I. AUGUSTINE TO HERMOGENIANUS. I would never dare, not even in jest, to provoke the Academics—for how could the authority of such great men fail to move me?—unless I thought that they held a view far different from what is commonly believed; and for this reason I have rather imitated them, so far as I was able, than assailed them, which I am wholly unable to do. For it seems to me that it well suited those times that, if anything pure should flow from the Platonic fount, it should be led into the possession of a very few men amid shady and thorny thickets, rather than that, streaming through open ground where cattle everywhere rush in, it could in no way be kept clear and pure. For what is more fitting to cattle than to suppose the soul to be a body?
Against men of this sort I think that art and method of concealing the truth was usefully devised. But in this present age, since we now see no philosophers except perhaps in the little cloak of the body—men whom I should hardly judge worthy of so venerable a name—it seems to me that those men ought to be led back into the hope of finding the truth, if the opinion of the Academics has, through cleverness of words, frightened any of them away from the comprehension of things; lest that which was suited to its time for rooting out the deepest errors should now begin to be a hindrance to the implanting of knowledge. For so greatly then did zeal for the various sects burn, that nothing was to be feared except the approval of the false.
But each man, when driven by those arguments from that which he had believed himself to hold firm and unshaken, sought another thing all the more steadfastly and cautiously, the greater the diligence there was in his character and the more the truth was felt to lie hidden, deep and most intricate, within the nature of things and of minds. But now there is so great a fleeing from labor and a neglect of the good arts, that, as soon as it has been noised abroad that to the keenest philosophers it seemed nothing could be comprehended, they let their minds go slack and shroud them in eternal darkness. For they do not dare to trust themselves to be more vigorous than those men, so as to find out for themselves what Carneades, with so much zeal, talent, and leisure, with learning so vast and manifold, and finally even with the longest life, could not discover.
But if, even after struggling somewhat against their sloth, they read those same books in which the perception of human nature is, as it were, declared denied, they will fall asleep in so great a torpor that not even the heavenly trumpet would rouse them. Wherefore, since I hold your faithful judgment of my little books most welcome, and place so much weight upon you that neither error can befall your prudence nor pretense your friendship, I ask this above all: that you consider more diligently and write back to me whether you approve of what, at the end of the third book, I thought ought to be believed—more suspiciously perhaps than certainly, yet more usefully, I judge, than incredibly.
For my part, however those writings may stand, it does not so much delight me—as you write—that I have vanquished the Academics (for you write this perhaps more from affection than from truth) as that I have broken for myself that most hateful tether, by which I was being held back from the breast of philosophy through despair of the truth, which is the nourishment of the soul. II. AUGUSTINE TO ZENOBIUS. It is well agreed between us, I think, that all things which the bodily sense touches cannot remain even for a single point of time in the same condition, but slip away, flow off, and possess nothing present—that is, to speak in Latin, they are not.
And so true and divine philosophy warns us to bridle and lull to sleep the most pernicious love of these things, a love full of punishments, so that the soul, even while it still drives this body, may bear itself wholly toward, and burn for, those things which are always of the same kind and do not please by a borrowed beauty. And since this is so, and since the mind sees you, true and simple, such as you can be loved without any anxiety, within its very self, yet we confess that we seek this meeting and sight of you—and therefore, while it is permitted, desire it for the brethren—when you depart from us in body and are separated from us by place. And this fault, if I know you well, you love in us; and though you wish all good things for your dearest and most intimate friends, you fear to heal them of this one.
But if you are of so powerful a mind that you can both recognize this snare and laugh at those caught in it, then truly you are a great man and another sort altogether. As for me, so long as I long for one who is absent, I wish to be longed for. Yet I keep watch, as much as I can, and strive to love nothing which can be taken from me against my will. And while I am about this duty, I admonish you meanwhile, whatever sort of man you may be, that the discussion begun with you must be completed, if we are of any care to ourselves. For I would by no means allow it to be completed with Alypius, even if he wished. But he does not wish it; for it is not in keeping with his humanity to refuse to work with me, that by as many letters as we can we may hold you with us, you who flee from us by I know not what necessity. III. AUGUSTINE TO NEBRIDIUS.
Whether I should think it was brought about by some flattering speech of yours, so to call it, or whether the matter truly stands so, is uncertain with me. For it happened suddenly and has not been sufficiently deliberated, to what extent it ought to be committed to belief. You await what this is. What do you suppose? You have nearly persuaded me that I am not indeed blessed—for that is the possession of the wise man alone—but at least, as it were, blessed; as we call a man 'as it were a man' in comparison with that man whom Plato knew, or call those things which we see 'as it were round' and 'as it were square,' though they are far removed from those things which the mind of a few beholds. For I read your letter by lamplight, having now dined; bedtime was at hand, but not yet sleep-time as well;
for, having lain long with myself in bed, I pondered and held these conversations, Augustine himself with Augustine: 'Is it not true, as Nebridius is pleased to hold, that we are blessed?' Not at all; for that we are still fools not even he himself dares to deny. 'What if even to fools the blessed life falls?' Hard! As though indeed there were any small or any other misery than folly itself. 'Whence then did it seem so to him? Did he, after reading those little books, dare even to believe me wise?' Joy exulting is not so rash—especially the joy of a man of whose consideration we well know how great is the weight. 'This therefore it is:'
he wrote what he supposed would be most sweet to us, because it had become sweet to him also—whatever we put in those writings; and he wrote rejoicing and did not care what ought to be entrusted to a rejoicing pen. What? If he had read the Soliloquies? He would have rejoiced far more abundantly, yet would have found nothing more to call me than blessed. So quickly, then, did he pour out upon me the highest name, and reserved nothing for himself by which he might more joyfully affirm something about me. See what joy does. But where is that blessed life? Where? Where, pray? Oh, if it were itself to repel the atoms of Epicurus! Oh, if it were itself to know that there is nothing below except the world! Oh, if it were itself to know that the outer parts of the sphere turn more slowly than the middle! And other like things, which we likewise know.
But now, in what way am I blessed, even of whatever sort, I who do not know why the world is so great, since the ratios of the figures by which it exists in no way forbid it to be as much larger as anyone may have wished? Or would it not be said to me—nay rather, should we not be compelled to confess—that bodies are cut into the infinite, so that, from a certain base as it were, a certain number of little bodies should rise up into a certain quantity?
Wherefore, since no body is allowed to be the least, how shall we allow there to be a greatest, than which there could be nothing greater? unless perhaps that which I once said to Alypius most secretly has great force: namely that, since that intelligible number increases infinitely yet is not infinitely diminished—for it cannot be resolved beyond the monad—the sensible number, on the contrary (for what else is sensible number than the quantity of corporeal things or of bodies?), is indeed diminished infinitely, but cannot increase infinitely. And therefore perhaps the philosophers rightly place riches in intelligible things and poverty in sensible ones. For what is more wretched than to be able always to become less and less?
What is richer than to increase as much as you wish, to go where you wish, to return when you wish, as far as you wish, and to love greatly that which cannot be diminished? For whoever understands those numbers loves nothing so much as the monad; nor is it any wonder, since it is through the monad that the rest come to be loved. But nevertheless, why is the world so great? For it could be either larger or smaller. I do not know; for it is simply such as it is. And why in this place rather than that? Nor ought there to be any question on this matter: for wherever it were, there would be a question. That one thing greatly moved me, that bodies are cut infinitely; to which perhaps the answer has been given from the contrary power of intelligible number. But wait; let us see what this 'I-know-not-what' is, which is suggested to the mind.
Certainly the sensible world is said to be the image of some intelligible world I know not which. But it is a marvel which we see in the images that mirrors reflect; for however huge the mirrors may be, they do not render images larger than the bodies presented, even the very smallest. But in little glasses, as in the pupils of the eyes, even if a great face set itself opposite, a very small image is formed according to the measure of the mirror. Therefore the images of bodies may be diminished, if the mirrors are diminished; but they may not be enlarged, if the mirrors are enlarged. Here assuredly something lies hidden. But now I must sleep. For I do not seem blessed to Nebridius by seeking, but perhaps by finding something. But what is that something?
Is it perhaps that reasoning which I am wont to caress as though it were my only one, and to delight myself too much in? Of what do we consist? Of soul and body. Which of these is better? Evidently the soul. What is praised in the body? I see nothing else than beauty. What is bodily beauty? A harmony of parts together with a certain sweetness of color. Where is this form better—where it is true, or where it is false? Who would doubt that, where it is true, it is better? Where then is it true? In the soul, of course. Therefore the soul is more to be loved than the body. But in what part of the soul is this truth? In the mind and the understanding. What is opposed to this? The senses. We must therefore resist the senses, it is plain, with all the strength of the soul. What if sensible things delight too much? Let it be brought about that they do not delight. Whence comes this?
From the habit of doing without these things and of seeking better ones. What if the soul dies? Then truth dies, or understanding is not truth, or understanding is not in the soul, or something can die in which something immortal is. But that none of these can come to pass our Soliloquies already contain, and it has been sufficiently shown; yet by some habit of evils we are terrified and waver. Finally, even if the soul dies—which I see can in no way come to pass—still that the blessed life is not in the delight of sensible things has been sufficiently explored in this leisure. By these things, perhaps, and such as these, I seem to my Nebridius, if not blessed, yet at least as it were blessed. Let me seem so to myself as well; what do I lose thereby, or why should I spare a good opinion? These things I said to myself;
then I prayed, as I was wont, and slept. These things it pleased me to write to you. For it delights me that you give me thanks if I conceal nothing from you that has come upon my lips, and I rejoice because I so please you. With whom, then, should I play the fool more gladly than with one whom I cannot displease? But if it lies in the power of fortune that man should love man, see how blessed I am, who rejoice so much over things of chance and confess that I desire such goods to grow abundantly for me. But the goods of fortune the truest wise men—whom alone it is right to call blessed—wished neither to be feared nor to be coveted (or 'cupied'? you shall see). And it fell out aptly. For I wish you to make me acquainted with this conjugation. For when I join similar words, I become more uncertain.
For it is thus: 'cupio' as 'fugio,' as 'sapio,' as 'iacio,' as 'capio'; but whether the infinitive form is 'fugiri' or 'fugi,' whether 'sapiri' or 'sapi,' I do not know. I could attend to 'iaci' and 'capi,' did I not fear lest it should catch me and, for a mockery, throw me where it would—he who should prove that 'iactum' and 'captum' are one thing, and 'fugitum,' 'cupitum,' 'sapitum' another. And these same three, whether they ought to be pronounced with the penultimate long and circumflexed, or with a grave and short syllable, I likewise do not know. I would provoke you to a longer letter; I ask that I may read you a little longer. For I cannot say as much as it is a delight to read you. IV. AUGUSTINE TO NEBRIDIUS.
It is exceedingly marvelous how, beyond my hope, it has fallen out to me that, when I inquire to which of your letters a reply still remains owing from me, I have found only one which still holds me a debtor: that in which you ask that, out of our leisure—as much of it as you reckon there is, and as you desire there to be either with you or with us—we should indicate to you what progress we have made in distinguishing the sensible and intelligible nature. But I do not think it hidden from you that, if each man becomes the more entangled in false opinions the more familiarly he wallows in them, then this happens much more easily in the mind with regard to true things. Yet so, little by little, as through age, we make progress. For since there is a very great distance between a boy and a youth, no one, asked daily from his boyhood, will ever say that he is at any time a youth.
This I would not have you take in such a sense as to suppose that we, in these matters, have arrived as it were at a certain youth of the mind by the strength of a firmer understanding. For we are boys—but, as is wont to be said, perhaps pretty ones; and not badly so. For very often, when I am troubled and crammed with the cares of sensible blows, that little reasoning, so well known to you, lifts me into a breathing-space: that the mind and the understanding are better than the eyes and this common kind of sight. Which would not be so, unless those things which we understand were more truly existent than these things which we discern. Whether anything be powerfully hostile to this reasoning, I ask you to consider with me.
Refreshed by this for the time being, when, having besought God for aid, I begin to be lifted up both into Him and into those things which are most truly true, I am sometimes filled with so great a confident grasp of abiding things that I marvel at times that I have any need of that reasoning in order to believe that those things exist which are present with as great a presence as each man becomes present to himself. Do you also reconsider; for I confess you to be more diligent in this matter, lest perhaps I should still owe something, without knowing it, to your replies. For so sudden a laying-down of so many burdens, which I had once reckoned up, does not win my belief—although I do not doubt that you have received my letters, the replies to which I do not have. V. NEBRIDIUS TO AUGUSTINE. Is it so, my Augustine?
You furnish fortitude and endurance to the affairs of citizens, and that longed-for rest is still not rendered to you? I beg you, who are the men that interrupt you, so great a good? I believe, those who do not know what you love, what you desire. Is there no one of your friends to report your loves to them? Neither Romanianus nor Lucinianus? Let them at least hear me. I will cry aloud, I will testify that you love God, and desire to serve and to cleave to Him. I could wish to call you to my country estate and there to find rest. For I shall not fear to be called a seducer of you by your fellow citizens, whom you love too much and by whom you are loved too much. VI. NEBRIDIUS TO AUGUSTINE. It pleases me much to keep your letters as I keep my own eyes.
For they are great, not in quantity but in substance, and contain great proofs of great matters. They will sound to me of Christ, of Plato, of Plotinus. They will therefore be to me both sweet for hearing because of their eloquence, easy for reading because of their brevity, and wholesome for understanding because of their wisdom. You will take care, then, to teach me whatever shall have seemed holy and good to your mind. To this letter you will reply when you have disputed something more subtly concerning phantasy and memory. For so it seems to me, that although not every phantasy is with memory, yet all memory cannot be without phantasy. But you will say: 'What, when we recall that we have understood or thought something?'
Against this I reply and say that this comes about for the following reason: that when we have understood or thought something corporeal and temporal, we have begotten that which pertains to phantasy. For either we have joined words to our understanding and thoughts—which words are not without time and pertain to the sense or to phantasy—or our understanding or thought has undergone some such thing as could have made a memory in the phantastic soul. These things I have said inconsiderately and confusedly, as is my habit; you will examine them, and, the false being rejected, you will set down the truth in writing. Hear another point: why, I ask you, do we not say that all images are had by the soul from itself rather than from the sense?
For it is possible that, just as our intellectual soul is admonished by the sense to see its own intelligibles rather than receives anything from it, so also the phantastic soul is admonished by the sense to contemplate its own images rather than takes up anything from it. For perhaps it thence comes about that those things which the sense does not see, the soul can nevertheless behold. Which is a sign that it has all images in itself and from itself. On this matter also you will reply what you think. VII. AUGUSTINE TO NEBRIDIUS. I will pass over the preface and quickly begin what you now and again wish me to say, especially as I shall not quickly leave off. Memory seems to you to be able to be none without images or imaginary sights, which you have wished to call by the name of phantasies; I judge otherwise.
First, then, it must be seen that we do not always remember things that pass away, but for the most part things that abide. Wherefore, although memory claims for itself a tenacity of past time, it is nevertheless agreed that it is partly of those things which forsake us, partly of those things which are forsaken by us. For when I recall my father, I recall indeed that which has forsaken me and now is not; but when I recall Carthage, I recall that which is and which I myself forsook. Yet in both of these kinds memory holds the past time. For both that man and that city I remember from that which I saw, not from that which I see. Here perhaps you ask: 'To what end is this?'—especially since you observe that neither of these can come into memory except by that imaginary sight.
But it is enough for me to have shown thus, for the time being, that a memory can be spoken of even of those things which have not yet perished. But how this helps me, see that you take in more attentively. Some men cavil against that most noble discovery of Socrates, by which it is asserted that those things which we learn are not, as it were, newly inserted into us, but are recalled into memory by recollection; saying that memory is of past things, but that these things which we learn by understanding remain forever (Plato himself being the author of this) and cannot perish, and through this are not past. But they do not attend to the fact that the vision itself is past, because we once saw these things with the mind; from which, since we have flowed away and begun to see other things otherwise, we revisit them by remembering—that is, through memory.
Wherefore if—to pass over other things—eternity itself ever abides and seeks no imaginary fictions by which it might come into the mind as if by vehicles, yet could not come unless we remembered it, then there can be a memory of certain things without any imagination. Now indeed, that which seems to you—that the soul, even when it has not used the senses of the body, can imagine corporeal things—is proved false in this way. If the soul, before it uses the body for perceiving bodies, can imagine those same bodies, and was better disposed (which no sound man doubts) before it was entangled with these deceptive senses, then the souls of sleepers are better disposed than those of the waking, the souls of the frenzied better than those lacking such a plague;
for they are affected by those images by which they were affected before these most empty messengers of the senses; and either the sun which they see will be truer than that which the sound and waking see, or false things will be better than true ones. But if these are absurd—as indeed they are—then that imagination, my Nebridius, is nothing else than a blow inflicted through the senses, by which there is not, as you write, a certain reminding, so that such things are formed in the soul, but the very bringing-in, or, to speak more expressly, the impressing of this falsity. But what indeed moves you—how it comes about that we think of those faces and forms which we have never seen—moves you acutely.
And so I will do something that will extend this letter beyond the usual measure—but not with you, for whom no page is more welcome than that which brings me more talkative to you. All these images, which along with many others you call phantasies, I see most conveniently and most truly distributed into three kinds: of which one is impressed from things perceived, another from things supposed, the third from things reckoned.
Examples of the first kind are when the soul forms within itself your face, or Carthage, or our former friend Verecundus, and anything else of abiding or of dead things which nevertheless I have seen and perceived. Under the second kind are placed those things which we suppose to have been thus, or to be thus; or when, for the sake of discussion, we ourselves invent certain things in no way hindering the truth; or such things as we picture when a history is read, and when we either hear or compose or surmise fabulous tales. For I, as it pleases me and as it occurs to my mind, fashion for myself the face of Aeneas, I of Medea with her serpents harnessed to the winged chariot, I of Chremes and some Parmeno.
To this kind belong also those things which either the wise, wrapping some truth in such figures, or fools, the founders of various superstitions, have brought forward as true: such as the Tartarean Phlegethon, and the five caverns of the race of darkness, and the northern pillar holding up heaven, and the other thousand monstrosities of the poets and heretics. We say too, in the midst of disputation: 'Suppose there are three worlds one above another, such as this one is'; and: 'Suppose the earth is contained in a square figure.' And the like. For all these things we fashion and suppose according as the storm of thought may have it.
Now concerning things which pertain to the third kind of images, the matter is chiefly handled in numbers and dimensions; which is partly in the nature of things—when the figure of the whole world is discovered, and an image follows this discovery in the mind of the one thinking—partly in the disciplines, as in geometrical figures and in rhythmical and musical figures and in the infinite variety of numbers. And although these are grasped as true—just as I affirm them to be—they nevertheless beget false imaginations, which reason itself scarcely resists; although it is not easy even for the discipline of disputation itself to be free of this evil, since in divisions and conclusions we imagine certain things as if they were counters.
In all this forest of images, I believe that the first kind does not seem to you to pertain to the soul before it cleaves to the senses; and on this there is no need to dispute longer. Concerning the two remaining kinds a question could still rightly be raised, were it not manifest that the soul is less liable to falsehoods when it has not yet suffered the vanity of sensible things and of the senses. But who would doubt that these images are much falser than those sensible things? For those things which we suppose and believe or invent are, on every side, wholly false; and certainly those things which we see and perceive are, as you discern, far truer.
Now, in that third kind, whatever corporeal space I may have figured to my mind—although thought seems to have produced it by the by-no-means-deceiving reasonings of the disciplines—yet by those same reasonings, which prove it, I convict it of being false. Whence it comes about that in no way do I believe the soul, when not yet perceiving through the body, not yet beaten by mortal and fleeting substance through the most empty senses, to have lain in so great a disgrace of falsehood. Whence, then, does it come about that we think of things which we do not see? What do you suppose, except that there is a certain power of diminishing and increasing implanted in the soul, which, wherever it comes, it must needs bring with it? Which power can be observed especially in numbers.
By this it comes about that, for example, an image of a crow set as it were before the eyes—which is of course known to sight—may, by taking away and adding certain things, be led on to any image whatsoever that has never at all been seen. This comes to pass so that, through habit, in souls that turn themselves about among such things, figures of this kind rush in upon the thoughts as if of their own accord. It is permitted, therefore, to the imagining soul, by taking away (as has been said) and adding from those things which the sense has brought in to it, to beget those things which it touches by no sense as a whole; but their parts it had touched in some things or others.
Thus we, born and nurtured as boys among inland peoples, could already, from water seen even in a small cup, imagine seas; whereas the taste of strawberries and cornel-cherries, before we tasted them in Italy, could in no way come into our mind. Hence it is that those blind from earliest age, when they are questioned about light and colors, find nothing to answer; for they who have perceived no colored images suffer none. Nor wonder how those things which are figured in the nature of things can be fashioned, unless the soul, which is present in all things, first turn these things over within itself, since it has never perceived them from outside.
For do not we ourselves also, in indignation or in gladness and the other motions of the soul of this kind, form in our body many countenances and colors—our thought, before we can do it, conceiving such images? These things follow in those marvelous ways, even to be committed to your thought: when, in the soul without any figure of corporeal falsehoods, hidden numbers are set in motion. From which I would have you understand that, since you perceive there to be so many motions of the soul devoid of all those images about which you now inquire, the soul obtains a body rather by some other motion than by the thinking of sensible forms—which forms I think it can in no way suffer before it uses the body and the senses.
Wherefore, by our friendship and by the very faith of divine right, I would earnestly admonish you, most dear and most delightful to me: form no friendship with those infernal shades, nor delay to tear apart that which has been formed. For the bodily senses are in no way resisted—which is for us the most sacred discipline—if we coax the blows and wounds inflicted through them. VIII. NEBRIDIUS TO AUGUSTINE. To me, hastening to come to the matter, no preface, no exordium pleases. How does it come about, my Augustine—or what is that mode which the higher powers use, those which I wish to be understood as the heavenly ones, when it pleases them to show us, as we sleep, certain dreams? What, I say, is the mode?