command and by battle. Whence it is evident that peace is the desired end of war. For every man seeks peace even by waging war, but no one seeks war by making peace. For even those who wish the peace in which they live to be disturbed do not hate peace, but desire to have it changed according to their own will. They do not therefore wish that there be no peace, but that it be such as they desire. Finally, even if by sedition they have separated themselves from others, they do not accomplish what they intend unless they maintain some kind of semblance of peace with their fellow conspirators or confederates.

Accordingly, robbers themselves, in order to be more fiercely and safely hostile to the peace of others, wish to have peace among their associates. And even if some one man be so pre-eminent in strength and so wary of accomplices that he trusts himself to no partner, but, lying in wait alone and prevailing, plunders those whom he can overpower and destroy, yet at least with those whom he cannot kill and from whom he wishes to hide what he does, he maintains some shadow of peace. And in his own house, with his wife and children, and any others he may have there, he certainly strives to be at peace; for he is doubtless delighted when they obey his beck and call.

For if this is not done, he is angry, he rebukes, he punishes, and he composes the peace of his own house, if it be necessary, even by cruelty; for he perceives that it cannot exist unless all the rest in that same domestic society are made subject to a certain head, which he himself is in his own house. And therefore, if the servitude of a greater number, whether of a city or a nation, were offered to him, so that they should serve him just as he wished to be served in his own home, he would no longer hide himself as a robber in dens, but would exalt himself as a conspicuous king, though the same greed and malice remained in him. Thus all men desire to have peace with their own people, whom they wish to live according to their own will. For even those against whom they wage war they wish, if they can, to make their own, and to impose upon them, once subjected, the laws of their own peace.

But let us imagine some being such as poetic and fabulous narrative sings of, whom perhaps on account of his very unsociable savagery they preferred to call a half-man rather than a man. Although, then, the kingdom of this creature was the solitude of a dreadful cave, and his malice so singular that from it a name was found for him (for in Greek what is evil is called kakos, which was what he was named), though no wife brought and returned to him a tender word, though he neither played with any little children nor gave commands to older ones, though he enjoyed the conversation of no friend, not even of his father Vulcan (in which respect alone he was not a little happier than his father, because he himself did not beget such a monster), though he gave nothing to anyone, but took whatever he wished from whomever he could, whenever he could, from whomever he chose:

nevertheless, in that solitary cave of his, whose ground, as it is described, was always warm with fresh slaughter, he wished for nothing else than peace, in which no one should trouble him, and no man's violence or terror should disturb his quiet. In short, he desired to have peace with his own body, and as much as he had of it, so much was well with him. For he ruled his obedient members; and that he might pacify with all the haste he could his own mortality, rebelling against him out of want and stirring up the sedition of hunger to sever the soul from the body and shut it out, he seized, he slew, he devoured; and monstrous and savage though he was, he yet took counsel, monstrously and savagely, for the peace of his own life and safety;

and thus, if he had been willing to have with others also the peace which he was busily concerned to have in his own cave and in himself, he would neither have been called evil, nor a monster, nor a half-man. Or if the shape of his body and his belching of black fires deterred human society from him, perhaps he raged not from a desire to do harm, but from the necessity of living. But in truth he may never have existed at all, or—what is more to be believed—was not such as he is described by poetic fancy; for unless Cacus were too much accused, Hercules would be too little praised. Such a man, therefore, or rather half-man, is, as I have said, better believed not to have existed, like many fictions of the poets.

For even the most savage beasts, from which he took a portion of his ferocity (for he was called half-beast), preserve their own kind by a certain peace, by mating, begetting, bearing, cherishing and nourishing their young—even though very many of them are unsociable and solitary; not, of course, like sheep, deer, doves, starlings, and bees, but like lions, wolves, foxes, eagles, and owls. For what tigress does not gently purr over her young and, laying aside her ferocity, fawn upon them? What kite, however solitary as it circles in search of prey, does not join in mating, build a nest, keep its eggs warm, feed its young, and preserve with the mother of the family, as it were, a domestic fellowship in as much peace as it can?

How much more is man, by the laws of his own nature, drawn in a certain manner to enter into fellowship and, so far as in him lies, to maintain peace with all men—since even the wicked wage war for the peace of their own people, and all wish, if they can, to make others their own, so that all and everything may serve one master? And by what means, save that they should consent to his peace either by loving or by fearing? For thus does pride perversely imitate God. For it hates equality with its fellows under Him, but wishes to impose its own dominion upon its fellows in place of Him. It hates, therefore, the just peace of God, and loves its own unjust peace. Yet it cannot in any way help loving some kind of peace. For no one's vice is so contrary to nature as to destroy even the last vestiges of nature.

And so the peace of the unjust, compared with the peace of the just, is not even to be called peace, in the eyes of one who knows how to prefer right things to wrong and ordered things to perverse. Yet that which is perverse must also be at peace in some part, and out of some part, and with some part of the things in which it exists or of which it consists; otherwise it would not exist at all. Just as, if anyone should hang head downwards, the position of the body and the order of the members is assuredly perverse, because that which nature requires to be above is beneath, and what she wishes to be beneath is made above; this perversity has disturbed the peace of the flesh and is therefore painful. Nevertheless, the soul is at peace with its own body and is busy for its safety, and therefore there is one who feels pain;