On Free Choice of the Will 3.8–3.13

For see how absurdly and inconsistently it is said: “I would rather not exist than be miserable.” For one who says, “I would rather this than that,” chooses something. But not to exist is not something but nothing; and so you can in no way choose rightly, when what you would choose does not exist. You say that you do indeed want to exist, since you are miserable, but that you ought not to have wanted this. What, then, ought you to have wanted? “Rather not to exist,” you say. If you ought to have wanted this, this is better; but what does not exist cannot be better; so you ought not to have wanted it; and the feeling by which you do not want it is truer than the opinion by which you think that you ought to have wanted it. Further, what anyone rightly chooses as a thing to be sought must, when he has reached it, make him better; but one who will not exist cannot be better; so no one can rightly choose not to exist. Nor should we be moved by the judgment of those who, under the pressure of misery, have killed themselves. For either they fled to where they thought it would be better for them, and this, whatever they thought, is not contrary to our reasoning; or, if they believed that they would be nothing at all, much less will the false choice of those who chose nothing move us. For how shall I follow one who chooses, if, when I ask him what he chooses, he will answer, “Nothing”? For one who chooses not to exist is certainly shown to choose nothing, even if he does not want to answer so. But to say what I think about this whole matter, if I can: no one, it seems to me, when he kills himself or in any way desires to die, has it in his feeling that he will not exist after death, although he may have this to some extent in his opinion. For opinion belongs to the error or the truth of one who reasons or believes; but feeling draws its force either from habit or from nature. And that one thing can be in opinion and another in feeling is easy to recognize even from this, that we often believe one thing should be done and delight in doing another. And sometimes feeling is truer than opinion, if the opinion comes from error and the feeling from nature, as when a sick man often delights, to his benefit, in cold water which he nevertheless believes will harm him if he drinks it. Sometimes opinion is truer than feeling, if he believes the art of medicine that cold water is harmful, when it really will harm him, and yet it delights him to drink. Sometimes both are in the truth, when what is beneficial is not only believed to be so but also pleases; sometimes both are in error, when what is harmful is both believed to be beneficial and does not cease to please. And right opinion often corrects a bad habit, and wrong opinion depraves a right nature: such is the force of the rule and sovereignty of reason. When, then, someone who believes that he will not exist after death is nevertheless driven by intolerable troubles to a total desire for death, and decides on death and seizes it, he has in his opinion the error of complete annihilation, but in his feeling the natural desire for rest. And what is at rest is not nothing; rather, it is even more than what is restless. For restlessness varies the affections, so that one destroys another; but rest has constancy, in which what is meant by “it is” is most of all understood. So all that desire in the will to die is directed not to the dying person's not existing but to his resting. So, though he wrongly believes that he will not exist, by nature he desires to be at rest, that is, to exist more. Therefore, just as it can in no way happen that not existing should please anyone, so it should in no way happen that anyone is ungrateful to the goodness of the Creator for the fact that he exists.

If he says, “Yet it was not difficult or laborious for almighty God so to order all the things he made that no creature would come to misery; for being almighty he could not have been unable to do this, nor being good would he have begrudged it,” I will answer: the order of creatures runs down from the highest to the lowest by just degrees in such a way that he who says, “This one should not exist,” is envious, and he who says, “This one should be like that,” is envious too. For if he wants it to be like the higher one, that higher one already exists, and is so great that nothing should be added to it, because it is perfect. So he who says, “This one too should be like that,” either wants to add to the perfect higher one, and will be immoderate and unjust, or wants to destroy this one, and will be wicked and envious. And he who says, “This one should not exist,” will be no less wicked and envious, since he does not want that to exist which, though lower, he is still compelled to praise. It is as if he were to say, “There should be no moon,” when he either admits that even the brightness of a lamp, though far inferior, is beautiful in its kind, becoming in the earthly darkness, fit for night-time uses, and in all these things surely praiseworthy in its small measure, or denies it most foolishly or contentiously. How, then, would he dare to say rightly, “There should be no moon among things,” when, if he said, “There should be no lamp,” he would feel that he deserved to be laughed at? And if he does not say, “There should be no moon,” but says that the moon ought to have been such as he sees the sun, he does not understand that he says nothing else than, “There should be no moon, but two suns.” In this he errs doubly: he wants both to add something to the perfection of things, when he desires another sun, and to take something away, when he wants the moon removed. Here he may perhaps say that he makes no complaint about the moon, because its brightness is lesser in such a way that it is not miserable; but that he grieves not over the dimness but over the misery of souls. Let him consider carefully that the moon's brightness is not miserable, just as the sun's brightness is not happy. For although they are heavenly bodies, they are still bodies as far as this light is concerned, which can be perceived through bodily eyes. And no bodies, as far as they themselves are concerned, can be either happy or miserable, although there can be bodies of the happy or of the miserable. But the comparison drawn from those lights teaches this. In contemplating the differences of bodies and seeing some brighter, you would unjustly ask that those you see dimmer be taken away or made equal to the brighter; but, referring all things to the perfection of the universe, you see that the more they differ in brightness from one another, the more all of them exist; and a perfect universe does not appear to you except where the greater are present in such a way that the lesser are not lacking. So think also of the differences of souls, in which you will find this too: that the misery you lament also serves this purpose, that the perfection of the universe should not lack even those souls which had to become miserable because they willed to be sinful. And so far is it from true that God ought not to have made such souls, that he has also made, in a praiseworthy way, other creatures far lower than miserable souls. But one who understands less still seems to have something to say against what has been said. For he says: “If even our misery completes the perfection of the universe, something would have been lacking to this perfection if we had always been happy. So if the soul comes to misery only by sinning, even our sins are necessary to the perfection of the universe that God founded. How, then, does he justly punish sins, without which his creation would not be full and perfect?” The answer is that neither sins nor misery themselves are necessary to the perfection of the universe, but souls insofar as they are souls, which, if they will, sin, and if they have sinned, become miserable. For if, when their sins are taken away, misery continues, or even precedes sins, then the order and governance of the universe is rightly said to be disfigured. Again, if sins happen and misery is absent, injustice no less dishonors the order. But when happiness attends those who do not sin, the universe is perfect; and when misery attends those who sin, the universe is no less perfect. And since those souls are not lacking which misery follows when they sin, or happiness when they act rightly, the universe is always full and perfect with all natures. For sin and the punishment of sin are not natures but states of natures, the one voluntary, the other penal. But the voluntary state that comes about in sin is shameful. To it the penal state is applied in order to set it where it is not shameful to be such, and to compel it to fit the beauty of the universe, so that the punishment of sin corrects the disgrace of sin. Hence it is that a higher creature that sins is punished by lower creatures, since these are so low that they can be adorned even by shameful souls and so fit the beauty of the universe. For what is so great in a house as a human being? And what so abject and low as the house's sewer? Yet a slave caught in such a fault that he is thought fit to clean the sewer adorns it even by his disgrace; and both of these, the disgrace of the slave and the cleaning of the sewer, now joined and brought into a kind of unity of their own, are so fitted and woven into the well-ordered house that they suit its whole in most orderly beauty. Yet if that slave had not wanted to sin, the household management would not have lacked some other provision by which the necessary cleaning would be done. What, then, is so low among things as every earthly body? Yet even a sinful soul so adorns this corruptible flesh that it gives it a most becoming appearance and vital motion. Such a soul, then, does not fit the heavenly dwelling because of sin, but fits the earthly one through punishment; so that, whatever it chooses, the universe, of which God is the maker and governor, is always beautiful, ordered with most becoming parts. For the best souls, when they dwell among the lowest creatures, adorn them not by their misery, which they do not have, but by their good use of them. But if sinful souls were allowed to dwell in lofty places, it would be unseemly, because they do not suit things which they can neither use well nor adorn in any way. So, although this earthly world is assigned to corruptible things, yet, keeping as far as it can an image of higher things, it does not cease to show us examples and certain signs. For if we see some good and great man, at the urging of the duty of honor, burned with fire as far as his body is concerned, we do not call this the punishment of sin but a proof of fortitude and patience; and we love him more when the most hideous corruption consumes his bodily limbs than if he suffered nothing of the kind; for we marvel that the nature of the mind is not changed by the changeableness of the body. But when we see the limbs of a most cruel robber destroyed by such a punishment, we approve the order of the laws. So both those torments adorn; but the one by the merit of virtue, the other by that of sin. And if, after those fires, or even before them, we saw that excellent man changed to suit a heavenly dwelling and raised to the stars, we would surely rejoice. But if we saw the wicked robber, either before or after his punishment, raised with the same malice of will to an everlasting seat of honor in heaven, who would not be offended? So it is that both could adorn lower creatures, but only one of them the higher. From this we are reminded to notice that the mortality of this flesh adorned both the first man, so that punishment fitted sin, and our Lord, so that mercy might set us free from sin. But it is not the case that, just as the just man could have a mortal body while remaining in justice itself, so the unjust man, while he is unjust, can attain the immortality of the saints, that is, the lofty and angelic immortality; not that of those angels of whom the Apostle says, “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” but of those of whom the Lord says, “And they will be equal to the angels of God.” For those who desire equality with the angels for their own empty glory do not therefore want to be equal to the angels, but want the angels equal to themselves. So, persevering in such a will, they will be made equal in punishment to the transgressing angels, who love their own power rather than that of almighty God. To such, set on the left, because they did not seek God through the door of humility which the Lord Jesus Christ showed in himself, and lived without mercy and proudly, it will be said: “Depart into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels.”

For there are two origins of sins, one in one's own spontaneous thought, the other in another's persuasion; and to these, I think, refers what the Prophet says: “Cleanse me, Lord, from my hidden sins, and spare your servant from those of others.” Both are indeed voluntary. For just as one does not sin unwillingly by one's own thought, so when one consents to someone who persuades to evil, one consents surely only by the will. Yet it is graver not only to sin by one's own thought with no one persuading, but also to persuade another to sin through envy and deceit, than to be led into sin by another's persuasion. So the justice of the Lord who punishes was preserved in both sins. For this too was weighed in the balance of equity, that man should not be withheld even from the power of the devil himself, whom the devil had subjected to himself by evil persuasion. For it would have been unjust that he should not rule over the one he had captured. Nor can it in any way be that the perfect justice of the supreme and true God, which extends everywhere, should fail to order even the ruins of sinners. And yet, because man had sinned less than the devil, this very thing served him for the recovery of salvation: that he was handed over, even to the mortality of the flesh, to the prince of this world, that is, of this mortal and lowest part of things, the prince of all sins and the ruler of death. For so, made fearful by the awareness of his mortality, dreading troubles and destruction from the vilest and most abject beasts, even the tiniest, and uncertain of the future, he grew used to restraining unlawful pleasures, and above all to breaking pride, by whose persuasion he was cast down, and by which one vice the medicine of mercy is rejected. For what needs mercy so much as one who is miserable? And what is so unworthy of mercy as one who is miserable and proud? Hence it came about that the Word of God, through whom all things were made, and whom all angelic happiness enjoys, extended his clemency even to our misery, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. For so man, not yet made equal to the angels, could eat the bread of angels, if the bread of angels itself deigned to be made equal to men. Nor did he so come down to us as to abandon them; but at once whole to them and whole to us, feeding them inwardly through what he is as God, admonishing us outwardly through what we are, he makes fit through faith those whom he will feed equally through sight. For the rational creature is fed by that Word as by its best food; and the human soul is rational, but it was held by mortal bonds as the penalty of sin, and reduced to such diminishment that it strove to understand invisible things through conjectures from visible things. So the food of the rational creature became visible, not by changing his own nature but by taking on ours, so that he might call back to himself, the invisible one, those who follow visible things. So the soul, which in its pride had left him within, finds him humble outside, to imitate his visible humility and to return to his invisible height. And the Word of God, the only Son of God, having put on man, subjected even to man the devil, whom he always had and always will have under his laws; wresting nothing from him by violent domination, but overcoming him by the law of justice. For after the woman had been deceived and the man cast down through the woman, the devil claimed all the offspring of the first man as sinners under the laws of death, with a malicious desire to harm, indeed, but yet by a most equitable right; so his power was to last until he should kill the just one, in whom he could show nothing deserving death, not only because he was killed without crime but also because he was born without lust, to which the devil had subjected those whom he had captured, so that whatever was born from it he might keep as the fruit of his own tree, with a perverse desire of having, indeed, but yet by a not unjust right of possession. So, most justly, he is forced to release those who believe in him whom he most unjustly killed, so that in dying temporally they pay a debt, and in living forever they live in him who paid for them what he did not owe. But those whom he had persuaded to persevere in unbelief he would justly have with him as companions in perpetual damnation. So it came about that man was not snatched from the devil by force, since the devil had captured him not by force but by persuasion; and he who was justly humbled the more, so as to serve the one to whom he had consented for evil, was justly set free through the one to whom he consented for good; because he had sinned less in consenting than the devil had in persuading to evil.

God, then, made all natures, not only those that would remain in virtue and justice, but also those that would sin; not so that they should sin, but so that they should adorn the universe, whether they willed to sin or not to sin. For if there were lacking among things souls holding the very summit of order in all creation in such a way that, if they willed to sin, the universe would be weakened and shaken, something great would be lacking to creation; for that would be lacking whose removal would disturb the stability and connection of things. Such are the best, holy, and sublime creatures, the heavenly or supercelestial powers, over whom God alone rules, and to whom the whole world is subject. Without their just and perfect services the universe cannot exist. Likewise, if those were lacking whose sinning or not sinning would diminish nothing of the order of the universe, even so a great deal would be lacking. For they are rational souls, unequal indeed in function to those higher ones, but equal in nature; and below them are still many grades of things established by the supreme God, which are nonetheless praiseworthy. That nature, then, is of the higher function which would diminish the order of the universe not only if it did not exist but even if it sinned. This one is of a lower function: the universe would have something less only if it did not exist, but not if it sinned. To the former is given the power of holding all things together by a function of its own, which cannot be lacking to the order of things; nor does it remain in good will because it received this function, but it received it because it was foreseen by him who gave it that it would remain. Nor does it hold all things together by its own majesty, but by cleaving to his majesty and most devotedly obeying the commands of him from whom and through whom and in whom all things were made. To the latter there was indeed given, if it did not sin, a most powerful function of holding all things together, yet not as its own, but together with the former, as to one foreknown to sin. For spiritual beings have among themselves both union without increase and separation without diminution: so the former would neither be helped in the ease of its action when the latter was joined to it, nor would its action become harder if the latter deserted its function by sinning. For spiritual creatures can be joined not by places and the mass of bodies but by likeness of dispositions, and separated by unlikeness, though each possesses its own body. But the soul, placed in lower and mortal bodies after sin, rules its body not altogether at its own will, but as the laws of the universe allow. Yet such a soul is not therefore lower than a heavenly body, to which even earthly bodies are subject. For the ragged garment of a condemned slave is far inferior to the garment of a slave of good merit, held in great honor by his master; but the slave himself is better than any precious garment, because he is a man. The former soul, then, cleaves to God, and in a heavenly body, by angelic power, adorns and rules even the earthly body, as he commands whose will it ineffably beholds. But this one, burdened with mortal members, barely manages from within the very body by which it is weighed down, and yet adorns it as much as it can; and the other things lying around it outside, it affects outwardly, as far as it can, by a far weaker activity.

From this it is gathered that the most fitting adornment of the lowest bodily creation would not have been lacking even if this soul had not willed to sin. For one that can rule the whole also rules the part; but one that can do less cannot thereby do greater things. A perfect physician also cures the itch effectively; but not everyone who gives useful advice to someone with the itch can heal all human ailments. And if the reasoning is clearly seen by which it becomes evident that there had to be a creature that has never sinned and never will sin, the same reasoning also declares that it abstains from sin by free will, and does not sin not under compulsion but of its own accord. Yet even if it sinned (though it has not sinned, just as God foreknew it would not), yet even if it did sin, the power of God's ineffable might would suffice to rule this universe, so that, rendering to all what is fitting and deserved, he would allow nothing shameful or unbecoming in his whole empire. For either, if the whole angelic nature had fallen away from his commands by sinning, he would rule all things most becomingly and excellently by his own majesty, through no powers created for this purpose; and he would not do so begrudging the spiritual creature its existence, he who created even the bodily creature, far lower than even sinning spiritual ones, with such bounty of goodness that there is no one who, looking reasonably at sky and earth and all visible natures, measured, formed, and ordered in their kinds, either believes that anyone other than God is the maker of all, or does not admit that he is to be praised ineffably. Or, if there is no better ordering of things than that the angelic power should be preeminent in the disposition of the universe by the excellence of its nature and the goodness of its will, then even if all the angels had sinned, they would cause no shortage for the Creator of angels in ruling his empire. For neither would his goodness fail as if through weariness, nor his omnipotence through difficulty, in creating others to place in the seats which the others had deserted by sinning; nor could a spiritual creature of any number, if condemned according to its merits, cramp the order, which fittingly and becomingly receives whoever are to be condemned. Wherever, then, our consideration turns, it finds that God, the best maker and most just governor of all natures, is to be praised ineffably. Finally, let us leave the contemplation of the beauty of things to those who can see it by divine gift, and not try by words to lead those who cannot to behold ineffable things; and yet, for the sake of talkative or weak or insidious people, let us go through so great a question in the briefest summary.

Every nature that can be made less good is good; and every nature, while it is being corrupted, becomes less good. For either corruption does not harm it, and it is not corrupted; or, if it is corrupted, corruption harms it; and if it harms it, it takes away something of its good and makes it less good. For if it deprives it entirely of all good, whatever remains of it can no longer be corrupted, because there will be no good by whose removal corruption could harm it; and what corruption cannot harm is not corrupted. Further, a nature that is not corrupted is incorruptible; so a nature would be made incorruptible by corruption, which is most absurd to say. Therefore it is most truly said that every nature, insofar as it is a nature, is good: for if it is incorruptible, it is better than the corruptible; and if it is corruptible, since it becomes less good while it is being corrupted, it is undoubtedly good. And every nature is either corruptible or incorruptible; so every nature is good. By nature I mean what is also usually called substance. Every substance, then, is either God or from God; because every good is either God or from God. With these points established and confirmed as the foundation of our reasoning, attend to what I say. Every rational nature created with free choice of the will, if it remains in the enjoyment of the highest and unchangeable good, is undoubtedly to be praised; and every one that strives to remain is itself also to be praised; but every one that does not remain in it, and does not want to act so as to remain, is to be blamed insofar as it is not there and insofar as it does not act so as to be there. If, then, the rational nature that was made is praised, no one doubts that he who made it is to be praised; and if it is blamed, no one doubts that its Maker is praised in that very blame. For when we blame it because it does not want to enjoy the highest and unchangeable good, that is, its Creator, we praise him beyond any doubt. How great a good, then, is God, the creator of all, and how ineffably he is to be proclaimed and honored by all tongues and all thoughts, since without praising him we can neither be praised nor blamed! For we can be blamed for not remaining in him only because it is our great, highest, and first good to remain in him; and why is this, but because he is an ineffable good? What, then, can be found in our sins for which he could be blamed, when there is no blaming of our sins unless he is praised? What of the fact that even in the things that are blamed, nothing in anything is blamed but its fault? And no one's fault is blamed unless his nature is praised. For either what you blame is according to nature, and then it is not a fault, and you need correcting, so that you may learn to blame rightly, rather than the thing you wrongly blame; or, if it is a fault, so that it can rightly be blamed, it must also be against nature. For every fault, by the very fact that it is a fault, is against nature. If it does not harm the nature, it is not a fault; but if it is a fault because it harms, it is a fault because it is against nature. And if some nature is corrupted not by its own fault but by another's, it is unjustly blamed, and we must ask whether that nature by whose fault another nature could be corrupted is not itself corrupted by its own fault. For what is being vitiated but being corrupted by a fault? Further, a nature that is not vitiated lacks fault; but one by whose fault another nature is corrupted certainly has a fault. That one, then, is faulty first, and is first corrupted by its own fault, by whose fault another too can be corrupted. From this it is gathered that every fault is against nature, even against the nature of the thing whose fault it is. Therefore, since in anything nothing is blamed but its fault, and it is a fault because it is against the nature of the thing whose fault it is, no thing's fault is rightly blamed unless its nature is praised. For nothing rightly displeases you in a fault except that it vitiates what pleases you in the nature.