«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from our conversation amiss, and I have long borne it so, that I neither hindered those things which, intent and withdrawn from us, you were doing on your own behalf, nor pursued those things which that pen of yours would not let you lose.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.