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;
and if the soul, driven out by these troubles, should depart, still, as long as the framework of the members remains, that which remains is not without a certain peace of its parts, and therefore there is still that which hangs. And in that the earthly body strains toward the earth, and struggles against the bond by which it is suspended, it tends toward the order of its own peace, and by the voice of its weight, as it were, demands a place where it may rest; and now lifeless and without any sensation, it nevertheless does not withdraw from the natural peace of its own order, whether it holds that place or is borne toward it. For if remedies and preparation be applied, which do not allow the form of the corpse to dissolve and fall apart, still a certain peace joins the parts to the parts and applies the whole mass to an earthly and suitable, and therefore peaceful, place.
But if no care of embalming be applied, and it be left to its natural course, then for a time it is, as it were, in tumult with vapors at variance with one another and disagreeable to our senses (for that is what is perceived in putrefaction), until it agrees with the elements of the world and departs little by little, particle by particle, into their peace. Yet in no way is anything thereby withdrawn from the laws of that supreme Creator and Orderer, by whom the peace of the universe is administered; for even if from the corpse of a larger animal tiny creatures are born, by the same law of the Creator every little body serves its own little souls in the peace of its own well-being;
and even if the flesh of the dead be devoured by other animals, whithersoever they be drawn, and with whatever things they be joined, and into whatsoever things they be turned and changed, they find those same laws diffused throughout all things, bringing fitting things into peace with fitting things for the well-being of every kind of mortal creature.
The peace of the body, then, is the ordered proportion of its parts; the peace of the irrational soul is the ordered repose of the appetites; the peace of the rational soul is the ordered agreement of knowledge and action; the peace of body and soul is the ordered life and well-being of the living creature; the peace of mortal man and God is ordered obedience in faith under the eternal law; the peace of men is ordered concord; the peace of a household is the ordered concord of those dwelling together in commanding and obeying; the peace of a city is the ordered concord of the citizens in commanding and obeying; the peace of the heavenly city is the most ordered and most harmonious fellowship in enjoying God and one another in God; the peace of all things is the tranquillity of order. Order is the disposition of equal and unequal things, assigning to each its own place.
Accordingly, the wretched, since in so far as they are wretched they are assuredly not in peace, indeed lack the tranquillity of order in which there is no disturbance; nevertheless, because they are deservedly and justly wretched, they cannot, even in that very wretchedness of theirs, be outside the order—not, indeed, joined to the blessed, but yet severed from them by the law of order. And when they are without disturbance, they are fitted to the things in which they are with whatever congruity is possible; and on this account there is in them some tranquillity of order, and therefore some peace. But they are wretched for this reason, that although in some measure of security they do not grieve, yet they are not there where they ought to be secure and free from grief; and they are more wretched still if there is no peace for them with the very law by which the natural order is administered.
But when they grieve, in that part in which they grieve a disturbance of peace has taken place; yet peace still remains in that part in which no pain burns and the framework itself is not dissolved. As, therefore, there is a certain life without pain, but there cannot be pain without some life, so there is a certain peace without any war, but there cannot be war without some peace—not according to that which war is, but according to that which is waged by or in those things which are natures of some kind; and these could in no way exist if they did not subsist by some kind of peace. Wherefore there is a nature in which there is no evil, or even in which there can be no evil; but there cannot be a nature in which there is no good.
Accordingly, not even the nature of the devil himself, in so far as it is a nature, is evil; but perversity makes it evil. And so he did not stand in the truth, yet he did not escape the judgment of the truth; he did not abide in the tranquillity of order, yet neither did he thereby flee from the power of the Orderer. The good of God, which is in him as a nature, does not withdraw him from the justice of God, by which he is ordered in punishment; nor does God there persecute the good which He created, but the evil which the devil committed. Nor indeed does He take away the whole of what He gave to the nature, but He takes away something, He leaves something, that there may be one who grieves for what He took away. And the grief itself is a testimony to the good taken away and the good left. For unless a good had been left, he could not grieve for the good lost.
For he who sins is worse if he rejoices in the loss of righteousness; but he who is tormented, if he gains no good thereby, grieves at the loss of well-being. And since both righteousness and well-being are good, and at the loss of good one ought rather to grieve than to rejoice (provided, however, there be no compensation of a better good—for the righteousness of the mind is better than the health of the body): assuredly it is more fitting that the unjust man should grieve in punishment than that he rejoiced in wrongdoing. As, therefore, the joy of a good forsaken in sin is the witness of an evil will, so the grief of a good lost in punishment is the witness of a good nature. For he who grieves at the peace of his own nature lost, grieves at it out of some remnants of peace, whereby it comes about that his nature is dear to itself.
And this rightly takes place in the extremest punishment, that the wicked and impious should bewail in their torments the losses of their natural goods, perceiving Him to be the most just remover of them whom they despised as the most bountiful giver.
God, therefore, the most wise Creator and most just Orderer of all natures, who established the mortal human race as the greatest ornament of earthly things, gave to men certain goods suited to this life, that is, temporal peace according to the small measure of mortal life in the very well-being and safety and fellowship of their kind, and whatever things are necessary either for guarding or for recovering this peace (such as those things which fittingly and suitably lie open to the senses—light, voice, breathable air, drinkable waters, and whatever is fit for feeding, clothing, healing, and adorning the body)—on this most equitable condition, that whoever the mortal be who shall have rightly used such goods, adapted to the peace of mortals, shall receive ampler and better goods, namely, the very peace of immortality and glory and honor befitting it, in eternal life, for the enjoyment of God and of one's neighbor in God;
but whoever uses them wrongly shall neither receive those, and shall lose these. Every use, therefore, of temporal things is referred to the enjoyment of earthly peace in the earthly city; but in the heavenly city it is referred to the enjoyment of eternal peace. Wherefore, if we were irrational living creatures, we should desire nothing beyond the ordered proportion of the parts of the body and the repose of the appetites; nothing, therefore, beyond the quiet of the flesh and an abundance of pleasures, so that the peace of the body might benefit the peace of the soul. For if the peace of the body be lacking, the peace of the irrational soul is also hindered, because it cannot attain to the repose of the appetites. But both together benefit that peace which the soul and the body have between themselves, that is, the peace of ordered life and well-being.
For just as living creatures show that they love the peace of the body when they flee from pain, and the peace of the soul when, in order to satisfy the needs of the appetites, they pursue pleasure; so, by fleeing from death, they sufficiently indicate how greatly they love the peace by which soul and body are reconciled to one another. But because in man there is a rational soul, he subjects all this which he has in common with the beasts to the peace of the rational soul, so that he may contemplate something with his mind and act according to it, that there may be for him the ordered agreement of knowledge and action which we called the peace of the rational soul. To this end he ought to wish neither to be troubled by pain, nor disturbed by desire, nor dissolved by death, that he may come to know something useful and order his life and conduct according to that knowledge.
But lest, in the very pursuit of knowledge, on account of the infirmity of the human mind, he fall into the pestilence of some error, he has need of divine teaching, which he may obey with certainty, and of divine help, that he may obey it freely. And since, so long as he is in this mortal body, he is a pilgrim absent from the Lord, he walks by faith, not by sight; and on this account he refers all peace, whether of the body or of the soul or of body and soul together, to that peace which mortal man has with the immortal God, that there may be for him ordered obedience in faith under the eternal law.
But now, since God the master teaches two chief precepts, that is, the love of God and the love of neighbor, in which a man finds three things which he should love—God, himself, and his neighbor—and he who loves God does not err in loving himself: it follows that he should also take counsel for his neighbor to love God, whom he is commanded to love as himself (so his wife, so his children, so his household, so all other men whom he can), and should wish that counsel be taken for himself by his neighbor, if perchance he has need; and on this account he will be at peace, so far as in him lies, with every man in the peace of men, that is, in ordered concord, whose order is this: first, that he harm no one, then, that he even benefit whom he can. First of all, therefore, there rests upon him the care of his own;
for to these he has readier and easier access for taking counsel, either by the order of nature or by that of human society itself. Whence the Apostle says: 「But if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own household, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.」 Hence, therefore, domestic peace also arises, that is, the ordered concord of those dwelling together in commanding and obeying. For those command who take counsel—as the husband for the wife, parents for children, masters for servants. But those obey for whom counsel is taken—as wives for husbands, children for parents, servants for masters. But in the household of the just man who lives by faith and is still a pilgrim from that heavenly city, even those who command serve those whom they seem to command.
For they do not command out of a lust for dominating, but out of a duty of taking counsel; not out of the pride of ruling, but out of the mercy of providing. This the natural order prescribes; thus God created man. For 「Let him have dominion,」 He said, 「over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over all creeping things which creep upon the earth.」 He willed that man, made rational after His own image, should have dominion over none but the irrational; not man over man, but man over the beasts. Hence the first just men were appointed shepherds of flocks rather than kings of men, so that even thus God might intimate what the order of creatures requires, what the desert of sins demands. For the condition of servitude is rightly understood to have been imposed upon the sinner.
Accordingly, nowhere in the Scriptures do we read of a servant before the just Noah avenged the sin of his son with this word. It was guilt, therefore, and not nature, that merited this name. And the origin of the word for slaves in the Latin tongue is believed to be derived from this, that those who by the law of war could have been slain, when they were preserved by the victors, became slaves (servi), so called from being preserved (a servando); which too is not without the desert of sin. For even when a just war is waged, on the contrary side men fight for sin; and every victory, even when it falls to the wicked, by the divine judgment humbles the vanquished, either correcting sins or punishing them.
A witness of this is the man of God, Daniel, when, placed in captivity, he confesses his own sins and the sins of his people to God, and with pious grief testifies that this is the cause of that captivity. The first cause of servitude, then, is sin, whereby man was made subject to man by the bond of his condition; and this comes about only by the judgment of God, with whom there is no injustice, and who knows how to apportion diverse punishments according to the deserts of those who offend. But as the supreme Lord says: 「Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin;」 and on this account many indeed who are religious serve masters who are unjust, yet not free: 「for by whatever a man is overcome, to the same is he also bound as a slave.」
And assuredly it is a happier thing to serve a man than to serve lust, since—to pass over other things—the very lust of dominating lays waste the hearts of mortals with a most savage domination. But among men, in that order of peace by which some are subject to others, humility profits those who serve, just as pride harms those who dominate. Yet no man is by nature, in which God first created man, the slave either of man or of sin. But penal servitude too is ordered by that law which commands the natural order to be preserved and forbids it to be disturbed; for if nothing had been done against that law, there would be nothing to be restrained by penal servitude. And therefore the Apostle also admonishes servants to be subject to their masters and to serve them from the heart with good will;
so that, namely, if they cannot be made free by their masters, they may themselves in a certain manner make their own servitude free, by serving not with crafty fear but with faithful love, until iniquity pass away and all human rule and power be brought to nought, and God be all in all. Wherefore, even though our just fathers had slaves, they so administered domestic peace that, as regards these temporal goods, they distinguished the lot of their sons from the condition of their slaves; yet as regards the worship of God, in whom eternal goods are to be hoped for, they took counsel with equal love for all the members of their household.
This the natural order prescribes, so that the name of 「fathers of families」 arose from this source and became so widely current that even those who rule unjustly rejoice to be called by it. But those who are true fathers of families take counsel for all in their household, as for their own children, that they may worship and win God, desiring and longing to come to the heavenly home, where the duty of commanding mortals will not be necessary, because the duty of taking counsel will not be necessary for those already in that immortality happy; until we come to which, fathers ought rather to bear the fact that they rule, than slaves the fact that they serve.
But if anyone in the household by disobedience opposes the domestic peace, he is corrected—whether by word, or by the rod, or by any other kind of punishment that is just and lawful, so far as human society permits—for the benefit of him who is corrected, that he may be fitted again to the peace from which he had leapt away. For just as it is not beneficence to help in such a way as to cause a greater good to be lost, so it is not innocence to spare in such a way as to allow one to fall into a graver evil. It pertains, therefore, to the duty of the innocent man not only to inflict evil on no one, but also to restrain from sin or to punish sin, that either the one who is punished may be corrected by his own experience, or others may be terrified by his example.
Since, therefore, a man's household ought to be the beginning, or a particle, of the city, and every beginning is referred to some end of its own kind, and every part to the integrity of the whole of which it is a part, it appears clearly enough to be consequent that domestic peace be referred to civic peace—that is, that the ordered concord of those dwelling together in commanding and obeying be referred to the ordered concord of citizens in commanding and obeying. Thus it comes about that the father of a family ought to take his precepts from the law of the city, so as to rule his household in such a way that it be adapted to the peace of the city. But the household of men who do not live by faith pursues an earthly peace out of the things and advantages of this temporal life;
but the household of men living by faith looks for those things which are promised as eternal in the future, and uses earthly and temporal things as a pilgrim uses them—not to be captivated by them and turned aside from the goal toward which it strains in God, but to be sustained by them, so as more easily to endure and in no way to increase the burdens of the corruptible body, which weighs down the soul. Therefore the use of things necessary for this mortal life is common to both kinds of men and to both households; but the end of using them is for each its own proper, and widely different.
So also the earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeks an earthly peace, and fixes the concord of citizens in commanding and obeying upon this, that there may be for them a certain composition of human wills concerning things pertaining to mortal life. But the heavenly city, or rather that part of it which is a pilgrim in this mortality and lives by faith, must needs use this peace also, until this very mortality, for which such peace is necessary, shall pass away;
and on this account, while it leads, as it were, a captive life of its pilgrimage in the midst of the earthly city, having already received the promise of redemption and the spiritual gift as a pledge, it does not hesitate to obey the laws of the earthly city by which those things are administered which are adapted to the sustaining of mortal life, so that, since this mortality itself is common to both, concord may be preserved between the two cities in the things that pertain to it.
But because the earthly city has had certain of its own sages whom the divine teaching condemns, men who, whether by conjecture or deceived by demons, believed that many gods were to be won over for the affairs of men and that different gods presided in a certain manner over their several offices, each over a distinct thing subordinated to it — to one the body, to another the soul; and within the body itself, to one the head, to another the neck, and the several remaining members to their several gods; likewise in the soul, to one natural talent, to another learning, to another anger, to another desire;
and among the very things that pertain to the maintenance of life, to one god cattle, to another wheat, to another wine, to another oil, to another woods, to another money, to another navigation, to another wars and victories, to another marriages, to another childbirth and fecundity, and to yet other gods the remaining things — whereas the heavenly city, knowing that only one God is to be worshipped, and that He alone is to be served with that service which in Greek is called latreia and which is owed to none but God, judged with faithful piety:
the result was that it could not share common laws of religion with the earthly city, and on this account it had of necessity to dissent from it and to become a burden to those who thought otherwise, and to endure their angers and hatreds and the assaults of their persecutions, save when at times it repelled the hostile minds by the terror of its own numbers, and always by divine help.
This heavenly city, then, while it sojourns as a pilgrim on earth, calls forth citizens out of all nations and gathers together a pilgrim society in all tongues, caring nothing for whatever is diverse in the customs, laws, and institutions by which earthly peace is sought or maintained; abolishing and destroying none of these, but rather preserving and following them — for however diverse they may be among diverse nations, they are directed toward one and the same end of earthly peace — provided only that they do not hinder the religion by which we are taught to worship the one supreme and true God.
Therefore even the heavenly city in this its pilgrimage makes use of earthly peace, and in matters pertaining to the mortal nature of men it guards and seeks a harmony of human wills, so far as this may be granted without harm to piety and religion; and it refers this earthly peace to the heavenly peace, which is so truly peace that it must be reckoned and called the peace of the rational creature alone — namely, the most perfectly ordered and most harmonious fellowship of enjoying God, and of one another in God. When we have attained to it, there will be no mortal life, but plainly and certainly a living one; nor an animal body, which by its corruption weighs down the soul, but a spiritual body without any want, wholly subject in every part to the will.
This peace it possesses while it sojourns in faith, and out of this faith it lives justly, when it refers to the attainment of that peace whatever good actions it performs toward God and neighbor; for the life of the city is assuredly a social one.
[Chapter XVIII] But as to that difference which Varro drew from the New Academics, for whom all things are uncertain, the City of God utterly detests such doubt as a kind of madness, having of those things which it grasps by mind and reason a most certain knowledge — even if a small one, because of the corruptible body which weighs down the soul (for, as the Apostle says, we know in part) — yet a most certain knowledge; and it trusts the senses in the evidence of each thing, which the mind employs by means of the body, since he is more wretchedly deceived who thinks they are never to be trusted. It believes also the holy Scriptures, both old and new, which we call canonical, whence faith itself was conceived, by which the just man lives;
by which we walk without doubting, as long as we are pilgrims away from the Lord. This faith being safe and sure, we may without just reproach entertain doubt concerning certain things which we have perceived neither by sense nor by reason, and which have neither become clear to us through canonical Scripture nor come to our knowledge through witnesses whom it would be absurd not to believe. [Chapter XIX] It matters nothing at all to this city by what habit or manner of living — provided it is not against the divine precepts — anyone follows this faith by which one arrives at God; whence also, when the philosophers themselves become Christians, it does not compel them to change their habit or their custom of diet, which in no way hinders religion, but only their false doctrines.
Hence that difference which Varro drew from the Cynics, provided one do nothing shamefully or intemperately, it wholly disregards. But of those three kinds of life — the contemplative, the active, and that which is composed of both — although anyone may, with faith kept safe, lead his life in whichever of them he chooses and attain to the eternal rewards, yet it matters what one holds through love of truth, and what one expends in the duty of charity. No one ought to be so contemplative that in his very leisure he does not consider his neighbor's advantage, nor so active that he does not seek the contemplation of God. In leisure it ought not to be idle vacancy that delights, but either the inquiry after or the discovery of truth, so that each may make progress in it, and may not begrudge to another what he has found.
In action, however, it is not honor or power in this life that is to be loved, since all things under the sun are vanity, but the work itself which is done through that honor or power — if it is done rightly and usefully, that is, so as to avail for that welfare of the subjects which is according to God; concerning which we have already argued above. On which account the Apostle says: 'He who desires the office of a bishop desires a good work.' He wished to explain what a bishopric is, for it is the name of a work, not of an honor. For it is a Greek word, and the term is derived from the fact that he who is set over those over whom he is placed superintends them, that is, bears the care of them; for skopos means intent, purpose;
therefore episkopein, if we wish, we may in Latin render 'to superintend,' so that he who loves to preside rather than to profit may understand that he is no bishop. And so no one is forbidden the pursuit of knowing the truth, which pertains to praiseworthy leisure; but the higher station, without which a people cannot be governed, even though it be held and administered as is fitting, is nevertheless unbecomingly coveted. Wherefore the love of truth seeks holy leisure; the necessity of charity undertakes just business. If no one lays this burden upon us, we are to be free for the perceiving and beholding of truth; but if it is laid upon us, it is to be undertaken because of the necessity of charity;