| print this

AUGUSTINE: CONFESSIONS INDEX

BOOK THIRTEEN

CHAPTER XXVIII

43. And thou, O God, didst see everything that thou hadst made and, behold, it was very good.[646] We also see the whole creation and, behold, it is all very good. In each separate kind of thy work, when thou didst say, "Let them be made," and they were made, thou didst see that it was good. I have counted seven times where it is written that thou didst see what thou hadst made was "good." And there is the eighth time when thou didst see all things that thou hadst made and, behold, they were not only good but also very good; for they were now seen as a totality. Individually they were only good; but taken as a totality they were both good and very good. Beautiful bodies express this truth; for a body which consists of several parts, each of which is beautiful, is itself far more beautiful than any of its individual parts separately, by whose well-ordered union the whole is completed even though these parts are separately beautiful.

GO BACK