Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 37 part 1/3

We must now discourse concerning wisdom: not that wisdom of God which is beyond all doubt God himself (for the wisdom of God is called his only-begotten Son), but we shall speak of the wisdom of man, yet a true wisdom, which is according to God and is his true and chief worship, which by a single name is called in Greek 'theosebeia.'

This name, as we have already noted, our own writers, wishing likewise to render it by a single word, called 'piety,' although among the Greeks piety is more usually named 'eusebeia'; but 'theosebeia,' since it cannot be perfectly rendered by one word, is better translated by two, so that it may rather be called 'the worship of God.' That this is the wisdom of man—which we have already set down in the twelfth volume of this work—is shown by the authority of Holy Scripture in the book of Job, the servant of God, where we read that the wisdom of God said to man: 'Behold, piety is wisdom; but to abstain from evils is knowledge' (or, as some have translated from the Greek 'episteme,' 'instruction'—which indeed takes its name from learning, whence it can also be called knowledge;

for a thing is learned to this end, that it may be known—though under another meaning 'instruction' is wont to be used for the evils which each one suffers on account of his sins, that he may be corrected. Hence that saying in the Epistle to the Hebrews: 'For what son is there whom his father does not instruct?'; and that yet more plainly in the same epistle: 'Now all instruction for the present seems to be not of joy but of sorrow; but afterward it will yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.') God, then, is himself the highest wisdom; but the worship of God is the wisdom of man of which we now speak. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. According to this wisdom, then, which is the worship of God, the Holy Scripture says: 'A multitude of the wise is the health of the world.'

But if to discourse of wisdom belongs to the wise, what shall we do? Shall we dare to profess wisdom, lest our discourse concerning it be presumptuous? Shall we not be deterred by the example of Pythagoras, who, when he did not dare to profess himself wise, answered rather that he was a philosopher, that is, a lover of wisdom—from whom that name so arose and thenceforth so pleased posterity, that however much anyone might seem, either to himself or to others, to excel in doctrine touching things pertaining to wisdom, he was called nothing but a philosopher? Or was it for this reason that none of such men dared to profess himself wise, because they thought that the wise man was without any sin? This our Scripture does not say, which says: 'Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you';

for assuredly it judges him to have sin whom it deems fit to be rebuked. But not even so do I dare to profess myself wise. It is enough for me—what not even they themselves can deny—that it belongs also to a philosopher, that is, a lover of wisdom, to discourse of wisdom. For they did not cease to do this who professed themselves lovers of wisdom rather than wise. And discoursing of wisdom, they defined it, saying: 'Wisdom is the knowledge of things human and divine.' Whence I too, in the preceding book, did not keep silent that the knowledge of both kinds of things—that is, of things divine and human—can be called both wisdom and knowledge. But according to that distinction by which the Apostle said:

'To one is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge,' this definition is to be divided, so that the knowledge of divine things be properly named wisdom, while the knowledge of human things properly obtains the name of knowledge—concerning which I discoursed in the thirteenth volume, not indeed attributing to this knowledge whatsoever can be known by man in human affairs (wherein there is very much superfluous vanity and harmful curiosity), but only that by which the most wholesome faith, which leads to true blessedness, is begotten, nourished, defended, and strengthened. In which knowledge very many of the faithful are not strong, although they are very strong in the faith itself.

For it is one thing merely to know what a man ought to believe in order to attain the blessed life, which is none other than the eternal one; but it is another thing to know how this very faith may both aid the pious and be defended against the impious—which the Apostle seems to call by the proper term 'knowledge.' Of this, when I earlier spoke, I took care especially to commend faith itself, briefly first distinguishing eternal things from temporal, and there discoursing of temporal things, but deferring eternal things to this book; and even concerning eternal things I showed that faith is indeed temporal and dwells temporally in the hearts of believers, yet is necessary for attaining those very eternal things.

I also discoursed that faith concerning temporal things—which the Eternal One did and suffered for us in the man whom he temporally bore and carried through to the eternal—profits toward the attainment of those same eternal things; and that the very virtues by which one lives prudently, bravely, temperately, and justly in this temporal mortality are not true virtues unless they be referred to that same faith, temporal though it be, which nevertheless leads to eternal things. [II 4] Wherefore, since, as it is written: 'As long as we are in the body we are absent from the Lord';

for we walk by faith, not by sight—assuredly, as long as the just man lives by faith, although he lives according to the inner man, and although through that same temporal faith he strives and tends toward eternal truth, yet in the retention, contemplation, and love of that same temporal faith he is not yet such a trinity as ought already to be called the image of God, lest that which ought to be established in things eternal seem to be established in things temporal. For the human mind, when it sees its own faith, by which it believes what it does not see, sees nothing everlasting.

For this will not always be, seeing that it certainly will not be when, this pilgrimage ended—the pilgrimage by which we are absent from the Lord, so that it is necessary to walk by faith—there shall succeed that sight by which we shall see face to face; just as now, though not seeing, yet because we believe, we shall deserve to see, and shall rejoice that through faith we have been led on to sight. For there will then no longer be faith by which are believed the things that are not seen, but sight by which shall be seen the things that were believed.

Then, therefore, even if we remember this mortal life once passed through, and recall by memory that we once believed things we did not see, that faith will be reckoned among things past and finished, not among things present and ever-abiding; and thereby also this very trinity, which now consists in the memory, contemplation, and love of that same present and abiding faith, will then be found to be past and finished, not permanent. From which it follows that, if this trinity is already the image of God, it too is to be held not among the things that always are, but among things that pass away.

[III] But far be it that, since the soul's nature is immortal and from the beginning of its creation never thereafter ceases to be, that in it than which it has nothing better should not endure together with its immortality. And what better has been created in its nature than that it was made to the image of its Creator? Not, therefore, in the retention, contemplation, and love of faith, which will not be forever, but in that which will be forever, is to be found what ought to be called the image of God. Or shall we still, somewhat more diligently and more deeply, search out whether the matter stands thus?

For it can be said that this trinity does not perish even when faith itself has passed away, because just as now we both hold it by memory, discern it by thought, and love it by will, so also then, when we shall hold by memory that we had it and shall recall it, and shall join both these by a third, the will, the same trinity will abide. (For if it left behind in us no trace, as it were, of its passing, assuredly we shall have nothing of it in our memory to which we might recur in recollecting it as past, and joining both these by a third act of attention—namely, that which was in the memory while we were not thinking thereof, and that which is formed from thence by thought.)

But he who says this does not distinguish that it is one trinity now, when we hold, see, and love the present faith in us, and another trinity to come then, when we shall behold in recollection, not the faith itself, but as it were its imaginary trace stored up in the memory, and shall join these two—that is, what was in the memory of the one retaining it, and what is thence imprinted upon the gaze of the one recollecting—by a third, the will.

That this may be understood, let us take an example from corporeal things, of which we have spoken sufficiently in the eleventh book. Namely, ascending from lower things to higher, or entering from outer things to inner, we find a first trinity in the body which is seen, and in the gaze of the one seeing, which is formed thence when it sees, and in the intention of the will which joins both.

Let us set up something similar to this trinity, when the faith which is now within us has been established in our memory just as that body was in place, and from it the thought of the one recollecting is informed, as the gaze of the one beholding was from that body; to which two, that a trinity may be completed, there is reckoned a third, the will, which connects and joins the faith established in the memory and a certain effigy of it imprinted upon the sight of recollection, just as in that corporeal trinity of vision the intention of the will joins the form of the body which is seen and the conformation which comes to be in the gaze of the beholder. Let us therefore suppose that body which was beheld to have perished, dissolved, and that nothing of it has remained in any place to which the sight may recur to see it.

Is it then, because the image of a corporeal thing now past and gone remains in the memory, whence the gaze of the one thinking may be informed, and both are joined by a third, the will—is the same trinity to be called that which had existed when the appearance of the body set in place was being seen? Not at all, but wholly another. For besides that the former was without, this within, the former was assuredly produced by the appearance of the present body, this by the image of the past. So also in this matter of which we now treat, and for the sake of which we thought that example should be applied: the faith which is now in our mind, like that body in place, while it is held, beheld, and loved, effects a certain trinity;

but it will not be the same when this faith will no longer be in the soul, as that body no longer in place. And that which will then exist, when we shall recollect that it was in us and is not, will assuredly be another. For the one which now exists is made by the present thing itself, fixed in the mind of the believer; but that which will then exist will be made by the imagination of the past thing left behind in the memory of the one recollecting. Therefore neither will that trinity, which now is not, be the image of God, nor is this the image of God which will then not be; but that image of the Creator is to be found in the soul of man—that is, in the rational or intellectual soul—which is immortally implanted in his immortality.

[IV] For just as the soul's very immortality is spoken of according to a certain manner (for the soul too has its death, when it lacks the blessed life, which is to be called the true life of the soul; yet it is called immortal because, with whatever kind of life, even when it is most wretched, it never ceases to live), so, although reason or intellect may now be dormant in it, now appear small, now great, the human soul is never anything but rational and intellectual;

and hence, if it was made to the image of God according to this—that it can use reason and intellect to understand and behold God—then assuredly, from the beginning when this so great and wonderful nature began to be, whether this image be so worn away as to be almost nothing, or be obscure and deformed, or be clear and beautiful, it always is. Finally, the divine Scripture, pitying the deformity of its dignity, says: 'Although man walks in an image, yet he is vainly disquieted; he heaps up treasure and knows not for whom he shall gather it.' It would not therefore attribute vanity to the image of God unless it discerned that it had been made deformed. And that this deformity does not so prevail as to take away the fact that it is an image, it sufficiently shows by saying: 'Although man walks in an image.'

Wherefore from either side this sentence can be truly pronounced, so that, just as it was said, 'Although man walks in an image, yet he is vainly disquieted,' so it may be said: 'Although man is vainly disquieted, yet he walks in an image.' For although it is a great nature, yet it could be vitiated, because it is not the highest; and although it could be vitiated because it is not the highest, yet because it is capable of the highest nature and can be a partaker of it, it is a great nature. Let us therefore seek in this image of God a certain trinity of its own kind, with the help of him who made us to his image.

For we cannot otherwise wholesomely investigate these things and, according to the wisdom which is from him, find anything; but if those things which we said in the earlier books, and especially in the tenth, concerning the human soul or mind, be either held and recalled by the reader's memory, or reviewed with diligence in the very places in which they were written, he will not here require a more prolix discourse on the inquiry into so great a matter. Among other things, then, we said in the tenth book that the mind of man knows itself. For nothing is so present to the mind as that which is present to itself, and nothing is more present to the mind than the mind is to itself. And we adduced other proofs, as far as seemed sufficient, by which this might most certainly be established.

[V] What then is to be said of the mind of an infant, still so small and sunk in so great an ignorance of things that the mind of a man which knows something shudders at the darkness of that mind? Is it too to be believed to know itself, but, being too intent upon those things which it has begun to perceive through the senses of the body with a delight all the greater for being newer, is unable to be ignorant of itself, and yet unable to think of itself?

Moreover, with how great an intentness it is borne toward those sensible things which are without, may be conjectured even from this alone: that it is so avid of drinking in this light that, if anyone less cautious, or not knowing what harm might come thereof, has placed a night-lamp where the infant lies, on that side to which the eyes of the lying child may be turned back and the neck cannot be bent, its gaze is so not removed from it that we know some have even become squint-eyed from this, their eyes retaining that form which habit in a manner fixed in them while tender and soft. So also into the other senses of the body, as far as that age allows, the souls of little ones so contract themselves, as it were, with intentness, that they vehemently shrink from or crave only whatever offends or allures through the flesh;

but they do not think of their own inner things, nor can they be admonished to do this, because they do not yet know the signs of the one admonishing, among which words hold the chief place, which, like all else, they utterly do not know. But that it is one thing not to know oneself, another not to think of oneself, we have already shown in the same volume. But let us pass over this age, which cannot be questioned what is being done within it, and of which we ourselves are utterly forgetful. Let it suffice that from this alone we are made certain: that when a man has been able to think of the nature of his own mind and to find what is true, he will not find it elsewhere than within his own self. But he will find, not what he did not know, but that of which he was not thinking.

For what do we know, if we do not know that which is in our own mind, since all that we know we can know only by the mind? [VI] Yet so great is the power of thought that not even the mind itself in a manner sets itself in its own sight except when it thinks of itself; and thereby nothing is in the sight of the mind except that which is being thought of, so that not even the mind itself, by which is thought whatever is thought, can be in its own sight otherwise than by thinking of itself. But how, when it does not think of itself, it should not be in its own sight—since it can never be without itself—as though it were one thing itself, and another the sight of it, I cannot find out. For this is not absurdly said of the eye of the body. For the eye itself is fixed in its own place in the body;

but its gaze is stretched forth toward those things which are without, and is extended even to the stars. Nor is the eye in its own sight, seeing that it does not behold itself except by a mirror set before it, of which we have already spoken. But this certainly does not happen when the mind sets itself in its own sight by thought. Does the mind then, with one part of itself, see another part of itself, when it beholds itself by thinking, just as with our other members which are the eyes we behold our other members which can be in our sight? What more absurd can be said or thought? Whence, then, is the mind taken away, except from itself; and where is it set in its own sight, except before itself? It will not therefore be there where it was when it was not in its own sight, because being here placed, it was thence taken away?

But if it has migrated in order to be beheld, where will it remain in order to behold? Or is it, as it were, doubled, so as to be both there and here—that is, both where it can behold and where it can be beheld—so that in itself it is beholding, before itself the thing beheld? Truth, when consulted, answers us none of these things, since when we think in this manner we think only of the feigned images of bodies, which the mind is not, is most certain to the few minds by which truth can be consulted on this matter. It remains, therefore, that something pertaining to its nature is the sight of it, and that it is recalled into that sight, when it thinks of itself, not as if through spatial extent, but by an incorporeal turning.

But when it does not think of itself, it is indeed not in its own sight, nor is its gaze formed from it; yet it knows itself as though it were itself a memory of itself. Just as one skilled in many disciplines—the things which he knows are contained in his memory, nor is any of them in the sight of his mind except that of which he thinks; the rest are stored away in a certain hidden knowledge which is called memory. Therefore we so commended the trinity, that we placed in the memory that from which the gaze of the one thinking is formed; the conformation itself, as it were, the image which is imprinted thence; and that by which both are joined, love or will. The mind, therefore, when by thought it beholds itself, understands and recognizes itself:

it begets, therefore, this understanding and knowledge of itself. For an incorporeal thing is beheld when it is understood, and by understanding is known. Nor indeed does the mind so beget this knowledge of itself, when it beholds itself understood by thinking, as though it had before been unknown to itself; but it was so known to itself as those things are known which are contained in the memory even if they are not being thought of (since we say that a man knows letters even when he is thinking of other things, not of letters). But these two, the begetter and the begotten, are coupled by love as a third, which is nothing else than the will seeking or holding something to be enjoyed. And therefore we thought the trinity of the mind should be intimated by those three names also: memory, understanding, will.

But since we said, toward the end of that same tenth book, that the mind always remembers itself and always understands and loves itself, although it does not always think of itself as distinct from those things which are not what it is, it must be asked in what manner understanding pertains to thought, while the knowledge of anything that is in the mind—even when it is not being thought of—is said to pertain to memory alone. For if this be so, the mind did not have these three, so as both to remember itself and to understand itself and to love itself, but only remembered itself; and afterward, when it began to think of itself, then it understood and loved itself.

[VII] Wherefore let us consider more diligently that example which we adduced, where it was shown that it is one thing not to know a given thing, another not to think of it, and that it can happen that a man knows something of which he does not think, when he thinks of something else, not of it. One skilled, then, in two or more disciplines, when he thinks of one, yet knows the other, or others, even though he does not think of them. But can we rightly say: 'This musician indeed knows music, but does not now understand it, because he does not think of it; he understands, however, geometry now, for this he now thinks of'? That sentence is absurd, as far as appears. What too of that, if we should say: 'This musician indeed knows music, but does not now love it when he does not think of it;

but he now loves geometry, since he now thinks of it'? Is not this likewise absurd? But most rightly do we say: 'This man whom you observe disputing about geometry is also an accomplished musician. For he both remembers that discipline and understands and loves it; but although he knows and loves it, he does not now think of it, since he thinks of geometry, about which he disputes.' Hence we are admonished that there are in the hidden depth of our mind certain items of knowledge of certain things, and that these then in a manner come forth into the open and are set, as it were, more manifestly in the sight of the mind, when they are thought of; for then the mind finds that it both remembers and understands and loves even that of which it was not thinking when it was thinking of something else.

But that of which we have long not thought, and of which we are unable to think unless reminded—this, in some strange and marvelous manner (if it can be said), we know that we do not know. Finally, it is rightly said by him who reminds, to him whom he reminds: 'You know this, but you do not know that you know it; I will remind you, and you will find yourself knowing what you had supposed you did not know.' This too the writings accomplish which are composed concerning such matters, the truth of which things the reader, with reason as guide, finds to be true—not the things which he believes to be true to the one who wrote, as history is read, but the things which he too himself finds to be true, whether within himself or in the very truth that guides the mind.

But he who, even when reminded, is unable to behold these things, is sunk more deeply into the darkness of ignorance by the great blindness of his heart, and needs a more wonderful divine aid that he may be able to attain to true wisdom. On this account, therefore, I wished to adduce, concerning thought, some proof of a kind by which it might be shown how, from those things which are contained in the memory, the gaze of the one recollecting is informed, and something of such a kind is begotten, when a man thinks, as was in him where, before thought, he remembered; because that which comes to be in time, and where the parent precedes the offspring by an interval of time, is more easily discerned.

For if we refer ourselves to the inner memory of the mind by which it remembers itself, and the inner understanding by which it understands itself, and the inner will by which it loves itself—where these three are together and have always been together from the time they began to be, whether they were thought of or not thought of—the image of that Trinity will indeed seem to pertain to memory alone. But because there a word cannot be without thought (for we think all that we say, even by that inner word which pertains to the tongue of no nation), this image is rather recognized in those three, namely, memory, understanding, will.

But I now call understanding that by which we understand in thinking—that is, when, on discovering those things which were present to the memory but were not being thought of, our thought is formed—and that will, or love, or affection, which joins this offspring and parent, and is in a manner common to both. Hence it came about that even through outer sensible things, which are seen by the eyes of the flesh, I led on the slowness of readers—namely, in the eleventh book—and thence, together with them, I entered into that power of the inner man by which it reasons concerning temporal things, distinguishing it from that principally dominant power by which it contemplates eternal things.

And this I did in two volumes: in the twelfth distinguishing the two, of which one is higher, the other lower, which ought to be subject to the higher; but in the thirteenth I discoursed, with what truth and brevity I could, concerning the office of the lower part, in which is contained the wholesome knowledge of human affairs, so that in this temporal life we may do that whereby we may attain the eternal—since I enclosed in one strictly compact volume a matter so manifold and copious, celebrated by the many and great disputations of many and great men, showing even in it a trinity, but not yet one that is to be called the image of God.

[VIII 11] But now we have already come to that discussion in which we have undertaken to consider the principal part of the human mind, by which it knows or is able to know God, that in it we may find the image of God. For although the human mind is not of that nature of which God is, yet the image of that nature than which no nature is better is to be sought and found in us in that whereby our nature too has nothing better. But the mind must first be considered in itself, before it becomes a partaker of God, and in it his image is to be found. For we have said that, even with the participation of God lost, worn away and deformed, it nevertheless remains the image of God.

For by this very fact it is his image, that it is capable of him and can be a partaker of him—which so great a good it cannot be except through this, that it is his image. Behold, then, the mind remembers itself, understands itself, loves itself. If we discern this, we discern a trinity—not yet indeed God, but already the image of God. The memory did not receive from without what it should hold, nor did the understanding find without what it should behold, as does the eye of the body; nor did the will join these two from without, as it joins the form of the body which is seen and that which is thence made in the gaze of the beholder.

Nor does thought, when it is turned toward it, discover an image of a thing seen without which has been in a certain manner snatched up and stored away in the memory, from which the gaze of the one remembering is given its form, a third thing, the will, joining both together — as we were showing to happen in those trinities which were found in bodily things, or which were in a certain manner drawn inward from bodies through the sense of the body, concerning all of which we treated in the eleventh book.