conversion, and fastening into one solid chain the reasons which made him
emerge at the act of faith: he himself perhaps, in his _Confessions_,
has given way too much to this inclination. In reality, conversion is an
interior fact, and (let us repeat it) a divine fact, which is independent
of all control by the reason. Before it breaks into light, there is a long
preparation in that dark region of the soul which to-day is called the
subconscious. Now nobody has more _lived_ his ideas than did Augustin
at this time of his life. He took them, left them, took them up again,
persisted in his desperate effort. They reflect in their disorder his
variable soul, and the misgivings which troubled it to its depths. And yet
it cannot be that this interior fact should be in violent contradiction
with logic. The head ought not to hinder the heart. With the future
believer, a parallel work goes on in the feelings and in the thought. If we
are not able to reproduce the marches and counter-marches, or follow their
repeatedly broken line, we can at least shew the main halting-places.
Let us recall Augustin's state of mind when he came to Milan. He was a
sceptic, the kind of sceptic who regards as useless all speculation upon
the origin of things, and for whom cognition is but an approximation of the
true. Vaguely deist, he saw in Jesus Christ only a wise man among the wise.
He believed in God and the providences of God, which amounts to this: That
although materialist by tendency, he admitted the divine interference in
human affairs--the miracle. This is an important point which differentiates
him from modern materialists.
Next, he listened to the preaching of Ambrose. The Bible no longer seemed
to him absurd or at variance with a moral scheme. Ambrose's exegesis,
half allegorical, half historic, might be accepted, taken altogether,
by self-respecting minds. But what, above all, struck Augustin in the
Scriptures, was the wisdom, the practical efficiency. Those who lived by
the Christian rule were not only happy people, but, as Pascal would say,
good sons, good husbands, good fathers, good citizens. He began to suspect
that this life here below is bearable and has a meaning only when it is
fastened to the life on high. Even as for nations glory is daily bread, so
for the individual the sacrifice to something which is beyond the world is
the only way of living in the world.
So, little by little, Augustin corrected the false notions that the
Manichees had filled him with about Catholicism. He acknowledged that in
attacking it he had "been barking against the vain imaginations of carnal
thoughts." Still, he found great difficulty in getting free of all his
Manichean prejudices. The problem of Evil remained inexplicable for him,
apart from Manichee teachings. God could not be the author of evil. This
truth admitted, he went on from it to think, against his former masters,
that nothing is bad in itself--bad because it has within it a corrupting
principle. On the contrary, all things are good, though in varying degrees.
The apparent defects of creation, perceived by our senses, blend into
the harmony of the whole. The toad and the viper have their place in the
operation of a perfectly arranged world. But physical ill is not the only
ill; there is also the evil that we do and the evil that others do us.
Crime and pain are terrible arguments against God. Now the Christians
hold that the first is the product solely of the human will, of liberty
corrupted by original sin, and that the other is permitted by God as a
means of purifying souls. Of course, this was a solution, but it implied a
belief in the dogmas of the Fall and of the Redemption. Augustin did not
accept them yet. He was too proud to recognize an impaired will and the
need of a Saviour. "My puffed-out face," he says, "closed up my eyes."
Nevertheless he had taken a great step in rejecting the fundamental dogma
of Manicheeism--the double Principle of good and evil. Henceforth for
Augustin there exists only one Principle, unique and incorruptible--the
Good, which is God. But his view of this divine substance is still
quite materialistic, to such an extent is he governed by his senses. In
his thought, it is corporeal, spatial, and infinite. He pictures it as
a kind of limitless sea, wherein is a huge sponge bathing the world
that it pervades throughout.... He was at this point, when one of his
acquaintances, "a man puffed up with immense vanity," gave him some of
the Dialogues of Plato, translated into Latin by the famous rhetorician
Victorinus Afer. It is worth noting, as we pass, that Augustin, now
thirty-two years old, a rhetorician by profession and a philosopher by
taste, had not yet read Plato. This is yet another proof to what extent the
instruction of the ancients was oral, resembling in this the Mussulmans'
instruction of to-day. Up to now, he had only known Plato by hearsay. He
read him, and it was as a revelation. He learned that a reality could exist
without diffusion through space. He saw God as unextended and yet infinite.
The sense of the divine Soul was given to him. Then the primordial
necessity of the Mediator or Word was borne in upon his mind. It is the
Word which has created the world. It is through the Word that the world,
and God, and all things, including ourselves, become comprehensible to us.
What an astonishment! Plato corresponded with St. John! "In the beginning
was the Word"--_in principio erat verbum_--said the fourth Gospel. But
it was not only an Evangelist that Augustin discovered in the Platonist
dialogues, it was almost all the essential part of the doctrine of Christ.
He saw plainly the profound differences, but for the moment he was struck
by the resemblances, and they carried him away. What delighted him, first
of all, is the beauty of the world, constructed after His own likeness by
the Demiurgus. God is Beauty; the world is fair as He who made it. This
metaphysical vision entranced Augustin; his whole heart leaped towards
this ineffably beautiful Divinity. Carried away by enthusiasm he cries: "I
marvelled to find that now I loved Thee, O my God, and not a phantasm in
Thy stead. If I was not yet in a state to enjoy Thee, _I was swept up to
Thee by Thy beauty_."
But such an abandonment could not endure: "I was not yet in a state to
enjoy Thee." There is Augustin's main objection to Platonism. He felt
that instead of touching God, of enjoying Him, he would be held by purely
mental conceptions, that he would be always losing his way among the
phantasmagoria of idealism. What was the use of giving up the illusory
realities of the senses, if it were not to get hold of more _solid_
realities? Though his intelligence, his poet's imagination, might be
attracted by the glamour of Platonism, his heart was not satisfied. "It is
one thing," he says, "from some wooded height to behold the land of peace,
another thing to march thither along the high road."
St. Paul it was who shewed him this road. He began to read the _Epistles_
carefully, and the more he read of them the more he became aware of the
abyss which separates philosophy from wisdom--the one which marshals the
ideas of things, the other which, ignoring ideas, leads right up to the
divine realities whereon the others are suspended. The Apostle taught
Augustin that it was not enough to get a glimpse of God through the crystal
of concepts, but that it is necessary to be united to Him in spirit and in
truth--to possess and enjoy Him. And to unite itself to this Good, the soul
must get itself into a fit state for such a union, purify and cure itself
of all its fleshly maladies, descry its place in the world and hold to it.
Necessity of repentance, of humility, of the contrite and humble heart.
Only the contrite and humble heart shall see God. "The broken heart shall
be cured," says the Scripture, "but the heart of the proud man shall be
shattered." So Augustin, the intellectual, had to change his methods,
and he felt that this change was right. If the writer who wants to write
beautiful things ought to put himself beforehand into some sort of a state
of grace, wherein not only vile actions, but unworthy thoughts become
impossible, the Christian, in like manner, must cleanse and prepare
his inward eye to perceive the divine verities. Augustin grasped this
thought in reading St. Paul. But what, above all, appealed to him in the
_Epistles_, was their paternal voice, the mildness and graciousness hidden
beneath the uncultivated roughness of the phrases. He was charmed by this.
How different from the philosophers! "Those celebrated pages have no trace
of the pious soul, the tears of repentance, nor of Thy sacrifice, O my God,
nor of the troubled spirit.... No one there hearkened to the Christ that
calleth, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour!' They think it scorn to learn
from Him, because He is meek and lowly of heart. For Thou hast hidden these
things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes."
But it is not much to bend: what is, above all, requisite for him is to get
rid of his passions. Now Augustin's passions were old friends. How could
he part with them? He lacked courage for this heroic treatment. Just think
of what a young man of thirty-two is. He is always thinking of women. Lust
holds him by the entanglements of habit, and he takes pleasure in the
impurity of his heart. When, yielding to the exhortations of the Apostle,
he tried to shape his conduct to his new way of thinking, the old friends
trooped to beg of him not to do anything of the kind. "They pulled me," he
says, "by the coat of my flesh, and they murmured in my ear--What, are you
leaving us? Shall we be no more with you, for ever? _Non erimus tecum ultra
in aeternum?_... And from that instant, the thing you well know, and still
another thing, will be forbidden you for ever--for eternity...."
Eternity! Dread word. Augustin shook with fear. Then, calming himself, he
said to them: "I know you; I know you too well! You are Desire without
hope, the Gulf without soundings that nothing can fill up. I have suffered
enough because of you." And the anguished dialogue continued: "What
matters that! If the only possible happiness for you is to suffer on our
account, to fling your body into the voracious gulf, without end, without
hope!"--"Let cowards act so!... For me there is another happiness than
yours. There is _something else_: I am certain." Then the friends, put
a little out of countenance by this convinced tone, muttered in a lower
voice: "Still, just suppose you are losing this wretched pleasure for
a phantasm still more empty.... Besides, you are mistaken about your
strength. You cannot--no, you never can exist without us." They had touched
the galling spot: Augustin knew his weakness only too well. And his burning
imagination presented to him with extraordinary lucidity these pleasures
which he could not do without. They were not only embracements, but also
those trifles, those superfluous nothings, "those light pleasantnesses
which make us fond of life." The perfidious old friends continued to
whisper: "Wait a bit yet! The things you despise have a charm of their
own; they bring even no small sweetness. You ought not to cut yourself off
light-heartedly, for it would be shameful to return to them afterwards."
He passed in review all the things he was going to give up; he saw them
shine before him tinted in the most alluring colours: gaming, elaborate
entertainments, music, song, perfumes, books, poetry, flowers, the coolness
of forests (he remembered the woods about Thagaste, and his hunting days
with Romanianus)--in a word, all that he had ever cared about, even to
"that freshness of the light, so kind to human eyes."
Augustin was not able to decide in this conflict between temptation and the
decree of his conscience, and he became desperate. His will, enfeebled by
sin, was unable to struggle against itself. And so he continued to endure
life and to be "devoured by time."
The life of that particular period, if it was endurable for quiet folk
who were careful to have nothing to do with politics--this life of the
Empire near its end, could be nothing but a scandalous spectacle for an
honest-minded and high-souled man such as Augustin. It ought to have
disgusted him at once with remaining in the world. At Milan, connected as
he was with the Court, he was in a good position to see how much baseness
and ferocity may spring from human avarice and ambition. If the present
was hideous, the future promised to be sinister. The Roman Empire no longer
existed save in name. Foreigners, come from all the countries of the
Mediterranean, plundered the provinces under its authority. The army was
almost altogether in the hands of the Barbarians. They were Gothic tribunes
who kept order outside the basilica where Ambrose had closed himself in
with his people to withstand the order of the Empress Justina, who wished
to hand over this church to the Arians. Levantine eunuchs domineered over
the exchequer-clerks in the palace, and officials of all ranks. All these
people plundered where they could. The Empire, even grown feeble, was
always an excellent machine to rule men and extract gold from nations.
Accordingly, ambitious men and adventurers, wherever they came from, tried
for the Purple: it was still worth risking one's skin for. Even more than
the patriots (and there were still some very energetic men of this sort
who were overcome with grief at the state of things), the men of rapine
and violence were interested in maintaining the Empire. The Barbarians
themselves desired to be included, so that they might pillage it with more
impunity.
As for the emperors, even sincere Christians, they were obliged to become
abominable tyrants to defend their constantly threatened lives. Never were
executions more frequent or more cruel than at this time. At Milan they
might have shewn Augustin, hard by the Imperial sleeping apartments, the
cave where the preceding Emperor, choleric Valentinian, kept two bears,
"Bit of Gold" and "Innocence," who were his rapid executioners. He fed them
with the flesh of those condemned to die. Possibly "Bit of Gold" was still
living. "Innocence"--observe the atrocious irony of this name--had been
restored to the liberty of her native forests, as a reward for her good and
loyal services.
Was Augustin, who still thought of becoming an official, going to mix in
with this lot of swindlers, assassins, and brute beasts? As he studied them
near at hand, he felt his goodwill grow weak. Like all those who belong
to worn-out generations, he must have been disgusted with action and the
villainies it involves. Just before great catastrophes, or just after,
there is an epidemic of black pessimism which freezes delicate souls.
Besides, he was ill--a favourable circumstance for a disappointed man if he
entertains thoughts of giving up the world. In the fogs of Milan his chest
and throat became worse and worse. And then it is likely enough that he was
not succeeding better as rhetorician than he had at Rome. It was a kind
of fatality for all Africans. However great their reputation in their own
country, that was the end of it as soon as they crossed the sea. Apuleius,
the great man of Carthage, had tried the experiment to his cost. They had
made fun of his guttural Carthaginian pronunciation. The same kind of thing
happened to Augustin. The Milanese turned his African accent into ridicule.
He even found among them certain purists who discovered solecisms in his
phrases.
But these scratches at his self-respect, this increasing disgust of men
and things, were small matters compared to what was going on within him.
Augustin had a sick soul. The forebodings he had always been subject to
were now become the suffering of every moment. At certain times he was
assailed by those great waves of sadness which unfurl all of a sudden from
the depths of the unknown. In such minutes we believe that the whole world
is hurling itself against us. The great wave rolled him over; he got up
again all wounded. And he felt stretch forth in him a new will which was
not his own, under which the other, the will to sin, struggled. It was
like the approach of an invisible being whose contact overcame him with an
anguish which was full of pleasure. This being wanted to open out within
him, but the weight of his old sins prevented. Then his soul cried out in
pain.
In those moments, what a relief it was to let himself float on the
canticles of the Church! The liturgical chants were then something new in
the West. It was in the very year we are dealing with that St. Ambrose
started the custom in the Milanese basilicas.
The childhood of our hymns! One cannot think about that without being
moved. One envies Augustin for having heard them in their spring freshness.
These lovely musics, which were to sound during so many centuries, and
still soar against the vaults of cathedrals, were leaving the nest for the
first time. We cannot think that a day will come when they will fold their
wings and fall silent. Since human bodies, temples of the Holy Ghost, will
live again in glory, one would like to believe with Dante that the hymns,
temples of the Word, are likewise immortal, and that they will still be
heard in the everlasting. Doubtless in the twilight glens of Purgatory the
bewailing souls continue to sing the _Te lucis ante terminum_, even as in
the star-circles, where the Blessed move ever, will always leap up the
triumphant notes of the _Magnificat_....
Even on those who have lost the faith, the power of these hymns is
irresistible. "If you knew," said Renan, "the charm that the Barbarian
magicians knew how to put into their canticles. When I remember them, my
heart melts." The heart of Augustin, who had not yet the faith, melted too
in hearing them: "How I have cried, my God, over the hymns and canticles
when the sweet sound of the music of Thy Church thrilled my soul! As the
music flowed into my ears, and Thy truth trickled into my heart, the tide
of devotion swelled high within me, and the tears ran down, and there was
gladness in those tears." His heart cast off its heaviness, while his mind
was shaken by the heavenly music. Augustin loved music passionately. At
this time he conceived God as the Great Musician of the spheres; and soon
he will write that "we are a strophe in a poem." At the same time, the
vivid and lightning figures of the Psalms, sweeping over the insipid
metaphors of the rhetoric which encumbered his memory, awoke in the depths
of him his wild African imagination and sent him soaring. And then the
affectionate note, the plaint in those sacred songs: _Deus, Deus meus!_--"O
God! O _my_ God!" The Divinity was no longer a cold abstraction, a phantom
that withdrew into an unapproachable infinite; He became the actual
possession of the loving soul. He leant over His poor scarred creature,
took him in His arms, and comforted him like a kind father.
Augustin wept with tenderness and ecstasy, but also with despair. He wept
upon himself. He saw that he had not the courage to be happy with the only
possible happiness. What, indeed, was he seeking, unless it were to capture
this "blessed life" which he had pursued so long? What he had tried to get
out of all his loves was the complete gift of his soul--to realize himself
completely. Now, this completeness of self is only in God--_in Deo salutari
meo_. The souls we have wounded are in unison with us, and with themselves,
only in God.... And the sweet Christian symbolism invited him with its
most enticing images: the Shades of Paradise; the Fountain of Living
Water; the Repose in the Lord God; the green Branch of the Dove, harbinger
of peace.... But the passions still resisted. "To-morrow! Wait a little
yet! Shall we be no more with you, for ever? _Non erimus tecum ultra in
aeternum?_..." What a dismal sound in these syllables, and how terrifying
for a timid soul! They fell, heavy as bronze, on the soul of Augustin.
An end had to be put to it somehow. What was needed was some one who would
force him out of his indecision. Instinctively, led by that mysterious will
which he felt had arisen within him, he went to see, and consult in his
distress, an old priest named Simplicianus, who had converted or directed
Bishop Ambrose in his young days. No doubt Augustin spoke to him of what he
had lately been reading, and particularly of his Platonist studies, and of
all the efforts he made to enter the communion of Christ. He acknowledged
that he was convinced, but he could not bend to the practice of the
Christian life. Then, very skilfully, as one artful in differentiating
souls, perceiving that vanity was not yet dead in Augustin, Simplicianus
offered him as an example the very translator of those Platonic books which
he had just been reading so enthusiastically--that famous Victorinus Afer,
that orator so learned and admired, who had his statue in the Roman Forum.
Because of some remains of philosophical pride, and also from fear of
offending his friends among the Roman aristocracy, who were still almost
altogether pagan, Victorinus was a Christian only in his head. In vain
Simplicianus pointed out to him how illogical his conduct was. But suddenly
and unexpectedly he decided. The day of the baptism of the catechumens,
this celebrated man mounted the platform set up in the basilica for the
profession of faith of the newly converted, and there, like the meanest of
the faithful, he delivered his profession before all the assembled people.
That was a dramatic stroke. The crowd, jubilant over this fine performance,
cheered the neophyte. And on all sides they shouted: "Victorinus!
Victorinus!"
Augustin listened to this little story, whereof all the details were so
happily chosen to act on an imagination like his:--the statue in the
Roman Forum; the platform from the height of which the orator had spoken
a language so new and unexpected; the exulting shouts of the crowd:
"Victorinus! Victorinus!" Already he saw himself in the same position.
There he was in the basilica, on the platform, in presence of Bishop
Ambrose; he too repeated his profession of faith, and the people of Milan
clapped their hands--"Augustin! Augustin!" But can a humble and contrite
heart thus take pleasure in human adulation? If Augustin did become a
convert, it would be entirely for God and before God. Very quickly he put
aside the temptation.... Nevertheless, this example, coming from so exalted
a man, made a very deep and beneficial impression. He looked upon it as a
providential sign, a lesson in courage which concerned him personally.
Some time after that, he received a visit from a fellow-countryman, a
certain Pontitianus, who had a high position in the Imperial household.
Augustin happened to be alone in the house with his friend Alypius. They
sat down to talk, and by chance the visitor noticed the Epistles of St.
Paul lying on a table for playing games. This started the conversation.
Pontitianus, who was a Christian, praised the ascetic life, and especially
the wonders of holiness wrought by Antony and his companions in the
Egyptian deserts. This subject was in the air. In Catholic circles at
Rome, they spoke of little else than these Egyptian solitaries, and of
the number, growing larger and larger, of those who stripped themselves
of their worldly goods to live in utter renunciation. What was the good
of keeping these worldly goods, that the avarice of Government taxation
confiscated so easily, and that the Barbarians watched covetously from
afar! The brutes who came down from Germany would get hold of them sooner
or later. And even supposing one might save them, retain an ever-uncertain
enjoyment of them, was the life of the time really worth the trouble of
living? There was nothing more to hope for the Empire. The hour of the
great desolation was at hand....