good God as they speak either of my evil or good, and they are meant to excite men's minds and affections toward him. At least as far as I am concerned, this is what they did for me when they were being written and they still do this when read. What some people think of them is their own affair [ipse viderint]; but I do know that they have given pleasure to many of my brethren and still do so. The first through the tenth books were written about myself; the other three about Holy Scripture, from what is written there, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,[2] even as far as the reference to the Sabbath rest.[3] 2. In Book IV, when I confessed my soul's misery over the death of a friend and said that our soul had somehow been made one out of two souls, "But it may have been that I was afraid to die, lest he should then die wholly whom I had so greatly loved" (Ch. VI, 11) -- this now seems to be more a trivial declamation than a serious confession, although this inept expression may be tempered somewhat by the "may have been" [forte] which I added. And in Book XIII what I said -- "The firmament was made between the higher waters (and superior) and the lower (and inferior) waters" -- was said without sufficient thought. In any case, the matter is very obscure. This work begins thus: "Great art thou, O Lord." II. De Dono Perseverantiae, XX, 53 (A.D. 428)

 Which of my shorter works has been more widely known or given  greater pleasure than the [thirteen] books of my Confessions?    And, although I published them long before the Pelagian heresy had  even begun to be, it is plain that in them I said to my God, again  and again, "Give what thou commandest and command what thou wilt."  When these words of mine were repeated in Pelagius' presence at  Rome by a certain brother of mine (an episcopal colleague), he  could not bear them and contradicted him so excitedly that they  nearly came to a quarrel.  Now what, indeed, does God command,  first and foremost, except that we believe in him?  This faith,  therefore, he himself gives; so that it is well said to him, "Give  what thou commandest." Moreover, in those same books, concerning  my account of my conversion when God turned me to that faith which  I was laying waste with a very wretched and wild verbal assault,[4  ]do you not remember how the narration shows that I was given as a  gift to the faithful and daily tears of my mother, who had been  promised that I should not perish?  I certainly declared there  that God by his grace turns men's wills to the true faith when  they are not only averse to it, but actually adverse.  As for the  other ways in which I sought God's aid in my growth in  perseverance, you either know or can review them as you wish (PL,  45, c.  1025).       III.  Letter to Darius (A.D.  429)

 Thus, my son, take the books of my Confessions and use them  as a good man should -- not superficially, but as a Christian in  Christian charity.  Here see me as I am and do not praise me for  more than I am.  Here believe nothing else about me than my own  testimony.  Here observe what I have been in myself and through  myself.  And if something in me pleases you, here praise Him with  me -- him whom I desire to be praised on my account and not  myself.  "For it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves."[5]   Indeed, we were ourselves quite lost; but he who made us, remade  us [sed qui fecit, refecit].  As, then, you find me in these  pages, pray for me that I shall not fail but that I may go on to  be perfected.  Pray for me, my son, pray for me! (Epist. CCXXXI,  PL, 33, c.  1025).      



          The Confessions of Saint Augustine       


                       BOOK ONE

 In God's searching presence, Augustine undertakes to plumb  the depths of his memory to trace the mysterious pilgrimage of  grace which his life has been -- and to praise God for his  constant and omnipotent grace.  In a mood of sustained prayer, he  recalls what he can of his infancy, his learning to speak, and his  childhood experiences in school.  He concludes with a paean of  grateful praise to God.        

                       CHAPTER I

 1.  "Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great  is thy power, and infinite is thy wisdom."[6]  And man desires to  praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his  mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and  the proof that thou dost resist the proud.  Still he desires to  praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation.   Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for  thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it  comes to rest in thee.  Grant me, O Lord, to know and understand  whether first to invoke thee or to praise thee; whether first to  know thee or call upon thee.  But who can invoke thee, knowing  thee not?  For he who knows thee not may invoke thee as another  than thou art.  It may be that we should invoke thee in order that  we may come to know thee.  But "how shall they call on him in whom  they have not believed?  Or how shall they believe without a  preacher?"[7]  Now, "they shall praise the Lord who seek him,"[8]  for "those who seek shall find him,"[9] and, finding him, shall  praise him.  I will seek thee, O Lord, and call upon thee.  I call  upon thee, O Lord, in my faith which thou hast given me, which  thou hast inspired in me through the humanity of thy Son, and  through the ministry of thy preacher.[10]


                      CHAPTER II

 2.  And how shall I call upon my God -- my God and my Lord?   For when I call on him I ask him to come into me.  And what place  is there in me into which my God can come?  How could God, the God  who made both heaven and earth, come into me?  Is there anything  in me, O Lord my God, that can contain thee?  Do even the heaven  and the earth, which thou hast made, and in which thou didst make  me, contain thee?  Is it possible that, since without thee nothing  would be which does exist, thou didst make it so that whatever  exists has some capacity to receive thee?  Why, then, do I ask  thee to come into me, since I also am and could not be if thou  wert not in me?  For I am not, after all, in hell -- and yet thou  art there too, for "if I go down into hell, thou art there."[11]   Therefore I would not exist -- I would simply not be at all --  unless I exist in thee, from whom and by whom and in whom all  things are.  Even so, Lord; even so.  Where do I call thee to,  when I am already in thee?  Or from whence wouldst thou come into  me?  Where, beyond heaven and earth, could I go that there my God  might come to me -- he who hath said, "I fill heaven and  earth"?[12]


                     CHAPTER III

 3.  Since, then, thou dost fill the heaven and earth, do they  contain thee?  Or, dost thou fill and overflow them, because they  cannot contain thee?  And where dost thou pour out what remains of  thee after heaven and earth are full?  Or, indeed, is there no  need that thou, who dost contain all things, shouldst be contained  by any, since those things which thou dost fill thou fillest by  containing them?  For the vessels which thou dost fill do not  confine thee, since even if they were broken, thou wouldst not be  poured out.  And, when thou art poured out on us, thou art not  thereby brought down; rather, we are uplifted.  Thou art not  scattered; rather, thou dost gather us together.  But when thou  dost fill all things, dost thou fill them with thy whole being?   Or, since not even all things together could contain thee  altogether, does any one thing contain a single part, and do all  things contain that same part at the same time?  Do singulars  contain thee singly?  Do greater things contain more of thee, and  smaller things less?  Or, is it not rather that thou art wholly  present everywhere, yet in such a way that nothing contains thee  wholly?


                      CHAPTER IV

 4.  What, therefore, is my God?  What, I ask, but the Lord  God?  "For who is Lord but the Lord himself, or who is God besides  our God?"[13]  Most high, most excellent, most potent, most  omnipotent; most merciful and most just; most secret and most  truly present; most beautiful and most strong; stable, yet not  supported; unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never  old; making all things new, yet bringing old age upon the proud,  and they know it not; always working, ever at rest; gathering, yet  needing nothing; sustaining, pervading, and protecting; creating,  nourishing, and developing; seeking, and yet possessing all  things.  Thou dost love, but without passion; art jealous, yet  free from care; dost repent without remorse; art angry, yet  remainest serene.  Thou changest thy ways, leaving thy plans  unchanged; thou recoverest what thou hast never really lost.  Thou  art never in need but still thou dost rejoice at thy gains; art  never greedy, yet demandest dividends.  Men pay more than is  required so that thou dost become a debtor; yet who can possess  anything at all which is not already thine?  Thou owest men  nothing, yet payest out to them as if in debt to thy creature, and  when thou dost cancel debts thou losest nothing thereby.  Yet, O  my God, my life, my holy Joy, what is this that I have said?  What  can any man say when he speaks of thee?  But woe to them that keep  silence -- since even those who say most are dumb.


                      CHAPTER V

 5.  Who shall bring me to rest in thee?  Who will send thee  into my heart so to overwhelm it that my sins shall be blotted out  and I may embrace thee, my only good?  What art thou to me?  Have  mercy that I may speak.  What am I to thee that thou shouldst  command me to love thee, and if I do it not, art angry and  threatenest vast misery?  Is it, then, a trifling sorrow not to  love thee?  It is not so to me.  Tell me, by thy mercy, O Lord, my  God, what thou art to me.  "Say to my soul, I am your  salvation."[14]  So speak that I may hear.  Behold, the ears of my  heart are before thee, O Lord; open them and "say to my soul, I am  your salvation." I will hasten after that voice, and I will lay  hold upon thee.  Hide not thy face from me.  Even if I die, let me  see thy face lest I die.      6.  The house of my soul is too narrow for thee to come in to  me; let it be enlarged by thee.  It is in ruins; do thou restore  it.  There is much about it which must offend thy eyes; I confess  and know it.  But who will cleanse it?  Or, to whom shall I cry  but to thee?  "Cleanse thou me from my secret faults," O Lord,  "and keep back thy servant from strange sins."[15]  "I believe,  and therefore do I speak."[16]  But thou, O Lord, thou knowest.   Have I not confessed my transgressions unto thee, O my God; and  hast thou not put away the iniquity of my heart?[17]  I do not  contend in judgment with thee,[18] who art truth itself; and I  would not deceive myself, lest my iniquity lie even to itself.  I  do not, therefore, contend in judgment with thee, for "if thou,  Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?"[19]


                      CHAPTER VI

 7.  Still, dust and ashes as I am, allow me to speak before  thy mercy.  Allow me to speak, for, behold, it is to thy mercy  that I speak and not to a man who scorns me.  Yet perhaps even  thou mightest scorn me; but when thou dost turn and attend to me,  thou wilt have mercy upon me.  For what do I wish to say, O Lord  my God, but that I know not whence I came hither into this life- in-death.  Or should I call it death-in-life?  I do not know.  And  yet the consolations of thy mercy have sustained me from the very  beginning, as I have heard from my fleshly parents, from whom and  in whom thou didst form me in time -- for I cannot myself  remember.  Thus even though they sustained me by the consolation  of woman's milk, neither my mother nor my nurses filled their own  breasts but thou, through them, didst give me the food of infancy  according to thy ordinance and thy bounty which underlie all  things.  For it was thou who didst cause me not to want more than  thou gavest and it was thou who gavest to those who nourished me  the will to give me what thou didst give them.  And they, by an  instinctive affection, were willing to give me what thou hadst  supplied abundantly.  It was, indeed, good for them that my good  should come through them, though, in truth, it was not from them  but by them.  For it is from thee, O God, that all good things  come -- and from my God is all my health.  This is what I have  since learned, as thou hast made it abundantly clear by all that I  have seen thee give, both to me and to those around me.  For even  at the very first I knew how to suck, to lie quiet when I was  full, and to cry when in pain -- nothing more.      8.  Afterward I began to laugh -- at first in my sleep, then  when waking.  For this I have been told about myself and I believe  it -- though I cannot remember it -- for I see the same things in  other infants.  Then, little by little, I realized where I was and  wished to tell my wishes to those who might satisfy them, but I  could not!  For my wants were inside me, and they were outside,  and they could not by any power of theirs come into my soul.  And  so I would fling my arms and legs about and cry, making the few  and feeble gestures that I could, though indeed the signs were not  much like what I inwardly desired and when I was not satisfied --  either from not being understood or because what I got was not  good for me -- I grew indignant that my elders were not subject to  me and that those on whom I actually had no claim did not wait on  me as slaves -- and I avenged myself on them by crying.  That  infants are like this, I have myself been able to learn by  watching them; and they, though they knew me not, have shown me  better what I was like than my own nurses who knew me.      9.  And, behold, my infancy died long ago, but I am still  living.  But thou, O Lord, whose life is forever and in whom  nothing dies -- since before the world was, indeed, before all  that can be called "before," thou wast, and thou art the God and  Lord of all thy creatures; and with thee abide all the stable  causes of all unstable things, the unchanging sources of all  changeable things, and the eternal reasons of all non-rational and  temporal things -- tell me, thy suppliant, O God, tell me, O  merciful One, in pity tell a pitiful creature whether my infancy  followed yet an earlier age of my life that had already passed  away before it.  Was it such another age which I spent in my  mother's womb?  For something of that sort has been suggested to  me, and I have myself seen pregnant women.  But what, O God, my  Joy, preceded _that_ period of life?  Was I, indeed, anywhere, or  anybody?  No one can explain these things to me, neither father  nor mother, nor the experience of others, nor my own memory.  Dost  thou laugh at me for asking such things?  Or dost thou command me  to praise and confess unto thee only what I know?      10.  I give thanks to thee, O Lord of heaven and earth,  giving praise to thee for that first being and my infancy of which  I have no memory.  For thou hast granted to man that he should  come to self-knowledge through the knowledge of others, and that  he should believe many things about himself on the authority of  the womenfolk.  Now, clearly, I had life and being; and, as my  infancy closed, I was already learning signs by which my feelings  could be communicated to others.      Whence could such a creature come but from thee, O Lord?  Is  any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself?  Or is there  any other source from which being and life could flow into us,  save this, that thou, O Lord, hast made us -- thou with whom being  and life are one, since thou thyself art supreme being and supreme  life both together.  For thou art infinite and in thee there is no  change, nor an end to this present day -- although there is a  sense in which it ends in thee since all things are in thee and  there would be no such thing as days passing away unless thou  didst sustain them.  And since "thy years shall have no end,"[20]  thy years are an ever-present day.  And how many of ours and our  fathers' days have passed through this thy day and have received  from it what measure and fashion of being they had?  And all the  days to come shall so receive and so pass away.  "But thou art the  same"![21]  And all the things of tomorrow and the days yet to  come, and all of yesterday and the days that are past, thou wilt  gather into this thy day.  What is it to me if someone does not  understand this?  Let him still rejoice and continue to ask, "What  is this?"  Let him also rejoice and prefer to seek thee, even if  he fails to find an answer, rather than to seek an answer and not  find thee!


                     CHAPTER VII

 11.  "Hear me, O God!  Woe to the sins of men!"  When a man  cries thus, thou showest him mercy, for thou didst create the man  but not the sin in him.  Who brings to remembrance the sins of my  infancy?  For in thy sight there is none free from sin, not even  the infant who has lived but a day upon this earth.  Who brings  this to my remembrance?  Does not each little one, in whom I now  observe what I no longer remember of myself?  In what ways, in  that time, did I sin?  Was it that I cried for the breast?  If I  should now so cry -- not indeed for the breast, but for food  suitable to my condition -- I should be most justly laughed at and  rebuked.  What I did then deserved rebuke but, since I could not  understand those who rebuked me, neither custom nor common sense  permitted me to be rebuked.  As we grow we root out and cast away  from us such childish habits.  Yet I have not seen anyone who is  wise who cast away the good when trying to purge the bad.  Nor was  it good, even in that time, to strive to get by crying what, if it  had been given me, would have been hurtful; or to be bitterly  indignant at those who, because they were older -- not slaves,  either, but free -- and wiser than I, would not indulge my  capricious desires.  Was it a good thing for me to try, by  struggling as hard as I could, to harm them for not obeying me,  even when it would have done me harm to have been obeyed?  Thus,  the infant's innocence lies in the weakness of his body and not in  the infant mind.  I have myself observed a baby to be jealous,  though it could not speak; it was livid as it watched another  infant at the breast.      Who is ignorant of this?  Mothers and nurses tell us that  they cure these things by I know not what remedies.  But is this  innocence, when the fountain of milk is flowing fresh and  abundant, that another who needs it should not be allowed to share  it, even though he requires such nourishment to sustain his life?   Yet we look leniently on such things, not because they are not  faults, or even small faults, but because they will vanish as the  years pass.  For, although we allow for such things in an infant,  the same things could not be tolerated patiently in an adult.      12.  Therefore, O Lord my God, thou who gavest life to the  infant, and a body which, as we see, thou hast furnished with  senses, shaped with limbs, beautified with form, and endowed with  all vital energies for its well-being and health -- thou dost  command me to praise thee for these things, to give thanks unto  the Lord, and to sing praise unto his name, O Most High.[22]  For  thou art God, omnipotent and good, even if thou hadst done no more  than these things, which no other but thou canst do -- thou alone  who madest all things fair and didst order everything according to  thy law.      I am loath to dwell on this part of my life of which, O Lord,  I have no remembrance, about which I must trust the word of others  and what I can surmise from observing other infants, even if such  guesses are trustworthy.  For it lies in the deep murk of my  forgetfulness and thus is like the period which I passed in my  mother's womb.  But if "I was conceived in iniquity, and in sin my  mother nourished me in her womb,"[23] where, I pray thee, O my  God, where, O Lord, or when was I, thy servant, ever innocent?   But see now, I pass over that period, for what have I to do with a  time from which I can recall no memories? 


                     CHAPTER VIII

 13.  Did I not, then, as I grew out of infancy, come next to  boyhood, or rather did it not come to me and succeed my infancy?   My infancy did not go away (for where would it go?).  It was  simply no longer present; and I was no longer an infant who could  not speak, but now a chattering boy.  I remember this, and I have  since observed how I learned to speak.  My elders did not teach me  words by rote, as they taught me my letters afterward.  But I  myself, when I was unable to communicate all I wished to say to  whomever I wished by means of whimperings and grunts and various  gestures of my limbs (which I used to reinforce my demands), I  myself repeated the sounds already stored in my memory by the mind  which thou, O my God, hadst given me.  When they called some thing  by name and pointed it out while they spoke, I saw it and realized  that the thing they wished to indicate was called by the name they  then uttered.  And what they meant was made plain by the gestures  of their bodies, by a kind of natural language, common to all  nations, which expresses itself through changes of countenance,  glances of the eye, gestures and intonations which indicate a  disposition and attitude -- either to seek or to possess, to  reject or to avoid.  So it was that by frequently hearing words,  in different phrases, I gradually identified the objects which the  words stood for and, having formed my mouth to repeat these signs,  I was thereby able to express my will.  Thus I exchanged with  those about me the verbal signs by which we express our wishes and  advanced deeper into the stormy fellowship of human life,  depending all the while upon the authority of my parents and the  behest of my elders.


                      CHAPTER IX

 14.  O my God!  What miseries and mockeries did I then  experience when it was impressed on me that obedience to my  teachers was proper to my boyhood estate if I was to flourish in  this world and distinguish myself in those tricks of speech which  would gain honor for me among men, and deceitful riches!  To this  end I was sent to school to get learning, the value of which I  knew not -- wretch that I was.  Yet if I was slow to learn, I was  flogged.  For this was deemed praiseworthy by our forefathers and  many had passed before us in the same course, and thus had built  up the precedent for the sorrowful road on which we too were  compelled to travel, multiplying labor and sorrow upon the sons of  Adam.  About this time, O Lord, I observed men praying to thee,  and I learned from them to conceive thee -- after my capacity for  understanding as it was then -- to be some great Being, who,  though not visible to our senses, was able to hear and help us.   Thus as a boy I began to pray to thee, my Help and my Refuge, and,  in calling on thee, broke the bands of my tongue.  Small as I was,  I prayed with no slight earnestness that I might not be beaten at  school.  And when thou didst not heed me -- for that would have  been giving me over to my folly -- my elders and even my parents  too, who wished me no ill, treated my stripes as a joke, though  they were then a great and grievous ill to me.      15.  Is there anyone, O Lord, with a spirit so great, who  cleaves to thee with such steadfast affection (or is there even a  kind of obtuseness that has the same effect) -- is there any man  who, by cleaving devoutly to thee, is endowed with so great a  courage that he can regard indifferently those racks and hooks and  other torture weapons from which men throughout the world pray so  fervently to be spared; and can they scorn those who so greatly  fear these torments, just as my parents were amused at the  torments with which our teachers punished us boys?  For we were no  less afraid of our pains, nor did we beseech thee less to escape  them.  Yet, even so, we were sinning by writing or reading or  studying less than our assigned lessons.      For I did not, O Lord, lack memory or capacity, for, by thy  will, I possessed enough for my age.  However, my mind was  absorbed only in play, and I was punished for this by those who  were doing the same things themselves.  But the idling of our  elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like  it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the  boys or the men.  For will any common sense observer agree that I  was rightly punished as a boy for playing ball -- just because  this hindered me from learning more quickly those lessons by means  of which, as a man, I could play at more shameful games?  And did  he by whom I was beaten do anything different?  When he was  worsted in some small controversy with a fellow teacher, he was  more tormented by anger and envy than I was when beaten by a  playmate in the ball game.


                      CHAPTER X

 16.  And yet I sinned, O Lord my God, thou ruler and creator  of all natural things -- but of sins only the ruler -- I sinned, O  Lord my God, in acting against the precepts of my parents and of  those teachers.  For this learning which they wished me to acquire  -- no matter what their motives were -- I might have put to good  account afterward.  I disobeyed them, not because I had chosen a  better way, but from a sheer love of play.  I loved the vanity of  victory, and I loved to have my ears tickled with lying fables,  which made them itch even more ardently, and a similar curiosity  glowed more and more in my eyes for the shows and sports of my  elders.  Yet those who put on such shows are held in such high  repute that almost all desire the same for their children.  They  are therefore willing to have them beaten, if their childhood  games keep them from the studies by which their parents desire  them to grow up to be able to give such shows.  Look down on these  things with mercy, O Lord, and deliver us who now call upon thee;  deliver those also who do not call upon thee, that they may call  upon thee, and thou mayest deliver them.


                      CHAPTER XI

 17.  Even as a boy I had heard of eternal life promised to us  through the humility of the Lord our God, who came down to visit  us in our pride, and I was signed with the sign of his cross, and  was seasoned with his salt even from the womb of my mother, who  greatly trusted in thee.  Thou didst see, O Lord, how, once, while  I was still a child, I was suddenly seized with stomach pains and  was at the point of death -- thou didst see, O my God, for even  then thou wast my keeper, with what agitation and with what faith  I solicited from the piety of my mother and from thy Church (which  is the mother of us all) the baptism of thy Christ, my Lord and my  God.  The mother of my flesh was much perplexed, for, with a heart  pure in thy faith, she was always in deep travail for my eternal  salvation.  If I had not quickly recovered, she would have  provided forthwith for my initiation and washing by thy life- giving sacraments, confessing thee, O Lord Jesus, for the  forgiveness of sins.  So my cleansing was deferred, as if it were  inevitable that, if I should live, I would be further polluted;  and, further, because the guilt contracted by sin after baptism  would be still greater and more perilous.      Thus, at that time, I "believed" along with my mother and the  whole household, except my father.  But he did not overcome the  influence of my mother's piety in me, nor did he prevent my  believing in Christ, although he had not yet believed in him.  For  it was her desire, O my God, that I should acknowledge thee as my  Father rather than him.  In this thou didst aid her to overcome  her husband, to whom, though his superior, she yielded obedience.   In this way she also yielded obedience to thee, who dost so  command.      18.  I ask thee, O my God, for I would gladly know if it be  thy will, to what good end my baptism was deferred at that time?   Was it indeed for my good that the reins were slackened, as it  were, to encourage me in sin?  Or, were they not slackened?  If  not, then why is it still dinned into our ears on all sides, "Let  him alone, let him do as he pleases, for he is not yet baptized"?   In the matter of bodily health, no one says, "Let him alone; let  him be worse wounded; for he is not yet cured"!  How much better,  then, would it have been for me to have been cured at once -- and  if thereafter, through the diligent care of friends and myself, my  soul's restored health had been kept safe in thy keeping, who gave  it in the first place!  This would have been far better, in truth.   But how many and great the waves of temptation which appeared to  hang over me as I grew out of childhood!  These were foreseen by  my mother, and she preferred that the unformed clay should be  risked to them rather than the clay molded after Christ's  image.[24]


                      CHAPTER XII

 19.  But in this time of childhood -- which was far less  dreaded for me than my adolescence -- I had no love of learning,  and hated to be driven to it.  Yet I was driven to it just the  same, and good was done for me, even though I did not do it well,  for I would not have learned if I had not been forced to it.  For  no man does well against his will, even if what he does is a good  thing.  Neither did they who forced me do well, but the good that  was done me came from thee, my God.  For they did not care about  the way in which I would use what they forced me to learn, and  took it for granted that it was to satisfy the inordinate desires  of a rich beggary and a shameful glory.  But thou, Lord, by whom  the hairs of our head are numbered, didst use for my good the  error of all who pushed me on to study: but my error in not being  willing to learn thou didst use for my punishment.  And I --  though so small a boy yet so great a sinner -- was not punished  without warrant.  Thus by the instrumentality of those who did not  do well, thou didst well for me; and by my own sin thou didst  justly punish me.  For it is even as thou hast ordained: that  every inordinate affection brings on its own punishment.


                     CHAPTER XIII

 20.  But what were the causes for my strong dislike of Greek  literature, which I studied from my boyhood?  Even to this day I  have not fully understood them.  For Latin I loved exceedingly --  not just the rudiments, but what the grammarians teach. For those  beginner's lessons in reading, writing, and reckoning, I  considered no less a burden and pain than Greek.  Yet whence came  this, unless from the sin and vanity of this life?  For I was "but  flesh, a wind that passeth away and cometh not again."[25]  Those  first lessons were better, assuredly, because they were more  certain, and through them I acquired, and still retain, the power  of reading what I find written and of writing for myself what I  will.  In the other subjects, however, I was compelled to learn  about the wanderings of a certain Aeneas, oblivious of my own  wanderings, and to weep for Dido dead, who slew herself for love.   And all this while I bore with dry eyes my own wretched self dying  to thee, O God, my life, in the midst of these things.      21.  For what can be more wretched than the wretch who has no  pity upon himself, who sheds tears over Dido, dead for the love of  Aeneas, but who sheds no tears for his own death in not loving  thee, O God, light of my heart, and bread of the inner mouth of my  soul, O power that links together my mind with my inmost thoughts?   I did not love thee, and thus committed fornication against  thee.[26]  Those around me, also sinning, thus cried out: "Well  done!  Well done!"  The friendship of this world is fornication  against thee; and "Well done!  Well done!"  is cried until one  feels ashamed not to show himself a man in this way.  For my own  condition I shed no tears, though I wept for Dido, who "sought  death at the sword's point,"[27] while I myself was seeking the  lowest rung of thy creation, having forsaken thee; earth sinking  back to earth again.  And, if I had been forbidden to read these  poems, I would have grieved that I was not allowed to read what  grieved me.  This sort of madness is considered more honorable and  more fruitful learning than the beginner's course in which I  learned to read and write.      22.  But now, O my God, cry unto my soul, and let thy truth  say to me: "Not so, not so!  That first learning was far better."  For, obviously, I would rather forget the wanderings of Aeneas,  and all such things, than forget how to write and read.  Still,  over the entrance of the grammar school there hangs a veil.  This  is not so much the sign of a covering for a mystery as a curtain  for error.  Let them exclaim against me -- those I no longer fear  -- while I confess to thee, my God, what my soul desires, and let  me find some rest, for in blaming my own evil ways I may come to  love thy holy ways.  Neither let those cry out against me who buy  and sell the baubles of literature.  For if I ask them if it is  true, as the poet says, that Aeneas once came to Carthage, the  unlearned will reply that they do not know and the learned will  deny that it is true.  But if I ask with what letters the name  Aeneas is written, all who have ever learned this will answer  correctly, in accordance with the conventional understanding men  have agreed upon as to these signs.  Again, if I should ask which  would cause the greatest inconvenience in our life, if it were  forgotten: reading and writing, or these poetical fictions, who  does not see what everyone would answer who had not entirely lost  his own memory?  I erred, then, when as a boy I preferred those  vain studies to these more profitable ones, or rather loved the  one and hated the other.  "One and one are two, two and two are  four": this was then a truly hateful song to me.  But the wooden  horse full of its armed soldiers, and the holocaust of Troy, and  the spectral image of Creusa were all a most delightful -- and  vain -- show![28]      23.  But why, then, did I dislike Greek learning, which was  full of such tales?  For Homer was skillful in inventing such  poetic fictions and is most sweetly wanton; yet when I was a boy,  he was most disagreeable to me.  I believe that Virgil would have  the same effect on Greek boys as Homer did on me if they were  forced to learn him.  For the tedium of learning a foreign  language mingled gall into the sweetness of those Grecian myths.   For I did not understand a word of the language, and yet I was  driven with threats and cruel punishments to learn it.  There was  also a time when, as an infant, I knew no Latin; but this I  acquired without any fear or tormenting, but merely by being alert  to the blandishments of my nurses, the jests of those who smiled  on me, and the sportiveness of those who toyed with me.  I learned  all this, indeed, without being urged by any pressure of  punishment, for my own heart urged me to bring forth its own  fashioning, which I could not do except by learning words: not  from those who taught me but those who talked to me, into whose  ears I could pour forth whatever I could fashion.  From this it is  sufficiently clear that a free curiosity is more effective in  learning than a discipline based on fear.  Yet, by thy ordinance,  O God, discipline is given to restrain the excesses of freedom;  this ranges from the ferule of the schoolmaster to the trials of  the martyr and has the effect of mingling for us a wholesome  bitterness, which calls us back to thee from the poisonous  pleasures that first drew us from thee.


                      CHAPTER XV

 24.  Hear my prayer, O Lord; let not my soul faint under thy  discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto thee thy mercies,  whereby thou hast saved me from all my most wicked ways till thou  shouldst become sweet to me beyond all the allurements that I used  to follow.  Let me come to love thee wholly, and grasp thy hand  with my whole heart that thou mayest deliver me from every  temptation, even unto the last.  And thus, O Lord, my King and my  God, may all things useful that I learned as a boy now be offered  in thy service -- let it be that for thy service I now speak and  write and reckon.  For when I was learning vain things, thou didst  impose thy discipline upon me: and thou hast forgiven me my sin of  delighting in those vanities.  In those studies I learned many a  useful word, but these might have been learned in matters not so  vain; and surely that is the safe way for youths to walk in.


                      CHAPTER XVI

 25.  But woe unto you, O torrent of human custom!  Who shall  stay your course?  When will you ever run dry?  How long will you  carry down the sons of Eve into that vast and hideous ocean, which  even those who have the Tree (for an ark)[29] can scarcely pass  over?  Do I not read in you the stories of Jove the thunderer --  and the adulterer?[30]  How could he be both?  But so it says, and  the sham thunder served as a cloak for him to play at real  adultery.  Yet which of our gowned masters will give a tempered  hearing to a man trained in their own schools who cries out and  says: "These were Homer's fictions; he transfers things human to  the gods.  I could have wished that he would transfer divine  things to us."[31]  But it would have been more true if he said,  "These are, indeed, his fictions, but he attributed divine  attributes to sinful men, that crimes might not be accounted  crimes, and that whoever committed such crimes might appear to  imitate the celestial gods and not abandoned men."      26.  And yet, O torrent of hell, the sons of men are still  cast into you, and they pay fees for learning all these things.   And much is made of it when this goes on in the forum under the  auspices of laws which give a salary over and above the fees.  And  you beat against your rocky shore and roar: "Here words may be  learned; here you can attain the eloquence which is so necessary  to persuade people to your way of thinking; so helpful in  unfolding your opinions." Verily, they seem to argue that we  should never have understood these words, "golden shower,"  "bosom," "intrigue," "highest heavens," and other such words, if  Terence had not introduced a good-for-nothing youth upon the  stage, setting up a picture of Jove as his example of lewdness and  telling the tale           "Of Jove's descending in a golden shower       Into Danae's bosom...        With a woman to intrigue."      See how he excites himself to lust, as if by a heavenly  authority, when he says:           "Great Jove,       Who shakes the highest heavens with his thunder;       Shall I, poor mortal man, not do the same?      I've done it, and with all my heart, I'm glad."[32]      These words are not learned one whit more easily because of  this vileness, but through them the vileness is more boldly  perpetrated.  I do not blame the words, for they are, as it were,  choice and precious vessels, but I do deplore the wine of error  which was poured out to us by teachers already drunk.  And, unless  we also drank we were beaten, without liberty of appeal to a sober  judge.  And yet, O my God, in whose presence I can now with  security recall this, I learned these things willingly and with  delight, and for it I was called a boy of good promise.


                     CHAPTER XVII

 27.  Bear with me, O my God, while I speak a little of those  talents, thy gifts, and of the follies on which I wasted them.   For a lesson was given me that sufficiently disturbed my soul, for  in it there was both hope of praise and fear of shame or stripes.   The assignment was that I should declaim the words of Juno, as she  raged and sorrowed that she could not           "Bar off Italy      From all the approaches of the Teucrian king."[33]      I had learned that Juno had never uttered these words.  Yet  we were compelled to stray in the footsteps of these poetic  fictions, and to turn into prose what the poet had said in verse.   In the declamation, the boy won most applause who most strikingly  reproduced the passions of anger and sorrow according to the  "character" of the persons presented and who clothed it all in the  most suitable language.  What is it now to me, O my true Life, my  God, that my declaiming was applauded above that of many of my  classmates and fellow students?  Actually, was not all that smoke  and wind?  Besides, was there nothing else on which I could have  exercised my wit and tongue?  Thy praise, O Lord, thy praises  might have propped up the tendrils of my heart by thy Scriptures;  and it would not have been dragged away by these empty trifles, a  shameful prey to the spirits of the air.  For there is more than  one way in which men sacrifice to the fallen angels.


                     CHAPTER XVIII

 28.  But it was no wonder that I was thus carried toward  vanity and was estranged from thee, O my God, when men were held  up as models to me who, when relating a deed of theirs -- not in  itself evil -- were covered with confusion if found guilty of a  barbarism or a solecism; but who could tell of their own  licentiousness and be applauded for it, so long as they did it in  a full and ornate oration of well-chosen words.  Thou seest all  this, O Lord, and dost keep silence -- "long-suffering, and  plenteous in mercy and truth"[34] as thou art.  Wilt thou keep  silence forever?  Even now thou drawest from that vast deep the  soul that seeks thee and thirsts after thy delight, whose "heart  said unto thee, ?I have sought thy face; thy face, Lord, will I  seek.'"[35] For I was far from thy face in the dark shadows of  passion.  For it is not by our feet, nor by change of place, that  we either turn from thee or return to thee.  That younger son did  not charter horses or chariots, or ships, or fly away on visible  wings, or journey by walking so that in the far country he might  prodigally waste all that thou didst give him when he set out.[36]  A kind Father when thou gavest; and kinder still when he returned  destitute!  To be wanton, that is to say, to be darkened in heart  -- this is to be far from thy face.      29.  Look down, O Lord God, and see patiently, as thou art  wont to do, how diligently the sons of men observe the  conventional rules of letters and syllables, taught them by those  who learned their letters beforehand, while they neglect the  eternal rules of everlasting salvation taught by thee.  They carry  it so far that if he who practices or teaches the established  rules of pronunciation should speak (contrary to grammatical  usage) without aspirating the first syllable of "hominem"  ["ominem," and thus make it "a 'uman being"], he will offend men  more than if he, a human being, were to _hate_ another human being  contrary to thy commandments.  It is as if he should feel that  there is an enemy who could be more destructive to himself than  that hatred which excites him against his fellow man; or that he  could destroy him whom he hates more completely than he destroys  his own soul by this same hatred.  Now, obviously, there is no  knowledge of letters more innate than the writing of conscience --  against doing unto another what one would not have done to  himself.      How mysterious thou art, who "dwellest on high"[37] in  silence.  O thou, the only great God, who by an unwearied law  hurlest down the penalty of blindness to unlawful desire!  When a  man seeking the reputation of eloquence stands before a human  judge, while a thronging multitude surrounds him, and inveighs  against his enemy with the most fierce hatred, he takes most  vigilant heed that his tongue does not slip in a grammatical  error, for example, and say inter hominibus [instead of inter  homines], but he takes no heed lest, in the fury of his spirit, he  cut off a man from his fellow men [ex hominibus].      30.  These were the customs in the midst of which I was cast,  an unhappy boy.  This was the wrestling arena in which I was more  fearful of perpetrating a barbarism than, having done so, of  envying those who had not.  These things I declare and confess to  thee, my God.  I was applauded by those whom I then thought it my  whole duty to please, for I did not perceive the gulf of infamy  wherein I was cast away from thy eyes.        For in thy eyes, what was more infamous than I was already,  since I displeased even my own kind and deceived, with endless  lies, my tutor, my masters and parents -- all from a love of play,  a craving for frivolous spectacles, a stage-struck restlessness to  imitate what I saw in these shows?  I pilfered from my parents'  cellar and table, sometimes driven by gluttony, sometimes just to  have something to give to other boys in exchange for their  baubles, which they were prepared to sell even though they liked  them as well as I.  Moreover, in this kind of play, I often sought  dishonest victories, being myself conquered by the vain desire for  pre-eminence.  And what was I so unwilling to endure, and what was  it that I censured so violently when I caught anyone, except the  very things I did to others?  And, when I was myself detected and  censured, I preferred to quarrel rather than to yield.  Is this  the innocence of childhood?  It is not, O Lord, it is not.  I  entreat thy mercy, O my God, for these same sins as we grow older  are transferred from tutors and masters; they pass from nuts and  balls and sparrows, to magistrates and kings, to gold and lands  and slaves, just as the rod is succeeded by more severe  chastisements.  It was, then, the fact of humility in childhood  that thou, O our King, didst approve as a symbol of humility when  thou saidst, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."[38]


                      CHAPTER XIX

 31.  However, O Lord, to thee most excellent and most good,  thou Architect and Governor of the universe, thanks would be due  thee, O our God, even if thou hadst not willed that I should  survive my boyhood.  For I existed even then; I lived and felt and  was solicitous about my own well-being -- a trace of that most  mysterious unity from whence I had my being.[39]  I kept watch, by  my inner sense, over the integrity of my outer senses, and even in  these trifles and also in my thoughts about trifles, I learned to  take pleasure in truth.  I was averse to being deceived; I had a  vigorous memory; I was gifted with the power of speech, was  softened by friendship, shunned sorrow, meanness, ignorance.  Is  not such an animated creature as this wonderful and praiseworthy?   But all these are gifts of my God; I did not give them to myself.   Moreover, they are good, and they all together constitute myself.   Good, then, is he that made me, and he is my God; and before him  will I rejoice exceedingly for every good gift which, even as a  boy, I had.  But herein lay my sin, that it was not in him, but in  his creatures -- myself and the rest -- that I sought for  pleasures, honors, and truths.  And I fell thereby into sorrows,  troubles, and errors.  Thanks be to thee, my joy, my pride, my  confidence, my God -- thanks be to thee for thy gifts; but do thou  preserve them in me.  For thus wilt thou preserve me; and those  things which thou hast given me shall be developed and perfected,  and I myself shall be with thee, for from thee is my being.      


                      BOOK TWO       He concentrates here on his sixteenth year, a year of idleness,  lust, and adolescent mischief.  The memory of stealing some pears  prompts a deep probing of the motives and aims of sinful acts.  "I  became to myself a wasteland." 


                       CHAPTER I

 1.  I wish now to review in memory my past wickedness and the  carnal corruptions of my soul -- not because I still love them,  but that I may love thee, O my God.  For love of thy love I do  this, recalling in the bitterness of self-examination my wicked  ways, that thou mayest grow sweet to me, thou sweetness without  deception!  Thou sweetness happy and assured!  Thus thou mayest  gather me up out of those fragments in which I was torn to pieces,  while I turned away from thee, O Unity, and lost myself among "the  many."[40]  For as I became a youth, I longed to be satisfied with  worldly things, and I dared to grow wild in a succession of  various and shadowy loves.  My form wasted away, and I became  corrupt in thy eyes, yet I was still pleasing to my own eyes --  and eager to please the eyes of men.


                      CHAPTER II

 2.  But what was it that delighted me save to love and to be  loved?  Still I did not keep the moderate way of the love of mind  to mind -- the bright path of friendship.  Instead, the mists of  passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence of the flesh,  and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and  overcast my heart that I was unable to distinguish pure affection  from unholy desire.  Both boiled confusedly within me, and dragged  my unstable youth down over the cliffs of unchaste desires and  plunged me into a gulf of infamy.  Thy anger had come upon me, and  I knew it not.  I had been deafened by the clanking of the chains  of my mortality, the punishment for my soul's pride, and I  wandered farther from thee, and thou didst permit me to do so.  I  was tossed to and fro, and wasted, and poured out, and I boiled  over in my fornications -- and yet thou didst hold thy peace, O my  tardy Joy!  Thou didst still hold thy peace, and I wandered still  farther from thee into more and yet more barren fields of sorrow,  in proud dejection and restless lassitude.      3.  If only there had been someone to regulate my disorder  and turn to my profit the fleeting beauties of the things around  me, and to fix a bound to their sweetness, so that the tides of my  youth might have spent themselves upon the shore of marriage!   Then they might have been tranquilized and satisfied with having  children, as thy law prescribes, O Lord -- O thou who dost form  the offspring of our death and art able also with a tender hand to  blunt the thorns which were excluded from thy paradise![41]  For  thy omnipotence is not far from us even when we are far from thee.   Now, on the other hand, I might have given more vigilant heed to  the voice from the clouds: "Nevertheless, such shall have trouble  in the flesh, but I spare you,"[42] and, "It is good for a man not  to touch a woman,"[43] and, "He that is unmarried cares for the  things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he  that is married cares for the things that are of the world, how he  may please his wife."[44]  I should have listened more attentively  to these words, and, thus having been "made a eunuch for the  Kingdom of Heaven's sake,"[45] I would have with greater happiness  expected thy embraces.      4.  But, fool that I was, I foamed in my wickedness as the  sea and, forsaking thee, followed the rushing of my own tide, and  burst out of all thy bounds.  But I did not escape thy scourges.   For what mortal can do so?  Thou wast always by me, mercifully  angry and flavoring all my unlawful pleasures with bitter  discontent, in order that I might seek pleasures free from  discontent.  But where could I find such pleasure save in thee, O  Lord -- save in thee, who dost teach us by sorrow, who woundest us  to heal us, and dost kill us that we may not die apart from thee.   Where was I, and how far was I exiled from the delights of thy  house, in that sixteenth year of the age of my flesh, when the  madness of lust held full sway in me -- that madness which grants  indulgence to human shamelessness, even though it is forbidden by  thy laws -- and I gave myself entirely to it?  Meanwhile, my  family took no care to save me from ruin by marriage, for their  sole care was that I should learn how to make a powerful speech  and become a persuasive orator.


                      CHAPTER III

 5.  Now, in that year my studies were interrupted.  I had  come back from Madaura, a neighboring city[46] where I had gone to  study grammar and rhetoric; and the money for a further term at  Carthage was being got together for me.  This project was more a  matter of my father's ambition than of his means, for he was only  a poor citizen of Tagaste.        To whom am I narrating all this?  Not to thee, O my God, but  to my own kind in thy presence -- to that small part of the human  race who may chance to come upon these writings.  And to what end?   That I and all who read them may understand what depths there are  from which we are to cry unto thee.[47]  For what is more surely  heard in thy ear than a confessing heart and a faithful life?        Who did not extol and praise my father, because he went quite  beyond his means to supply his son with the necessary expenses for  a far journey in the interest of his education?  For many far  richer citizens did not do so much for their children.  Still,  this same father troubled himself not at all as to how I was  progressing toward thee nor how chaste I was, just so long as I  was skillful in speaking -- no matter how barren I was to thy  tillage, O God, who art the one true and good Lord of my heart,  which is thy field.[48]       6.  During that sixteenth year of my age, I lived with my  parents, having a holiday from school for a time -- this idleness  imposed upon me by my parents' straitened finances.  The  thornbushes of lust grew rank about my head, and there was no hand  to root them out.  Indeed, when my father saw me one day at the  baths and perceived that I was becoming a man, and was showing the  signs of adolescence, he joyfully told my mother about it as if  already looking forward to grandchildren, rejoicing in that sort  of inebriation in which the world so often forgets thee, its  Creator, and falls in love with thy creature instead of thee --  the inebriation of that invisible wine of a perverted will which  turns and bows down to infamy.  But in my mother's breast thou  hadst already begun to build thy temple and the foundation of thy  holy habitation -- whereas my father was only a catechumen, and  that but recently.  She was, therefore, startled with a holy fear  and trembling: for though I had not yet been baptized, she feared  those crooked ways in which they walk who turn their backs to thee  and not their faces.      7.  Woe is me!  Do I dare affirm that thou didst hold thy  peace, O my God, while I wandered farther away from thee?  Didst  thou really then hold thy peace?  Then whose words were they but  thine which by my mother, thy faithful handmaid, thou didst pour  into my ears?  None of them, however, sank into my heart to make  me do anything.  She deplored and, as I remember, warned me  privately with great solicitude, "not to commit fornication; but  above all things never to defile another man's wife." These  appeared to me but womanish counsels, which I would have blushed  to obey.  Yet they were from thee, and I knew it not.  I thought  that thou wast silent and that it was only she who spoke.  Yet it  was through her that thou didst not keep silence toward me; and in  rejecting her counsel I was rejecting thee -- I, her son, "the son  of thy handmaid, thy servant."[49]  But I did not realize this,  and rushed on headlong with such blindness that, among my friends,  I was ashamed to be less shameless than they, when I heard them  boasting of their disgraceful exploits -- yes, and glorying all  the more the worse their baseness was.  What is worse, I took  pleasure in such exploits, not for the pleasure's sake only but  mostly for praise.  What is worthy of vituperation except vice  itself?  Yet I made myself out worse than I was, in order that I  might not go lacking for praise.  And when in anything I had not  sinned as the worst ones in the group, I would still say that I  had done what I had not done, in order not to appear contemptible  because I was more innocent than they; and not to drop in their  esteem because I was more chaste.      8.  Behold with what companions I walked the streets of  Babylon!  I rolled in its mire and lolled about on it, as if on a  bed of spices and precious ointments.  And, drawing me more  closely to the very center of that city, my invisible enemy trod  me down and seduced me, for I was easy to seduce.  My mother had  already fled out of the midst of Babylon[50] and was progressing,  albeit slowly, toward its outskirts.  For in counseling me to  chastity, she did not bear in mind what her husband had told her  about me.  And although she knew that my passions were destructive  even then and dangerous for the future, she did not think they  should be restrained by the bonds of conjugal affection -- if,  indeed, they could not be cut away to the quick.  She took no heed  of this, for she was afraid lest a wife should prove a hindrance  and a burden to my hopes.  These were not her hopes of the world  to come, which my mother had in thee, but the hope of learning,  which both my parents were too anxious that I should acquire -- my  father, because he had little or no thought of thee, and only vain  thoughts for me; my mother, because she thought that the usual  course of study would not only be no hindrance but actually a  furtherance toward my eventual return to thee.  This much I  conjecture, recalling as well as I can the temperaments of my  parents.  Meantime, the reins of discipline were slackened on me,  so that without the restraint of due severity, I might play at  whatsoever I fancied, even to the point of dissoluteness.  And in  all this there was that mist which shut out from my sight the  brightness of thy truth, O my God; and my iniquity bulged out, as  it were, with fatness![51]


                      CHAPTER IV

 9.  Theft is punished by thy law, O Lord, and by the law  written in men's hearts, which not even ingrained wickedness can  erase.  For what thief will tolerate another thief stealing from  him?  Even a rich thief will not tolerate a poor thief who is  driven to theft by want.  Yet I had a desire to commit robbery,  and did so, compelled to it by neither hunger nor poverty, but  through a contempt for well-doing and a strong impulse to  iniquity.  For I pilfered something which I already had in  sufficient measure, and of much better quality.  I did not desire  to enjoy what I stole, but only the theft and the sin itself.      There was a pear tree close to our own vineyard, heavily  laden with fruit, which was not tempting either for its color or  for its flavor.  Late one night -- having prolonged our games in  the streets until then, as our bad habit was -- a group of young  scoundrels, and I among them, went to shake and rob this tree.  We  carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to  dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves.   Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden.  Such  was my heart, O God, such was my heart -- which thou didst pity  even in that bottomless pit.  Behold, now let my heart confess to  thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously  wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself.  It was  foul, and I loved it.  I loved my own undoing.  I loved my error  -- not that for which I erred but the error itself.  A depraved  soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself,  seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself.


                       CHAPTER V

 10.  Now there is a comeliness in all beautiful bodies, and  in gold and silver and all things.  The sense of touch has its own  power to please and the other senses find their proper objects in  physical sensation.  Worldly honor also has its own glory, and so  do the powers to command and to overcome: and from these there  springs up the desire for revenge.  Yet, in seeking these  pleasures, we must not depart from thee, O Lord, nor deviate from  thy law.  The life which we live here has its own peculiar  attractiveness because it has a certain measure of comeliness of  its own and a harmony with all these inferior values.  The bond of  human friendship has a sweetness of its own, binding many souls  together as one.  Yet because of these values, sin is committed,  because we have an inordinate preference for these goods of a  lower order and neglect the better and the higher good --  neglecting thee, O our Lord God, and thy truth and thy law.  For  these inferior values have their delights, but not at all equal to  my God, who hath made them all.  For in him do the righteous  delight and he is the sweetness of the upright in heart.      11.  When, therefore, we inquire why a crime was committed,  we do not accept the explanation unless it appears that there was  the desire to obtain some of those values which we designate  inferior, or else a fear of losing them.  For truly they are  beautiful and comely, though in comparison with the superior and  celestial goods they are abject and contemptible.  A man has  murdered another man -- what was his motive?  Either he desired  his wife or his property or else he would steal to support  himself; or else he was afraid of losing something to him; or  else, having been injured, he was burning to be revenged.  Would a  man commit murder without a motive, taking delight simply in the  act of murder?  Who would believe such a thing?  Even for that  savage and brutal man [Catiline], of whom it was said that he was  gratuitously wicked and cruel, there is still a motive assigned to  his deeds.  "Lest through idleness," he says, "hand or heart  should grow inactive."[52]  And to what purpose?  Why, even this:  that, having once got possession of the city through his practice  of his wicked ways, he might gain honors, empire, and wealth, and  thus be exempt from the fear of the laws and from financial  difficulties in supplying the needs of his family -- and from the  consciousness of his own wickedness.  So it seems that even  Catiline himself loved not his own villainies, but something else,  and it was this that gave him the motive for his crimes.


                      CHAPTER VI

 12.  What was it in you, O theft of mine, that I, poor  wretch, doted on -- you deed of darkness -- in that sixteenth year  of my age?  Beautiful you were not, for you were a theft.  But are  you anything at all, so that I could analyze the case with you?   Those pears that we stole were fair to the sight because they were  thy creation, O Beauty beyond compare, O Creator of all, O thou  good God -- God the highest good and my true good.[53]  Those  pears were truly pleasant to the sight, but it was not for them  that my miserable soul lusted, for I had an abundance of better  pears.  I stole those simply that I might steal, for, having  stolen them, I threw them away.  My sole gratification in them was  my own sin, which I was pleased to enjoy; for, if any one of these  pears entered my mouth, the only good flavor it had was my sin in  eating it.  And now, O Lord my God, I ask what it was in that  theft of mine that caused me such delight; for behold it had no  beauty of its own -- certainly not the sort of beauty that exists  in justice and wisdom, nor such as is in the mind, memory senses,  and the animal life of man; nor yet the kind that is the glory and  beauty of the stars in their courses; nor the beauty of the earth,  or the sea -- teeming with spawning life, replacing in birth that  which dies and decays.  Indeed, it did not have that false and  shadowy beauty which attends the deceptions of vice.      13.  For thus we see pride wearing the mask of high- spiritedness, although only thou, O God, art high above all.   Ambition seeks honor and glory, whereas only thou shouldst be  honored above all, and glorified forever.  The powerful man seeks  to be feared, because of his cruelty; but who ought really to be  feared but God only?  What can be forced away or withdrawn out of  his power -- when or where or whither or by whom?  The enticements  of the wanton claim the name of love; and yet nothing is more  enticing than thy love, nor is anything loved more healthfully  than thy truth, bright and beautiful above all.  Curiosity prompts  a desire for knowledge, whereas it is only thou who knowest all  things supremely.  Indeed, ignorance and foolishness themselves go  masked under the names of simplicity and innocence; yet there is  no being that has true simplicity like thine, and none is innocent  as thou art.  Thus it is that by a sinner's own deeds he is  himself harmed.  Human sloth pretends to long for rest, but what  sure rest is there save in the Lord?  Luxury would fain be called  plenty and abundance; but thou art the fullness and unfailing  abundance of unfading joy.  Prodigality presents a show of  liberality; but thou art the most lavish giver of all good things.   Covetousness desires to possess much; but thou art already the  possessor of all things.  Envy contends that its aim is for  excellence; but what is so excellent as thou?  Anger seeks  revenge; but who avenges more justly than thou?  Fear recoils at  the unfamiliar and the sudden changes which threaten things  beloved, and is wary for its own security; but what can happen  that is unfamiliar or sudden to thee?  Or who can deprive thee of  what thou lovest?  Where, really, is there unshaken security save  with thee?  Grief languishes for things lost in which desire had  taken delight, because it wills to have nothing taken from it,  just as nothing can be taken from thee.      14.  Thus the soul commits fornication when she is turned  from thee,[54] and seeks apart from thee what she cannot find pure  and untainted until she returns to thee.  All things thus imitate  thee -- but pervertedly -- when they separate themselves far from  thee and raise themselves up against thee.  But, even in this act  of perverse imitation, they acknowledge thee to be the Creator of  all nature, and recognize that there is no place whither they can  altogether separate themselves from thee.  What was it, then, that  I loved in that theft?  And wherein was I imitating my Lord, even  in a corrupted and perverted way?  Did I wish, if only by gesture,  to rebel against thy law, even though I had no power to do so  actually -- so that, even as a captive, I might produce a sort of  counterfeit liberty, by doing with impunity deeds that were  forbidden, in a deluded sense of omnipotence?  Behold this servant  of thine, fleeing from his Lord and following a shadow!  O  rottenness!  O monstrousness of life and abyss of death!  Could I  find pleasure only in what was unlawful, and only because it was  unlawful?