On Free Choice of the Will 2.11–2.17

E. I cannot doubt it. But I would very much like to know whether these two, wisdom and number, are contained in some one class, since you mentioned that they are set side by side even in the holy Scriptures; or whether one arises from the other or consists in the other, for instance number from wisdom or in wisdom. For I would not dare to say that wisdom arises from number or consists in number. I do not see how it could, since I know many arithmeticians or calculators, or whatever else they should be called, who calculate supremely and wonderfully, but very few wise men, or perhaps none; wisdom strikes me as far more worthy of reverence than number. A. You speak of something at which I too often marvel. For when I consider within myself the unchangeable truth of numbers, and what is, so to speak, its lair and inner sanctuary, or a certain region, or whatever other fitting name can be found to name the dwelling, as it were, and seat of numbers, I am carried far from the body; and finding perhaps something that I can think, yet not finding anything that I am able to express in words, I return as if wearied to these things of ours so that I can speak, and I speak of the things placed before our eyes as they are usually spoken of. This happens to me also when I think about wisdom as alertly and intently as I can. And so I marvel greatly, since these two are in the most hidden and most certain truth, and the testimony of the Scriptures is added, in which, as I mentioned, they are set side by side; I marvel greatly, as I said, why number is cheap to the multitude of people and wisdom dear. But no doubt the reason is that they are one and the same thing. Yet, since in the divine books it is said of wisdom that it “reaches from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly,” perhaps the power by which it reaches mightily from end to end is called number, and that by which it orders all things sweetly is properly called wisdom, though both belong to one and the same wisdom. But it has given numbers to all things, even the lowest and those placed at the end of things (for all bodies, though they are the last among things, have their numbers), while it has given the power to be wise not to bodies, nor to all souls, but only to rational ones, as if it had set its seat in them, from which to order all those things, even the lowest, to which it gave numbers. And so, since we judge easily about bodies, as things ordered below us, we see that the numbers impressed on them are below us, and so we hold them cheaper. But when we begin to run back upward, as it were, we find that they also transcend our minds and remain unchangeable in truth itself. And because few can be wise, while counting is granted even to fools, people admire wisdom and despise numbers. But the learned and studious, the farther they are from earthly stain, the more they behold both number and wisdom in truth itself and hold both dear; and in comparison with that truth, not only gold and silver and the other things for which people fight become cheap to them, but they even become cheap to themselves. Nor should you wonder that numbers have become cheap to people and wisdom dear because they can count more easily than they can be wise, when you see that they hold gold dearer than the light of a lamp, in comparison with which gold is laughable. Yet the far inferior thing is honored more, because even a beggar lights a lamp for himself, while few have gold. Far be it, though, that wisdom should be found inferior in comparison with number, since it is the same; but it requires an eye by which it can be seen. Just as in one fire brightness and heat are perceived as consubstantial, so to speak, and cannot be separated from each other, yet the heat reaches only the things brought near, while the brightness is spread farther and wider; so by the power of understanding that is in wisdom the nearer things, such as rational souls, grow warm, while the more distant things, such as bodies, it does not touch with the warmth of wisdom but floods with the light of numbers. This is perhaps obscure to you; for no visible likeness can be fitted to an invisible thing in every respect. Only attend to this, which is enough for the question we have taken up and shows itself even to humbler minds such as ours: even if it cannot be clear to us whether number is in wisdom or from wisdom, or wisdom itself from number or in number, or whether both can be shown to be names of one thing, this at least is evident, that both are true, and unchangeably true.

So you will in no way deny that there is an unchangeable truth containing all these things that are unchangeably true, which you cannot call yours or mine or any human being's, but which is present and offers itself in common to all who discern unchangeable truths, like a light that is in wonderful ways both hidden and public. And who would say that anything present in common to all who reason and understand belongs properly to the nature of any one of them? For you remember, I think, what was discussed a little earlier about the senses of the body: that the things we touch in common by the sense of the eyes or ears, such as colors and sounds, which you and I see at once or hear at once, do not belong to the nature of our eyes or ears, but are common to us for perceiving. So too you would in no way say that the things which you and I behold in common, each with his own mind, belong to the nature of the mind of either of us. For what the eyes of two people see at once you cannot say is the eyes of this one or of that one; it is something third, toward which the gaze of both is directed. E. That is most plain and most true. A. This truth, then, of which we have been speaking for so long, and in which, though it is one, we behold so many things: do you think it more excellent than our mind, or equal to our minds, or even inferior? If it were inferior, we would judge not according to it but about it, as we judge about bodies, because they are below us, and we often say not only that they are so or not so, but that they ought to be so or not so. So too with our minds: we know not only that the mind is so, but often also that it ought to be so. We judge so about bodies when we say, “It is less white than it should have been,” or “less square,” and many such things; and about minds, “It is less fit than it ought to be,” or “less gentle,” or “less vigorous,” as the character of our conduct has led. And we judge these things according to those inner rules of truth which we discern in common; but about them no one in any way judges. For when someone has said that eternal things are better than temporal ones, or that seven and three are ten, no one says that it ought to have been so; knowing only that it is so, he does not correct it as an examiner but only rejoices as a discoverer. And if this truth were equal to our minds, it too would be changeable. For our minds see it sometimes more and sometimes less, and by this confess that they are changeable; whereas it, remaining in itself, neither gains when it is seen more by us nor fails when it is seen less, but, whole and incorrupt, it gladdens with its light those who are turned toward it and punishes with blindness those who are turned away. What of the fact that we judge even about our minds themselves according to it, while we can in no way judge about it? For we say, “He understands less than he ought,” or “He understands as much as he ought.” And a mind ought to understand as much as it has been able to draw near to the unchangeable truth and cleave to it. So if it is neither inferior nor equal, it remains that it is superior and more excellent.

I had promised, if you remember, to show you that there is something higher than our mind and reason. Here it is for you: truth itself. Embrace it if you can, and enjoy it, and “take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the requests of your heart.” For what more do you ask than to be happy? And who is happier than one who enjoys unshaken, unchangeable, and most excellent truth? People cry out that they are happy when they embrace beautiful bodies desired with great longing, whether of wives or even of prostitutes; and shall we doubt that we are happy in the embrace of truth? People cry out that they are happy when, with throats parched by heat, they come to an abundant and healthful spring, or, hungry, find a dinner or supper richly furnished and plentiful; and shall we deny that we are happy when we are watered and fed by truth? We often hear the voices of people crying out that they are happy if they lie among roses and other flowers, or enjoy most fragrant ointments; what is more fragrant, what more pleasant, than the breath of truth? And do we hesitate to call ourselves happy when we breathe it in? Many place the happy life in the music of voices and strings and pipes, and when these are lacking they judge themselves miserable, and when they are present they are carried away with joy; and when a certain melodious and eloquent silence of truth, so to speak, glides without any noise into our minds, shall we seek another happy life, and not enjoy one so sure and so present? People delight in the light of gold and silver, the light of gems and other colors, or in the brightness and pleasantness of the light itself that belongs to these eyes, whether in earthly fires or in the stars or the moon or the sun; and when they are called away from this delight by no troubles and no want, they think themselves happy and want to live forever for the sake of these things. And are we afraid to place the happy life in the light of truth? Rather, since the highest good is known and held in truth, and that truth is wisdom, let us discern the highest good in it, hold it, and enjoy it fully. For he is happy who enjoys the highest good. This truth shows all the goods that are true, from which people of understanding choose, according to their capacity, one or several to enjoy. Those who choose in the light of the sun what they like to look at are gladdened by that sight; and if some among them are endowed with more vigorous, healthy, and very strong eyes, they look at nothing more gladly than the sun itself, which also lights up the other things in which weaker eyes delight. So the strong and vigorous gaze of the mind, when it has beheld by sure reason many true and unchangeable things, directs itself to truth itself, by which all are shown, and cleaving to it, as it were forgets the rest, and in it enjoys all of them at once. For whatever is pleasant in the other truths is pleasant by truth itself. This is our freedom, when we are subject to this truth; and it is our God himself, who frees us from death, that is, from the condition of sin. For the Truth itself, speaking also as a man with men, says to those who believe in him: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” For the soul enjoys nothing with freedom except what it enjoys with security.

But no one is secure in goods that he can lose against his will. Truth and wisdom no one loses against his will; for no one can be separated from it by places, but what is called separation from truth and wisdom is a perverse will, by which lower things are loved. And no one wills anything unwillingly. We have, then, something to enjoy, all of us equally and in common; there is no crowding, no deficiency in it. It receives all its lovers without their envying one another; it is common to all and chaste to each. No one says to another, “Step back, so that I too may come near; take your hands away, so that I too may embrace it.” All cleave to it, all touch the very same thing. Its food is torn into no parts; you drink nothing from it that I cannot. For you change nothing from sharing in it into your private property; what you take from it remains whole for me too. What it breathes into you I do not wait to have given back by you, so that I may then be breathed upon by it; for no part of it ever becomes the property of any one person or of a few, but it is wholly common to all at once. So the things we touch or taste or smell are less like this truth, and the things we hear and see are more like it; because every word is heard whole by all who hear it, and whole by each at once, and every appearance that lies before the eyes is seen as large by one as by another at once. But these are like it only at a very great distance. For no voice sounds whole all at once, since it is stretched out and drawn out through time, and one part of it sounds earlier and another later; and every visible appearance swells out, as it were, through space and is not whole everywhere. And certainly all these things are taken away from us against our will, and we are hindered by certain constraints from enjoying them. For even if someone's sweet singing could be everlasting, and its admirers came eagerly to hear it, they would crowd one another and fight over places, the more of them there were, so that each might be nearer the singer; and in hearing they would hold nothing that stayed with them, but would be touched by sounds that all flee away. And if I wanted to gaze at this sun and could do so steadily, it would desert me at its setting, it would be veiled by cloud, and through many other obstacles I would lose the pleasure of seeing it against my will. Finally, even if the sweetness of light for the one who sees and of voice for the one who hears were always present, what great thing would come to me, when I would have it in common with the beasts? But that beauty of truth and wisdom, provided only there is a persevering will to enjoy it, neither shuts out those who come because it is crowded by a throng of hearers, nor passes with time, nor moves from place to place, nor is cut off by night, nor shut off by shadow, nor subject to the senses of the body. To those from the whole world who are turned toward it and love it, it is nearest to all, everlasting for all; it is in no place, and nowhere absent; it admonishes outwardly, it teaches inwardly; it changes all who behold it for the better, and is changed by none for the worse; no one judges about it, and no one judges well without it. And so it is evident that it is beyond doubt superior to our minds, which by it alone become, each of them, wise, and judge not about it but through it about other things.

You had granted that if I showed there was something above our minds, you would confess it to be God, provided there was nothing higher still. Accepting this concession of yours, I said that it was enough for me to show this. For if there is something more excellent, that rather is God; but if there is not, then truth itself is God. Whether that is so or not, then, you cannot deny that God exists, which was the question set for us to discuss and treat. And if you are troubled because in the most holy teaching of Christ we have received in faith that there is a Father of Wisdom, remember that we have also received in faith that the Wisdom begotten by the eternal Father is equal to him. About this, then, nothing is to be inquired now; it is to be held with unshaken faith. For God exists, and exists truly and supremely. This, I think, we not only hold by faith as undoubted, but we also reach by a certain, though still very slender, form of knowledge; and this is enough for the question we took up, so that we can explain the other things that bear on the matter, unless you have something to object against this. E. I accept these things filled with a joy altogether beyond belief, which I cannot explain to you in words, and I cry out that they are most certain. I cry out with the inner voice, by which I desire to be heard by truth itself and to cleave to it; for I grant that it is not only good, but the highest good and the giver of happiness. A. Quite right; I too rejoice greatly. But, I ask you, are we already wise and happy, or are we still tending there, so that it may come to be ours? E. I think rather that we are tending there. A. How then do you grasp these true and certain things in which you cry out that you rejoice, and which you grant belong to wisdom? Can any foolish person know wisdom? E. As long as he is foolish, he cannot. A. Then either you are already wise, or you do not yet know wisdom. E. I am not yet wise, indeed, but neither would I call myself foolish, insofar as I know wisdom; for the things I know are certain, and I cannot deny that they belong to wisdom. A. Tell me, please, will you not admit that one who is not just is unjust, one who is not prudent is imprudent, and one who is not temperate is intemperate? Or can anything be doubted about these? E. I admit that a man, when he is not just, is unjust; I would answer the same about the prudent and the temperate. A. Why, then, when he is not wise, should he not be foolish? E. This too I admit: when anyone is not wise, he is foolish. A. Now, then, which of these are you? E. Whichever of these you call me, I do not yet dare to call myself wise; and from what I have granted I see it follows that I should not hesitate to call myself foolish. A. So a fool knows wisdom. For, as was said, he would not be certain that he wants to be wise, and that he ought to be, unless the notion of wisdom were fixed in his mind, as are the notions of those things belonging to wisdom itself about which you answered when asked one by one, and in the knowledge of which you rejoiced. E. It is as you say.

A. What else, then, are we doing when we strive to be wise, but in some way gathering our whole soul, with all the eagerness we can, toward what we touch with the mind, placing it there and fixing it firmly, so that it may no longer rejoice in its own private good, which has entangled it in passing things, but, stripped of all attachments to times and places, may grasp that which is always one and the same? For as the soul is the whole life of the body, so God is the happy life of the soul. While we are doing this, until we reach the end, we are on the way. And that we are granted to rejoice in these true and certain goods, though they still only flash out on this dark journey: see whether this is what is written of wisdom, what it does with its lovers when they come to it and seek it. For it is said, “In the ways it will show itself to them cheerfully, and meet them with all providence.” For wherever you turn, it speaks to you by certain traces that it has impressed on its works, and when you are slipping back into outward things, it calls you back within by the very forms of outward things; so that you may see that whatever delights you in a body and lures you through the bodily senses is full of number, and may ask where it comes from, and return into yourself, and understand that you cannot approve or disapprove what you touch by the senses of the body unless you have within yourself certain laws of beauty to which you refer whatever beautiful things you perceive outside. Look at the sky and the earth and the sea, and whatever in them shines above or creeps below, or flies or swims: they have forms because they have numbers; take these away from them, and they will be nothing. From whom, then, are they, but from him from whom number is, since they have being only insofar as they are numbered? And human craftsmen of all bodily forms have numbers in their art, to which they fit their works; they move their hands and tools in making until what is formed outside, referred to that light of numbers which is within, attains completion as far as it can, and pleases, through the sense that interprets, the inner judge that beholds the numbers above. Then ask who moves the craftsman's limbs: it will be number, for they too move in measure. And if you take the work from the hands and the intention of making from the mind, and that motion of the limbs is directed to delight, it will be called dancing. Ask, then, what delights in dancing: number will answer you, “Here I am.” Look now at the beauty of a formed body: numbers are held in place. Look at the beauty of motion in a body: numbers turn in time. Enter into the art from which these come forth, and seek time and place in it: there will never be any time, nowhere any place; yet number lives in it, and its region is not of spaces nor its age of days. And yet those who want to become craftsmen, when they apply themselves to learning the art, move their body through places and times, and their mind through times; for with the passing of time they become more skilled. Go beyond, then, the craftsman's mind as well, so that you may see everlasting number; now wisdom will shine on you from its very inner seat and from the very sanctuary of truth. And if it still beats back your gaze as too weak, turn the eye of your mind back to that way where it showed itself cheerfully. Remember, of course, that you have only put off a vision which you may seek again when you are stronger and healthier. Woe to those who forsake you as their guide and wander among your traces, who love your signs instead of you and forget what you signify, O wisdom, sweetest light of a purified mind! For you do not cease to signal to us what and how great you are; and your signs are all the beauty of creatures. For even a craftsman in a way signals to the beholder of his work, by the very beauty of the work, not to cling to it wholly, but so to run his eyes over the appearance of the made body that he runs back in affection to the one who made it. And those who love the things you make instead of you are like people who, hearing some eloquent wise man, listen too eagerly to the sweetness of his voice and the arrangement of well-placed syllables, and lose the chief thing, the thoughts, of which those words sounded as signs. Woe to those who turn away from your light and cling sweetly to their own darkness! For as if turning their backs to you, they are fixed in fleshly work as in their own shadow, and yet even there what delights them they still have from the light of yours that shines around them. But the shadow, while it is loved, makes the eye of the mind weaker and less able to bear the sight of you. So a man is darkened more and more, as he more gladly follows whatever receives him more bearably in his weakness. From this he begins to be unable to see what supremely is, and to think evil whatever deceives him when he is unwary, or lures him when he is needy, or torments him when he is caught; though he suffers these things as the desert of his turning away, and whatever is just cannot be evil. If, then, whatever changeable thing you look at, you cannot grasp either by bodily sense or by the mind's consideration unless it is held by some form of numbers, and it falls back into nothing when that is taken away, do not doubt that there is some eternal and unchangeable form, so that these changeable things are not cut off but, by measured motions and a distinct variety of forms, complete, as it were, certain verses of times: a form which is neither contained and as it were spread out in places, nor stretched out and varied in times, through which all these things can be formed and, according to their kind, fill out and carry through the numbers of places and times.

For every changeable thing must also be formable. Just as we call changeable what can be changed, so I would call formable what can be formed. But nothing can form itself, because nothing can give itself what it does not have; and surely a thing is formed so that it may have form. So if any thing has some form, it does not need to receive what it has; and if any thing does not have form, it cannot receive from itself what it does not have. So nothing, as we said, can form itself. What more shall we say about the changeableness of body and mind? Enough was said above. It follows, then, that both body and mind are formed by a certain form that is unchangeable and always abiding. To this form it was said: “You will change them, and they will be changed; but you are the same, and your years will not fail.” The prophetic speech put “years without failing” for eternity. Of this form too it is said that, remaining in itself, it renews all things. From this it is also understood that all things are governed by providence. For if all things that are will be nothing when form is wholly taken away, the unchangeable form itself, through which all changeable things subsist, so that they are filled out and carried through by the numbers of their forms, is itself their providence; for they would not exist if it did not exist. Whoever, then, is making his way toward wisdom, beholding and considering the whole creation, feels that wisdom shows itself to him cheerfully on the way and meets him with all providence; and he burns the more eagerly to complete that way, as the way itself is beautiful through that wisdom which he longs to reach. But if, besides that which exists and does not live, that which exists and lives but does not understand, and that which exists, lives, and understands, you find some other class of creatures, then dare to say that there is some good that is not from God. For these three can also be expressed by two names, if they are called body and life; for both the life that only lives and does not understand, such as that of cattle, and the life that understands, such as that of human beings, are most rightly called life. These two, body and life, considered as creatures (for the life of the Creator himself is also spoken of, and that is the highest life), these two creatures, then, body and life, since they are formable, as what was said above has taught, and fall back into nothing if form is wholly lost, show clearly enough that they subsist from that form which is always the same. Therefore all goods, however great, however small, can only be from God. For what is greater among creatures than understanding life, or what can be less than body? However much these fail and tend toward not being, yet some form remains to them, so that they exist in some way. And whatever form remains to any failing thing is from that form which does not know failing, and which does not allow even the motions of things failing or advancing to exceed the laws of their numbers. Whatever, then, is noticed as praiseworthy in the nature of things, whether it is judged worthy of slight or of ample praise, is to be referred to the most excellent and ineffable praise of the Maker, unless you have something to say to this.