For who could endure that a man be thought unlearned who has not heard that Daedalus flew — that he who invented the tale is a liar, that he who believed it is a fool, that he who asked about it is shameless — or, another point on which I am wont gravely to pity our friends, who, if they cannot answer what was the name of Euryalus's mother, are accused of ignorance, while they themselves dare not call those of whom these things are asked vain, foolish, or overcurious? That reason, then, having perfected and arranged grammar, was admonished to seek out and attend to this very power by which it had brought forth the art; for by defining, distributing, and collecting it had not only digested and ordered it but had also defended it from every creeping-in of falsehood.
When, then, would it pass over to fashioning other things, unless it first distinguished, marked, digested, and set forth its own instruments and tools, as it were — that discipline of disciplines which they call dialectic? This teaches how to teach, this teaches how to learn; in it reason shows and opens itself, revealing what it is, what it wills, what it avails. It knows to know, and alone it not only wills but is also able to make men knowing. But since for the most part foolish men, in regard to those things which are rightly, usefully, and honourably urged upon them, follow not that most sincere truth which few minds behold, but their own feelings and custom, it was fitting that they be not only taught, as far as they are able, but often and above all be stirred.
This part of itself which should accomplish that — fuller of necessity than of purity, with a bosom crammed full of the delights which it scatters upon the people, so that it may deign to be led toward its own advantage — it called rhetoric. Thus far that part which is called rational in signifying has been advanced by liberal studies and disciplines. Hence that reason willed to seize itself away to the most blessed contemplation of divine things themselves. But lest it fall from on high, it sought steps and contrived for itself a way through its own possessions and their order. For it desired beauty, which alone and simple it could behold without these eyes; but it was hindered by the senses.
And so it turned its gaze a little upon those very senses which, crying out that they possessed the truth, kept calling back with importunate din the reason that was hastening to press on to other things. And first it began with the ears, because they said that the words were their very own, out of which it had already made grammar and dialectic and rhetoric. But that reason, most powerful in discerning, quickly saw what difference there was between a sound and that of which it was the sign. It understood that nothing else pertained to the judgment of the ears than sound, and that this was threefold: either in the voice of a living being, or in that which breath produced in instruments, or in that which was uttered by a stroke;
to the first belong tragedians, comedians, choruses of every kind, and absolutely all who sing with their own voice; the second is assigned to flutes and similar instruments; to the third are given citharas, lyres, cymbals, and everything that is tuneful by striking. But it saw that this material was most worthless, unless it were shaped by a fixed measurement of times and by a modulated variety of high and low pitch of sound.
It recognized that hence came those seeds which, in grammar, when it turned over the syllables with diligent consideration, it had called feet and accents; and because in the words themselves it was easy to attend to the shortnesses and lengths of syllables scattered through discourse in nearly equal number, it attempted to arrange those feet in fixed rows and to join them together. And in this, first following the sense itself, it impressed measured joints, which they name 'cuts' (caesa) and 'members' (membra). And lest the course of the feet roll on further than its judgment could sustain, it set a measure whence it should return, and from that very thing it called it 'verse' (versus).
But that which was not measured by a fixed end, yet ran on with rationally ordered feet, it marked with the name of 'rhythm', which in Latin could be called nothing else than 'number' (numerus). Thus from it the poets were born, in whom, when it saw great importance not only of sounds but also of words and matters, it honoured them greatly and granted to them the power of such rational falsehoods as they wished. And because they drew their stock from that first discipline, it permitted the grammarians to be judges over them. In this fourth step, then, whether in rhythms or in modulation itself, it understood that numbers reigned and perfected the whole; it inspected most diligently of what sort they were;
it found them divine and everlasting, especially because it was by their aid that it had woven together all the higher things. And now it could most grievously endure that their splendour and serenity should be discoloured by the bodily material of sounds. And because that which the mind sees is always present and is proved to be immortal — of which kind the numbers appeared — while sound, being a sensible thing, passes away with time and is imprinted on the memory, reason itself now favouring the poets' rational falsehood, it was feigned that the Muses were daughters of Jove and of Memory. Whence this discipline, sharing in sense and intellect, found the name of 'music'.
Setting out thence, reason came into the resources of the eyes and, surveying earth and heaven, perceived that nothing else pleased it than beauty, and in beauty figures, in figures dimensions, in dimensions numbers; and it asked within itself whether there existed there such a line and such a roundness or any other form and figure as intelligence might contain. It found what the eyes saw far inferior, and in no part to be compared with what the mind discerned. These things too, distinguished and arranged, it reduced into a discipline and called it geometry. The motion of the heaven greatly moved it and invited it to consider it diligently.
There too, through the most constant vicissitudes of the seasons, through the fixed and defined courses of the stars, through the measured spaces of the intervals, it understood that nothing else held sway than that same dimension and numbers, which, by likewise defining and separating, binding them into order, gave birth to astronomy — a great argument for the religious and a torment for the curious. In all these disciplines, then, all things numerical met it, which nevertheless shone forth more manifestly in those dimensions which, by thinking and revolving them within itself, it beheld as most true, while in these things which are perceived by the senses it rather recollected their shadows and traces. Here it raised itself much and presumed much, and dared to prove the soul immortal.
It treated all things diligently and perceived plainly that it could do very much, and that whatever it could do, it could do by numbers. A certain wonder moved it, and it began to suspect that perhaps it was itself that very number by which all things are numbered; or, if that were not so, that it was nevertheless there where it strove to arrive. But this it grasped with all its strength, that number which, being now destined to be the index of universal truth — the one of which Alypius made mention when we were inquiring about the Academics — was, like Proteus, in its hands. For the false images of those things which we number, flowing down from that most hidden thing by which we number, snatch our thought to themselves and often make it slip away even when it is already held.
If anyone shall not yield to these images, and shall reduce all those things which are spread widely and variously through so many disciplines to one single, true, and certain thing, he is most worthy of the name of learned; and not rashly does he now seek out those divine things — no longer only to be believed, but also to be contemplated, understood, and retained.
But whoever, whether still a slave of his desires and gaping after perishing things, or already fleeing these things and living chastely, yet not knowing what is nothing, what is formless matter, what is a formed thing without life, what is body, what is the lifeless in a body, what is place, what is time, what is in place, what is in time, what is motion according to place, what is motion not according to place, what is stable motion, what is eternity, what it is to be neither in place nor nowhere, what it is to be beyond time and always, what it is both to be nowhere and to be nowhere not, and never to be and never not to be — whoever, then, being ignorant of these things, I do not say concerning that supreme God,
who is better known by being unknown, but should wish even to inquire and dispute about his own soul, he will err as greatly as it is possible to err. But he will come to know these things easily who has grasped the simple and intelligible numbers; and those he will grasp who, being both strong in native talent and at leisure by the privilege of age or of any kind of good fortune, and vehemently kindled with zeal, shall have pursued, as far as is sufficient, the aforesaid order of the disciplines. For since all those liberal arts are learned partly for the use of life, partly for the knowledge and contemplation of things, to attain the use of them is most difficult save for him who, most talented from his very boyhood, has given his labour most urgently and most constantly.
But as for what is needful out of these things for that which we seek, I beg you, mother, let not this immeasurable forest, as it were, of matters deter you. For certain things, very few in number, will be chosen out of them all: you, most powerful, though in knowledge they are indeed arduous to many — yet to you, whose native talent is daily new to me, and whose mind I know to have risen much within itself, most remote whether by age or by admirable temperance from all trifling, and emerging from the great defilement of the body — they will be as easy as they are difficult to those who live most slowly and most wretchedly. For if I should say that you will easily come to that speech which is free of the fault of diction and language, I should surely lie.
For even I myself, who had great necessity to learn these things thoroughly, am still harassed by the Italians in many of my word-sounds, and am in turn reproached by them as regards pronunciation itself. For it is one thing to be secure by art, another to be secure by birth. As for the solecisms which we call by that name, perhaps any learned man attending diligently will find them in my speech; for there was no lack of one who most expertly persuaded me that Cicero himself committed not a few faults of this kind. But of barbarism such a kind has been discovered in our own times that even that very oration by which Rome was saved seems barbarous.
But you, despising these things as either childish or as not pertaining to you, will so come to know the almost divine power and nature of grammar that you may seem to have grasped its soul and to have left its body to the eloquent. This I would say also of the other arts of this kind, which, if perhaps you utterly despise them, I admonish you — as much as I, your son, dare, and as much as you permit — that you firmly and warily guard that faith of yours which you have received through the venerable mysteries, and then that you constantly and vigilantly persevere in this life and in these morals.
But concerning matters most obscure and yet divine — how God both does no evil and is omnipotent, and yet such great evils come to pass; and for whose benefit He made the world, He who was in no need; and whether evil always existed or began in time; and, if it always existed, whether it existed under the condition of God; and, if it existed, whether this world too always existed, in which that evil might be tamed by the divine order — but if this world at some time began to be, how, before it existed, was evil held under the power of God, and what need was there to fashion a world in which the evil that God's power was already curbing should be shut up for the punishment of souls? But if there was a time in which under God's dominion there was no evil, what suddenly happened, which had not happened through all the ages before?
For to say that a new counsel arose in God — not to say an impious thing — is most absurd. But if we say that evil was importunate and, as it were, wicked toward God, as some think, then no learned man will restrain his laughter, and no unlearned man will fail to be indignant; for what harm could that I-know-not-what nature of evil do to God? For if they say it could not, there will be no cause for fashioning the world; if they say it could, it is an inexpiable crime to believe God violable — and not even in such a way that He might at least have provided by His power that His own substance not be violated; for they confess that the soul here pays penalties, though they hold that between its substance and God's there is no difference whatever.
But if we should say that this world was not made, it is impious and ungrateful to believe it, lest that consequence follow — that God did not fashion it. Therefore, concerning these and suchlike matters, either something must be inquired by that order of erudition, or in no way at all. And lest anyone suppose that we have embraced something very vast, this I say more plainly and briefly: to the knowledge of these things no one ought to aspire without that, as it were, twofold science of good disputation and of the power of numbers. If anyone thinks even this too much, let him know most excellently the numbers alone, or dialectic alone.
If even this is unbounded, let him at least know perfectly what the one is in numbers and how much it avails — not yet in that supreme law and supreme order of all things, but in these things which we daily and everywhere perceive and do. For the very discipline of philosophy takes up this erudition, and in it it will find nothing more than what the one is, but far more loftily and far more divinely. Its inquiry is twofold: one concerning the soul, the other concerning God. The first brings it about that we know ourselves, the second that we know our origin. The first is sweeter to us, the second dearer; the first makes us worthy of the blessed life, the second makes us blessed; the first is for those who are learning, the second for those already learned.
This is the order of the studies of wisdom, through which each one becomes fit for understanding the order of things — that is, for discerning the two worlds and the very Parent of the universe, of whom there is no knowledge in the soul save to know how it does not know Him. Holding this order, then, the soul, now handed over to philosophy, first inspects itself; and to it, once that erudition has persuaded it that reason is either its own or is itself, and that in reason either nothing is better and more powerful than numbers, or that reason is nothing else than number, it thus speaks with itself: I can, by a certain interior and hidden motion of mine, distinguish or connect those things which are to be learned, and this power of mine is called reason.
But what is to be distinguished, except what is thought to be one and is not, or is certainly not so much one as it is thought to be? Likewise, why is anything to be connected, except that it may become one, as far as it can? Therefore both in distinguishing and in connecting I will one thing and I love one thing; but when I distinguish, I will the purified, and when I connect, I will the whole. In the former part alien things are avoided; in the latter, proper things are joined, so that some one perfect thing may come to be. That a stone might be a stone, all its parts and all its nature are consolidated into one. What of a tree? Would not a tree not be a tree if it were not one? What of the limbs of any living being, and the inward parts, and whatever those are of which it consists? Surely, if they suffer a divorce of unity, it will not be an animal. What else do friends strive for than to be one?
And the more they are one, the more they are friends. A people is one city, to which dissension is perilous. But what is it to dissent, except not to feel as one? Out of many soldiers one army is made. Is not any multitude the less easily conquered the more it comes together into one? Whence that coming-together into one is called a 'wedge' (cuneus), as it were 'co-one' (couneus). What of all love? Does it not will to become one with that which it loves, and, if it befall it, does it become one with it? Pleasure itself delights the more vehemently for no other reason than that loving bodies are forced together into one. Whence is pain destructive? Because that which was one strives to be scattered. Therefore it is troublesome and perilous to become one with that which can be separated.
Out of many things lying scattered about before me, then gathered into one form, I make one house. I am the better, since it is I who make it; it becomes so, and it is the better for this, that I make it. There is no doubt that I am therefore better than the house is. But I am not therefore better than the swallow or the little bee — for the swallow too builds its nest artfully, and the bee its honeycombs — but I am better than these because I am a rational animal. But if reason lies in fixed dimensions, is not what the birds fashion measured no less aptly and congruously? Nay, it is most full of number. Therefore I am the better not by making numerical things, but by knowing numbers. What then? Could those birds, without knowing, produce numerical things? They certainly could. Whence is this taught?
From this: that we too fit our tongue to our teeth and palate in fixed dimensions, so that letters and words burst forth from the mouth, and yet we do not think, while we speak, by what movement of the mouth we ought to do it. Then, what good singer, even if he be unskilled in music, does not, by that very natural sense, keep both rhythm and melody, grasped by memory, in his singing — than which what can be done more numerically? He knows not, being unlearned, yet he does it, with nature operating. But when is he better and to be preferred above the beasts? When he knows what he does. Nothing else prefers me above the beast except that I am a rational animal. How, then, is reason immortal, and I at once defined as something both rational and mortal? Or is reason not immortal?
But one to two, or two to four, is a most true ratio; nor was that ratio more true yesterday than today, nor will it be more true tomorrow or a year hence, nor, if this whole world should collapse, could that ratio fail to be. For it is always such, but this world had neither yesterday, nor will it have tomorrow, what it has today; nor on this very day did it have the sun in the same place even for the space of one hour. Thus, since nothing remains in it, it has nothing in the same manner even for a small span of time. Therefore, if reason is immortal, and I, who either distinguish or connect all these things, am reason, then that whereby I am called mortal is not my own;
or if the soul is not that which reason is, and yet I use reason and through reason am the better, then from the worse to the better, from the mortal to the immortal, must I flee. These and many other things the well-instructed soul speaks and revolves within itself, which I do not wish to pursue further, lest, while I desire to teach you order, I exceed measure, which is the father of order. For step by step it leads itself even to the best morals and life, no longer by faith alone but by sure reason. To one who diligently beholds the force and power of numbers, it will seem exceedingly unworthy and exceedingly to be lamented that, through its own knowledge, a verse should run well and a cithara sound in harmony, while its own life and its very self, which is the soul, should follow a devious path and, with lust lording it over it, should jar out of tune with the most shameful din of the vices.
But when the soul has composed and ordered itself, and rendered itself harmonious and fair, it will then dare to behold God, and the very fountain from which all truth flows, and the Father of truth Himself. O great God, what eyes those will be — how sound, how comely, how strong, how steadfast, how serene, how blessed! And what is that which they behold? What, I ask, are we to think it, how are we to reckon it, what are we to say of it? Everyday words come to hand, and they are all soiled by the basest of things. I will say nothing further than that there is promised to us the sight of a Beauty, in imitation of which all other things are fair, and in comparison with which all else is foul.
Whoever shall have seen this Beauty — and he shall see it who lives well, prays well, studies well — when will it move him to ask why one man who longs to have children has none, while another has them in abundance yet exposes them, hating those about to be born and neglecting those already born? How shall it not conflict with the truth that nothing can come to be which is not already present with God, and that from this it follows of necessity that all things happen according to an order, and yet God is not besought in vain? Finally, when shall any burdens, any dangers, any weariness, or any allurements of fortune move such a man?
For in this sensible world one must consider most carefully what time and place are, so that whatever delights us in a part of place or time may nevertheless be understood to be far better as a whole, of which that thing is but a part; and again, that whatever offends in a part may be evident to the learned man as offending for no other reason than that the whole is not seen, to which that part marvelously belongs; whereas in that intelligible world any part whatsoever is beautiful and perfect as a whole. These things will be treated more fully, if your studies shall have set themselves to hold — as I exhort and hope — the right order, whether this one recounted by us, or perhaps some other briefer and more convenient one, and shall have held to it altogether diligently and steadfastly.
That this may be granted us, the utmost effort must be given to the best of morals; for our God will not otherwise be able to hear us, but will most readily hear us if we live well. Let us pray, therefore, not that riches or honours or things of this sort — fleeting and tottering and passing away at the least resistance — may come to us, but that those things may come to pass which make us good and blessed. And that these prayers may be most devoutly fulfilled, this task I lay chiefly upon you, mother; for by your prayers I undoubtedly believe, and I affirm, that God has given me this mind: that I set absolutely nothing before the finding of truth, that I will nothing else, think of nothing else, love nothing else; nor do I cease to believe that this so great a good, which we have desired through your deserving, we shall obtain through your entreaty.
And now, Alypius, with what shall I exhort you, of what shall I admonish you? You are not excessive in this, since to love such things, however much, can perhaps always be called too little, but never rightly too much. Here he said: You have truly brought it about that the memory of those most learned and great men — which once, on account of the greatness of the matter, seemed incredible — we now, both by daily reflection and by this present admiration which we have for you, not only do not hold in doubt, but could even, if need be, swear to it. For what more?
Has not that venerable and almost divine discipline of Pythagoras — which has rightly been both held and approved — been today unlocked to us by you, almost before our very eyes, when you signified, both briefly and yet so plainly, both the rules of life and, of knowledge, not so much the paths as the very fields themselves and the clear open seas, and — what was to that man an object of great veneration — even the very sanctuaries of truth: where they were, of what kind they were, what kind of men sought them; so that, although we suspect and believe that there are still more secret things known to you, we should nevertheless think it not without shamelessness if we judged that anything more ought to be demanded?
I accept these words gladly, said I — for it is not so much your words, which are not true, that delight and stir me, as the true spirit in your words — and it is well that we have decided to send this letter to one who is wont to tell many lies about us gladly. But if perhaps any others shall have read it, neither do I fear these, that they should be angry at you. For who would not most kindly pardon the error of a lover in judging? And as for your having made mention of Pythagoras, I believe it came into your mind by some hidden divine ordering unknown to me. For a matter much needful to me had quite slipped away, which in that man — if any credence is to be given to things committed to writing in letters; and yet who would not believe Varro? —
— I am wont to admire, and, as you know, almost daily to extol with praises: namely, that he handed on the discipline of governing the commonwealth as the last thing to his hearers, when they were already learned, already perfected, already wise, already blessed. For he saw there such great waves that he was unwilling to entrust it to any but the man who both in governing might almost divinely avoid the rocks, and, if all else should fail, might himself become as it were a rock to those waves. For of the wise man alone it can most truly be said: 'He, like a sea-cliff, stands unmoved and resists,' and the rest, which have been spoken in splendid verses to this effect. Here an end was made of the discussion, and, all being glad and full of much hope, we dismissed the assembly, since by now the nocturnal light had been brought in. FROM AUGUSTINE'S BOOK OF RETRACTATIONS.
Book I, Chapter III (page 19, line 8, ed. Knoell): CONCERNING ORDER, TWO BOOKS. During the same period, among those which were written about the Academics, I also wrote two books On Order, in which a great question is treated: whether the order of divine providence contains all things good and evil. But since I saw the matter to be difficult enough to understand, and that those with whom I was dealing could scarcely be brought by argument to grasp it, I chose rather to speak of the order of studying, by which one can advance from bodily things to incorporeal things. But in these books too it displeases me that the word 'fortune' is so often interposed; and that I did not add 'of the body' when I named 'the sense of the body';
and that I attributed much to the liberal disciplines, of which many holy men are much ignorant, while some who know them are not holy; and that I made mention of the Muses as though they were certain goddesses, albeit in jest; and that I called admiration a vice; and that I said that philosophers not endowed with true piety had shone with the light of virtue; and that I commended two worlds — one sensible, the other intelligible — not from the person of Plato or of the Platonists, but from my own, as though the Lord too had wished to signify this, since He does not say 'My kingdom is not of the world,' but:
'My kingdom is not of this world' — although it can be found to have been said also by some manner of speech, and, if another world was signified by the Lord Christ, that world could be more fittingly understood in which there will be a new heaven and a new earth, when there shall be fulfilled what we pray when we say: 'Thy kingdom come.' Nor indeed did Plato err in this, in that he said there is an intelligible world, if we are willing to attend not to the term — which is unusual to ecclesiastical custom in that matter — but to the thing itself. For that man named the intelligible world that very eternal and unchangeable Reason by which God made the world.
Whoever denies that this exists, it follows that he must say that God irrationally made what He made, or that, while He was making it or before He made it, He did not know what He was making, if there was in Him no reason for making. But if there was — as there was — Plato seems to have called this very thing the intelligible world. Yet we would not have used this name had we already been sufficiently instructed in ecclesiastical writings. Nor does that please me, that when I had said 'the utmost effort must be given to the best of morals,' I straightway added: 'for our God cannot otherwise hear us; but He will most readily hear those who live well.' For it was so said as though God does not hear sinners;