The Learning Curve/The Learning Curve (Weird Science, 1996).iso/religion/augustine/book2

Text File | 1995-01-17 | 22KB | 320 lines

     BOOK II

     I will now call to mind my past foulness, and the carnal corruptions
   of my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my
   God. For love of Thy love I do it; reviewing my most wicked ways in
   the very bitterness of my remembrance, that Thou mayest grow sweet
   unto me (Thou sweetness never failing, Thou blissful and assured
   sweetness); and gathering me again out of that my dissipation, wherein
   I was torn piecemeal, while turned from Thee, the One Good, I lost
   myself among a multiplicity of things. For I even burnt in my youth
   heretofore, to be satiated in things below; and I dared to grow wild
   again, with these various and shadowy loves: my beauty consumed
   away, and I stank in Thine eyes; pleasing myself, and desirous to
   please in the eyes of men.
     And what was it that I delighted in, but to love, and be loved?
   but I kept not the measure of love, of mind to mind, friendship's
   bright boundary: but out of the muddy concupiscence of the flesh,
   and the bubblings of youth, mists fumed up which beclouded and
   overcast my heart, that I could not discern the clear brightness of
   love from the fog of lustfulness. Both did confusedly boil in me,
   and hurried my unstayed youth over the precipice of unholy desires,
   and sunk me in a gulf of flagitiousnesses. Thy wrath had gathered over
   me, and I knew it not. I was grown deaf by the clanking of the chain
   of my mortality, the punishment of the pride of my soul, and I strayed
   further from Thee, and Thou lettest me alone, and I was tossed
   about, and wasted, and dissipated, and I boiled over in my
   fornications, and Thou heldest Thy peace, O Thou my tardy joy! Thou
   then heldest Thy peace, and I wandered further and further from
   Thee, into more and more fruitless seed-plots of sorrows, with a proud
   dejectedness, and a restless weariness.
     Oh! that some one had then attempered my disorder, and turned to
   account the fleeting beauties of these, the extreme points of Thy
   creation! had put a bound to their pleasureableness, that so the tides
   of my youth might have cast themselves upon the marriage shore, if
   they could not be calmed, and kept within the object of a family, as
   Thy law prescribes, O Lord: who this way formest the offspring of this
   our death, being able with a gentle hand to blunt the thorns which
   were excluded from Thy paradise? For Thy omnipotency is not far from
   us, even when we be far from Thee. Else ought I more watchfully to
   have heeded the voice from the clouds: Nevertheless such shall have
   trouble in the flesh, but I spare you. And it is good for a man not to
   touch a woman. And, he that is unmarried thinketh of the things of the
   Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he that is married careth for
   the things of this world, how he may please his wife.
     To these words I should have listened more attentively, and being
   severed for the kingdom of heaven's sake, had more happily awaited Thy
   embraces; but I, poor wretch, foamed like a troubled sea, following
   the rushing of my own tide, forsaking Thee, and exceeded all Thy
   limits; yet I escaped not Thy scourges. For what mortal can? For
   Thou wert ever with me mercifully rigorous, and besprinkling with most
   bitter alloy all my unlawful pleasures: that I might seek pleasures
   without alloy. But where to find such, I could not discover, save in
   Thee, O Lord, who teachest by sorrow, and woundest us, to heal; and
   killest us, lest we die from Thee. Where was I, and how far was I
   exiled from the delights of Thy house, in that sixteenth year of the
   age of my flesh, when the madness of lust (to which human
   shamelessness giveth free licence, though unlicensed by Thy laws) took
   the rule over me, and I resigned myself wholly to it? My friends
   meanwhile took no care by marriage to save my fall; their only care
   was that I should learn to speak excellently, and be a persuasive
   orator.
     For that year were my studies intermitted: whilst after my return
   from Madaura (a neighbour city, whither I had journeyed to learn
   grammar and rhetoric), the expenses for a further journey to
   Carthage were being provided for me; and that rather by the resolution
   than the means of my father, who was but a poor freeman of Thagaste.
   To whom tell I this? not to Thee, my God; but before Thee to mine
   own kind, even to that small portion of mankind as may light upon
   these writings of mine. And to what purpose? that whosoever reads
   this, may think out of what depths we are to cry unto Thee. For what
   is nearer to Thine ears than a confessing heart, and a life of
   faith? Who did not extol my father, for that beyond the ability of his
   means, he would furnish his son with all necessaries for a far journey
   for his studies' sake? For many far abler citizens did no such thing
   for their children. But yet this same father had no concern how I grew
   towards Thee, or how chaste I were; so that I were but copious in
   speech, however barren I were to Thy culture, O God, who art the
   only true and good Lord of Thy field, my heart.
     But while in that my sixteenth year I lived with my parents, leaving
   all school for a while (a season of idleness being interposed
   through the narrowness of my parents' fortunes), the briers of unclean
   desires grew rank over my head, and there was no hand to root them
   out. When that my father saw me at the baths, now growing towards
   manhood, and endued with a restless youthfulness, he, as already hence
   anticipating his descendants, gladly told it to my mother; rejoicing
   in that tumult of the senses wherein the world forgetteth Thee its
   Creator, and becometh enamoured of Thy creature, instead of Thyself,
   through the fumes of that invisible wine of its self-will, turning
   aside and bowing down to the very basest things. But in my mother's
   breast Thou hadst already begun Thy temple, and the foundation of
   Thy holy habitation, whereas my father was as yet but a Catechumen,
   and that but recently. She then was startled with a holy fear and
   trembling; and though I was not as yet baptised, feared for me those
   crooked ways in which they walk who turn their back to Thee, and not
   their face.
     Woe is me! and dare I say that Thou heldest Thy peace, O my God,
   while I wandered further from Thee? Didst Thou then indeed hold Thy
   peace to me? And whose but Thine were these words which by my
   mother, Thy faithful one, Thou sangest in my ears? Nothing whereof
   sunk into my heart, so as to do it. For she wished, and I remember
   in private with great anxiety warned me, "not to commit fornication;
   but especially never to defile another man's wife." These seemed to me
   womanish advices, which I should blush to obey. But they were Thine,
   and I knew it not: and I thought Thou wert silent and that it was
   she who spake; by whom Thou wert not silent unto me; and in her wast
   despised by me, her son, the son of Thy handmaid, Thy servant. But I
   knew it not; and ran headlong with such blindness, that amongst my
   equals I was ashamed of a less shamelessness, when I heard them
   boast of their flagitiousness, yea, and the more boasting, the more
   they were degraded: and I took pleasure, not only in the pleasure of
   the deed, but in the praise. What is worthy of dispraise but vice? But
   I made myself worse than I was, that I might not be dispraised; and
   when in any thing I had not sinned as the abandoned ones, I would
   say that I had done what I had not done, that I might not seem
   contemptible in proportion as I was innocent; or of less account,
   the more chaste.
     Behold with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon, and
   wallowed in the mire thereof, as if in a bed of spices and precious
   ointments. And that I might cleave the faster to its very centre,
   the invisible enemy trod me down, and seduced me, for that I was
   easy to be seduced. Neither did the mother of my flesh (who had now
   fled out of the centre of Babylon, yet went more slowly in the
   skirts thereof as she advised me to chastity, so heed what she had
   heard of me from her husband, as to restrain within the bounds of
   conjugal affection (if it could not be pared away to the quick) what
   she felt to be pestilent at present and for the future dangerous.
   She heeded not this, for she feared lest a wife should prove a clog
   and hindrance to my hopes. Not those hopes of the world to come, which
   my mother reposed in Thee; but the hope of learning, which both my
   parents were too desirous I should attain; my father, because he had
   next to no thought of Thee, and of me but vain conceits; my mother,
   because she accounted that those usual courses of learning would not
   only be no hindrance, but even some furtherance towards attaining
   Thee. For thus I conjecture, recalling, as well as I may, the
   disposition of my parents. The reins, meantime, were slackened to
   me, beyond all temper of due severity, to spend my time in sport, yea,
   even unto dissoluteness in whatsoever I affected. And in all was a
   mist, intercepting from me, O my God, the brightness of Thy truth; and
   mine iniquity burst out as from very fatness.
     Theft is punished by Thy law, O Lord, and the law written in the
   hearts of men, which iniquity itself effaces not. For what thief
   will abide a thief? not even a rich thief, one stealing through
   want. Yet I lusted to thieve, and did it, compelled by no hunger,
   nor poverty, but through a cloyedness of well-doing, and a
   pamperedness of iniquity. For I stole that, of which I had enough, and
   much better. Nor cared I to enjoy what I stole, but joyed in the theft
   and sin itself. A pear tree there was near our vineyard, laden with
   fruit, tempting neither for colour nor taste. To shake and rob this,
   some lewd young fellows of us went, late one night (having according
   to our pestilent custom prolonged our sports in the streets till
   then), and took huge loads, not for our eating, but to fling to the
   very hogs, having only tasted them. And this, but to do what we
   liked only, because it was misliked. Behold my heart, O God, behold my
   heart, which Thou hadst pity upon in the bottom of the bottomless pit.
   Now, behold, let my heart tell Thee what it sought there, that I
   should be gratuitously evil, having no temptation to ill, but the
   ill itself. It was foul, and I loved it; I loved to perish, I loved
   mine own fault, not that for which I was faulty, but my fault
   itself. Foul soul, falling from Thy firmament to utter destruction;
   not seeking aught through the shame, but the shame itself!
     For there is an attractiveness in beautiful bodies, in gold and
   silver, and all things; and in bodily touch, sympathy hath much
   influence, and each other sense hath his proper object answerably
   tempered. Wordly honour hath also its grace, and the power of
   overcoming, and of mastery; whence springs also the thirst of revenge.
   But yet, to obtain all these, we may not depart from Thee, O Lord, nor
   decline from Thy law. The life also which here we live hath its own
   enchantment, through a certain proportion of its own, and a
   correspondence with all things beautiful here below. Human
   friendship also is endeared with a sweet tie, by reason of the unity
   formed of many souls. Upon occasion of all these, and the like, is sin
   committed, while through an immoderate inclination towards these goods
   of the lowest order, the better and higher are forsaken,- Thou, our
   Lord God, Thy truth, and Thy law. For these lower things have their
   delights, but not like my God, who made all things; for in Him doth
   the righteous delight, and He is the joy of the upright in heart.
     When, then, we ask why a crime was done, we believe it not, unless
   it appear that there might have been some desire of obtaining some
   of those which we called lower goods, or a fear of losing them. For
   they are beautiful and comely; although compared with those higher and
   beatific goods, they be abject and low. A man hath murdered another;
   why? he loved his wife or his estate; or would rob for his own
   livelihood; or feared to lose some such things by him; or, wronged,
   was on fire to be revenged. Would any commit murder upon no cause,
   delighted simply in murdering? who would believe it? for as for that
   furious and savage man, of whom it is said that he was gratuitously
   evil and cruel, yet is the cause assigned; "lest" (saith he)
   "through idleness hand or heart should grow inactive." And to what
   end? that, through that practice of guilt, he might, having taken
   the city, attain to honours, empire, riches, and be freed from fear of
   the laws, and his embarrassments from domestic needs, and
   consciousness of villainies. So then, not even Catiline himself
   loved his own villainies, but something else, for whose sake he did
   them.
     What then did wretched I so love in thee, thou theft of mine, thou
   deed of darkness, in that sixteenth year of my age? Lovely thou wert
   not, because thou wert theft. But art thou any thing, that thus I
   speak to thee? Fair were the pears we stole, because they were Thy
   creation, Thou fairest of all, Creator of all, Thou good God; God, the
   sovereign good and my true good. Fair were those pears, but not them
   did my wretched soul desire; for I had store of better, and those I
   gathered, only that I might steal. For, when gathered, I flung them
   away, my only feast therein being my own sin, which I was pleased to
   enjoy. For if aught of those pears came within my mouth, what
   sweetened it was the sin. And now, O Lord my God, I enquire what in
   that theft delighted me; and behold it hath no loveliness; I mean
   not such loveliness as in justice and wisdom; nor such as is in the
   mind and memory, and senses, and animal life of man; nor yet as the
   stars are glorious and beautiful in their orbs; or the earth, or
   sea, full of embryo-life, replacing by its birth that which
   decayeth; nay, nor even that false and shadowy beauty which
   belongeth to deceiving vices.
     For so doth pride imitate exaltedness; whereas Thou alone art God
   exalted over all. Ambition, what seeks it, but honours and glory?
   whereas Thou alone art to be honoured above all, and glorious for
   evermore. The cruelty of the great would fain be feared; but who is to
   be feared but God alone, out of whose power what can be wrested or
   withdrawn? when, or where, or whither, or by whom? The tendernesses of
   the wanton would fain be counted love: yet is nothing more tender than
   Thy charity; nor is aught loved more healthfully than that Thy
   truth, bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity makes semblance of
   a desire of knowledge; whereas Thou supremely knowest all. Yea,
   ignorance and foolishness itself is cloaked under the name of
   simplicity and uninjuriousness; because nothing is found more single
   than Thee: and what less injurious, since they are his own works which
   injure the sinner? Yea, sloth would fain be at rest; but what stable
   rest besides the Lord? Luxury affects to be called plenty and
   abundance; but Thou art the fulness and never-failing plenteousness of
   incorruptible pleasures. Prodigality presents a shadow of
   liberality: but Thou art the most overflowing Giver of all good.
   Covetousness would possess many things; and Thou possessest all
   things. Envy disputes for excellency: what more excellent than Thou?
   Anger seeks revenge: who revenges more justly than Thou? Fear startles
   at things unwonted and sudden, which endangers things beloved, and
   takes forethought for their safety; but to Thee what unwonted or
   sudden, or who separateth from Thee what Thou lovest? Or where but
   with Thee is unshaken safety? Grief pines away for things lost, the
   delight of its desires; because it would have nothing taken from it,
   as nothing can from Thee.
     Thus doth the soul commit fornication, when she turns from Thee,
   seeking without Thee, what she findeth not pure and untainted, till
   she returns to Thee. Thus all pervertedly imitate Thee, who remove far
   from Thee, and lift themselves up against Thee. But even by thus
   imitating Thee, they imply Thee to be the Creator of all nature;
   whence there is no place whither altogether to retire from Thee.
   What then did I love in that theft? and wherein did I even corruptly
   and pervertedly imitate my Lord? Did I wish even by stealth to do
   contrary to Thy law, because by power I could not, so that being a
   prisoner, I might mimic a maimed liberty by doing with impunity things
   unpermitted me, a darkened likeness of Thy Omnipotency? Behold, Thy
   servant, fleeing from his Lord, and obtaining a shadow. O
   rottenness, O monstrousness of life, and depth of death! could I
   like what I might not, only because I might not?
     What shall I render unto the Lord, that, whilst my memory recalls
   these things, my soul is not affrighted at them? I will love Thee, O
   Lord, and thank Thee, and confess unto Thy name; because Thou hast
   forgiven me these so great and heinous deeds of mine. To Thy grace I
   ascribe it, and to Thy mercy, that Thou hast melted away my sins as it
   were ice. To Thy grace I ascribe also whatsoever I have not done of
   evil; for what might I not have done, who even loved a sin for its own
   sake? Yea, all I confess to have been forgiven me; both what evils I
   committed by my own wilfulness, and what by Thy guidance I committed
   not. What man is he, who, weighing his own infirmity, dares to ascribe
   his purity and innocency to his own strength; that so he should love
   Thee the less, as if he had less needed Thy mercy, whereby Thou
   remittest sins to those that turn to Thee? For whosoever, called by
   Thee, followed Thy voice, and avoided those things which he reads me
   recalling and confessing of myself, let him not scorn me, who being
   sick, was cured by that Physician, through whose aid it was that he
   was not, or rather was less, sick: and for this let him love Thee as
   much, yea and more; since by whom he sees me to have been recovered
   from such deep consumption of sin, by Him he sees himself to have been
   from the like consumption of sin preserved.
     What fruit had I then (wretched man!) in those things, of the
   remembrance whereof I am now ashamed? Especially, in that theft
   which I loved for the theft's sake; and it too was nothing, and
   therefore the more miserable I, who loved it. Yet alone I had not done
   it: such was I then, I remember, alone I had never done it. I loved
   then in it also the company of the accomplices, with whom I did it?
   I did not then love nothing else but the theft, yea rather I did
   love nothing else; for that circumstance of the company was also
   nothing. What is, in truth? who can teach me, save He that
   enlighteneth my heart, and discovereth its dark corners? What is it
   which hath come into my mind to enquire, and discuss, and consider?
   For had I then loved the pears I stole, and wished to enjoy them, I
   might have done it alone, had the bare commission of the theft
   sufficed to attain my pleasure; nor needed I have inflamed the itching
   of my desires by the excitement of accomplices. But since my
   pleasure was not in those pears, it was in the offence itself, which
   the company of fellow-sinners occasioned.
     What then was this feeling? For of a truth it was too foul: and
   woe was me, who had it. But yet what was it? Who can understand his
   errors? It was the sport, which as it were tickled our hearts, that we
   beguiled those who little thought what we were doing, and much
   disliked it. Why then was my delight of such sort that I did it not
   alone? Because none doth ordinarily laugh alone? ordinarily no one;
   yet laughter sometimes masters men alone and singly when on one
   whatever is with them, if anything very ludicrous presents itself to
   their senses or mind. Yet I had not done this alone; alone I had never
   done it. Behold my God, before Thee, the vivid remembrance of my soul;
   alone, I had never committed that theft wherein what I stole pleased
   me not, but that I stole; nor had it alone liked me to do it, nor
   had I done it. O friendship too unfriendly! thou incomprehensible
   inveigler of the soul, thou greediness to do mischief out of mirth and
   wantonness, thou thirst of others' loss, without lust of my own gain
   or revenge: but when it is said, "Let's go, let's do it," we are
   ashamed not to be shameless.
     Who can disentangle that twisted and intricate knottiness? Foul is
   it: I hate to think on it, to look on it. But Thee I long for, O
   Righteousness and Innocency, beautiful and comely to all pure eyes,
   and of a satisfaction unsating. With Thee is rest entire, and life
   imperturbable. Whoso enters into Thee, enters into the joy of his
   Lord: and shall not fear, and shall do excellently in the
   All-Excellent. I sank away from Thee, and I wandered, O my God, too
   much astray from Thee my stay, in these days of my youth, and I became
   to myself a barren land.