Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 45 part 3/6

'You have moved me to laughter,' he said, 'as though I had said that what the wise man does is with God. What is with God is that which he knows.' — 'Does not the wise man know,' I said, 'his book, his cloak, his tunic, his furniture, if he has any, and the rest of that kind, which even fools know well?' — 'I confess,' he said, 'that to know a tunic and to know a cloak is not to be with God.' — 'This then,' I said, 'is what you say: that not everything which the wise man knows is with God, but that nevertheless whatever of the wise man's is with God, that the wise man knows.' — 'Excellently,' he said; 'for whatever he knows by that bodily sense is not with God, but that which he perceives by the mind. Perhaps I even dare to say something more, but I will say it nonetheless; for with you as judges I shall either confirm it or learn.'

'Whoever knows those things alone which the sense of the body attains, seems to me to be not only not with God, but not even with himself.' — Here, when I had noticed Trygetius with such an expression on his face that he seemed to wish to say something in reply, but to be held back by modesty lest he should burst in as it were into another's place, I gave him leave, Licentius now falling silent, to bring forth what he wished. And he said: 'Those things which pertain to the senses of the body, no one at all seems to me to know. For it is one thing to sense, another to know. Wherefore, if we know anything, I think it is contained by the intellect alone and can be comprehended by that alone. Whence it comes about that, if that is with God which the wise man knows by understanding, the whole of what the wise man knows can be with God.'

When Licentius had approved this, he added another point which I could in no way despise. For he said: 'The wise man himself is entirely with God; for the wise man understands even himself. And this is concluded both from what I received from you — that that is with God which understands God — and from what has been said by us — that that is with God which is understood by the wise man. But that part of him through which he uses these senses — for I do not think it is to be reckoned in when we call him wise — I confess that I do not know, nor can I even conjecture at all of what kind it is.' — 'Do you deny then,' I said, 'that the wise man consists not only of body and soul, but even of the whole soul, if indeed to deny that this part, by which he uses the senses, belongs to the soul is the mark of a madman?'

'For it is not the eyes themselves or the ears, but I know not what other thing that senses through the eyes. Now if we do not grant this act of sensing to the intellect, we do not grant it to any part of the soul. It remains that it be attributed to the body — than which nothing meanwhile seems to me more absurd to be said.' — 'The soul of the wise man,' he said, 'thoroughly purged by the virtues and now cleaving to God, is worthy even of the name of the wise man, and nothing else of his does one delight to call "the wise man"; but nevertheless, certain, so to speak, filth and cast-off skins, as it were, from which he has cleansed himself and, as it were, withdrawn into himself, serve that soul — or, if this whole is to be called soul, they at least serve and are subject to that part of the soul which alone it is fitting to name wise.'

'In which subject part I think that memory itself also dwells. The wise man therefore uses this as a servant, so as to command it these things and, once it is now tamed and subdued, to impose upon it the bounds of law: so that, while he uses these senses for the sake of those things which now are necessary not to the wise man but to himself, he may not dare to exalt himself nor to be proud toward his master, nor to use even these things which belong to him at random and immoderately. For to that most worthless part can pertain those things which pass away. And to whom is memory necessary but to things passing away and, as it were, fleeing? That wise man therefore embraces God and enjoys him to the full — him who ever remains, and is not awaited that he may be, nor feared lest he fail, but by that very fact by which he truly is, is ever present.'

'But immovable, and remaining in himself, he takes care of his servant's peculium, as it were, so that he may use it well, as a thrifty and diligent household servant would, and guard it sparingly.' As I considered this opinion of his with admiration, I recalled that I myself had once said this very thing briefly in his hearing. Then, smiling, I said: 'Give thanks, Licentius, to this servant of yours, who, unless he had ministered to you something from his own peculium, you would now perhaps not have had wherewith to bring forth what you did. For if memory pertains to that part which yields itself as a maidservant to be ruled by the good mind, believe me, you have now been aided by it in order to say this.'

'Therefore, before I return to that matter of order — does it not seem to you that, precisely because of such things, that is, because of honorable and necessary disciplines, memory is needful to the wise man?' — 'Why,' he said, 'is memory needful, since he has and holds all his things present? For not even in sense itself do we call upon memory as a help for that which is before our eyes. To the wise man therefore, who has before those inner eyes of the intellect all things — that is, who gazes fixedly and immovably upon God himself, with whom are all things which the intellect sees and possesses — what need, I ask, is there of memory?'

'But that memory should be needful to me, for retaining these things which I had heard from you — I am not yet the master of that servant, but sometimes I serve him, sometimes I fight that I may not serve, and I dare, as it were, to claim myself into my own liberty; and if perchance at some time I command and he obeys me and often makes me think that I have conquered, in other matters again he so raises himself up that I lie wretched beneath his feet. Wherefore, when we inquire about the wise man, I do not wish you to name me.' — 'Nor me,' I said; 'but nevertheless, can that wise man of yours desert his own people, or in any way, while he governs this body in which he holds that servant bound by his law, abandon the duty of bestowing benefits upon those he can — and above all that which is most vehemently demanded of him, of teaching wisdom itself?'

'When he does this, in order to teach fittingly and be less inept, he often prepares something beforehand which, from his arrangement, he may utter and discuss — which, unless he has committed it to memory, must necessarily perish. Therefore either you will deny that the duties of benevolence belong to the wise man, or you will confess that certain things of the wise man are guarded by memory. Or perhaps he commits some of his affairs to be kept by that servant — not indeed for his own sake, but for the sake of his people, yet necessary to himself — so that the servant, as one sober and of his master's best training, may guard, not indeed what is his to guard except for the sake of leading fools to wisdom, but what nevertheless that master has commanded him to guard?'

'And I judge,' he said, 'that nothing at all is committed to this servant by the wise man, if indeed the wise man is ever fixed upon God, whether silent or speaking with men; but that servant, now well instructed, diligently guards what it may from time to time suggest to its master as he discusses, and, as to a most just one, may render its duty a welcome service — under whose power it sees itself to live — and does this not as it were by reasoning, but as that highest law and highest order prescribes.' — 'I now offer no resistance,' I said, 'to your reasonings, that what we have undertaken may rather be carried through. But about that matter — how it stands — we shall see at another time (for it is no small matter, nor contained in so small a discourse), when God himself shall have given opportunity by his order.'

'Now it has been defined what it is to be with God; and when it was said by me that that is with God which understands God, you also added something more — that there also are those things which are understood by the wise man. In which matter this much moves me: how you have suddenly placed folly together with God. For if whatever the wise man understands is with God, and folly cannot be escaped unless it is understood, then there will also be — a thing wicked to say — that pestilence together with God.' — Disturbed by this conclusion, when they had kept themselves for some while in silence, Trygetius said: 'Let him too answer, upon whose most opportune arrival for this disputation we did not, I think, congratulate ourselves rashly.' — Then Alypius: 'God grant better things!' he said;

'was so great a silence of mine at last being prepared for this? But my repose is now broken in upon. Yet now I will strive somehow to satisfy this question, once I have first looked ahead to what is to come and have obtained from you that you demand nothing further of me by way of this response.' — 'By no means,' I said, 'Alypius, does it befit your benevolence and humanity to deny to our discourse your voice, which has moreover been longed for. But only go on; accomplish what you have begun; the rest, as that order now stands, will come forth.' — 'Equally,' he said, 'I have to hope for better things concerning order, in whose defense you wished meanwhile to put me in your place.'

'But, if I am not mistaken, you thought that folly was, by that conclusion of yours, coupled with God by these men, because they said that all the things which the wise man understands are with God. But to what extent this is to be accepted, I now leave aside; attend a little to that reasoning of yours. For you said: "For if whatever the wise man understands is with God, and folly cannot be escaped unless it is understood" — as though indeed it were obscure that, before anyone shuns folly, he is not to be reckoned by the name of a wise man — and it was said that things understood by the wise man are with God. Since therefore, for the sake of avoiding folly, each one understands that same folly, he is not yet wise. But when he shall have become so, folly is not to be numbered among those things which he understands.'

'Wherefore, since those things which the wise man now understands are joined to God, folly will rightly be severed from God.' — 'Acutely indeed,' I said, 'as is your wont, Alypius, have you answered; but as though thrust into another man's straits. Yet since, as I think, you still deign to be a fool along with me, what shall we do if we happen upon some wise man who would gladly free us from so great an evil by teaching and disputing? For nothing, as I judge, shall I sooner entreat of him than that he show me what folly is, what kind of thing, of what character it is altogether. For about you I would not easily affirm it; yet it detains me so long, in so far as it is not understood by me. He will therefore say, on your authority:

"That I might teach you this, you ought to have come to me when I was a fool; but now you can be your own teachers, for I no longer understand folly." And if indeed I heard this from him, I would not be afraid to admonish the man to become our companion, and at the same time to seek another teacher. For although I do not fully understand folly, I nevertheless see that nothing is more foolish than this answer. But perhaps he will be ashamed either thus to leave us or to follow us. He will therefore dispute and will most copiously heap up the evils of folly. But we, providing well for ourselves, will either listen attentively to a man who does not know what he is saying, or believe that he knows that which he does not understand — or else folly is still, by the reasoning of those you have taken up, coupled to God.

'But there is nothing of the foregoing which I see can be defended: it remains therefore that the last option, which you do not wish, stands.' — 'I had never,' he said, 'perceived you to be envious. For if from these men whom, as you say, I have taken up, I had received any fee, as is customary, then, while you are too tenacious of this reasoning, I would just now be compelled to render it back to them. Wherefore let them be content either with this, that, while I labor with you, I have given them no little time to think it over; or, if these vanquished clients, by no fault of their own, gladly hearken to counsel, let them in this too yield to you now, and be more cautious in the rest.' — 'I will not despise,' I said, 'what Trygetius, making I know not what noise, was also desiring to say in your defense; and I will do it with your good leave;

'for perhaps you are not well instructed, since you have come recently and unexpectedly upon this business, so that, with patronage set aside, I may patiently hear them pleading their own cause, as I had begun.' — Then Trygetius, Licentius being now entirely absent, said: 'Take it however you please, and laugh at my folly. It does not seem to me that that ought to be called an understanding, by which folly itself is understood — folly which is either the sole or the greatest cause of not understanding.' — 'Not easily,' I said, 'do I refuse to accept that.

'For although I am much moved by what Alypius feels — how anyone can rightly teach of what sort a thing is which he does not understand, and how great a ruin it brings to the mind that it does not see with the mind (for it was surely attending to that which you said that he was afraid to speak, since that opinion is known to him even from the books of the learned) — yet, considering the bodily sense itself (for the soul uses even this, and it alone is, in a manner of speaking, a comparison with the intellect), I am led to say that no one can see darkness. Wherefore, if to understand is to the mind what to see is to the sense, and although anyone may have his eyes open, sound, and clear, yet cannot see darkness, it is not absurdly said that folly cannot be understood;

'for we name no other darkness of the mind. Nor will that now trouble us, how folly can be avoided while not understood. For as we avoid darkness with the eyes by the very fact that we are unwilling not to see, so whoever wishes to avoid folly, let him not try to understand it, but let him grieve, over those things which can be understood, that through this folly he does not understand them, and let him perceive that it is present to him — not in that he understands it the more, but in that he understands other things the less. But let us return to order, that Licentius may at length be restored to us. For this I now require of you: whether whatever a fool does seems to you to be done by order. For see what snares the question holds. If you say "by order," where will that definition be:

"order is that by which God does all things which are" — if even a fool does by order what he does? But if there is no order in these things which are done by the fool, there will be something which order does not hold; yet you wish neither. See, I beg, lest by the very defense of order you throw all things into confusion.' — Here again Trygetius — for that other was still entirely absent — said: 'It is easy, indeed, to answer this complex of yours; but for the present a simile fails me, by which I see that my opinion ought to be asserted and illustrated. Yet I will say what I feel; for you will do what you did a little while ago. For that reminder about darkness brought us no little light upon that which had been wrapped up by me.'

'For the whole life of fools, although through those fools themselves it is least consistent and least ordered, is nevertheless, through divine providence, necessarily included in the order of things, and, by places, as it were, disposed by that ineffable and everlasting law, is in no way allowed to be where it ought not to be. Thus it comes about that each one, considering it alone with a narrow mind, as though struck back by its great foulness, turns away from it. But if, raising and diffusing the eyes of the mind, he should at the same time survey all things universally, he will find nothing not ordered and always distinguished and disposed, as it were, in its own seats.' — 'How great,' I said, 'how wonderful an order of things — some hidden order, I know not what — does that God, and God himself (as I am led more and more to believe), answer me through you!

'For you say things which I neither see how they are said, nor understand how you see them; so I suspect that they are both true and profound. But some one thing similar for that opinion you were perhaps seeking. Yet to me now there occur innumerable things which draw me utterly toward consent. For what is more hideous than an executioner? What is more truculent and more grim than that mind of his? Yet among the very laws he holds a necessary place, and is inserted into the order of a well-regulated city, and is harmful in his own mind, but by another's order the punishment of the harmful. What can be said to be more sordid, more empty, fuller of disgrace and baseness, than prostitutes, pimps, and the rest of the plagues of this kind? Take away prostitutes from human affairs, and you will have thrown everything into confusion by lusts;

'set them in the place of matrons, and you will have defiled all with stain and disgrace. Thus therefore this kind of men is, through their own morals, most impure in life, but through the laws of order, most vile in condition. Are there not, in the bodies of living creatures, certain members which, if you attend to them alone, you could not attend to? Yet the order of nature willed neither that they be lacking, because they are necessary, nor permitted them to be prominent, because they are unseemly. These deformed things, nevertheless, by holding their own places, have yielded the better place to the better. What was sweeter to us, what more fitting as a spectacle for field and farmhouse, than that fight and clash of dunghill cocks, which we mentioned in the previous book? What, nevertheless, did we see more abject than the deformity of the one subdued?

'And yet through that very thing a more perfect beauty of that same contest had come forth. Such, I believe, are all things, but they require eyes. The solecisms and barbarisms, as they are called, poets have fallen in love with; and these, by changing their names, they prefer to call figures (schemata) and metaplasms rather than to flee them as manifest faults. Yet take these away from songs, and we shall miss the sweetest seasonings. Heap many of them into one place, and I shall loathe the whole as harsh, rank, and rancid. Transfer them into free and forensic speech, and who will not bid it flee and hide itself in the theaters? Order, therefore, governing and moderating these things, will suffer them to be neither too many with itself nor foreign anywhere at all.

'Speech, interposing certain lowly and, as it were, most unpolished passages, illuminates the very leaps and its own charming places. And if such speech should exist alone, you cast it aside as worthless; but if it be lacking, those beautiful things do not stand out, do not hold sway in their own regions and possessions, as it were, and stand in the way of their own proper light and confound the whole. Great thanks are due here too to order. Deceptive conclusions, creeping in little by little, either by diminishing or by adding, into assent to falsehood — who would not fear them, who would not hate them? Yet often in disputations, placed in fixed and fitting seats, they avail so much that, I know not how, through them the deception itself grows sweet. Will not this order too, here also, be praised?

'Now in music, in geometry, in the motions of the stars, in the necessities of numbers, order so holds sway that, if anyone should desire to see, as it were, its fountain and its very inmost sanctuary, he either finds it in these things, or is led through these things to it without any error.

'For such erudition, if anyone should use it with moderation — for nothing there is to be dreaded except excess — nourishes such a soldier of philosophy, or even a leader, that toward that highest measure, beyond which he can neither, ought not, nor desires to seek anything further, he may fly whither he wills and arrive, and may lead many thither; whence now, while he is held by human affairs themselves, he so despises them and so discerns all things, that in no way is he moved as to why one man should wish to have children and not have them, another be tormented by his wife's excessive fecundity; that this one should lack money, who

'is ready to bestow many things liberally, while over his buried hoard a lean and scurvy usurer broods; that luxury should scatter and squander ample patrimonies, while a beggar scarcely, weeping all day long, obtains a coin; that honor should exalt an unworthy man, while bright characters are hidden in the crowd. These and other things in the life of men compel men for the most part impiously to believe that we are governed by no order of divine providence; while others, pious and good and endowed with splendid genius, who can neither bring themselves to think that we are deserted by the most high God, and yet, disturbed as it were by so great a fog and confusion of things, see no order, and, wishing the most hidden causes to be laid bare to them, often bewail their errors even in verse.

If they were to ask only this — why the Italians always pray for mild winters, while our wretched Gaetulia is likewise always athirst — who would readily answer them? Or where among us would even a suspicion of that order be traced out? But for my part, if I can offer my friends any counsel, then, so far as it appears to me and so far as I perceive, I judge that they ought to be schooled in every discipline. For otherwise these matters can in no way be so understood as to become clearer than daylight. If, however, they are either too lazy, or preoccupied with other affairs, or already too hardened for learning, let them furnish themselves with the safeguards of faith, that by this bond He may draw them to Himself and free them from these dreadful and most tangled evils — He who suffers none who rightly believe in Him through the mysteries to perish.

For twofold is the way we follow when the obscurity of things stirs us: either reason or at all events authority. Philosophy promises reason, and sets free scarcely the very fewest.

Yet philosophy compels these few not merely not to despise those mysteries, but to understand them alone as they ought to be understood; and it has no other business — this true and, so to speak, genuine philosophy — than to teach what is the beginning of all things, a beginning without beginning, and how great an understanding abides in it, and what has flowed thence, without any degeneration, unto our salvation. This one omnipotent God, together with whom the thrice-powerful Father and Son and Holy Spirit are the venerable mysteries, which by a sincere and unshaken faith set the peoples free — philosophy proclaims neither confusedly, as certain men do, nor contumeliously, as many do.

But how great a thing this is — that so great a God deigned, for our sake, even to assume and to bear a body of this our race — the more lowly it seems, the more full it is of clemency, and the more remotely and loftily removed from a certain pride of the clever. As for the soul, whence it draws its origin, and what it does here, and how far it acts from God, and what it has that is its own, which alternates into either nature, and to what extent it dies and how it is proved immortal — of how great an order do you think it is, that these things be learned? Of a great order indeed and a sure one, concerning which we shall speak briefly hereafter, if there be time.

Now I would have you receive this from me: if anyone dares to rush rashly and without the order of the disciplines into the knowledge of these things, he becomes, instead of studious, merely curious; instead of learned, credulous; instead of cautious, incredulous. And so, as to the fact that you just now answer me so well and aptly when I question you, I both marvel whence it comes and am compelled to inquire. Let us see, nonetheless, how far your hidden application can advance. Let words now be returned to us by Licentius too, who for so long, occupied by I know not what care, has been a stranger to this conversation — so that I believe he will read these things no differently than our intimates who are not present. But return to us, I beg, Licentius, and see that you are here whole and entire; for it is to you that I speak.

For you approved my definition, by which it was stated what it is to be with God — with whom the mind of the wise man abides immovable, so far as I am able to attain it. You wished me to teach this. But this troubles me: how, since this wise man, so long as he lives among men, is not denied to be in a body, it comes about that, while his body wanders hither and thither, his mind abides immovable. For in that manner you might say, when a ship is moved, that the men who are in it are not moved, although we confess that it is possessed and steered by them. And indeed, if they governed it by thought alone and made it go where they willed, nevertheless, when it is moved, those who are set within it cannot but be moved.

«No,» said Licentius, «the soul is in the body in such a way that the body commands the soul.» — «Neither do I say this,» I said; «but a horseman too is not in a horse in such a way that the horse commands him, and yet, although he drives the horse wherever he wills, when the horse is moved it is necessary that he be moved.» — «He can,» he said, «sit still himself, unmoved.» — «You compel us,» I said, «to define what it is to be moved; and if you can, I would have you do it.» — «By all means,» he said, «let your kindness remain, I beg; for my request remains — and, lest you keep on asking whether it pleases me to make the definition, when I shall be able to do it, I myself will declare it.» — When these things had been said, the boy from the house, to whom we had given that task, ran to us and announced that it was the hour of the midday meal. Then I:

«What it is to be moved,» I said, «this boy compels us not to define, but to show with our very eyes. Let us go, then, and pass over from this place into another place; for to be moved, unless I am mistaken, is nothing else than this.» — When at this they had smiled, we departed. And when we had refreshed our bodies, since clouds had overspread the sky, we sat down in our accustomed place in the bath. And I: «Do you grant, then, Licentius, that motion is nothing else than a passage from place to place?» — «I grant it,» he said. — «Do you grant, then,» I said, «that no one is in a place in which he had not been, and yet was not moved?» — «I do not understand,» he said. — «If a thing,» I said, «was in another place a while ago and now is in another, do you grant that it has been moved?» — He assented.

«Therefore,» I said, «could some wise man's living body be here with us just now, while his mind were absent hence?» — «It could,» he said. — «Even,» I said, «if it were conversing with us and teaching us something?» — «Even,» he said, «if it were teaching us wisdom itself, I would not say that he was with us, but with himself.» — «Not in the body, then?» I said. — «Not,» he said. — To whom I: «That body which lacks a mind — do you not confess it dead, whereas I proposed it as living?» — «I do not know,» he said, «how to unravel it. For I both see that a man's body cannot be living if a mind be not in it, and I cannot say that, wherever the wise man's body may be, his mind is not with God.» — «I,» I said, «will bring it about that you unravel this.»

For perhaps, because God is everywhere, wherever the wise man goes he finds God, with whom he may be. Thus it comes about that we can both not deny that he passes from place to place — which is to be moved — and yet that he is always with God. — «I confess,» he said, «that that body makes a passage from place to place, but I deny it of the mind itself, upon which the name of wise man has been imposed.» — «For now I yield to you,» I said, «lest a matter most obscure and requiring longer and more careful treatment hinder for the present our proposed aim. But let us look at this: since it has been defined by us what it is to be with God, whether we can also know what it is to be without God — although I think it is already manifest. For I believe it seems to you that those who are not with God are without God.»

«If words could supply me,» he said, «I would say something that perhaps would not displease you. But I beg you to bear with my inarticulateness, and, as befits you, to snatch beforehand with swift mind the matters themselves. For these men seem to me neither to be with God, and yet to be held by God; and so I cannot say that those whom God holds are without God. Likewise I do not say they are with God, because they themselves do not have God — since indeed to have God, as was agreed among us long ago in that most delightful conversation which we held on your birthday, pleased us to be nothing else than to enjoy God. But I confess that I dread these contraries: how anyone is neither without God nor with God.» — «Let not these things move you,» I said. «For where the matter agrees, who would not scorn words?»