BOOK FOUR
CHAPTER XV
24. But I had not seen how the main point in these great issues [concerning the nature of beauty] lay really in thy craftsmanship, O Omnipotent One, “who alone doest great wonders.”[107] And so my mind ranged through the corporeal forms, and I defined and distinguished as “beautiful” that which is so in itself and as “fit” that which is beautiful in relation to some other thing. This argument I supported by corporeal examples. And I turned my attention to the nature of the mind, but the false opinions which I held concerning spiritual things prevented me from seeing the truth. Still, the very power of truth forced itself on my gaze, and I turned my throbbing soul away from incorporeal substance to qualities of line and color and shape, and, because I could not perceive these with my mind, I concluded that I could not perceive my mind. And since I loved the peace which is in virtue, and hated the discord which is in vice, I distinguished between the unity there is in virtue and the discord there is in vice. I conceived that unity consisted of the rational soul and the nature of truth and the highest good. But I imagined that in the disunity there was some kind of substance of irrational life and some kind of entity in the supreme evil. This evil I thought was not only a substance but real life as well, and yet I believed that it did not come from thee, O my God, from whom are all things. And the first I called a Monad, as if it were a soul without sex. The other I called a Dyad, which showed itself in anger in deeds of violence, in deeds of passion and lust–but I did not know what I was talking about. For I had not understood nor had I been taught that evil is not a substance at all and that our soul is not that supreme and unchangeable good.
25. For just as in violent acts, if the emotion of the soul from whence the violent impulse springs is depraved and asserts itself insolently and mutinously–and just as in the acts of passion, if the affection of the soul which gives rise to carnal desires is unrestrained–so also, in the same way, errors and false opinions contaminate life if the rational soul itself is depraved. Thus it was then with me, for I was ignorant that my soul had to be enlightened by another light, if it was to be partaker of the truth, since it is not itself the essence of truth. “For thou wilt light my lamp; the Lord my God will lighten my darkness”[108]; and “of his fullness have we all received,”[109] for “that was the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world”[110]; for “in thee there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”[111]
26. But I pushed on toward thee, and was pressed back by thee that I might know the taste of death, for “thou resistest the proud.”[112] And what greater pride could there be for me than, with a marvelous madness, to assert myself to be that nature which thou art? I was mutable–this much was clear enough to me because my very longing to become wise arose out of a wish to change from worse to better–yet I chose rather to think thee mutable than to think that I was not as thou art. For this reason I was thrust back; thou didst resist my fickle pride. Thus I went on imagining corporeal forms, and, since I was flesh I accused the flesh, and, since I was “a wind that passes away,”[113] I did not return to thee but went wandering and wandering on toward those things that have no being–neither in thee nor in me, nor in the body. These fancies were not created for me by thy truth but conceived by my own vain conceit out of sensory notions. And I used to ask thy faithful children–my own fellow citizens, from whom I stood unconsciously exiled–I used flippantly and foolishly to ask them, “Why, then, does the soul, which God created, err?” But I would not allow anyone to ask me, “Why, then, does God err?” I preferred to contend that thy immutable substance was involved in error through necessity rather than admit that my own mutable substance had gone astray of its own free will and had fallen into error as its punishment.
27. I was about twenty-six or twenty-seven when I wrote those books, analyzing and reflecting upon those sensory images which clamored in the ears of my heart. I was straining those ears to hear thy inward melody, O sweet Truth, pondering on “the beautiful and the fitting” and longing to stay and hear thee, and to rejoice greatly at “the Bridegroom’s voice.”[114] Yet I could not, for by the clamor of my own errors I was hurried outside myself, and by the weight of my own pride I was sinking ever lower. You did not “make me to hear joy and gladness,” nor did the bones rejoice which were not yet humbled.[115]