1. 1. 1. Evodius: Tell me, I beg you, whether God is not the author of evil.

Augustine: I will tell you, if you first make plain which evil you are asking about. For we usually speak of evil in two ways: in one, when we say that someone has done evil; in the other, when someone has suffered something evil.

Evodius: I want to know about both.

Augustine: But if you know or believe that God is good—and it is not lawful to think otherwise—he does not do evil. Again, if we confess that God is just—and to deny this too is sacrilege—then just as he grants rewards to the good, so he assigns punishments to the wicked; and these punishments are indeed evils to those who suffer them. Therefore, if no one pays a penalty unjustly—which we must believe, since we believe that this universe is governed by divine providence—God is in no way the author of that first kind of evils, but he is the author of this second kind.

Evodius: Is there, then, some other author of that evil of which God has been shown not to be the author?

Augustine: There certainly is, for it could not come about with no author at all. But if you ask who that author is, it cannot be named, for it is not any single one; rather, each wicked person is the author of his own misdeed. If you doubt this, attend to what was said above: that misdeeds are punished by the justice of God. They would not be punished justly unless they were done by the will.

1. 1. 2. Evodius: I do not know whether anyone sins who has not learned to. And if that is true, I ask who it is from whom we have learned to sin.

Augustine: Do you consider learning to be something good?

Evodius: Who would dare to say that learning is evil?

Augustine: What if it is neither good nor evil?

Evodius: It seems good to me.

Augustine: Quite right, since knowledge is given or awakened through it, and no one learns anything except through learning. Or do you think otherwise?

Evodius: I judge that only good things are learned through learning.

Augustine: Then take care that evil things are not learned, for learning is so called only from a learning that is good.

Evodius: How, then, do people come to do evil things, if they are not learned?

Augustine: Perhaps by this: that a person turns himself away and estranges himself from learning, that is, from learning. But whether it is this or something else, one thing at least is clear: since learning is good, and learning takes its name from learning, evil things cannot be learned at all. For if they are learned, they are contained within learning, and so learning will not be a good thing—yet it is good, as you yourself grant. Therefore evil things are not learned, and you are searching in vain for the one from whom we learn to do evil; or if evil things are learned, they are learned so as to be avoided, not done. From which it follows that to do evil is nothing other than to turn aside from learning.

1. 1. 3. Evodius: I think there are really two kinds of learning: one through which we learn to do good, the other through which we learn to do evil. But when you asked whether learning was good, the love of the good itself seized my attention, so that I had in view the learning by which one does good, and on that account I answered that it was good. Now, however, I am reminded that there is another, which I confirm beyond doubt to be evil, and whose author I am seeking.

Augustine: At least you think that understanding is nothing if not good?

Evodius: I think it so plainly good that I cannot see what could be more excellent in a human being, and I would in no way say that any understanding could be evil.

Augustine: What then? When someone is taught, if he does not understand, can he seem to you to be learned?

Evodius: He certainly cannot.

Augustine: If, then, all understanding is good, and no one who does not understand learns, then everyone who learns does good; for everyone who learns understands, and everyone who understands does good. Whoever, therefore, seeks the author through whom we learn something is in fact seeking the author through whom we do good. So stop wanting to track down some evil teacher or other. For if he is evil, he is no teacher; and if he is a teacher, he is not evil.

1. 2. 4. Evodius: Come now: since you press me hard enough to confess that we do not learn to do evil, tell me whence it is that we do evil.

Augustine: You raise the very question that vexed me severely as a young man, and that, wearying me, drove and cast me down among the heretics. By that fall I was so afflicted, and so buried under such great heaps of empty fables, that had not the love of finding the truth obtained divine help for me, I could not have emerged from there and breathed again in that first freedom of inquiry. And since I was diligently brought to be freed from this question, I will proceed with you by the same path I followed in escaping. For God will be present, and will make us understand what we have believed. We are well aware in our own conscience that we hold to the step prescribed by the prophet, who says, unless you believe, you will not understand ((Isa 7:9)). Now we believe that all things that exist are from one God, and yet that God is not the author of sins. But the mind is troubled: if sins come from those souls that God created, and those souls are from God, how is it that sins are not, at no great remove, traced back to God?

1. 2. 5. Evodius: That is now plainly what you have said—the very thing that, when I think on it, torments me enough, and that has driven and dragged me into this inquiry.

Augustine: Be of a manly spirit, and believe what you believe; for nothing better is believed, even if the reason why it is so lies hidden. To think of God in the best way is the truest beginning of piety; and no one thinks of him in the best way who does not believe him to be almighty, and unchangeable in not so much as a single part; the creator also of all good things, to which he himself is superior; the most just ruler too of all that he created; and aided by no nature in creating, as though he were one who was not sufficient for himself. From this it follows that he created all things out of nothing; but out of himself he did not create, but rather begot, that which would be equal to himself, whom we call the only Son of God, and whom, when we try to declare him more plainly, we name the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, through whom he made all things, which were made out of nothing. With these things settled, let us, with God's help, strive toward an understanding of the matter you are inquiring into, in this way.

1. 3. 6. Evodius: Adulteries and murders and sacrileges—to pass over the rest, for which there is neither time nor memory enough to list them—who is there to whom these do not seem to be evil deeds?

Augustine: Then tell me first why you think adultery is an evil deed. Is it because the law forbids doing it?

Evodius: It is surely not evil because it is forbidden by law; rather, it is forbidden by law because it is evil.

Augustine: What if someone should harass us, exaggerating the pleasures of adultery and asking us why we judge this to be evil and worthy of condemnation? Do you think we should take refuge in the authority of the law, when dealing with people who now desire not merely to believe but to understand? For I too believe with you, and believe it unshakably, and proclaim that all peoples and nations must believe, that adultery is evil. But now we are laboring to know and hold most firmly, by understanding as well, the very thing we have received in faith. So consider as best you can, and tell me, by what reasoning you have come to know that adultery is evil.

Evodius: I know it is evil by this: that I would not be willing to suffer it myself in the case of my own wife. And whoever does to another what he does not want done to himself surely does evil.

Augustine: What if a man's lust were such that he offered his own wife to another, and willingly allowed her to be corrupted by one in whose wife he in turn desired to have an equal license? Does it seem to you that he does no evil?

Evodius: On the contrary, very great evil.

Augustine: Yet this man does not sin by that rule, for he does not do what he is unwilling to suffer. So you must look for something else by which to prove that adultery is evil.

1. 3. 7. Evodius: It seems to me evil because I have often seen people condemned for this crime.

Augustine: What of this: have not people often been condemned for doing what is right? Review the history—I need not send you to other books—that very history which excels by its divine authority; and you will at once find how badly we think of the apostles and of all the martyrs, if it pleases us to take condemnation as a sure sign of an evil deed, since all of them were judged worthy of condemnation for their confession. Therefore, if whatever is condemned is evil, then to believe in Christ and to confess that faith was evil at that time. But if not everything that is condemned is evil, look for some other ground on which to teach that adultery is evil.

Evodius: I cannot find what to answer you.

1. 3. 8. Augustine: Then perhaps the evil in adultery is lust. But while you look for the evil outside, in the deed itself, which can already be seen, you find yourself in difficulties. For to make you understand that the lust in adultery is the evil, consider this: even if a man should not have the opportunity to lie with another's wife, but it is in some way plain that he desires it, and that, were the chance given, he would do it, he is no less guilty than if he were caught in the act itself.

Evodius: Nothing is plainer than this, and I now see that there is no need for a long discourse to persuade me concerning murder and sacrilege, and indeed concerning all sins. For it is now clear that nothing other than lust holds sway in the whole class of evildoing.

1. 4. 9. Augustine: Do you also know that this lust is called by another name, "desire"?

Evodius: I know.

Augustine: What then? Do you think there is no difference between this and fear, or some difference?

Evodius: On the contrary, I judge that these two differ greatly from each other.

Augustine: I suppose you judge so because desire pursues, while fear flees.

Evodius: It is as you say.

Augustine: What, then, if someone kills a man not out of a desire to gain something, but in fear that some evil may befall him? Will he not be a murderer?

Evodius: He will indeed; but the deed does not on that account lack the dominion of desire. For one who kills a man out of fear surely desires to live without fear.

Augustine: And does it seem to you a small good to live without fear?

Evodius: It is a great good, but this can in no way come to that murderer through his crime.

Augustine: I am not asking what can come to him, but what he himself desires. For surely he desires a good who desires a life free of fear; and therefore this desire is not to be blamed—otherwise we would blame all lovers of the good. Hence we are compelled to admit that there is a murder in which the dominion of that evil desire cannot be found; and either it will be false that lust holds sway in all sins so as to make them evil, or there will be some murder that may not be a sin.

Evodius: If murder is the killing of a man, it can sometimes happen without sin; for a soldier who kills an enemy, a judge or his officer who kills a criminal, and one whose weapon slips by accident, against his will and without his knowing, do not seem to me to sin when they kill a man.

Augustine: I agree; but these are not usually called murderers. So answer me: do you think that the man who killed his master, from whom he feared grievous torments, should be counted among those who kill a man in such a way that they do not even deserve the name of murderers?

Evodius: I see that he differs greatly from them. For they act either in accordance with the laws or not against the laws, whereas no law approves this man's deed.

1. 4. 10. Augustine: Again you call me back to authority. But you should remember that we have now taken this up so that we may understand what we believe; and we believe the laws. So we must try, if in any way we can, to understand this very thing: whether the law that punishes this deed punishes it wrongly.

Evodius: It in no way punishes wrongly, since it punishes one who willingly and knowingly kills his master, which none of those others does.

Augustine: And what of this—do you recall that you said a little while ago that lust holds sway in every evil deed, and that by this very fact it is evil?

Evodius: I do recall it.

Augustine: What then? Did you not yourself grant this same point, that one who desires to live without fear does not have an evil desire?

Evodius: I recall this too.

Augustine: When, then, a master is slain by his slave out of this desire, he is not slain out of that blameworthy desire. And so we have not yet found out why this deed is evil. For we agreed between us that all evil deeds are evil for no other reason than that they are done out of lust, that is, out of a desire that is to be condemned.

Evodius: It now seems to me that the man is condemned unjustly—which I would not dare to say if I had anything else to say.

Augustine: Is that so? Did you persuade yourself that so great a crime ought to go unpunished, before you considered whether that slave wished to be free of the fear of his master in order to satisfy his lusts? For to desire to live without fear belongs not only to the good but to all the wicked as well. The difference, however, is this: the good seek it by turning their love away from those things that cannot be possessed without the danger of losing them; the wicked, on the other hand, strive to remove the obstacles, so that they may rest in the enjoyment of these things with security, and on that account they lead a life of crime and wickedness, which would better be called death.

Evodius: I come to my senses, and I rejoice greatly that I have so plainly come to know what that blameworthy desire is, which is called lust. It now appears to be the love of those things that anyone can lose against his will.

1. 5. 11. Augustine: Take care that this is not too hasty. For it seems to me that we must first examine whether an attacking enemy, or an ambushing assassin, can be killed—whether for the sake of life, or freedom, or chastity—without any lust.

Evodius: How can I think that those people lack lust who fight for the sake of things they can lose against their will? Or if they cannot lose them, what need is there to go so far as to kill a man for their sake?

Augustine: Then the law is not just that grants power to a traveler to kill a robber, lest he himself be killed by him; or to any man or woman to slay, if able, an assailant rushing in to rape them, before the rape is committed. For the soldier too is commanded by law to kill the enemy; and if he refrains from that slaughter, he pays the penalty at the commander's order. Shall we then dare to call these laws unjust, or rather no laws at all? For to me what is not just does not seem to be a law.

1. 5. 12. Evodius: I see well enough that the law is sufficiently fortified against an accusation of this kind, since, among the people it governs, it has given license for lesser evil deeds so that greater ones may not be committed. For it is far less harsh that one who lies in wait for another's life be killed than that he who defends his own life be killed. And it is far more monstrous for a man to suffer rape against his will than for the one who tries to force it to be slain by the one on whom he tries to force it. As for the soldier, in killing the enemy he is the agent of the law, and so he fulfilled his office without any lust. Furthermore, the law itself, which was enacted for the protection of the people, cannot be charged with any lust. For if the one who enacted it enacted it at God's command—that is, what eternal justice prescribes—he could have done it wholly free of lust. And if he established it with some lust, it does not follow that one must obey that law with lust, since a good law can be enacted even by one who is not good. For suppose someone who has seized tyrannical power should take a bribe from a person to whom it is profitable, so as to decree that no one may seize a woman even for marriage; the law will not be evil on that account, because an unjust and corrupt man enacted it. Therefore that law, which for the protection of citizens commands that hostile force be repelled with equal force, can be obeyed without lust; and the same can be said of all officers who by right and order are subject to the various authorities. But how those men can be guiltless under a law that does not blame them, I do not see. For the law does not compel them to kill, but leaves it in their power. They are therefore free to kill no one for the sake of things they can lose against their will, and for that reason ought not to love. As for life, it may perhaps be a matter of doubt to someone whether it is taken from the soul at all when this body is slain; but if it can be taken away, it is to be despised; if it cannot, there is nothing to fear. As for chastity, who would doubt that it is established in the soul itself, since it is a virtue? Hence it cannot be snatched away even by a violent rapist. Whatever, then, the man who is killed was going to snatch away is entirely not within our power; and so I do not understand how it is to be called ours. Therefore I do not reproach the law that permits such people to be killed; but how to defend those who do the killing, I cannot find.

1. 5. 13. Augustine: Much less can I find why you seek a defense for people whom no law holds guilty.

Evodius: No law, perhaps—of those laws that are visible and read by men. But I do not know whether they are not held by some more powerful and most hidden law, if there is nothing that divine providence does not administer. For how, in its sight, are those people free of sin who, for the sake of things that ought to be despised, are stained with human blood? It seems to me, then, both that this law, which is written for governing a people, rightly permits these things, and that divine providence avenges them. For this law takes upon itself to avenge only those things that are sufficient to secure peace among ignorant people, and so far as they can be governed by a man. But those other faults have other fitting penalties, from which it seems to me that wisdom alone can free us.

Augustine: I praise and approve this distinction of yours—unfinished and less than perfect, yet confident and reaching after certain lofty things. For it seems to you that this law, which is enacted for governing states, concedes much and leaves much unpunished that is nevertheless avenged by divine providence; and rightly so. For it is not the case that, because it does not do everything, the things it does are to be disapproved.

1. 6. 14. Evodius: I desire to go on, if only we can reach the limits of so great a matter; for I think it is boundless.

Augustine: On the contrary, be of good heart, and enter upon the ways of reason, relying on piety. For nothing is so arduous and difficult that it does not become wholly plain and easy with God's help. So, depending on him and beseeching his aid, let us seek what we have set out to seek. And first answer me: does this law, which is promulgated in writing, give aid to people who are living this present life?

Evodius: It is plain that it does, for it is from such people that peoples and states are made up.

Augustine: What then? Are these people and peoples of the kind of thing that cannot perish or change, and is altogether eternal? Or are they rather changeable and subject to time?

Evodius: Who would doubt that this kind of thing is plainly changeable and subject to time?

Augustine: Then if a people is well ordered and serious, and a most diligent guardian of the common good, in which each person values his private affairs less than the public good, is not a law rightly enacted by which this very people is allowed to appoint magistrates for itself, through whom its affairs—that is, the public affairs—may be administered?

Evodius: Quite rightly.

Augustine: Furthermore, if that same people, gradually grown corrupt, should prefer private affairs to the public good, and put its vote up for sale, and, corrupted by those who love honors, should hand over its government to scoundrels and criminals—then if some good man should arise who had great power, would it not likewise be right for him to take away from this people the power of conferring honors, and reduce it to the choice of a few good men, or even of one?

Evodius: That too is right.

Augustine: Since, then, these two laws seem so contrary to each other—one granting the people the power of conferring honors, the other taking it away—and since this second was enacted in such a way that both can in no manner exist at once in one state, shall we say that one of them is unjust and ought never to have been enacted?

Evodius: By no means.

Augustine: Let us call this law, then, if you please, "temporal," which, although it is just, can nevertheless justly be changed with the times.

Evodius: Let us so call it.

1. 6. 15. Augustine: What of that law which is called the highest reason, which must always be obeyed, and through which the wicked merit a wretched life and the good a blessed one, and through which, finally, the law we said should be called temporal is rightly enacted and rightly changed—can it seem to anyone who understands to be anything but unchangeable and eternal? Or can it ever be unjust that the wicked be wretched and the good blessed, or that a temperate and serious people appoint its own magistrates, while a dissolute and worthless one lacks that license?

Evodius: I see that this law is eternal and unchangeable.

Augustine: At the same time I think you also see that in that temporal law there is nothing just and lawful that people have not derived for themselves from this eternal one. For if at one time that people justly conferred honors, and at another justly did not, this temporal variation, in order to be just, was drawn from that eternity by which it is always just that a serious people confer honors and a fickle one not confer them. Or does it seem otherwise to you?

Evodius: I agree.

Augustine: Then, to explain in words, as briefly and as well as I can, the notion of the eternal law that is impressed upon us: it is that by which it is just that all things be most perfectly ordered. If you think otherwise, say so.

Evodius: I have nothing to set against what you say, since it is true.

Augustine: Since, then, this is the one law from which all those temporal laws for governing people are varied, can it itself in any way be varied?

Evodius: I understand that it altogether cannot. For no force, no chance, no decay of things will ever bring it about that it is not just for all things to be most perfectly ordered.

1. 7. 16. Augustine: Come now, let us see how a human being is himself most perfectly ordered within himself; for from human beings bound together by one law a people is made up, and that law, as has been said, is temporal. And tell me whether it is most certain to you that you are alive.

Evodius: What could I answer more certainly than this?

Augustine: What then? Can you distinguish that it is one thing to be alive, and another to know that one is alive?

Evodius: I know indeed that no one knows that he is alive except a living being; but whether every living being knows that it is alive, I do not know.

Augustine: How I wish that, as you believe, so you also knew that beasts lack reason; our discussion would soon pass on from this question. But since you say you do not know, you set a long discourse going. For it is not a thing such that, passing it over, we may be allowed to proceed to what we aim at with the close-knit chain of reasoning that I sense is needed. So tell me: since we have often seen beasts tamed by men—that is, not only the body of a beast but also its soul so subjugated to a man that it serves his will by a kind of perception and habit—does it seem to you possible in any way that any beast, however savage in ferocity or in body, or however keen in any sense, should in turn try to subjugate a man to itself, though many of them are able to slay his body either by force or by stealth?

Evodius: I agree that this can in no way happen.

Augustine: Quite right. But likewise tell me: since it is plain that in bodily strength and the other functions of the body a man is easily surpassed by very many beasts, what is the thing in which a man so excels that no beast can rule over him, while he can rule over many? Is it perhaps that which is usually called reason or understanding?

Evodius: I can find nothing else, since it is in the soul that we have what makes us excel the beasts. If they were without souls, I would say we excel them because we have a soul. But as it is, since they too are animate beings, what is not present in their souls—namely, that they be subject to us—but is present in ours—namely, that we be better than they—since this is evidently neither nothing nor anything small, what could I more rightly call it than reason?

Augustine: See how easily, with God's help, what people think most difficult is done. For I confess to you, I had thought that this question, which, as I understand, is now settled, would hold us as long, perhaps, as all that has been said from the very beginning of our discussion. So accept now, that the reasoning may go on connectedly; for I believe you are not unaware that what we call knowing is nothing other than to have grasped something by reason.

Evodius: So it is.

Augustine: He, then, who knows that he is alive does not lack reason.

Evodius: That follows.

Augustine: But beasts are alive, and, as has already been shown, they are without reason.

Evodius: That is plain.

Augustine: Behold, then, you now know what you had answered that you did not know: that not everything that is alive knows that it is alive, although everything that knows that it is alive necessarily is alive.

1. 7. 17. Evodius: I no longer doubt it; go on to what you intended. For I have learned well enough that it is one thing to be alive, another to know that one is alive.

Augustine: Which, then, of these two seems to you the more excellent?

Evodius: What do you suppose, if not the knowledge of life?

Augustine: Does the knowledge of life seem to you better than life itself? Or do you perhaps understand that knowledge is a certain higher and purer life, since no one can know unless he understands? And what is it to understand, if not to live more brightly and more perfectly by the very light of the mind? So you have, unless I am mistaken, set before me not something other than life, but a life better than a certain life.

Evodius: You have understood and explained my meaning excellently well—provided that knowledge can never be evil.

Augustine: I think it can in no way be evil, unless by a transferred sense we call experience "knowledge"; for to experience is not always good, as to experience punishments. But that which is properly and purely called knowledge, since it is acquired by reason and understanding—how can that be evil?

Evodius: I grasp this distinction too; go on with the rest.

1. 8. 18. Augustine: This is what I want to say: this thing, whatever it is, by which a human being is set above the beasts—whether it is more rightly called mind, or spirit, or both (for we find both in the divine Scriptures)—if it rules and commands the other things of which a human being is composed, then a human being is most perfectly ordered. For we see that we have much in common not only with the beasts but even with shrubs and plants. To take food for the body, to grow, to reproduce, to flourish—we see these granted also to trees, which are bound within a certain lowest kind of life. And we discern and admit that beasts can see and hear, and perceive bodily things by smell, taste, and touch, and most of them more keenly than we do. Add strength and vigor and firmness of limbs, and swift and very easy movements of the body, in all of which we surpass some of them, are equal to others, and are even outdone by a few. Yet that very class of things is certainly common to us with the beasts. And indeed to seek bodily pleasures and to avoid hardships is the whole activity of the life of beasts. There are certain other things that no longer seem to fall to wild animals, yet are not the highest things in the human being either, such as joking and laughing—things human indeed, but which anyone who judges most rightly of human nature judges to be the lowest in a human being. Then there is the love of praise and glory, and the craving to dominate; and although these are not found in beasts, we are not to think ourselves better than beasts by reason of the lust for these things. For this appetite too, when it is not subject to reason, makes people wretched; and no one ever thought himself to be set above another by his wretchedness. When, therefore, reason dominates these movements of the soul, a human being is to be called ordered. For there is no right order, nor is it to be called order at all, where the better are made subject to the worse. Or does it not seem so to you?

Evodius: It is plain.

Augustine: When this reason, then, or mind, or spirit governs the irrational movements of the soul, that which dominates in a human being is the very thing to which dominion is owed by the law we have found to be eternal.

Evodius: I understand and follow.

1. 9. 19. Augustine: When, then, a human being is so constituted and ordered, does he not seem to you to be wise?

Evodius: I do not know who else could seem to me a wise man, if this one does not.

Augustine: I believe you also know this, that very many people are foolish.

Evodius: This too is sufficiently established.

Augustine: But if the fool is the contrary of the wise, then, since we have found out who is wise, you surely now understand who is foolish.

Evodius: To whom would it not be obvious that it is the one in whom the mind does not hold the highest power?

Augustine: What, then, must be said when a human being is in this condition—that he lacks a mind, or that, though it is present, it lacks dominion?

Evodius: This latter, rather, which you placed last.

Augustine: I would very much like to hear from you by what proofs you have grasped that there is a mind present in a human being which does not exercise its rule.

Evodius: If only you would take that part yourself, for it is not easy for me to sustain what you press upon me.

Augustine: At least it is easy for you to recall what we said a little while ago: how beasts that have been tamed and domesticated by people serve them; and how people would in turn be subject to them, as reason has shown, unless they excelled in something. We did not find that something in the body; and so, since it appeared to be in the soul, and we did not discover what to call it but reason, we afterward recalled that this is also called mind and spirit. But if reason is one thing and mind another, it is at any rate certain that nothing but the mind can use reason. From which it follows that one who has reason cannot lack a mind.

Evodius: I recall and hold these things well.

Augustine: What then? Do you believe that the tamers of wild animals can only be wise men? For I call those wise whom the truth bids to be called so—that is, those who, by the reign of the mind, are at peace through having subjugated all lust.

Evodius: It is laughable to think such people wise—those whom common usage calls animal-keepers, or even herdsmen, oxherds, or charioteers, all of whom we see have tamed cattle subject to them, and by whose industry the untamed are subdued.

Augustine: There, then, you have a most certain proof by which it becomes plain that a mind is present in a human being without dominion. For such people have it, since they do things that could not be done without a mind; yet it does not reign, for they are foolish, and it is well known that the reign of the mind belongs to none but the wise.

Evodius: It is remarkable that this had already been worked out by us in what went before, and yet I could not call to mind what to answer.

1. 10. 20. Augustine: Do you think that lust is more powerful than that mind to which we know dominion over the lusts has been granted by the eternal law? For my part, I think it in no way is. For it would not be most perfectly ordered for the less powerful to command the more powerful. So I judge it necessary that the mind be more powerful than desire, by the very fact that it rightly and justly dominates desire.

Evodius: I think so too.

Augustine: What then? Shall we doubt that we ought to set every virtue above every vice in such a way that the better and loftier the virtue, the firmer and more invincible it is?

Evodius: Who would doubt it?

Augustine: Then no vicious soul overcomes a soul armed with virtue.

Evodius: That is most true.

Augustine: I do not think you will deny that any soul whatever is better and more powerful than any body.

Evodius: No one denies it who sees—as is easy—that a living substance is to be preferred to one not living, or that which gives life to that which receives it.

Augustine: Then much less does a body, of whatever kind, overcome a soul endowed with virtue.

Evodius: It is most evident.

Augustine: What then? Can a just soul, a mind that keeps its own right and command, cast another mind that reigns with equal fairness and virtue down from its citadel and subjugate it to lust?

Evodius: By no means—not only on account of the equal excellence in both, but also because the mind that tried to make the other vicious would first fall away from justice and become vicious, and by that very fact would be the weaker.

1. 10. 21. Augustine: You understand well. So it remains for you to answer, if you can, whether anything seems to you more excellent than a rational and wise mind.

Evodius: Nothing, I think, except God.

Augustine: That is my view too. But since the matter is arduous, and it is not now opportune to inquire into it so as to come to an understanding—although it is held by a most robust faith—let our careful and cautious treatment of this question remain intact for us.

1. 11. 21. Evodius: There is no one at all who would not confess this without any hesitation.

Augustine: It remains, then—since to a reigning mind possessed of virtue, whatever is equal or superior does not make it a slave of lust, on account of justice, and whatever is inferior cannot do this, on account of its weakness, as the points established between us show—that nothing else makes the mind a companion of desire than its own will and free choice.

Evodius: I see that nothing so necessary remains to be said.

1. 11. 22. Augustine: It follows, then, that it now seems to you just that the mind pay the penalty for so great a sin.

Evodius: I cannot deny it.

Augustine: What then? Is this very penalty to be thought a small one—that lust dominates the mind, and, having despoiled it of the riches of virtue, drags it this way and that, needy and destitute: now approving false things as true, now even defending them, now disapproving what it had earlier approved, and nonetheless rushing into other false things; now suspending its assent, and for the most part dreading clear reasonings; now despairing of finding the truth at all, and clinging fast to the darkness of folly; now striving toward the light of understanding, and again falling back through weariness? Meanwhile that reign of the desires rages tyrannically, and disturbs the whole soul and life of a human being with various and contrary storms—here with fear, there with longing; here with anxiety, there with empty and false gladness; here with the torment of a lost thing that was loved, there with the burning to obtain what was not possessed; here with the pains of an injury received, there with the fires of avenging it. Wherever it can, greed straitens, extravagance squanders, ambition enslaves, pride puffs up, envy torments, sloth buries, obstinacy provokes, subjection harasses, and whatever other countless things crowd and busy that reign of lust. Can we, in the end, count this no penalty—which, as you see, all who do not cling to wisdom must necessarily suffer?

1. 11. 23. Evodius: I judge this to be a great penalty indeed, and altogether just, if someone already set on the height of wisdom should choose to come down from there and be a slave to lust. But whether there could be anyone who has either wished to do this or wishes it, is uncertain. For although we believe that a human being was so perfectly fashioned by God, and established in the blessed life, that he himself slipped down from there by his own will into the hardships of mortal life—still, while I hold this by a most firm faith, I have not yet attained it by understanding. If you think a careful inquiry into this matter should now be deferred, you do so against my wish.

1. 12. 24. Augustine: You say this as though you had it clearly established that we were never wise; for you are looking at the time since we were born into this life. But since wisdom is in the soul, whether before its partnership with this body the soul lived in some other life, and whether it ever lived wisely, is a great question, a great secret, to be considered in its own place. Yet the matter we now have in hand is not on that account hindered from being opened up as far as it can be.

1. 12. 25. Evodius: I do not know.

Augustine: Do you want to know this?

Evodius: I do not know that either.

Augustine: Then question me no further.

Evodius: Why?

Augustine: Because I ought not to answer you when you ask, unless you want to know what you ask. Furthermore, unless you want to attain wisdom, there can be no discussion with you about matters of this kind. And finally, you cannot be my friend unless you want it to be well with me. Now as for yourself, see whether you have no will for your own blessed life.

Evodius: I confess, it cannot be denied that we have a will. Go on now; let us see what you conclude from this.

Augustine: I will. But tell me first this too: do you sense that you have a good will as well?

Evodius: What is a good will?

Augustine: The will by which we seek to live rightly and honorably and to attain to the highest wisdom. Just see whether you do not seek a right and honorable life, or do not vehemently wish to be wise, or whether you dare to deny that, when we will these things, we have a good will.

Evodius: I deny none of these things, and therefore I now confess that I have not only a will, but also a good will.

Augustine: How highly, I ask you, do you value this will? Do you think that riches, or honors, or bodily pleasures, or all these together, are in any way to be compared to it?

Evodius: God avert that wicked madness!

Augustine: Then ought we to rejoice but little that we have something in the soul—I mean this very good will—in comparison with which the things we mentioned are utterly worthless, things for the obtaining of which we see a multitude of people refuse no labors and no dangers?

Evodius: We ought indeed to rejoice, and greatly.

Augustine: What then? Do you think that those who do not enjoy this joy are afflicted with only a small loss of so great a good?

Evodius: On the contrary, with a very great one.

1. 12. 26. Augustine: You see, then, as I think, that it is set within our will whether we enjoy or are without so great and so true a good. For what is so within the will as the will itself? Whoever has it good has, surely, something that is to be set far above all earthly kingdoms and all bodily pleasures. But whoever does not have it lacks that thing which his will alone, by itself, would give him—a thing more excellent than all the goods that are not within our power. And so, although he judges himself most wretched if he has lost a glorious reputation, vast wealth, and any bodily goods whatever, will you not judge him most wretched—even if he abounds in all such things—when he clings to things he can most easily lose, and does not have, though he wills it, the good will, which is not even to be compared with those things, and which, since it is so great a good, requires only willing in order to be had?

Evodius: That is most true.

Augustine: By right, then, and deservedly, foolish people—even if they were never wise (for this is doubtful and most hidden)—are afflicted with wretchedness of this kind.

Evodius: I agree.

1. 13. 27. Augustine: Consider now whether prudence seems to you to be the knowledge of things to be sought and things to be avoided.

Evodius: It does.

Augustine: What then? Is not fortitude that disposition of the soul by which we despise all hardships and the loss of things not set within our power?

Evodius: So I judge.

Augustine: Further, temperance is the disposition that restrains and checks the appetite from those things that are basely sought. Or do you think otherwise?

Evodius: No, I think as you say.

Augustine: And justice—what shall we say it is, if not the virtue by which to each is rendered what is his own?

Evodius: I have no other notion of justice.

Augustine: Whoever, then, having a good will—of whose excellence we have now long been speaking—embraces this one thing with love, than which meanwhile he has nothing better, delights in it, and finally enjoys it fully and rejoices in it, considering and judging how great it is, and how it can neither be torn nor stolen from him against his will: can we doubt that such a person is opposed to all the things that are enemies to this one good?

Evodius: It is altogether necessary that he be opposed to them.

Augustine: Shall we think that this person is endowed with no prudence, when he sees that this good is to be sought and that the things hostile to it are to be avoided?

Evodius: It seems to me in no way possible that anyone could do this without prudence.

Augustine: Rightly. But why do we not also grant him fortitude? For all those things that are not within our power he cannot love or value highly. For they are loved by an evil will, which he must resist as an enemy to his dearest good. But since he does not love these things, he does not grieve at their loss, and altogether despises them—which we have said and granted to be the work of fortitude.

Evodius: Let us grant it indeed; for I do not understand whom I could more truly call brave than the one who, with an even and tranquil soul, does without those things which it is not within us to obtain or to keep—which we have found that this person necessarily does.

Augustine: See now whether we can keep temperance from him, since it is the virtue that checks the lusts. And what is so hostile to a good will as lust? From which you surely understand that this lover of his own good will resists in every way, and opposes the lusts, and is therefore rightly called temperate.

Evodius: Go on; I agree.

Augustine: Justice remains; and I really do not see how it could be lacking to this man. For one who has and loves a good will, and resists, as has been said, the things hostile to it, can wish ill to no one. It will follow, then, that he does injury to no one—which no one can do except one who renders to each what is his own. When I said that this pertains to justice, you approved it, as I think you remember.

Evodius: I do indeed remember, and I confess that in this man, who values and loves his own good will highly, all four virtues, which were described by you a little while ago with my agreement, are found.

1. 13. 28. Augustine: What, then, prevents us from granting that this man's life is praiseworthy?

Evodius: Nothing at all; rather, all things urge, and even compel us to it.

Augustine: What then? Can you in any way not judge that a wretched life is to be fled?

Evodius: I judge it greatly to be fled, and think that nothing else should be done.

Augustine: But a praiseworthy life, surely, you do not think is to be fled.

Evodius: On the contrary, I judge it is to be diligently sought.

Augustine: Then a praiseworthy life is not a wretched one.

Evodius: That certainly follows.

Augustine: Then nothing, I think, now remains difficult for you to agree to—namely, that the life which is not wretched is the blessed life.

Evodius: It is most plain.

Augustine: It is agreed, then, that the man who is a lover of his own good will, and despises in comparison with it whatever else is called good—the loss of which can happen even while the will to keep it remains—is blessed.

Evodius: Why should it not be agreed, since the things we conceded above necessarily lead to it?

Augustine: You understand well. But tell me, I ask: is not this very thing—to love one's good will and to value it as highly as has been said—itself a good will?

Evodius: You speak the truth.

Augustine: And if we rightly judge this man blessed, do we not rightly judge wretched the one whose will is the contrary?

Evodius: Most rightly.

Augustine: What reason, then, is there why we should think it must be doubted that—even if we were never before wise—we nevertheless merit and lead, by our will, a praiseworthy and blessed life, and by our will a base and wretched one?

Evodius: I confess that we have arrived here by sure and undeniable steps.

1. 13. 29. Augustine: Consider also this: for I believe you hold in memory what we said a good will is. I think it was said to be the will by which we seek to live rightly and honorably.

Evodius: I remember it so.

Augustine: If, then, we love and embrace this will with a likewise good will, and prefer it to all the things we cannot keep merely because we will to, those virtues, as reason has taught, will dwell in our soul; and to have them is the very thing that it is to live rightly and honorably. From which it follows that whoever wills to live rightly and honorably, if he wills this willing of his above the fleeting goods, attains so great a thing with such ease that to have what he willed is nothing other than the very willing of it.

Evodius: Truly I tell you, I can scarcely keep from crying out for joy at so great a good, so suddenly arising for me and so easily set within reach.

Augustine: And yet this very joy, which is begotten by the attaining of this good, when it lifts the soul calmly and quietly and steadily, is called the blessed life—unless you think that to live blessedly is anything other than to rejoice in true and certain goods.

Evodius: So I think.

1. 14. 30. Augustine: Rightly. But do you suppose that any human being does not in every way will and wish for the blessed life?

Evodius: Who doubts that every human being wills it?

Augustine: Why, then, do not all attain it? For we had said, and agreed between us, that people merit it by their will, and the wretched life too by their will, and merit them so as to receive them. But now there arises some sort of contradiction, and unless we look carefully, it strives to throw into confusion the earlier reasoning, so wide-awake and firm. For how does anyone suffer a wretched life by his will, when no one at all wills to live wretchedly? Or how does a human being attain the blessed life by his will, when so many are wretched, and all will to be blessed? Does it come about because it is one thing to will well or ill, and another to merit something through a good or evil will? For those who are blessed, who must also be good, are not blessed because they willed to live blessedly—for the wicked also will this—but because they willed to live rightly, which the wicked do not will. Therefore it is no wonder that wretched people do not attain what they will, that is, the blessed life. For they do not likewise will that which is its companion, and without which no one is worthy of it and no one attains it—namely, to live rightly. For that eternal law, to whose consideration it is now time to return, has fixed this with unchangeable stability: that merit lies in the will, but reward and punishment in blessedness and wretchedness. And so, when we say that people are wretched by their will, we do not say it because they will to be wretched, but because they are in a will such that wretchedness must follow it, even against their will. Therefore it does not contradict the earlier reasoning that all will to be blessed and cannot be; for not all will to live rightly, to which one will alone the blessed life is owed—unless you have something to say against this.

Evodius: I have nothing.

1. 15. 31. Augustine: So be it. But tell me first whether one who loves to live rightly, and so delights in it that to him it is not only right but also sweet and pleasant, loves this law, and holds it most dear—the law by which he sees that the blessed life is granted to a good will, and a wretched life to an evil one.

Evodius: He loves it altogether and vehemently; for it is by following this very law that he lives so.

Augustine: What then? When he loves it, does he love something changeable and temporal, or something stable and everlasting?

Evodius: Something eternal, surely, and unchangeable.

Augustine: What of those who, persevering in an evil will, nonetheless desire to be blessed? Can they love that law by which wretchedness is deservedly repaid to such people?

Evodius: In no way, I think.

Augustine: Do they love nothing else?

Evodius: On the contrary, very many things—namely, those in the obtaining or keeping of which that evil will persists.

Augustine: I suppose you mean riches, honors, pleasures, and the beauty of the body, and all the other things that they can both fail to obtain though they will them, and lose against their will.

Evodius: Those are the very things.

Augustine: Do you think these things are eternal, when you see them subject to the turning of time?

Evodius: Who, even of the most demented, would think so?

Augustine: Since, then, it is plain that some people are lovers of eternal things, others of temporal things, and since we have agreed that there are two laws, one eternal, the other temporal—if you have any sense of fairness, which of these do you judge ought to be subject to the eternal law, and which to the temporal?

Evodius: I think what you ask is obvious. For I judge that the blessed, on account of their love of eternal things, live under the eternal law, while the temporal is imposed on the wretched.

Augustine: You judge rightly, provided you hold unshaken what reason has already most clearly shown: that those who serve the temporal law cannot be free of the eternal—from which, we said, everything that is just, and is justly varied, is derived—while those who, by a good will, cling to the eternal law have no need of the temporal law. This, as it appears, you understand well enough.

Evodius: I grasp what you say.

1. 15. 32. Augustine: The eternal law, then, commands us to turn our love away from temporal things and, when it is cleansed, to turn it toward the eternal.

Evodius: It does command this.

Augustine: What, then, do you think the temporal law commands, except that those things which can be called ours for a time—when people cling to them by desire—they may possess by that right by which peace and human society are preserved, as far as they can be preserved in such matters? These things are: first, this body and what are called its goods, such as sound health, keenness of the senses, strength, beauty, and whatever others there are, some necessary for the good arts and therefore to be valued more highly, others of less worth. Then liberty—though indeed there is no true liberty except that of the blessed and those who cling to the eternal law; but I now mention the liberty by which those think themselves free who have no human masters, and which those long for who wish to be set free from human masters. Then parents, brothers, spouse, children, kinsmen, relations by marriage, intimates, and whoever are joined to us by some bond. Then the state itself, which is usually held in the place of a parent; honors too, and praise, and what is called popular glory. And lastly, money, under which one name are contained all the things of which we are by right the owners, and which we seem to have the power to sell or give away. How that law distributes to each his own among all these is difficult and long to explain, and plainly not necessary for what we have proposed. For it is enough to see that the power of this law in punishing reaches no further than to take and carry off these things, or some of them, from the one it punishes. It coerces, then, by fear, and twists and turns to its purpose the souls of the wretched, for whose governing it is fitted. For while they fear to lose these things, they keep a certain measure in using them, suited to the bond of the state, of such kind as can be formed out of people of this sort. It does not, however, punish the sin when these things are loved, but when they are taken from others by wickedness. So consider whether we have now reached what you thought boundless. For we had set out to inquire how far that law, by which earthly peoples and states are governed, has the right of punishing.

Evodius: I see that we have reached it.

1. 15. 33. Augustine: Do you also see this, then—that there would be no punishment, whether inflicted on people by injury or by such legal vengeance, if they did not love the things that can be taken from them against their will?

Evodius: I see this too.

Augustine: Since, then, of the same things one person makes evil use and another good use—and the one who makes evil use clings to them and is entangled by love, that is, made subject to the things that ought to be subject to him, and setting up as goods for himself the things in the ordering and right handling of which he himself ought surely to be a good; whereas the one who uses them rightly shows that they are indeed goods, but not for him, for they do not make him good or better, but are rather made so by him; and therefore he is not glued to them by love, nor makes them, as it were, members of his own soul (which happens by loving), lest, when they begin to be cut away, they defile him with torment and decay; rather, he rises wholly above them, ready to have them and to govern them when there is need, and readier still to lose them and not have them—since this is so, do you think that silver and gold should be blamed on account of the greedy, or food on account of gluttons, or wine on account of drunkards, or women's beauty on account of fornicators and adulterers, and so on in like manner—especially when you see that a physician makes good use of fire, and a poisoner makes wicked use of bread?

Evodius: It is most true that not the things themselves, but the people who use them badly, are to be blamed.

1. 16. 34. Augustine: Rightly. But since we have now, as I think, begun to see what the eternal law is capable of, and have found out how far the temporal law can go in punishing; and since the two kinds of things, eternal and temporal, and again the two kinds of people—those who follow and love eternal things, and those who follow temporal things—have been distinguished clearly enough; and since it has been established that what each chooses to pursue and embrace is set within the will, and that the mind is cast down from the citadel of its rule and from right order by nothing but the will, and it is plain that not any thing, when someone uses it badly, but the one who uses it badly, is to be blamed: let us return, if you please, to the question proposed at the beginning of this discourse, and see whether it has been resolved. For we had set out to inquire what it is to do evil, and on this account we said all that we have said. So now we may notice and consider whether to do evil is anything other than to neglect eternal things—which the mind enjoys through itself, and perceives through itself, and which, loving them, it cannot lose—and to pursue temporal things, things perceived through the body, the lowest part of a human being, things that can never be certain, as though they were great and wondrous. For in this one class all evil deeds, that is, sins, seem to me to be included. But I wait to learn what seems so to you.

1. 16. 35. Evodius: It is as you say, and I agree that all sins are contained in this one class, when someone turns away from divine and truly abiding things and turns to changeable and uncertain ones. These, although they are rightly placed in their own order and accomplish a certain beauty of their own, it is nevertheless the mark of a perverse and disordered soul to be made subject to them in following them, when by the divine order and right it has rather been set over them, to lead them at its own bidding. And at the same time I now seem to see settled and found out the very thing we had set out to inquire after that question, what it is to do evil—namely, whence it is that we do evil. For, unless I am mistaken, as the reasoning we have pursued has shown, we do it by the free choice of the will. But I ask whether free choice itself, by which we are shown to have the capacity for sinning, ought to have been given to us by him who made us. For it seems we would not have been going to sin if we lacked it; and it is to be feared that in this way God may even be thought the author of our evil deeds.

Augustine: Have no fear of that at all. But for a more careful inquiry, another time must be taken. For this discourse now calls for a measure and a limit; and I would have you believe that we have, as it were, knocked at the doors of great and hidden things to be inquired into. When, with God as our guide, we begin to come into their inmost recesses, you will surely judge how great a difference there is between this discussion and those that follow, and how far those excel—not only in the keenness of the inquiry, but also in the majesty of the things and the most brilliant light of truth. Only let piety be present, that divine providence may permit us to hold and complete the course we have begun.

Evodius: I yield to your wish, and most gladly join my own to it in judgment and desire.

2. 1. 1. Evodius: Now, if it can be done, explain to me why God gave a human being free choice of the will; for surely, if he had not received it, he could not sin.

Augustine: Is it now certain and known to you that God gave a human being this thing which you think ought not to have been given?

Evodius: As far as I seemed to understand in the previous book, we both have free choice of the will, and it is by it alone that we sin.

Augustine: I too remember that this was already made clear to us. But just now I asked whether you know that God gave us this thing which we plainly have, and by which we sin.

Evodius: I think it was no other. For we are from him; and whether we sin or do right, we merit from him either punishment or reward.

Augustine: I want to know this too: whether you know this clearly, or whether, moved by authority, you gladly believe it even though it is unknown to you.

Evodius: I affirm that on this matter I first believed on authority. But what is truer than that every good is from God, and that everything just is good, and that punishment for sinners and reward for those who do right is just? From which it follows that God afflicts sinners with wretchedness and those who do right with blessedness.

2. 1. 2. Augustine: I do not resist; but I ask that other thing: how you know that we are from him. For just now you explained not this, but that we merit from him either punishment or reward.

Evodius: This too I see is plain from no other source than that it is already established that God avenges sins. For all justice is from him. For just as it does not belong to a certain goodness to bestow benefits on strangers, so it does not belong to justice to take vengeance on strangers. Hence it is plain that we belong to him, since he is not only most kind to us in bestowing, but also most just in avenging. Then, from what I posited and you granted—that every good is from God—it can also be understood that a human being is from God. For a human being himself, insofar as he is a human being, is some good; because he can, when he wills, live rightly.

2. 1. 3. Augustine: Plainly, if these things are so, the question you proposed is resolved. For if a human being is some good, and could not do right except when he willed, he must have had a free will, without which he could not do right. For we must not believe that God gave it for this purpose, that one might sin by it. There is reason enough, then, why it ought to have been given, since without it a human being cannot live rightly. And that it was given for this purpose can be understood even from this: that if anyone uses it for sinning, he is divinely punished for it. This would be done unjustly if the will had been given as free not only for living rightly but also for sinning. For how could he be justly punished who used the will for that very thing for which it was given? But now, when God punishes a sinner, what else does he seem to you to say but: "Why did you not use free will for the very thing for which I gave it to you—that is, for doing right?" Then again, that good, by which justice itself is commended in condemning sins and honoring right deeds—how could it exist if a human being lacked free choice of the will? For there would be neither sin nor right deed that was not done by the will. And on this account both punishment and reward would be unjust, if a human being did not have a free will. But there had to be justice in both punishment and reward, since this is one of the goods that are from God. God, therefore, had to give a human being a free will.

2. 2. 4. Evodius: Now I grant that God gave it. But does it not seem to you, I ask you—if it was given for doing right—that it ought not to have been able to be turned to sinning, just like that justice which was given to a human being for living well? For surely no one can live badly through his justice. So no one could sin through the will, if the will was given for doing right.

Augustine: God will indeed grant, I hope, that I may be able to answer you—or rather, that you yourself may answer, with Truth, the supreme teacher of all, teaching within. But for a little while I want you to tell me this: if you hold for certain and known the thing I asked you about, that God gave us a free will, ought we to say that it should not have been given, when we confess that God gave it? For if it is uncertain whether he gave it, we rightly ask whether it was given well, so that, when we have found it was given well, we may also find that he gave it, from whom all good things are given to souls; but if we find it was not given well, let us understand that he did not give it, whom it is wrong to blame. But if it is certain that he himself gave it, we must confess that, in whatever way it was given, it neither ought not to have been given, nor to have been given otherwise than it was. For he gave it whose work can in no way be rightly faulted.

2. 2. 5. Evodius: Although I hold these things by an unshaken faith, yet since I do not yet hold them by knowledge, let us inquire as though all were uncertain. For I see that, from this being uncertain—whether the free will was given for doing right, since by it we can also sin—it becomes uncertain too whether it ought to have been given. For if it is uncertain that it was given for doing right, it is uncertain too that it ought to have been given; and through this it will also be uncertain whether God gave it, because if it is uncertain that it ought to have been given, it is uncertain that it was given by him, whom it is wrong to believe gave anything that ought not to have been given.

Augustine: At least it is certain to you that God exists.

Evodius: Even this I hold unshaken, not by contemplating it, but by believing it.

Augustine: If, then, one of those foolish people, of whom it is written, the fool said in his heart, There is no God (Ps 14:1 (13:1)), were to say this to you, and were unwilling to believe with you what you believe, but wanted to know whether you had believed truly—would you leave the man, or would you think that in some way what you hold unshaken should be made convincing to him, especially if he wished not to fight back stubbornly, but earnestly to come to know it?

Evodius: This last point you put sufficiently reminds me what I ought to answer him. For surely, however absurd he might be, he would grant me that one must not argue, about any matter at all, and least of all about so great a matter, with a deceitful and stubborn person. With that granted, he would first deal with me, so that I might believe he was asking this in good faith, and that there lay hidden in him, as far as this matter is concerned, no deceit or stubbornness. Then I would show—which I think very easy for anyone—how much fairer it was that, when on the hidden matters of his own soul, which he himself knew, he wished another, who did not know them, to believe him, he himself should also believe in the existence of God on the books of such great men, who left it attested in their writings that they had lived with the Son of God; for they wrote that they had seen things that in no way could happen if there were no God; and he would be exceedingly foolish if he reproached me for having believed those men, while wanting me to believe him. And now, since he could not rightly reproach this, he would in no way find why he should also be unwilling to imitate it.

Augustine: If, then, as to whether God exists, you think it enough that we judged we ought not rashly to believe such great men, why, I ask you, do you not likewise think that on those matters too which we have set out to inquire into as uncertain and quite unknown, we ought to believe the authority of those same men in such a way that we need labor no further over investigating them?

Evodius: But we desire to know and understand what we believe.

2. 2. 6. Augustine: You rightly remember what we cannot deny was set down by us at the very beginning of the previous discussion. For unless it were one thing to believe and another to understand, and unless we must first believe the great and divine thing we desire to understand, the prophet would have said in vain, unless you believe, you will not understand ((Isa 7:9)). Our Lord himself, too, both by words and by deeds, exhorted those whom he called to salvation first to believe. But afterward, when he spoke of the gift itself, which he was going to give to those who believe, he did not say, "But this is eternal life, that they believe"; rather he said, This is eternal life, that they know you the true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent ((John 17:3)). Then, to those who already believe, he says, Seek and you will find ((Matt 7:7)). For what is believed without being known cannot be called found; nor does anyone become fit for finding God unless he has first believed what he is afterward to know. Therefore, obeying the Lord's precepts, let us seek earnestly. For what we seek at his urging, we will find at his showing, as far as such things can be found in this life, and by people such as we are. For we must believe that these things are discerned and obtained more evidently and more perfectly by the better, even while they dwell on this earth, and certainly by all the good and pious after this life; and we ought so to hope for ourselves, and, despising things earthly and human, to desire and love these things in every way.

2. 3. 7. Evodius: Go on rather to the rest.

Augustine: Then, since it is plain that you exist, and it would not be plain to you otherwise unless you were alive, this too is plain, that you are alive. Do you understand that these two things are most true?

Evodius: I understand entirely.

Augustine: Then this third thing too is plain—namely, that you understand.

Evodius: It is plain.

Augustine: Which of these three seems to you to excel?

Evodius: Understanding.

Augustine: Why does this seem so to you?

Evodius: Because, while there are these three—to be, to live, to understand—a stone too exists, and a beast lives, yet I do not think a stone lives or a beast understands; but one who understands, it is most certain, both exists and lives. Therefore I do not doubt to judge that more excellent in which all three are present, than that in which even one is lacking. For what lives surely also exists, but it does not follow that it also understands; such, I think, is the life of a beast. But what exists does not surely follow that it also lives and understands; for I can admit that corpses exist, but no one would say they live. And what does not live, much less does it understand.

Augustine: We hold, then, that of these three, two are lacking to a corpse, one to a beast, and none to a human being.

Evodius: It is true.

Augustine: We hold also that the most excellent of these three is that which a human being has along with the other two—that is, to understand—which, where it is present, is followed by both being and living.

Evodius: We hold it indeed.

2. 3. 8. Augustine: Now tell me whether you know that you have those most common senses of the body—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.

Evodius: I know it.

Augustine: What do you think belongs to the sense of sight? That is, what do you think we perceive by seeing?

Evodius: Whatever is corporeal.

Augustine: Do we also perceive hard and soft things by seeing?

Evodius: No.

Augustine: What, then, properly belongs to the eyes, which we perceive through them?

Evodius: Color.

Augustine: What to the ears?

Evodius: Sound.

Augustine: What to smell?

Evodius: Odor.

Augustine: What to taste?

Evodius: Flavor.

Augustine: What to touch?

Evodius: Soft or hard, smooth or rough, and many such things.

Augustine: What of this? The shapes of bodies—large, small, square, round, and any of this kind—do we not perceive them both by touching and by seeing, and so they can be assigned properly neither to sight nor to touch, but to both?

Evodius: I understand.

Augustine: Then you understand that some things the several senses have as their own, of which they give report, and some things certain of them have in common?

Evodius: I understand this too.

Augustine: Then, what belongs to each sense, and what either all of them or certain of them have in common among themselves—can we discern any of this by any one of those senses?

Evodius: By no means; rather, these things are discerned by some inner sense.

Augustine: Is it perhaps reason itself, which beasts lack? For, as I think, it is by reason that we grasp these things and know them to be so.

Evodius: I rather think that by reason we grasp that there is some inner sense, to which all things are referred from those five most familiar ones. For it is one thing by which a beast sees, and another by which it either avoids or seeks what it perceives by seeing. For that sense is in the eyes, but the other is within, in the soul itself; by which animals, not only the things that are seen, but also the things that are heard, and that are grasped by the other bodily senses, either seek and take up when delighted, or, offended, shun and reject. This latter can be called neither sight, nor hearing, nor smell, nor taste, nor touch, but something else, I know not what, which presides in common over all of them. And although we grasp this very thing by reason, as I said, I cannot for all that call it reason, since it is plain that it is present in beasts too.

2. 3. 9. Augustine: I recognize this thing, whatever it is, and I do not hesitate to call it the inner sense. But unless what is reported to us by the bodily senses passes beyond this too, it cannot reach knowledge. For whatever we know, we hold grasped by reason. We know, however—to be silent about the rest—that colors cannot be perceived by hearing, nor sounds by sight. And when we know this, we know it neither by the eyes, nor by the ears, nor by that inner sense which beasts too do not lack. For we must not believe that they know that light is not perceived by the ears, nor sound by the eyes; since we discern these things only by rational attention and thought.

Evodius: I cannot say I have grasped this. For what if, by that inner sense, which you grant they do not lack, they also discern this too—that colors cannot be perceived by hearing nor sounds by sight?

Augustine: Do you also think that they can distinguish from one another the color that is perceived, and the sense that is in the eye, and that inner sense in the soul, and the reason by which these things are severally defined and enumerated?

Evodius: By no means.

Augustine: What? Could this reason distinguish these four from one another and bound them with definitions, unless both color was referred to it through the sense of the eyes, and that sense in turn through that inner sense which presides over it, and that same inner sense through itself—provided that nothing else is interposed?

Evodius: I do not see how it could otherwise.

Augustine: What? Do you see this—that color is perceived by the sense of the eyes, but that same sense is not perceived by that same sense? For by the sense with which you see color, you do not also see the very seeing.

Evodius: Not at all.

Augustine: Try to distinguish these too. For I believe you do not deny that color is one thing, and to see color another, and likewise yet another thing, when color is not present, to have a sense by which it could be seen, if it were present.

Evodius: I discern these too, and grant that they differ among themselves.

Augustine: Of these three, do you see any with your eyes except color?

Evodius: Nothing else.

Augustine: Tell me, then, by what you see the other two; for you could not distinguish them if they were not seen.

Evodius: I do not know by what; I know that they exist, nothing more.

Augustine: Then you do not know whether it is reason itself, or that life which we call the inner sense, surpassing the senses of the body, or something else?

Evodius: I do not know.

Augustine: This, however, you know: that these things can be defined only by reason, and that reason does not do this except concerning the things that are offered to it for examination.

Evodius: It is certain.

Augustine: Whatever, then, that other thing is by which everything we know can be perceived, it is a servant of reason, to which it presents and reports whatever it touches, so that the things perceived may be discerned within their own bounds, and grasped not only by being perceived but also by being known.

Evodius: So it is.

Augustine: What? Does reason itself, which distinguishes its servants and the things they report from one another, and likewise recognizes what difference there is between these and itself, and affirms itself to be far more powerful than they—does it grasp itself by anything other than itself, that is, by reason? Or would you know that you have reason except by perceiving it through reason?

Evodius: That is most true.

Augustine: Since, then, when we perceive color, we do not likewise by that very sense perceive that we are perceiving; nor, when we hear a sound, do we also hear our own hearing; nor, when we smell a rose, does the smelling itself have any scent for us; nor, to those tasting, does the taste itself have any savor in the mouth; nor, when we touch something, can we touch the very sense of touching: it is plain that these five senses cannot be perceived by any sense of theirs, although by them all corporeal things are perceived.

Evodius: It is plain.

2. 4. 10. Augustine: I think this too is plain: that that inner sense perceives not only the things it has received from the five bodily senses, but that these senses are also perceived by it. For a beast would not move itself, either by seeking something or by fleeing, unless it perceived that it was perceiving—not for the sake of knowing, for that belongs to reason, but only for the sake of moving, which it surely does not do by any one of those five senses. If this is still obscure, it will become clear if you notice what, for the sake of example, is enough in some one sense, such as sight. For a beast could in no way open its eye and move it in looking toward what it desires to see, unless, with the eye closed or not so moved, it perceived that it did not see that thing. But if it perceives that it does not see while it does not see, then it must also perceive that it sees while it does see; for since it does not move its eye with the same appetite when seeing as when not seeing, it shows that it perceives both. But whether this life, which perceives that it perceives corporeal things, also perceives itself, is not so clear—except that everyone, questioning himself within, finds that every living thing flees death; and since death is contrary to life, it must be that life perceives even itself, since it flees its own contrary. But if this is not yet clear, let it be passed over, that we may strive toward what we will only by sure and plain proofs. For these things are plain: that corporeal things are perceived by a bodily sense; that the same sense cannot be perceived by this same sense; that by the inner sense both corporeal things are perceived through the bodily sense, and the bodily sense itself; and that by reason all those things, and that very reason itself, are made known and contained in knowledge. Or does it not seem so to you?

Evodius: It does seem so.

Augustine: Come now, answer: from what does the question arise, to whose solution we have long been laboring our way, desiring to come?

2. 5. 11. Evodius: As far as I remember, of those three questions which we posed a little while ago to weave the order of this discussion, the first is now in hand—that is, how it can be made plain, although it is to be believed most tenaciously and firmly, that God exists.

Augustine: You hold this rightly. But I also want you to hold carefully this: that when I asked you about yourself, whether you know that you exist, not only this, but two other things appeared to us that you know.

Evodius: I hold this too.

Augustine: Now, then, see to which of these three you understand that everything which the sense of the body touches belongs—that is, in what kind of thing it seems to you should be placed whatever our sense touches by the eyes or by any other bodily instrument: whether in that which only exists, or in that which also lives, or in that which also understands.

Evodius: In that which only exists.

Augustine: What? In which kind of these three do you judge the sense itself to be?

Evodius: In that which lives.

Augustine: Which, then, of these two do you judge better—the sense itself, or what the sense touches?

Evodius: The sense, of course.

Augustine: Why?

Evodius: Because that which also lives is better than that which only exists.

2. 5. 12. Augustine: What? That inner sense, which we tracked down above as below reason and still common to us with beasts—will you hesitate to set it above this sense by which we touch the body, and which you have already said is to be set above the body itself?

Evodius: I would in no way hesitate.

Augustine: I want to hear from you why you do not hesitate about this too. For you will not be able to say that this inner sense is to be placed in that one of those three kinds which also understands, but rather in that which both exists and lives, though it lacks understanding; for this sense is present in beasts too, in which understanding is not present. Since this is so, I ask why you set the inner sense above this sense by which corporeal things are perceived, when both are in that kind which lives. Now, the sense that touches bodies you set above bodies because they are in the kind that only exists, while it is in the kind that also lives; but since that inner sense too is found in this same kind, tell me why you think it the better. For if you say it is because the inner sense perceives this one, I do not think you will find a rule by which we can trust that everything that perceives is better than what is perceived by it—lest perhaps from this we be even compelled to say that everything that understands is better than what is understood by it. For this is false, since a human being understands wisdom and is not better than wisdom itself. So consider for what reason it seemed to you that the inner sense is to be preferred to this sense by which we perceive bodies.

Evodius: Because I recognize that it is a kind of governor and judge of the other. For if anything is lacking to that other in its office, this one demands it, as a debt, from its servant, as was argued a little while ago. For the sense of the eye does not see that it sees or does not see; and because it does not see this, it cannot judge what is lacking to it or what is enough; but that inner one does, by which the soul of a beast too is prompted to open the closed eye and to supply what it perceives to be lacking. And no one doubts that the one who judges is better than that about which it judges.

Augustine: Do you see, then, that this bodily sense too judges in a way about bodies? For to it belong pleasure and pain, when it is touched, whether gently or roughly, by a body. For just as that inner one judges what is lacking or enough to the sense of the eyes, so the sense of the eyes itself judges what is lacking or enough to colors. Likewise, just as that inner one judges about our hearing, whether it is too little or sufficiently attentive, so hearing itself judges about sounds, which of them flows in gently or rattles harshly. There is no need to follow through the other bodily senses; for now, as I think, you notice what I want to say—namely, that the inner sense judges about these bodily senses, when it both approves their soundness and demands its due, just as the bodily senses themselves judge about bodies, taking up in them the gentle touch and rejecting the contrary.

Evodius: I see indeed, and I agree that these things are most true.

2. 6. 13. Augustine: Attend now to whether reason also judges about this inner sense. For I am not now asking whether you doubt that reason is better than it, because I do not doubt that you judge so; although I think we need not even ask whether reason judges about this sense. For in the very things that are below it—that is, in bodies, and in the bodily senses, and in this inner sense—how is one better than another, and how far reason itself is more excellent than they, what in the end reports this, if not reason itself? And this it surely could in no way do, unless it itself judged about these things.

Evodius: It is plain.

Augustine: Since, then, the nature that only exists, and neither lives nor understands—such as a lifeless body—is preceded by the nature that not only exists but also lives, though it does not understand, such as the soul of beasts; and this in turn is preceded by the one that at once exists and lives and understands, such as the rational mind in a human being—do you think that in us, that is, in those things by which our nature is completed so that we are human beings, anything more excellent can be found than this, which we placed third among these three? For it is plain that we have a body, and a certain life by which the body itself is animated and quickened—both of which we recognize in beasts too—and a third thing, like the head or the eye of our soul, or whatever can be more fittingly said of reason and understanding, which the nature of beasts does not have. So see, I beg you, whether you can find anything in human nature loftier than reason.

Evodius: I see nothing at all better.

2. 6. 14. Augustine: What if we are able to find something that you not only do not doubt to exist, but is even more excellent than our reason itself? Will you hesitate to call that, whatever it is, God?

Evodius: I would not at once say that God is whatever I could find better than that which is best in my nature. For it does not please me to call God that to which my reason is inferior, but that to which none is superior.

Augustine: Quite so; for he himself gave to this reason of yours to think of him so piously and truly. But, I ask you, if you should find that there is nothing above our reason except what is eternal and unchangeable, will you hesitate to call this God? For you know that bodies are changeable; and it is plain that the very life by which the body is animated is not free of changeableness, through its various affections; and reason itself is plainly proved to be changeable, since now it strives to reach the truth and now does not strive, and sometimes reaches it and sometimes does not. If reason, with no bodily instrument employed—neither by touch, nor by taste, nor by smell, nor by the ears, nor by the eyes, nor by any sense inferior to itself, but through itself—discerns something eternal and unchangeable, then at the same time it must confess both that it is itself inferior, and that this is its God.

Evodius: I will plainly confess this to be God, than which it is established that nothing is higher.

Augustine: Well and good; for it will be enough for me to show that there is something of this kind, which you will either confess to be God, or, if there is something above it, you will grant that this very thing is God. Therefore, whether there is something above it or not, it will be plain that God exists, when I have shown, with his own help, the thing I promised—that there is something above reason.

Evodius: Then demonstrate what you promise.

2. 7. 15. Augustine: I will. But first I ask whether my bodily sense is the same as yours, or rather mine is only mine, and yours only yours. For if it were not so, I could not see anything with my eyes that you would not see.

Evodius: I grant entirely that, though they are of the same kind, we each have our own senses of seeing, or hearing, or any of the others. For one person can not only see, but also hear, what another does not hear, and perceive by any other sense something that another does not perceive. Hence it is plain that your sense is only yours, and mine only mine.

Augustine: Will you answer the same about that inner sense too, or something else?

Evodius: Nothing else, indeed. For mine surely perceives my sense, and yours perceives yours. For this is why I am often asked by someone who sees something, whether I too see it, because I perceive that I see or do not see, not he who asks.

Augustine: What? Does not each of us have his own reason? For it can happen that I understand something when you do not understand it; nor can you know whether I understand, while I myself know it.

Evodius: It is plain that each of us has his own rational mind too.

2. 7. 16. Augustine: Can you also say that we each have our own suns that we see, or moons, or morning stars, or other such things, although each sees them by his own and proper sense?

Evodius: I would in no way say that.

Augustine: We can, then, many of us at once see some one thing, although our senses are several, one to each of us, by all of which we perceive that one thing which we see together; so that, although my sense is one and yours another, it can nevertheless come about that what we see is not one thing for me and another for you, but that one thing is present to both of us and seen at once by both.

Evodius: It is most plain.

Augustine: We can also hear some one voice at once, so that, although my hearing is one and yours another, the voice we hear together is nevertheless not one for me and another for you, nor is one part of it caught by my hearing and another by yours; but whatever sounds is present, whole and one, to both of us at once, to be heard.

Evodius: This too is plain.

2. 7. 17. Augustine: Now you may notice, regarding the other bodily senses too, what we are saying: that, as far as this matter is concerned, they are not altogether as those two of the eyes and ears are, nor altogether not so. For since both you and I can fill our breath from one air, and perceive the quality of that air by smell; and likewise since we can both taste from one honey, or any other food or drink, and perceive its quality by flavor—although that thing is one, while our senses are several, yours yours and mine mine—so that, although we both perceive one odor or one flavor, you nevertheless do not perceive it by my sense, nor I by yours, nor by any one sense that could be common to both of us, but my sense is altogether mine, and yours yours, even though one odor or one flavor is perceived by both: hence, then, these senses are found to have something of the kind that those two of sight and hearing have. But in this they differ, as far as concerns what we are now doing: that although we both draw in one air by the nostrils, or take in one food by tasting, I nevertheless do not draw in the same part of the air that you do, nor take the same part of the food that you do, but I one and you another. And so, when I breathe, I draw from the whole air the part that is enough for me, and you likewise draw from the whole another part that is enough for you; and although one whole food is consumed by both, it cannot be consumed wholly both by me and by you—as a word is heard whole both by me and by you at once, and an appearance, as great as I see it, just so great you see at once; but a part of the food or drink must pass, one into me, another into you. Or do you understand these things too little?

Evodius: On the contrary, I agree that they are most clear and most certain.

2. 7. 18. Augustine: Do you think the sense of touch is to be compared with the senses of the eyes and ears in the matter we are now treating? For by it not only can we both perceive one body by touching, but you too can touch the same part that I have touched, so that not only the same body, but the same part of the body, we can both perceive by touching. For it does not happen in touching as with some food set before us, which I cannot take whole, and you whole, when we both feed on it; rather, both the one and the whole that I have touched, you too can touch, so that we both touch it—not in several parts, but each the whole.

Evodius: I confess that in this way the sense of touch is very like those two higher senses. But in this I see it is unlike: that at once, that is, at one time, we can both see and hear some one whole thing; whereas we can indeed both touch some whole thing at one time, but each in several parts, and the same part only at several times. For to no part that you grasp by touch can I apply my touch, unless you remove yours.

2. 7. 19. Augustine: You have answered most attentively. But you must also see this: of all the things we perceive, some are perceived by both of us, others by each of us singly; but our senses themselves we each perceive singly, so that I do not perceive your sense, nor you mine. Now of those things that are perceived by us through the bodily senses—that is, of corporeal things—what is it that we cannot perceive both of us, but only each singly, except that which is so made ours that we can turn it into ourselves and change it, as is food and drink, no part of which that I have taken in can you too take in? For although nurses give chewed food to infants, yet what taste has snatched from it and changed into the vitals of the chewer can in no way be recalled to be poured back into the infant's food. For the throat, when something tastes pleasant, claims for itself a small but irrecoverable part, and forces this to be done, as suits the nature of the body; otherwise, no taste would remain in the mouth after the chewed food was given back and spat out. The same can rightly be said of the parts of air that we draw in by the nostrils: for even if some of the air I breathe out, you too can draw in, you cannot for all that draw in what has passed from it into my nourishment, because it cannot be given back. For physicians teach that we take nourishment by the nostrils too; and this nourishment I alone can perceive by breathing, and cannot restore by breathing out, so that, drawn in by your nostrils too, it could be perceived by you. For the other perceptible things, which, though we perceive them, we do not by perceiving change and corrupt into our body, we can both perceive, either at one time or each in turn at several times, so that the whole, or the very part that I perceive, may be perceived by you too; such are light, or sound, or bodies that we touch but do not harm.

Evodius: I understand.

Augustine: It is plain, then, that the things we do not change, and yet perceive by the bodily senses, do not belong to the nature of our senses, and are therefore more common to us, because they are not turned and changed into our own and, as it were, private possession.

Evodius: I agree entirely.

Augustine: We must understand, then, as one's own and, as it were, private, that which each of us is to himself, and which he alone perceives in himself, which belongs properly to his own nature; and as common and, as it were, public, that which is perceived by all who perceive without any corruption or change of it.

Evodius: So it is.

2. 8. 20. Augustine: Come now, attend, and tell me whether anything is found that all who reason see in common, each by his own reason and mind, while that which is seen is present to all, and is not changed for the use of those to whom it is present, like food or drink, but remains uncorrupted and whole, whether they see it or do not see it. Or do you perhaps think there is nothing of this kind?

Evodius: On the contrary, I see there are many; one of which it is enough to mention—that the reason and truth of number is present to all who reason, so that every calculator tries to grasp it, each by his own reason and understanding; and one can do this more easily, another with more difficulty, another not at all; yet it offers itself equally to all who are able to grasp it; nor, when anyone perceives it, is it turned and changed, as it were, into the nourishment of its perceiver; nor, when anyone errs in it, does it itself fail, but, while it remains true and whole, that person is in error all the more, the less he sees it.

2. 8. 21. Augustine: Quite rightly; but I see that, as one not unversed in these matters, you have quickly found what to say. Yet if someone should tell you that these numbers are impressed on our mind not from some nature of their own, but from those things we touch by the bodily sense—as certain images of visible things—what would you answer? Or do you too think this?

Evodius: I would in no way think this. For even if I perceived numbers by the bodily sense, I could not on that account perceive by the bodily sense the reason of dividing or joining numbers. For by this light of the mind I refute anyone who, in adding or subtracting while he calculates, reports a false sum. And whatever I touch by the bodily sense, such as this sky and this earth, and whatever other bodies I perceive in them, I do not know how long they will last; but seven and three are ten, and not only now but always; nor in any way were seven and three ever not ten, nor will seven and three ever not be ten. This incorruptible truth of number, then, I said is common to me and to any who reason.

2. 8. 22. Augustine: I do not resist you, who answer most truly and most certainly. But you will easily see that numbers themselves too are not drawn in through the bodily senses, if you consider that every number is called by as many units as it has: for example, if it has one twice, it is called two; if three times, three; and if they have one ten times, then they are called ten; and any number whatever, however many times it has one, from this it has its name, and is called by that number. But whoever thinks most truly of one surely finds that it cannot be perceived by the bodily senses. For whatever is touched by such a sense is shown to be not one, but many; for it is a body, and therefore has innumerable parts. But, not to pursue the tiny and less distinct parts, however small that little body may be, it certainly has one part on the right, another on the left; one above, another below; or one farther, another nearer; or some at the ends, another in the middle: for these we must confess to be present in however small a measure of body; and therefore we grant that no body is truly and purely one—in which, nevertheless, so many parts could not be counted unless they were distinguished by the knowledge of that one. For when I seek one in a body, and do not doubt that I do not find it, I surely know what I am seeking there, and what I do not find there, and that it cannot be found, or rather that it is not there at all. So where I know that a body is not one, I know what one is; for if I did not know it there, I could not count many in a body. But wherever I know one, I do not know it through the bodily sense; because through the bodily sense I know only a body, which we prove is not truly and purely one. Moreover, if we did not perceive one by the bodily sense, we perceived no number by that sense, of those numbers at least which we discern by the understanding. For there is none of them that is not called by as many units as it has one, the perception of which is not made by the bodily sense. For of any little body, the half part, although the whole consists of two, has itself its own half. So there are those two parts in a body in such a way that they themselves are not simply two. But that number which is called two, since it has twice that which is simply one, its half part—that is, that very thing which is simply one—cannot again have a half part, or a third, or any fraction whatever, since it is simple and truly one.

2. 8. 23. Then, since, keeping the order of numbers, after one we see two, which number, compared to one, is found to be double, the double of two is not joined next in sequence, but, with three interposed, four follows, which is the double of two. And this reasoning runs through all the other numbers by a most certain and unchangeable law: that after one, that is, after the first of all numbers, excepting it, the first is the one that has its double; for two follows. After the second, that is, after two, excepting it, the second is the one that has its double; for after two the first is three, the second four, the double of the second. After the third, that is, three, excepting it, the third is the one that is its double; for after the third, that is, after three, the first is four, the second five, the third six, which is the double of the third. And so after the fourth, excepting it, the fourth has its double; for after the fourth, that is, four, the first is five, the second six, the third seven, the fourth eight, which is the double of the fourth. And so through all the rest you will find this which was found in the first pair of numbers, that is, in one and two: that whatever its place a number holds from the very beginning, just so far after it is its double. This, then, which we behold to be immovable, firm, and incorruptible through all numbers—whence do we behold it? For no one touches all numbers by any bodily sense, since they are innumerable: whence, then, do we know that this is so through all, or by what fancy or phantasm is so certain a truth of number beheld so confidently through innumerable cases, unless by that inner light which the bodily sense does not know?

2. 8. 24. By these and many such proofs, those to whom God has given talent for disputing, and on whom stubbornness draws no fog, are compelled to confess that the reason and truth of numbers both does not belong to the bodily senses, and stands unalterable and pure, and is common to all who reason, to be seen. Therefore, although many other things could occur that are present in common and, as it were, publicly to those who reason, and are seen by the mind and reason of each who discerns them, and remain inviolate and unchangeable—nevertheless I am not unwilling that this reason and truth of number occurred to you above all, when you wished to answer what I asked. For not without cause, in the holy books, is number joined to wisdom, where it is said, I turned my heart about, to know and consider and seek out wisdom and number ((Eccl 7:25)).

2. 9. 25. Evodius: I do not yet know what you mean by wisdom; for I see that people have various views as to what is done or said wisely. Those who serve as soldiers seem to themselves to act wisely; those who, despising soldiering, spend care and labor on cultivating a field, rather praise this and attribute it to wisdom; those who are clever at devising ways of getting money seem to themselves to be wise; those who neglect or cast off all these things and all such temporal things, and bend their whole zeal to the search for truth, that they may come to know themselves and God, judge this to be the great gift of wisdom; those who are unwilling to give themselves to this leisure of seeking and contemplating the truth, but rather are busy with most laborious cares and duties, in order to take counsel for people, and are engaged in the just regulating and governing of human affairs, think themselves wise; and those who do both of these—who live partly in the contemplation of truth, partly in dutiful labors which they think owed to human society—seem to themselves to hold the palm of wisdom. I pass over the countless sects, of which there is none that does not, preferring its own followers to the rest, wish them alone to be wise. Therefore, since what we are now doing between us is that we must answer not what we believe but what we hold by clear understanding, I shall in no way be able to answer what you asked, unless what I hold by believing, I have also come to know by contemplating and discerning by reason—namely, what wisdom itself is.

2. 9. 26. Augustine: Do you think wisdom is anything other than the truth in which the highest good is discerned and held? For all those you mentioned, following different things, seek the good and flee evil; but they follow different things because to different people a different thing seems good. Whoever, then, seeks what ought not to be sought—even though he would not seek it unless it seemed good to him—nevertheless errs. But neither can he err who seeks nothing, nor he who seeks what he ought to seek. Insofar, therefore, as all people seek the blessed life, they do not err. But insofar as anyone does not hold the way of life that leads to blessedness, while confessing and professing that he wills nothing but to arrive at blessedness, so far he errs. For error is when we follow something that does not lead to that at which we wish to arrive. And the more one errs in the way of life, the less he is wise. For he is so much the farther from the truth, in which the highest good is discerned and held. But when the highest good has been pursued and attained, everyone becomes blessed; which, without controversy, we all will. As, then, it is established that we will to be blessed, so it is established that we will to be wise; for no one is blessed without wisdom. For no one is blessed except by the highest good, which is discerned and held in that truth which we call wisdom. As, therefore, before we are blessed, the notion of blessedness is nevertheless impressed on our minds—for by it we know, and confidently and without any doubt say, that we will to be blessed—so too, before we are wise, we have the notion of wisdom impressed on our mind, by which each of us, if asked whether he wills to be wise, answers without any fog of doubt that he does.

2. 9. 27. Evodius: If the highest good is one for all, then the truth too, in which it is discerned and held—that is, wisdom—must be one and common to all.

Augustine: Do you doubt that the highest good, whatever it is, is one for all people?

Evodius: I do doubt it indeed, because I see different people rejoicing in different things as in their highest goods.

Augustine: I would indeed wish that no one doubted about the highest good, just as no one doubts that, whatever it is, a person cannot become blessed except by attaining it. But since it is a great question, and perhaps demands a long discourse, let us suppose that there are altogether as many highest goods as there are the various things that are sought by various people as highest goods. Does it then follow that wisdom itself is also not one and common to all, because those goods which people discern and choose in it are many and various? For if you think this, you could also doubt that the light of the sun is one, because the things we discern in it are many and various; of which many things each chooses, according to his will, what he may enjoy through the sense of the eyes: one gladly gazes on the height of some mountain and delights in that sight; another on the flatness of a plain; another on the hollows of valleys; another on the greenness of woods; another on the moving evenness of the sea; another brings together all these, or several of them at once, for the gladness of seeing. As, then, these things that people see and choose to enjoy in the light of the sun are many and various, yet the light itself is one, in which the gaze of each beholder sees and holds what he may enjoy: so, even if there are many and various goods, from which each may choose what he wills, and, by seeing and holding it for enjoyment, rightly and truly establish it as his highest good, it can nevertheless be that the very light of wisdom, in which these things can be seen and held, is one and common to all the wise.

Evodius: I confess it can be so, and that nothing prevents one wisdom from being common to all, even if the highest goods are many and various. But I would like to know whether it is so. For what we grant can be so, we do not at once grant is so.

Augustine: Meanwhile we hold that wisdom exists; but whether it is one common to all, or each wise person has his own, as he has his own soul or mind, this we do not yet hold.

Evodius: So it is.

2. 10. 28. Augustine: What then? This which we hold—that wisdom or the wise exist, and that all people will to be blessed—where do we see it? For I would in no way doubt that you see this, and that it is true. Do you see this truth, then, as you see your own thought, which, if you do not declare it to me, I am wholly ignorant of? Or do you see it in such a way that you understand it can be seen by me too, even though it is not told me by you?

Evodius: On the contrary, in such a way that I do not doubt it can be seen by you too, even against my will.

Augustine: Then this one truth, which we both see, each with his own mind—is it not common to both of us?

Evodius: Most plainly.

Augustine: Likewise, I believe you do not deny that wisdom is to be pursued, and you grant this to be true.

Evodius: I do not doubt it at all.

Augustine: Can we deny that this truth likewise is one, and common to all who know it to be seen, although each beholds it not with my mind, nor yours, nor anyone else's, but with his own, since the thing beheld is present in common to all who behold it?

Evodius: By no means.

Augustine: Likewise, that one must live justly, that worse things must be made subject to better, that like must be compared with like, and that to each must be rendered what is his own—will you not confess that these are most true, and present in common to me and to you and to all who see them?

Evodius: I agree.

Augustine: Can you deny that the incorrupt is better than the corrupt, the eternal than the temporal, the inviolable than the violable?

Evodius: Who can?

Augustine: Then can anyone call this truth his own, when it is present, unchangeably, to be contemplated by all who are able to contemplate it?

Evodius: No one could truly say it was his own, since it is as much one and common to all as it is true.

Augustine: Likewise, that the soul must be turned away from corruption and turned toward incorruption—that is, that not corruption but incorruption must be loved—who denies it? Or who, when he confesses it to be true, does not also understand it to be unchangeable, and see that it is present in common to all minds that are able to behold it?

Evodius: That is most true.

Augustine: What? Will anyone doubt that the life which is moved by no adversities from its sure and honorable resolve is better than the one that is easily broken and overturned by temporal misfortunes?

Evodius: Who would doubt it?

2. 10. 29. Augustine: I will not now ask for more things of this kind; for it is enough that you see together with me, and grant to be most certain, that these, as it were, rules and certain lights of the virtues are both true and unchangeable, and, whether singly or all together, present in common to be contemplated by those who are able to behold them, each by his own reason and mind. But I do ask whether these things seem to you to pertain to wisdom. For I believe it seems to you that one who has attained wisdom is wise.

Evodius: It seems so entirely.

Augustine: What? Could one who lives justly so live, unless he saw which lower things he should subject to which higher, and which equal things he should join to one another, and which proper things he should distribute to each?

Evodius: He could not.

Augustine: One, then, who sees these things—will you deny that he sees wisely?

Evodius: I do not deny it.

Augustine: What? Does not one who lives prudently choose incorruption, and judge that it is to be preferred to corruption?

Evodius: Most plainly.

Augustine: When, then, he chooses that toward which he turns his soul—which no one doubts is to be chosen—can it be denied that he chooses wisely?

Evodius: I would in no way deny it.

Augustine: When, then, he turns his soul toward that which he wisely chooses, he surely turns it wisely.

Evodius: It is most certain.

Augustine: And one who is driven away by no terrors or penalties from that which he wisely chooses and toward which he wisely turns himself, doubtless acts wisely.

Evodius: Without any doubt.

Augustine: It is most plain, then, that all these things which we have called rules and lights of the virtues pertain to wisdom; since the more anyone uses them for the conduct of life, and conducts his life according to them, the more wisely he lives and acts; and everything that is done wisely cannot rightly be said to be separated from wisdom.

Evodius: It is altogether so.

Augustine: As, then, the rules of numbers are true and unchangeable, whose reason and truth you said is present unchangeably and in common to all who discern them, so the rules of wisdom are true and unchangeable—the rules about which, questioned just now one by one, you answered that they are true and evident, and you grant that they are present in common to be contemplated by all who are able to behold them.

2. 11. 30. Evodius: I cannot doubt it. But I would very much like to know whether these two—wisdom, that is, and number—are contained under some one kind, because you mentioned that they are placed together in the holy Scriptures; or whether one exists from the other, or one consists in the other, as number from wisdom, or in wisdom. For that wisdom exists from number, or consists in number, I would not dare to say; for I do not know how, since I have known many number-workers, or calculators, or by whatever other name they should be called, who reckon supremely and wonderfully, but very few wise people, or perhaps none. And so wisdom seems to me far more venerable than number.

Augustine: You speak of a thing that I too am wont to marvel at. For when I consider with myself the unchangeable truth of numbers, and its, as it were, lair and inner chamber, or some region, or whatever other fitting name can be found by which we may name, as it were, a certain dwelling and seat of numbers, I am borne far away from the body; and finding perhaps something I can think, yet not finding anything I am able to express in words, I return, as if wearied, to these things of ours, that I may be able to speak, and I say the things set before my eyes, as they are usually said. This happens to me also when I think of wisdom as attentively and intently as I am able. And therefore I greatly marvel—since these two are in a most hidden and most certain truth, with the testimony of the Scriptures also added, in which I mentioned that they are set together—I marvel exceedingly, as I said, why number is held cheap by the multitude of people, and wisdom dear. But no doubt it is because they are some one and the same thing; and yet, since nonetheless it is said in the divine books of wisdom that it reaches mightily from end to end, and orders all things sweetly ((Wis 8:1)), that power by which it reaches mightily from end to end is perhaps called number, while that by which it orders all things sweetly is properly called wisdom—though both belong to one and the same wisdom.

2. 11. 31. But because it gave numbers to all things, even to the lowest and those set at the bottom of things—for all bodies too, although they are the most extreme of things, have their own numbers—but it did not give to bodies, nor to all souls, but only to rational ones, the power to be wise, as though it had set up its seat in them, from which it might order all those even lowest things to which it gave numbers: therefore, since we easily judge about bodies, as about things ordered below us, on which we discern numbers impressed below us, we hold them on that account more cheaply. But when we begin, as it were, to run back upward, we find that those numbers transcend even our minds, and remain unchangeable in truth itself. And because few can be wise, while even to fools it is granted to count, people marvel at wisdom and despise numbers. But the learned and studious, the further removed they are from earthly stain, the more they behold both number and wisdom in truth itself, and hold both dear; and in comparison with that truth, not gold and silver and the other things over which people fight, but they themselves even grow cheap to themselves.

2. 11. 32. And do not marvel that numbers have therefore grown cheap to people, and wisdom is dear, because they can more easily count than be wise, when you see that they hold gold dearer than the light of a lamp, in comparison with which gold is laughable. But a far inferior thing is more honored, because even a beggar lights a lamp for himself, while few have gold—although far be it that wisdom should be found inferior in comparison with number, since it is the same; but it seeks an eye by which it can be discerned. But as in one fire there is felt, so to speak, a consubstantial brightness and heat, and they cannot be separated from each other, yet the heat reaches the things brought near, while the brightness is diffused even farther and wider: so the power of understanding that is in wisdom warms the things nearer it, such as rational souls; but the things that are more remote, such as bodies, it does not reach with the heat of being wise, but floods with the light of numbers. This is perhaps obscure to you. For no visible likeness can be fitted to an invisible thing in every respect of agreement. Only attend to this, which is enough both for the question we have taken up, and which shows itself even to humbler minds, such as ours: that although it cannot be clear to us whether number is in wisdom or from wisdom, or whether wisdom itself is from number, or in number, or whether both names can be shown to be of one thing—this at least is plain, that both are true, and unchangeably true.

2. 12. 33. Evodius: It is most clear and most true.

2. 12. 34. Augustine: This truth, then, of which we have now long been speaking, and in which, one as it is, we behold so many things—do you think it is more excellent than our mind, or equal to our minds, or even inferior? But if it were inferior, we would judge not according to it, but about it, as we judge about bodies because they are below us, and we say of them, for the most part, not only that they are so or not so, but that they ought to be so or not so. So too about our souls: we know not only that the soul is so, but for the most part that it ought to be so. And about bodies we judge thus when we say, It is less white than it ought to be; or, less square, and many such things; and about souls, He is less apt than he ought to be; or, less gentle; or less vehement, as the rule of our character should bear. And we judge these things according to those inner rules of truth which we discern in common; but about those rules themselves no one in any way judges. For when someone says that eternal things are to be preferred to temporal, or that seven and three are ten, no one says it ought to have been so, but, knowing only that it is so, he does not, like an examiner, correct it, but, like a discoverer, only rejoices. But if this truth were equal to our minds, it too would be changeable. For our minds sometimes see it more, sometimes less, and by this they confess themselves changeable; whereas it, abiding in itself, neither gains when it is seen more by us, nor loses when less, but, whole and uncorrupted, gladdens with its light those who are turned toward it, and punishes with blindness those turned away. What of this, that we judge even about our own minds according to it, while about it we can in no way judge? For we say, He understands less than he ought; or, He understands as much as he ought. But a mind ought to understand the more, the nearer it can be brought and the more it can cling to unchangeable truth. Therefore, if it is neither inferior nor equal, it remains that it is superior and more excellent.

2. 13. 35. I had promised, if you remember, that I would show you something that is loftier than our mind and reason. Behold, here is truth itself: embrace it if you can, and enjoy it, and delight in the Lord, and he will give you the petitions of your heart ((Ps 37:4 (36:4))). For what more do you ask than to be blessed? And what is more blessed than one who enjoys the unshaken, unchangeable, and most excellent truth? People cry out that they are blessed when they embrace beautiful bodies greatly desired, whether of spouses or even of harlots; and shall we doubt that we are blessed in the embrace of truth? People cry out that they are blessed when, with throats parched by heat, they come to an abundant and wholesome spring, or, hungering, find a dinner or supper richly and copiously set out; and shall we deny that we are blessed when we are watered and fed by truth? We are wont to hear the voices of those who cry that they are blessed if they lie among roses and other flowers, or even enjoy most fragrant ointments: what is more fragrant, what more pleasant, than the breathing of truth? And do we hesitate to call ourselves blessed when we are breathed upon by it? Many set their blessed life in the singing of voices and strings and pipes, and when these are lacking to them they judge themselves wretched; but when present, they are carried away with gladness: and shall we, when into our minds, without any noise, so to speak, a certain melodious and eloquent silence of truth glides, seek another blessed life, and not enjoy the one so certain and present? People, delighted by the brightness and pleasantness of the light of gold and silver, of gems and other colors, or of the very light that belongs to these eyes—whether in earthly fires, or in the stars or moon or sun—when they are called away from this gladness by no troubles, no want, seem to themselves blessed, and for the sake of these things wish to live forever: and shall we be afraid to set our blessed life in the light of truth?

2. 13. 36. On the contrary, since in truth the highest good is known and held, and that truth is wisdom, let us discern in it, and hold, the highest good, and fully enjoy it. For he is blessed who enjoys the highest good. For this truth shows all the goods that are true, which intelligent people, according to their own capacity, choose, whether singly or several, to enjoy. But as those who, in the light of the sun, choose what they gladly behold, and are gladdened by that sight—among whom, if there happen to be any endowed with more vigorous, sound, and very strong eyes, behold nothing more gladly than the sun itself, which also illumines the other things in which weaker eyes delight—so a strong and vigorous keenness of mind, when with sure reason it has beheld many true and unchangeable things, directs itself to truth itself, by which all things are shown, and, clinging to it, as it were forgets the rest, and in it enjoys all things at once. For whatever is pleasant in the other true things is pleasant by truth itself.

2. 13. 37. This is our freedom, when we are subject to this truth; and it is God himself, our God, who frees us from death, that is, from the condition of sin. For Truth itself, speaking as a man with men, says to those who believe in him: If you remain in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free ((John 8:31–32)). For the soul enjoys nothing with freedom unless it enjoys it with security.

2. 14. 37. But no one is secure in those goods that he can lose against his will. Now truth and wisdom no one loses against his will; for no one can be separated from it by places. Rather, what is called separation from truth and wisdom is a perverse will, by which lower things are loved. But no one wills anything unwillingly. We have, therefore, that which we may all enjoy equally and in common: there are no straits in it, no want. It receives all its lovers without any envy of one toward another, and is common to all, and chaste to each. No one says to another: Step back, that I too may approach; take away your hands, that I too may embrace. All cling to it; all touch the selfsame. Its food is in no part torn off; you drink nothing from it that I cannot drink. For you do not change anything from its common store into your own private possession; but what you take from it remains whole for me. What it breathes upon you, I do not wait to be given back by you, that I may be breathed upon from it: for no part of it ever becomes the property of any one or some persons, but the whole of it is at once common to all.

2. 14. 38. Less like this truth, then, are the things we touch, or taste, or smell, and more like it the things we hear and see; for every word is heard whole by all who hear it, and at once whole by each; and every appearance that lies before the eyes, as great as it is seen by one, just so great by another at once. But these are like it only by a very long interval. For no voice sounds whole all at once, since it is stretched out and drawn through times, and one part of it sounds first, another later; and every visible appearance, as it were, swells out through places, and is not whole everywhere. And certainly all these things are taken away against our will, and we are hindered by certain straits from being able to enjoy them. For even if anyone's sweet song could be everlasting, and its devotees came eagerly to hear it, they would crowd together and fight over places, the more numerous they were, that each might be nearer the singer; and in hearing they would hold nothing remaining with them, but would be touched by all the voices as they fled. But if I wished to gaze on this sun, and could do so persistently, it would desert me at its setting, and be veiled by cloud, and by many other obstacles I would against my will lose the pleasure of seeing it. Finally, even if the sweetness of light to the seer and of voice to the hearer were always present, what great thing would come to me, when it would be common to me with the beasts? But that beauty of truth and wisdom—provided only there be a persevering will to enjoy it—neither shuts out those who come by the crowding of a multitude of hearers, nor is run through by time, nor moves from place to place, nor is cut off by night, nor shut in by shadow, nor subject to the bodily senses. To all who are turned to it from the whole world, and who love it, it is nearest of all, everlasting to all; it is in no place, nowhere is it absent; outwardly it admonishes, inwardly it teaches; it changes all who behold it for the better, and is changed by none for the worse; no one judges about it, and no one judges well without it. And hence it is plain that it, by which alone our minds, individually, are made wise, and which are judges not about it but, through it, about other things, is beyond doubt more excellent than our minds.

2. 15. 39. Evodius: But I, suffused with an altogether incredible joy, which I cannot explain to you in words, receive these things, and cry out that they are most certain. And I cry out with an inner voice, by which I desire to be heard by truth itself, and to cling to it; for I grant that it is not only a good, but the highest good, and the blessing-bestowing good.

2. 15. 40. Augustine: Quite rightly; I too rejoice greatly. But, I ask you, are we now wise and blessed? Or are we still tending toward it, that it may come to be ours?

Evodius: I think rather that we are tending toward it.

Augustine: Whence, then, do you grasp these things, which you cry out you rejoice in as true and certain, and which you grant pertain to wisdom? Or can any foolish person know wisdom?

Evodius: As long as he is foolish, he cannot.

Augustine: Then you are already wise, or you do not yet know wisdom.

Evodius: I am not indeed yet wise, but neither would I call myself foolish, insofar as I know wisdom; since the things I know are certain, and I cannot deny that they pertain to wisdom.

Augustine: Tell me, I ask you, will you not confess that one who is not just is unjust, and one who is not prudent imprudent, and one who is not temperate intemperate? Or can anything be doubted about these?

Evodius: I confess that a person, when he is not just, is unjust; and I would answer the same of the prudent and the temperate.

Augustine: Why, then, is he not foolish when he is not wise?

Evodius: This too I confess, that when anyone is not wise, he is foolish.

Augustine: Which, then, of these are you now?

Evodius: Whichever of these you call me, I do not yet dare to call myself wise; and from the things I have granted, I see it follows that I should not hesitate to call myself foolish.

Augustine: Then the foolish person knows wisdom. For, as has already been said, he would not be certain that he wills to be wise, and that he ought to be, unless the notion of wisdom clung to his mind—as did the notion of those things about which, questioned one by one, you answered, which pertain to wisdom itself, and in the knowledge of which you rejoiced.

Evodius: It is as you say.

2. 16. 41. Augustine: What else, then, do we do when we are zealous to be wise, but, with all the eagerness we can, gather our whole soul, as it were, to that which we touch with the mind, and set it there, and fix it steadfastly, so that it may no longer rejoice in its own private possession, which it has entangled with passing things, but, stripped of all affections for times and places, may lay hold of that which is one and the same always? For as the soul is the whole life of the body, so God is the blessed life of the soul. While we do this, until we accomplish it, we are on the way. And that it is granted us to rejoice in these true and certain goods, gleaming even now amid this dark journey, see whether this is what is written of wisdom—what she does with her lovers when they come to her and seek her; for it is said, In their ways she will show herself to them cheerfully, and in all foresight she will meet them ((See Wis 6:16)). For wherever you turn, she speaks to you by certain traces that she has impressed on her works, and, when you slip back into outward things, she calls you back within by the very forms of outward things; so that whatever delights you in a body, and entices you through the bodily senses, you may see to be numerical, and may ask whence it is, and may return into yourself, and understand that you cannot approve or disapprove what you touch by the bodily senses unless you have within you certain laws of beauty, to which you refer whatever beautiful things you perceive outwardly.

2. 16. 42. Behold the sky and the earth and the sea, and whatever in them shines above, or creeps below, or flies or swims; they have forms because they have numbers: take these away from them, and they will be nothing. From whom, then, are they, if not from him from whom number is; since they have being only insofar as they have number? And indeed the makers of all corporeal forms have in their art the numbers by which they fit together their works; and they keep moving their hands and instruments in fashioning until that which is formed outwardly, referred to the light of numbers that is within, attains, as far as it can, its completion, and pleases, through the interpreting sense, the inner judge who looks upon the higher numbers. Ask next who moves the very limbs of the craftsman: it will be number, for they too are moved by number. And if you take away the work from the hands, and from the mind the intention of fashioning, and that motion of the limbs is directed to delight, it will be called dancing. Ask, then, what delights in dancing; number will answer you: Behold, it is I. Look now at the beauty of a formed body; numbers are held fast in place. Look at the beauty of mobility in a body; numbers are at work in time. Enter into the art whence these proceed; seek in it time and place; never will it be, nowhere will it be; yet number lives in it: its region is not of spaces, nor its age of days; and yet, when those who wish to become craftsmen apply themselves to learning the art, they move their body through places and times, and their mind through times; for by the passage of time they become more skilled. Transcend, then, even the mind of the craftsman, that you may see the everlasting number; then wisdom will shine for you from its very inner seat, and from the very sanctuary of truth. And if it still beats back your too feeble gaze, turn the eye of the mind to that way in which it showed itself cheerfully. Only remember that you have deferred a vision which, stronger and sounder, you may seek again.

2. 16. 43. Woe to those who forsake you as their guide, and wander among your traces, who love your beckonings instead of you, and forget what you signify, O wisdom, most sweet light of the cleansed mind! For you do not cease to beckon to us what and how great you are; and your beckonings are all the beauty of created things. For even the craftsman in a way beckons to the beholder of his work, from the very beauty of the work, not to stick fast there wholly, but so to run over with his eyes the appearance of the fashioned body that he may recur with affection to the one who fashioned it. But like those craftsmen are the people who love the things you make instead of you—who, when they hear someone eloquent and wise, while they too eagerly listen to the sweetness of his voice and the structures of aptly placed syllables, lose the sovereignty of the meanings, of which those words sounded as, so to speak, signs. Woe to those who turn away from your light, and cling sweetly to their own darkness! For, as it were setting their backs to you, they are fixed in carnal work as in their own shadow; and yet even there, what delights them they still have from the surrounding radiance of your light. But the shadow, while it is loved, makes the eye of the soul more feeble and weaker for enduring the sight of you. And so a person is more and more darkened, while he the more gladly follows whatever, being weaker, receives him more tolerantly. From this he begins to be unable to see what supremely is, and to think evil whatever deceives the unforeseeing, or entices the needy, or torments the captive—when he suffers these things as the desert of his own turning away, and nothing that is just can be evil.

2. 16. 44. If, then, whatever changeable thing you behold, you cannot grasp, whether by the bodily sense or by the consideration of the mind, unless it is held together by some form of numbers, which being taken away it falls back into nothing—do not doubt that, in order that those changeable things may not be cut off, but, by measured motions and a distinct variety of forms, may run through, as it were, certain verses of time, there is some eternal and unchangeable form; which is neither contained and, as it were, diffused through places, nor stretched out and varied through times, but through which all these things are able to be formed, and, after their own kind, to fill out and run through the numbers of places and times.

2. 17. 45. For every changeable thing must also be formable. But just as we call changeable that which can be changed, so I would call formable that which can be formed. But no thing can form itself; because no thing can give what it does not have, and surely it is in order to have form that anything is formed. Therefore, any thing whatever, if it has some form, has no need to receive what it has; but if it does not have any form, it cannot receive from itself what it does not have. No thing, then, as we said, can form itself. But what more shall we say of the changeableness of body and soul? Enough has been said above. It follows, then, that body and soul are formed by a certain unchangeable and ever-abiding form. To which form it is said, You will change them, and they shall be changed; but you are the same, and your years shall not fail ((Ps 102:26–27 (101:27–28))). The prophetic utterance put "years without failing" for eternity. Of this same form it is said that, abiding in itself, it makes all things new ((See Wis 7:27)). Hence, too, it is grasped that all things are governed by providence. For if all things that are will be nothing once the form is utterly withdrawn, then the unchangeable form itself, through which all changeable things subsist so that they are filled out and run through by the numbers of their forms, is their providence; for these things would not be if it were not. Therefore, whoever makes the journey toward wisdom, beholding and considering the whole creation, feels that wisdom shows herself to him cheerfully on the way, and meets him in all foresight; and the more eagerly he burns to complete this way, the more beautiful that way too is through her, to whom he is afire to come.

2. 17. 46. But if, besides that which exists and does not live, and that which exists and lives but does not understand, and that which exists and lives and understands, you find some other kind of creature, then dare to say that there is some good that is not from God. For these three can be expressed by two names as well, if they are called body and life: for that which only lives, and does not understand, such as belongs to beasts, and that which understands, such as belongs to human beings, are most rightly called life. But these two, that is, body and life, which are indeed reckoned among creatures—for the life of the Creator himself too is called life, and that is the highest life—these two creatures, then, body and life, since they are formable, as the things said above have taught, and, with their form utterly lost, fall back into nothing, sufficiently show that they subsist from that form which is always of the same kind. Therefore, however great goods they may be—whether great or least—they can only be from God. For what is greater among creatures than intelligent life, or what can be less than body? However much they fail and tend toward not being, yet some form remains to them, so that they exist in some way. But whatever form remains to any failing thing is from that form which does not know how to fail, and does not allow the very movements of failing or advancing things to exceed the laws of their numbers. Whatever, therefore, is found praiseworthy in the nature of things, whether judged worthy of little or much praise, is to be referred to the most excellent and ineffable praise of the Creator—unless you have something to say against this.

2. 18. 47. Evodius: I confess that I am sufficiently persuaded—both how it is made plain, as far as in this life and among such as we are it can be, that God exists, and that all goods are from God; since all things that are—whether those that understand and live and exist, or those that only live and exist, or those that only exist—are from God. Now let us look at the third question, whether it can be settled that the free will is to be numbered among goods. When this is shown, I shall without hesitation grant that God gave it to us, and that it had to be given.

Augustine: You have remembered well what was proposed, and you have noticed attentively that the second question is already explained. But you should also have seen that this third one is already resolved. For you had said that it seemed to you that free choice of the will ought not to have been given, because by it each person sins. When, against this opinion of yours, I had replied that it cannot rightly be done except by this same free choice of the will, and asserted that God gave it rather for this purpose, you answered that the free will ought to have been given to us as justice was given, which no one can use except rightly. This answer of yours compelled us to go through such long circuits of discussion, in which we proved to you that goods, both greater and lesser, are only from God. This could not be shown so clearly unless first, against the opinions of impious folly, by which the fool says in his heart, There is no God ((Ps 14:1 (13:1))), some reasoning, of whatever sort, entered into so great a matter according to our small measure—God himself helping us on so perilous a journey—were directed toward something plain. Yet these two things, that is, that God exists and that all goods are from him, although they were held even before by an unshaken faith, have nevertheless been so treated that this third too—that the free will is to be numbered among goods—appears most plainly.

2. 18. 48. For it was already made clear in the previous discussion, and established between us, that the nature of body is in a lower grade than the nature of the soul, and that on this account the soul is a greater good than the body. If, then, among the goods of the body we find some that a person can use not rightly, and yet do not on that account say that they ought not to have been given, since we confess them to be goods, what wonder is it if there are also in the soul certain goods that we may use not rightly, but which, because they are goods, could only have been given by him from whom all goods are? For you see how great a good is lacking to a body that lacks hands; and yet one who works either cruel or shameful things with his hands uses them badly. If you saw someone without feet, you would confess that a very great good was lacking to the wholeness of the body; and yet you would not deny that one who used his feet to harm someone, or to dishonor himself, used his feet badly. With our eyes we see this light, and distinguish the forms of bodies; and this is the most beautiful thing in our body, for which reason these members are set on a kind of pinnacle of dignity; and the use of the eyes serves to protect health, and brings many other conveniences of life: yet very many people do many shameful things with their eyes, and force them to serve lust. And you see how great a good is lacking in the face if the eyes are lacking; but when they are present, who gave them, if not God, the giver of all goods? As, then, you approve these things in the body, and, not looking at those who use them badly, praise him who gave these goods, so you ought to confess that the free will, without which no one can live rightly, is a good and divinely given, and that those who use this good badly are rather to be condemned than that the one who gave it ought not to have given it.

2. 18. 49. Evodius: Then I would first wish you to prove to me that free will is some good, and I would grant that God gave it to us, since I confess that all goods are from God.

Augustine: Did I not, then, prove it at last, with such effort in the previous discussion, when you confessed that every shape and form of a body subsists from the highest form of all things, that is, from truth, and granted that it is good? For Truth itself in the Gospel says that even the hairs of our head are numbered ((See Matt 10:30)). Has what we said about the supremacy of number, and the power reaching from end to end, slipped from you? What perversity is this, then—to number our hairs, though they are among the tiny and altogether most abject things, yet among goods, and to find no author to whom they should be attributed except God the founder of all goods, since both the greatest and the least goods are from him from whom is every good; and yet to doubt about the free will, without which even those who live most wickedly grant that no one can live rightly? And now answer, I ask: which seems to you the better thing in us—that without which one can live rightly, or that without which one cannot live rightly?

Evodius: Spare me now, I beg you; I am ashamed of my blindness. For who would doubt that that is far more excellent without which there is no right life at all?

Augustine: Will you now deny that a one-eyed man can live rightly?

Evodius: Far be such monstrous madness.

Augustine: Since, then, you grant that the eye is some good in the body, the loss of which nevertheless does not hinder living rightly—will the free will seem to you no good, without which no one lives rightly?

2. 18. 50. For you behold justice, which no one uses badly. This is numbered among the highest goods that are in a human being himself, and so are all the virtues of the soul, by which the right and honorable life itself consists. For no one uses prudence, or fortitude, or temperance badly; for in all these too, as in that justice you mentioned, right reason flourishes, without which the virtues cannot exist. And right reason no one can use badly.

2. 19. 50. These, then, are great goods. But you must remember that not only great goods, but even the least, cannot be except from him from whom all goods are, that is, God. For this the previous discussion persuaded us of, to which you so often and so gladly assented. The virtues, then, by which one lives rightly, are great goods; the forms of any bodies whatever, without which one can live rightly, are the least goods; and the powers of the soul, without which one cannot live rightly, are intermediate goods. The virtues no one uses badly; but the other goods, that is, the intermediate and the least, anyone can use not only well but also badly. And therefore no one uses virtue badly, because the work of virtue is the good use of those things which we can also use not well. But no one, by using well, uses badly. Therefore the abundance and greatness of God's goodness has provided not only great goods, but also intermediate and least goods. His goodness is more to be praised in the great than in the intermediate, and more in the intermediate than in the least goods; but more in all than if he had not bestowed all.

2. 19. 51. Evodius: I agree. But this troubles me: since the question is about the free will, and we see that it itself uses the other goods well or not well, how is it that it too is to be numbered among those things which we use?

Augustine: In the same way that all the things we know unto knowledge, we know by reason, and yet reason itself too is numbered among those things which we know by reason. Or have you forgotten that, when we were inquiring what things are known by reason, you confessed that reason too is known by reason? Do not marvel, then, if we use the other things through the free will, that we can use the free will itself through it as well; so that, in a way, the will, which uses the other things, uses itself—just as reason, which knows the other things, knows itself. For memory too not only comprehends all the other things we remember, but also, because we do not forget that we have memory, memory in a way holds itself in us, which remembers not only other things but also itself; or rather, we remember both the other things and itself through itself.

2. 19. 52. The will, then, which is an intermediate good, when it clings to the unchangeable good—and that not its own private good, but one common, such as is the truth of which we have spoken much and said nothing worthy—a person holds the blessed life; and this very blessed life, that is, the disposition of a soul clinging to the unchangeable good, is the proper and first good of a human being. In it are also all the virtues, which no one can use badly. For although these are great and first in a human being, yet it is sufficiently understood that they are proper to each individual person, and not common. For by truth and wisdom, which is common to all, all become wise and blessed by clinging to it. But one person is not made blessed by the blessedness of another; for even when one imitates another in order to be blessed, he seeks to become blessed from the same source from which he sees the other was made so—namely, from that unchangeable and common truth. Nor is anyone made prudent by another's prudence, or brave by another's fortitude, or temperate by another's temperance, or just by another's justice; but by conforming his soul to those unchangeable rules and lights of the virtues which live incorruptibly in truth itself and in the common wisdom, to which the very person also conformed and fixed his soul whom, endowed with those virtues, he set before himself for imitation.

2. 19. 53. The will, then, clinging to the common and unchangeable good, obtains the first and great goods of a human being, while it is itself a certain intermediate good. But the will turned away from the unchangeable and common good, and turned toward its own private good, or toward what is outer, or toward what is lower, sins. It is turned toward its own private good when it wills to be its own master; toward what is outer, when it is zealous to know the private affairs of others, or whatever does not pertain to it; toward what is lower, when it loves the pleasure of the body. And so a person, made proud and curious and lascivious, is taken up by another life, which in comparison with the higher life is death; which, nevertheless, is governed by the administration of divine providence, which sets all things in their fitting seats, and distributes to each what is his own according to his merits. So it comes about that neither those goods that are sought by sinners are in any way evil, nor the free will itself, which we have found is to be numbered among certain intermediate goods; but the evil is the turning of it away from the unchangeable good, and its turning toward changeable goods—which turning away and turning toward, since it is not compelled but voluntary, is followed by a fitting and just penalty of wretchedness.

2. 20. 54. Evodius: I follow your wish indeed, that we should defer to another time whatever arises from here. For I will not grant you this—that you should think enough has now been inquired into from it.

3. 1. 1. Evodius: Since it has been made plain enough to me that the free will is to be numbered among goods, and indeed not the least of them—from which we are also compelled to confess that it was divinely given, and had to be given—now, if you think it opportune, I desire to learn from you whence that movement arises by which the will itself turns away from the common and unchangeable good, and turns toward its own, or another's, or lower goods, all of them changeable.

Augustine: But what need is there to know this?

Evodius: Because, if it was so given that it has this movement naturally, then it is by necessity turned to these things; and no fault can be found where nature and necessity hold sway.

Augustine: Does this movement please you, or displease you?

Evodius: It displeases me.

Augustine: Then you blame it.

Evodius: I do indeed blame it.

Augustine: Then you blame a blameless movement of the soul.

Evodius: I do not blame a blameless movement of the soul; but I do not know whether there is any fault in forsaking the unchangeable good and turning to changeable goods.

Augustine: Then you blame what you do not know.

Evodius: Do not press the word. For I said "I do not know whether there is any fault" in such a way that I meant to be understood as having no doubt that there is a fault. For by this word that I used, "I do not know," I plainly mocked any doubt about so plain a matter.

Augustine: See what most certain truth is, which has compelled you so quickly to forget what you said a little while ago. For if that movement exists by nature or by necessity, it can in no way be blameworthy. Yet you hold so most firmly that it is blameworthy, that you thought even a doubt about so certain a matter should be mocked. Why, then, did it seem to you that you should affirm, or at least say with some doubt, what you yourself plainly prove to be false? For you said: If the free will was so given that it has this movement naturally, then it is by necessity turned to these things; and no fault can be found where nature and necessity hold sway. But you ought in no way to have doubted that it was not so given, since you do not doubt that this movement is blameworthy.

Evodius: I said that the movement itself was blameworthy, and therefore that it displeases me, and I cannot doubt that it is to be blamed; but I deny that the soul, which by this movement is dragged from the unchangeable good to changeable goods, is to be blamed, if its nature is such that it is moved by necessity.

3. 1. 2. Augustine: Whose is this movement, which you grant must surely be blamed?

Evodius: I see it in the soul, but whose it is I do not know.

Augustine: Surely you do not deny that the soul is moved by this movement?

Evodius: I do not deny it.

Augustine: Do you deny, then, that the movement by which a stone is moved is the stone's movement? I do not mean the movement by which we move it, or by which it is moved by some external force, as when it is thrown into the air, but that by which, by its own inclination, it tends and falls toward the earth.

Evodius: I do not indeed deny that the movement by which, as you say, it is inclined and seeks the depths, is the stone's movement; but it is natural. If the soul too has its movement in this way, then it too surely is natural; and it cannot rightly be reproached for what it does naturally; for even if it is moved to its own ruin, yet it is compelled by the necessity of its nature. But since we do not doubt that this movement is blameworthy, it must in every way be denied to be natural; and so it is not like that movement by which a stone is naturally moved.

Augustine: Did we accomplish anything in the two earlier discussions?

Evodius: We did indeed.

Augustine: I believe, then, you remember that in the first discussion it was sufficiently found out that the mind is made a slave of lust by nothing other than its own will: for it can be forced to this disgrace neither by anything higher nor by anything equal, since that is unjust; nor by anything lower, since it cannot. It remains, then, that this movement is its own—the movement by which it turns its will to enjoyment from the Creator toward the creature. If this movement is reckoned as fault—and one who doubts it seemed to you worthy of mockery—then surely it is not natural but voluntary; and in this it is like that movement by which a stone is borne downward, for as that is the stone's own, so this is the soul's. Yet in this it is unlike, that a stone does not have it in its power to check the movement by which it is borne lower; whereas the soul, while it is unwilling, is not moved in such a way that, forsaking higher things, it loves lower ones. And so that movement is natural to the stone, but this one voluntary to the soul. Hence, if anyone should say that a stone sins because it tends toward the depths by its weight, I would judge him—I will not say duller than the stone itself, but plainly out of his mind; whereas we charge the soul with sin when we prove that it forsakes higher things and prefers lower ones for enjoyment. What need, then, is there to ask whence arises that movement by which the will turns away from the unchangeable good toward the changeable good, since we confess it to be only the soul's, and voluntary, and on that account blameworthy; and the whole useful teaching about this matter avails for this: that, this movement being disapproved and checked, we may turn our will from the lapse into temporal things toward the enjoyment of the everlasting good?

3. 1. 3. Evodius: I see, and in a way touch and hold, that what you say is true. For there is nothing I sense so firmly and so intimately as that I have a will, and that by it I am moved to enjoy something. And what I may call mine, I do not find at all, if the will by which I will and do not will is not mine. To whom, then, is it to be attributed, if I do anything evil through it, but to myself? For since a good God made me, and I do nothing good except through the will, it sufficiently appears that it was given by the good God rather for this. But the movement by which the will is turned this way or that, unless it were voluntary and set in our power, a person would be neither praiseworthy when he turns the, as it were, hinge of the will toward higher things, nor blameworthy when he turns it toward lower; nor would he need at all to be admonished to neglect these things and will to attain the eternal, and to will not to live badly but to live well. But whoever thinks that a person need not be so admonished is to be banished from the number of human beings.

3. 2. 4. Since these things are so, I am moved beyond words how it can be that both God is foreknowing of all things future, and we sin by no necessity. For whoever says that anything can happen otherwise than God foreknew it, strives with most insane impiety to destroy the foreknowledge of God. Therefore, if God foreknew that the good man was going to sin—which anyone must grant me who confesses with me that God is foreknowing of all things future—then if it is so, I do not say that God should not have made him, for he made him good, nor could the sin of one whom he himself made good harm God in anything; rather, in making him he had shown his goodness, and shows also, in punishing, his justice, and, in delivering, his mercy. So I do not say that God should not have made him; but this I say: since he had foreknown that he was going to sin, it was necessary that what God foreknew was going to be should come about. How, then, is the will free, where so unavoidable a necessity appears?

3. 2. 5. Augustine: You have knocked vehemently at the mercy of God. May it be present, and open to those who knock. But I would believe that the greater part of people are tormented by this question for no other reason than that they do not seek piously, and are swifter to excuse than to confess their sins. For some gladly hold that no divine providence presides over human affairs; and while they commit both their souls and their bodies to chance happenings, and give themselves to be struck and torn by lusts, denying divine judgments and deceiving human ones, they think to ward off, by the patronage of fortune, those by whom they are accused—which fortune, however, they are wont to fashion and paint as blind, so that either they are better than that fortune by which they think they are governed, or they confess that they too feel and speak these things with the same blindness. And it is not absurd to grant that such people manage everything by chance, since by acting they fall. But against this opinion, full of the most foolish and most demented error, enough, as I think, was discussed in our second conversation. Others, however, although they do not dare to deny that the providence of God presides over human life, prefer nevertheless to believe, by a wicked error, that it is either weak, or unjust, or evil, rather than to confess their sins with suppliant piety. If all these would suffer themselves to be persuaded that, when they think of the best and most just and most powerful, they should believe the goodness and justice and power of God to be far greater and higher than whatever they conceive in thought; and, considering themselves, would understand that they owe thanks to God, even if he had willed them to be something lower than they are, and would cry out with all the bones and marrow of their conscience: I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you ((Ps 41:4 (40:5)))—then they would be led, by the sure paths of the divine mercy, into wisdom, so that, neither puffed up by things found nor disturbed by things not found, they would become both better instructed for seeing by knowing, and gentler for seeking by not knowing. But to you, of whom I do not doubt that this is now persuaded, see how easily I shall answer concerning so great a question, when you, who first questioned, have answered me a few things.

3. 3. 6. Evodius: Nothing else for the moment.

Augustine: You think, then, that all the things of which God is foreknowing come about not by will but by necessity.

Evodius: I think so entirely.

Augustine: Wake up at last, and look upon yourself a little, and tell me, if you can, what sort of will you are going to have tomorrow—one for sinning, or one for doing right.

Evodius: I do not know.

Augustine: What? Do you think God likewise does not know this?

Evodius: I would in no way think that.

Augustine: If, then, he knows your will of tomorrow, and foresees the future wills of all people, both those who are and those who will be, much more does he foresee what he himself is going to do with the just and the impious.

Evodius: Surely, if I say that God is foreknowing of my works, I would say much more confidently that he foreknows his own works, and most certainly foresees what he is going to do.

Augustine: Do you not, then, beware lest it be said to you that he too will do whatever he is going to do not by will but by necessity, if all the things of which God is foreknowing come about by necessity and not by will?

Evodius: When I said that all things that God foreknew were going to be come about by necessity, I was looking only at those things that come about in his creation, not those in himself; for those do not come about, but are everlasting.

Augustine: Then God does nothing in his creation.

Evodius: He has already established, once for all, in what manner the order of that universe which he founded should be carried on; nor does he administer anything by a new will.

Augustine: Does he make no one blessed?

Evodius: He does indeed.

Augustine: And he does it surely then, when the person is made so.

Evodius: So it is.

Augustine: If, then, for example, you are going to be blessed a year from now, you will be made blessed a year from now.

Evodius: Just so.

Augustine: Then he foreknows today what he is going to do a year from now.

Evodius: He always foreknew this; and now too I agree that he foreknows it, if it is so going to be.

3. 3. 7. Augustine: Tell me, I ask: are you not his creature, or will your blessedness not come about in you?

Evodius: On the contrary, I am his creature, and it will come about in me that I shall be blessed.

Augustine: Then your blessedness will come about in you not by will but by necessity, with God making it.

Evodius: His will is necessity for me.

Augustine: Then you will be blessed against your will.

Evodius: If I had the power to be blessed, I would surely already be so; for I will it even now, and am not so, because not I, but he, makes me blessed.

Augustine: Most excellently does truth cry out from you. For you could not feel that anything is in our power except what we do when we will. So nothing is so within our power as the will itself. For it, surely, with no interval, is present the moment we will. And so we can rightly say, We grow old not by will but by necessity; or, We fall ill not by will but by necessity; or, We die not by will but by necessity; and anything else of this kind. But that we will not by will—who, even raving, would dare to say? Therefore, although God foreknows our future wills, it does not follow that we do not will something by will. For as to what you said about blessedness, that you are not made blessed by your own self, you said it as though I had denied this; but I say that, when you are going to be blessed, you will be so not against your will but willing it. Since, then, God is foreknowing of your future blessedness, and nothing can come about otherwise than he foreknew—otherwise there is no foreknowledge—we are nevertheless not on that account compelled to think (which is most absurd and far removed from the truth) that you will be blessed though unwilling. But just as the foreknowledge of God, which is certain even today about your future blessedness, does not take from you the will for blessedness when you begin to be blessed, so too a blameworthy will, if any will be in you in the future, will not for that reason cease to be a will, because God foreknew that it would be.

3. 3. 8. Evodius: Behold, I no longer deny that whatever God foreknew comes about of necessity, and that he foreknows our sins in such a way that nevertheless our will remains free to us, and set within our power.

3. 4. 9. Augustine: What, then, troubles you? Have you perhaps forgotten what our first discussion accomplished—that we sin by no one compelling us, whether higher or lower or equal, but by our own will?

Evodius: I dare to deny none of these things at all. But yet, I confess, I do not yet see how these two are not opposed to each other—the foreknowledge of God about our sins, and our free choice in sinning. For we must confess both that God is just, and that he is foreknowing. But I would like to know by what justice he punishes sins which must necessarily come about; or how it is that things he foreknew were going to be do not come about of necessity; or how whatever must necessarily come about in his creation is not to be attributed to the Creator.

3. 4. 10. Augustine: Why does it seem to you that our free choice is opposed to the foreknowledge of God? Because it is foreknowledge, or because it is the foreknowledge of God?

Evodius: Because it is God's, rather.

Augustine: What then? If you foreknew that someone was going to sin, would it not be necessary that he sin?

Evodius: On the contrary, it would be necessary that he sin; for my foreknowledge would not be foreknowledge unless I foreknew things certain.

Augustine: Then it is not because it is God's foreknowledge that what he foreknew must necessarily come about, but only because it is foreknowledge—which, if it does not foreknow things certain, is surely no foreknowledge at all.

Evodius: I agree; but where is this tending?

Augustine: Because, unless I am mistaken, you would not directly compel the person to sin whom you foreknew was going to sin; nor would your foreknowledge itself compel him to sin, though without doubt he was going to sin—for otherwise you would not foreknow that this was going to be. Therefore, just as these two are not opposed to each other—that you should by your foreknowledge know what another is going to do by his own will—so God, compelling no one to sin, nevertheless foresees those who are going to sin by their own will.

3. 4. 11. Why, then, should not he who is just avenge what he, being foreknowing, does not compel to be done? For just as you do not, by your memory, compel to have been done the things that have passed, so God does not, by his foreknowledge, compel to be done the things that are to come. And just as you remember certain things you have done, and yet have not done all the things you remember, so God foreknows all the things of which he himself is the author, and yet is not the author of all the things he foreknows. Of those things of which he is not the evil author, he is the just avenger. From this, then, understand now by what justice God punishes sins—because he does not do the things he knows are to come; for if he ought not to render punishment to sinners because he foresees they will sin, neither ought he to render rewards to those who do right, because he no less foresees that they will do right. Rather, let us confess both that it belongs to his foreknowledge that nothing future escapes him, and that it belongs to his justice that sin, since it is committed by the will, is not, by his judgment, left unpunished, just as it is not compelled to be done by his foreknowledge.

3. 5. 12. Now that which you put in the third place—how whatever must necessarily come about in his creation is not to be attributed to the Creator—that rule of piety will easily set aside, which it behooves us to remember: that we owe thanksgiving to our Creator. For his most lavish goodness would most justly be praised, even if he had founded us in some lower grade of creation. For although our soul is corrupted by sins, it is nevertheless higher and better than if it were turned into this visible light. And you surely see, from the eminence of this light, how greatly souls, even those given over to the bodily senses, praise God. Therefore let it not now trouble you that sinful souls are blamed, so that you say in your heart that it would have been better if they did not exist. For they are blamed in comparison with themselves, when it is considered what they would be like if they had been unwilling to sin. Yet God, their founder, is to be praised most gloriously, as far as human capacity allows, not only because he orders them justly when they sin, but also because he so founded them that, even when defiled by sins, they are in no way surpassed by the dignity of corporeal light, for which he is nonetheless rightly praised.

3. 5. 13. I also warn you to beware lest perhaps you say not that it would have been better if they did not exist, but that they ought to have been made otherwise. For whatever better thing occurs to you by true reason, know that God made it, as the founder of all goods. But it is not true reason, but envious weakness, when, having thought that something better ought to have been made, you then will nothing lower to be made at all—as if, beholding the sky, you were unwilling that the earth had been made; which is altogether unjust. For you would rightly find fault if you saw the earth made and the sky passed over, since you would say it ought to have been made such as you could conceive the sky to be. But since you see that the very thing to whose appearance you wished the earth brought has been made—but is called not earth but sky—I believe that, not defrauded of the better thing, you ought in no way to envy that some lower thing too was made and was earth. And in the earth there is again, according to its parts, such variety that nothing pertaining to the appearance of earth occurs to one's thought that God, the founder of all things, has not made in its whole mass. For from the most fertile and most pleasant land, by degrees, one comes through the intermediate kinds to the most salty and most barren, so that you would not dare to blame any, except in comparison with a better; and so you ascend through all the degrees of praise, so that, when you have found the highest kind of land, you would nevertheless not wish it alone to exist. Now between the whole earth and the sky, how great is the distance! For the moist and airy natures are interposed; and out of these four elements other countless kinds and forms of things—countless to us, but numbered by God—are varied. There can, then, be something in the nature of things that you do not conceive by your reason. But that what you conceive by true reason should not exist, cannot be. For you cannot conceive anything better in creation that escaped the maker of creation. For the human soul, naturally connected with the divine reasons on which it depends, when it says, This would be better made than that—if it speaks the truth, and sees what it says—sees it in those reasons to which it is connected. Let it believe, then, that God made what it knew by true reason ought to have been made by him, even if it does not see this among the things made. For even if it could not see the sky with its eyes, and yet gathered by true reason that some such thing ought to have been made, it ought to believe it was made, although it did not see it with its eyes. For it would not see in thought that it ought to have been made, unless it saw it in those reasons by which all things were made. But what is not there, no one can see by truthful thought, as surely as it is not true.

3. 5. 14. In this very many people err, that, when they have beheld better things with the mind, they seek them with the eyes in unfitting places. As if someone, grasping perfect roundness by reason, should be vexed that he did not find such a nut, if he had never beheld any round body except fruits of this kind. So some, when by most true reason they see that a creature is better which, although it has a free will, yet always fixed on God, has never sinned—then, looking upon the sins of people, grieve not that they may stop sinning, but that they were made at all, saying: He should have made us such that we always wished to enjoy his unchangeable truth, and never wished to sin. Let them not cry out, let them not grow angry: for he did not compel them to sin by the fact that he made them, to whom he gave the power to choose whether they would; and there are some such angels, who neither ever sinned nor ever will sin. Therefore, if a creature delights you that, by a most persevering will, does not sin, there is no doubt that, by right reason, you set it above one that sins; but just as you set it above in thought, so God, the Creator, set it above in his ordering. Believe that there is such a creature in the higher seats and in the height of the heavens; for if the Founder showed his goodness in founding that creature whose future sins he foresaw, in no way would he not show that goodness in founding a creature which he foreknew would not sin.

3. 5. 15. For that lofty creature has its own perpetual blessedness, forever enjoying its Creator, which it merits by a perpetual will to keep justice. Next, even that sinful creature has its own order—having lost blessedness in its sins, yet not dismissed from the capacity of recovering blessedness. This surely surpasses the one held by a perpetual will to sin; and between it and that former one, abiding in the will of justice, this one shows a certain middle state, which by the humility of repentance recovers its height. For God did not, from that creature which he foreknew would not only sin but also remain in the will of sinning, withhold the bounty of his goodness, so as not to found it. For just as a wandering horse is better than a stone that does not wander, because it lacks proper motion and sense, so a creature is more excellent that sins by a free will than one that does not sin because it has no free will. And as I would praise wine good in its kind, while I would blame a person made drunk on that wine, and yet would set that same person, already blamed and still drunk, above the wine I praised by which he was made drunk: so a corporeal creature is rightly to be praised in its degree, while those are to be blamed who, by its immoderate use, are turned away from the perception of truth; and yet those same perverse and, as it were, drunken people are still preferred to that creature, praiseworthy in its own order, by the greedy use of which they have vanished away—not now by the merit of their vices, but still by the dignity of their nature.

3. 5. 16. Since, then, every soul is better than every body, and every sinful soul, into whatever it falls, is by no change made a body, nor is what makes it a soul taken from it at all, and therefore it in no way loses that by which it is better than a body—while among bodies light holds the first place—it follows that the lowest soul is set above the first body; and it can come about that some other body be set before the body of a certain soul, but that another soul be set before that soul itself, in no way. Why, then, should not God be praised, and praised with unspeakable proclamation, who, when he made those souls that would abide in the laws of justice, made also other souls which he foresaw would either sin or even persevere in sins, since even such souls are still better than those which, because they have no rational and free choice of the will, cannot sin? And these latter are still better than the brightest splendor of any bodies whatever, which some, though with great error, venerate in place of the substance of the highest God himself. But if, in the order of corporeal creatures, from the very choirs of the stars down to the number of our hairs, the beauty of good things is so woven together by degrees that it is most ignorant to say, What is this? Why this?—since all things were created in their own order—how much more ignorant is it to say it of any soul, which, to whatever diminution and defect of its own beauty it may come, will without any doubt always surpass the dignity of all bodies?

3. 5. 17. For reason judges one way, use another. Reason judges by the light of truth, so as by right judgment to subject lesser things to greater; but use is for the most part inclined by the habit of convenience, so as to value more highly the things that truth proves to be lesser. For although reason sets the heavenly bodies far above earthly bodies, yet which of carnal people would not rather that more stars be missing from the sky than one little tree from his field, or a cow from his herd? But just as older people either wholly despise, or at least patiently wait to correct, the judgments of little children, who—except for certain ones in whose love they delight—would rather any other person whatever should die than their own sparrow; and much more so if that person were terrifying, but the sparrow tuneful and pretty: so those who, by the advance of the soul, have made progress toward wisdom, when they find unskilled appraisers of things praising God in lesser creatures, which they apply more fittingly to their carnal senses, but, in the higher and better things, partly not praising him, or praising him less, partly even trying to blame or amend, partly not believing that he is their founder—let them grow accustomed either wholly to despise the judgments of such people, if they cannot correct them, or, until they correct them, to bear and endure them with an even mind.

3. 6. 18. Since these things are so, so far is it from the truth that the sins of the creature are thought to be attributed to the Creator—although the things he foreknew were going to be must necessarily come about—that, whereas you said you could not find how whatever must necessarily come about in his creation is not attributed to him, I, on the contrary, do not find a way, and affirm that none can be found and that there is altogether none, by which whatever must necessarily come about in his creation, so as to come about by the will of those sinning, is attributed to him. For if anyone says, I would rather not exist than be wretched, I will answer: You lie. For even now you are wretched, and you do not wish to die for no other reason than to exist; so that, although you do not wish to be wretched, you nevertheless wish to exist. Give thanks, then, for the fact that you exist willingly, that what you are unwillingly may be taken away. For you exist willingly, and you are wretched unwillingly. If you are ungrateful for the fact that you wish to exist, you are rightly compelled to be what you do not wish. Therefore, from the fact that, even ungrateful, you have what you wish, I praise the goodness of the Creator; and from the fact that you suffer ungrateful what you do not wish, I praise the justice of the Orderer.

3. 6. 19. If he says: I do not refuse to die because I prefer to be wretched rather than not to exist at all, but lest after death I be more wretched—I will answer: If this is unjust, you will not be so; but if it is just, let us praise him by whose laws you will be so. If he says: From what should I presume that, if this is unjust, I shall not be so?—I will answer: Because, if you will be in your own power, either you will not be wretched, or, by ruling yourself unjustly, you will justly be wretched; or, willing to rule yourself justly and not being able, you will not be in your own power, and will be either in no one's power or in another's; if in no one's, then either unwillingly or willingly; but unwillingly you can be nothing, unless some force has overcome you; and one who is in no one's power can be overcome by no force. If, however, willingly you will be in no one's power, then again reason runs to this—that you are in your own; and either, by ruling yourself unjustly, you are justly wretched; or, since you will be whatever you are willingly, you still have whereby to give thanks to the goodness of your Creator. But if you will not be in your own power, then surely either one more powerful, or one weaker, will have you in his power. If weaker, it is your fault, and a just wretchedness, since you could overcome the weaker if you would. But if a more powerful will have you, the weaker, in his power, you will in no way think so right an ordering rightly unjust. Most truly, then, it was said: If this is unjust, you will not be so; if just, let us praise him by whose laws you will be so.

3. 7. 20. If he says: For this reason I prefer to be wretched rather than not to exist at all, because I already am; whereas, if I could have been consulted before I existed, I would choose not to exist rather than to be wretched. For the very fact that now I fear not to exist, though I am wretched, belongs to that very wretchedness, by which I do not will what I ought to will; for I ought rather to will not to exist than to be wretched. But now I confess that indeed I prefer to be wretched rather than nothing; but the more wretchedly, the more foolishly do I will this; and the more wretchedly, the more truly I see that I ought not to have willed this—I will answer: Take care rather that you do not err here, where you think you see the truth. For if you were blessed, you would surely prefer to be rather than not to be; and now, though you are wretched, you nonetheless prefer to be, even wretched, rather than not to be at all, though you do not will to be wretched. Consider, then, as far as you can, how great a good it is simply to be, which both the blessed and the wretched will. For if you consider this well, you will see that you are wretched insofar as you do not draw near to that which supremely is; and that you think it better not to be than to be wretched, insofar as you do not see that which supremely is; and yet that you will to be, because you are from him who supremely is.

3. 7. 21. If, then, you wish to flee wretchedness, love in yourself this very thing—that you wish to be. For if you will more and more to be, you will draw near to him who supremely is. And give thanks now that you are. For although you are inferior to the blessed, you are nevertheless superior to those things which do not have even the will for blessedness; many of which are praised even by the wretched. Yet all things, by the very fact that they are, are rightly to be praised; because by the very fact that they are, they are good. The more, then, you love to be, the more you will desire eternal life, and the more you will long to be so fashioned that your affections are not temporal, branded and impressed by the loves of temporal things—things which, before they exist, do not exist, and when they exist, flee, and when they have fled, will not be. And so, when they are future, they do not yet exist; and when they are past, they no longer exist. How, then, can they be held so as to abide, whose very beginning to be is a passing on toward not being? But one who loves to be approves these things insofar as they are, and loves that which always is. And if he was wavering in the love of these things, he is made firm in the love of that; and if he was flowing away in the love of passing things, he will be made solid in the love of the abiding, and will stand, and will obtain that very being which he willed when he feared not to be, and could not stand entangled in the love of fleeing things. Therefore let it not displease you—rather, let it greatly please you—that you prefer to be even wretched rather than, for that reason, not to be wretched, because you would be nothing. For to this beginning, by which you wish to be, if you add the willing to be more and more, you rise and are built up into that which supremely is; and so you will hold yourself back from every defect by which what is lowest passes into not being, and undermines with itself the strength of the one who loves it. Hence it comes about that he who prefers not to be, lest he be wretched, since he cannot not be, it remains that he be wretched. But he who loves to be more than he hates to be wretched, by adding to what he loves, excludes what he hates: for when he has begun to be perfectly in his own kind, he will not be wretched.

3. 8. 22. For see how absurdly and inconsistently it is said: I would rather not be than be wretched. For one who says, I would rather this than that, chooses something. But not to be is not something, but nothing; and therefore you can in no way rightly choose, when what you choose does not exist. You say that you indeed will to be, though you are wretched, but that you ought not to have willed this. What, then, ought you to have willed? Rather not to be, you say. If you ought to have willed this, this is better; but what does not exist cannot be better: therefore you ought not to have willed it; and the sense by which you do not will it is truer than the opinion by which you think you ought to have willed it. Then, what anyone rightly chooses to seek, when he has reached it, he must necessarily become better; but one who will not exist cannot be better: no one, therefore, can rightly choose not to be. Nor ought we to be moved by the judgment of those who, pressed by wretchedness, have killed themselves. For either they fled to where they thought it would be better for them—and this is not contrary to our reasoning, however they thought; or, if they believed they would be nothing at all, much less will the false choice of those who choose nothing move us. For how shall I follow one who chooses, of whom, if I ask what he chooses, he will answer, Nothing? For one who chooses not to be is surely proved to choose nothing, even if he is unwilling to give that answer.

3. 8. 23. But, to say what I think about this whole matter, if I can: no one seems to me, when he kills himself or in any way desires to die, to have in his perception that he will not exist after death—although he has something of this in his opinion. For opinion is in the error or the truth of one who reasons or believes; but perception holds sway either by habit or by nature. That it can happen that one thing is in opinion and another in perception is easy to recognize even from this: that very often we believe one thing ought to be done, and it delights us to do another. And sometimes perception is truer than opinion, if the latter is from error and the former from nature: as when a sick person is often profitably delighted by cold water, which he nevertheless believes, if he drinks it, will harm him. Sometimes opinion is truer than perception, if he believes, on the art of medicine, that cold water will hurt, when indeed it will hurt, and yet it delights him to drink it. Sometimes both are in the truth, when what profits is not only believed so, but also pleases; sometimes both are in error, when what harms is both believed to profit and does not cease to please. Now right opinion is wont to correct depraved habit, and depraved opinion to deprave right nature: so great is the force in the dominion and sovereignty of reason. When, therefore, anyone, believing that he will not exist after death, is nevertheless driven by intolerable troubles to a total desire for death, and decides upon and seizes death, he has in his opinion the error of utter ceasing-to-be, but in his perception the natural desire for rest. But that which is at rest is not nothing; rather, it is more than that which is unquiet. For unquiet varies the affections, so that one destroys another; but rest has constancy, in which is best understood that which is said, "it is." Therefore all that craving in the will for death is directed not so that one who dies should not exist, but so that he should rest. So, although by error he believes he will not exist, by nature he nevertheless desires to be at rest—that is, to be more fully. Wherefore, just as it can in no way come about that not to exist should please anyone, so it ought in no way to come about that anyone, from the fact that he exists, should be ungrateful to the goodness of the Creator.

3. 9. 24. If he says: Yet it was not difficult or laborious for almighty God so to make all things he made that each should have its own order, so that no creature should come to wretchedness; for either the almighty could not do this, or the good God begrudged it—I will answer that the order of creatures runs by just degrees from the highest to the lowest, so that he envies who says, That should not exist; and he too envies who says, That should be of such a kind. For if he wishes it to be such as the higher is, then that higher already exists, and is so great that nothing should be added to it, since it is perfect. He, then, who says, That too should be of such a kind, either wishes to add to the perfect higher one, and will be immoderate and unjust; or wishes to destroy that one, and will be evil and envious. But he who says, That should not exist, will be no less evil and envious, since he does not wish to exist that thing which he is still compelled to praise as superior to a lower one. As if he should say, There should be no moon—when even the brightness of a lamp, far inferior, yet beautiful in its kind, and comely for earthly darkness, and apt for nightly uses, and in all these in its own small measure praiseworthy, he must either confess or most foolishly or contentiously deny. How, then, will he dare rightly to say, The moon should not exist among things, when, if he said, The lamp should not exist, he would feel he was to be laughed at? But if he does not say, The moon should not exist, but says it ought to have been such as he sees the sun is, he does not understand that he is saying nothing other than, The moon should not exist, but there should be two suns. In which he errs doubly: both that he desires to add something to the perfection of things, when he longs for a second sun; and that he desires to diminish it, when he wishes the moon withdrawn.

3. 9. 25. Here perhaps he will say that he makes no complaint about the moon, because its splendor is so much less that it is not wretched; but that he grieves over the souls—not over their dimness, but over their wretchedness. Let him diligently consider that, just as the splendor of the moon is not wretched, so the splendor of the sun is not blessed. For although they are heavenly bodies, they are nevertheless bodies, as far as concerns this light which can be perceived through the bodily eyes. But no bodies, as far as concerns themselves, can be either blessed or wretched—although the bodies of the blessed or the wretched can exist. Yet the likeness drawn from those lights teaches this: that just as, in contemplating the differences of bodies, when you see some brighter, you unjustly demand that those you have beheld as dimmer be taken away, or made equal to the brighter—but, referring all things to the perfection of the whole, you see that all things exist the more, the more clear they are among themselves in greater and lesser degree; nor does a perfect whole occur to you except where the greater are present in such a way that the lesser are not lacking—so too you should think of the differences of souls; in which you will find this also: that the wretchedness over which you grieve avails for this too, that, for the perfection of the whole, those souls also are not lacking which were bound to become wretched, because they willed to be sinful. And so far is it from being the case that God ought not to have made such souls, that he made even the other creatures, far inferior to wretched souls, in a praiseworthy way.

3. 9. 26. But one less understanding seems still to have something to object to what has been said. For he says: If even our wretchedness completes the perfection of the whole, then something would have been lacking to this perfection if we were always blessed. Therefore, if the soul does not reach wretchedness except by sinning, then even our sins are necessary to the perfection of the whole which God founded. How, then, does he justly punish sins, which, had they been lacking, his creation would not be full and perfect? Here the answer is given that not the sins themselves, nor the wretchedness itself, are necessary to the perfection of the whole, but souls insofar as they are souls; which, if they will, sin, and, if they have sinned, become wretched. For if, when their sins are removed, wretchedness persists, or even precedes sins, then rightly the order and administration of the whole is said to be deformed. Again, if sins occur, and wretchedness is lacking, no less does iniquity dishonor the order. But when blessedness is present to those not sinning, the whole is perfect; and when wretchedness is present to those sinning, no less is the whole perfect. And that the souls themselves are not lacking—those which wretchedness follows when they sin, or blessedness when they do right—the whole is always full and perfect through all natures. For sin and the punishment of sin are not certain natures, but affections of natures—the one voluntary, the other penal. The voluntary affection that occurs in sin is a base affection. To it, therefore, a penal one is applied, that it may order it where it is not base for such a thing to be, and may compel it to fit the beauty of the whole, so that the punishment of sin amends the dishonor of sin.

3. 9. 27. Hence it comes about that the sinning superior creature is punished by inferior creatures, because they are so low that they can be adorned even by base souls, and so fit the beauty of the whole. For what is so great in a house as a human being? And what is so abject and lowly as the sewer of the house? Yet a slave detected in such a sin that he is held worthy to clean the sewer adorns it even by his disgrace; and both of these—that is, the slave's disgrace and the cleaning of the sewer—now joined together and reduced to a kind of unity of their own kind, are so fitted and woven into a well-arranged house that they suit its whole with most fitting beauty. Yet, if that slave had been unwilling to sin, there would not have been lacking to household discipline some other provision by which the necessary things were cleaned. What, then, is so lowly among things as every earthly body? Yet even a sinful soul so adorns this corruptible flesh that it gives it a most becoming appearance and a vital motion. A soul of this kind, then, does not suit a heavenly dwelling through sin, but suits an earthly one through punishment; so that, whichever it chooses, the whole is always beautiful, ordered in its most becoming parts, of which God is the founder and administrator. But the best souls, when they dwell in the lowest creatures, do not adorn them by their wretchedness, which they do not have, but by the good use of them. But if sinful souls were permitted to dwell in lofty places, it would be dishonorable; for they do not suit those things which they can neither use well nor confer any ornament upon.

3. 9. 28. Therefore, although this earthly world is assigned to corruptible things, yet, preserving as far as it can the image of the higher things, it does not cease to show us certain examples and indications. For if we see some good and great man, at the prompting of the duty of honor, burned by fire, as far as concerns the body, we do not call this the punishment of sin, but a proof of fortitude and patience, and we love him more when most foul corruption consumes his bodily members than if he suffered nothing of the kind; for we marvel that the nature of the soul is not changed by the changeableness of the body. But when we see the members of a most cruel robber undone by such a torment, we approve the order of the laws. Both these torments, then, adorn—the one by the merit of virtue, the other by that of sin. But if, after those fires, or even before them, we saw that best man changed, to suit a heavenly dwelling, and lifted up to the stars, we would surely rejoice. But if we saw a wicked robber, whether before or after his punishment, with the same malice of will, raised up to a seat of everlasting honor in heaven, who would not be offended? So it comes about that both could adorn the inferior creatures, but only one of them the higher. From this we are admonished to observe that the mortality of this flesh both adorned the first man, so that punishment suited his sin, and adorned our Lord, so that mercy might free us from sin. But not as the just man, abiding in justice itself, could have a mortal body, can the unjust man, while he is unjust, attain the immortality of the saints—that is, the lofty and angelic immortality; not of those angels of whom the Apostle says, Do you not know that we shall judge angels? ((1 Cor 6:3)), but of those of whom the Lord says, And they shall be equal to the angels of God ((Luke 20:36)). For those who desire equality with the angels for the sake of their own vain glory do not on that account wish to be equal to the angels, but to themselves. And so, persevering in such a will, they will be made equal in punishment to the prevaricating angels, loving their own power rather than that of almighty God. To such, set on the left hand, because they did not seek God through the door of humility, which the Lord Jesus Christ showed in himself, and lived unmercifully and proudly, it will be said: Depart into the eternal fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels ((Matt 25:41)).

3. 10. 29. For since there are two origins of sins—one from one's own thought, the other from the persuasion of another—to which I think pertains what the prophet says, Cleanse me from my hidden faults, O Lord, and from those of others spare your servant ((Ps 19:12–13 (18:13–14)))—both are indeed voluntary. For just as one does not sin unwillingly by his own thought, so, when he consents to one persuading him to evil, he surely consents only by will; but yet it is graver, not only to sin by one's own thought with no one persuading, but even to persuade another to sin through envy and deceit, than to be drawn to sinning by another's persuasion. The justice of the Lord, then, who punishes, is preserved in both sins. For this too was weighed in the balance of equity: that the human being should not be denied even to the power of the devil, whom by evil persuasion he had subjected to himself. For it was unjust that the devil should not have dominion over him whom he had captured. Nor can it in any way come about that the perfect justice of the highest and true God, which is stretched out everywhere, should forsake even the ruins of sinners that must be set in order. And yet, because the human being had sinned less than the devil, this very thing availed him for the recovery of salvation—that he was made over, even to the mortality of the flesh, to the prince of this world, that is, of the portion of these mortal and lowest things—the prince, that is, of all sinners and the overseer of death. For so, made fearful by the consciousness of mortality, and dreading harm and destruction even from the basest and most abject beasts, or even the tiniest, and uncertain of things to come, the human being grew accustomed to check both unlawful joys, and especially pride—by whose persuasion he was cast down, and which is the one vice through which the medicine of mercy is spurned. For what is so needy of mercy as the wretched? And what is so unworthy of mercy as the proud wretch?

3. 10. 30. From this it came about that that Word of God, through whom all things were made, and in whom all angelic blessedness rejoices, stretched out his mercy even to our wretchedness, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us ((John 1:14)). For so could a human being eat the bread of angels, not yet made equal to the angels, if the very bread of angels deigned to be made equal to human beings. Nor did he so descend to us as to forsake them; but, whole to them at once and whole to us, he feeds them inwardly through that which he is God, and admonishes us outwardly through that which we are, making fit by faith those whom he may feed equally by sight. For since the rational creature is fed by that Word as by its best food, and the human soul is rational, which was held by the mortal bonds of the penalty of sin, reduced to such diminution that it strove toward understanding invisible things through conjectures of visible things—the food of the rational creature was made visible, not by a change of its own nature, but by the taking on of ours, so that, by drawing those who pursue visible things, it might call them back to itself, the invisible. So the soul found him outwardly humble whom, growing proud, it had inwardly forsaken—about to imitate his visible humility, and about to return to his invisible height.

3. 10. 31. And the Word of God, the only Son of God, having clothed himself with man, subjected to man also the devil, whom he always held and will hold under his laws—wresting nothing from him by violent dominion, but overcoming him by the law of justice. For since, the woman having been deceived, and the man having been cast down through the woman, the devil claimed all the offspring of the first man as sinful under the laws of death—with a malicious desire of harming, yet by a most just right—his power held good only so long as he should slay the just one, in whom he could show nothing worthy of death, both because he was slain without crime, and because he was born without lust. To this just one the devil had subjected those he had captured, so that whatever was born from there he might retain as the fruit of his own tree—by a depraved desire of having, yet by a not unjust right of possessing. Most justly, then, he is compelled to release those who believe in him whom he most unjustly slew; so that both, in that they die in time, they may pay their debt, and, in that they live forever, they may live in him who paid for them what he did not owe. But those whom he had persuaded to persevere in unbelief, he would justly have as companions with himself in everlasting damnation. So it came about that the human being was not snatched from the devil by force, whom the devil had captured not by force but by persuasion; and that the one who was justly the more humbled, so as to serve him to whom he had consented unto evil, was justly set free through him to whom he consented unto good; because this one sinned less in consenting than that one in evilly persuading.

3. 11. 32. All natures, then, God made—not only those that would abide in virtue and justice, but also those that would sin—not that they might sin, but that they might adorn the universe, whether they willed to sin or not to sin. For if there were lacking to things those souls which so hold the very pinnacle of order in the whole creation that, if they willed to sin, the whole would be weakened and shaken, something great would be lacking to creation: for there would be lacking that, with which removed, the stability of things and their connection would be disturbed. Such are the best, and holy, and lofty creatures of the heavenly or supercelestial powers, whom God alone commands, while the whole world is subject to them. Without their just and perfect services the whole cannot exist. Likewise, if there were lacking those which, whether they sinned or did not sin, would diminish nothing of the order of the whole, even so very much would be lacking. For these are rational souls, unequal indeed in office to those higher ones, but equal in nature; and below these still there are many, yet praiseworthy, grades of things appointed by the highest God.

3. 11. 33. That nature, then, is of a loftier office which would diminish the order of the whole not only if it did not exist, but even if it sinned. Of a lower office is this one, which only if it did not exist, but not if it sinned, the whole would have something less. To the former is given the power of holding all things together by its proper office, which cannot be lacking to the order of things: nor does it abide in a good will because it received this office, but it received it because it was foreseen by him who gave it that it would abide. Yet it does not hold all things together by its own majesty, but by clinging to his majesty, and by most devotedly obeying the commands of him by whom and through whom and in whom all things were made. To the latter, indeed, when it does not sin, is given the most powerful office of holding all things together; yet not as its own, but together with that former one, as to one foreknown as going to sin. Spiritual things, surely, have among themselves both a conjunction without increase, and a separation without diminution: so that the former is not aided in the ease of its action when the latter is joined to it, nor is its action made more difficult if the latter forsakes its office by sinning. For spiritual creatures can be joined not by places and the mass of bodies, but by likeness of affections, and separated by unlikeness, although they each possess their own bodies.

3. 11. 34. But ordered, after sin, among inferior and mortal bodies, the soul governs its body—not altogether at its own pleasure, but as the laws of the whole allow. Nor is such a soul on that account inferior to a heavenly body, to which body even earthly bodies are subject. For the ragged garment of a condemned slave is far inferior to the garment of one well deserving and set in great honor before his master; but the slave himself is better than any precious garment, because he is a human being. That former soul, then, clings to God, and, in a heavenly body, by angelic power, adorns and governs even an earthly body, as he commands whose beck it beholds ineffably. But this latter soul, burdened with mortal members, scarcely administers within the very thing by which it is pressed, and yet adorns it as far as it can; but the other things lying about it outwardly, by a far weaker working, it affects from without as it can.

3. 12. 35. Whence it is gathered that there would not have been lacking a most fitting adornment to the lowest corporeal creature, even if this soul had been unwilling to sin. For that which can govern the whole governs also a part; but that which can do less cannot at once do greater things. For a perfect physician heals even the itch effectively; but it does not at once follow that one who usefully attends to a person with the itch can heal the whole of human health. And if it is discerned by sure reason—by which it becomes plain that there ought to be a creature which has never sinned, and which never will sin—the same reason also reports that that creature refrains from sin by a free will, and does not refrain compelled, but of its own accord. Nevertheless, even if it sinned (although it did not sin, as God foreknew it would not sin)—yet even if it itself sinned, the power of God's ineffable might would suffice for the governing of this universe, so that, rendering to all things fitting and worthy returns, he would allow nothing in his whole dominion to be base and unseemly. For whether, through no powers founded for this very purpose—if the whole angelic nature had failed from his precepts by sinning—he would by his own majesty most fittingly and best govern all things; nor would he so begrudge the spiritual creature to exist, he who founded even the corporeal one, far inferior even to sinning spiritual creatures, with such lavishness of goodness that there is no one who reasonably beholds the sky and the earth, and all visible natures, measured, formed, and ordered in their kinds, who would either believe that the maker of all things is any other than God, or not confess that he is to be ineffably praised. Or whether there is no better ordering of things unless the angelic power excels in the disposition of the universe by the excellence of its nature and the goodness of its will—even if all the angels had sinned, they would cause no lack to the Creator of the angels for governing his dominion. For neither would his goodness fail, as from some weariness, nor his omnipotence from difficulty, in creating others, whom he would set in those seats which others had forsaken by sinning; nor could a spiritual creature, of however great a number, if it were condemned according to its merits, straiten the order which fittingly and becomingly receives whatever are to be condemned. Wherever, then, our consideration turns itself, it finds God ineffably to be praised, the best founder of all natures, and the most just administrator.

3. 12. 36. Finally, that we may leave the contemplation of the beauty of things to those who can see it by the divine gift, and not try to lead them by words to behold things ineffable, yet, on account of talkative or weak or treacherous people, let us go through so great a question with a most brief summary.

3. 13. 36. Every nature that can become less good is good; and every nature, while it is corrupted, becomes less good. For either corruption does not harm it, and it is not corrupted; or, if it is corrupted, corruption harms it; and if it harms it, it diminishes something of its good, and makes it less good. For if it utterly deprives it of all good, whatever of it remains will then be unable to be corrupted, because there will be no good by the taking away of which corruption could harm it; but that which corruption cannot harm is not corrupted. Now a nature that is not corrupted is incorruptible: therefore a nature will be—which is most absurd to say—made incorruptible by corruption. Wherefore it is most truly said that every nature, insofar as it is a nature, is good: for if it is incorruptible, it is better than the corruptible; but if it is corruptible, since, while it is corrupted, it becomes less good, it is without doubt good. But every nature is either corruptible or incorruptible. Every nature, therefore, is good. I call nature that which is also wont to be called substance. Every substance, therefore, is either God or from God; because every good is either God or from God.

3. 13. 37. These things being settled and established, as at the head of our reasoning, attend to what I say. Every rational nature, founded with free choice of the will, if it abides in the enjoyment of the highest and unchangeable good, is beyond doubt praiseworthy; and every one that strives to abide is itself also praiseworthy; but every one that does not abide in it, and does not will to act so as to abide, insofar as it is not there, and insofar as it does not act so as to be there, is blameworthy. If, then, a rational nature that has been made is praised, no one doubts that the one who made it is to be praised; and if it is blamed, no one doubts that its Founder is praised in its very blaming. For when we blame this nature because it does not will to enjoy the highest and unchangeable good, that is, its Creator, we without any doubt praise him. How great a good, then, and how—whether ineffably by all tongues, or ineffably by all thoughts—is the Creator of all, God, to be proclaimed and honored, without whose praise we can neither be praised nor blamed! For we cannot be blamed for not abiding in him, except because it is our great and highest and first good to abide in him; and whence is this, except because he is the ineffable good? What, then, can be found in our sins for which he should be blamed, since the blame of our sins is nothing unless he is praised?

3. 13. 38. What of this—that even in the very things that are blamed, nothing is blamed but the fault? But no thing's fault is blamed except where the nature is praised. For either what you blame is according to nature, and is no fault, and you rather are to be amended, that you may know how to blame rightly, than that which you wrongly blame; or, if it is a fault, so that it can rightly be blamed, it must also be against nature. For every fault, by the very fact that it is a fault, is against nature. For if it does not harm the nature, it is no fault; but if, because it harms it, it is therefore a fault, then it is a fault because it is against nature. But if some nature is corrupted not by its own fault but by another's, it is unjustly blamed; and it must be asked whether that nature is not corrupted by its own fault, by whose fault the other nature could be corrupted. But what else is it to be made faulty than to be corrupted by a fault? Now a nature that is not made faulty lacks fault; but that by whose fault another nature is corrupted surely has a fault. The former, then, is the faulty one, and is first corrupted by its own fault, by whose fault the other too can be corrupted. From which it is gathered that every fault is against nature, even of that thing whose fault it is. Wherefore, since in any thing whatever nothing is blamed but the fault, and it is a fault for this reason, because it is against the nature of that thing whose fault it is, no thing's fault is rightly blamed except one whose nature is praised. For a fault rightly displeases you only because it spoils what pleases you in the nature.

3. 14. 39. We must also see this: whether it is truly said that some nature is corrupted by the fault of another nature, with no fault of its own joined to it. For if the nature that comes, with its own fault, to corrupt another, finds nothing corruptible in it, it does not corrupt it. But if it finds it, it works its corruption with the other's fault joined. For a more powerful nature, if it is unwilling to be corrupted by a weaker, is not corrupted; but if it is willing, it begins to be corrupted first by its own fault rather than by another's. And a nature equal to an equal, no less, if it is unwilling to be corrupted, cannot be. For whatever nature comes with a fault to one that is without fault, in order to corrupt it, by that very fact does not come as an equal, but as weaker by its own fault. But if a more powerful one corrupts a weaker, it comes about either by the fault of both, if it is done by the depraved desire of both; or by the fault of the more powerful, if its nature is of such excellence that, even faulty, it surpasses the inferior one which it corrupts. For who would rightly blame the fruits of the earth because people do not use them well, and, corrupted by their own fault, corrupt them by abusing them to luxury, since it would be the mark of a madman to doubt that the nature of a human being, even faulty, is more excellent and more powerful than any fruits, however unfaulty?

3. 14. 40. It can also come about that a more powerful nature corrupts some inferior one, and that this happens by the fault of neither of them: since we call a fault that which is worthy of blame. But who would dare to blame either a frugal man who seeks nothing from the fruits but the supplying of his nature, or those same fruits because they are corrupted by the use of his food? For such corruption is not even usually called corruption, since corruption is most often the name of a fault. For this too can easily be observed in things—that for the most part a more powerful nature corrupts an inferior one for no use of supplying its own want, but by the order of justice, while it punishes a fault; from which rule the Apostle said, If anyone corrupts the temple of God, God will corrupt him ((See 1 Cor 3:17))—or by the order of changeable things yielding to one another according to the most fitting laws given for the strength of each part of the whole. For if the sun corrupts by its brightness the eyes of someone too weak, by the measure of their nature, to bear its light, neither is it to be thought to do this to supply its own want of light, nor to do it by any fault of its own; nor at least are the eyes themselves to be blamed, because they both yielded to their owner so as to be opened against the light, and to the light itself so as to be corrupted. Of all corruptions, then, only that which is faulty is rightly blamed; but the others either are not even to be called corruptions, or surely, because they are not faulty, cannot be worthy of blame. For blame itself, because it is prepared, that is, fitted and due, for a fault alone, is believed to have drawn its name from this, that it should be called vituperation [blame of a vice].

3. 14. 41. But a fault, as I had begun to say, is evil from no other source than that it is contrary to the nature of that very thing whose fault it is. Whence it is plain that this same thing whose fault is blamed is praiseworthy by nature; so that we confess that this very blaming of faults is the praise of the natures—namely, of those whose faults are blamed. For because a fault is contrary to nature, just so much is added to the malice of faults as is taken from the integrity of natures. When, therefore, you blame a fault, you surely praise that whose integrity you desire; and of what, if not of the nature? For a perfect nature is worthy not only of no blame, but even of praise in its kind. What, then, you perceive to be lacking to the perfection of a nature, that you call a fault, testifying that the nature pleases you well enough, since you would wish it perfect by your blame of its imperfection.

3. 15. 42. If, then, the blaming of faults commends the comeliness and dignity of the very natures whose faults they are, how much more is God, the founder of all natures, to be praised even in their faults; since both they have this from him, that they are natures, and they are faulty in just so far as they depart from the art by which they were made, and are rightly blamed in just so far as their blamer sees the art by which they were made, so that he blames in them that which he does not see there! And if that art itself, through which all things were made—that is, the highest and unchangeable Wisdom of God—truly and supremely is, as indeed it is, look to where whatever departs from it tends. Yet that defect would not be worthy of blame, unless it were voluntary. For attend, I beg, whether you rightly blame what is as it ought to be: I think not; but rather what is not as it ought to be. But no one owes what he has not received; and whoever owes, to whom does he owe but to him from whom he received what he should owe? For things too that are paid back by inheritance are paid back to him who bequeathed them. And what is paid back to the just successors of creditors is surely paid back to those very ones whom these rightly succeed. Otherwise it must be called not repayment, but ceding or losing, or whatever else of the kind. Wherefore it is most absurd to say that all temporal things, which are so placed in this order of things that, unless they fail, the future cannot succeed the past—so that the whole beauty of the ages may be completed in its kind—ought not to fail. For as much as they have received, so much they do, and so much they pay back to him to whom they owe what they are, in whatever measure they are. He who grieves that these things fail ought to attend to his own speech—that very speech, surely, in which he complains of these things, if he judges it to be just and proceeding from prudence; of which speech, as far as concerns its sound, if anyone should love one little particle, and be unwilling that it should give place by failing to the rest, by whose departing and succeeding the whole speech is woven together, he would be judged of marvelous madness.

3. 15. 43. In those things, then, which fail for this reason, because they did not receive being further, so that all things may be accomplished in their own times, no one rightly blames the failing; because no one can say, It ought to have remained, when it could not pass beyond the bounds it received. But in rational creatures, by whom—whether sinning or not sinning—the universal beauty is bounded in most fitting ways: either there are no sins (which it is most absurd to say, for he sins at least who even condemns as sins things that are no sins); or sins are not to be blamed (which is no less absurd; for then even right deeds will begin not to be praised, and the whole intention of the human mind will be disturbed, and life overthrown); or a deed will be blamed that was done as it ought to have been done (and an execrable madness, or, to speak more mildly, a most wretched error will arise); or, if most true reason compels, as it does, both that sins be blamed, and that whatever is rightly blamed be blamed for this reason, because it is not as it ought to be—seek what a sinful nature owes, and you will find a right deed; seek to whom it owes it, and you will find God. For from him from whom it received the power to do right when it wills, from him it received this also: that it be wretched if it has not done so, and blessed if it has.

3. 15. 44. For since no one surpasses the laws of the almighty Creator, the soul is not allowed not to pay its debt. For either it pays back by using well what it received, or it pays back by losing what it was unwilling to use well. So, if it does not pay back by doing justice, it will pay back by suffering wretchedness; because in both that word of debt sounds. For this too could be said, in what was said: If it will not pay back by doing what it ought, it will pay back by suffering what it ought. Nor are these divided by any interval of time, so that, as it were, at one time it does not do what it ought, and at another suffers what it ought, lest even for a point of time the universal beauty be defiled, with the dishonor of sin being in it without the comeliness of vengeance. But whatever is now most secretly avenged is reserved for the future judgment, for the manifestation and most keen sense of wretchedness. For just as one who does not keep awake sleeps, so whoever does not do what he ought suffers, without interval, what he ought; since the blessedness of justice is so great that no one can depart from it except into wretchedness. In all defects, then, either those things which fail did not receive being further, and there is no fault—as also, when they exist, because they did not receive more being than they have, there is nonetheless no fault; or they are unwilling to be what, if they willed, they received being to be; and because it is good, there is guilt if they are unwilling.

3. 16. 45. But God owes nothing to anyone, because he bestows all things freely. And if anyone says that something is owed him by his own merits, surely, that he should exist was not owed him; for there was no one to whom it could be owed. And yet, what merit is it to be turned to him from whom you are, that from him you may even be better—you who have it from him that you are? What, then, do you advance to him beforehand, so as to demand it as a debt; since, if you were unwilling to be turned to him, nothing would be lacking to him, but to you he himself, without whom you would be nothing, and from whom you are something in such a way that, unless by turning yourself to him you pay back to him that you are from him, you will indeed not be nothing, but will nevertheless be wretched? All things, then, owe to him, first, whatever they are, insofar as they are natures; then, whatever they can be better, if they will, of those things which they received that they should will; and whatever they ought to be. From that, then, which one did not receive, no one is guilty; but from that which one does not do that he ought, he is justly guilty. And he owes, if he has received both a free will and a most sufficient capacity.

3. 16. 46. Evodius: I receive these things most gladly, and approve them; and I agree that it is altogether true that in no way can our sins rightly be attributed to our Creator.

3. 17. 47. But yet I would like to know, if it could be done, why that nature does not sin which God foreknew would not sin, and why this one sins which was foreseen by him as going to sin. For I no longer think that, by the very foreknowledge of God, either this one is compelled to sin or that one not to sin. But yet, if there were no cause, the rational creature would not be so divided that one never sins, another perseveres in sinning, and another, as it were midway between both, sometimes sins, sometimes turns to doing right. What cause distributes it into these three parts? But I do not want to be answered, "The will": for I am seeking the cause of the will itself. For not without cause does that one never will to sin, this one never not will, while certain ones sometimes will, sometimes not will, though all are of the same kind. This alone I seem to see: that there is not without cause this threefold will of the rational creature; but what the cause is, I do not know.

3. 17. 48. Augustine: Since the will is the cause of sin, and you are inquiring into the cause of the will itself—if I should be able to find this, will you not then be going to seek the cause also of that cause which has been found? And what will be the measure of seeking, what the end of inquiring and discussing, since you ought to seek nothing beyond the root? For beware lest you think anything could be said more truly than what was said—that the root of all evils is greed ((1 Tim 6:10)), that is, to wish more than is enough. But enough is as much as the measure of preserving each nature in its own kind requires. For greed, which in Greek is called philargyria, is to be understood not in silver or coins alone—from which it sounds as if it took its name the more, for among the ancients coins were more often made of silver or of mixed silver—but in all things that are immoderately desired, wherever, in general, anyone wishes more than is enough. And this greed is desire; but desire is a wicked will. Therefore a wicked will is the cause of all evils. If it were according to nature, it would surely preserve nature, and would not be destructive to it, and so it would not be wicked. From which it is gathered that the root of all evils is not according to nature; which is enough against all who wish to accuse natures. But if you seek the cause of this root, how will it be the root of all evils? For that will be the root which is the cause of this; and when you have found it, as I said, you will seek the cause of it too, and there will be no measure of seeking.

3. 17. 49. But what cause of the will can there finally be, prior to the will? For either it is itself a will, and the root of this will is not departed from; or it is not a will, and it has no sin. Either, then, the will itself is the first cause of sinning, or no sin is the first cause of sinning. Nor is there anyone to whom sin is rightly imputed, except the sinner. There is not, therefore, anyone to whom it is rightly imputed except one who wills; but I do not know why it pleases you to seek anything further. Then, whatever that cause of the will is, it is surely either just or unjust. If just, whoever obeys it will not sin; if unjust, let him not obey it, and he will not sin.

3. 18. 50. Is it perhaps violent, and does it compel the unwilling? Shall we so often go over the same things? Recall what was said above—so many things by us about sin and the free will. But if it is laborious to commit all things to memory, hold this most brief point. Whatever that cause of the will is, if it cannot be resisted, it is yielded to without sin; but if it can be, let it not be yielded to, and there will be no sin. Does it perhaps deceive the unwary? Then let him beware lest he be deceived. Or is the deception so great that it cannot be guarded against at all? If so, there are no sins. For who sins in that which can in no way be guarded against? But there is sinning: therefore it can be guarded against.

3. 18. 51. And yet certain things done even through ignorance are disapproved, and judged to need correction, as we read in the divine authorities; for the Apostle says, I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly ((1 Tim 1:13)); and the prophet says, Remember not the sins of my youth and my ignorances ((Ps 25:7 (24:7))). There are also things done of necessity that are to be disapproved, where a person wills to do right and cannot: for whence are those words, For I do not do the good I will, but the evil I do not will, that I do ((Rom 7:19)); and that, To will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I find not ((Rom 7:18)); and that, The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, so that you do not do the things you would ((Gal 5:17))? But all these belong to people coming from that condemnation of death; for if this is not the punishment of a human being but his nature, then these are no sins. For if a person does not depart from that mode in which he was naturally made, so that he cannot be better, then he does what he ought when he does these things. But if a person were good, he would be otherwise; but now, because he is so, he is not good, nor does he have it in his power to be good—whether by not seeing what kind he ought to be, or by seeing and not being able to be what he sees he ought to be: who can doubt that this is a punishment? But every punishment, if it is just, is the punishment of sin, and is called a penalty; but if the punishment is unjust—since no one doubts it is a punishment—it was imposed on the human being by some unjust ruler. Furthermore, since to doubt about the omnipotence and justice of God is the mark of a madman, this punishment is just, and is paid for some sin. For no unjust ruler could either steal a human being away, as though God did not know; or wrest him away against his will, as though weaker, by terrifying or fighting, so as to torment a human being with an unjust punishment. It remains, then, that this just punishment comes from the condemnation of the human being.

3. 18. 52. Nor is it to be wondered at that a person, either through ignorance, does not have free choice of the will to choose what he may rightly do, or, with carnal habit resisting—which by the violence of mortal succession has, as it were, grown naturally ingrained—sees what is rightly to be done, and wills it, and cannot accomplish it. For that is the most just penalty of sin: that each lose what he was unwilling to use well, when he could have used it without any difficulty if he had willed. That is to say: that one who, knowing, does not do right, loses the knowing of what is right; and one who, when he could, was unwilling to do right, loses the power when he wills. For there are in truth two penal things for every sinning soul, ignorance and difficulty. From ignorance, error dishonors; from difficulty, torment afflicts. But to approve false things as true, so that one errs against his will, and, with the pain of the carnal bond resisting and tormenting, not to be able to refrain from lustful works, is not the nature of the human being as he was instituted, but the punishment of one condemned. But when we speak of the free will of doing right, we are surely speaking of that in which the human being was made.

3. 19. 53. Here arises that question which people, murmuring among themselves, are wont to gnaw at, who are ready to accuse anything else whatever in sinning rather than themselves. For they say: If Adam and Eve sinned, what did we wretches do, that we should be born with the blindness of ignorance and the torments of difficulty, and first should err, not knowing what we ought to do; then, when the precepts of justice begin to be opened to us, should will to do them, and, with some necessity of carnal concupiscence holding us back, not be able? To whom it is briefly answered, that they should be quiet, and cease to murmur against God. For perhaps they would rightly complain, if no human being existed as conqueror of error and lust; but since he is everywhere present who in many ways, through the creature serving him as Lord, calls back the one turned away, teaches the believer, consoles the hoper, exhorts the lover, helps the one striving, hears the one praying—it is not reckoned to you as a fault that you are unwillingly ignorant, but that you neglect to seek what you do not know; nor that you do not bind up your wounded members, but that you despise him who wills to heal you: these are your own proper sins. For to no human being is it taken away to know that it is useful to seek what it is useless to be ignorant of, and that one's weakness is to be humbly confessed, so that he who neither errs while he helps, nor labors, may come to the aid of the one seeking and confessing.

3. 19. 54. For that which anyone does not rightly through ignorance, and that which, willing to do rightly, he cannot do, are called sins because they take their origin from that sin of the free will: for that preceding sin merited these as its consequences. For just as we call "tongue" not only the member that we move in the mouth when we speak, but also that which follows the motion of this member—that is, the form and tenor of words, according to which manner one tongue is called Greek, another Latin—so we call sin not only that which is properly called sin, for it is committed by a free will and by one who knows, but also that which now must necessarily follow from the punishment of this. So too we speak of nature in one way when we speak properly of the nature of the human being, in which he was first made blameless in his kind; in another way of this nature, in which, from the punishment of that condemned man, we are born mortal and ignorant and subject to the flesh; according to which manner the Apostle says, For we too were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest ((Eph 2:3)).

3. 20. 55. But that we are born from that first marriage with ignorance, and with difficulty, and with mortality, since they, when they had sinned, were cast headlong into error and into hardship and into death—it most justly pleased the highest God, the moderator of things, that both in the origin of the human being the justice of the one punishing might appear, and in his advancement the mercy of the one delivering. For blessedness was not so taken from the first man condemned that fruitfulness too was taken away. For there could be made, even from his offspring, though carnal and mortal, some adornment and ornament of the earth in its own kind. But that he should beget better than he himself was, was not of equity; but that, by conversion to God, each might overcome the punishment which his origin had merited by aversion, it behooved that the willing one be not only not hindered but even helped; for so too the Creator of things showed with how great ease the human being could, if he had willed, have retained what he was made, since his offspring could even surpass what it was born.

3. 20. 56. Then, if one soul was made, from which the souls of all who are born are drawn, who can say that he did not sin when that first one sinned? But if souls are made singly in each one who is born, then it is not perverse—rather, it appears most fitting and most ordered—that the evil desert of the prior be the nature of the one that follows, and the good desert of the one that follows be the nature of the prior. For what unworthy thing is there, if the Creator willed even thus to show that the dignity of the soul so excels corporeal creatures that one soul can have its rise from that grade to which another was brought down at its fall? For when that sinful soul comes to ignorance and difficulty, it is rightly called punishment, because it was better before this punishment. If, then, another begins to be such, not only before sin, but before all its own life, as the other was made after a blameworthy life, it has no small good for which to give thanks to its Creator; because even its very rise and beginning is better than any perfect body. For these are no mean goods—not only that it is a soul, by which nature it already precedes every body, but also that it has the capacity, by the help of the Creator, to cultivate itself, and by pious zeal to acquire and grasp all the virtues, through which it may be freed both from tormenting difficulty and from blinding ignorance. If this is so, ignorance and difficulty will not be, for souls being born, the punishment of sin, but the prompting to advance and the beginning of perfection. For it is no small thing, before any merit of good work, to have received the natural judgment by which one prefers wisdom to error, and rest to difficulty, so that to these it may come not by being born, but by being zealous. But if it is unwilling to do this, it will rightly be held guilty of sin, as one that did not use well the capacity it received. For although it was born in ignorance and difficulty, it is nevertheless compressed by no necessity to remain in that in which it was born: nor at all could there be any maker of such souls but God almighty, who makes them even when not loved by himself, and remakes them when loving them; who both grants to things not existing that they exist, and grants to those loving him from whom they are that they be blessed.

3. 20. 57. But if souls, already existing somewhere in some secret place of God, are sent to inspire and govern the bodies of each who is born, then they are sent surely for this office: that the body, which is born of the punishment of sin—that is, of the mortality of the first man—they may, by administering it well, that is, by chastising it through the virtues and subjecting it to a most ordered and lawful servitude, prepare for themselves also, in due order and at the opportune time, a place of heavenly incorruption. When these souls enter into this life and undergo the mortal members to be borne, they must of necessity also undergo both forgetfulness of their prior life and the labor of the present; from which will follow that ignorance and difficulty, which in the first man was the punishment of mortality, for the paying out of the soul's wretchedness, but in these is the door of ministry for restoring the incorruption of the body. For in this way too these are not called sins, except because the flesh, coming from the offspring of the sinner, causes this ignorance and difficulty to the souls coming to it; which is to be attributed as blame neither to these souls nor to the Creator. For he gave both the capacity for working well in laborious offices, and the way of faith in the blindness of forgetfulness; and that judgment above all, by which every soul both grants that it must seek what it uselessly does not know, and that it must perseveringly strive in dutiful labors to overcome the difficulty of doing right, and must implore the aid of the Creator that he help the one striving; who has commanded—whether outwardly by the law, or in the inmost places of the heart by his address—that one must strive, and prepares the glory of the most blessed city for those who triumph over him who, by most wicked persuasion, led the first man, conquered, to this wretchedness; which wretchedness these undertake, by the best faith, in order to conquer him. For it is no small glory of warfare to conquer the devil by the very punishment undertaken, by which he boasts to have led the conquered man. But whoever, captured by love of this life, neglects this, will in no way justly attribute the disgrace of his desertion to the command of the king of all; but he will rather be ordered, under the Lord of all, in the ranks of that one whose foul wages, that he might desert his own camp, he came to love.

3. 20. 58. But if souls, established elsewhere, are not sent by the Lord God, but of their own accord come to inhabit bodies, then it is now easy to see that whatever ignorance and difficulty has followed their own will, the Creator is in no way to be blamed for it; since, even if he himself had sent them—he who, even in that very ignorance and difficulty, did not take away the free will of asking and seeking and striving, being about to give to those who ask, to show to those who seek, to open to those who knock—he would be altogether beyond fault. For he would grant that this ignorance and difficulty avail, for the zealous and well-disposed who overcome it, unto a crown of glory; but to the negligent, and those wishing to defend their sins by their weakness, he would not cast in their teeth the ignorance and difficulty itself as a crime; but, because they preferred to remain in these rather than to come to truth and ease by the zeal of seeking and learning, and by the humility of confessing and praying, he would avenge it with a just punishment.

3. 21. 59. But of these four opinions about the soul—whether they come from the offspring, or are made new in each who is born, or, already existing somewhere, are either sent divinely into the bodies of those being born, or slip into them of their own accord—none ought to be rashly affirmed. For either this question has not yet been unfolded and made clear by the catholic treaters of the divine books, according to the desert of its obscurity and perplexity; or, if it has already been done, writings of this kind have not yet come into our hands. Only let there be present a faith of thinking nothing false and unworthy about the substance of the Creator. For toward him we tend by the journey of piety. If, then, we should think otherwise about him than is true, our intention would compel us to go not into blessedness but into vanity. But about the creature, if we should think anything otherwise than it is, provided we do not hold it as known and grasped, there is no danger. For we are not bidden to tend toward the creature in order to become blessed, but toward the Creator himself; about whom, if we are persuaded of anything other than is fitting and than the matter stands, we are deceived by a most pernicious error. For by going toward that which either does not exist, or, if it exists, does not make us blessed, no one can come to the blessed life.

3. 21. 60. But for contemplating the eternity of truth, that we may be able fully to enjoy it and to cling to it, a way has been provided for our weakness out of temporal things, so that, as far as suffices for the journey of those tending toward the eternal, we may believe things past and future. This discipline of faith, that it may prevail by authority, is governed by the divine mercy. But present things, as far as concerns the creature, are perceived, as it were, passing, in the mobility and changeableness of body and soul. Of these, whatever we do not experience, we cannot hold by any kind of knowledge. Whatever, therefore, is narrated to us about any creatures whatever, whether past or future, on divine authority to be believed, although partly it passed away before we could perceive it, and partly has not yet come into our senses—nevertheless, because it avails much for strengthening our hope and exhorting our love, while it commends to us, through the most ordered series of times, that God does not neglect our deliverance, it is to be believed without any doubt. But whatever error takes upon itself the person of divine authority is refuted especially by this reasoning: if it is proved to believe or affirm either some changeable appearance besides the creature of God, or some changeable appearance in the substance of God, and contends that the substance of God is either more or less than the Trinity; to the pious and sober understanding of which Trinity all Christian watchfulness keeps vigil, and to it all its advancement is directed. Of the unity and equality of that Trinity, and of a certain property of the several persons in it, this is not the place to discuss. For to mention certain things about the Lord God, the author and former and orderer of all things, which pertain to a most wholesome faith, and by which the intention, suckling and beginning to lift itself from earthly things to heavenly, may be usefully supported, both is most easy to do and has been done by very many already; but to treat this whole matter through, and so to handle the question that to clear reason, as far as is given in this life, all human understanding may be subjected, can seem easy and ready to be undertaken, not only in speech, but not even in thought, by any human being—or at least by us. Now, then, that we may accomplish what we set out to do, as far as we are helped and as far as we are permitted: whatever, as far as concerns the creature, is either narrated to us as past or foretold as future, which may avail to commend an entire religion, by rousing us to a most sincere love of God and of neighbor, is to be believed without doubt; but it is to be defended against unbelievers only so far that either by the weight of authority their unbelief may be crushed, or it may be shown to them, as far as can be, first how it is not foolish to believe such things, then how foolish it is not to believe them. But false teaching is to be refuted, not so much about past and future things as about present things, and especially about unchangeable things, and, as far as is given, to be convicted by clear reason.

3. 21. 61. Indeed, in the series of temporal things, the expectation of future things is to be preferred to the inquiry into things past: since even in the divine books, those things that are narrated as past bear before themselves either a prefiguration of things to come, or a promise, or a testimony. And in truth, even in those things that pertain to this life, in prosperity and adversity, each person is not much concerned what he was; but upon what is hoped to be future, the whole tide of his cares gathers itself. For by some inmost and natural sense, the things that have happened to us, because they are done with, are held, as to the moment of happiness and wretchedness, as if they had never happened. What, then, does it harm me, if I do not know when I began to be, when I know that I am, and do not despair that I shall be? For I do not attend to the past, so as to fear, as a most pernicious error, if I should think otherwise about it than it was; but toward that which I am to be, I direct my course, with the mercy of my Creator for guide. About this, then, which I am to be, and about him with whom I am to be, if I believe or think otherwise than the truth holds, the error is vehemently to be guarded against; lest I either not prepare the necessary things, or not be able to come to the very end of my purpose, while one thing seems to me instead of another. Wherefore, just as for procuring a garment it would not harm me if I had forgotten the past winter, but it would harm me if I did not believe the future cold to be threatening: so it will in no way harm my soul, if it has forgotten what perchance it has borne, provided only that it diligently attend to and hold to what it is admonished to prepare itself for next. As, for example, it would not hurt one sailing to Rome if it had slipped from his mind from what shore he loosed the ship, provided only that, from the place where he was, he did not fail to know whither to direct the prow; but it would profit him nothing to remember the shore from which he began his journey, if, thinking something false about the Roman port, he had fallen upon the rocks: so neither, if I do not hold the beginning of the time of my life, will it harm me at all, knowing the end in which I shall rest; nor would that memory or conjecture of the inchoate life profit anything, if, thinking otherwise than is worthy about God himself, who is the one end of the labors of the soul, I should rush upon the reefs of error.

3. 21. 62. Nor let this discourse avail so that anyone should think we forbid those who can to inquire, according to the divinely inspired Scriptures, whether the soul is propagated from the soul, or is made singly in each living thing, or, sent by the divine command from somewhere to rule and animate the body, or insinuating itself by its own will; if either the reasoning of some necessary question to be unraveled demands that these things be considered and discussed, or leisure from more necessary matters is granted for seeking and disputing these. But I have said these things rather for this: that no one should, in such a matter, either rashly grow angry at one who does not yield to his own opinion, perhaps with a more human doubting; or even, if anyone should grasp something certain and clear here, think on that account that another has lost hope of future things, because he does not recall the beginnings of his past.

3. 22. 63. But in whatever way this stands—whether it is to be altogether omitted, or now deferred and considered at another time—the present question is not hindered from making it appear that, by the most whole and most just and unshaken and unchangeable majesty and substance of the Creator, souls pay the penalties of their own sins; which sins, as we have long been discussing, are to be attributed only to their own will, and no further cause of sins is to be sought.

3. 22. 64. But ignorance and difficulty, if they are natural, the soul begins from them to advance, and to be promoted toward knowledge and rest, until the blessed life is perfected in it. If it neglects, by its own will, this advance in the best pursuits and in piety, the capacity for which has not been denied it, it is justly cast headlong into a graver ignorance and difficulty, which is now penal, being ordered among lower things by a most becoming and most fitting governance of things. For not that which it does not know naturally, and cannot do naturally, is reckoned to the soul as guilt; but that it did not study to know, and that it did not give worthy effort to acquire the ease for doing right. For not to know how to speak, and not to be able to, is natural to an infant; and this ignorance and difficulty of speech is not only blameless under the laws of grammarians, but even charming and pleasing to human affections; for it neglected to acquire that faculty by no fault, nor lost by any fault what it had acquired. Therefore, if our blessedness were set in eloquence, and it were imputed as a crime when one sins in the sounds of the tongue, as when one sins in the acts of life, no one surely would be charged with his infancy, because from it he set out toward attaining eloquence; but plainly he would deservedly be condemned if, by the perversity of his own will, he had either slipped back into it or remained in it. So too now, if ignorance of the true and difficulty of the right is natural to a human being, from which he begins to rise into the blessedness of wisdom and rest, no one rightly charges him with it from his natural beginning; but if he is unwilling to advance, or wills to slip back from his advance, he will justly and deservedly pay the penalties.

3. 22. 65. But its Creator is everywhere praised—either because he has begun it, from its very beginnings, with a capacity for the highest good; or because he aids its advance; or because he fills and perfects the one advancing; or because, the one sinning—that is, either refusing to lift itself from its beginnings to perfection, or already slipping back from some advance—he orders by a most just condemnation according to its deserts. For he did not create it evil because it is not yet so great as it received the power to be by advancing; since all the perfections of bodies are far inferior to its beginning, which whoever judges most soundly about things judges to be praiseworthy in their kind. That, then, it does not know what it ought to do comes from this: that it has not yet received it; but this too it will receive, if it has used well that which it has received. And it has received that it should piously and diligently seek, if it will. But that, recognizing what it ought to do, it cannot at once accomplish it—this too it has not yet received: for a certain loftier part of it went before, to perceive the good of the right deed; but a certain slower and carnal part is not consequently led into the same view; so that, from this very difficulty, it may be admonished to implore the helper of its perfection, the same whom it feels to be the author of its beginning; so that from this he may become dearer to it, while it is lifted up, not by its own powers, but by the mercy of him by whose goodness it has that it exists, to be blessed. But the dearer he is to it from whom it is, the more firmly it rests in him, and the more fully it enjoys his eternity. For if we in no way rightly call sterile the new and tender shoot of a tree, though it passes some summers without fruit, until at the opportune time it puts forth its fruitfulness, why should not the author of the soul be praised with due piety, if he has granted it such a beginning that, by being zealous and advancing, it may come to the fruit of wisdom and justice, and has bestowed on it so great a dignity that he has set it even within its own power, if it will, to tend toward blessedness?

3. 23. 66. But against this discussion a certain cavil is wont to be raised by the unskilled, concerning the deaths of little children, and concerning certain torments of the body by which we often see them afflicted. For they say: What need was there that one should be born who departed from life before he had entered upon any merit of life? Or how will he be reckoned in the future judgment, who has no place among the just, since he did nothing rightly, nor among the wicked, since he sinned in nothing? To whom it is answered: for the embracing of the whole, and the most ordered connection of the entire creation, whether through places or through times, no human being whatever can be created superfluously, where not a leaf of a tree is created superfluously; but it is surely superfluous to ask about the merits of one who has merited nothing. For we need not fear that there could be some life midway between right deed and sin, and that the sentence of the judge cannot be midway between reward and punishment.

3. 23. 67. At this point people are also wont to scrutinize what the sacrament of the baptism of Christ profits little children, since for the most part they die after receiving it, before they could have known anything of it. In this matter it is piously and rightly enough believed that the faith of those by whom the child is offered to be consecrated profits the child. And this the most wholesome authority of the Church commends, so that from it each may perceive what his own faith profits him, when, for the benefit of others too who do not yet have their own, another's can be lent. For what did his own faith profit the widow's son, which, being dead, he surely did not have? And yet his mother's faith profited him, that he should rise again ((See Luke 7:12–15)). How much more, then, can another's faith take counsel for a little child, to whom his own faithlessness cannot be imputed?

3. 23. 68. But concerning the torments of the body by which little children are afflicted, whose sins through their age are none—if the souls by which they are animated did not begin to exist before they themselves began to be human beings—a greater and, as it were, merciful complaint is wont to be laid down, when it is said: What evil did they do that they should suffer these things? As if there could be a merit of innocence before anyone could do any harm. But when God works some good in the amendment of their elders, when these are scourged by the pains and deaths of their little ones who are dear to them, why should these things not come about, since, when they have passed, they will be, for those in whom they were done, as though not done; while those for whose sake they were done will either be better, if, amended by temporal troubles, they choose to live more rightly, or will have no excuse in the punishment of the future judgment, if, by the anguishes of this life, they were unwilling to turn their desire toward the eternal life? But who knows what good of recompense God reserves in the secret of his judgments for those little children themselves—by whose torments the hardness of their elders is either broken, or their faith exercised, or their mercy proved—since, although they did nothing rightly, yet they suffered these things while sinning in nothing? For not in vain does the Church commend, as received into the honor of martyrs, those infants too who were slain when the Lord Jesus Christ was being sought by Herod to be killed ((See Matt 2:16)).

3. 23. 69. Although these cavilers, not most zealous examiners of such questions but most talkative fanners of them, are wont also to trouble the faith of the less learned by the pains and labors of beasts, when they say: What evil have beasts deserved, that they should suffer such great troubles, or what good do they hope for, that they are tried by such great troubles? But they say or feel these things because they judge most wrongly about matters, who, since they cannot behold what and how great the highest good is, wish all things to be such as they think the highest good to be: for, besides the highest bodies, which are heavenly and less subject to corruption, they cannot conceive any highest good; and therefore they most disorderedly demand that the bodies of beasts suffer neither death nor any corruption, as if they were not mortal, since they are lowest; or as if they were evil, because the heavenly are better. But the pain which beasts feel commends, in its own kind, a certain wonderful and praiseworthy force of the souls even of beasts. For from this very thing it appears well enough how greatly desirous they are of unity in ruling and animating their bodies. For what else is pain but a certain sense impatient of division or corruption? Whence it appears clearer than light how greedy of unity, and how tenacious, that soul is in the whole of its own body, which is bent toward that suffering of its body neither gladly nor indifferently, but rather struggling and reluctant, by which it takes ill that its unity and wholeness are weakened. So the appetite for unity in the inferior animate creatures would not appear, unless by the pain of beasts. And if it did not appear, we would be admonished less than were needful that all these things are constituted by that highest and lofty and ineffable unity of the Creator.

3. 23. 70. And in truth, if you piously and diligently attend, every appearance and motion of the creature that falls under the consideration of the human mind speaks our instruction; by its diverse motions and affections, as by a certain variety of tongues, crying out and proclaiming on every side that the Creator is to be known. For there is none of those things which feel neither pain nor pleasure that does not, by some unity, attain the comeliness proper to its kind, or at least some sort of stability of its nature. Likewise there is none of those things which feel either the troubles of pain or the allurements of pleasure that does not, by the very fact that they flee pain and seek pleasure, confess that they flee separation and seek unity. And in rational souls themselves, every appetite for knowledge, by which that nature is gladdened, both refers to unity everything it perceives, and in error flees nothing else than to be confounded by an incomprehensible ambiguity. But whence is every ambiguity troublesome, unless because it has no sure unity? From which it appears that all things, whether when they give offense or are offended, whether when they delight or are delighted, intimate and proclaim the unity of the Creator. But if ignorance and difficulty, from which this life must necessarily begin, are not natural to souls, it remains that they were either undertaken as a duty, or imposed as a punishment. Of which things I think enough has now been discussed.

3. 24. 71. Wherefore we must rather inquire what the first man himself was made like, than how his posterity was propagated. For they think they propose the question very acutely who say: If the first man was made wise, why was he seduced? But if he was made foolish, how is God not the author of vices, since folly is the greatest vice? As if human nature received no middle affection besides folly and wisdom, which could be called neither folly nor wisdom. For a human being begins to be either foolish or wise—so that necessarily one of these is applied to him—when, were he not negligent, he could already have wisdom, so that the will is guilty of a faulty folly. For no one is so out of his senses as to call an infant foolish, although it would be more absurd to wish to call him wise. As, then, an infant can be called neither foolish nor wise, although he is already a human being—from which it appears that human nature receives some middle thing which you would rightly call neither folly nor wisdom—so too, if anyone were animated by such an affection as those have who, through negligence, lack wisdom, no one would rightly call him foolish whom he saw to be such not by vice but by nature. For folly is not any ignorance whatever of things to be sought and avoided, but a faulty ignorance. Hence we do not call an irrational animal foolish, because it did not receive the power to be wise. Yet we often, by likeness, call something not properly. For blindness, although it is the greatest vice of the eyes, is nevertheless not a vice in puppies being born, nor can it properly be called blindness.

3. 24. 72. If, then, the human being was so made that, although he was not yet wise, he could nevertheless receive a precept which he surely ought to obey, it is no wonder that he could be seduced; nor is it unjust that, not obeying the precept, he paid the penalty; nor is his Creator the author of vices, because not to have wisdom was not yet the vice of the human being, if he had not yet received the power to have it. Yet he had something whereby, if he willed to use it well, he might ascend to that which he did not have. For it is one thing to be rational, another to be wise. By reason each becomes capable of the precept, to which he owes faith, that he may do what is commanded. As, however, the nature of reason takes up the precept, so the observance of the precept takes up wisdom. And what nature is for taking up the precept, that the will is for observing it. And as the rational nature is, as it were, the merit of receiving the precept, so the observance of the precept is the merit of receiving wisdom. But from the point at which a human being begins to be capable of a precept, from that point he begins to be able to sin. He sins, however, in two ways before he becomes wise: either if he does not apply himself to receiving the precept, or if, having received it, he does not observe it. But the wise man sins if he turns himself away from wisdom. For just as the precept is not from him to whom it is given, but from him who gives it, so wisdom is not from him who is illumined, but from him who illumines. What is there, then, for which the Creator of the human being should not be praised? For a human being is some good, and better than a beast, from the fact that he is capable of a precept. And this is better, when he has now received the precept. And again, this is better, when he has obeyed the precept. And better than all these, when he is blessed by the eternal light of wisdom. But sin is the evil in negligence, whether toward receiving the precept, or toward observing it, or toward keeping the contemplation of wisdom. From which it is understood that, even if the first man was made wise, he could nevertheless be seduced. Which sin, since it was in the free choice, a just punishment followed by the divine law. So the apostle Paul too says: Claiming to be wise, they became fools ((Rom 1:22)). For pride turns away from wisdom; and folly follows the turning away. For folly is a kind of blindness, as the same one says: And their foolish heart was darkened ((Rom 1:21)). But whence is this darkening, if not from turning away from the light of wisdom? And whence this turning away, except while one to whom the good is God wills to be his own good to himself, as God is to himself? So, My soul is troubled within me ((Ps 42:6 (41:7))); and, Taste, and you will be as gods ((See Gen 3:5)).

3. 24. 73. But it troubles those who consider it, that they ask thus: Did the first man depart from God by folly, or was he made foolish by departing? For if you answer that he departed from wisdom by folly, he will seem to have been foolish before he departed from wisdom, so that folly was the cause of his departing. Likewise, if you answer that he was made foolish by departing, they ask whether he acted foolishly or wisely in departing. For if wisely, he did rightly and sinned in nothing; but if foolishly, then, they say, there was already in him the folly by which it came about that he departed. For he could not do anything foolishly without folly. From which it appears that there is something midway, by which there is a transition from wisdom to folly, which can be called neither foolishly nor wisely done; which is given to be understood by people set in this life only from its contrary. For just as no mortal becomes wise except by passing from folly to wisdom, so, if that transition is made foolishly, it is surely not made well—which is most demented to say; but if it is made wisely, then wisdom was already in the human being before he passed to wisdom, which is no less absurd. From which it is understood that there is a middle thing which can be called neither: so too, from the citadel of wisdom, in order that the first man might pass to folly, that transition was neither foolish nor wise. As in sleep and waking, to fall asleep is not the same as to sleep, nor to wake the same as to be roused, but a certain transition from one to the other. But this difference there is: that for the most part these things happen without the will, but those never except through the will; whence most just retributions follow.

3. 25. 74. But because the will is enticed to do anything only by some thing seen—while what each takes up or rejects is in his power, but by what sight he is touched there is no power—it must be confessed that the soul is touched by sights both from higher and from lower things, so that the rational substance may take from either what it wills, and that from the merit of taking, either wretchedness or blessedness may follow. As in paradise, the sight from the higher things was the precept of God; the sight from the lower things, the suggestion of the serpent. For neither what was commanded him by the Lord, nor what was suggested by the serpent, was in the human being's power. But how free, and loosed from all bonds of difficulty, it is, for one established in the soundness of wisdom, not to yield to the sights of a lower enticement, can be understood even from this: that even the foolish, who are about to pass to wisdom, overcome them, even with the trouble of doing without pernicious habits with their pestilential sweetness.

3. 25. 75. But it can be asked at this point: if sights from both sides were present to the human being—one from the precept of God, the other from the suggestion of the serpent—whence was there suggested to the devil himself the counsel of seeking impiety, by which he fell from his lofty seats? For if he were touched by no sight, he would not choose to do what he did; for if nothing had come into his mind, he would in no way have turned his intention to wickedness. Whence, then, did it come into his mind—whatever it was that came into his mind—that he should contrive those things by which, from a good angel, he became the devil? For one who wills surely wills something; which, unless either he is admonished from without through the bodily sense, or comes into his mind by hidden ways, he cannot will. Therefore the kinds of sights are to be distinguished, of which one is that which proceeds from the will of one persuading, such as that of the devil, by consenting to whom the human being sinned; the other from things lying beneath either the intention of the mind or the senses of the body. The intention of the mind has lying beneath it—excepting the unchangeableness of the Trinity, which indeed does not lie beneath but rather rises above—first the mind itself, whence we feel that we live; then the body which it administers, whence, to do any work, it moves the member that is needed, when it is needed. And under the bodily senses lie all corporeal things.

3. 25. 76. But that in the contemplation of the highest wisdom (which surely is not the soul, for it is unchangeable) the soul, which is changeable, may behold even itself, and in a way come into its own mind, comes about only by that difference whereby it is not what God is, and yet is something that can please after God. But it is better when it forgets itself in love of the unchangeable God, or even utterly despises itself in comparison with him. But if, as if meeting itself, it pleases itself, so as perversely to imitate God, willing to enjoy its own power, it becomes the less, the more it desires to be the greater. And this is, Pride is the beginning of all sin ((Sir 10:13)); and, The beginning of the pride of a human being is to apostatize from God ((Sir 10:12)). To the pride of the devil there was added a most malevolent envy, that he should persuade this same pride to the human being, by which he felt himself to be damned. Whence it came about that punishment took up the human being as amending rather than destroying; so that, to the one to whom the devil had offered himself for the imitation of pride, the Lord might offer himself for the imitation of humility, through whom eternal life is promised to us; so that, with the blood of Christ given beforehand for us, after labors and ineffable wretchedness, we might cling with so great love to our deliverer, and be caught up with so great brightness of his into him, that no sight from lower things might bend us away from the higher vision; and, even if anything were suggested to this intention of ours from the appetite for lower things, the everlasting damnation and torment of the devil would call us back.

3. 25. 77. So great is the beauty of justice, so great the pleasantness of the eternal light—that is, of unchangeable truth and wisdom—that, even if it were not allowed to abide in it longer than the space of a single day, for this alone the innumerable years of this life, full of delights and an abundance of temporal goods, would rightly and deservedly be despised. For it was not from a false or small affection that it was said, For one day in your courts is better than a thousand ((Ps 84:10 (83:11))). Although it can also be understood in another sense, so that "a thousand days" be understood in the changeableness of time, but by the name of "one day" the unchangeableness of eternity be called. I do not know that I have passed over anything that, from our answer—as far as the Lord has deigned to grant it—is lacking to your questions; although, even if anything occurs to you, the measure of the book now compels us to make an end, and at last to rest from this discussion.