1. 1. With the help of God's mercy, now that the snares of the Manichees have been broken and left behind, and I have at last been restored to the bosom of the Catholic Church, it pleases me to consider now, at least, and to lament that wretchedness of mine. For there were many things I ought to have done, that the seeds of the truest religion, soundly implanted in me from boyhood, should not have been so easily, and in so few days, dug out and driven from my mind by the error or the deceit of false and deceitful people.

For first, as to those two kinds of souls to which they attribute natures so distinct and proper that they would have one to be of the very substance of God, while of the other they will not have God accepted even as its founder: if I had considered this soberly and carefully with myself, with my mind suppliant and devout toward God, perhaps, as I applied myself, it would have appeared to me that there is no life of any sort whatever which, by the very fact that it is life and insofar as it is life at all, does not pertain to the highest source and origin of life—which we can confess to be nothing other than the highest and only true God. Therefore those souls which are called evil by the Manichees either lack life and are not souls, neither willing nor unwilling anything, neither seeking nor avoiding; or, if they were alive, so that they could both be souls and do something of the kind they suppose, they live in no way except by life. And since it is established that Christ said, as indeed it is established, I am the life (John 14:6), there is no reason why we should not confess that all souls—since souls cannot exist except by living—were created and founded through Christ, that is, through life.

2. 2. But if at that time my thinking could not bear or sustain the question of life itself and of participation in life—a question that is certainly great and needs much serene discussion among the most learned—I might perhaps have been able to discern this, which appears most plainly to everyone who considers it well, without partisan zeal: that everything we are said to know and recognize, we hold grasped either by a sense of the body or by the understanding. The senses of the body, moreover, are commonly numbered as five: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. And who—unless ungrateful and impious—would not grant me that understanding far and deeply surpasses and excels them all?

Once this is established and confirmed, it follows that all the things perceived by touch and sight, or in any other bodily way, are as much inferior to the things we attain by understanding as we see the senses themselves to yield to understanding. For this reason, since all life, and therefore every soul, can be perceived by no bodily sense but by understanding alone—while that sun and moon and all the light discerned by these mortal eyes is said even by the Manichees themselves to be attributed to the true and good God—it is the height of madness to proclaim that what we behold through the body pertains to God, but to think that what we grasp not only by the mind but by the very loftiness of the mind, namely the intellect and understanding—that is, life, whatever sort of life it be called, yet life—must be deprived and bereaved of the same God as its author. For could I not answer, if, having called upon God, I were to ask myself what it is to live, and how separated it is from every bodily sense, and how altogether incorporeal?

Or would they too not confess that those souls they detest not only live, but even live immortally? And that what was said by Christ, Let the dead bury their own dead (Matt 8:22), was said not of those who do not live at all, but of those who sin, which is the only death of an immortal soul—as Paul writes, The widow who lives in pleasures is dead (1 Tim 5:6): for he said at once both that she is dead and that she lives.

Therefore I would attend not to how much more discolored a sinful soul may live, but only to this very fact, that it lives. And if I could not perceive this except by understanding, I believe it would come to mind that any soul whatever is to be preferred to the light we perceive through these eyes by as much as we prefer understanding to the eyes themselves.

3. 2. But that light too they affirm to be from the Father of Christ: should I then have doubted that any soul whatever was from him? Indeed, not only about the soul, but about any body whatever, that it was from him, I would have had no doubt at all—not even then, a man, that is, of such inexperience and of such an age—if I had thought piously and carefully about what form is and what is formed, what species is and what is endowed with species, and then which of these is the cause of which.

3. 3. But of the body I say nothing for the moment; I complain about the soul, about its spontaneous and lively movement, about its act, about its life, about its immortality. In short, I complain that I, most wretched, believed that all these things could exist apart from the goodness of God—that I attended carelessly to how great they were. This I think I must groan over, this I must weep over. I would turn these things over with myself, speak with myself, and bring them before those men: I would set out what the power of understanding is, and how there is nothing in a human being that we could compare with this excellence.

When the men had granted me this, if only they were men, I would ask whether to see with these eyes is to understand. When they had denied it, I would first gather that the understanding of the mind is far to be set before the sense of these eyes; then I would add that what we perceive by a better thing must necessarily be judged better. Who would not grant this?

I would therefore proceed to ask: is that soul which they call evil perceived by these eyes, or understood by the mind? They would confess: by the mind. When all this had been agreed and confirmed among us, I would show what is concluded: namely, that the very soul they execrate is better than that light they venerate, since the one is made known by the understanding of the mind, the other by a sense of the body.

Here, perhaps, they would stick fast and refuse to follow reason as their guide: so great is the force of inveterate opinions and of a falsehood long defended and believed. But I would press the more upon those who stuck fast—not harshly, not childishly, not stubbornly—I would repeat what had been granted, and show how it had to be granted.

I would urge them to take counsel together, to see clearly what we must deny: whether they thought it false that the intellect is to be preferred to these eyes of flesh, or that what is known by the excellence of the mind is more excellent than what is known by the lowly sense of the body; or whether they were unwilling to confess that those souls they believed to be of alien origin could be known only by understanding, that is, by the very excellence of the mind; or whether they wished to deny that the sun and moon become known only by these eyes.

But if they perceived that none of these things could be denied except most absurdly and shamelessly, I would persuade them that they ought not to doubt that this light which they proclaimed worthy of worship is baser than that soul which they warned must be fled.

4. 4. And here, if by chance they were troubled and asked me whether I judged even the soul of a fly to surpass this light, I would answer: Yes; nor would the fly frighten me because it is small, but it would reassure me because it is alive. For the question is what enlivens those tiny limbs, what leads so small a little body here and there according to natural appetite, what moves the feet of the running fly in rhythm, what governs and beats the little wings of the flying one. Whatever this is, it stands out, to those who consider it well, as something so great in so small a thing that it is to be preferred to any brilliance that dazzles the eyes.

5. 4. Certainly, as no one doubts, whatever exists is intelligible: and this, by divine laws, surpasses everything sensible, and therefore surpasses this light as well. For what, I ask, do we perceive by thought, if we do not perceive this: that to understand by the mind is one thing and to sense through the body another, and that the former stands apart from the latter by an incomparable loftiness; and therefore that intelligible things cannot but be preferred to sensible ones, since the intellect itself is so far preferred to the senses?

5. 5. Hence too I would perhaps come to recognize this, which manifestly follows: since injustice and intemperance and the other vices of the mind are not sensed but understood, how it comes about that even these things, which we detest and judge worthy of condemnation, can nonetheless, because they are intelligible, surpass this light, though it is to be praised in its own kind. For it is suggested to the mind that subjects itself well to God, first, that not everything we praise is to be set before everything we blame.

For I do not, because I praise the most purified lead, on that account value it more highly than the gold I blame. For each thing is to be considered in its own kind. I disapprove of a jurist ignorant of many laws; yet I so prefer him to the most approved cobbler that I think the two not even to be compared. But I praise the latter, that he is most skilled in his own craft; the former I rightly reprehend, that he fulfills his profession less well.

From which I ought to discover that this light, since it is perfect in its own kind, is rightly praised; yet because it is included in the number of sensible things, which kind must yield to the kind of intelligible things, it must be reckoned below unjust and intemperate souls, since these are intelligible—although we judge these souls not unjustly to be most worthy of condemnation. For we seek in them what is reconciled to God, not what is to be preferred to that brilliance. Therefore, if anyone should contend that this light is from God, I would not oppose him; but I would say rather that souls, even defective ones, not insofar as they are defective but insofar as they are souls, ought to confess God to be their creator.

6. 6. At this point, if any of them, cautious and watchful, now more studious than obstinate, were to warn me that the question is not about defective souls but about the vices themselves—which, since they are not known by a sense of the body and yet are known, can be taken to be nothing but intelligible; and if these surpass all sensible things, why should it be agreed among us that light is to be attributed to God as its author, while no one but a sacrilegious person would call God the author of the vices?—I would answer the man, if either the solution of this question had at once and suddenly shone upon me from God, as it usually does upon God's good worshipers, or had been prepared beforehand; but if I had merited and been able to do neither of these, I would put off what I had begun, and would confess that what was proposed was difficult and hard to discern.

I would recur into myself, prostrate myself before God, and groan deeply, praying that he would not let me stick fast in the middle of the course along which I had advanced by sure reasonings; lest, by the twofold question, I be forced either to submit and subject intelligible things to sensible ones, or to call God himself the author of the vices—since either of these is utterly full of falsehood and impiety. In no way could I suppose that he would desert me, affected as I was in this way. He would rather warn me, by those ineffable ways of his, to consider again and again whether the vices of the mind, over which I was in turmoil, were to be numbered among intelligible things.

And in order to discover this, because of the weakness of my inner eye, which had justly befallen me through my sins, I would contrive for myself some step toward beholding invisible things within the visible things themselves—things of which we have by no means a more certain knowledge, but a more confident familiarity.

And so I would at once ask what properly pertains to the sense of the eyes: I would find colors, of which this light holds the chief place. For these are what no other sense attains; for the motions of bodies, their magnitudes, intervals, and shapes, though seen by the eyes too, are nevertheless perceived not properly by them but also by touch. From which I would gather that light surpasses the other bodily and sensible things by as much as sight is more brilliant than the other senses.

Having chosen, then, from all the things perceived by the body, this light, on which I would rely and in which I would necessarily place that step of my inquiry, I would go on to attend to what was being done in this way, and would speak with myself thus:

if this sun, so conspicuous in its brightness and sufficient for the light of day, were gradually to fail before our gaze, down to the likeness of the moon, would we perceive anything else with our eyes than light shining in some degree—seeking light, nonetheless, because of what we no longer saw, and drinking in by sight what was present?

We would therefore not see that diminishing, but the light that remained in the diminishing. But when we did not see it, we would not sense it; for whatever we sense by sight cannot fail to be seen. Hence, if that diminishing were sensed neither by sight nor by any other sense, it could not be numbered among sensible things. For nothing is sensible that cannot be sensed.

Let us now bring our consideration back to virtue, by whose intelligible light we most fittingly say the mind shines. Now a certain diminishing from this light of virtue—one that does not destroy the soul but darkens it—is called a vice. Rightly, therefore, can the vice of the soul too by no means be numbered among intelligible things, just as that diminishing of the light is rightly excluded from the number of sensible things; yet what remains of the soul—that is, the very fact that it lives and is a soul—is as intelligible as that sensible thing which would shine, however faintly, in this visible light after the diminishing. And therefore the soul, insofar as it is a soul and shares in life, without which a soul can in no way exist, is most rightly to be set before all sensible things. For which reason it is the greatest of errors to say that any soul is not from God, when from him you boast that the sun and moon exist.

6. 7. But if it now pleased me to call all sensible things not only those we sense, but also those which, though we do not sense them, we nevertheless judge through the body—as through the eyes darkness, and through the ears silence; for we know the former by not seeing and the latter by not hearing—and in turn to call intelligible not only those we behold with the mind illuminated, such as wisdom itself, but also those from which we turn away by the very privation of that illumination, such as folly, which I might fittingly call the darkness of the mind:

then I would raise no controversy over the word, but would resolve the whole question by an easy division, and would at once make it approved to those who attend well, that intelligible substances are set before sensible substances by the divine and incorruptible law of truth—not the defects of those substances, although we might wish to call the latter intelligible and the former sensible.

Therefore those who would confess both that these visible lights and those intelligible souls are substances are in every way compelled to grant and attribute the more sublime parts to the souls; but the defects of either kind cannot be set one before the other, for they merely deprive and indicate non-being, and so have everywhere the same force, like negations themselves. For when we say "It is not gold" and "It is not virtue," although there is the greatest difference between gold and virtue, there is nevertheless no difference between the negations we have joined to them.

But in very truth it is worse not to have virtue than not to have gold: no sane person is in doubt about this; and who would not understand that this happens not because of the negations themselves, but because of the things to which they are joined? For by as much as virtue surpasses gold, by so much is it more wretched to lack virtue than to lack gold. Therefore, since intelligible things surpass sensible things, we deservedly endure a defect in intelligible things more grievously than in sensible ones; valuing not the defects, but the things that are defective, more dearly or more cheaply. From which it now appears that the defect of life, which is intelligible, is far more pitiable than the defect of this sensible light—since, namely, intelligible life understood is far dearer than this light perceived by sight.

6. 8. Since this is so, will anyone dare, when he attributes to God the sun and moon, and whatever shines among the stars, and finally whatever in this earthly fire of ours shines with visible light, to be unwilling to grant that any souls whatever—which assuredly are not souls except by living—are from God, when life so far precedes this light? And since he speaks truly who says, Insofar as it shines, it is from God; shall I in the end, great God, lie, if I say, Insofar as it lives, it is from God? Let not, I pray, the blindness of mind and the punishments of souls be so increased that people fail to understand these things.

But however their error or obstinacy might stand, relying and armed with these reasonings, I believe that when I had brought the matter, thus considered and examined, before them, and had calmly conferred with them, I would have no fear that any of them should seem to me of any weight, if he tried either to prefer to a sense of the body the intellect, or those things which are perceived by the intellect and not through defect—or at least to compare them with the corporeal sense, or with those things which likewise have to be known by that same sense.

This being established, when would he or anyone dare to deny me that souls, however evil one might wish, nevertheless, because they are souls, are contained in the number of intelligible things, and are not understood through defect? Since souls would be nothing else than that by which they live. For although they would be understood to be defective because they are defective through want of virtue, they would nevertheless not be souls through defect, since they are souls by living. Nor can it happen that the presence of life is the cause of defect, since each thing is the more defective the more it is forsaken by life.

6. 9. In every way, then, since it would be clear that no souls can be separated from that author from whom this light is not separated, whatever they brought forward I would not accept; but I would rather warn them to prefer to follow with me those who proclaim that everything whatever, since it exists, in whatever degree it exists, is from the one God.

7. 9. They would recite against me those gospel words: You do not hear, for this reason, because you are not from God (John 8:47); You are from your father the devil (John 8:44). I too would recite in turn: All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing (John 1:3); and that word of the Apostle: One God, from whom are all things; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things (1 Cor 8:6); and again, of the same Apostle: From whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things; to him be glory (Rom 11:36):

and I would exhort the men (if indeed I could find men) that we should not now presume to have, as it were, discovered anything; but should rather seek teachers who would show us the peace and concord of these sentences, which seemed to us to be at war with one another.

For in one and the same authority of the Scriptures, when in one place it sounded forth, All things are from God (1 Cor 11:12), and in another, You are not from God (John 8:47): since it would be wrong rashly to condemn the books, who would not see that a skilled teacher had to be found, one to whom the solution of this question was known? And he, surely, if he were a good interpreter and, as it is divinely said, a spiritual man (See 1 Cor 2:15)—since he would necessarily favor the true reasonings which I have, as far as I could, treated and discussed concerning intelligible and sensible nature, or rather would open them himself far better and more aptly for teaching—we would hear from him nothing else about this question than how it could be that both no kind of souls is not from God, and that it is nevertheless rightly said to sinners and unbelievers, You are not from God.

For perhaps we too, having implored God's help, could easily see that to live is one thing and to sin another; and although life in sins, compared with a just life, has been called death (See 1 Tim 5:6), yet both can be found in one and the same person, so that he is at once alive and a sinner—but that which is alive, from God; that which is a sinner, not from God.

In this division we use that one of the two parts which fits our position: so that when we wish to set forth the omnipotence of God the founder, we say even to sinners that they are from God. For we say it to those who are contained under some species, we say it to living beings, we say it to rational beings, we say it, finally—and this most of all pertains to the matter—to the living: all of which are in themselves divine gifts. But when the purpose is to reprove the evil, we rightly say, You are not from God. For we say it to those who turn themselves away from the truth, to the unbelieving, the criminal, the shameful, and—what in one word comprises the whole—to sinners: and who, in turn, would doubt that all these things are not from God?

And so, when Christ, reproving sinners for the very fact that they were sinners and did not believe in him, says, You are not from God, what wonder is it—while on the other side that sentence remains intact, that all things were made through him, and all things are from God? For if not to believe in Christ, to reject Christ's coming, not to receive Christ, were a sure sign of souls that are not God's, and for that reason it had been said, You do not hear, for this reason, because you are not from God: how would that word of the Apostle be true, at the memorable beginning of the Gospel itself, where it is said, he came to his own, and his own received him not (John 1:11)? How were they his own, if they did not receive him? Or why, for this reason, were they not his own, because they did not receive him—unless because human beings who are sinners, by the fact that they are human beings, pertain to God, but by the fact that they are sinners, pertain to the devil?

Here, then, he who said his own received him not held to the side of nature; but he who said You are not from God held to the side of the will. For the Evangelist was commending the works of God, while Christ was restraining the sins of human beings.

8. 10. Here perhaps someone will say: Whence the sins themselves, and whence evil altogether? If from a human being, whence the human being? If from an angel, whence the angel? And when it is said that these are from God—though it is rightly and truly said—it nevertheless seems to the inexperienced and to those less able to gaze keenly at hidden matters as if evils and sins were connected to God by a kind of chain.

By this question they think they reign: as though to ask were to know. Would that it were so; no one would be found more knowing than I. But somehow, often in disputing, the proposer of a great question puts on the part of a great teacher, when for the most part he is himself more unlearned than the very person he frightens, in the very matter about which he frightens him.

And so these people think themselves to be preferred to the multitude, because they are the first to ask what they, along with the multitude, do not know. But if, at the time when I dealt with them in a way I now regret, instead of as I have long done, they had objected this to me as I set forth these reasonings, I would say:

I ask you, for the present, to recognize with me what is most easy: that if nothing can shine without God, much less can anything live without God; lest we remain among such monstrous opinions as to proclaim that I know not what souls have life without God. For thus it will perhaps come about that what you do not know along with me—that is, whence evil comes—we may at some time learn, either at the same time or in whatever order. For what if the knowledge of the highest evil cannot come to a human being without the knowledge of the highest good? For we would not know darkness if we were always in darkness; but the knowledge of light does not leave its contrary unknown. Now the highest good is that than which nothing can be higher: but God is good, and nothing can be higher than God: therefore God is the highest good. Let us therefore know God, and so that which we seek too hastily will not lie hidden from us. Do you think, after all, that the knowledge of God is a matter of moderate effort or moderate reward? For what other prize is promised us than eternal life, which is the knowledge of God? For God our teacher says, And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only and true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (John 17:3). For although the soul is immortal, yet because its death is rightly called the turning away from the knowledge of God, when it turns itself to God it merits the attaining of eternal life, so that, as has been said, that very knowledge may be eternal life.

But no one can turn to God unless he turns himself away from this world. This I feel to be hard and most difficult for myself: if it is easy for you, let God himself see to it. I would wish to believe it, were I not moved by this: that, while this world, from which we are commanded to turn away, is visible, and the Apostle has said, The things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal (2 Cor 4:18), you attribute more to the judgment of these eyes than to that of the mind—you among whom it is proclaimed and believed that there is no shining feather that does not shine from God, yet that there is a living soul that does not live from God.

These things, and things like them, I would either say even to those people, or reckon over with myself. For I could, beseeching God with all my heart, as the saying goes, and intent on the Scriptures as far as was permitted, perhaps even then say such things, or think what was enough for salvation.

9. 11. But two things especially, which easily capture that incautious age, wore me down through wondrous windings. One of these is familiarity, somehow creeping in under a certain image of goodness, like some sinuous bond wound many times about the neck. The other was that a certain harmful victory almost always fell to me in disputations, when I argued with uninstructed Christians who nevertheless strove, each as he could, to defend their faith. By this constant success the young man's spiritedness swelled, and by its own impulse it imprudently inclined toward the great evil of obstinacy. And because I had taken up that manner of wrangling after hearing them, whatever I could accomplish, whether by my own such talent as it was or by other readings, I most gladly attributed to them alone. Thus from their discourses ardor for contests, and from the outcome of the contests love for them, was daily renewed in me. From which it came about that whatever they said, by certain marvelous diseases, I approved as true, not because I knew it but because I wished it to be true. So it happened that, although step by step and cautiously, I nevertheless long followed men who preferred a glittering straw to a living soul.

9. 12. But suppose it so: that at that time I could not judge and distinguish sensible things from intelligible, that is, carnal things from spiritual; it was not a matter of age, nor of training, nor even of some habit, nor finally of any merits; for it is no small matter of joy and happiness. Could I then not even grasp this much, which in the judgment of all human beings nature itself has established by the laws of the highest God?

10. 12. For any human beings whatever, provided no madness had cut them off from the common sense of the human race—whatever zeal they might bring to bear in judging, however much inexperience, however great even their slowness—I should like to test what they would answer me as I asked whether it seemed to them that a man had sinned from whose hand, while he slept, another had written something shameful. Who would doubt that all would so deny this to be a sin, and so protest, that they would perhaps even be angry that I had thought them worthy of such a question?

Having reconciled them as best I could and restored them to deliberation, I would ask them not to take it ill that I was questioning them about something else so manifest and set in everyone's knowledge. Then I would ask: if, not by the hand of a sleeping man but of one who knew, yet who was bound and constrained in his other limbs, some stronger person had likewise done some evil, whether, because he knew it, although he was entirely unwilling, he would be held by any name of sin. And here all of them, wondering that I asked such things, would answer without hesitation that this man too had not sinned at all. Why so? Because no one can in any way be justly condemned for some evil that another has done while he was unaware, or unable to resist.

And as to why this is so, if I questioned human nature itself in those persons, I would easily arrive at what I desired, asking in this way: What if that sleeping man already knew what the other would do with his hand, and deliberately, having drunk the more so as not to wake, gave himself to sleep in order to deceive someone by an oath—would his sleep at all support his innocence? What else would they pronounce him than a guilty man? But if he too were willingly bound, in order likewise to deceive someone under cover of that pretended defense, what in the end did those bonds profit him toward being free of sin? Although, bound by them, he could not in fact resist, just as that sleeping man would be wholly unaware of what was then being done. Is there, then, any room for doubt that both would be judged to have sinned?

When these things had been granted, I would gather that sin is nowhere except in the will: since this too would aid me, that justice holds sinners guilty by an evil will alone, even though they were unable to carry out what they willed.

10. 13. Could anyone say that I, in treating these things, was occupied with obscure and hidden matters, where, because of the fewness of those who understand, a suspicion of either fraud or showing off usually arises? Let that distinction of intelligible and sensible things withdraw for a little while: let no ill will arise against me for pursuing dull minds with the goads of subtle disputations. Let me be permitted to know that I am alive, let me be permitted to know that I will to live: in which, if the human race agrees, our will is as well known to us as our life. Nor, when we profess this knowledge, need it be feared that anyone will convince us we can be deceived in it: for in this very thing no one can be deceived, if he either does not live or wills nothing. I do not think I have brought forward anything obscure, and I fear rather that I may seem more to be faulted by someone because these things are too manifest: but let us consider where they tend.

10. 14. Therefore one sins only by the will. But our own will is most fully known to us: for I would not know that I will, if I did not know what the will itself is. It is defined, then, in this way: The will is a movement of the mind, with nothing compelling it, either toward not losing or toward acquiring something. Why, then, could I not have defined it thus at that time? Or was it difficult to see that the unwilling is the contrary of the willing, in the way that we say the left is contrary to the right, not the way black is to white? For one and the same thing cannot be at once both black and white; but anyone placed in the middle of two things is on the left toward one and on the right toward the other: one man is indeed at once both, but at once both toward one and the same man, in no way. So indeed one mind can at once be both unwilling and willing; but it cannot at once not will and will one and the same thing. For when anyone does something unwillingly, if you ask whether he wills to do it, he says he does not will it; likewise, if you ask whether he wills not to do it, he answers that he wills it. Thus you will find him unwilling as to the doing, but willing as to the not doing: that is, one mind having both at one time, but referring the one and the other to different things. Why do I say this? Because if we ask again on what account he does it unwillingly, he will say he is compelled. For everyone who does something unwillingly is compelled; and everyone who is compelled, if he does it, does it only unwillingly.

It remains that the willing is free from one who compels, even if someone thinks himself compelled. For in this way too everyone who acts willingly is not compelled; and everyone who is not compelled either acts willingly or does not act. Since nature itself proclaims these things in all human beings whom we can not absurdly question, from boy to old man, from the schoolroom to the chair of the wise: why did I not then see that this had to be placed in the definition of the will, namely, "with nothing compelling it," which now, made most cautious by greater experience, as it were, I have set down?

But if this is everywhere manifest, and ready at hand to all not by teaching but by nature, what remains that might seem obscure—unless perhaps something lies hidden, that we will something when we will, and that our mind is moved toward this, and that we either have it or do not have it, and if we had it would will to retain it, if we did not have it would will to acquire it? Therefore everyone who wills either wills not to lose, or to acquire, something. For which reason, if all these things are clearer than light—as they are, and are granted not only to my knowledge but to that of the human race by the liberality of truth itself—why could I not at that time too have said: The will is a movement of the mind, with nothing compelling it, either toward not losing or toward acquiring something?

11. 15. Someone will say: And how would this help you against the Manichees? Wait; let us first also define sin, which every mind reads inscribed within itself by God, that it cannot exist without the will. Sin, then, is the will to retain or to obtain what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain. Although, if one is not free, it is not the will. But I have preferred to define it more roughly than too scrupulously. Did I really need to scrutinize these obscure books, in order to learn that no one is worthy of blame or punishment who either wills what justice does not forbid him to will, or does not do what he cannot do? Do not even shepherds sing these things on the mountains, and poets in the theaters, and the unlearned in their gatherings, and the learned in libraries, and teachers in schools, and prelates in sacred places, and the whole human race over the globe of the earth? But if no one is worthy of blame or condemnation who either does not act against the prohibition of justice, or does what he cannot not do, while every sin is either to be blamed or to be condemned: who would doubt that there is sin where it is both unjust to will and free not to will; and that therefore that definition is both true and most easy to understand, and could have been stated by me not only now, but then also: Sin is the will to retain or to obtain what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain?

12. 16. Come now, let us see how these things would help us. Very greatly indeed, so that I would desire nothing more: for they would settle the whole case. For whoever, consulting the secrets of his own conscience and the divine laws deeply implanted in nature, within his mind, where they are more expressly and more surely present, concedes that these two definitions of the will and of sin are true, condemns the whole heresy of the Manichees, without any hesitation, by the fewest and briefest, yet plainly most invincible, little arguments.

This can be considered as follows. They say that there are two kinds of souls: one good, which is from God in such a way that it is said not to have been made by him from some matter or from nothing, but a certain part to have proceeded from his very substance altogether; the other evil, which they believe, and commend as a thing to be believed, pertains in no part whatever to God: and therefore they proclaim the former to be the highest good, the latter the highest evil; and that these two kinds were once distinct but are now mingled together.

The manner of this mingling, and its cause, I had not yet heard: but nevertheless I could already ask whether that evil kind of souls, before it was mingled with the good, had any will. For if it did not, it was without sin and innocent, and therefore in no way evil. But if it was evil on this account, that, although it was without will—like fire—yet, if it had touched the good, it would violate and corrupt it: how great a wickedness it is both to believe that the nature of evil has such power to alter any part of God, and to believe that highest good corruptible and violable! But if the will was in it, then certainly there was in it, with nothing compelling, a movement of the mind toward either not losing or acquiring something. But this something was either good, or was thought good: for otherwise it could not be sought. But in the highest evil, before the mingling they proclaim, there never was any good. Whence, then, could there be in it either knowledge or opinion of the good? Or did they will nothing that was with them, and seek that true good which was outside? But this indeed is a will to be proclaimed with great praise, by which the highest and true good is sought. Whence, then, in the highest evil, a movement of the mind so worthy of so great praise? Or did they seek it from a zeal to harm?

First, the argument turns back to the same point. For whoever wills to harm wills to deprive another of some good for the sake of some good of his own. There was therefore in them either knowledge or opinion of the good, which ought in no way to have been in the highest evil.

Next, whence had they come to know that the good set outside themselves, which they were eager to harm, existed at all? If they had understood it, what is more excellent than such a mind? Or is there anything else toward which all the striving of the good is directed with great labors, except that the highest and pure good be understood? What, then, is now scarcely granted to a few good and just persons, was that pure evil already able to do then, with no good helping it? But if those souls bore bodies and had seen it with their eyes, what tongues, what hearts, what talents suffice to praise and proclaim those eyes, with which scarcely the minds of the just can be matched? How great goods do we find in the highest evil! For if to see God is evil, God is not good: but God is good: therefore it is good to see God; and I know not what could be compared to this good. Further, since to see is good, how can it be that the power to see is evil? For which reason, whatever wrought, whether in those eyes or in these minds, the power that the divine substance can be seen by them, wrought a good great and most worthy of unspeakable praise. But if it was not made, but was itself such of itself and everlasting, it is difficult to find anything better than this evil.

12. 17. Finally, granting that those souls have none of these praiseworthy things which they are compelled by their arguments to have, I would ask whether God condemns some souls or none. If none, there is no judgment of merits, no providence, and the world is administered by chance rather than by reason—or rather is not administered at all: for administration is not to be ascribed to chances. But if it is wrong for all who are bound by any religion to believe this, it remains that either there is a condemnation of some souls, or there are no sins. But if there are no sins, then there is also no evil: and if they say this, they slay their own heresy at a single blow.

I agree with them, then, that some souls are condemned by the divine law and judgment. But these souls, if they are good, what is that justice? If they are evil, are they so by nature or by will? But souls can in no way be evil by nature. How do we teach this? From the foregoing definitions of the will and of sin. For to say that souls are both evil and yet sin in nothing is full of madness; to say that they sin without the will is a great delusion; and to hold anyone guilty of sin because he did not do what he could not do is the height of injustice and madness. For which reason, if those souls do whatever they do by nature and not by will—that is, if they lack a movement of the mind free both to act and not to act—if, finally, no power is granted them of abstaining from their work, we cannot hold them guilty of sin. But all confess that evil souls are justly condemned, and those that have not sinned, unjustly: they confess, therefore, that those are evil which sin. But those souls, as reason has taught, do not sin. Therefore that I-know-not-what alien kind of evil souls, which is introduced by the Manichees, is nothing.

12. 18. Now let us look at that good kind, which in turn they so praise as to say that it is the very substance of God. But how much better is it that each one recognize his own order and merit, and not be puffed up with such sacrilegious pride that, although he feels himself so often changed, he believes himself to be the substance of that highest good which devout reason professes and teaches to be unchangeable?

For behold: since it is manifest that souls do not sin in that which they are not, such as they cannot be; and since it is therefore established that those I-know-not-what imported souls in no way sin, and on that account do not exist at all: it remains that, since they concede that sins exist, they find no one to whom to attribute them except the good kind of souls and the substance of God.

But they are especially pressed by Christian authority: for they have never denied that pardon of sins is given when anyone has been converted to God; they have never said—as they have of many other things—that some corrupter inserted this into the divine Scriptures. To whom, then, are sins forgiven? If to those evil souls of the alien kind, then they too can become good, can possess the kingdom of God with Christ.

Since they deny this, and have no other kind except that of the souls they declare to be of the substance of God, it remains that they confess not only that these souls also sin, but that these alone sin. But I, for my part, do not contend that they alone sin: yet they do sin. But are they compelled by the mingling of evil? If they are so compelled that there is no power of resisting, they do not sin: if it is in their power to resist, and they consent by their own will, why are we compelled by their teaching to find such great goods in the highest evil, and this evil in the highest good—unless because neither is that evil which they introduce by their suspicion, nor is this the highest good which they pervert by their superstition?

13. 19. But if I had taught that they raved and erred about those two kinds of souls, or had at least learned it myself, what could remain why they should seem to me worth hearing or consulting about any matter? Or that I might learn from this that two kinds of souls are shown to exist, because in deliberating our assent now wavers toward the evil side, now toward the good? Why is this not rather a sign of one soul, which by that free will can be carried this way and that, brought back from here and from there? For when it happens to me, I feel that I am one, both considering each side and choosing one or the other: but for the most part the one pleases, the other befits, and we, placed in the middle, fluctuate between them.

Nor is this strange: for we are now so constituted that we can be affected both by pleasure through the flesh and by what is honorable through the spirit. Why am I therefore compelled to confess two souls from this? For we can understand better and far more readily that two kinds of good things—neither of which, however, is alien to God their author—affect one soul from different parts, the lower and the higher, or, as it can rightly be put, the outer and the inner. These are the two kinds which a little earlier we treated under the name of sensible and intelligible things, which we more gladly and more familiarly call carnal and spiritual.

But it has become difficult for us to abstain from carnal things, although our truest bread is spiritual. For now we eat our bread by labor. Nor are we without any punishment, having been made mortal from immortal by the sin of transgression. Hence it comes about that, when, as we strive after better things, the habit formed with the flesh and our sins begin in some way to war against us and to make difficulty for us, some foolish people suspect, with most obtuse superstition, another kind of souls which is not from God.

13. 20. And yet, even if it be granted them that we are enticed to base things by some other inferior kind of souls, they do not thereby establish either that those souls are evil by nature or that these of ours are the highest good.

For it can happen that those souls, by their own will desiring what was not permitted—that is, by sinning—were made evil from good; and can in turn be made good, but, as happens while they remain in sin, draw others over to themselves by a certain hidden persuasion: or, again, that they are not evil at all, but in their own kind, though an inferior one, exercise their proper work without any sin; while these higher souls, to which the highest justice, governess of things, has assigned an activity far more excellent, if they should will to follow and imitate those lower ones, become evil by sinning—not because they imitate evil souls, but because they imitate them in an evil way.

For by the former their own work is done, by the latter what is alien is sought: hence the former remain in their own rank, the latter are plunged into lower things, as when human beings pursue what is beastly. For the four-footed horse moves beautifully; but if a man should imitate this with hands and feet, who would think him worthy even of the food of chaff?

Rightly, then, do we for the most part disapprove of the imitator, while we approve of the one he imitates. But we disapprove not because he did not attain it, but because he willed to attain it at all. For in the horse we approve that to which, by as much as we prefer the man, by so much are we offended that he pursues lower things. Among human beings themselves, in raising the voice, is it not the case that what a herald does well, even if a senator should do it more clearly and better than the herald, he is mad to do?

Take heavenly things: the shining moon is praised, and by its course and phases it pleases well enough those who consider it well; yet if the sun should wish to imitate it (let us suppose that it could have wishes of this kind), to whom would it not in the highest degree and rightly displease? From which comes the thing I wish to be understood. Even if there are souls (which for the present is uncertain) given over to bodily functions not by sin but by nature, and even if they touch upon us by some inner kinship, although they are inferior, they ought not on that account to be considered evil because we, when we follow them and love bodily things, are evil. For we sin by loving bodily things for this reason: because we are both commanded by justice to love spiritual things and able by nature to do so; and then we are best and most blessed in our own kind.

13. 21. For which reason, what force of argument has deliberation seething on both sides—now inclined toward sin, now lifted toward right action—that we should be compelled to accept two kinds of souls, of which the nature of the one is from God and of the other is not, when one may conjecture so many other causes of alternating thought? But that these things are obscure, and sought in vain by bleary minds, anyone who is a good judge of things sees. Therefore those things rather which have been said about the will and about sin—those things, I say, which the highest justice does not permit anyone using reason to be ignorant of, those things which, if they were taken from us, there would be nothing from which the discipline of virtue might begin, nothing from which one might rise from the death of vices—those things, considered again and again, clearly and lucidly enough convince us that the heresy of the Manichees is false.

14. 22. Like these is what I shall now say about repenting. For, as is agreed among all who are sane, and as the Manichees themselves not only confess but even prescribe, it is useful to repent of sin. Why should I now gather, on this matter, the testimonies of the divine Scriptures, which are everywhere abundant? This too is the voice of nature: the knowledge of this thing has deserted no foolish person; if it were not deeply implanted in us, we would perish. Someone can say that he does not sin: but that he need not repent if he has sinned, no barbarian will dare to say.

Since this is so, I ask, of those two kinds of souls, which one is it that repents of sin? I know indeed that it can belong neither to the one that cannot do evil, nor to the one that cannot do good: therefore, to use their own words, if the soul of darkness repents of sin, it is not of the substance of the highest evil; if the soul of light repents, it is not of the substance of the highest good. For that affection of repenting which is profitable testifies that the one repenting both did evil and was able to do good. How, then, is nothing of evil from me, if I acted wrongly? Or how do I rightly repent, if I did not do it?

Hear the other side: How is nothing of good from me, in whom a good will is present? Or how do I rightly repent, if it is not present? For which reason, let them either deny that there is great usefulness in repenting—so that they may be driven not only from the Christian name, but even from every show of reason—or let them at last cease to say and teach those two kinds of souls, the one from which is nothing of evil, the other from which is nothing of good: and if they do this, they will certainly cease to be Manichees; for that whole sect is propped up by this two-headed, or rather headlong, variety of souls.

14. 23. And for me it is enough to know that the Manichees err in the way that I know one must repent of sin: and yet, if I now were to challenge, by the right of friendship, one of my friends who still thinks they ought to be heard, and were to say to him: Do you know that it is useful, when anyone has sinned, to repent? he would without hesitation swear that he knows it. If, then, I make you know thus that the heresy of the Manichees is false, will you desire anything more?

Let him answer what more he could desire in this matter. Well enough thus far. But when I begin to set forth the sure and necessary reasonings which follow from that proposition, bound, as it is said, by adamantine chains, and have brought the whole matter through to the conclusion by which that sect is overthrown: he will perhaps deny that he knows that usefulness of repenting, which no one learned, no one unlearned, fails to know; and he will contend rather that he knows that, when we doubt and deliberate, two souls in us bring their own advocacy to each side of the question. O habit of sin! O companion, the punishment of sin! You then turned me away from the consideration of things so manifest; but you harmed me without my feeling it: now, in my closest friends who likewise do not feel it, you wound and torture me, who now feel it.

15. 24. Attend to these things, I beg you, dearest ones: I know your talents well. If you now grant me the mind and reason of any human being whatever, these things are far more certain than those which there we either seemed to learn or were rather compelled to believe.

Great God, almighty God, God of the highest goodness, whom it is right to believe and to understand to be inviolable and unchangeable, Triune Unity whom the Catholic Church worships, as a suppliant I pray, having experienced your mercy in myself, that you not allow the men with whom from boyhood I have had the closest fellowship in all my dealings to differ from me in worshiping you. I see that here, above all, it is expected how I would, even then, if I were as cautious as I say, defend against the Manichees the Catholic Scriptures, which they accused; or how I may show that they can now be defended. But in other volumes God will assist my purpose; for the moderate length of this one, as I judge, now demands that it be spared.