Petrarch. Have you some now terror in store for me?
S. Augustine. To desire is but one word, but how many things go to make it up!
Petrarch. Your words make me tremble.
S. Augustine. Not to mention the positive elements in desire, it involves the destruction of many other objects.
Petrarch. I do not quite take in your meaning.
S. Augustine. The desire of all good cannot exist without thrusting out every lower wish. You know how many different objects one longs for in life. All these you must first learn to count as nothing before you can rise to the desire for the chief good; which a man loves less when along with it he loves something else that does not minister to it.
Petrarch. I recognise the thought.
S. Augustine. How many men are there who have extinguished all their passions, or, not to speak of extinguishing, tell me how many are there who have subdued their spirit to the control of Reason, and will dare to say, "I have no more in common with my body; all that once seemed so pleasing to me is become poor in my sight. I aspire now to joys of nobler nature"?
Petrarch. Such men are rare indeed. And now I understand what those difficulties are with which you threatened me.
S. Augustine. When all these passions are extinguished, then, and not till then, will desire be full and free. For when the soul is uplifted on one side to heaven by its own nobility, and on the other dragged down to earth by the weight of the flesh and the seductions of the world, so that it both desires to rise and also to sink at one and the same time, then, drawn contrary ways, you find you arrive nowhither.