S. Augustine. But how dangerous is such delay, remembering that time flies fast and how uncertain our short life is. Let me ask you a question, and I beg you to answer it. Suppose that He who alone can fix our time of life and death were this day to assign you one whole year, and you had the definite certainty of how would you propose to use that year?
Petrarch. Assuredly I should use great economy of time, and be extremely, careful to employ it on serious things; and I suppose no man alive would be so insolent or foolish as to answer your question in any other way.
S. Augustine. You have answered rightly. And yet the folly men display in this case is matter of astonishment, not to me only but to all those who have ever written on this subject. To set forth what they feel, they have combined every faculty they possess and employed all their eloquence, and even then the truth itself will leave their utmost efforts far behind.
Petrarch. I fear I do not understand the motive of so great astonishment.
S. Augustine. It is because you are covetous of uncertain riches and altogether wasteful of those which are eternal, doing the very contrary of what you ought to do, if you were not quite devoid of wisdom.
So this space of a year, though short enough indeed, being promised you by Him who deceives not, neither is deceived, you would partition out and dissipate on any kind of folly, provided you could keep the last hour for the care of your salvation! The horrible and hateful madness of you all is just this, that you waste your time on ridiculous vanities, as if there were enough and to spare, and though you do not in the least know if what you have will be long enough for the supreme necessities of the soul in face of death. The man who has one year of life possesses something certain though short; whereas he who has no such promise and lies under the power of death (whose stroke may fall at any moment), which is the common lot of all men—this man, I say, is not sure of a year, a day; no, not even of one hour. He who has a year to live, if six months shall have slipped away, will still have another half-year left to run; but for you, if you lose the day that now is, who will promise you to-morrow?[55]
It is Cicero who says: "It is certain that we must die: what is uncertain is whether it will be to-day; and there is none so young that-he can be sure he will live until the evening."[56] I ask, then, of you, and I ask it likewise of all those who stand gaping after the future and pay no heed to the present, "Who knows if the high gods will add even one morrow to this your little day of life?"[57]
Petrarch. If I am to answer for myself and for all: No one knows, of a truth. But let us hope for a year at least; on which, if we are still to follow Cicero, even the most aged reckons!
S. Augustine. Yes; and, as he also adds, not old men only but young ones too are fools in that they cherish false hope, and promise themselves uncertain goods as though they were certain.[58]
But let us take for granted (what is quite impossible) that the duration of life will be long and assured: still, do you not find it is the height of madness to squander the best years and the best parts of your existence on pleading only the eyes of others and tickling other men's ears, and to keep the last and worst—the years that are almost good for nothing—that bring nothing but distaste for life and then its end—to keep these, I say, for God and yourself, as though the welfare of your soul were the last thing you cared for?