On Two Souls 1–13

Now that, by the help of God's mercy, the snares of the Manichaeans have been broken and left behind, and I have at last been restored to the bosom of the catholic Church, I wish at least now to consider and lament that misery of mine. For there were many things I ought to have done so that the seeds of the truest religion, implanted in me healthfully from boyhood, should not have been so easily, and in a few days, dug up and driven out of my mind by the error or fraud of false and deceitful men. For first, as to those two kinds of souls, to which they assigned such separate and proper natures that one is of the very substance of God, while God is not even willing to be accepted as the creator of the other: if I had considered this with myself soberly and carefully, with a mind humble and devout toward God, perhaps it would have become clear to me, as I strove, that there is no life of any kind which, by the very fact that it is life and insofar as it is life at all, does not belong to the highest fount and principle of life; and this we can confess to be nothing other than the highest, only, and true God. Therefore those souls which the Manichaeans call evil either lack life, and are not souls, and neither will nor refuse anything, neither seek nor flee anything; or, if they live, so that they can both be souls and do anything such as those people imagine, they live by nothing but life. And if it were established that Christ said, as it is established that he said, “I am the life,” there would be no reason why we should not confess that all souls, since they cannot be souls except by living, were created and founded through Christ, that is, through the life.

But if at that time my thought could not bear and sustain the question of life itself and of participation in life (which is certainly a great question, needing much calm discussion among the most learned), perhaps I could have made out what is most plainly evident to every person who considers it well without partisan zeal: that everything we are said to know and understand we hold as grasped either by the sense of the body or by the intelligence. The senses of the body, even in common speech, are counted as five: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch; and who, unless ungrateful and impious, would not grant me that intelligence far and deeply surpasses and excels all of them? Once this is settled and established, it follows that all things perceived bodily, by touch and sight or in any other way, are as much inferior to the things we attain by understanding as we see the senses themselves yield to the intelligence. Therefore, since all life, and for that reason every soul, can be perceived by no bodily sense but by the intellect alone, while this sun and moon and every light seen by these mortal eyes are said even by the Manichaeans themselves to be attributed to the true and good God, it is the height of madness to proclaim that what we behold through the body belongs to God, but to think that what we grasp not merely with the mind but with the very summit of the mind, that is, with the reason and intelligence, namely life, of whatever kind it is said to be, must be deprived and bereft of that same God as its author. For if I invoked God and questioned myself, could I not answer what it is to live, and how removed it is from every bodily sense, and how wholly incorporeal? Or would not they too admit that those souls they detest not only live but live immortally? And what Christ said, “Let the dead bury their dead,” was said not of those who do not live at all but of those who sin, which is the only death of the immortal soul, as Paul writes: “The widow who lives in pleasures is dead”; for he said at once that she is dead and that she lives. So I should have attended not to how much more discolored the life of a sinful soul is, but only to the fact that it lives. And if I could not perceive this except by understanding, it would, I believe, have come into my mind that any soul whatever is to be preferred to the light we perceive through these eyes as much as we prefer the intelligence to the eyes themselves. But they too affirm that that light is from the Father of Christ: should I, then, have doubted that any soul whatever was from him? Indeed, even then, a man, of course, of that inexperience and that age, I would not have hesitated at all, not only about the soul but about any body whatever, that it was from him, if I had thought devoutly and carefully what form is and what is formed, what beauty is and what is clothed with beauty, and then which of these is the cause of which.

But of the body I say nothing for the moment; of the soul I complain: of its spontaneous and living motion, of its activity, of its life, of its immortality. Finally, I complain that, most wretched as I was, I believed that anything could have all these things without the goodness of God, and that I paid careless attention to how great they are: this, I think, I must bewail and weep over. I should have turned these things over with myself, spoken with myself, and brought them before those men: I would have set forth what the power of understanding is, and how nothing in man can be compared with this excellence. When men had granted me this, if only they were men, I would have asked whether to see with these eyes is the same as to understand; when they had denied it, I would have concluded first that the understanding of the mind is to be placed far ahead of the sense of these eyes; then I would have added that what we perceive by the better faculty must necessarily be judged better. Who would not grant this? So I would have gone on to ask whether that soul which they call evil is perceived by these eyes or understood by the mind. They would admit, by the mind. When all these things had been agreed and established between us, I would have shown what follows: that that soul which they execrate is better than this light which they venerate, since the one is known by the understanding of the mind, the other by the sense of the body. Here, perhaps, they would have stuck and refused to follow reason as their guide, so great is the force of long-entrenched opinions and of a falsehood long defended and believed. But I would have pressed them the more as they stuck, not harshly, not childishly, not obstinately; I would have repeated what had been conceded, and shown how it had to be conceded. I would have urged them to take counsel in common, and to see clearly what we would have to deny: whether they thought it false that understanding is to be preferred to these fleshly lights, or that what is known by the excellence of the mind is more excellent than what is known by the weak sense of the body; or whether they would refuse to admit that those souls which they believed to be alien could be known only by understanding, that is, by the very excellence of the mind; or whether they would want to deny that the sun and moon become known only by these eyes. And if they noticed that none of these could be denied except most absurdly and shamelessly, I would have urged them that they ought not to doubt that this light, which they proclaimed should be worshiped, is lower than that soul which they warned should be shunned.

And here, if perhaps they were disturbed and asked me whether I thought that even the soul of a fly surpasses this light, I would have answered: yes, even that. Nor would the fly frighten me because it is small; rather, because it is alive, it would confirm my case. For one asks what gives life to those tiny members, what leads that tiny little body here and there according to its natural appetite, what moves the feet of the running fly in rhythm, or what governs and makes vibrate the little wings of the flying one. Whatever it is, to those who consider well it stands out so greatly in so small a thing that it is to be preferred to any brightness that dazzles the eyes. Certainly, as no one doubts, whatever it is, it is intelligible, and by divine laws it surpasses everything sensible, and therefore also this light. For what, I ask, do we grasp by thought, if we do not grasp that to understand with the mind is one thing and to perceive through the body another, and that the former is separated from the latter by an incomparable elevation, and therefore that intelligible things cannot fail to be preferred to sensible things, since understanding itself is so far preferred to the senses?

From this perhaps I might also have recognized what plainly follows: since injustice and intemperance and the other vices of the mind are not sensed but understood, how does it come about that even these, which we detest and judge worthy of condemnation, can nevertheless, because they are intelligible, rank above this light, although this light is praiseworthy in its own kind? For it is suggested to a mind that rightly submits itself to God, first, that not everything we praise is to be placed above everything we blame. For I do not, because I praise the purest lead, value it more than gold that I blame; each thing must be considered in its own kind. I disapprove of a lawyer who does not know many laws, and yet I so prefer him to a most approved shoemaker that I do not think him even comparable. Yet I praise the shoemaker because he is very skilled in his craft, and I rightly blame the lawyer because he fulfills his profession less well. From this I should have found that this light, because it is perfect in its own kind, is rightly praised; yet because it is included among sensible things, a kind that must yield to the kind of intelligible things, it is to be ranked below unjust and intemperate souls, since they are intelligible, although we judge them, not without reason, most worthy of condemnation. For in them we are looking for what may be reconciled to God, not what may be preferred to that brightness. Therefore, if anyone maintained that this light is from God, I would not oppose him; but I would say rather that souls, even vicious ones, not insofar as they are vicious but insofar as they are souls, must confess God as their creator.

At this point, if one of them, cautious and watchful and by now more eager for truth than for stubbornness, warned me that the question was not about vicious souls but about the vices themselves (which, since they are not known by bodily sense and yet are known, can only be taken as intelligible; and if they surpass all sensible things, why should we agree that light is to be attributed to God as its author, when no one but a sacrilegious person would call God the author of vices?), I would have answered the man if the solution of this question had either shone on me at once and suddenly from God, as usually happens to good worshipers of God, or had been prepared beforehand. If I had deserved and achieved neither, I would have postponed what I had begun and confessed that what was proposed was difficult and hard to discern. I would have run back into myself, prostrated myself before God, groaned deeply, asking that he not let me stick halfway along the course by which I had advanced by sure reasons, lest I be forced by a double-edged question either to subordinate and subject intelligible things to sensible ones or to call him the author of vices, since either of these is full of falsehood and impiety. In no way could I have thought that he would desert me in such a state. He would therefore have warned me, in those ineffable ways of his, to consider again and again whether the vices of the mind, about which I was troubled, were to be counted among intelligible things. And to find this out, because of the weakness of my inner eye, which had rightly befallen me through my sins, I would have contrived for myself some step, in the visible things themselves, toward beholding invisible things, visible things of which we have by no means a more certain knowledge, but a more confident familiarity. So I would at once have asked what properly belongs to the sense of the eyes. I would have found colors, among which this light holds first place. For these are what no other sense reaches; for the motions of bodies, their sizes, distances, and shapes, though they can be sensed by the eyes, are not properly theirs, but can also be sensed by touch. Hence I would have concluded that light surpasses other bodily and sensible things as much as sight is more illustrious than the other senses. So, having picked out from all things that are sensed by the body this light, on which I would rely and on which I would necessarily place that step of my inquiry, I would have gone on to observe what happens in this way, and would have talked it over with myself thus: If this sun, conspicuous with such brightness and sufficient for the light of day, gradually failed in our sight until it resembled the moon, would we perceive with our eyes anything other than light shining in some measure, looking for the light that had been by not seeing it, and taking in by seeing the light that was present? So we would not see that failing, but the light that remained to the failing. But what we did not see we would not sense; for whatever we sense by sight cannot fail to be seen. Therefore, if that failing were sensed neither by sight nor by any other sense, it could not be counted among sensible things; for nothing is sensible that cannot be sensed. Let us now turn our consideration to virtue, by whose intelligible light we most fittingly say the mind shines. Further, a certain failing from this light of virtue, which does not destroy the soul but darkens it, is called vice. So the vice of the mind too can rightly be counted in no way among intelligible things, just as that failing of light is rightly excluded from the number of sensible things. But what remains to the soul, that is, the very fact that it lives and is a soul, is as intelligible as that which, in this visible light, would be sensible, however much it still shone after the failing. And therefore the soul, insofar as it is a soul and participates in life, without which it can in no way be a soul, is most rightly placed ahead of all sensible things. Therefore it is a very great error to say that any soul is not from God, when you boast that the sun and moon are from him.

But if one now chose to call sensible not only the things we sense but also those which, by not sensing them, we nevertheless judge through the body, as darkness through the eyes and silence through the ears (for we know the one by not seeing and the other by not hearing), and again to call intelligible not only the things we behold with an enlightened mind, such as wisdom itself, but also those which we turn away from through the privation of that enlightenment, such as folly, which we may fittingly call the darkness of the mind: I would make no dispute about the word, but would resolve the whole question by an easy division, and would at once prove to those who pay attention that, by the divine and incorrupt law of truth, intelligible substances are placed above sensible substances, not the failings of those substances, even if we chose to call the one intelligible and the other sensible. Therefore those who admitted that both these visible lights and those intelligible souls are substances would be compelled in every way to grant and concede the higher place to souls; but the failings of the two kinds cannot be placed one above the other, for they only deprive and indicate not-being, and so everywhere have the same force, just as negations themselves do. For when we say “it is not gold” and “it is not virtue,” although there is a very great difference between gold and the virtues, there is no difference between the negations we have attached to them. But that it is worse for virtue not to be than for gold not to be, no one of sound mind doubts; and who does not understand that this comes about not because of the negations themselves but because of the things to which they are attached? For the more virtue surpasses gold, the more wretched it is to lack virtue than to lack gold. Therefore, since intelligible things surpass sensible things, we rightly bear a failing in intelligible things with more distress than in sensible things, valuing not those failings, but the things that fail, as more precious or more worthless. From this it is already clear that the failing of life, which is intelligible, is much more lamentable than that of this sensible light, because understood life is much more precious than this seen light.

Since this is so, will anyone dare, while attributing to God the sun and moon and whatever shines with visible light in the stars, and finally in this fire of ours on earth, to refuse to grant that any souls whatever are from God, souls which are certainly not souls except by living, since life so far surpasses this light? And when he speaks the truth who says, “Insofar as it shines, it is from God,” shall I, great God, be lying if I say, “Insofar as it lives, it is from God”? Let not, I beg, the blindness of the mind and the punishments of souls be increased so far that men do not understand these things. But however their error or stubbornness might stand, I believe that, relying on and armed with these reasons, when I had brought the matter so considered and examined before them and had calmly discussed it with them, I would have been afraid that any of them might seem to me of any weight if he tried to rank either the understanding or the things perceived by understanding (not through failing) below bodily sense, or even to compare them with it or with the things that likewise belong to that sense to be known. And when this was established, when would he or anyone dare to deny to me that souls, however evil he wished them to be, are nevertheless, because they are souls, contained among intelligible things, and are not understood through failing? For souls are souls by nothing other than that by which they live. For although they might be understood as vicious through failing, since they are vicious by lack of virtue, yet they are not souls through failing, since they are souls by living. Nor can it be that the presence of life is a cause of failing, since each thing fails as much as life deserts it.

In every way, then, since it was clear that no souls can be separated from that author from whom this light is not separated, I would no longer accept whatever they brought forward, but would rather urge them to choose to follow with me those who proclaim that everything that is, because it is, to whatever degree it is, is from the one God. They might recite against me those words of the Gospel: “You do not hear for this reason, because you are not from God; you are from your father the devil.” I in turn would recite: “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made,” and the apostle's words: “One God, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,” and again the same apostle's: “From whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things; to him be glory.” And I would urge the men, if only I found men, that we should no longer presume that we had found anything out, but should rather seek teachers who could show us the peace and harmony of these statements, which seemed to us to conflict with one another. Since, within one and the same authority of the Scriptures, it sounded in one place, “All things are from God,” and in another, “You are not from God,” and since it would be impious to condemn the books rashly, who would not see that a skilled teacher, to whom the solution of this question was known, had to be found? And if he were a good interpreter and, as Scripture says, a spiritual man, then, since he would necessarily favor the true reasons which I have treated and discussed, as far as I could, concerning intelligible and sensible nature, or rather would himself lay them open much better and more fitly for teaching, we would hear nothing else from him on this question than how it could be that no kind of souls is not from God, and yet it is rightly said to sinners and unbelievers, “You are not from God.” For we too, perhaps, having implored God's help, could easily see that to live is one thing and to sin another; and that although life in sins has been called death in comparison with a righteous life, yet both can be found in one man, so that he is at once alive and a sinner; but insofar as he is alive, he is from God; insofar as he is a sinner, he is not from God. In this division we use whichever of the two parts suits our purpose: when we want to make known the omnipotence of God the creator, we say even to sinners that they are from God; for we say it to those who are held together by some form, to animate beings, to rational beings, and finally, what touches the matter most, to living beings, all of which in themselves are divine gifts. But when our purpose is to rebuke the wicked, we rightly say, “You are not from God.” For we say it to those who turn away from the truth, to unbelievers, to criminals, to the shameful, and, in one word that contains the whole, to sinners; and who doubts that all these, again, are not from God? So when Christ rebuked sinners for the very fact that they were sinners and did not believe in him, what wonder if he said, “You are not from God,” while on the other side that statement remains intact, that “all things were made through him,” and “all things are from God”? For if not believing Christ, rejecting Christ's coming, not receiving Christ were a sure sign of souls that are not God's, and for that reason it had been said, “You do not hear for this reason, because you are not from God,” how would that saying of the apostle be true, at the memorable beginning of the Gospel itself, where it is said: “He came to his own, and his own did not receive him”? How were they his own, if they did not receive him? Or how were they for that reason not his own, because they did not receive him? Only because sinful men, insofar as they are men, belong to God, but insofar as they are sinners, to the devil. So he who said, “His own did not receive him,” kept to the part of nature; he who said, “You are not from God,” kept to the part of the will. For the evangelist was commending the works of God; Christ was restraining the sins of men.

Here perhaps someone may say: “Where do sins themselves come from, and where does evil come from at all? If from man, where does man come from? If from an angel, where does the angel come from?” When these are said to be from God, although this is said rightly and truly, it still seems to the unskilled and to those less able to look keenly into hidden things that evils and sins are linked to God as though by a kind of chain. In this question these people think they reign, as though to ask were to know. Would that it were! No one would be found more knowing than I. But somehow, in disputing, the one who puts a great question often displays the role of a great teacher, while he himself is usually more ignorant than the one he has cornered, on the very matter with which he intimidates him. So these people think they should be preferred to the multitude because they ask first what they, with the multitude, do not know. But if, at the time when I dealt with them (as I now regret having done, not as I have long been doing), they had put this objection to me when I brought out these reasons, I would have said: “Please, meanwhile, recognize with me what is very easy: if nothing can shine without God, much less can anything live without God; so that we may not remain in such monstrous opinions as to proclaim that certain souls have life not from God. For so perhaps it will come about that what you do not know along with me, that is, where evil comes from, we may learn some day, either together or in whatever order. For what if the knowledge of the highest evil cannot come to a man without knowledge of the highest good? For we would not know darkness if we were always in darkness; but the knowledge of light did not leave its contrary unknown. Now the highest good is that than which nothing can be higher; but God is good, and nothing is higher than God: God, therefore, is the highest good. Let us know God, then, and so what we are seeking too hastily will not be hidden from us. Or do you think the knowledge of God is a matter of little importance or merit? For what other reward is promised us than eternal life, which is the knowledge of God? For God our teacher says: ‘And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only and true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’ For although the soul is immortal, yet because its death is rightly called turning away from the knowledge of God, when it turns to God, that is the merit of attaining eternal life, so that eternal life is, as has been said, knowledge itself. But no one can turn to God unless he turns away from this world. This I feel to be hard and very difficult for me; if it is easy for you, God himself will see. I would like to believe it, if I were not troubled by this: that, although this world, from which we are commanded to turn away, is visible, and the apostle has said, ‘The things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal,’ you give more weight to the judgment of these eyes than to that of the mind, you among whom it is proclaimed and believed that no feather shines that does not shine from God, and yet that there is a living soul that does not live from God.” These and similar things I would either have said to them as well or thought over with myself. For I could, praying to God with all my heart, as they say, and intent on the Scriptures as far as was permitted, perhaps even then have said such things, or, what was enough for salvation, have thought them.

But two things above all, which easily capture that incautious age, wore me down by wonderful roundabout ways. One of them was a familiarity, somehow creeping on with a certain image of goodness, like a winding cord wrapped many times around the neck; the other, that a kind of harmful victory almost always came to me in disputes, when I argued with unskilled Christians who nevertheless strove eagerly, each as best he could, to defend their faith. By this very frequent success the young man's hot temper grew, and imprudently drove its impulses toward the great evil of obstinacy. And because I had taken up this kind of disputing after I began to hear them, whatever I could do in it, either by whatever ability I had or from other reading, I most gladly credited to them alone. So from their talks came ardor for contests, and from the success of the contests love for them was renewed daily. Hence it happened that whatever they said I approved as true, in some strange ways, not because I knew it but because I wished it to be true. So it came about that, although step by step and cautiously, I followed for a long time men who preferred a shining straw to a living soul.

But suppose it so: at that time I could not judge between and distinguish these sensible things from intelligible ones, that is, carnal from spiritual. It was not a matter of my age, nor of my training, nor even of a certain habit, nor finally of any merits (for it is a thing of no small joy and happiness). But could I not at least lay hold of what nature itself has established in the judgment of all men by the laws of the highest God? For I would like to test what any men would answer me, provided no madness had cut them off from the common sense of the human race, whatever pursuits they brought to judging, whatever inexperience, however great their slowness, if I asked them whether a man seemed to them to have sinned from whose hand, while he slept, someone else had written something shameful. Who would doubt that all would deny that this was a sin, and protest so loudly that they might even be angry that I thought them deserving of such a question? Having reconciled them as best I could and brought them back to the discussion, I would ask them not to take it ill if I asked them something else as plain and as clear to everyone's knowledge. Then I would ask: if someone stronger had done some similar evil not with the hand of a sleeping man but with that of a man who knew it, but who was bound and tied in his other limbs, would he, because he knew of it, although he was wholly unwilling, be held guilty under any name of sin? And here all, wondering that I asked such things, would answer without hesitation that he too had not sinned at all. Why so? Because a man through whom, when he is unaware or unable to resist, someone else has done some evil, can in no way be justly condemned. And if I inquired of human nature itself in those men why this is so, I would easily reach what I wanted, asking in this way: What if that sleeper already knew what the other would do with his hand, and on purpose, having even drunk more so as not to wake, gave himself to sleep, in order to deceive someone by an oath: would sleep contribute anything to his innocence? What would they declare him but a guilty man? What if the other too was bound willingly, so as likewise to deceive someone by the pretext of that defense: of what use, then, were those bonds to him in keeping him free of sin? Although, tied by them, he really could not resist, just as that sleeper could not at all know what was being done then. Is there any doubt, then, that both would be judged to have sinned? When these points were conceded, I would conclude that sin is nowhere but in the will, since I would also be helped by the fact that justice holds sinners guilty by the evil will alone, even if they could not carry out what they willed.

Could anyone say that in treating these things I am dealing with obscure and hidden matters, where, because few understand, suspicion of fraud or of display usually arises? Let that distinction of intelligible and sensible things step aside for a little; let no one resent me for pursuing slow souls with the goads of subtle arguments. Let me be allowed to know that I live; let me be allowed to know that I will to live. If the human race agrees on these things, our will is as known to us as our life. Nor, when we profess this knowledge, need we fear that anyone may convict us of being able to be deceived; for no one can be deceived in this very matter unless 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 blameworthy to someone because these things are too obvious; but let us consider where they lead.