Confessions 10.34–10.58

But why does truth breed hatred, and why did your servant who preached the truth become an enemy to them, when the happy life is loved, which is nothing but joy in the truth? Is it not because truth is loved in such a way that whoever loves something else wants what he loves to be the truth; and because they would not want to be deceived, they do not want to be shown that they are deceived? So they hate the truth for the sake of the very thing they love instead of the truth. They love it when it shines, they hate it when it rebukes. For because they do not want to be deceived and want to deceive, they love it when it reveals itself and hate it when it reveals them. Therefore it will repay them: those who do not want to be exposed by it, it will expose against their will, and it will not be manifest to them. So, so, even so the human mind, even so blind and sick, foul and unseemly, wants to be hidden, but does not want anything to be hidden from it. It is repaid the opposite: it is not hidden from the truth, but the truth is hidden from it. Yet even so, while it is miserable, it would rather rejoice in true things than false. It will therefore be happy if, with no trouble intervening, it rejoices in the Truth alone, through which all things are true.

See how far I have ranged in my memory seeking you, Lord, and I have not found you outside it. For I find nothing about you that I have not remembered since I learned you. For since I learned you, I have not forgotten you. For where I found truth, there I found my God, Truth itself, which I have not forgotten since I learned it. And so, since I learned you, you remain in my memory, and there I find you when I remember you and delight in you. These are my holy delights, which you have given me in your mercy, looking upon my poverty.

But where in my memory do you remain, Lord, where do you remain there? What resting place have you made for yourself? What sanctuary have you built for yourself? You have granted my memory this honor, that you remain in it; but in what part of it you remain, that I am considering. For in remembering you I passed beyond the parts of it which the beasts also have, because I did not find you there among the images of bodily things; and I came to the parts of it where I had entrusted the feelings of my mind, and I did not find you there. And I entered the seat of my mind itself, which it has in my memory, since the mind remembers itself too, and you were not there; because just as you are not a bodily image, nor the feeling of a living being such as we have when we rejoice, grieve, desire, fear, remember, forget, and anything of that kind, so you are not the mind itself either, because you are the Lord God of the mind; and all these things change, but you remain unchangeable above all things, and you have deigned to dwell in my memory since I learned you. And why do I ask in what place of it you dwell, as if there were really places there? You certainly dwell in it, since I have remembered you since I learned you, and I find you in it when I recall you.

Where, then, did I find you, so as to learn you? For you were not in my memory before I learned you. Where, then, did I find you, so as to learn you, if not in you, above me? And there is no place anywhere; we go back and we come near, and there is no place anywhere. O Truth, everywhere you preside over all who consult you, and at the same time you answer all, though they consult you about different things. You answer clearly, but not all hear clearly. All consult you about what they want, but they do not always hear what they want. Your best servant is the one who does not look so much to hear from you what he himself wants, as rather to want what he hears from you.

Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you! And see, you were within and I was outside, and there I sought you, and, deformed as I was, I rushed headlong into those beautiful things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. Those things kept me far from you which, if they were not in you, would not exist. You called and cried out and broke through my deafness; you flashed, you shone, and you put my blindness to flight; you were fragrant, and I drew breath and now I pant for you; I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I burned for your peace.

When I cling to you with all of myself, I shall have no pain or toil anywhere, and my life will be alive, wholly full of you. But now, since you lift up the one whom you fill, and I am not yet full of you, I am a burden to myself. My joys that deserve weeping contend with my sorrows that deserve rejoicing, and I do not know on which side the victory stands. Alas, Lord, have mercy on me! My evil sorrows contend with my good joys, and I do not know on which side the victory stands. Alas! Lord, have mercy on me! Alas! See, I do not hide my wounds: you are the physician, I am sick; you are merciful, I am miserable. "Is not human life on earth a trial?" Who would want troubles and difficulties? You command us to endure them, not to love them. No one loves what he endures, even if he loves to endure. For although he rejoices that he endures, he would rather there were nothing to endure. In adversity I long for prosperity; in prosperity I fear adversity. What middle place is there between them, where human life is not a trial? Woe to the prosperities of the world, once and again, from the fear of adversity and the corruption of joy! Woe to the adversities of the world, once and again and a third time, from the longing for prosperity, and because adversity itself is hard, and lest it break our endurance! Is not human life on earth a trial, without any respite?

And all my hope is nowhere except in your great mercy. Give what you command, and command what you will. You command us to be continent. "And when I knew," someone said, "that no one can be continent unless God gives it, this too was a mark of wisdom, to know whose gift this was." For by continence we are gathered together and brought back into the One, from whom we had flowed away into the many. For he loves you too little who loves something together with you which he does not love for your sake. O Love, who always burn and are never quenched, Charity, my God, set me on fire! You command continence: give what you command, and command what you will.

You certainly command me to abstain from "the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the ambition of the world." You commanded me to abstain from sexual intercourse, and with regard to marriage itself you advised something better than what you permitted. And because you gave it, it was done, even before I became a dispenser of your sacrament. But there still live in my memory, of which I have said so much, the images of such things, which my habit fixed there; and they come to meet me, powerless indeed when I am awake, but in sleep not only to the point of pleasure but even to the point of consent and something very like the act. And the illusion of that image has such power in my soul, in my flesh, that false visions persuade me when asleep to what true ones cannot when I am awake. Am I not myself then, Lord my God? And yet there is so great a difference between myself and myself in the moment when I pass from here into sleep, or come back from there to here! Where then is the reason by which, when awake, the mind resists such suggestions and remains unshaken even if the things themselves are pressed upon it? Is it closed with the eyes? Is it lulled to sleep with the bodily senses? And how is it that often even in sleep we resist, and, mindful of our resolve and remaining most chastely in it, give no assent to such allurements? And yet the difference is so great that when it happens otherwise, on waking we return to peace of conscience, and by that very distance we find that we did not do what we nevertheless grieve was in some way done in us.

Is not your hand powerful, almighty God, to heal all the diseases of my soul, and by your more abundant grace to quench even the lustful motions of my sleep? You will increase your gifts in me more and more, Lord, so that my soul may follow me to you, freed from the birdlime of lust; so that it may not rebel against itself, and even in sleep may not only not commit these shameful corruptions through sensual images to the point of bodily discharge, but may not even consent to them. For to bring it about that nothing of the kind should please, not even so slightly that it could be checked by a nod, even in the chaste feeling of one asleep, not only in this life but at this age of mine, is no great thing for the Almighty, "who is able to do more than we ask or understand." But now I have told my good Lord what I still am in this kind of evil of mine, "rejoicing with trembling" in what you have given me, and mourning in what is still unfinished in me, hoping that you will bring your mercies to completion in me until the full peace which my inner and outer self will have with you, when "death is swallowed up in victory."

There is another evil of the day, and I wish it were sufficient for it. For we repair the daily wear of the body by eating and drinking, until you "destroy both food and stomach," when you will kill need with a wonderful fullness and clothe "this corruptible" with eternal "incorruption." But now this necessity is sweet to me, and I fight against that sweetness so as not to be taken captive by it; and I wage a daily war by fasting, often "bringing my body into subjection," and my pains are driven out by pleasure. For hunger and thirst are pains of a sort; they burn and, like a fever, kill, unless the medicine of food comes to the rescue. And since this is at hand from the comfort of your gifts, in which earth and water and sky serve our weakness, the calamity is called a delight.

You have taught me this: that I should come to take food as I take medicine. But while I pass from the discomfort of need to the rest of fullness, in that very passage the snare of desire lies in wait for me. For the passage itself is pleasure, and there is no other way to pass to where necessity compels us to pass. And although health is the reason for eating and drinking, a dangerous pleasure joins itself to it like a servant following behind, and often tries to go in front, so that what I say or want to do for the sake of health is done for its sake. Nor is the measure of the two the same: for what is enough for health is too little for pleasure, and it often becomes uncertain whether the necessary care of the body is still asking for help, or whether the deceitful pleasure of desire is offering its service. The unhappy soul brightens at this uncertainty and prepares in it the defense of an excuse, glad that it is not clear what is enough for the moderate care of health, so that under the pretext of health it may cloak the business of pleasure. These temptations I try to resist every day, and I call upon your right hand and refer my turmoil to you, because my mind is not yet settled on this matter.

I hear the voice of my God commanding: "Let not your hearts be weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness." Drunkenness is far from me; you will have mercy, so that it does not come near me. But gluttony has sometimes crept up on your servant; you will have mercy, so that it may be far from me. For no one can be continent unless you give it. You grant us many things when we pray; and whatever good we received before we prayed, we received from you; and that we should afterward know this, we received from you. I was never a drunkard, but I have known drunkards made sober by you. So it was your doing that those who never were drunkards are not, your doing that those who were are not so always, and your doing too that both know by whom it was done. I heard another voice of yours: "Do not go after your lusts, and turn away from your pleasure." I heard also, by your gift, one I have loved very much: "Neither if we eat shall we abound, nor if we do not eat shall we lack"; that is to say, neither will the one thing make me rich, nor the other wretched. I heard also another: "For I have learned to be content in whatever state I am; I know how to abound, and I know how to suffer need. I can do all things in him who strengthens me." See, a soldier of the heavenly camp, not the dust that we are. But "remember, Lord, that we are dust," and out of dust you made man, and "he was lost and is found." Nor could he do it in himself, because he was the same dust, he whom I have loved for saying such things by the breath of your inspiration: "I can do all things," he says, "in him who strengthens me." Strengthen me, so that I may be able; give what you command, and command what you will. He confesses that he has received, and "when he boasts, he boasts in the Lord." I have heard another asking to receive: "Take from me," he says, "the lusts of the belly." From which it is clear, holy God, that it is you who give, when what you command to be done is done.

You have taught me, good Father, that "to the pure all things are pure," but that "it is evil for the man who eats with offense"; and that "every creature of yours is good, and nothing is to be rejected which is received with thanksgiving"; and that "food does not commend us to God"; and that "no one should judge us in food or drink"; and that "he who eats should not despise him who does not eat, and he who does not eat should not judge him who eats." I have learned these things; thanks be to you, praise be to you, my God, my teacher, who knock at my ears and enlighten my heart: rescue me from every temptation. It is not the uncleanness of food that I fear, but the uncleanness of desire. I know that Noah was allowed to eat every kind of meat that was fit for food; that Elijah was refreshed with meat; that John, endowed with wonderful abstinence, was not defiled by the living creatures, that is, the locusts, that served him for food. And I know that Esau was deceived by his desire for lentils, and that David blamed himself for his longing for water, and that our King was tempted not by meat but by bread. And so too the people in the wilderness deserved to be rebuked, not because they desired meat, but because in their desire for food they murmured against the Lord.

Placed among these temptations, then, I struggle daily against the desire for eating and drinking. For this is not something I can decide to cut off once and never touch again, as I could with sexual intercourse. So the reins of the throat must be held with a moderate slackening and tightening. And who is there, Lord, who is not carried a little beyond the bounds of necessity? Whoever he is, he is great; let him magnify your name. But I am not he, "for I am a sinful man." Yet I too magnify your name; and he who "has overcome the world" intercedes with you for my sins, counting me among the weak members of his body, because "your eyes have seen" his "imperfect part, and in your book all shall be written."

With the allurement of scents I am not much concerned: when they are absent, I do not seek them; when they are present, I do not reject them, and I am ready to do without them always. So it seems to me; perhaps I am deceived. For this too is a darkness to be lamented, in which my own capacity is hidden from me, so that my mind, questioning itself about its strength, does not think it should easily trust itself; because even what is in it is mostly hidden unless experience makes it plain; and no one ought to be secure in this life, which is called wholly a trial, as to whether one who could be made better from worse may not also become worse from better. One hope, one confidence, one firm promise: your mercy.

The pleasures of the ears had entangled and subdued me more tightly, but you loosed and freed me. Now, in the sounds to which your words give life, when they are sung with a sweet and trained voice, I confess that I find some rest, not indeed so as to cling to them, but so that I can rise when I will. Yet together with the thoughts by which they live, so that they may be admitted to me, they seek in my heart a place of some honor, and I can hardly give them a fitting one. For sometimes I seem to myself to give them more honor than is proper, when I feel that our minds are moved more devoutly and ardently to a flame of piety by the holy words themselves when they are sung so than if they were not so sung, and that all the feelings of our spirit, in their variety, have their own measures in voice and song, by which they are stirred through some hidden kinship. But the pleasure of my flesh, to which the mind ought not to be given over to be weakened, often deceives me, when the sense does not accompany reason so as to follow patiently behind, but, having been admitted only for reason's sake, tries even to run ahead and lead. So in these things I sin without noticing, and afterward I notice.

But sometimes, guarding too immoderately against this very deception, I err by too great severity, so much so at times that I would want every melody of the sweet songs to which David's psalter is regularly sung to be removed from my ears and from those of the church itself; and it seems safer to me to follow what I remember having often been told of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who made the reader of the psalm sound it with so little inflection of the voice that it was nearer to speaking than singing. Yet when I remember the tears I shed at the songs of the church in the early days of my recovered faith, and that even now I am moved not by the singing but by the things that are sung, when they are sung with a clear voice and the most fitting melody, I acknowledge again the great usefulness of this practice. So I waver between the danger of pleasure and the experience of its benefit, and I am more inclined, though not putting forward an irrevocable opinion, to approve the custom of singing in church, so that through the delights of the ears the weaker mind may rise to a feeling of devotion. Yet when it happens to me that the singing moves me more than what is sung, I confess that I sin in a way that deserves punishment, and then I would rather not hear the singer. See where I am! Weep with me and weep for me, you who have some good within you, from which good deeds come. For you who do not, these things do not move you. But you, Lord my God, hear, look, see, and have mercy and heal me, in whose eyes I have become a question to myself; and that is my sickness.

There remains the pleasure of these eyes of my flesh, about which I make my confessions, to be heard by the ears of your temple, brotherly and devout ears; so that we may conclude the temptations of the lust of the flesh which still assail me as I groan and long "to be clothed over with my dwelling which is from heaven." The eyes love beautiful and varied forms, bright and pleasant colors. Let these not hold my soul; let God hold it, who made these things, "very good" indeed, but he is my good, not these. They touch me while I am awake all day long, and no rest from them is given me, as there is from musical voices, and sometimes from all sounds, in silence. For this queen of colors, the light, bathing all that we see, wherever I am during the day, caresses me with manifold approach while I am doing something else and not paying attention to it. And it insinuates itself so strongly that if it is suddenly taken away, it is sought with longing; and if it is absent for long, it saddens the mind.

O the light which Tobit saw, when with these eyes closed he taught his son the way of life and went before him on the foot of love, never going astray; or which Isaac saw, when his fleshly eyes were heavy and covered with old age, and it was granted him to bless his sons not by recognizing them, but to recognize them by blessing them; or which Jacob saw, when he too, deprived of sight by great age, with an enlightened heart shone light upon the tribes of the future people foreshadowed in his sons, and laid on his grandsons by Joseph his hands, mystically crossed, not as their father outwardly tried to correct them, but as he himself inwardly discerned. That is the light; it is one, and all who see and love it are one. But this bodily light I was speaking of seasons the life of the world for its blind lovers with an alluring and dangerous sweetness. But those who know how to praise you for it too, "God, creator of all things," take it up into your hymn and are not taken up by it into their sleep: so I desire to be. I resist the seductions of the eyes, lest my feet, with which I walk on your way, be entangled; and I lift up to you invisible eyes, so that you may "pluck my feet out of the snare." You pluck them out again and again, for they are caught. You do not cease to pluck them out, while I often get stuck in the snares spread everywhere; for "you will neither slumber nor sleep, you who keep Israel."

How countless are the things that men, by various arts and crafts, have added to the allurements of the eyes, in clothes, shoes, vessels, and manufactures of every kind, in pictures too and various images, going far beyond necessary and moderate use and devout meaning; following outwardly what they make, abandoning inwardly him by whom they were made, and destroying what they were made to be. But I, my God and my glory, even from this sing a hymn to you and offer a sacrifice of praise to him who sacrificed himself for me, because the beautiful things passed through souls into skillful hands come from that Beauty which is above souls, for which my soul sighs day and night. But the makers and followers of outward beauties draw from it their standard of approval, but not their standard of use. And it is there, and they do not see it, so that they would go no further and would "keep their strength for you," and not scatter it on pleasurable wearinesses. But I, while saying and discerning this, entangle my steps even in these beautiful things; but you pluck me out, Lord, you pluck me out, "for your mercy is before my eyes." For I am caught miserably, and you pluck me out mercifully, sometimes without my noticing, because I had only lightly fallen upon it, sometimes with pain, because I had already stuck fast.

To this is added another form of temptation, dangerous in many more ways. For besides the lust of the flesh, which lies in the delight of all the senses and pleasures, and whose slaves perish as they put themselves far from you, there is in the soul, through the same bodily senses, a certain vain and curious desire, cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning, not to take pleasure in the flesh but to gain experience through the flesh. Since this lies in the appetite for knowing, and the eyes are the chief of the senses for knowing, it is called in the divine word "the lust of the eyes." For seeing belongs properly to the eyes; but we use this word of the other senses too, when we apply them to knowing. For we do not say, "Hear how it glows," or "Smell how it shines," or "Taste how it gleams," or "Feel how bright it is"; for all these things are said to be seen. But we say not only "See how it shines," which the eyes alone can perceive, but also "See how it sounds," "See how it smells," "See how it tastes," "See how hard it is." And so the general experience of the senses is called, as has been said, the lust of the eyes, because the office of seeing, in which the eyes hold the first place, is taken over by the other senses too by analogy when they explore any knowledge.

From this it is more clearly seen what is done through the senses by pleasure and what by curiosity: pleasure pursues what is beautiful, melodious, fragrant, tasty, and smooth, but curiosity pursues even their opposites, for the sake of trying them, not to undergo discomfort but from a lust for experience and knowledge. For what pleasure is there in seeing a mangled corpse, which makes you shudder? And yet, if one is lying somewhere, people flock to be saddened, to turn pale. They are even afraid of seeing it in their sleep, as if anyone had forced them to look at it while awake, or any report of its beauty had persuaded them. So too with the other senses, which it would take long to go through. From this disease of desire all kinds of marvels are exhibited in the shows. From this people go on to search out the workings of nature, which is outside us, which it does no good to know, and which men desire only to know. From this also comes whatever is sought through the magic arts with the same aim of perverse knowledge. From this too, even in religion itself, God is tempted, when signs and wonders are demanded, desired not for any salvation but only for the experience.

In this immense forest, so full of snares and dangers, see, I have cut away many things and driven them from my heart, as you have granted me to do, God of my salvation. Yet when do I dare to say, since so many things of this kind make their noise around our daily life on every side, when do I dare to say that nothing of this sort makes me intent on watching it and captures me with vain interest? Certainly the theaters no longer carry me away, nor do I care to know the courses of the stars, nor has my soul ever sought answers from the shades; I detest all sacrilegious rites. From you, Lord my God, to whom I owe humble and single-hearted service, with what schemes of suggestion the enemy works on me to make me ask for some sign! But I beseech you by our King and by our homeland, Jerusalem, simple and chaste, that as consent to such things is far from me, so it may always be farther and farther. But when I pray to you for anyone's salvation, the aim of my intention is very different; and as you do what you will, you give and will give me to follow willingly.

Yet in how many very small and contemptible things our curiosity is tempted every day, and how often we slip, who can count? How often, when people tell idle tales, we at first put up with them, as it were, so as not to offend the weak, and then little by little we listen willingly! I no longer watch a dog running after a hare when it happens in the circus; but in the country, if I happen to pass by, that hunt may perhaps distract me even from some great thought and turn me toward it, not forcing me to turn aside the body of my horse, but the inclination of my heart; and unless you, having already shown me my weakness, quickly warn me either to rise to you through some reflection drawn from the sight itself, or to despise the whole thing and pass on, I grow dull and vain. What of when, sitting at home, a lizard catching flies, or a spider entangling them as they rush into its webs, often holds my attention? Is it not the same thing just because they are small animals? I go on from there to praise you, the wonderful Creator and orderer of all things, but that is not why I begin to pay attention. It is one thing to get up quickly, another not to fall. And my life is full of such things, and my one hope is your very great mercy. For when our heart becomes a receptacle of things of this kind and carries crowds of abundant vanity, our prayers too are often interrupted and disturbed by them; and in your sight, while we direct the voice of our heart to your ears, so great a matter is cut short by trifling thoughts rushing in from I know not where.

Shall we count this too among things to be despised, or will anything bring us back to hope except your known mercy, since you have begun to change us? And you know how far you have changed me, you who first heal me of the lust to vindicate myself, so that you may be gracious to all my other iniquities too, and heal all my diseases, and redeem my life from corruption, and crown me with pity and mercy, and satisfy my desire with good things; you who have checked my pride with your fear and tamed my neck to your yoke. And now I bear it, and it is light to me, because so you promised and so you did; and truly it was so, and I did not know it when I was afraid to take it up.