The Confessions of St. Augustine
others, I was forced to learn the wanderings of one Aeneas, forgetful of
my own, and to weep for dead Dido, because she killed herself for love;
the while, with dry eyes, I endured my miserable self dying among these
things, far from Thee, O God my life.
For what more miserable than a miserable being who commiserates not
himself; weeping the death of Dido for love to Aeneas, but weeping not
his own death for want of love to Thee, O God. Thou light of my heart,
Thou bread of my inmost soul, Thou Power who givest vigour to my mind,
who quickenest my thoughts, I loved Thee not. I committed fornication
against Thee, and all around me thus fornicating there echoed "Well
done! well done!" for the friendship of this world is fornication
against Thee; and "Well done! well done!" echoes on till one is ashamed
not to be thus a man. And for all this I wept not, I who wept for Dido
slain, and "seeking by the sword a stroke and wound extreme," myself
seeking the while a worse extreme, the extremest and lowest of Thy
creatures, having forsaken Thee, earth passing into the earth. And
if forbid to read all this, I was grieved that I might not read what
grieved me. Madness like this is thought a higher and a richer learning,
than that by which I learned to read and write.
But now, my God, cry Thou aloud in my soul; and let Thy truth tell me,
"Not so, not so. Far better was that first study." For, lo, I would
readily forget the wanderings of Aeneas and all the rest, rather than
how to read and write. But over the entrance of the Grammar School is a
vail drawn! true; yet is this not so much an emblem of aught recondite,
as a cloak of error. Let not those, whom I no longer fear, cry out
against me, while I confess to Thee, my God, whatever my soul will, and
acquiesce in the condemnation of my evil ways, that I may love Thy
good ways. Let not either buyers or sellers of grammar-learning cry out
against me. For if I question them whether it be true that Aeneas came
on a time to Carthage, as the poet tells, the less learned will reply
that they know not, the more learned that he never did. But should I ask
with what letters the name "Aeneas" is written, every one who has
learnt this will answer me aright, as to the signs which men have
conventionally settled. If, again, I should ask which might be forgotten
with least detriment to the concerns of life, reading and writing or
these poetic fictions? who does not foresee what all must answer who
have not wholly forgotten themselves? I sinned, then, when as a boy I
preferred those empty to those more profitable studies, or rather loved
the one and hated the other. "One and one, two"; "two and two, four";
this was to me a hateful singsong: "the wooden horse lined with
armed men," and "the burning of Troy," and "Creusa's shade and sad
similitude," were the choice spectacle of my vanity.
Why then did I hate the Greek classics, which have the like tales? For
Homer also curiously wove the like fictions, and is most sweetly-vain,
yet was he bitter to my boyish taste. And so I suppose would Virgil
be to Grecian children, when forced to learn him as I was Homer.
Difficulty, in truth, the difficulty of a foreign tongue, dashed, as it
were, with gall all the sweetness of Grecian fable. For not one word of
it did I understand, and to make me understand I was urged vehemently
with cruel threats and punishments. Time was also (as an infant) I
knew no Latin; but this I learned without fear or suffering, by mere
observation, amid the caresses of my nursery and jests of friends,
smiling and sportively encouraging me. This I learned without any
pressure of punishment to urge me on, for my heart urged me to give
birth to its conceptions, which I could only do by learning words not of
those who taught, but of those who talked with me; in whose ears also I
gave birth to the thoughts, whatever I conceived. No doubt, then, that
a free curiosity has more force in our learning these things, than a
frightful enforcement. Only this enforcement restrains the rovings of
that freedom, through Thy laws, O my God, Thy laws, from the master's
cane to the martyr's trials, being able to temper for us a wholesome
bitter, recalling us to Thyself from that deadly pleasure which lures us
from Thee.
Hear, Lord, my prayer; let not my soul faint under Thy discipline, nor
let me faint in confessing unto Thee all Thy mercies, whereby Thou
hast drawn me out of all my most evil ways, that Thou mightest become a
delight to me above all the allurements which I once pursued; that I may
most entirely love Thee, and clasp Thy hand with all my affections, and
Thou mayest yet rescue me from every temptation, even unto the end. For
lo, O Lord, my King and my God, for Thy service be whatever useful
thing my childhood learned; for Thy service, that I speak, write, read,
reckon. For Thou didst grant me Thy discipline, while I was learning
vanities; and my sin of delighting in those vanities Thou hast forgiven.
In them, indeed, I learnt many a useful word, but these may as well be
learned in things not vain; and that is the safe path for the steps of
youth.
But woe is thee, thou torrent of human custom! Who shall stand against
thee? how long shalt thou not be dried up? how long roll the sons of Eve
into that huge and hideous ocean, which even they scarcely overpass who
climb the cross? Did not I read in thee of Jove the thunderer and the
adulterer? both, doubtless, he could not be; but so the feigned thunder
might countenance and pander to real adultery. And now which of our
gowned masters lends a sober ear to one who from their own school cries
out, "These were Homer's fictions, transferring things human to the
gods; would he had brought down things divine to us!" Yet more truly had
he said, "These are indeed his fictions; but attributing a divine nature
to wicked men, that crimes might be no longer crimes, and whoso commits
them might seem to imitate not abandoned men, but the celestial gods."
And yet, thou hellish torrent, into thee are cast the sons of men with
rich rewards, for compassing such learning; and a great solemnity is
made of it, when this is going on in the forum, within sight of laws
appointing a salary beside the scholar's payments; and thou lashest
thy rocks and roarest, "Hence words are learnt; hence eloquence; most
necessary to gain your ends, or maintain opinions." As if we should have
never known such words as "golden shower," "lap," "beguile," "temples
of the heavens," or others in that passage, unless Terence had brought
a lewd youth upon the stage, setting up Jupiter as his example of
seduction.
"Viewing a picture, where the tale was drawn,
Of Jove's descending in a golden shower
To Danae's lap a woman to beguile."
And then mark how he excites himself to lust as by celestial authority:
"And what God? Great Jove,
Who shakes heaven's highest temples with his thunder,
And I, poor mortal man, not do the same!
I did it, and with all my heart I did it."
Not one whit more easily are the words learnt for all this vileness;
but by their means the vileness is committed with less shame. Not that
I blame the words, being, as it were, choice and precious vessels; but
that wine of error which is drunk to us in them by intoxicated teachers;
and if we, too, drink not, we are beaten, and have no sober judge to
whom we may appeal. Yet, O my God (in whose presence I now without hurt
may remember this), all this unhappily I learnt willingly with great
delight, and for this was pronounced a hopeful boy.
Bear with me, my God, while I say somewhat of my wit, Thy gift, and on
what dotages I wasted it. For a task was set me, troublesome enough to
my soul, upon terms of praise or shame, and fear of stripes, to speak
the words of Juno, as she raged and mourned that she could not
"This Trojan prince from Latinum turn."
Which words I had heard that Juno never uttered; but we were forced to
go astray in the footsteps of these poetic fictions, and to say in prose
much what he expressed in verse. And his speaking was most applauded, in
whom the passions of rage and grief were most preeminent, and clothed
in the most fitting language, maintaining the dignity of the character.
What is it to me, O my true life, my God, that my declamation was
applauded above so many of my own age and class? is not all this smoke
and wind? and was there nothing else whereon to exercise my wit and
tongue? Thy praises, Lord, Thy praises might have stayed the yet tender
shoot of my heart by the prop of Thy Scriptures; so had it not trailed
away amid these empty trifles, a defiled prey for the fowls of the air.
For in more ways than one do men sacrifice to the rebellious angels.
But what marvel that I was thus carried away to vanities, and went out
from Thy presence, O my God, when men were set before me as models, who,
if in relating some action of theirs, in itself not ill, they committed
some barbarism or solecism, being censured, were abashed; but when
in rich and adorned and well-ordered discourse they related their own
disordered life, being bepraised, they gloried? These things Thou seest,
Lord, and holdest Thy peace; long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and
truth. Wilt Thou hold Thy peace for ever? and even now Thou drawest out
of this horrible gulf the soul that seeketh Thee, that thirsteth for
Thy pleasures, whose heart saith unto Thee, I have sought Thy face; Thy
face, Lord, will I seek. For darkened affections is removal from Thee.
For it is not by our feet, or change of place, that men leave Thee, or
return unto Thee. Or did that Thy younger son look out for horses or
chariots, or ships, fly with visible wings, or journey by the motion of
his limbs, that he might in a far country waste in riotous living all
Thou gavest at his departure? a loving Father, when Thou gavest, and
more loving unto him, when he returned empty. So then in lustful, that
is, in darkened affections, is the true distance from Thy face.
Behold, O Lord God, yea, behold patiently as Thou art wont how carefully
the sons of men observe the covenanted rules of letters and syllables
received from those who spake before them, neglecting the eternal
covenant of everlasting salvation received from Thee. Insomuch, that
a teacher or learner of the hereditary laws of pronunciation will more
offend men by speaking without the aspirate, of a "uman being," in
despite of the laws of grammar, than if he, a "human being," hate a
"human being" in despite of Thine. As if any enemy could be more hurtful
than the hatred with which he is incensed against him; or could wound
more deeply him whom he persecutes, than he wounds his own soul by his
enmity. Assuredly no science of letters can be so innate as the record
of conscience, "that he is doing to another what from another he would
be loth to suffer." How deep are Thy ways, O God, Thou only great,
that sittest silent on high and by an unwearied law dispensing penal
blindness to lawless desires. In quest of the fame of eloquence, a man
standing before a human judge, surrounded by a human throng, declaiming
against his enemy with fiercest hatred, will take heed most watchfully,
lest, by an error of the tongue, he murder the word "human being"; but
takes no heed, lest, through the fury of his spirit, he murder the real
human being.
This was the world at whose gate unhappy I lay in my boyhood; this
the stage where I had feared more to commit a barbarism, than having
committed one, to envy those who had not. These things I speak and
confess to Thee, my God; for which I had praise from them, whom I then
thought it all virtue to please. For I saw not the abyss of vileness,
wherein I was cast away from Thine eyes. Before them what more foul than