Confessions

This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to find out how you can volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mark Barnes. www.414.org.uk. Confessions by St. Augustine. Book 6. Chapter 8. He had gone on to Rome before me to study law, which was the worldly way which his parents were for ever urging him to pursue. And there he was carried away again with an incredible passion for the gladiatorial shows. For, although he had been utterly opposed to such spectacles and detested them, one day he met by chance a company of his acquaintances and fellow students returning from dinner, and, with a friendly violence, they drew him, resisting and objecting vehemently, into the amphitheatre, on a day of those cruel and murderous shows. He protested to them, though you drag my body to that place and set me down there, you cannot force me to give my mind or lend my eyes to these shows, thus I will be absent while present and so overcome both you and them. When they heard this, they dragged him on in, probably interested to see whether he could do as he said. When they got to the arena, and had taken what seats they could get, the whole place become a tumult of inhuman frenzy. But Alippius kept his eyes closed and forbade his mind to roam abroad after such wickedness. Would that he had shut his ears also! For when one of the combatants fell in the fight, a mighty cry from the whole audience stirred him so strongly that, overcome by curiosity and still prepared, as he thought, to despise and rise superior to it no matter what it was, he opened his eyes and was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the victim whom he desired to see had been in his body. Thus he fell more miserably than the one whose fall had raised that mighty clamour which had entered through his ears and unlocked his eyes to make way for the wounding and beating down of his soul, which was more audacious than truly valiant. Also it was weaker, because it presumed on his own strength when it ought to have depended on thee. For, as soon as he saw the blood, he drank in with it a savage temper, and he did not turn away, but fixed his eyes on the bloody pastime, unwittingly drinking in the madness, delighted with the wicked contest, and drunk with bloodlust. He was now no longer the same man who came in, but was one of the mob he came into, a true companion of those who had brought him thither. Why need I say more? He looked, he shouted, he was excited, and he took away with him the madness that would stimulate him to come again, not only with those who had first enticed him, but even without them, indeed, dragging in others besides. And yet from all this, with a most powerful and most merciful hand, thou didst pluck him, and taught him not to rest his confidence in himself, but in thee. But this was all being stored up in his memory as medicine for the future. So also was that other incident, when he was still studying under me at Carthage, and was meditating at noonday in the market-place on what he had to recite, as scholars usually have to do for practice. And thou didst allow him to be arrested by the police-officers in the market-place as a thief. I believe, O my God, that thou didst allow this for no other reason than that this man, who was in the future to prove so great, should now begin to learn that in making just decisions a man should not readily be condemned by other men with reckless credulity. For, as he was walking up and down alone before the judgment-seat with his tablet and pen, and lo a young man, another one of the scholars, who was the real thief, secretly brought a hatchet, and without Alippius seeing him, got in as far as the leaden bars which protected the silversmith's shop, and began to hack away at the lead gratings. But when the noise of the hatchet was heard, the silversmith below began to call to each other in whispers, and sent men to arrest whomsoever they should find. The thief heard their voices, and ran away, leaving his hatchet because he was afraid to be caught with it. Now Alippius, who had not seen him come in, got a glimpse of him as he went out, and noticed that he had went off in great haste. Being curious to know the reasons, he went up to the place where he found the hatchet, and stood wondering and pondering when, behold, those that were sent caught him alone holding the hatchet which had made the noise which had startled them and brought them there. They seized him, and dragged him away, gathering the tenants of the marketplace about them, and boasting that they had caught a notorious thief. Thereupon he was led away to appear before the judge. But this is as far as his lesson was to go. For immediately, O Lord, Thou didst come to the rescue of his innocence, of which Thou wast the sole witness. As he was being led off to prison or punishment, they were met by the master-builder who had charge of the public buildings. The captors were especially glad to meet him, because he had more than once suspected them of stealing the goods that had been lost out of the marketplace. Now at last they thought they could convince him who it was who had committed the thefts. But the custodian had often met Alippius at the house of a certain senator, whose receptions he used to attend. He recognized him at once, and, taking his hand, led him apart from the throng, inquired the cause of all the trouble, and learned what had occurred. He then commanded all the rabble still around him, and very uproarious and full of threatens they were, to come along with him, and they came to the house of the young man who had committed the deed. There, before the door, was a slave-boy so young that he was not restrained from telling the whole story by fear of harming his master. And he had followed his master to the marketplace. Alippius recognized him, and whispered to the architect, who showed the boy the hatchet and asked whose it was. "'Ours,' he answered directly. And, being further questioned, he disclosed the whole affair. Thus the guilt was shifted to that household, and the rabble, who had begun to triumph over Alippius, were shamed. And so he went away home, this man who was to be the future steward of thy word and judge of so many causes in thy church, a wiser and more experienced man. Chapter 10 I found him at Rome, and he was bound to me with the strongest possible ties, and he went with me to Milan, in order that he might not be separated from me, and also that he might obtain some law practice, for which he had qualified with a view to pleasing his parents more than himself. He had already sat three times as assessor, showing an integrity that seemed strange to many others, though he thought them strange who could prefer gold to integrity. His character had also been tested, not only by the bait of covetousness, but by the spur of fear. At Rome he was assessor to the Secretary of the Italian Treasury. There was at that time a very powerful senator to whose favours were many indebted, and of whom many stood in fear. In his usual high-handed way he demanded to have a favour granted him that was forbidden by the laws. This Alippius resisted. A bribe was promised, but he scorned it with all his heart. Threats were employed, but he trampled them underfoot, so that all men marvelled at so rare a spirit which neither coveted the friendship nor feared the enmity of a man at once so powerful and so widely known for his great resources of helping his friends and doing harm to his enemies. Even the official whose counsellor Alippius was, although he was unwilling that the favour should be granted, would not openly refuse the request, but passed the responsibility on to Alippius, alleging that he would not permit him to give his assent. And the truth was that even if the judge had agreed, Alippius would have simply left the court. There was one matter, however, which appealed to his love of learning, in which he was very nearly led astray. He found out that he might have books copied for himself at praetorian rates, i.e., at public expense. But his sense of justice prevailed, and he changed his mind for the better, thinking that the rule that forbade him was still more profitable than the privilege that his office would have allowed him. These are little things, but he that is faithful in a little matter is faithful also in a great one. Nor can that possibly be void which was uttered by the mouth of thy truth. If, therefore, you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mannermen, who will commit to your trust and true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? Such a man was Alippius, who clung to me at that time and who wavered in his purpose, just as I did, as to what course of life to follow. Nebridius also had come to Milan for no other reason than that he might live with me in a most ardent search after truth and wisdom. He had left his native place near Cathage, and Cathage itself where he usually lived, leaving behind his fine family estate, his house, and his mother, who would not follow him. Like me he sighed, like me he wavered, an ardent seeker after the true life and a most acute analyst of the most abstruse questions. So there were three begging mouths, sighing out of their other, and waiting upon thee, that thou mightest give them meat in due season. And in all the vexations with which thy mercy followed our worldly pursuits, we sought for the reason why we suffered so, and all was darkness. We turned away groaning and exclaiming, How long shall these things be? And this we often asked, yet for all our asking we did not relinquish them, for as yet we had not discovered anything certain which, when we gave those others up, we might grasp in their stead. CHAPTER XI And I especially puzzled and wondered when I remembered how long a time had passed since my nineteenth year, in which I had first fallen in love with wisdom, and had determined as soon as I could find her to abandon the empty hopes and mad delusions of vain desires. Behold, I was now getting close to thirty, still stuck fast in the same mire, still greedy of enjoying present goods which fly away and distract me, and I was still saying, Tomorrow I shall discover it, behold, it will become plain and I shall see it, behold, Faustus will come and explain everything. Or I would say, Oh, you mighty academics, is there no certainty that man can grasp for the guidance of his life? No, let us search the more diligently, and let us not despair. See, the things in the church's books that appeared so absurd to us before do not appear so now, and may be otherwise and honestly interpreted. I will set my feet upon that step where, as a child, my parents placed me, until the clear truth is discovered. But where and when shall it be sought? Ambrose has no leisure, we have no leisure to read. Where are we to find the books? How or where could I get hold of them? From whom could I borrow them? Let me set a schedule for my days, and set apart certain hours for the health of the soul. A great hope has risen up in us, because the Catholic faith does not teach what we thought it did, and vainly accused it of. Its teachers hold it as an abomination to believe that God is limited by the form of a human body. And do I doubt that I should knock, in order for the rest also to be opened unto me? My pupils take up the morning hours. What am I doing with the rest of the day? Why not do this? But then, when am I to visit my influential friends whose favours I need? When am I to prepare the orations that I sell to the class? When would I get some recreation, and relax my mind from the strain of work? Perish everything, and let us dismiss these idle triflings. Let me devote myself solely to the search for truth. This life is unhappy, death uncertain. If it comes upon me suddenly, in what state shall I go hence, and where shall I learn what here I have neglected? Should I not indeed suffer the punishment of my negligence here? But suppose death cuts off and finishes all care and feeling? This too is a question that calls for inquiry. God forbid that it should be so. It is not without reason, it is not in vain, that the stately authority of the Christian faith has spread over the entire world, and God would never have done such great things for us if the life of the soul perished with the death of the body. Why, therefore, do I delay in abandoning my hopes of this world, and giving myself wholly to seek after God and the blessed life? But wait a moment. This life also is pleasant, and it has a sweetness of its own not at all negligible. We must not abandon it lightly, for it would be shameful to lapse back into it again. See now, it is important to gain some post of honour. And what more should I desire? I have crowds of influential friends, if nothing else, and if I push my claims, a governorship may be offered me, and a wife with some money, so that she would not be an added expense. This would be the height of my desire. Many men, who are great and worthy of imitation, have combined the pursuit of wisdom with a marriage life. While I talked about these things, and the winds of opinions veered about and tossed my heart hither and thither, time was slipping away. I delayed my conversion to the Lord. I postponed from day to day the life in Thee, but I could not postpone the daily death in myself. I was enamoured of a happy life, but I still feared to seek it in its own abode, and so I fled from it, while I sought it. I thought I should be miserable if I were deprived of the embraces of a woman, and I never gave a thought to the medicine that Thy mercy has provided for the healing of that infirmity, for I had never tried it. As for continence, I imagined that it depended on one's own strength, though I found no such strength in myself, for in my folly I knew not what is written. None can be continent unless Thou dost grant it. Certainly, Thou wouldst have given it if I had beseeched Thy ears with heartfelt groaning, and if I had cast my care upon Thee with firm faith. Chapter 12 Actually, it was Olypius who prevented me from marrying, urging that if I did so, it would not be possible for us to live together and to have as much undistracted leisure in the love of wisdom as we had long desired. For he himself was so chaste that it was wonderful, all the more because in his early youth he had entered upon the path of promiscuity, but had not continued in it. Instead, feeling sorrow and disgust at it, he had lived from that time down to the present most continentally. I quoted against him the examples of men who had been married and still lovers of wisdom, who had pleased God and had been loyal and affectionate to their friends. I fell far short of them in greatness of soul, and enthralled with a disease of my carnality and its deadly sweetness, I dragged my chain along, fearing to be loosed of it. Thus I rejected the words of him who counseled me wisely, as if the hand that would have loosed the chain only hurt my wound. Moreover, the serpent spoke to Olypius himself by me, weaving and lying in his path by my tongue to catch him with pleasant snares in which his honourable and free feet may be entangled. For he wondered that I, for whom he had such a great esteem, should be stuck so fast in the glue-pot of pleasure as to maintain, whenever we discussed the subject, that I could not possibly live a celibate life. And when I urged in my defence against his accusing questions that the hasty and stolen delight which he had tasted and now hardly remembered, and therefore too easily disparaged, was not to be compared with a settled acquaintance with it, and that, if to this stable acquaintance were added the honourable name of marriage, he would not then be astonished at my inability to give it up. When I spoke thus, then he also began to wish to be married, not because he was overcome by the lust for such pleasures, but out of curiosity. For, he said, he longed to know what that could be without which my life, which he thought so happy, seemed to me to be no life at all but a punishment. For he who wore no chain was amazed at my slavery, and his amazement awoke the desire for experience, and from that he would have gone on to the experiment itself, and then perhaps he would have fallen into the very slavery that amazed him in me, since he was ready to enter into a covenant with death, for he that loves danger shall fall into it. Now the question of conjugal honour in the ordering of a good married life and the bringing up of children interested us but slightly. What afflicted me most, and what had made me already a slave to it, was the habit of satisfying an insatiable lust. But Olypius was about to be enslaved by a mere curious wonder. This is the state we were in, until thou, O Most High, who never forsakest our loneliness, didst take pity on our misery, and didst come to our rescue in wonderful and secret ways. Chapter 13 Active efforts were made to get me a wife. I wooed, I was engaged, and my mother took the greatest pains in the matter, for her hope was that, when I was once married, I might be washed clean in health-giving baptism for which I was being daily prepared, as she joyfully saw, taking note that her desires and promises were being fulfilled in my faith. Yet, when at my request, and her own impulse, she called upon thee daily with strong, heartfelt cries, that thou wouldst, by a vision disclosed unto her, a leading about my future marriage, thou wouldst not. She did indeed see certain vain and fantastic things, such as conjured up by the strong preoccupation of the human spirit, and these, she supposed, had some reference to me, and she told me about them, but not with the confidence she usually had when thou hadst shown her anything, for she always said that she could distinguish, by a certain feeling impossible to describe, between thy revelations and the dreams of her own soul. Yet the matter was pressed forward, and proposals were made for a girl who was, as yet, some two years too young to marry, and because she pleased me, I agreed to wait for her. CHAPTER XIV. Many in my band of friends, consulting about and abhorring the turmulate vexations of human life, had often considered, and were now almost determined to undertake a peaceful life, away from the turmoil of men. This, we thought, could be obtained by bringing together what we severally owned, and thus making of it a common household, so that in the sincerity of our friendship nothing should belong more to one than to the other, but all were to have one purse, and the whole was to belong to each and to all. We thought that this group might consist of ten persons, some of whom were very rich, especially Romanianus, my fellow-townsman, an intimate friend from childhood days. He had been brought up to the court on grave business matters, and he was the most earnest of us all about the project, and his voice was of great weight in commending it, because his estate was far more ample than that of the others. We had resolved, also, that each year two of us should be managers, and provide all that was needful, while the rest were left undisturbed. But when we began to reflect whether this would be permitted by our wives, which some of us had already and others hoped to have, the whole plan, so excellently framed, collapsed in our hands, and was utterly wrecked and cast aside. From this we fell again into sighs and groans, and our steps followed the broad and beaten ways of the world, for many thoughts were in our hearts, but thy counsel standeth fast for ever. In thy counsel thou didst mock ours, and didst prepare thy own plan, for it was thy purpose to give us meat in due season, to open thy hand, and to fill our souls with blessing. Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied, my mistress was torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, and my heart which clung to her was torn and wounded till it bled. And she went back to Africa, vowing to thee never to know any other man, and leaving with me my natural son by her. But I, unhappy as I was, and weaker than a woman, could not bear the delay of the two years that should elapse before I could obtain the bride I sought. And so, since I was not a lover of wedlock so much as a slave of lust, I procured another mistress, not a wife, of course. Thus in bondage to a last inhabit, the disease of my soul might be nursed up and kept in its vigour, or even increased until it reached the realm of matrimony. Nor indeed was the wound healed that had been caused by cutting away my former mistress. Only it ceased to burn and throb, and began to fester, and was more dangerous because it was less painful. CHAPTER XVI Thine be the praise, and to thee be the glory, O fountain of mercies! I became more wretched, and thou didst become nearer. Thy right hand was ever ready to pluck me out of the mire and to cleanse me, but I did not know it. Nor did anything call me back from a still deeper plunge into carnal pleasure except the fear of death and of thy future judgment, which amid all the waverings of my opinions never faded from my breast. And I discussed with my friends Allippius and Nebrodias the nature of good and evil, maintaining that, in my judgment, Epicurus would have carried off the palm if I had not believed what Epicurus would not have believed, and that after death there remains a life for the soul and places of recompense. And I demanded of them, suppose we are immortal and live in the enjoyment of perpetual bodily pleasure, and that without any fear of losing it, why then should we not be happy, or why should we search for anything else? I did not know that this was in fact the root of my misery, that I was so fallen and blinded that I could not discern the light of virtue and of beauty which must be embraced for its own sake, which the eye of flesh cannot see, and only the inner vision can see. Nor did I, alas, consider the reason why I found delight in discussing these very perplexities, shameful as they were with my friends. For I could not be happy without friends, even according to the notions of happiness I had then, and no matter how rich the store of my carnal pleasures might be. Yet, of a truth, I loved my friends for their own sakes, and felt that they in turn loved me for my own sake. Oh, crooked ways! Woe to the audacious soul which hoped that by forsaking thee it would become some better thing! It tossed and turned, upon back and side and belly, but the bed is hard, and thou alone givest it rest. And, lo, thou art near, and thou deliverest us from our wretched wanderings, and established us in thy way, and thou comfortest us, and sayest, Run, and I will carry you, yea, I will lead you home, and then I will set you free.