On Two Souls

Contents

Reading pages: 1–13 · 14–24

1. 1Restored to the catholic Church, Augustine laments that he did not see that every soul, being alive, must come from God, the source of life, and through Christ, who is the life.
2. 2Since life and soul are known by the intellect, which surpasses the bodily senses, souls must rank above the visible light that the Manichaeans ascribe to God, and so must also be from God.
3. 3Augustine sets out the argument he should have pressed on the Manichaeans: souls are known by the mind, the sun and moon by the eyes, so even the “evil” soul is better than the light they worship.
4. 4Even a fly's soul surpasses the sun's light, because the life that moves it is intelligible, and intelligible things rank above all sensible ones.
5. 5Things must be judged within their kinds: the sun's light is praiseworthy as sensible, yet even vicious souls, as intelligible, rank above it, and as souls they have God as creator.
6. 6Vices are not intelligible things but failings, as a waning of light is not itself seen; what remains in a vicious soul, its life, is intelligible and ranks above all sensible things.
7. 7Whatever words are used, intelligible substances rank above sensible ones, while failings as mere negations are equal in themselves; losing an intelligible good is worse because the good is greater.
8. 8If the Manichaeans grant that whatever shines is from God, they must grant that whatever lives is from God, for souls are souls by living, and life is never a cause of failing.
9. 9Scripture's “all things are from God” and “you are not from God” agree once one sees that a sinner is from God insofar as he lives and not from God insofar as he sins.
10. 10To the question “where does evil come from?” Augustine would have answered that one must first know God, the highest good, and that the Manichaeans wrongly trust the eyes over the mind.
11. 11Augustine explains that friendship with the Manichaeans and easy victories in debates with untrained Christians kept him long among men who preferred a shining straw to a living soul.
12. 12By common human judgment no one sins through an act done without knowledge or power to resist, unless he willed it beforehand; so sin lies nowhere but in the will.
13. 13Augustine turns to what everyone knows without subtle argument: that he lives and that he wills, knowledge in which no one can be deceived.
14. 14Augustine defines will as a movement of the mind, uncompelled, toward keeping or gaining something, a definition that nature makes plain to everyone.
15. 15Augustine defines sin as the will to keep or gain what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain, a truth known to everyone from shepherds to bishops.
16. 16Applying the definitions: if the Manichaean evil souls had no will they were innocent, and if they willed and sought the good they already had knowledge of good, even the sight of God, so their “highest evil” is full of goods.
17. 17Since God justly condemns only souls that sin, and sin requires will, souls evil by nature cannot sin and so cannot exist; the Manichaeans' evil kind of souls is nothing.
18. 18Since the Manichaeans admit that sins exist and are forgiven, and their evil souls cannot sin, they must ascribe sin to the souls they call God's substance, which refutes their claim.
19. 19Wavering in deliberation shows not two souls but one soul drawn by carnal and spiritual goods, both from God; the struggle comes from habit and the penalty of sin.
20. 20Even if lower souls drew us to bodily things, they would not be evil by nature; we sin by imitating what is beneath us when we are made and commanded to love spiritual things.
21. 21Wavering thoughts can have many causes and prove nothing about two souls; the plain truths about will and sin suffice to show the Manichaean heresy false.
22. 22The Manichaeans admit that repentance is useful, but neither a soul incapable of evil nor one incapable of good can repent, so their two kinds of souls are refuted.
23. 23Augustine fears that a friend still attached to the Manichaeans would rather deny the known usefulness of repentance than accept the conclusion, and laments the power of the habit of sin.
24. 24Augustine appeals to his friends still among the Manichaeans, prays to the triune God for them, and defers the defense of Scripture against Manichaean charges to other books.