Saint Augustin

by Louis Bertrand

So in spite of family and professional cares, he did not lose his intellectual proclivities. The conquest of truth remained always his great ambition. He still hoped to find it in Manicheeism, but he began to think that it was a long time coming. The leaders of the sect could not have trusted him thoroughly. They feared his acute and subtle mind, so quick to detect the flaw in a thesis or argument. That is why they postponed his initiation into their secret doctrines. Augustin remained a simple auditor in their Church. By way of appeasing the enormous activity of his intelligence, they turned him on to controversy, and the critical discussion of the Scriptures. Giving themselves out for Christians, they adopted a part of them, and flung aside as interpolated or forged all that was not in tune with their theology. Augustin, as we know, triumphed in disputes of this kind, and was vain because he excelled in them.

And when he grew tired of this negative criticism and asked his evangelists to give him more substantial food, they put him on some exoteric doctrine calculated to appeal to a young imagination by its poetic or philosophical colouring. The catechumen was not satisfied, but he put up with it for lack of anything better. Very prettily he compares these enemies of the Scriptures to the snarers of birds, who defile or fill with earth all the water-places where the birds use to drink, save one mere; and about this they set their snares. The birds all fly there, not because the water is better, but because there is no other water, and they know not where else to go and drink. So Augustin, not knowing where to quench his thirst for truth, was fain to make the best of the confused pantheism of the Manichees.

What remains noteworthy is, that however unstable his own convictions were, he yet converted everybody about him. It was through him that his friends became Manichees: Alypius one of the first; then Nebridius, the son of a great landowner near Carthage; Honoratius, Marcianus; perhaps, too, the youngest of his pupils, Licentius and his brother—all victims of his persuasive tongue, which he exerted later on to draw them back from their errors. So great was his charm—so deep, especially, was public credulity!

This fourth century was no longer a century of strong Christian faith. On the other hand, the last agony of paganism was marked by a new attack of the lowest credulity and superstition. As the Church energetically combated both one and the other, it is not surprising that it was chiefly the pagans who were contaminated. The old religion was to end by foundering in magic. The greatest minds of the period, the neo-Platonists, the Emperor Julian himself, were miracle-workers, or at any rate, adepts in the occult sciences. Augustin, who was then separated from Christianity, followed the general impulse, together with the young men he knew. Just now we saw him sending to consult the soothsayer, Albicerius, about the loss of a spoon. And this man of intellect believed also in astrologers and nigromancers.

Strips of lead have been found at Carthage upon which are written magic spells against horses entered for races in the circus. Just like the Carthaginian jockeys, Augustin had recourse to these hidden and fraudulent practices, to make sure of success. On the eve of a verse competition in the theatre, he fell in with a wizard who offered, if they could agree about the price, to sacrifice a certain number of animals to buy the victory. Upon this, Augustin, very much annoyed, declared that if the prize were a crown of immortal gold, not a fly should be sacrificed to help him win it. Really, magic was repellent to the honesty of his mind, as well as to his nerves, by reason of the suspicious and brutal part of its operations. As a rule, it was involved with haruspicy, and had a side of sacred anatomy and the kitchen which revolted the sensitive—dissection of flesh, inspection of entrails, not to mention the slaughtering and strangling of victims. Fanatics, such as Julian, gave themselves up with delight to these disgusting manipulations. What we know of Augustin's soul makes it quite clear why he recoiled with horror.

Astrology, on the contrary, attracted him by its apparent science. Its adepts called themselves "mathematicians," and thus seemed to borrow from the exact sciences something of their solidity. Augustin often discussed astrology with a Carthage physician, Vindicianus, a man of great sense and wide learning, who even reached Proconsular honours. In vain did he point out to the young rhetorician that the pretended prophecies of the mathematicians were the effect of chance; in vain did Nebridius, less credulous than his friend, join his arguments to those of the crafty physician; Augustin clung obstinately to his chimera. His dialectical mind discovered ingenious justifications for what the astrologers claimed.

Thus, dazzled by all the intellectual phantasms, he strayed from one science to another, repeating meanwhile in his heart the motto of his Manichean masters: "The Truth, the Truth!". But whatever might be the attractions of the speculative life, he had first to face the needs of actual life. The sight of his child called him back to a sense of his position. To get money, and for that purpose to push himself forward, put himself in evidence, increase his reputation—Augustin worked at that as hard as he could. It led him to enter for the prize of dramatic poetry. He was declared the winner. His old friend, the physician Vindicianus, who was then Proconsul, placed the crown, as he says, upon his "disordered head." The future Father of the Church writing for the theatre—and what a theatre it was then!—is not the least extraordinary thing in this life so disturbed and, at first sight, so contradictory.

It was also from literary ambition that about the same time he wrote a book on æsthetics called Upon the Beautiful and the Fit, which he dedicated to a famous colleague, the Syrian Hierius, "orator to the City of Rome," one of the professors of the official education appointed either by the Roman municipality or the Imperial treasury. This Levantine rhetorician had an immense success in the capital of the Empire. His renown had got beyond academical and fashionable circles and crossed the sea. Augustin admired him on trust, like everybody else. It is clear that, at this time he could not imagine a more glorious fortune for himself than to become, like Hierius, orator to the City of Rome. Later in life, the Bishop of Hippo, while condemning the vanity of his youthful ambitions, must have made some extremely ironical reflections as to their modesty. How mistaken he was about himself! An Augustin had dreamed of equalling one day this obscure pedagogue, of whom nobody, save for him, would ever have spoken again. Men of instinct, like Augustin, continually go wrong in this way about their object and the means to employ. But their mistakes are only in appearance. A will stronger than their own leads them, by mysterious ways, whither they ought to go.

This first book of Augustin's is lost, and we are unable to say whether there be any reason to regret it. He himself recalls it to us in a very indifferent tone and rather vague terms. It would seem, however, that his æsthetic had a basis of Manichean metaphysics. But what is significant for us, in this youthful essay, is that the first time Augustin wrote as an author it was to define and to praise Beauty. He did not yet know, at least not directly from the text, the dialogues of Plato, and he is already inclined to Platonism. He was this by nature. His Christianity will be a religion all of light and beauty. For him, the supreme Beauty is identical with the supreme Love. "Do we love anything," he used to say to his friends, "except what is beautiful?" Num amamus aliquid, nisi pulchrum? Again, at the end of his life, when he strives in The City of God to make clear for us the dogma of the resurrection of the body, he thinks our bodies shall rise free from all earthly flaws, in all the splendour of the perfect human type. Nothing of the body will be lost. It will keep all its limbs and all its organs because they are beautiful. One recognizes in this passage, not only the Platonist, but the traveller and art-lover, who had gazed upon some of the finest specimens of ancient statuary.

This first book had hardly any success. Augustin does not even say whether the celebrated Hierius paid him a compliment about it, and he has an air of giving us to understand that he had no other admirer but himself. New disappointments, more serious mortifications, changed little by little his state of mind and his plans for the future. He was obliged to acknowledge that after years of effort he was scarcely more advanced than at the start. There was no chance to delude himself with vain pretences: it was quite plain to everybody that the rhetorician Augustin was not a success. Now, why was this? Was it that he lacked the gift of teaching? Perhaps he had not the knack of keeping order, which is the most indispensable of all for a schoolmaster. What suited him best no doubt was a small and select audience which he charmed rather than ruled. Large and noisy classes he could not manage. At Carthage, these rhetoric classes were particularly difficult to keep in order, because the students were more rowdy than elsewhere. At any moment "The Wreckers" might burst in and make a row. Augustin, who had not joined in these "rags" when he was a student, saw himself obliged to endure them as a professor. He had nothing worse to complain of than his fellow-professors, in whose classes the same kind of disturbance took place. That was the custom and, in a manner of speaking, the rule in the Carthage schools. For all that, a little more authoritative bearing would not have harmed him in the eyes of these disorderly boys. But he had still graver defects for a professor who wants to get on: he was not a schemer, and he could not make the most of himself.