These things I then knew not, and I loved
these lower beauties, and I was sinking to the very depths, and
to my friends I said, "Do we love any thing but the beautiful?
What then is the beautiful? And what is beauty? What is it that
attracts and wins us to the things we love? For unless there were
in them a grace and beauty, they could by no means draw us unto
them." And I marked and perceived that in bodies themselves,
there was a beauty, from their forming a sort of whole, and again,
another from apt and mutual correspondence, as of a part of the
body with its whole, or a shoe with a foot, and the like. And
this consideration sprang up in my mind, out of my inmost heart,
and I wrote "on the fair and fit," I think, two or three
books. Thou knowest, O Lord, for it is gone from me; for I have
them not, but they are strayed from me, I know not how.
But what moved me, O Lord my God, to dedicate these books unto
Hierius, an orator of Rome, whom I knew not by face, but loved
for the fame of his learning which was eminent in him, and some
words of his I had heard, which pleased me? But more did he please
me, for that he pleased others, who highly extolled him, amazed
that out of a Syrian, first instructed in Greek eloquence, should
afterwards be formed a wonderful Latin orator, and one most learned
in things pertaining unto philosophy. One is commended, and, unseen,
he is loved: doth this love enter the heart of the hearer from
the mouth of the commender? Not so. But by one who loveth is another
kindled. For hence he is loved who is commended, when the commender
is believed to extol him with an unfeigned heart; that is, when
one that loves him, praises him.
For so did I then love men, upon the judgment of men, not Thine,
O my God, in whom no man is deceived. But yet why not for qualities,
like those of a famous charioteer, or fighter with beasts in the
theatre, known far and wide by a vulgar popularity, but far otherwise,
and earnestly, and so as I would be myself commended? For I would
not be commended or loved, as actors are (though I myself did
commend and love them), but had rather be unknown, than so known;
and even hated, than so loved. Where now are the impulses to such
various and divers kinds of loves laid up in one soul? Why, since
we are equally men, do I love in another what, if I did not hate,
I should not spurn and cast from myself? For it holds not, that
as a good horse is loved by him, who would not, though he might,
be that horse, therefore the same may be said of an actor, who
shares our nature. Do I then love in a man, what I hate to be,
who am a man? Man himself is a great deep, whose very hairs Thou
numberest, O Lord, and they fall not to the ground without Thee.
And yet are the hairs of his head easier to be numbered than his
feelings, and the beatings of his heart.
But that orator was of that sort whom I loved, as wishing to be
myself such; and I erred through a swelling pride, and was tossed
about with every wind, but yet was steered by Thee, though very
secretly. And whence do I know, and whence do I confidently confess
unto Thee, that I had loved him more for the love of his commenders,
than for the very things for which he was commended? Because,
had he been unpraised, and these self-same men had dispraised
him, and with dispraise and contempt told the very same things
of him, I had never been so kindled and excited to love him. And
yet the things had not been other, nor he himself other; but only
the feelings of the relators. See where the impotent soul lies
along, that is not yet stayed up by the solidity of truth! Just
as the gales of tongues blow from the breast of the opinionative,
so is it carried this way and that, driven forward and backward,
and the light is overclouded to it, and the truth unseen. And
lo, it is before us. And it was to me a great matter, that my
discourse and labours should be known to that man: which should
he approve, I were the more kindled; but if he disapproved, my
empty heart, void of Thy solidity, had been wounded. And yet the
"fair and fit," whereon I wrote to him, I dwelt on with
pleasure, and surveyed it, and admired it, though none joined
therein.
But I saw not yet, whereon this weighty matter turned in Thy wisdom,
O Thou Omnipotent, who only doest wonders; and my mind ranged
through corporeal forms; and "fair," I defined and distinguished
what is so in itself, and "fit," whose beauty is in
correspondence to some other thing: and this I supported by corporeal
examples. And I turned to the nature of the mind, but the false
notion which I had of spiritual things, let me not see the truth.
Yet the force of truth did of itself flash into mine eyes, and
I turned away my panting soul from incorporeal substance to lineaments,
and colours, and bulky magnitudes. And not being able to see these
in the mind, I thought I could not see my mind. And whereas in
virtue I loved peace, and in viciousness I abhorred discord; in
the first I observed a unity, but in the other, a sort of division.
And in that unity I conceived the rational soul, and the nature
of truth and of the chief good to consist; but in this division
I miserably imagined there to be some unknown substance of irrational
life, and the nature of the chief evil, which should not only
be a substance, but real life also, and yet not derived from Thee,
O my God, of whom are all things. And yet that first I called
a Monad, as it had been a soul without sex; but the latter a Duad;--anger,
in deeds of violence, and in flagitiousness, lust; not knowing
whereof I spake. For I had not known or learned that neither was
evil a substance, nor our soul that chief and unchangeable good.
For as deeds of violence arise, if that emotion of the soul be
corrupted, whence vehement action springs, stirring itself insolently
and unrulily; and lusts, when that affection of the soul is ungoverned,
whereby carnal pleasures are drunk in, so do errors and false
opinions defile the conversation, if the reasonable soul itself
be corrupted; as it was then in me, who knew not that it must
be enlightened by another light, that it may be partaker of truth,
seeing itself is not that nature of truth. For Thou shalt light
my candle, O Lord my God, Thou shalt enlighten my darkness: and
of Thy fulness have we all received, for Thou art the true light
that lighteth every man that cometh into the world; for in Thee
there is no variableness, neither shadow of change.