Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
This reaction is the most uncontrovertible evidence for the fact we are examining. For why should men fear to the, and prefer to live in such distress than to end it by dying? The only reason is the obvious natural revulsion from annihilation. And that is the reason why men, although they know that they are destined to the, long for this mercy to be granted them, as a great boon, the mercy, that is, of an extension of life in this pitiable state, and the deferment of their death. This shows without any shadow of doubt that they would grasp at the offer of immortality, with the greatest delight, even an immortality which would offer no end to their beggarly condition.
Why, even the irrational animals, from the immense dragons down to the tiniest worms, who are not endowed with the capacity to think on those matters, show that they wish to exist and to avoid extinction. They show this by taking every possible action to escape destruction. And then there are the trees and shrubs. They have no perception to enable them to avoid danger by any immediately visible movement; but they send up one shoot into the air to form their crown, and to safeguard this they fix another shoot into the earth to form their root, so that they may draw their nourishment thereby, and thus in some way preserve their existence. Even material objects which are not only bereft of sense-perception, but lack even reproductive life, shoot up aloft or sink down to the depths or hang suspended in between, so as to secure their existence in the situation to which they are by nature adapted.
Furthermore, the strength of man’s love of knowledge and of human nature’s dislike of being deceived can be realized from the fact that anyone would rather keep his wits and be sorrowful than lose his reason and be joyful. This great and marvellous power of the mind belongs to no mortal being but man. Some other creatures may have much sharper vision than we have for seeing in the light of the sun; but they cannot attain to that immaterial light which casts as it were its rays upon our minds, to enable us to come to a right judgement about all these other creatures. For this we can do, in proportion as we receive this light.
Nevertheless, although there is no kind of real knowledge in the senses of irrational creatures, there is at least something parallel to knowledge, whereas all other material things are called ‘sensible’, not because they have senses, but because they are perceived by the senses. In the case of trees and plants there is something like sensitivity
in their powers of taking nutriment and of reproduction. Yet these and all other material things have their causes hidden in nature; but they offer their forms to the perception of our senses, those forms which give loveliness to the structure of this visible world. It almost seems as if they long to be known, just because they cannot know themselves. We apprehend them by our bodily senses, but it is not by our bodily senses that we form a judgement on them. For we have another sense, far more important than any bodily sense, the sense of the inner man, by which we apprehend what is just and what is unjust, the just by means of the ‘idea’ which is presented to the intellect, the unjust by the absence of it. The working of this sense has nothing to do with the mechanism of eye, ear, smell, taste or touch. It is through this sense that I am assured of my existence; and through this I love both existence and knowledge, and am sure that I love them.
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Whether we should approximate more nearly to the image of the divine Trinity by loving our love of our existence and our knowledge
Now we have said enough, to satisfy the apparent demands of this present work, on the subject of existence and knowledge, and how much we love them in ourselves, and how far some resemblance to them, though with great difference, is found in the lower creation. But we have not dealt with the question whether the love with which they are loved is itself the object of love. The answer is Yes; and the proof is that in all cases where love is rightly bestowed, that love is itself loved even more. For we are justified in calling a man good not because he merely knows what is good, but because he loves the Good. Therefore why should we not feel in ourselves that we love that love with which we love what is good? There is indeed a love which is given to what should not be loved, and that love is hated in himself by one who loves the love which is given to a proper object of love. For these can both exist in the same man; and it is good for man that what makes for right living should increase in him, and what makes for evil should the away until he is made perfectly sound, and all his life is changed into good. If we were mere beasts, we should love the life of sensuality and all that relates to it; this would be our sufficient good, and when this was satisfied, we should seek nothing further. If we were trees, we should not indeed be able to love anything with any sensual emotion; yet we would seem to have a kind of desire for increased fertility and more abundant fruitfulness. If we were stones, waves, wind or flame,
or anything of that kind, lacking sense and life, we would still show something like a desire for our own place and order. For the specific gravity of a body is, in a manner, its love, whether a body tends downwards by reason of its heaviness or strives upwards because of its lightness. A material body is borne along by its weight in a particular direction, as a soul is by its love.
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Now we are human beings, created in our Creator’s image, whose eternity is true, whose truth is eternal, whose love is eternal and true, who is a Trinity of eternity, truth and love, without confusion or separation; and the constituents of the world which are inferior to us could not exist at all, could not have shape or form, could not aspire to any ordered pattern, or keep that pattern, had they not been created by him who supremely exists, and who is supremely wise and supremely Good. Therefore let us run over all these things which he created in such wonderful stability, to collect the scattered traces of his being, more distinct in some places than in others. And let us gaze at his image in ourselves, and, ‘returning to ourselves’, like the younger son in the Gospel story,
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let us rise up and go back to him from whom we have departed in our sinning. There our existence will have no death, our knowledge no error, our love no obstacle. Yet in our present state, although we are sure in our grasp of those three realities, although we do not believe in them on the witness of others, but are conscious of them ourselves as present in our experience, and discern them unerringly with our inner gaze, we still cannot know by ourselves how long they will last, or whether they will last for ever, or what will be their final destination if they are well directed, and if they are wrongly employed. Hence we search for other witnesses or we have them already to hand. This is not the place for detailed discussion about the credibility of this testimony, and why we should have no doubt of it; that will come on a later occasion.
But now we will proceed, to the best of our power and with the help of God, with the discussion we have started in this present book. We are speaking of the City of God which is not on pilgrimage in this mortal life, but is eternally immortal in heaven, consisting of the holy angels who cleave to God, who have never deserted nor ever will desert him. And we have already described how God at the beginning made a division between these holy angels and those who were made darkness by deserting the eternal light.
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The angel’s knowledge of the Trinity
These holy angels, to be sure, do not learn about God by spoken words, but by the actual presence of the unchanging Truth, that is by his only-begotten Word, by the Father himself, and by his Holy Spirit. They know that this is the inseparable Trinity, and that the three Persons in it are substantial beings, and yet are not three Gods. They know this with more certainty than we know ourselves. And they have better knowledge of the created world there, in God’s wisdom, in the art by which it was made, than in the created world itself, and consequently in that wisdom they know themselves better than in themselves, although they have that knowledge in themselves as well. For they were made, and they are different from their Creator; and therefore they know themselves in him by a daylight knowledge; and in themselves, as we said,
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by a kind of twilight recognition. For there is a wide difference between knowing something in the cause of its creation, and knowing it as it is in itself. Compare, for example, the conception of a straight line, or any figure as truly apprehended by the mind, with the representation of it drawn in the dust; or the concept of justice in its changeless truth, and its manifestation in the soul of a just man. The same applies to the whole of creation; the firmament between the upper and lower waters, which we call the sky; the gathering of the waters on earth below; the uncovering of the dry land, and the establishment of plants and trees; the setting up of sun, moon, and stars; the creation of the living creatures from the waters, the flying things, the fishes, and the swimming beasts; of things that walk and creep on the earth; and of man himself, excelling all the rest of the creatures on earth. These are all known by the angels in the word
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of God, where they have the causes and reasons for their creation, fixed and unchanging; and they are known there in a different fashion than in themselves. In the word they are known by a clearer perception than in themselves – the difference between the knowledge of the art and the knowledge of the works of that art. Yet when all these works are referred to the praise and worship of the Creator, then
there is the light as of morning sunshine in the minds of those who contemplate them.
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The perfection of the number six
The works of Creation are described as being completed in six days, the same formula for a day being repeated six times. The reason for this is that six is the number of perfection. It is not that God was constrained by the intervals of time, as if he could not have created all things simultaneously, and have made them afterwards conform to temporal succession by appropriate movements. No, the reason was that the completion or perfection of the works is expressed by the number six. For six is the first number which is the sum of its parts, that is of its fractions, the sixth, the third and the half; for one, two and three added together make six. By ’parts’ of a number, in this sense, we mean what may be called its quotients, half, third, fourth and so on as fractions with different denominators. For example, four is a part of nine, being contained in it, but it is not a part in the sense of a fraction; but one is, being a ninth, and so is three, being a third. But these two parts, one and three, are far from making the total of nine. Again, four is a part of ten, but it cannot be called a fraction of it. But one is a fraction, a tenth; and two is a fifth, and five a half. But these three parts, the tenth, the fifth and the half, that is one, two, and five, do not make ten if added, together, but eight. On the other hand, the sum of the fractions of twelve exceeds that number, being the twelfth the sixth, the fourth, the third and the half – one, two, three, four and six, making, a total of sixteen. This point seemed worthy of a brief mention to show the perfection of the number six, as the first number, as I have said, which is made up by the sum of its parts, and in this number God brought his works to complete perfection. Hence the theory of number is not to be lightly regarded, since it is made quite clear, in many passages of the holy Scriptures, how highly it is to be valued. It was not for nothing that it was said in praise of God, ‘You have ordered all things in measure, number and weight.’
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31.
The seventh day, of completeness and rest
The number seven is also perfect, for a different reason; and it was on the seventh day, that is on the seventh repetition of the same day’s pattern, that the rest of God is emphasized, and in this rest we hear
the first mention of ‘sanctification’. Thus God did not wish to sanctify that day by the performance of any of his works, but by his rest, which has no evening. For that rest is no created thing, to make itself known in two different ways, in the Word of God, the ‘daylight knowledge’ as we may call it, and in itself, the ‘twilight knowledge’.
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There is a great deal that could be said about the perfection of the number seven; but this book is prolix enough already, and I am afraid of seeming to seize an occasion for showing off my trifles of knowledge, for idle effect rather than for any advantage to the reader. And so I must be careful to observe moderation and show proper seriousness, or I may be judged to neglect ‘measure and weight’ in indulging in talk about ‘number’. Suffice it to point out that three is the first odd whole number, and four the first whole even number, and seven is made up of these two. That is why seven often stands for an unlimited number, as in, ‘The righteous will fall seven times, and rise again,’
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which means, ‘However many times he falls, he will not perish’ – which is to be understood as referring not to the falls of wickedness, but to tribulations, which lead to humility. Similarly, ‘Seven times a day I will praise you’, expresses the same thought as, ‘His praise is always on my lips.’
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And there are many other passages of the kind in the Scriptures of divine authority, in which the number seven is habitually used, as I have said, to indicate any conceivable number of anything.
For this reason the Holy Spirit is often referred to by this same number; and the Lord says of the Spirit, ‘He will teach you all the truth.’
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Here is God’s rest, in which we rest in God. In this whole, in this complete perfection, is rest, whereas in the part is labour. Therefore we labour, as long as we ‘know in part; but when perfection is reached, what is partial will vanish.’
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Hence it is that even our probing of the Scriptures is laborious.
But the holy angels, for whose society and fellowship we sigh as we travel on this laborious pilgrimage, enjoy an ease of knowledge and a felicity of rest which correspond to their eternity and permanence. And they help us, we may be sure, without difficulty, since their motions are spiritual, pure and free, and therefore unlaborious.