Confessions

This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mark Barnes. www.414.org.uk Confessions by St. Augustine. Translated by Albert C. Outler. Book 4. Chapter 10. Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts. Cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. For wherever the soul of man turns itself, alas toward thee, it is enmeshed in sorrows, even though it is surrounded by beautiful things outside thee and outside itself. For lovely things would simply not be, unless they were from thee. They come to be, and they pass away, and by coming they begin to be, and they grow toward perfection. Then, when perfect, they begin to wax old and perish, and, if all do not wax old, still all perish. Therefore, when they rise and grow toward being, the more rapidly they grow to maturity, so also the more rapidly they hasten back toward non-being. This is the way of things. This is the lot thou hast given them, because they are part of things which do not all exist at the same time, but by passing away and succeeding each other, they all make up the universe, of which they are all parts. For example, our speech is accomplished by sounds which signify meanings, but a meaning is not complete unless one word passes away when it has sounded its part, so that the next may follow after it. Let my soul praise thee in all these things, O God, the Creator of all, but let not my soul be stuck to these things by the glue of love through the senses of the body, for they go where they were meant to go, that they may exist no longer, and they rend the soul with pestilent desires because she longs to be and yet loves to rest secure in the created things she loves. But in these things there is no rest in place to be found. They do not abide. They flee away, and who is he who can follow them with his physical senses? Or who can grasp them, even when they are present? For our physical sense is slow because it is a physical sense and bears its own limitations in itself. The physical sense is quite sufficient for what it was made to do, but it is not sufficient to stay things from running their courses from the beginning appointed to the end appointed. For in thy word, by which they were created, they hear their appointed bound. From there to here. Chapter 11. Be not foolish, O my soul, and do not let the tumult of your vanity deafen the ear of your heart. Be attentive. The Word itself calls you to return, and with him is a place of unpertubed rest where love is not forsaken unless it first forsakes. Behold, these things pass away that others may come to be in their place. Thus even this lowest level of unity may be complete in all its parts. But do I ever pass away? asks the Word of God. Fix your habitation in him. O my soul, commit whatsoever you have to him. For at long last you are now becoming tired of deceit. Commit to truth, whatever you have received from the truth, and you will lose nothing. What is decayed will flourish again. Your diseases will be healed. Your perishable parts shall be reshaped and renovated and made whole again in you. And these perishable things will not carry you with them down to where they go when they perish, but shall stand and abide, and you with them, before God who abides and continues for ever. Why then, my perverse soul, do you go on following your flesh? Instead, let it be converted so as to follow you. Whatever you feel through it is but partial. You do not know the whole of which sensations are but parts, and yet the parts delight you. But if my physical senses had been able to comprehend the whole, and had not as part of their punishment received only a portion of the whole as their own province, you would then desire that whatever exists in the present time should also pass away so that the whole might please you more. For what we speak, you also hear through physical sensation, and yet you would not wish that the syllables should remain. Instead, you wish them to fly past so that others may follow them and the whole be heard. Thus it is always that when any single thing is composed of many parts which do not coexist simultaneously, the whole gives more delight than the parts could ever do perceived separately. But far better than all this is He who made it all. He is our God, and He does not pass away, for there is nothing to take His place. Chapter 12 If physical objects please you, praise God for them. If physical objects please you, praise God for them. But turn back your love to their Creator, lest in those things which please you, you displease Him. If souls please you, let them be loved in God, for in themselves they are mutable, but in Him firmly established, without Him they would simply cease to exist. In Him then, let them be loved, and bring along to Him with yourself as many souls as you can, and say to them, Let us love Him, for He Himself created all these, and He is not far away from them. For He did not create them, and then go away. They are of Him and in Him. Behold, there He is, wherever truth is known. He is within the inmost heart, yet the heart has wandered away from Him. Return to your heart, O you transgressors, and hold fast to Him who made you. Stand with Him, and you shall stand fast. Rest in Him, and you shall be at rest. Where do you go along these rugged paths? Where are you going? The good that you love is from Him, and insofar as it is also for Him, it is both good and pleasant. But it will rightly be turned to bitterness if whatever comes from Him is not rightly loved, and if He is deserted for the love of the creature. Why then will you wander farther and farther in these difficult and toilsome ways? There is no rest where you seek it. Seek what you seek, but remember that it is not where you seek it. You seek for a blessed life in the land of death. It is not there. For how can there be a blessed life where life itself is not? But our very life came down to earth and bore our death, and slew it with the very abundance of His own life. And thundering, He called us to return to Him into that secret place from which He came forth to us, coming first in the vaginal womb where the human creature, our mortal flesh, was joined to Him, that it might not be for ever mortal, and came as a bridegroom coming out His chamber rejoicing as a strong man to run a race. For He did not delay, but ran through the world, crying out by words, deeds, death, life, descent, ascension, crying aloud to us to return to Him. And He departed from our sight that we might return to our hearts and find Him there. For He left us, and behold, He is here. He could not be with us long, yet He did not leave us. He went back to the place that He had never left, for the world was made by Him. In this world He was, and into this world He came to save sinners. To Him my soul confesses, and He heals it, because it had sinned against Him. Oh, sons of men, how long will you be so slow of heart? Even now, after life itself has come down to you, will you not ascend and live? But where will you climb if you are already on a pinnacle and have set your mouth against the heavens? First come down, that you may climb up, climb up to God. For you have fallen by trying to climb against Him. Tell this to the souls you love, that they may weep in the valley of tears, and so bring them along with you to God, because it is by His Spirit that you speak thus to them, if, as you speak, you burn with the fire of love. Chapter 13 These things I did not understand at that time, and I loved those inferior beauties, and I was sinking down to the very depths. And I said to my friends, Do we love anything but the beautiful? What then is the beautiful, and what is beauty? What is it that allures and unites us to the things we love? For unless there were grace and beauty in them, they could not possibly attract us to them. And I reflected on this, and I saw that in the objects themselves there is a kind of beauty which comes from their form in a whole, and another kind of beauty that comes from mutual fitness, as the harmony of one part of the body with its whole, or a shoe with a foot, and so on. And this idea sprang up in my mind out of my inmost heart, and I wrote some books, two or three, I think, on the beautiful and the fitting. Thou knowest them, O Lord. They have escaped my memory. I no longer have them. Somehow they have been mislaid. Chapter 14 What was it, O Lord my God, that prompted me to dedicate these books to Hierius, an orator of Rome, a man I did not know by sight, but whom I loved for his reputation of learning in which he was famous, and also for some words of his that I had heard which had pleased me. But he pleased me more because he pleased others, who gave him high praise and expressed amazement that a Syrian who had first studied Greek eloquence should thereafter become so wonderful a Latin orator, and also so well versed in philosophy. Thus a man we have never seen is commended and loved. Does a love like this come into the heart of the hearer from the mouth of him who sings the other's praise? Not so. Instead, one catches the spark of love from one who loves. This is why we love one who is praised when the eulogist is believed to give his praise from an unfeigned heart, that is, when he who loves him praises him. Thus it was that I loved men on the basis of other men's judgment, and not thine, O my God, in whom no man is deceived. But why is it that the feeling I had for such men was not like my feeling toward the renowned charioteer, or the great gladiatorial hunter, famed far and wide and popular with a mob? Actually, I admire the orator in a different and more serious fashion as I would myself desire to be admired. For I did not want them to praise and love me as actors were praised and loved, although I myself praise and love them too. I would prefer being unknown than known in that way, or even being hated than loved in that way. How are these various influences and diverse sorts of love distributed within one soul? What is it that I am in love with in another, which if I did not hate, I should neither detest nor repel from myself, seeing that we are equally men? For it does not follow that because the good horse is admired by a man who would not be that horse, even if he could, the same kind of admiration should be given to an actor who shares our nature. Do I then love that in a man which I also a man would hate to be? Man is himself a great deep. Thou dost number his very hairs, O Lord, and they do not fall to the ground without thee, and yet the hairs of his heads are more readily numbered than are his affections and the movements of his heart. But that orator whom I admired so much was the kind of man I wished myself to be. Thus I erred through a swell in pride and was carried about with every wind, but through it all I was being piloted by thee, though most secretly. And how is it that I know, whence comes my confident confession to thee, that I loved him more because of the love of those who praised him than for the things they praised in him? Because if he had gone unpraised, and these same people had criticized him and had spoken the same things of him in a tone of scorn and disapproval, I should never have been kindled and provoked to love him. And yet his qualities would not have been different, nor would he have been different himself, only the appraisals of the spectators. See where the helpless soul lies prostrate that is not yet sustained by the stability of truth. Just as the breezes of speech blow from the breast of the opinionated, so also the soul is tossed this way and that, driven forward and backward, and the light is obscured to it and the truth not seen. And yet there it is in front of us. And to me it was a great matter that both my literary work and my zest for learning should be known by that man. For if he approved them, I would be even more fond of him. But if he disapproved, this vain heart of mine, devoid of thy steadfastness, would have been offended. And so I meditated on the problem of the beautiful and the fitting, and dedicated my essay on it to him. I regarded it admiringly, though no one else joined me in doing so. Chapter 15 But I had not seen how the main point in these great issues lie really in thy craftsmanship, O Omnipotent One, who alone doest great wonders. And so my mind ranged through the corporeal forms, and I defined and distinguished as beautiful that which is so in itself, and as fit that which is beautiful in relation to some other thing. This argument I supported by corporeal examples. And I turned my attention to the nature of the mind, but the false opinions which I held concerning spiritual things prevented me from seeing the truth. Still, the very power of truth forced itself onto my gaze, and I turned my throbbing soul away from the incorporeal substance to qualities of line and colour and shape, and because I could not perceive these with my mind, I concluded that I could not perceive my mind. And since I loved the peace which is in virtue, and hated the discord which is in vice, I distinguished between the unity there is in virtue, and the discord there is in vice. I conceived that unity consisted of the rational soul, and the nature of truth, and the highest good. But I imagined that in the disunity there was some kind of substance of irrational life, and some kind of entity in the supreme evil. This evil, I thought, was not only a substance, but real life as well. And yet I believed that it did not come from thee, O my God, from whom there are all things. And the first I called a monad, as if it were a soul without sex. The other I called a dyad, which showed itself in anger, in deeds of violence, in deeds of passion and lust. But I did not know what I was talking about, for I had not understood nor had I been taught that evil is not a substance at all, and that our soul is not that supreme and unchangeable good. For just as in violent acts, if the emotion of the soul from whence the violent impulse springs is depraved, and asserts itself insolently and mutinously, and just as in the acts of passion, if the affection of the soul which gives rise to the carnal desires is unrestrained, so also, in the same way, errors and false opinions contaminate life if the rational soul itself is depraved. Thus it was then with me, for I was ignorant that my soul had to be enlightened by another light, if it was to be partaker of the truth, since it is not itself the essence of truth. For thou wilt light my lamp, the Lord my God will lighten the darkness. And of His fullness have we all received, for that was the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, for in thee there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. But I pushed on toward thee, and was pressed back by thee, that I might know the taste of death, for thou resistest the proud. And what greater pride could there be for me than with a marvellous madness to assert myself to be that nature which thou art? I was mutable, this much was clear enough to me, because my very longing to become wise arose out of a wish to change from worse to better. Yet I chose rather to think thee mutable than to think that I was not as thou art. For this reason I was thrust back, thou disresist my fickle pride. Thus I went on imagining corporeal forms, and since I was flesh I accused the flesh, and since I was a wind that passes away I did not return to thee, but went wandering and wandering on toward those things that have no being neither in thee, nor in me, nor in the body. These fancies were not created for me by thy truth, but conceived by my own vain conceit out of sensory notions. And I used to ask thy faithful children, my own fellow-citizens from whom I stood unconsciously exiled, I use flippantly and foolishly to ask them, Why then does the soul which God created err? But I would not allow anyone to ask me, Why then does God err? I preferred to contend that thy immutable substance was involved in error through necessity, rather than admit that my own mutable substance had gone astray of its own free will and had fallen into error as its punishment. I was about twenty-six or twenty-seven when I wrote these books, analyzing and reflecting upon those sensory images which clamored in the ears of my heart. I was straining those ears to hear thy inward melody, O sweet truth, pondering on the beautiful and the fitting, and longing to stay and hear thee, and to rejoice greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Yet I could not, for by the clamor of my own errors I was hurried outside myself, and by the weight of my own pride I was sinking ever lower. You did not make me to hear joy and gladness, nor did the bones rejoice which were not yet humbled. And what did it profit me, that when I was scarcely twenty years old a book of Aristotle's entitled The Ten Categories fell into my hands? On the very title of this I hung as on something great and divine, since my rhetoric master at Carthage and others who had reputations for learning were always referring to it with such swelling pride. I read it by myself and understood it. And what did it mean, that when I discussed it with others they said that even with the assistance of tutors, who not only explained it orally, but drew many diagrams in the sand, they scarcely understood it, and could tell me no more about it than I had acquired in the reading of it by myself alone? For the book appeared to me to speak plainly enough about substances such as man, and of their qualities, such as the shape of a man, his kind, his stature, how many feet high, and his family relationship, his status, when born, whether he is sitting or standing, is shod or armed, or is doing something or having something done to him, and all the innumerable things that are classified under these nine categories, of which I have given some examples, or under the chief category of substance. What did all this profit me, since it actually hindered me when I imagined that whatever existed was comprehended within those ten categories? I tried to interpret them, O my God, so that even thy wonderful and unchangeable unity could be understood as subjected to thy own magnitude or beauty, as if they existed in thee as their subject, as they do in corporeal bodies, whereas thou art thyself thy own magnitude and beauty. A body is not great or fair because it is a body, because even if it were less great or less beautiful it would still be a body. But my conception of thee was falsity, not truth. It was a figment of my own misery, not the stable ground of thy blessedness. For thou hast commanded, and it was carried out in me, that the earth should bring forth briars and thorns for me, and that with heavy labour I should gain my bread. And what did it profit me, that I could read and understand for myself all the books I could get in the so-called liberal arts, when I was actually a worthless slave of wicked lust? I took delight in them, not knowing the real source of what it was in them that was true and certain. For I had my back toward the light, and my face toward the things on which the light falls, so that my face, which looked toward the illuminated things, was not itself illuminated. Whatever was written in any of the fields of rhetoric or logic, geometry, music or arithmetic, I could understand without any great difficulty and without the instruction of another man. All this thou knowest, O Lord my God, because both quickness in understanding and acuteness in insight are thy gifts. Yet for such gift I made no thank-offering to thee. Therefore my abilities serve not my profit, but rather my loss, since I went about trying to bring so large a part of my substance into my own power. And I did not store up my strength for thee, but went away from thee into the far country to prostitute my gifts in disordered appetite. And what did these abilities profit me, if I did not put them to good use? I did not realize that those arts were understood with great difficulty, even by the studious and the intelligent, until I tried to explain them to others and discovered that even the most proficient in them followed my explanations all too slowly. And yet, what did this profit me, since I still suppose that thou, O Lord God, the truth, wert a bright and vast body, and that I was a particle of that body? O perversity gone too far! But so it was with me. And I do not blush, O my God, to confess thy mercies to me in thy presence or to call upon thee, any more than I did not blush when I openly avowed my blasphemies before men and bade hound-like against thee. What good was it for me that my nimble wit could run through those studies and disentangle all those knotty volumes without help from a human teacher, since all the while I was erring so hatefully and with such sacrilege as far as the right substance of pious faith was concerned? And what kind of burden was it for thy little ones to have a far slower wit, since they did not use it to depart from thee, and since they remained in the nest of thy church to become safely fledged and to nourish the wings of love by the food of a sound faith? O Lord our God, under the shadow of thy wings let us hope, defend us, and support us. Thou wilt bear us up when we are little, and even down to our grey hairs thou wilt carry us. For our stability, when it is in thee, is stability indeed. But when it is in ourselves, then it is all unstable. Our good lives forever with thee, and when we turn from thee with aversion, we fall into our own perversion. Let us now, O Lord, return that we be not overturned, because with thee our good lives without blemish, for our good is thee thyself. And we need not fear that we shall find no place to return to because we fell away from it, for in our absence our home, which is thy eternity, does not fall away. End of book 4