On Two Souls 14–24

One sins, then, only by will. But our will is most 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 movement of the mind, with nothing compelling it, toward either not losing or obtaining something. Why, then, could I not define it so at that time? Was it difficult to see that the unwilling is contrary to the willing, in the way that we say left is contrary to right, not as black is to white? For the same thing cannot be both black and white at once; but anyone placed between two people is on the left of one and on the right of the other; one man is indeed both at once, but he is by no means both at once in relation to one man. So one mind can indeed be both unwilling and willing at once, but it cannot at once not will and will one and the same thing. For when someone does something unwillingly (for if you ask him whether he wants to do it, he says he does not; likewise if you ask him whether he wants not to do it, he answers that he does), you will find him unwilling to do it but willing not to do it; that is, you will find one mind at one time having both, but referring each to a different thing. Why do I say this? Because if we ask again why he does it unwillingly, he will say he is compelled. For everyone who acts unwillingly is compelled, and everyone who is compelled, if he acts, acts only unwillingly. It remains that the willing person is free from compulsion, even if someone thinks he is compelled. For in this way everyone who acts willingly is not compelled, and everyone who is not compelled either acts willingly or does not act. Since nature itself proclaims these things in all people whom we can sensibly question, from the boy to the old man, from the elementary school to the throne of the wise, why could I not see at that time that in the definition of will one must put “with nothing compelling,” which I have now put with great caution, as though from greater experience? But if this is everywhere evident, and is available to all not by instruction but by nature, what remains that seems obscure? Unless perhaps it escapes anyone that when we will, we will something, and that our mind is moved toward this, and that we either have it or do not have it, and that if we have it we will to keep it, and if we do not have it, to acquire it. Therefore everyone who wills wills either not to lose something or to obtain it. Therefore, if all these things are clearer than light, as they are, and are given by the generosity of truth itself not only to my knowledge but to the knowledge of the human race, why could I not say even at that time: will is a movement of the mind, with nothing compelling it, toward either not losing or obtaining something?

Someone will say: “And how would this have helped you against the Manichaeans?” Wait; let us first also define sin, which every mind reads written within itself by God cannot exist without will. Sin, then, is the will to keep or to obtain what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain. Although, if one is not free, it is not will; but I preferred to define it broadly rather than scrupulously. Did I have to search obscure books here too, to learn 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 shepherds sing these things on the mountains, and poets in the theaters, and the unlearned in their circles, and the learned in libraries, and teachers in schools, and bishops in holy 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 every sin is to be either blamed or condemned, who doubts that there is sin when it is both unjust to will and free not to will? And therefore that definition is both true and very easy to understand, and could have been stated by me not only now but then as well: sin is the will to keep or to obtain what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain.

Come now, let us see how these things would have helped us. First of all, so that I would have desired nothing more: for they would have settled the whole case. For whoever, consulting the secrets of his conscience and the divine laws deeply implanted in nature, within the mind, where they are more clearly expressed and more certain, grants that these two definitions of will and of sin are true, condemns without any hesitation the whole heresy of the Manichaeans by a very few and very short, but plainly quite invincible, little arguments. This can be considered as follows. They say there are two kinds of souls: one good, which is from God in such a way that it is said not to have been made by him from some matter or from nothing, but to have proceeded as a certain part from his very substance; the other evil, which they believe, and commend to be believed, belongs in no way whatever to God. And therefore they proclaim that the one is the highest good and the other the highest evil, and that these two kinds were once separate and are now mixed. The manner and cause of this mixture I had not yet heard; but I could already ask whether that evil kind of souls, before it was mixed with the good, had any will. For if it had none, it was without sin and innocent, and therefore in no way evil. But if it was evil because, although without will, like fire, it would still violate and corrupt the good if it touched it, how impious it is to believe both that the nature of evil has such power to change any part of God and that that highest good is corruptible and violable! But if will was in it, then certainly there was in it a movement of the mind, with nothing compelling it, toward not losing or obtaining something. But this something was either good or thought to be good; for otherwise it could not be sought. But in the highest evil, before the mixture they proclaim, there was never any good. Where, then, could either knowledge or opinion of good be there? Or did they will nothing that was among themselves, and seek that true good which was outside? That, surely, is a noble will, to be proclaimed with great praise, by which the highest and true good is sought. Where, then, in the highest evil did a movement of the mind so very worthy of praise come from? Or did they seek it out of eagerness to harm? 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. So there was in them either knowledge or opinion of good, which ought in no way to be in the highest evil. Next, how had they come to know that that good placed outside them, which they were eager to harm, existed at all? If they had understood it, what is more splendid than such a mind? Or is there anything else toward which the whole effort of the good strains with great labors, except that that highest and pure good may be understood? What, then, is now granted with difficulty to a few good and just people, could that pure evil already do then, with no good helping it? But if those souls had bodies and had seen it 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 equaled? How many goods we find in the highest evil! For if to see God is evil, God is not good; but God is good; therefore to see God is good, and I do not know what could be compared with this good. Further, how can it be that the ability to see is evil when seeing is good? Therefore whoever made it so, in those eyes or in those minds, that the divine substance could be seen by them, made a great good, most worthy of ineffable praise. But if it was not made, but was such in itself and everlasting, it is hard to find anything better than this evil.

Finally, granting that those souls have none of these praiseworthy things which by the Manichaeans' own reasoning they are forced to have, I would ask whether God condemns some souls or none. If none, there is no judgment of merits, no providence, and the world is governed by chance rather than by reason, or rather is not governed at all; for governing is not to be credited to chance. But if it is impious for all who are bound by any religion to believe this, it remains that either some souls are condemned or there are no sins. But if there are no sins, there is also no evil; and if they said this, they would kill their heresy with one blow. It is agreed, then, between them and me that some souls are condemned by 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. How do we show this? From the definitions of will and of sin given above. For to say that souls are both evil and do not sin is full of madness; and to say that they sin without will is great raving; and to hold anyone guilty of sin because he did not do what he could not do is the height of injustice and insanity. Therefore, whatever those souls do, if they do it by nature and not by will, that is, if they lack a free movement of the mind both for doing and for not doing, if, finally, no power is granted them of abstaining from their action, we cannot hold them guilty of sin. But all admit that evil souls are condemned justly, and those that have not sinned unjustly; they admit, then, that those souls are evil which sin. But those souls, as reason has shown, do not sin; therefore the alien kind of evil souls, whatever it is, which the Manichaeans bring in, does not exist.

Now let us look at that good kind, which in turn they praise so highly that they say it is the very substance of God. But how much better it is that each should know his own rank and merit, and not be so puffed up with sacrilegious pride that, although he feels himself changed so often, he should believe himself to be the substance of that highest good which devout reason professes and teaches is unchangeable. For see: since it is evident that souls do not sin in not being such as they cannot be (from which it is already established that those imported souls, whatever they are, in no way sin, and therefore do not exist at all), it remains that, since they grant that there are sins, they find none to attribute them to except the good kind of souls and the substance of God. And they are pressed most of all by Christian authority; for they have never denied that pardon of sins is given when anyone has turned to God; they have never said, as they do of many other things, that some corrupter inserted this into the divine Scriptures. To whom, then, are sins forgiven? If to those alien evil souls, then they can also become good, they can possess the kingdom of God with Christ. Since they deny this, and have no other kind than those they declare to be of the substance of God, it remains that they must admit that these souls too sin, and indeed these alone. But I do not fight over it: let them not sin alone; still they sin. “But,” they say, “they are compelled by the mixture of evil.” If they are compelled in such a way 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 forced by their teaching to find such goods in the highest evil and such evil in the highest good, unless it is because neither is that an evil which they bring in by suspicion, nor is this the highest good which they pervert by superstition?

But if I had shown that they rave and err about these two kinds of souls, or at least had learned it myself, what could remain for which they should still seem to me worth hearing or consulting on any matter? Was it so that I might learn that the existence of two kinds of souls is shown by this, that in deliberating our assent sways now 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 carried this way and that, and brought back from this side and from that? For when this happens to me, I feel that I am one, considering both and choosing one or the other; but often the one pleases, the other is fitting, and we waver placed between them. No wonder: for we are now so constituted that we can be affected by pleasure through the flesh and by what is honorable through the spirit. Why, then, am I forced by this to admit two souls? For we can understand better and much more readily that two kinds of good things, neither of which is foreign to God as author, affect one soul from different sides, a lower and a higher, or, as may rightly be said, an outer and an inner. These are the two kinds we treated a little before under the names of sensible and intelligible, which we more gladly and familiarly call carnal and spiritual. But it has become difficult for us to abstain from carnal things, although our truest bread is spiritual. For now we eat bread with toil; for we are not free of punishment, having been made mortal instead of immortal by the sin of transgression. Hence it happens that, when we strive toward better things, the habit formed with the flesh and our sins begin in a certain way to fight against us and make difficulty for us, so that some foolish people, in most dull-witted superstition, suspect another kind of souls which is not from God.

Yet even if it were granted them that we are enticed to shameful things by another, lower kind of souls, they do not conclude from this either that those souls are evil by nature or that these are the highest good. For it may be that those souls, by their own will, in seeking what was not allowed, that is, by sinning, became evil from good, and can become good again; but that, as happens, as long as they remain in sin, they draw others to themselves by some hidden persuasion. Or again, that they are not evil at all, but in their own kind, though a lower one, carry out their proper work without any sin; while these higher souls, to which justice, the supreme governor of things, has given a far more excellent activity, become evil by sinning if they choose to follow and imitate those lower ones, not because they imitate evil souls, but because they imitate badly. For the lower souls do what is proper to them; the higher seek what is foreign to them; hence the lower remain in their rank, while the higher sink to lower things. It is as when men pursue the ways of beasts. A four-footed horse moves beautifully; but if a man practiced this with his feet and hands, who would think him worthy even of a diet of chaff? So we often rightly disapprove of the imitator while we approve the one he imitates. And we disapprove not because he has not succeeded, but because he wanted to succeed at all. For in the horse we approve that very thing which offends us in the man, who pursues lower things, to the degree that we rank man above the horse. Again, among men themselves, in raising the voice, is not a praetor insane if he does what a herald does well, even if he does it more loudly and better? Look up at the heavens: the shining moon is praised, and praised for its course and phases, and it pleases well those who consider it rightly; yet if the sun wanted to imitate it (for let us imagine they could have wills of this kind), who would not be greatly and rightly displeased? From these examples comes what I wish to be understood: even if there are souls (which is uncertain for now) devoted to bodily functions not by sin but by nature, and which, though lower, touch us by some inner nearness, they are not therefore to be considered evil because we, when we follow them and love bodily things, are evil. For we sin by loving bodily things precisely because we are commanded by justice, and are able by nature, to love spiritual things, and then we are best and most blessed in our own kind.

What argument, then, does deliberation have, tossed to either side, now inclined toward sin, now lifted up toward right action, to force us to accept two kinds of souls, the nature of one from God and of the other not, when we may conjecture so many other causes for alternating thoughts? But anyone who is a good judge of things sees that these matters are obscure and are sought in vain by bleary-eyed minds. Therefore rather those things that have been said about will and sin, those, I say, which the highest justice does not permit anyone who uses reason to be ignorant of, those which, if they are taken from us, leave nothing from which the discipline of virtue may begin, nothing by which we may rise from the death of vices: these, considered again and again, prove clearly and distinctly enough that the heresy of the Manichaeans is false.

Similar to these is what I will now say about repentance. For as is agreed among all sane people, and as the Manichaeans themselves not only admit but also teach, it is useful to repent of sin. Why should I now gather testimonies of the divine Scriptures on this matter, which are spread everywhere? This too is a voice of nature; knowledge of this has deserted no fool; if it were not deeply implanted in us, we would perish. Someone may say that he does not sin; but that, if he has sinned, he need not repent, no barbarism will dare to say. Since this is so, I ask: of those two kinds of souls, to which does it belong to repent of sin? I know that it cannot belong either to the one that cannot do evil or to the one that cannot do good. So, to speak in their words, if the soul of darkness repents of sin, it is not of the substance of the highest evil; if the soul of light, it is not of the substance of the highest good. For that disposition of repentance which is profitable testifies both that the penitent has done evil and that he could have done good. How, then, is there no evil from me, if I have acted wrongly? Or how do I rightly repent, if I did not act? Hear the other side: how is there no good from me, in whom there is a good will? Or how do I rightly repent, if there is none? Therefore let them either deny the great usefulness of repentance, so that they are driven out not only from the Christian name but from every even imaginary reason, or let them now stop learning and teaching those two kinds of souls, one from which no evil comes, the other from which no good comes. If they do this, they will certainly stop being Manichaeans; for that whole sect is propped up by this two-headed, or rather headlong, diversity of souls.

For my part, it is enough for me to know that the Manichaeans are in error in the same way as I know that one must repent of sin. And yet, if I now appeal by the right of friendship to one of my friends who still thinks they should be listened to, and say to him: “Do you know that it is useful, when anyone has sinned, to repent?”, he will swear without hesitation that he knows it. “If, then, I make you know in this way that the heresy of the Manichaeans is false, will you want anything more?” What more could he answer that he could want in this matter? So far, so good. But when I begin to show the sure and necessary reasons which follow from that proposition, linked, as they say, by adamantine chains, and have brought the whole matter to the conclusion by which that sect is overthrown, perhaps he will deny that he knows that usefulness of repentance which no learned man and no unlearned man is ignorant of, and will rather contend that he knows that, when we doubt and deliberate, two souls in us each lend their own support to the two sides of the question. O habit of sin! O punishment, companion of sin! You turned me away then from considering things so plain, but you harmed me without my feeling it; now, in my closest friends who likewise do not feel it, you wound and torment me, who feel it.

Pay attention to these things, I beg you, dearest friends; I know your minds well. If you now grant me the mind and reason of any man at all, these things are much more certain than what we there either seemed to learn or rather were forced to believe. Great God, almighty God, God of the highest goodness, whom it is right to believe and understand as inviolable and unchangeable, threefold unity whom the catholic Church worships, I humbly pray, having experienced your mercy in myself, that you not allow the men with whom I have had the closest agreement in all our life together from boyhood to disagree with me in your worship. I see that at this point it is especially expected how I would then have defended, if, as I say, I had been cautious, or how I now show that one can defend, the catholic Scriptures accused by the Manichaeans. But in other volumes God will help my purpose; for the length of this one, as far as I judge, now asks in moderation to be spared.