images that clamored in the ears of my heart. I was straining those ears to hear your inward melody, O sweet Truth, pondering on “the beautiful and the fitting” and longing to stay and hear you, and to rejoice greatly at “the Bridegroom’s voice” (cf. Jer 25:10, 33:11; Jn 3:29; Rev 18:23). 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 that were not yet humbled (cf. Ps 51:8).
28. And what did it profit me that, when I was scarcely twenty years old, a book of Aristotle’s entitled The Ten Categories7 fell into my hands? On the very title of this I hung as on something great and divine, since my rhetoric master in Carthage and others who had reputations for learning were always referring to it with such swelling pride. I read it by myself and understood it. And what did it mean that when I discussed it with others they said that even with the assistance of tutors — who not only explained it orally, but drew many diagrams in the sand — they scarcely understood it and could tell me no more about it than I had acquired in reading it on my own? For the book appeared to me to speak plainly enough about substances, such as a man; and of their qualities, such as the shape of a man, his kind, his stature, how many feet high, and his family relationship, his status, when born, whether he is sitting or standing, is shod or armed, or is doing something or having something done to him — and all the innumerable things that are classified under these nine categories (of which I have given some examples) or under the chief category of substance.
29. What did all this profit me, since it actually hindered me when I imagined that whatever existed was comprehended within those ten categories? I tried to interpret them, O my God, so that even your wonderful and unchangeable unity could be understood as subjected to your own magnitude or beauty, as if they existed in you as their Subject — as they do in corporeal bodies — whereas you are your own magnitude and beauty. A body is not great or fair because it is a body, because, even if it were less great or less beautiful, it would still be a body. But my conception of you was falsity, not truth. It was a figment of my own misery, not the stable ground of your blessedness. For you commanded, and it was carried out in me, that the earth should bring forth briars and thorns for me, and that with heavy labor I should gain my bread (cf. Gen 3:18).
30. And what did it profit me that I could read and understand for myself all the books I could get in the so-called “liberal arts,” when I was actually a worthless slave of wicked lust? I took delight in those books, not knowing the real source of what it was in them that was true and certain. For I had my back toward the light, and my face toward the things on which the light falls, so that my face, which looked toward the illuminated things, was not itself illuminated. Whatever was written in any of the fields of rhetoric or logic, geometry, music, or arithmetic, I could understand without any great difficulty and without the instruction of another man. All this you know, O Lord my God, because both quickness in understanding and acuteness in insight are your gifts. Yet for such gifts I made no thank offering to you. Therefore, my abilities served not my profit but rather my loss, since I went about trying to bring so large a part of my substance into my own power. And I did not store up my strength for you, but went away from you into the far country to prostitute my gifts in disordered appetite.8 And what did these abilities profit me, if I did not put them to good use? I did not realize that those arts were understood with great difficulty, even by the studious and the intelligent, until I tried to explain them to others and discovered that even the most proficient in them followed my explanations all too slowly.
31. And yet what did this profit me, since I still supposed that you, O Lord God, the Truth, were a bright and vast body and that I was a particle of that body? O perversity gone too far! But so it was with me. And I do not blush, O my God, to confess your mercies to me in your presence, or to call upon you — any more than I did not blush when I openly avowed my blasphemies before men, and bayed, like a hound, against you. What good was it for me that my nimble wit could run through those studies and disentangle all those knotty volumes, without help from a human teacher, since all the while I was erring so hatefully and with such sacrilege as far as the right substance of pious faith was concerned? And what kind of burden was it for your little ones to have a far slower wit, since they did not use it to depart from you, and since they remained in the nest of your Church to become safely fledged and to nourish the wings of love by the food of a sound faith?
O Lord our God, under the shadow of your wings let us hope — defend us and support us (cf. Ps 17:8). You will bear us up when we are little and even down to our gray hairs you will carry us. For our stability, when it is in you, is stability indeed; but when it is in ourselves, then it is all unstable. Our good lives forever with you, and when we turn from you with aversion, we fall into our own perversion. Let us now, O Lord, return that we be not overturned, because with you our good lives without blemish — for our good is you yourself. And we need not fear that we shall find no place to return to because we fell away from it. For, in our absence, our home — which is your eternity — does not fall away.
Book Five
Augustine faces a year of decision. Faustus comes to Carthage, and Augustine is disenchanted in his hope for solid demonstration of the truth of Manichean doctrine. He decides to flee from his known troubles in Carthage to troubles yet unknown in Rome. His experiences in Rome prove disappointing, and he applies for a teaching post in Milan. Here he meets Ambrose, who confronts him as an impressive witness for Catholic Christianity and uncovers the possibilities of the allegorical interpretation of Scripture. Augustine decides to become a Christian catechumen.
Chapter I
1. Accept this sacrifice of my confessions from the hand of my tongue. You formed it and prompted it to praise your name. Heal all my bones and let them say, “O Lord, who is like you?” (Ps 35:10). It is not that one who confesses to you instructs you as to what goes on within him. For the closed heart does not bar your sight into it, nor does the hardness of heart hold back your hands, for you can soften it at will, either by mercy or in vengeance, “and there is no one who can hide himself from your heat” (cf. Ps 19:6). But let my soul praise you, that it may love you, and let it confess your mercies to you, that it may praise you. Your whole creation praises you without ceasing: the spirit of man, by his own lips, by his own voice, lifted up to you; animals and lifeless matter by the mouths of those who meditate upon them. Thus our souls may climb out of their weariness toward you and lean on those things you have created and pass through them to you, who created them in a marvelous way. With you, there is refreshment and true strength.
Chapter II
2. Let the restless and the unrighteous depart and flee away from you. Even so, you see them and your eye pierces through the shadows in which they run. For lo, they live in a world of beauty and yet are themselves most foul. And how have they harmed you? Or in what way have they discredited your power, which is just and perfect in its rule even to the last item in creation? Indeed, where would they fly when they fled from your presence? Wouldst you be unable to find them? But they fled that they might not see you, who saw them; that they might be blinded and stumble into you. But you forsake nothing that you have made. The unrighteous stumble against you that they may be justly plagued, fleeing from your gentleness and colliding with your justice, and falling on their own rough paths. For in truth they do not know that you are everywhere; that no place contains you, and that only you are near even to those who go farthest from you. Let them, therefore, turn back and seek you, because even if they have abandoned you, their Creator, you have not abandoned your creatures. Let them turn back and seek you — and lo, you are there in their hearts, there in the hearts of those who confess to you. Let them cast themselves upon you, and weep on your bosom, after all their weary wanderings; and you will gently wipe away their tears (cf. Rev 21:4). And they weep the more and rejoice in their weeping, since you, O Lord, are not a man of flesh and blood. You are the Lord, who can remake what you made and can comfort them. And where was I when I was seeking you? There you were, before me; but I had gone away, even from myself, and I could not find myself, much less you.
Chapter III
3.