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If, then, we be asked what the city of God has to say upon these
points, and, in the first place, what its opinion regarding the
supreme good and evil is, it will reply that life eternal is the
supreme good, death eternal the supreme evil, and that to obtain the
one and escape the other we must live rightly. And thus it is
written, "The just lives by faith," for we do not as yet see our
good, and must therefore live by faith; neither have we in ourselves
power to live rightly, but can do so only if He who has given us faith
to believe in His help do help us when we believe and pray. As for
those who have supposed that the sovereign good and evil are to be found
in this life, and have placed it either in the soul or the body, or in
both, or, to speak more explicitly, either in pleasure or in virtue,
or in both; in repose or in virtue, or in both; in pleasure and
repose, or in virtue, or in all combined; in the primary objects of
nature, or in virtue, or in both, all these have, with a marvelous
shallowness, sought to find their blessedness in this life and in
themselves. Contempt has been poured upon such ideas by the Truth,
saying by the prophet, "The Lord knoweth the thoughts of men"
(or, as the Apostle Paul cites the passage, "The Lord knoweth
the thoughts of the wise") "that they are vain."
For what flood of eloquence can suffice to detail the miseries of this
life? Cicero, in the Consolation on the death of his daughter, has
spent all his ability in lamentation; but how inadequate was even his
ability here? For when, where, how, in this life can these primary
objects of nature be possessed so that they may not be assailed by
unforeseen accidents? Is the body of the wise man exempt from any pain
which may dispel pleasure, from any disquietude which may banish
repose? The amputation or decay of the members of the body puts an end
to its integrity, deformity blights its beauty, weakness its health,
lassitude its vigor, sleepiness or sluggishness its activity, and
which of these is it that may not assail the flesh of the wise man?
Comely and fitting attitudes and movements of the body are numbered
among the prime natural blessings; but what if some sickness makes the
members tremble? what if a man suffers from curvature of the spine to
such an extent that his hands reach the ground, and he goes upon
all-fours like a quadruped? Does not this destroy all beauty and
grace in the body, whether at rest or in motion? What shall I say of
the fundamental blessings of the soul, sense and intellect, of which
the one is given for the perception, and the other for the
comprehension of truth? But what kind of sense is it that remains when
a man becomes deaf and blind? where are reason and intellect when
disease makes a man delirious? We can scarcely, or not at all,
refrain from tears, when we think of or see the actions and words of
such frantic persons, and consider how different from and even opposed
to their own sober judgment and ordinary conduct their present demeanor
is. And what shall I say of those who suffer from demoniacal
possession? Where is their own intelligence hidden and buried while
the malignant spirit is using their body and soul according to his own
will? And who is quite sure that no such thing can happen to the wise
man in this life?
Then, as to the perception of truth, what can we hope for even in
this way while in the body, as we read in the true book of Wisdom,
"The corruptible body weigheth down the soul, and the earthly
tabernacle presseth down the mind that museth upon many things?" And
eagerness, or desire of action, if this is the right meaning to put
upon the Greek ormh, is also reckoned among the primary advantages of
nature; and yet is it not this which produces those pitiable movements
of the insane, and those actions which we shudder to see, when sense
is deceived and reason deranged?
In fine, virtue itself, which is not among the primary objects of
nature, but succeeds to them as the result of learning, though it
holds the highest place among human good things, what is its occupation
save to wage perpetual war with vices, not those that are outside of
us, but within; not other men's, but our own, a war which is waged
especially by that virtue which the Greeks call swfrsnh, and we
temperance, and which bridles carnal lusts, and prevents them from
winning the consent of the spirit to wicked deeds? For we must not
fancy that there is no vice in us, when, as the apostle says, "The
flesh lusteth against the spirit;" for to this vice there is a
contrary virtue, when, as the same writer says, "The spirit lusteth
against the flesh." "For these two," he says, "are contrary one
to the other, so that you cannot do the things which you would." But
what is it we wish to do when we seek to attain the supreme good,
unless that the flesh should cease to lust against the spirit, and that
there be no vice in us against which the spirit may lust? And as we
cannot attain to this in the present life, however ardently we desire
it, let us by God's help accomplish at least this, to preserve the
soul from succumbing and yielding to the flesh that lusts against it,
and to refuse our consent to the perpetration of sin. Far be it from
us, then, to fancy that while we are still engaged in this intestine
war, we have already found the happiness which we seek to reach by
victory. And who is there so wise that he has no conflict at all to
maintain against his vices?
What shall I say of that virtue which is called prudence? Is not all
its vigilance spent in the discernment of good from evil things, so
that no mistake may be admitted about what we should desire and what
avoid? And thus it is itself a proof that we are in the midst of
evils, or that evils are in us; for it teaches us that it is an evil
to consent to sin, and a good to refuse this consent. And yet this
evil, to which prudence teaches and temperance enables us not to
consent, is removed from this life neither by prudence nor by
temperance. And justice, whose office it is to render to every man
his due, whereby there is in man himself a certain just order of
nature, so that the soul is subjected to God, and the flesh to the
soul, and consequently both soul and flesh to God, does not this
virtue demonstrate that it is as yet rather laboring towards its end
than resting in its finished work? For the soul is so much the less
subjected to God as it is less occupied with the thought of God; and
the flesh is so much the less subjected to the spirit as it lusts more
vehemently against the spirit. So long, therefore, as we are beset
by this weakness, this plague, this disease, how shall we dare to say
that we are safe? and if not safe, then how can we be already enjoying
our final beatitude? Then that virtue which goes by the name of
fortitude is the plainest proof of the ills of life, for it is these
ills which it is compelled to bear patiently. And this holds good, no
matter though the ripest wisdom co-exists with it. And I am at a
loss to understand how the Stoic philosophers can presume to say that
these are no ills, though at the same time they allow the wise man to
commit suicide and pass out of this life if they become so grievous that
he cannot or ought not to endure them. But such is the stupid pride of
these men who fancy that the supreme good can be found in this life,
and that they can become happy by their own resources, that their wise
man, or at least the man whom they fancifully depict as such, is
always happy, even though he become blind, deaf, dumb, mutilated,
racked with pains, or suffer any conceivable calamity such as may
compel him to make away with himself; and they are not ashamed to call
the life that is beset with these evils happy. O happy life, which
seeks the aid of death to end it? If it is happy, let the wise man
remain in it; but if these ills drive him out of it, in what sense is
it happy? Or how can they say that these are not evils which conquer
the virtue of fortitude, and force it not only to yield, but so to
rave that it in one breath calls life happy and recommends it to be
given up? For who is so blind as not to see that if it were happy it
would not be fled from? And if they say we should flee from it on
account of the infirmities that beset it, why then do they not lower
their pride and acknowledge that it is miserable?
Was it, I would ask, fortitude or weakness which prompted Cato to
kill himself? for he would not have done so had he not been too weak to
endure Caesar's victory. Where, then, is his fortitude? It has
yielded, it has succumbed, it has been so thoroughly overcome as to
abandon, forsake, flee this happy life. Or was it no longer happy?
Then it was miserable. How, then, were these not evils which made
life miserable, and a thing to be escaped from?
And therefore those who admit that these are evils, as the
Peripatetics do, and the Old Academy, the sect which Varro
advocates, express a more intelligible doctrine; but theirs also is a
surprising mistake, for they contend that this is a happy life which is
beset by these evils, even though they be so great that he who endures
them should commit suicide to escape them. "Pains and anguish of
body," says Varro, "are evils, and so much the worse in proportion
to their severity; and to escape them you must quit this life." What
life, I pray? This life, he says, which is oppressed by such
evils. Then it is happy in the midst of these very evils on account of
which you say we must quit it? Or do you call it happy because you are
at liberty to escape these evils by death? What, then, if by some
secret judgment of God you were held fast and not permitted to die,
nor suffered to live without these evils? In that case, at least,
you would say that such a life was miserable.
It is soon relinquished, no doubt but this does not make it not
miserable; for were it eternal, you yourself would pronounce it
miserable. Its brevity, therefore, does not clear it of misery;
neither ought it to be called happiness because it is a brief misery.
Certainly there is a mighty force in these evils which compel a man,
according to them even a wise man, to cease to be a man that he may
escape them, though they say, and say truly, that it is as it were
the first and strongest demand of nature that a man cherish himself,
and naturally therefore avoid death, and should so stand his own friend
as to wish and vehemently aim at continuing to exist as a living
creature, and subsisting in this union of soul and body. There is a
mighty force in these evils to overcome this natural instinct by which
death is by every means and with all a man's efforts avoided, and to
overcome it so completely that what was avoided is desired, sought
after, and if it cannot in any other way be obtained, is inflicted by
the man on himself. There is a mighty force in these evils which make
fortitude a homicide, if, indeed, that is to be called fortitude
which is so thoroughly overcome by these evils, that it not only cannot
preserve by patience the man whom it undertook to govern and defend,
but is itself obliged to kill him. The wise man, I admit, ought to
bear death with patience, but when it is inflicted by another. If,
then, as these men maintain, he is obliged to inflict it on himself,
certainly it must be owned that the ills which compel him to this are
not only evils, but intolerable evils. The life, then, which is
either subject to accidents, or environed with evils so considerable
and grievous, could never have been called happy, if the men who give
it this name had condescended to yield to the truth, and to be
conquered by valid arguments, when they inquired after the happy life,
as they yield to unhappiness, and are overcome by overwhelming evils,
when they put themselves to death, and if they had not fancied that the
supreme good was to be found in this mortal life; for the very virtues
of this life, which are certainly its best and most useful
possessions, are all the more telling proofs of its miseries in
proportion as they are helpful against the violence of its dangers,
toils, and woes. For if these are true virtues, and such cannot
exist save in those who have true piety, they do not profess to be able
to deliver the men who possess them from all miseries; for true virtues
tell no such lies, but they profess that by the hope of the future
world this life, which is miserably involved in the many and great
evils of this world, is happy as it is also safe. For if not yet
safe, how could it be happy? And therefore the Apostle Paul,
speaking not of men without prudence, temperance, fortitude, and
justice, but of those whose lives were regulated by true piety, and
whose virtues were therefore true, says, "For we are saved by hope:
now hope which is seen is not hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he
yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with
patience wait for it." As, therefore, we are saved, so we are made
happy by hope. And as we do not as yet possess a present, but look
for a future salvation, so is it with our happiness, and this "with
patience;" for we are encompassed with evils, which we ought
patiently to endure, until we come to the ineffable enjoyment of
unmixed good; for there shall be no longer anything to endure.
Salvation, such as it shall be in the world to come, shall itself be
our final happiness. And this happiness these philosophers refuse to
believe in, because they do not see it, and attempt to fabricate for
themselves a happiness in this life, based upon a virtue which is as
deceitful as it is proud.
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