(i) 1. Deceased was now that my evil and abominable youth, and I was
passing into early manhood [his thirty-first year]; the more defiled by
vain things as I grew in years, who could not imagine any substance but
such as is wont to be seen with these eyes. I thought not of Thee, O
God, under the figure of a human body; since I began to hear aught of
wisdom, I always avoided this; and rejoiced to have found the same in
the faith of our spiritual mother, Thy Catholic Church. But what else to
conceive Thee I knew not. And I, a man, and such a man, sought to
conceive of Thee the sovereign, only, true God; and I did in my inmost
soul believe that Thou wert incorruptible, and uninjurable, and
unchangeable; because though not knowing whence or how, yet I saw
plainly and was sure that that which may be corrupted must be inferior
to that which cannot; what could not be injured I preferred
unhesitatingly to what could receive injury; the unchangeable to things
subject to change. My heart passionately cried out against all my
phantoms, and with this one blow I sought to beat away from the eye of
my mind all that unclean troop, which buzzed around it. And lo, being
scarce put off, in the twinkling of an eye they gathered again thick
about me, flew against my face, and beclouded it; so that though not
under the form of the human body, yet was I constrained to conceive of
Thee (that incorruptible, uninjurable, and unchangeable, which I
preferred before the corruptible, and injurable, and changeable) as
being in space, whether infused into the world, or diffused infinitely
without it. Because whatsoever I conceived, deprived of this space,
seemed to me nothing, yea altogether nothing, not even a void, as if a
body were taken out of its place, and the place should remain empty of
any body at all, of earth and water, air and heaven, yet would it remain
a void place, as it were a specious nothing.
2. I then being thus gross-hearted, nor clear even to myself, whatsoever
was not extended over certain space, nor diffused, nor condensed, nor
swelled out, or did not or could not receive some of these dimensions, I
thought to be altogether nothing. For over such forms as my eyes are
wont to range did my heart then range: nor yet did I see that this same
notion of the mind, whereby I formed those very images, was not of this
sort, and yet it could not have formed them, had not itself been some
great thing. So also did I endeavor to conceive of Thee, Life of my
life, as vast, through infinite spaces, on every side penetrating the
whole mass of the universe, and beyond it, every way, through
immeasurable boundless spaces; so that the earth should have Thee, the
heaven have Thee, all things have Thee, and they be bounded in Thee, and
Thou bounded nowhere. For that as the body of this air which is above
the earth hindereth not the light of the sun from passing through it,
penetrating it, not by bursting or by cutting, but by filling it wholly:
so I thought the body not of heaven, air, and sea only, but of the earth
too, previous to Thee, so that in all its parts, the greatest as the
smallest, it should admit Thy presence by a secret inspiration, within
and without, directing all things which Thou hast created. So I guessed,
only as unable to conceive aught else, for it was false. For thus should
a greater part of the earth contain a greater portion of Thee, and a
less, a lesser: and all things should in such sort be full of Thee, that
the body of an elephant should contain more of Thee than that of a
sparrow, by how much larger it is, and takes up more room; and thus
shouldst Thou make the several portions of Thyself present unto the
several portions of the world, in fragments, large to the large, petty
to the petty. But such art not Thou. But not as yet hadst Thou
enlightened my darkness.
(He “sees that the cause of sin lies in free-will, rejects the Manichean
heresy, but cannot altogether embrace the doctrine of the Church;
recovered from the belief in Astrology, but miserably perplexed about
the origin of evil; is led to find in the Platonists the seeds of the
doctrine of the Divinity of the WORD, but not of His humiliation; hence
he obtains clearer notions of God’s majesty, but, not knowing Christ to
be the Mediator, remains estranged from Him; all his doubts removed by
the study of Holy Scripture, especially St. Paul.” This Book completes
Augustine’s thirty-first year.)
(Dealing with his abandonment of astrology, a naively elaborate proof of
the falsity of that science is brought forward, to-wit: By careful
planning, two children of widely different parents were observed, who
were born at approximately the same time. According to astrology, their
horoscopes should be the same, for the stars would obviously be in the
same positions at their simultaneous birth. But one was a slave, the
other a successful freeman. In addition, the common phenomenon of twins,
born at the same hour or so nearly at the same moment that the stars
could not vary enough to be noted, is cited. The twins, according to
their horoscopes, should be similarly endowed with abilities, and
similarly favored by fortune. Yet this has seldom proved the case.)