Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 68/87

Great is the force in those evils which compel a man—even, according to them, a wise man—to take from himself that which makes him a man; for they say, and say truly, that this is in a manner the first and greatest voice of nature, that a man be reconciled to himself and therefore naturally flee death, being so a friend to himself that he vehemently wishes and desires to be a living being and to live in this conjunction of body and soul. Great is the force in those evils by which this sense of nature is overcome, whereby death is in every way avoided with all one's strength and endeavors, and is so overcome that what was being avoided is wished for and sought, and, if it cannot be brought about from elsewhere, is inflicted by the man himself upon himself. Great is the force in those evils which make fortitude a murderer;

if indeed it is still to be called fortitude, which is so overcome by these evils that it not only cannot guard, through patience, the man whom, like a virtue, it undertook to rule and protect, but is itself moreover compelled to slay him. The wise man ought indeed to bear even death patiently, but death that befalls from elsewhere. But according to these men, if he is compelled to inflict it upon himself, surely it must be confessed by them that not only are these evils, but they are even intolerable evils which compel him to perpetrate this.

This life, therefore, which is either pressed down by the burdens of such great and grievous evils or subject to their chances, would by no means be called happy, if the men who say this would, just as, vanquished by evils growing ever heavier when they bring death upon themselves, they yield to misfortune, so also, vanquished by sure reasonings when they seek the happy life, deign to yield to the truth, and would not think that in this mortal state there is the end of the highest good to rejoice in—where the very virtues, than which nothing better and more useful is here certainly found in man, the greater aids they are against the force of dangers, labors, and pains, the more faithful witnesses they are of miseries. For if they are true virtues, which cannot exist except in those in whom true piety is present:

they do not profess that they can bring it about that the men in whom they are should suffer no miseries (for true virtues are not lying, as to profess this), but that human life, which is compelled to be miserable by so many and so great evils of this age, may be happy in the hope of the age to come, just as it is also safe. For how is that happy which is not yet safe? Whence also the apostle Paul, not concerning imprudent, impatient, intemperate, and unjust men, but concerning those who lived according to true piety and therefore had the virtues which they had as true ones, says: For by hope we have been made safe. But hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man sees, why does he also hope for? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it through patience.

As therefore by hope we have been made safe, so by hope we have been made happy; and just as we do not yet hold salvation present but await it as future, so also we do not hold blessedness present but await it as future, and this through patience; because we are amid evils which we ought patiently to endure, until we come to those goods where there will be all things in which we may ineffably delight, and there will be nothing which we must any longer endure. Such salvation, which will be in the age to come, will itself also be the final blessedness. This blessedness these philosophers, because they do not see it and are unwilling to believe it, strive to fabricate for themselves here, a most false one, with a virtue as much more mendacious as it is more proud. CHAPTER V. Of the social life, which, though it is most to be desired, is often overturned by many offenses.

But that they hold the wise man's life to be social, we approve far more abundantly. For whence would this City of God—of which we are now handling in our hands the nineteenth book of this work—either be begun in its rising, or proceed in its course, or attain its due ends, if the life of the saints were not social? But amid the hardship of this mortality, with how many and how great evils human society abounds, who could enumerate? Who could be sufficient to estimate it? Let them hear, among their own comic poets, a man saying with the perception and consent of all men: 'I took a wife; what misery I saw there! Children were born—another care.' What likewise of those vices which the same Terence recounts in love—'wrongs, suspicions, enmities, war, then peace again':

have they not everywhere filled human affairs? Have they not for the most part befallen even the honorable loves of friends? Everywhere human affairs are full of these, where we feel wrongs, suspicions, enmities, war—evils that are certain; but peace an uncertain good, since we do not know the hearts of those with whom we wish to keep it, and even if today we could know them, we should certainly not know what sort they would be tomorrow. Who, moreover, are wont or ought to be more friendly to one another than those who are even contained within one household? And yet who is secure even there, when so often such great evils have arisen from the secret plots of those within—evils all the more bitter as the peace was sweeter which was thought to be true, while it was most craftily feigned?

On account of which it touches the hearts of all so as to force them into a groan, that which Tully says: 'There are no more hidden plots than those which lurk in the pretense of duty or under some name of close relationship. For him who is openly an adversary you could easily avoid by being on guard; but this hidden, internal, and domestic evil not only exists but even crushes you before you could foresee and explore it.' On account of which also that divine utterance:

'And a man's foes are those of his own household,' which is heard with great grief of heart, because, even if anyone be so brave that he bears it with an even mind, or so vigilant that he guards against it with provident counsel what feigned friendship contrives against him, yet by the wickedness of those treacherous men, when he experiences them to be most evil, if he himself is good, he must needs be grievously tormented—whether they were always evil and feigned themselves good, or were changed from goodness into that malice. If, then, the household, the common refuge amid these evils of the human race, is not safe, what of the city, which, the greater it is, the more its forum is full of suits both civil and criminal—even if there be not turbulent,

and very often even bloody, seditions and civil wars, from whose occurrences cities are sometimes free, but from whose dangers never? CHAPTER VI. Of the error of human judgments, when the truth is hidden. What of the very judgments of men concerning men, which cannot be lacking to cities even while they remain in however great a peace—of what sort do we think they are, how miserable, how lamentable? Since indeed those judge who cannot discern the consciences of those concerning whom they judge. Whence they are often compelled, by the tortures of innocent witnesses, to seek out the truth pertaining to another's case.

What when each man is tortured in his own case and, when it is asked whether he is guilty, the innocent man is tortured and suffers the most certain penalties for an uncertain crime—not because it is detected that he committed it, but because it is not known that he did not commit it? And on this account the ignorance of the judge is for the most part the calamity of the innocent. And what is more intolerable and more to be bewailed and to be bathed, if it could be, in fountains of tears: when the judge tortures the accused for this very reason, lest he should unknowingly slay an innocent man, it comes about through the misery of ignorance that he slays both the tortured and the innocent man whom he had tortured lest he should slay him innocent. For if, according to the wisdom of these men, he chooses to flee from this life rather than to endure those torments any longer, he says that he committed what he did not commit.

And when he has been condemned and slain, the judge still does not know whether he has slain a guilty or an innocent man, whom he had tortured lest he should unknowingly slay him innocent; and on this account he both tortured the innocent man in order to know, and slew him while not knowing. In these shadows of social life, will that wise judge sit in judgment, or will he not dare? He will plainly sit. For human society constrains him and drags him to this office, which he deems it a sin to forsake. For he does not deem it a sin that innocent witnesses are tortured in others' cases; that those who are arraigned, for the most part overcome by the force of pain and confessing falsely about themselves, are even punished though innocent, when they have already been tortured though innocent; that, even if they are not punished by death, they very often die amid or from the very torments;

that sometimes even the accusers themselves, perhaps wishing to be of service to human society lest crimes go unpunished, and being unable to prove what they allege—the witnesses lying and the accused himself holding out inhumanly against the torments and not confessing—although they alleged true things, are condemned by a judge who does not know. These evils, so many and so great, he does not reckon as sins; for the wise judge does these things not with the will to harm, but by the necessity of not knowing, and yet, because human society compels him, also by the necessity of judging. This, then, is what we call the misery, at least, of man, even if not the malice of the wise man.

Or rather, by the necessity of not knowing and of judging, does he torture the innocent, punish the innocent—and is it too little for him that he is not guilty, unless he be also happy besides? How much more considerately and in a manner more worthy of a man does he acknowledge in this necessity his misery, and hate it in himself, and—if he is piously wise—cry out to God: 'Deliver me from my necessities!' CHAPTER VII. Of the diversity of languages, by which the society of men is sundered, and of the misery of wars, even those that are called just. After the city or town there follows the world, in which they place the third grade of human society, beginning from the household and thence advancing to the city, then coming to the world; which, like a heap of waters, the greater it is, the more full of dangers it is.

In which, first, the diversity of languages estranges man from man. For if two men meet one another and are compelled by some necessity not to pass by but to be together, neither of whom knows the other's language: more easily do dumb animals, even of different kinds, associate with one another than they, though both be men. For when they cannot communicate to one another what they perceive, on account of the mere diversity of language, so great a likeness of nature is of no avail toward associating men; so that a man would more gladly be with his dog than with a foreign man.

But, it is said, effort was expended so that the imperial city might impose upon the subjugated nations through the peace of fellowship not only her yoke but also her language, so that there should be no lack—indeed an abundance—of interpreters. True; but at the cost of how many and how great wars, what slaughter of men, what shedding of human blood was this purchased? And when these were done, still the misery of those same evils was not at an end. For although there have not been wanting, and are not wanting, foreign nations as enemies, against whom wars have ever been waged and are being waged:

yet the very vastness of the empire has given birth to wars of a worse kind, namely social and civil wars, by which the human race is shaken more wretchedly still—whether when war is being waged that men may at length find rest, or when it is feared that they may rise up again. Of these evils, with their many and manifold disasters, their hard and dire necessities, should I wish to speak as is fitting—though I can in no way do so as the matter demands—what limit would there be to so prolix a discussion? But, they say, the wise man will wage just wars. As though, if he remembers that he is a man, he would not far rather grieve that the necessity of just wars has befallen him; for unless they were just, he would not have to wage them, and therefore for the wise man there would be no wars at all.

For it is the iniquity of the opposing side that lays upon the wise man wars to be justly waged; and this iniquity is surely to be grieved over by man, because it is man's, even if no necessity of warring were to arise from it. Whoever, then, considers with grief these evils, so great, so horrible, so savage, let him acknowledge his misery; but whoever either endures or contemplates them without anguish of soul, all the more wretchedly does he reckon himself blessed, precisely because he has lost even human feeling. CHAPTER VIII. That the friendship of the good cannot be secure, so long as amid the dangers of this life we must needs be anxious.

But if there does not befall us a certain ignorance resembling madness—which nevertheless in the wretched condition of this life often does befall us, so that one who is an enemy is believed to be a friend, or one who is a friend is believed to be an enemy—what consoles us in this human society, so full of errors and afflictions, save the unfeigned faith and mutual love of true and good friends? And the more of these we have, and in the more places, the more widely and far do we fear lest some evil befall them out of the vast heaps of this world's woes. For we are anxious not only lest they be afflicted by famine, by wars, by diseases, by captivities, lest in that same servitude they suffer such things as we are not able even to conceive;

but also, where the fear is far more bitter, lest they be changed into faithlessness, malice, and wickedness. And when these things happen—the more, surely, the more numerous our friends are—and are brought to our knowledge, who, save one who feels such things, can perceive with what scourges our heart is burned? Indeed we would rather hear that they were dead, although even this we cannot hear without grief. For of those whose life delighted us through the solace of friendship, how can it be that their death should bring us no sorrow?

Let whoever forbids this grief forbid, if he can, friendly conversations; let him interdict or cut off all friendly affection; let him with pitiless insensibility burst the bonds of all human relationships, or so decree that they be used that no sweetness from them may steep the soul. But if this can in no way be done, how shall it come to pass that the death of one whose life is sweet should not be bitter to us? For from this comes also that mourning—a kind of wound or sore of a heart that is not inhuman—for the healing of which the kindly services of consolation are applied. For it is not that there is nothing to be healed, simply because the better the soul, the more swiftly and easily it is healed therein.

Since, then, by the deaths even of those most dear to us—especially of such as render services necessary to human society—the life of mortals is afflicted, now more gently, now more harshly: yet we would rather hear or see those whom we love dead, than fallen from faith or from good morals, that is, dead in the very soul. Of which vast material of evils the earth is full, for which reason it is written: Is not the life of man upon earth a temptation? and for which the Lord Himself says: Woe to the world because of offences, and again: Because iniquity hath abounded, He says, the charity of many shall grow cold.

From which it comes about that we congratulate good friends when they die; and although their death saddens us, that very death more surely consoles us, because they have been freed from the evils by which in this life even good men are either worn down, or depraved, or imperilled in both ways. CHAPTER IX. Of the friendship of the holy angels, which cannot be made manifest to man in this world because of the deceitfulness of the demons, into whose snares those fell who thought many gods were to be worshipped.

But in the society of the holy angels—which those philosophers who wished us to have the gods as friends set in the fourth place, as it were coming to the universe from the round of the earth, that so they might in a certain manner embrace also heaven—we surely in no way fear lest such friends should sadden us either by their death or by their depravation. But because they are not mingled with us in that familiarity by which men are (which itself also belongs to the afflictions of this life), and because sometimes Satan, as we read, transforms himself as it were into an angel of light, to tempt those whom it is needful either to instruct or just to deceive:

the great mercy of God is necessary, lest anyone, when he thinks he has good angels as friends, should have evil demons as feigned friends, and should suffer as his enemies these who are the more harmful in proportion as they are the more cunning and deceitful. And to whom is this great mercy of God necessary, save to great human misery, which is so weighed down by such ignorance that it is easily deceived by the dissembling of these demons? And that those philosophers in the impious city, who said the gods were their friends, fell among malignant demons, is most certain—demons to whom that whole city is subject, and with whom it shall have everlasting punishment.

For from their sacred rites—or rather sacrileges—by which they thought such demons were to be worshipped, and from the most filthy games, where the crimes of those demons are celebrated, by which they thought them to be appeased, with these very demons themselves as the authors and exacters of such great disgraces, it is made plain enough by those who are worshipped what they are. CHAPTER X. What fruit is gained by the saints from overcoming the temptation of this life. But neither are the saints and faithful worshippers of the one true and supreme God secure from their deceits and manifold temptation. For in this place of weakness and in these evil days, even this anxiety is not without profit, that that security, where peace is fullest and most certain, may be sought with a more fervent longing.

For there shall be the gifts of nature, that is, those which are bestowed on our nature by the Creator of all natures, not only good but also everlasting—not only in the soul, which is healed through wisdom, but also in the body, which shall be renewed by resurrection; there shall be virtues, contending no longer against any vices or evils whatsoever, but possessing as the prize of victory eternal peace, which no adversary may disturb. For this is the final blessedness, this the end of perfection, which has no end to consume it. Here, indeed, we are called blessed when we have peace, however little of it can be had here in a good life; but this blessedness, compared with that which we call final, is found to be utter misery.

This peace, then, such as can be had here, while we mortal men dwell among mortal things, virtue rightly uses its goods, if we live rightly; but when we do not have it, virtue uses well even the evils which a man suffers. But that is true virtue, when it refers both all the goods which it uses well, and whatever it does in the good use of goods and evils, and its very self, to that end where we shall have such and so great a peace, than which there can be none better or greater. CHAPTER XI. Of the blessedness of eternal peace, in which is the end of the saints, that is, true perfection.

Wherefore we might say that the end of our goods is peace, even as we have said it is eternal life, especially since to the city of God itself, concerning which this most laborious discussion of ours is, it is said in the holy psalm: Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Zion; for He hath strengthened the bars of thy gates, He hath blessed thy children within thee, who hath set thy borders peace. For when the bars of her gates have been strengthened, none shall any more enter into her, nor any go forth from her. And on this account we ought here to understand her borders to be that peace which we wish to demonstrate to be final. For the very mystical name of this city, that is, Jerusalem, which we have also already said, is interpreted 'vision of peace.'

But since the name of peace is frequently used even in these mortal things, where assuredly there is no eternal life, on that account we have preferred to call the end of this city, where its supreme good shall be, eternal life rather than peace. Of which end the Apostle says: But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end life everlasting.

But again, since eternal life may be taken, by those who have no familiarity with the holy Scriptures, to mean even the life of the wicked—whether according to certain philosophers because of the immortality of the soul, or according even to our faith because of the unending punishments of the impious, who certainly cannot be tormented eternally unless they also live eternally—therefore the end of this city, in which it shall have its supreme good, must be called either peace in eternal life, or eternal life in peace, so that it may the more easily be understood by all. For so great is the good of peace, that even in earthly and mortal things nothing is wont to be heard with more pleasure, nothing desired more longingly, nothing finally can be found better.

And if we should wish to speak of it somewhat longer, we shall not, as I judge, be burdensome to our readers, both on account of the end of this city, of which we are speaking, and on account of the very sweetness of peace, which is dear to all. CHAPTER XII. That even the savagery of those who wage war, and all the disquietudes of men, desire to attain the end of peace, since there is no nature without an appetite for it. For whoever surveys with me, in whatever way, human affairs and our common nature, recognizes this: that just as there is no one who does not wish to rejoice, so there is no one who does not wish to have peace. Since indeed even those who wish for wars wish nothing else than to conquer; therefore by warring they desire to attain a glorious peace. For what else is victory but the subjection of those who resist?

And when this has been accomplished, there will be peace. Wars therefore are waged with the aim of peace, even by those who are eager to exercise warlike valour by commanding and fighting. Whence it is evident that peace is the desired end of war. For every man, even in waging war, seeks peace; but no one in making peace seeks war. For even those who wish to disturb the peace in which they are do not hate peace, but desire it to be changed according to their own pleasure. They do not, then, wish there to be no peace, but that it should be the peace they wish. Finally, even if by sedition they have separated themselves from others, they accomplish not what they intend unless they keep some semblance of peace with their own fellow-conspirators and confederates.

Accordingly, robbers themselves, that they may more violently and safely be hostile to the peace of others, wish to have peace with their associates. And even if one be so pre-eminent in strength and so wary of accomplices that he commits himself to no associate, but lying in wait alone and overpowering, and after his victims are crushed and slain carries off his spoils—yet with those at least whom he cannot kill, and from whom he wishes to hide what he does, he keeps some shadow of peace. And in his own house, with his wife and children, and any others he may have there, he certainly strives to be at peace; for in their obeying his nod he doubtless takes delight.

For if it is not done, he is indignant, he chides, he punishes, and he composes the peace of his house, if it be so necessary, even by raging—a peace which he perceives cannot exist unless all the rest in that same domestic fellowship be subject to some head, which in his own house is himself. And therefore, if the servitude of a greater number, of a city or a nation, were offered to him, so that they should serve him as he wished to be served in his own house, he would no longer hide himself as a robber in dens, but would raise himself up as a conspicuous king, though the same greed and malice remained in him. All men, then, desire to have peace with their own, whom they wish to live according to their own pleasure. For even those against whom they wage war they wish, if they can, to make their own, and to impose upon them, when subdued, the laws of their own peace.

But let us imagine someone such as poetic and fabulous narration sings of, whom perhaps on account of his very unsociable savagery they chose to call a half-man rather than a man. Although, then, his kingdom was the solitude of a dreadful cave, and his malice so singular that from it a name was found for him (for in Greek the evil is called 'kakos,' which is what he was called); though no wife brought to him and exchanged with him sweet words, nor did he play with any little children or command any older ones, nor enjoy the conversation of any friend, nor of his father Vulcan (in which alone he was not a little more fortunate than his father, in that he did not himself beget such a monster); though he gave nothing to anyone, but from whomever he could carried off whatever he wished, and when he could, and as he wished:

yet in his own solitary cave, whose floor, as it is described, 'was ever warm with fresh slaughter,' he wished for nothing other than a peace in which no one should be troublesome to him, and the violence of no power should disturb his quiet. With his own body, in fine, he desired to have peace, and in so far as he had it, so far was it well with him. For he gave commands while his members obeyed; and that he might pacify his mortality, which rebelled against him out of want and stirred up the sedition of hunger to dissolve and shut out the soul from the body, he with all the haste he could would seize, kill, and devour; and though monstrous and savage, yet for the peace of his own life and safety he took counsel, monstrously and savagely though it was:

and on this account, if he had been willing to have also with others the peace which he was at pains enough to have in his own cave and in himself, he would have been called neither evil nor a monster nor a half-man. Or if the shape of his body and the vomiting forth of black fires deterred human society from him, perhaps he raged not from a desire of doing harm, but from the necessity of living. But this fellow may never have existed at all; or, what is rather to be believed, he was not such as he is described with poetic vanity; for unless Cacus were too much accused, Hercules would be too little praised. Such a man, then, or half-man, is better believed, as I said, not to have existed, like many fictions of the poets.

For the very most savage beasts—from whom he had part of his ferocity (for he was even called half-beast)—guard their own kind by a certain peace, by mating, begetting, bringing forth, by cherishing and nourishing their young, even though most of them are unsociable and solitary—not, that is, like sheep, deer, doves, starlings, bees, but like lions, foxes, eagles, owls. For what tigress does not gently purr over her cubs, and, laying aside her ferocity, fondle them with tenderness? What kite, however solitary it may circle in search of prey, does not couple in marriage, build a nest, brood over its eggs, feed its young, and, as it were with the mother of its family, preserve a domestic fellowship with all the peace it can?