Who would doubt that all would thus deny that this was a sin, would thus protest, so that they might perhaps even grow angry that I had thought them worthy of such a question? Being reconciled with them in whatever way I could, and restored to counsel, I would beg that they not take it ill of me asking them another thing so manifest, so placed within the knowledge of all. Then I would ask: if not by the hand of a sleeping man, but of one knowing, who nevertheless was bound and constrained as to his other limbs, someone stronger had similarly done some evil, whether—because he knew it, although he wholly had not willed it—he would be held by any name of sin. And here all, wondering that I inquired such things, would answer without hesitation that this man too had in no way at all sinned.
Why so? Because concerning one who is unaware, or is not able to resist, of whom someone has done some evil, he can in no way be justly condemned. And why this itself was so, if I inquired of human nature itself in those men, I would easily arrive at what I desired, asking in this way: What? If that sleeping man already knew what another was going to do with his hand, and of set purpose had given himself over to sleep, even more drunk, that he might not wake, in order to deceive someone by swearing an oath—would sleep in any way avail him toward innocence? What else would they pronounce him than a guilty man? What? If he too was willingly bound, that he might similarly deceive someone by a pretended defense, what, pray, did those bonds profit him, so that he should be free of sin?
Although, bound by these, he truly was not able to resist, just like that sleeping man, yet what was then being done he would be wholly unaware of. Is there then any doubt but that both would be judged to have sinned? These things being conceded, I would conclude that sin is nowhere except in the will—since this also aided me: that justice holds sinners guilty by the evil will alone, although they were unable to accomplish what they willed. Could anyone say that I, treating these matters, am occupied in things obscure and hidden, where, owing to the fewness of those who understand, a suspicion either of fraud or of ostentation is wont to arise?
Let that distinction between intelligible and sensible things withdraw for a little while; let no ill-will arise against me because I pursue slow souls with the goads of subtle disputations. Let it be granted me to know that I am alive; let it be granted me to know that I will to live: and if the human race agrees to these, our will is as known to us as our life. Nor, when we profess this knowledge, need it be feared lest anyone should prove that we can be deceived: for in this very thing no one can be deceived, if he either does not live or wills nothing. I do not think I have brought forward anything obscure, and I fear rather that I may seem to anyone the more blameworthy because these things are too manifest; but let us consider whither they tend. Not otherwise, then, than by the will is sin committed.
But our will is most well known to us: for I would not know that I will, if I did not know what will itself is. It is therefore defined in this way: will is a motion of the mind, with nothing compelling, toward either not losing or acquiring something. Why then could I not at that time define it so? Or was it difficult to see that the unwilling is contrary to the willing, in such a way that we call the contrary as the left to the right, not as black to white? For the same thing cannot be at once both black and white; but of two things anyone placed in the middle is left with respect to the one, right with respect to the other; at one time indeed one man is both, but both at once with respect to one man in no way.
So one and the same mind can indeed be at once unwilling and willing, but one and the same thing it cannot at once both refuse and will. For when anyone does something unwillingly—for if you ask whether he wishes to do it, he says he does not wish; likewise if you ask whether he wishes not to do it, he answers that he does wish—thus you will find him unwilling as to the doing, but willing as to the not-doing; that is, one mind at one time having both, but referring each to a different particular object. Why do I say these things? Because if we ask again on what account he does it unwillingly, he says he is compelled. For everyone who does something unwillingly is compelled, and everyone who is compelled, if he does it, does it only unwillingly. It remains that he who wills is free from him who compels, even if anyone should think himself compelled.
For in this way too, everyone who acts willingly is not compelled; and everyone who is not compelled either acts willingly or does not act. Since nature herself proclaims this in all human beings whom we may not absurdly question, from the child to the old man, from the elementary school to the throne of the wise, why then could I not have seen that in the definition of the will one must place the words 'with no one compelling,' which now, as though made most cautious by greater experience, I have set down? But if this is everywhere manifest and ready to hand for all not by teaching but by nature, what remains that might seem obscure — unless perchance something lies hidden: that we will something when we will, and that our mind is moved toward it, and that we either have it or do not have it.
And, if we had it, that we will to keep it; if we did not have it, that we will to acquire it? Hence everyone who wills, wills either not to lose or to obtain something. Therefore, if all these things are clearer than light — as indeed they are, granted not only to my knowledge but to the knowledge of the human race by the generosity of Truth itself — why even at that time could I not say: The will is a movement of the mind, with no one compelling, toward either not losing or acquiring something? Someone will say: And how would this help you against the Manichaeans? Wait; allow us first also to define sin, which every mind reads inscribed within itself by God that it cannot exist without the will. Therefore sin is the will to keep or to pursue what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain.
Although, if it be not free, it is not the will. But I preferred to define more roughly than too scrupulously. Was it here too that I had to search obscure books, to learn from them that no one is worthy of blame or punishment who either wills what justice does not forbid him to will, or does not do what he cannot do? Do not the shepherds sing these things on the mountains, and the poets in the theatres, and the unlearned in their gatherings, and the learned in libraries, and the teachers in schools, and the prelates in sacred places, and the human race throughout the world? But if no one is worthy of blame or condemnation who either does not act against the prohibition of justice, or does not do what he cannot do, while yet every sin is to be blamed or condemned...
— is to be blamed or condemned, who would doubt that sin exists precisely then, when both the willing is unjust and one is free not to will it? And therefore that definition is both true and most easy to understand, and could have been stated by me not only now but then also: Sin is the will to keep or pursue what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain. Come now, let us see how these things would help us. First of all — that I might desire nothing further — they would in fact settle the whole case.
For whosoever, consulting the secrets of his own conscience and the divine laws deeply implanted in his nature within the mind, where they are more distinct and more certain, concedes that these two definitions of the will and of sin are true, condemns the whole Manichaean heresy by very few and very brief but plainly most invincible little reasonings, without any hesitation. This can be considered thus. They say there are two kinds of souls: one good, which is from God in such a way that it is said to have proceeded not as made by Him out of some matter or out of nothing, but out of His very own substance, some part of it; but the other evil, which they believe, and commend as to be believed, pertains to God in no part whatsoever.
And therefore they proclaim the former to be the supreme good, but the latter the supreme evil, and that these two kinds were once separate, but now are commingled. Indeed I had not yet heard the manner and cause of this commingling; but nevertheless I could already ask whether that evil kind of souls, before it was mingled with the good, had any will. For if it did not, it was without sin and innocent, and therefore in no way evil. But if it was evil for this reason, that although it was without will — like fire — yet if it touched the good it would violate and corrupt it: how great an impiety it is to believe both that the nature of evil has such power to change any part of God, and that supreme Good is corruptible and violable!
But if a will was present, then assuredly there was present, with no one compelling, a movement of the mind toward either not losing or acquiring something. But this something was either good or was thought to be good; for otherwise it could not be sought. Yet in the supreme evil, before the commingling which they proclaim, there never was any good. Whence therefore could there be there either knowledge or opinion of good? Or did they will nothing that was within themselves, and seek that true good which was outside? But this indeed is a will to be proclaimed with great and lofty praise, by which the supreme and true good is sought. Whence then, in the supreme evil, a movement of the mind so worthy of great praise? Or did they seek it out of a zeal for harming? First, the argument comes round to the same point. For whoever wills to harm...
— wills to deprive another of some good for the sake of some good of his own. There was therefore in them either knowledge or opinion of good, which ought in no way to have been in the supreme evil. Next, that good placed outside themselves, which they were eager to harm — how had they come to know whether it existed at all? If they had understood it, what is more excellent than such a mind? Or is there anything else toward which the whole striving of good men reaches with great labors, except that this supreme and pure good be understood? What therefore is now scarcely granted to a few good and just persons, could that unmixed evil then already accomplish, with no good assisting it?
But if those souls bore bodies and had seen this with their eyes, how many tongues, how many hearts, what talents suffice to praise and proclaim those eyes, to which the minds of the just can scarcely be equalled? How many goods do we find in the supreme evil? For if to see God is an evil, God is not a good; but God is a good: therefore it is a good to see God, and I know not what could be compared to this good. Furthermore, that whose seeing is good — how can it come about that the ability to see it should be an evil? Wherefore whoever brought it about, whether in those eyes or in those minds, that the divine substance could be seen by them, wrought a great good, worthy of ineffable praise.
But if it was not made, but was of itself such and everlasting, it is hard for anything better than this evil to be found. Finally, so that those souls might have none of these praiseworthy things — which by their own reasonings they are compelled to have — I would ask whether God condemns any souls or none: if none, there is no judgment of merits, no providence, and the world is administered by chance rather than by reason, or rather is not administered at all; for administration must not be ascribed to chances. But if it is impious for anyone bound by any religion to believe this, it remains that either there is a condemnation of some souls, or there are no sins. But if there are no sins, then also there is no evil: and if these men say this, they will slay their own heresy with one blow.
It is agreed therefore between me and them that some souls are condemned by the divine law and judgment. But if these are good, what justice is that? If evil, is it by nature or by will? But souls can in no way be evil by nature. Whence do we teach this? From the earlier definitions of the will and of sin. For to say that souls are both evil and yet sin in nothing is full of madness; but to say that they sin without will is a great delirium; and to hold anyone guilty of sin because he did not do what he could not do is of the highest injustice and insanity. Wherefore those souls, whatever they do...
— if they do it by nature, not by will — that is, if they lack a movement of the mind free both to do and not to do — if, finally, no power of abstaining from their own work is granted to them, we cannot hold them liable for their sin. But all confess that both evil souls are justly condemned, and those that have not sinned are unjustly condemned: they confess therefore that those which sin are evil. But those souls, as reason has taught, do not sin; therefore that alien kind of evil souls, whatever it is, which is introduced by the Manichaeans, is nothing. Now let us look at that good kind, which again they praise in such a way as to say it is the very substance of God.
But how much better it is that each should recognize his own rank and merit, and not be tossed about by so sacrilegious a pride as to believe that the substance of that supreme good — which pious reason professes and teaches to be unchangeable — belongs to him, even while he feels himself so often changed? For behold, since it is manifest that souls do not sin in that they are not such as they cannot be — whence it is now established that those imaginary souls, whatever they are, in no way sin, and therefore do not exist at all —: it remains that, since they concede that sins exist, they find none to whom to ascribe them except the good kind of souls and the substance of God. And they are most of all pressed by Christian authority;
for they have never denied that pardon of sins is given, once anyone has turned to God: they have never said — as of many other things — that some corrupter had inserted this into the divine Scriptures. To whom then are sins forgiven? If to those alien evil souls, they can also become good, they can possess the kingdom of God with Christ. And since these men deny this, and have no other kind except of those which they maintain to be of the substance of God, it remains that they must confess that not only these too, but these alone, sin. But I contend for nothing: let them not be the only ones that sin; yet they do sin. But, they say, they are compelled by the commingling with evil. If they are so compelled that there is no power of resisting, they do not sin:
if it is in their power to resist, and they consent by their own proper will, why are we compelled by their teaching to find such great goods in the supreme evil, and this evil in the supreme good — unless it be that neither is that an evil which they introduce by suspicion, nor is this the supreme good which they pervert by superstition? But if I had taught that they rave and err about these two kinds of souls, or at least had learned it myself, what could remain why they should now seem to me worth hearing or consulting about any matter at all? Or so that I might learn from this — as is here shown — that there are two kinds of souls, because in deliberating our assent now wavers to the evil side, now to the good?
Why is this not rather a sign of one soul, which by that free will can be borne this way and that, drawn back from here and from there? For when it happens to me, I feel that I am one, weighing both, choosing the one or the other; but for the most part the one pleases, the other befits, and set in the midst of these we waver. And no wonder: for we are now so constituted that we can be affected through the flesh by pleasure and through the spirit by what is honorable. Why then am I compelled to confess two souls from this? For we can better and much more easily understand that two kinds of things — of which neither, however, is alien to God the author — affect one soul from different parts, the lower and the higher, or, as it may rightly be said, the outer and the inner.
These are the two kinds which a little before we treated under the name of the sensible and the intelligible, which we more gladly and familiarly call carnal and spiritual. But it has become hard for us to abstain from carnal things, though our truest bread is spiritual. For now with labor we eat our bread; nor are we in any way without the punishment of the sin of transgression, we who have been made mortal out of immortals. Hence it comes about that, when for us who strive toward better things the habit formed with the flesh and our sins have begun in a certain way to war against us and to make difficulty for us, some foolish men, by the most obtuse superstition, suspect another kind of souls that is not from God.
Although even if it be granted them that we are enticed to base things by some other, lower kind of souls, they do not thereby prove either that those souls are evil by nature or that these are the supreme good. For it can happen that those, by their own will, in seeking what was not permitted — that is, in sinning — have become evil from being good, and can again become good; but, as it happens, so long as they remain in sin, they draw others over to themselves by a certain hidden persuasion; and further, that they are not evil altogether, but perform their proper work in their own kind — however lower — without any sin; while these higher souls, to whom justice, the supreme governess of things, has assigned a far more excellent action, if they should be willing to follow and imitate those lower ones...
— if they should will to follow and imitate them by sinning, they become evil, not because they imitate evil ones, but because they imitate badly. For by those lower ones what is proper to them is done; by these higher ones what is alien is sought: whence those remain in their own degree, but these sink to lower things. As when men pursue beastly ways: for the four-footed horse steps along beautifully; but if a man should study to do this with his hands and feet, who would think him worthy even of the food of straw? Rightly therefore do we for the most part disapprove of the imitator, while we approve of him whom he imitates. But we disapprove not because he has not attained it, but because he willed to attain it at all. For in the horse we approve that very thing by which — as much as we set the man above it — we are just so much offended that he pursues lower things. What of this?
Among men themselves, in raising the voice, is not what the herald does well — even if the praetor should do it more clearly and better — a mark of madness in the praetor? Look up to heavenly things: the shining moon is praised, and is praised for her course and her phases, and pleases well enough those who consider rightly; yet if the sun should wish to imitate her — for let us pretend that they can have wills of this sort — to whom would he not most rightly displease? From which follows what I wish to be understood: even if there are souls — which meanwhile is uncertain — devoted to bodily functions not by sin but by nature, and though they are lower, yet touch us by some inner nearness, they ought not on that account to be held evil, because we, when we follow them and love bodily things, are evil.
For we sin in loving bodily things for this reason, that we are both commanded by justice and able by nature to love spiritual things, and then we are the best and most blessed in our own kind. Wherefore what argument has that deliberation, seething toward either side, now prone to sin, now uplifted toward right action, to compel us to accept two kinds of souls — of which the nature of the one is from God, of the other is not — when it is permitted to conjecture so many other causes of alternating thought? But that these matters are obscure, and are sought in vain by bleary-eyed souls, whoever is a good judge of things sees.
Wherefore rather those things which have been said about the will and about sin — those, I say, which supreme justice permits no one endowed with reason to be ignorant of, those which, if they be taken from us, there is nothing whence the discipline of virtue may be begun, nothing whence one may rise from the death of vices — when considered again and again, quite clearly and lucidly convince that the Manichaean heresy is false. Like to these is what I shall now say about repenting. For as it is agreed among all sound men, and as the Manichaeans themselves not only confess but even enjoin, it is useful to repent of sin. Why should I now gather on this matter the testimonies of the divine Scriptures, which are diffused everywhere? This too is the voice of nature:
the knowledge of this thing has deserted no fool; if this were not deeply implanted in us, we should perish. Someone can say that he does not sin: but that, if he has sinned, he need not repent — no barbarian will dare to say this. Since this is so, I ask of those two kinds of souls, to which does it belong to repent of sin? I know indeed that it can belong neither to that which cannot do evil, nor to that which cannot do good. Wherefore, to speak in their words, if it is the soul of darkness, sin is not of the substance of the supreme evil; if it is the soul of light, sin is not of the substance of the supreme good. For that disposition of repenting which is profitable testifies both that the penitent has done evil and that he could have done well.
How then is nothing evil from me, if I have done wrong? Or how do I rightly repent, if I did not do it? Hear the other part: how is nothing good from me, in whom a good will resides? Or how do I rightly repent, if it does not reside? Wherefore let these men either deny that there is great usefulness in repenting — that they may be driven not only from the Christian name, but even from every, even imaginary, reason — or let them now cease to learn and to teach those two kinds of souls, one from which nothing evil, the other from which nothing good comes: and if they do this, they will certainly cease to be Manichaeans; for that whole sect is propped up by this two-headed, or rather headlong, variety of souls.
And for me indeed it is enough to know that the Manichaeans err in this way, as I know that one must repent of sin. And yet if I should now, by the right of friendship, address some one of my friends who still thinks they ought to be heard, and say to him: Do you know that it is useful, when anyone has sinned, to repent? Without hesitation he will swear that he knows it. If therefore I make you know in this way that the Manichaean heresy is false, will you desire anything further? Let him answer what more he can desire in this matter. Well and good thus far. But when I begin to show the sure and necessary reasonings which follow that proposition, bound as it were with adamantine chains, and bring the whole matter to the conclusion by which that sect is overthrown...
— he will perhaps deny that he knows that usefulness of repenting, which no learned man, no unlearned man, is ignorant of, and will rather contend that he knows that, when we doubt and deliberate, two souls within us bring their own patronage to the several parts of the question. O habit of sin! O attendant punishment of sin! You then turned me away from the consideration of things so manifest, but you harmed me while I did not perceive it; but now, in my most intimate friends who likewise do not perceive it, you already wound and torture me who do perceive it. Attend to these things, I beseech you, dearest ones; I know your talents well. If you now grant me the mind and reason of any man whatsoever, these things are far more certain than those which there we either seemed to learn or were rather compelled to believe.
O great God, God almighty, God of the supreme goodness, whom it is right to believe and understand to be inviolable and unchangeable, threefold Unity, whom the Catholic Church worships: as a suppliant I pray, having experienced Your mercy in myself, that You do not permit those men, with whom from boyhood I had the fullest agreement in every association, to dissent from me in Your worship. I see that here above all this is expected: how I might even then have defended the Catholic Scriptures, accused by the Manichaeans, if — as I say — I had been cautious, or how I might now show that they can be defended. But in other volumes God will assist my purpose; for the moderate length of this one now, as I judge, demands that it be spared. II. On Faith and Works. It seems to certain persons that all are to be admitted indiscriminately to the laver of regeneration, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.