On Free Choice of the Will 1.1–1.8

Evodius: Tell me, please, whether God is not the author of evil? Augustine: I will tell you, if you make plain which evil you are asking about. For we usually speak of evil in two ways: in one, when we say that someone has done evil; in the other, when he has suffered something evil. E. I want to know about both. A. If you know or believe that God is good (and it is not right to think otherwise), he does not do evil. Again, if we acknowledge that God is just (and to deny this too is sacrilege), then as he assigns rewards to the good, so he assigns punishments to the wicked; and these punishments are certainly evils to those who suffer them. Therefore, if no one pays a penalty unjustly, which we must believe, since we believe that this universe is ruled by divine providence, God is in no way the author of the first kind of evil, but he is the author of the second. E. Is there, then, another author of that evil of which God has been found not to be the author? A. There certainly is, for it could not be done with no author. But if you ask who that is, it cannot be said; for it is not some one being, but each wicked person is the author of his own wrongdoing. If you doubt this, attend to what was said above: wrongdoings are punished by the justice of God. They would not be punished justly unless they were done by will. E. I do not know whether anyone sins who has not learned to sin. If that is true, I ask who it is from whom we have learned to sin. A. Do you think learning is something good? E. Who would dare to say that learning is evil? A. What if it is neither good nor evil? E. It seems good to me. A. Quite right, since knowledge is given or awakened through it, and no one learns anything except through learning. Or do you think otherwise? E. I think that through learning only good things are learned. A. See, then, whether evil things are not learned at all; for “learning” (disciplina) takes its name from nothing but “to learn” (discere). E. Then where do evil deeds come from in a human being, if they are not learned? A. Perhaps from this, that he turns himself away and estranges himself from learning, that is, from learning anything. But whether it is this or something else, this at least is clear: since learning is good, and learning is named from learning, evil things cannot be learned at all. For if they are learned, they are contained in learning, and so learning will not be a good; but it is a good, as you yourself grant. So evil things are not learned, and you seek in vain the one from whom we learn to do evil; or, if evil things are learned, they are learned in order to be avoided, not to be done. Hence to do evil is nothing but to stray from learning. E. I really think there are two kinds of learning: one by which we learn to do well, another by which we learn to do evil. But when you asked whether learning was a good, the love of the good itself carried off my attention, so that I looked at the learning that belongs to doing well, and so I answered that it was good. Now I am reminded that there is another, which I affirm without any doubt to be evil, and whose author I am looking for. A. At least you think that understanding is nothing but good? E. I think it so good that I do not see what could be more excellent in a human being; and I would in no way say that any understanding can be evil. A. Well then, when someone is taught, if he does not understand, could he seem to you to have learned? E. Not at all. A. If, then, all understanding is good, and no one learns who does not understand, everyone who learns does well. For everyone who learns understands, and everyone who understands does well. So whoever seeks the author through whom we learn something is surely seeking the author through whom we do well. Stop wanting, then, to search out some evil teacher or other. For if he is evil, he is not a teacher; if he is a teacher, he is not evil.

E. Come now, since you press me hard enough to admit that we do not learn to do evil, tell me where our doing evil comes from. A. You raise the question that troubled me intensely when I was quite young, wore me out, drove me into the company of heretics, and threw me down. I was so wounded by that fall, and buried under such heaps of empty fables, that if my love of finding the truth had not won me God's help, I could not have come up out of it and breathed again in that first freedom of inquiry. And since great pains were taken with me to free me from this question, I will deal with you in the same order that I followed in my escape. For God will be with us and will make us understand what we have believed. We are well aware that we are holding to the step prescribed by the prophet, who says, “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” Now we believe that all things that exist are from the one God, and yet that God is not the author of sins. But the mind is troubled: if sins come from the souls that God created, and those souls come from God, how are sins not, at a short remove, referred back to God? E. You have now said plainly what torments me enough when I think about it, and what has driven and dragged me into this inquiry. A. Be of manly spirit, and believe what you believe; for nothing is believed better, even if the reason why it is so is hidden. To think of God in the best way is the truest beginning of piety; and no one thinks of him in the best way who does not believe him almighty and unchangeable in any least part; the creator also of all good things, he himself being more excellent than they; the most just ruler, too, of all that he created; and that he was helped by no nature in creating, as if he were not sufficient for himself. From this it follows that he created all things from nothing; but from himself he did not create but begot what would be equal to himself, whom we call the only Son of God, whom, when we try to express him more plainly, we name the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, through whom he made all things that were made from nothing. With these points settled, let us strive with God's help toward an understanding of the matter you ask about, in this way.

A. You are asking, of course, where our doing evil comes from; so first we must examine what doing evil is. Tell me what you think about it. If you cannot take in the whole briefly in words at once, at least make your view known to me by listing the evil deeds themselves one by one. E. Adulteries and murders and sacrileges, to leave out the rest, for the listing of which neither time nor memory suffices: who is there to whom these do not seem evil deeds? A. Tell me first, then, why you think adultery is an evil deed. Is it because the law forbids doing it? E. Surely it is not evil because it is forbidden by law; it is forbidden by law because it is evil. A. What if someone harasses us, magnifying the pleasures of adultery and asking us why we judge it evil and worthy of condemnation? Do you think that people who now desire not only to believe but to understand must take refuge in the authority of the law? For I too believe with you, and believe unshakably, and I proclaim that all peoples and nations must believe, that adultery is evil; but now we are striving to know by understanding, and to hold most firmly, what we have received in faith. So consider as well as you can, and report to me by what reasoning you have come to know that adultery is evil. E. I know that it is evil because I would not want to suffer it myself in the case of my own wife; and whoever does to another what he does not want done to himself certainly does evil. A. What if someone's lust is such that he offers his wife to another and willingly allows her to be corrupted by him, desiring in turn to have equal license with that man's wife? Does he seem to you to do nothing evil? E. On the contrary, a great deal. A. But he does not sin by that rule, for he is not doing what he would not want to suffer. So you must look for something else by which to prove that adultery is evil. E. It seems evil to me because I have often seen people condemned for this crime. A. What? Have not people very often been condemned for right actions? Review history (not to send you to other books, take the very history that excels by divine authority), and you will find how badly we would think of the apostles and of all the martyrs, if we choose to take condemnation as a sure sign of wrongdoing, since all of them were judged worthy of condemnation because of their confession. So if whatever is condemned is evil, it was evil at that time to believe in Christ and to confess that faith; but if not everything that is condemned is evil, look for something else by which to show that adultery is evil. E. I cannot find what to answer you. A. Perhaps, then, lust is the evil in adultery. But as long as you look for the evil outside, in the act itself that can be seen, you are in difficulties. To help you understand that lust is the evil in adultery: if someone has no opportunity of lying with another man's wife, but it is somehow plain that he desires it and would do it if he had the power, he is no less guilty than if he were caught in the act itself. E. Nothing is more evident; and I see now that there is no need of a long conversation to convince me about murder and sacrilege and indeed about all sins. For it is now clear that nothing else but lust rules in every kind of wrongdoing.

A. Do you know that this lust is also called by another name, desire (cupiditas)? E. I know. A. Well, do you think there is no difference between it and fear, or some difference? E. On the contrary, I think they are very far apart. A. I suppose you think so because desire seeks and fear flees. E. It is as you say. A. What, then, if someone kills a man not from desire to obtain something, but fearing that some evil may befall him? Will he not be a murderer? E. He will; but that does not mean this act is free of the dominion of desire, for one who kills a man out of fear certainly desires to live without fear. A. And does living without fear seem a small good to you? E. It is a great good, but it can in no way come to that murderer through his crime. A. I am not asking what can come to him, but what he himself desires. Surely one who desires a life free from fear desires a good, and so that desire is not to be blamed; otherwise we shall blame all lovers of the good. So we are forced to admit that there is a murder in which the dominion of that evil desire cannot be found; and then it will be false that in all sins lust rules, so that they are evil; or else there will be some murder that can be no sin. E. If murder is killing a man, it can happen sometimes without sin. A soldier who kills an enemy, a judge or his officer who kills a guilty man, and one from whose hand a weapon slips, perhaps against his will and unawares: these do not seem to me to sin when they kill a man. A. I agree; but these are not usually called murderers. Answer, then, whether you think that a slave who has killed his master, from whom he feared severe tortures, should be counted among those who kill a man in such a way that they do not even deserve the name of murderers. E. I see that he differs greatly from them: they act either according to the laws or not against the laws, but no law approves his deed. A. Again you call me back to authority. But you should remember that what we have now undertaken is to understand what we believe. We believe the laws; so we must try, if we can in any way, to understand this very point: whether the law that punishes this deed does not punish it wrongly. E. It in no way punishes wrongly, since it punishes one who kills his master willingly and knowingly, which none of those others does. A. Well, do you remember saying a little earlier that in every evil act lust rules, and that it is evil for that very reason? E. I certainly remember. A. And did you not also grant that one who desires to live without fear does not have an evil desire? E. I remember that too. A. When, then, a master is killed by his slave from that desire, he is not killed from that blameworthy desire. So we have not yet found why this crime is evil. For we agreed that all evil deeds are evil for no other reason than that they are done from lust, that is, from a desire that deserves disapproval. E. Now it seems to me that he is condemned unjustly, which I would not dare to say if I had anything else to say. A. Have you persuaded yourself that so great a crime ought to go unpunished before considering whether that slave desired to be free from fear of his master in order to satisfy his own lusts? For to desire to live without fear belongs not only to all the good but also to all the wicked. The difference is this: the good seek it by turning their love away from things that cannot be possessed without the danger of losing them; the wicked, in order to settle down securely in the enjoyment of these things, try to remove what stands in the way, and so lead a criminal and wicked life, which is better called death. E. I come to my senses, and I am very glad that I have now plainly learned what that blameworthy desire is which is called lust. It now appears to be the love of those things that anyone can lose against his will.

E. So now, come, let us ask, if you please, whether lust also rules in sacrileges, many of which we see committed through superstition. A. See that this is not too hasty. First, I think, we must examine whether an attacking enemy, or an assassin lying in wait, is killed without any lust, whether in defense of life, of liberty, or of chastity. E. How can I think that those are free of lust who fight with the sword for things they can lose against their will? Or, if they cannot lose them, what need is there to go as far as killing a man for them? A. Then the law is not just that gives a traveler the power to kill a robber so as not to be killed by him, or gives any man or woman the power to kill, if possible, a violator who attacks them with force, before the violation is done. For the soldier too is commanded by law to kill the enemy, and if he refrains from that killing he is punished by his commander. Shall we dare to call those laws unjust, or rather no laws at all? For to me a law that is not just does not seem to be a law. E. I see well enough that the law is protected against an accusation of this kind, since among the people it governs it has granted license to lesser wrongs to prevent greater ones being committed. For it is much milder that one who plots against another's life be killed than one who defends his own. And it is much more monstrous that a person should suffer violation against his will than that the one who inflicts that violence should be killed by the one on whom he tries to inflict it. As for the soldier, in killing the enemy he is a servant of the law; so he easily fulfills his duty without any lust. Further, the law itself, which was enacted to protect the people, cannot be charged with any lust. For if he who enacted it did so at God's command, that is, by what eternal justice commands, he could do it wholly free of lust; and if he made this decree with some lust, it does not follow that one must obey that law with lust, since a good law can be enacted even by one who is not good. If, say, someone who has seized tyrannical power takes a price from someone whom it profits, and decrees that no one may carry off a woman by force, even for marriage, that law will not be bad because an unjust and corrupt man enacted it. So the law that commands that hostile force be repelled by the same force, to protect the citizens, can be obeyed without lust; and the same can be said of all officers who are subject, rightly and in due order, to any authorities. But how those other men can be blameless, even though the law is blameless, I do not see. For the law does not compel them to kill; it leaves it in their power. They are free, then, to kill no one for things that they can lose against their will, and which for that reason they ought not to love. As for life, someone may perhaps doubt whether it is in no way taken from the soul when this body is killed; but if it can be taken away, it should be despised; if it cannot, there is nothing to fear. As for chastity, who would doubt that it is located in the mind itself, since it is a virtue? So it cannot be snatched away even by a violent violator. Whatever, then, the man who is killed was going to snatch away is not wholly in our power; so I do not understand how it is to be called ours. Therefore I do not blame the law that permits such men to be killed; but how to defend those who kill them I cannot find. A. Much less can I find why you seek a defense for men whom no law holds guilty. E. No law, perhaps, of those laws that are visible and read by men. For I do not know whether they are not held by some stronger and most hidden law, if there is nothing that divine providence does not govern. For how are they free of sin before it, who are polluted with human blood for the sake of things that ought to be despised? It seems to me, then, that this law written for governing a people rightly permits these things, and that divine providence punishes them. For this law of the people takes upon itself the punishment of as much as is enough to maintain peace among unlearned people, and as much as can be governed by man. Those faults have other, fitting penalties, from which, it seems to me, wisdom alone can set us free. A. I praise and approve this distinction of yours, which, though only begun and not perfect, is yet confident and reaches toward lofty things. For you think that this law enacted for governing cities concedes and leaves unpunished many things that are nevertheless punished by divine providence; and rightly. For it does not follow that, because it does not do everything, what it does should be disapproved.

A. But let us examine carefully, if you please, how far wrongdoings are to be punished by this law that restrains peoples in this life; and then what remains to be punished more inescapably and secretly by divine providence. E. I want to, if only one can reach the limits of so great a matter; for I think it is endless. A. On the contrary, take heart, and enter the paths of reason relying on piety. For nothing is so steep and difficult that it does not become very plain and easy with God's help. So, depending on him and begging his help, let us pursue what we have begun. And first answer me whether this law that is promulgated in writing helps people living this life. E. That is evident; for it is of these people, after all, that peoples and cities consist. A. Well, are these people and peoples of a kind of thing that cannot perish or change and is wholly eternal? Or are they changeable and subject to time? E. Who would doubt that this kind is plainly changeable and subject to time? A. So, if a people is well balanced and serious, and a most careful guardian of the common good, in which each person values his private affairs less than the public, is not a law rightly enacted by which this people is allowed to create its own magistrates, through whom its affairs, that is, the public affairs, are administered? E. Quite rightly. A. Further, if this same people, gradually corrupted, prefers private affairs to the public, holds its vote for sale, and, corrupted by those who love office, entrusts the government of itself to the vicious and criminal, would it not likewise be right that, if some good man of great power should then arise, he should take from this people the power to confer offices and bring it under the decision of a few good men, or even of one? E. That too is right. A. Since, then, these two laws seem so contrary that one gives the people the power to confer offices and the other takes it away, and since the second is enacted in such a way that the two can in no way exist at once in one city, shall we say that one of them is unjust and should never have been enacted? E. By no means. A. Let us call this law, then, if you please, temporal, since although it is just, it can justly be changed in the course of time. E. Let us call it so. A. Well, that law which is called the supreme reason, which must always be obeyed, by which the wicked deserve a miserable life and the good a happy one, and by which, finally, the law we said should be called temporal is rightly enacted and rightly changed: can it seem to anyone who understands to be anything but unchangeable and eternal? Or can it ever be unjust that the wicked be miserable and the good happy, or that a moderate and serious people create magistrates for itself, while a dissolute and worthless one lacks that license? E. I see that this law is eternal and unchangeable. A. I think you also see at the same time that in that temporal law there is nothing just and lawful that people have not derived for themselves from this eternal law. For if that people at one time justly conferred offices and at another time justly did not, this change over time, in order to be just, was drawn from that eternity by which it is always just for a serious people to confer offices and for a frivolous one not to. Or do you think otherwise? E. I agree. A. So, to explain briefly in words, as well as I can, the notion of the eternal law that is impressed upon us: it is the law by which it is just that all things be most perfectly ordered. If you think otherwise, say so. E. I have nothing to say against you when you speak the truth. A. Since, then, this is the one law from which all those temporal laws for governing people take their variations, can it itself therefore vary in any way? E. I understand that it absolutely cannot; for no force, no chance, no collapse of things could ever bring it about that it is not just for all things to be most perfectly ordered.

A. Come now, let us see how a human being himself is most perfectly ordered within himself; for a people consists of human beings joined together by one law, and that law, as was said, is temporal. Tell me whether it is most certain to you that you are alive. E. What more certain answer could I give than this? A. Well, can you distinguish that it is one thing to live and another to know that one lives? E. I know that no one knows that he lives unless he is living; but whether every living thing knows that it lives, I do not know. A. How I wish that, as you believe it, so you also knew that cattle lack reason! Our discussion would quickly pass on from this question. But since you say you do not know, you set off a long conversation. For it is not the kind of matter that we can pass over and go on to what we intend with as close a chain of reasoning as I feel is needed. So tell me: since we have often seen beasts tamed by human beings, that is, not only the body of a beast but also its soul so subjected to a human being that it serves his will by a kind of sense and habit, does it seem to you possible in any way that some beast, however monstrous in fierceness or in body, or very keen in any sense, should try in its turn to subject a human being to itself, although many of them can destroy his body by force or by stealth? E. I agree that this can in no way happen.

A. Quite right. But tell me also: since it is clear that a human being is easily surpassed by very many beasts in strength and in the other functions of the body, what is it in which a human being excels, so that no beast can command him while he can command many of them? Is it perhaps what is usually called reason or understanding? E. I find nothing else, since what makes us surpass the brutes lies in the mind. If they were without souls, I would say that we excel them because we have a mind. But since they too are living beings, what is absent from their minds, so that they are subject to us, but present in ours, so that we are better than they, is plainly neither nothing nor something small; what could I more rightly call it than reason? A. See how easily, with God's help, a thing is done that people think most difficult. For I confess to you that I had thought this question, which, as I see, is now settled, would hold us as long as perhaps everything that has been said since the very beginning of our discussion. So take this now, so that the reasoning may next be linked together: I believe you are aware that what we call knowing is nothing other than having perceived by reason. E. So it is. A. Then one who knows that he lives does not lack reason. E. It follows. A. But beasts live, and, as has now become clear, they have no share in reason. E. That is evident. A. See, then: you now know what you answered you did not know, that not everything that lives knows that it lives, although everything that knows that it lives necessarily lives. E. I no longer doubt it; go on where you were heading. For I have learned well enough that it is one thing to live and another to know that one lives. A. Which of these two, then, seems to you more excellent? E. What do you suppose, but the knowledge of life? A. Does the knowledge of life seem to you better than life itself? Or do you perhaps understand knowledge to be a higher and purer life, which no one can know unless he understands? And what is understanding but living more brightly and perfectly by the very light of the mind? So, unless I am mistaken, you have not preferred something other than life to life, but a better life to a certain kind of life. E. You have grasped and set out my view perfectly; provided, however, that knowledge can never be evil. A. In no way, I think, unless we use the word in a transferred sense, saying knowledge when we mean experience. For to experience is not always good, as when one experiences punishments. But how can that which is properly and purely called knowledge, since it is acquired by reason and understanding, be evil? E. I grasp that distinction too. Go on with the rest. A. This is what I want to say: whatever this is by which a human being is set above cattle, whether it is more rightly called mind or spirit or both (for we find both in the divine books), if it rules and commands all the other parts of which a human being consists, then that human being is most perfectly ordered. For we see that we have many things in common not only with cattle but even with trees and plants. To take food for the body, to grow, to reproduce, to flourish: we see these granted also to trees, which are contained in a lowest kind of life. And we see and admit that beasts can see and hear and perceive bodily things by smell, taste, and touch, most of them more keenly than we. Add strength, power, and firmness of limbs, and speed and very easy motions of the body: in all these we surpass some of them, equal others, and are even beaten by some. This whole class of things is certainly common to us and the brutes; and to seek the pleasures of the body and to avoid discomforts is the whole activity of the life of beasts. There are some other things that do not seem to fall to wild animals, yet are not the highest in a human being, such as joking and laughing; whoever judges human nature most rightly judges this to be human indeed, but the lowest part of a human being. Then there is the love of praise and glory, and the desire to rule; though these do not belong to beasts, we must not think that we are better than beasts by lusting for these things. For this appetite too, when it is not subject to reason, makes people miserable; and no one has thought that he should be ranked above anyone by misery. So when reason rules these motions of the soul, a human being must be called ordered. For it is not right order, or to be called order at all, where better things are subjected to worse. Or does it not seem so to you? E. It is evident. A. When, then, this reason, or mind, or spirit, rules the irrational motions of the soul, then that rules in a human being to which rule is owed by that law which we found to be eternal. E. I understand and follow.