On Free Choice of the Will 3.21–3.25

Of these four opinions about the soul, whether souls come by propagation, or are made new in each one who is born, or, already existing somewhere, are either sent by God into the bodies of those being born or slip into them of their own accord, none should be rashly affirmed. For either this question has not yet been unfolded and clarified by catholic commentators on the divine books as its obscurity and complexity deserve, or, if this has been done, such writings have not yet come into our hands. Only let faith be present, so that we think nothing false or unworthy about the substance of the Creator. For we are making our way toward him by the road of piety. If, then, we think of him otherwise than he is, our striving will drive us not toward happiness but toward vanity. But if we think something about the creature otherwise than it is, there is no danger, provided we do not hold it as known and perceived. For we are not commanded to make our way toward the creature in order to become happy, but toward the Creator himself; and if we are persuaded of something about him other than is fitting and other than the truth is, we are deceived by a most pernicious error. For no one can arrive at the happy life by making his way toward what either does not exist or, if it exists, does not make people happy. But for contemplating the eternity of truth, so that we may be able to enjoy it fully and cleave to it, a way has been provided for our weakness through temporal things, so that, as far as suffices for the journey of those who are making their way toward eternal things, we may believe things past and future. This discipline of faith is governed by the divine mercy, so that it may prevail by authority. Present things, as far as the creature is concerned, are perceived as passing, in the movement and changeableness of body and mind. Whatever of these we do not experience, we cannot hold by any kind of knowledge. Whatever things, then, past or future, about any creatures, are told us by divine authority to be believed, although some passed away before we could perceive them and some have not yet come within our senses, are to be believed without any doubt, because they are of great value for strengthening our hope and encouraging our love, while they commend to us, through the most orderly sequence of the ages, how God does not neglect our liberation. But any error that assumes the mask of divine authority is refuted above all by this reasoning: if it is shown to believe or to affirm either some changeable form apart from the creation of God, or some changeable form in the substance of God, or contends that this substance of God is either more or less than the Trinity; the Trinity, to the pious and sober understanding of which all Christian vigilance keeps watch and all its progress is directed. Of the unity and equality of this Trinity, and of a certain property of the individual persons in it, this is not the place to speak. For to mention certain things about the Lord God, the author, former, and orderer of all things, which belong to the most wholesome faith, and by which the striving of one still nursing and beginning to raise itself from earthly to heavenly things is usefully supported, is very easy to do and has already been done by very many. But to treat that whole question thoroughly, and to turn it over so that all human understanding, as far as is granted in this life, is subjected to clear reason, cannot seem easy and simple to undertake, not only in speech but even in thought, for any human being, or at least for us. Now, then, to complete what we have undertaken, as far as we are helped and allowed: whatever things concerning the creature are either told us as past or foretold as future, and serve to commend religion whole by stirring us to the most sincere love of God and neighbor, are to be believed without doubt; and they are to be defended against unbelievers in such a way that either their unbelief is crushed by the weight of authority, or it is shown to them, as far as possible, first how it is not foolish to believe such things, and then how foolish it is not to believe them. But false teaching is to be refuted not so much about things past and future as about things present, and above all about unchangeable things, and, as far as is granted, to be convicted by clear reason. Certainly, in the sequence of temporal things, the expectation of things future is to be preferred to the investigation of things past; since even in the divine books the things narrated as past carry with them a prefiguration, or a promise, or a testimony of things to come. And indeed, even in the prosperity and adversity that belong to this life, no one cares much what he has been; the whole surge of cares gathers toward what is hoped for in the future. For by some inner and natural sense, the things that have happened to us, since they are over, count for as little in the balance of happiness and misery as if they had never happened. What harm is it to me, then, if I do not know when I began to exist, since I know that I exist and do not despair of existing in the future? For I do not attend to the past so as to fear, as a most pernicious error, thinking of it otherwise than it was; but I direct my course toward what I shall be, with the mercy of my Maker as my guide. About what I shall be, then, and about him with whom I shall be, if I believe or think otherwise than the truth is, I must greatly beware of error, lest I either fail to prepare what is necessary, or, taking one thing for another, be unable to reach the very end of my purpose. So, just as it would do me no harm in getting clothing if I had forgotten last winter, but it would harm me if I did not believe that cold was coming, so it will do my soul no harm if it has forgotten what it may perhaps have suffered, provided only that it notices carefully and holds fast that for which it is warned to prepare itself from now on. And just as, for example, it would not harm someone sailing to Rome if he had forgotten from what shore he set sail, provided that from where he was he knew where to direct the prow, while it would profit him nothing to remember the shore from which he began the journey if, thinking something false about the port of Rome, he ran onto rocks: so it will not harm me if I do not hold the beginning of the time of my life, provided I know in what end I shall rest; nor would that memory or conjecture of the beginning of life profit me at all if, thinking about God himself, who alone is the end of the soul's labors, otherwise than is worthy, I rushed onto the rocks of error. Nor should this discourse be taken to mean that we forbid those who are able to inquire, according to the divinely inspired Scriptures, whether soul is propagated from soul, or souls are made individually in each living being, or are sent from somewhere by divine command to rule and animate the body, or enter by their own will; if either the needs of some necessary question demand that these things be considered and discussed, or leisure from more necessary matters is granted for inquiring into and discussing them. Rather, I would have said these things so that no one may rashly be angry, in such a matter, with one who, perhaps from a more human hesitation, does not yield to his opinion; or, if anyone has grasped something certain and clear about this, that he may not think that another has lost hope of the future because he does not remember the beginnings of the past.

However this question stands, whether it is to be omitted altogether or put off now and considered elsewhere, the present question is not hindered from appearing clearly: that souls pay the penalties of their sins while the majesty and substance of the Creator remain wholly intact, most just, unshaken, and unchangeable; and these sins, as we have long argued, are to be attributed only to their own will, and no further cause of sins is to be sought. But if ignorance and difficulty are natural, the soul begins from there to make progress and to be advanced toward knowledge and rest, until the happy life is perfected in it. If by its own will it neglects this progress in the best pursuits and in piety, the capacity for which has not been denied it, it is justly cast down into a graver ignorance and difficulty, which is now penal, and is set in order among lower things by a most becoming and fitting governance of things. For what it does not know by nature and cannot do by nature is not counted to the soul as guilt; but that it did not strive to know, and did not give due effort to acquiring ease in acting rightly. For not to know how to speak and not to be able to is natural to an infant; and this ignorance and difficulty of speech is not only blameless under the laws of the grammarians but even charming and pleasing to human affection; for the infant did not neglect to acquire that ability through any fault, nor lose through any fault what it had acquired. So if our happiness lay in eloquence, and it were counted a crime to sin in the sounds of language as it is to sin in the actions of life, no one would be accused for his infancy, since from it he set out to attain eloquence; but he would plainly be condemned deservedly if by the perversity of his will he either fell back into it or remained in it. So too now, if ignorance of the true and difficulty in the right are natural to man, the point from which he is to begin to rise into the happiness of wisdom and rest, no one rightly reproaches this natural beginning; but if he refuses to make progress, or chooses to slip back from progress, he will justly and deservedly pay the penalty. But his Creator is praised everywhere: whether because he began the soul from its very beginnings with a capacity for the highest good, or because he helps its progress, or because he fills and perfects it as it progresses, or because, when it sins, that is, either refuses to raise itself from its beginnings to perfection or slips back after some progress, he sets it in order by a most just condemnation according to its merits. For he did not create it evil because it is not yet as great as it received the power to become by progressing; for all the perfections of bodies are far inferior to its beginning, and yet whoever judges most soundly of things judges these praiseworthy in their kind. That it does not know what it ought to do, then, comes from its not yet having received this; but it will receive this too if it uses well what it has received. And it has received the power to seek devoutly and diligently, if it will. And that, knowing what it ought to do, it is not at once able to fulfill it, this too it has not yet received. For a certain higher part of it has gone ahead to perceive the good of acting rightly, but a slower and fleshly part is not drawn along into that judgment; so that by this very difficulty it is admonished to implore as the helper of its perfection the same one whom it perceives to be the author of its beginning, and so that he may become dearer to it, since it is raised to happiness not by its own strength but by the mercy of him by whose goodness it has its existence. And the dearer he is to it from whom it is, the more firmly it rests in him and the more fully it enjoys his eternity. For if we in no way rightly call the new and young shoot of a tree barren, though it passes some summers without fruit until at the right time it shows its fruitfulness, why should the author of the soul not be praised with due piety, if he has given it such a beginning that by striving and progressing it may come to the fruit of wisdom and justice, and has granted it such dignity as to place it in its own power to tend toward happiness if it wills?

Against this discussion the unskilled usually bring a certain cavil about the deaths of little children and about certain bodily torments by which we often see them afflicted. For they say: “What need was there for him to be born who left life before he entered on any merit of life? Or how will he be counted in the future judgment, who has no place among the just, since he did nothing rightly, nor among the wicked, since he committed no sin?” The answer to them is that, in the whole scope of the universe and the most orderly connection of all creation through places and times, no human being whatever can be created superfluously, where not a leaf of a tree is created superfluously; but it is indeed superfluous to inquire about the merits of one who has merited nothing. For we need not fear that there could be a life midway between right action and sin, while the judge's sentence could not be midway between reward and punishment. At this point people also usually examine what the sacrament of the baptism of Christ profits little children, since after receiving it they often die before they could know anything of it. In this matter it is piously and rightly enough believed that the faith of those by whom the child is offered for consecration profits it. And the most wholesome authority of the Church commends this, so that each may perceive from it how much his own faith profits him, when even another's faith can be lent for the benefit of others who do not yet have their own. For what did the widow's son's own faith profit him, which, being dead, he certainly did not have? Yet his mother's faith profited him so that he rose again. How much more, then, can another's faith provide for a little child, to whom no unbelief of its own can be imputed? But about the bodily torments by which little children are afflicted, who because of their age have no sins (if the souls by which they are animated did not begin to exist before they themselves began to be human beings), a greater complaint, and as it were a compassionate one, is usually raised, when it is said: “What evil have they done to suffer these things?” As if there could be a merit of innocence before anyone could do any harm! But since God works some good in correcting adults when they are scourged by the pains and deaths of their little children, who are dear to them, why should these things not happen? When they have passed, they will be as if they had not happened for those in whom they happened; while those for whose sake they happened will either be better, if, corrected by temporal troubles, they choose to live more rightly, or will have no excuse in the punishment of the future judgment, if they would not turn their desire to eternal life through the anguish of this life. And who knows what good compensation God reserves in the secret of his judgments for these little children themselves, by whose torments the hardness of adults is crushed, or faith is exercised, or mercy proved; for though they have done nothing rightly, yet they have suffered these things without having sinned? For not in vain does the Church commend, as received into the honor of martyrs, even those infants who were killed when the Lord Jesus Christ was sought by Herod to be put to death. Yet these cavilers, not most careful examiners of such questions but most talkative airers of them, also often try to unsettle the faith of the less learned about the pains and labors of animals, saying: “What evil have animals deserved, that they suffer such troubles, or what good do they hope for, that they are exercised by such troubles?” But they say or think this because they judge most unfairly about things: unable to see what and how great the highest good is, they want all things to be such as they think the highest good is. For beyond the highest bodies, the heavenly ones, which are less subject to corruption, they cannot conceive the highest good; and so, most disorderedly, they demand that the bodies of beasts suffer neither death nor any corruption, as if they were not mortal, though they are the lowest; or as if they were evil because heavenly bodies are better. But the pain that beasts feel commends a certain power, wonderful and praiseworthy in its kind, even of animal souls. For by this very thing it appears clearly enough how eager for unity they are in ruling and animating their bodies. For what is pain but a certain feeling that cannot bear division or corruption? Hence it is clearer than light how eager for unity, and how tenacious of it, that soul is in the whole of its body, which neither willingly nor indifferently, but rather resisting and struggling, faces that suffering of its body by which it is distressed that its unity and soundness are being shaken. It would not appear, then, how great a desire for unity there is in the lower living creatures, except by the pain of beasts. And if it did not appear, we would be reminded less than we need that all these things were established by that supreme, sublime, and ineffable unity of the Creator. And indeed, if you attend devoutly and diligently, every beauty and motion of creation that falls under the consideration of the human mind speaks to instruct us, crying out and calling on every side by various motions and dispositions, as by a variety of tongues, that the Creator must be known. For there is none of the things that feel neither pain nor pleasure that does not attain by some unity the beauty of its own kind, or at least some stability of its nature. Nor is there any of the things that feel the distresses of pain or the allurements of pleasure that does not confess, by the very fact that it flees pain and seeks pleasure, that it flees division and seeks unity. And in rational souls themselves, every desire for knowledge, in which that nature delights, refers all it perceives to unity, and in error flees nothing but being confused by incomprehensible ambiguity. And why is every ambiguity troublesome, unless because it has no certain unity? From this it appears that all things, whether they offend or are offended, delight or are delighted, suggest and proclaim the unity of the Creator. But if ignorance and difficulty, with which this life must begin, are not natural to souls, it remains that they were either taken up as a duty or imposed as a punishment. About these, I think, enough has now been discussed.

So it is rather to be asked what the first man himself was made like than how his posterity was propagated. For those think they put the question very sharply who say: “If the first man was made wise, why was he seduced? But if he was made foolish, how is God not the author of vices, since folly is the greatest vice?” As if human nature admitted no intermediate state besides folly and wisdom, one that could be called neither folly nor wisdom. For a man begins to be either foolish or wise, so that he must necessarily be called one of these, only when he could already have wisdom if he did not neglect it, so that the will is guilty of faulty folly. For no one is so senseless as to call an infant foolish, though he would be still more absurd if he wanted to call it wise. So, just as an infant can be called neither foolish nor wise, though already a human being (from which it appears that human nature admits something intermediate which you would rightly call neither folly nor wisdom), so too, if anyone had been endowed with such a disposition as those have who lack wisdom through negligence, no one would rightly call him foolish whom he saw to be so not by fault but by nature. For folly is not just any ignorance of what to seek and what to avoid, but faulty ignorance. Hence we do not call an irrational animal foolish, since it has not received the power to be wise. Yet we often name something by likeness, not properly. For blindness, though it is the greatest fault of the eyes, is not a fault in newborn puppies and cannot properly be called blindness. If, then, man was made such that, though not yet wise, he could yet receive a command which he certainly ought to obey, it is neither surprising that he could be seduced, nor unjust that he paid the penalty for not obeying the command; nor is his Creator the author of vices, since not to have wisdom was not yet a fault in man, if he had not yet received the power to have it. Yet he had something by which, if he willed to use it well, he would rise to what he did not have. For it is one thing to be rational, another to be wise. By reason one becomes capable of a command, to which he owes fidelity, so as to do what is commanded. As the nature of reason grasps the command, so the keeping of the command grasps wisdom. What nature is for grasping the command, the will is for keeping it. And as rational nature is, as it were, the merit of receiving the command, so the keeping of the command is the merit of receiving wisdom. From the time a man begins to be capable of a command, he begins to be able to sin. He sins in two ways before he becomes wise: if he does not make himself fit to receive the command, or if, having received it, he does not keep it. But the wise man sins if he turns away from wisdom. For just as the command is not from the one commanded but from the one who commands, so wisdom is not from the one enlightened but from the one who enlightens. What is there, then, for which man's Creator is not to be praised? For man is a good, and better than cattle, because he is capable of a command; better still when he has received the command; better again when he has obeyed it; and better than all these when he is happy in the eternal light of wisdom. Sin, then, is an evil that lies in negligence, either in receiving the command, or in keeping it, or in guarding the contemplation of wisdom. From this it is understood that, even if the first man was made wise, he could still be seduced. And since that sin lay in free choice, a just penalty followed by divine law. So too the apostle Paul says: “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” For pride turns one away from wisdom, and folly follows the turning away. For folly is a kind of blindness, as the same Apostle says: “And their foolish heart was darkened.” And where does this darkening come from, but from turning away from the light of wisdom? And where does this turning away come from, but from this, that he whose good is God wants to be his own good to himself, as God is to himself? So it is said, “My soul is troubled toward myself,” and, “Taste, and you will be like gods.” But those who consider this are troubled when they ask: Did the first man depart from God through folly, or did he become foolish by departing? For if you answer that he departed from wisdom through folly, he will seem to have been foolish before he departed from wisdom, so that folly was the cause of his departing. Again, if you answer that he became foolish by departing, they ask whether he acted foolishly or wisely in departing. If wisely, he acted rightly and sinned not at all; if foolishly, they say, there was already folly in him, by which it came about that he departed; for he could not do anything foolishly without folly. From this it appears that there is something intermediate through which one passes from folly to wisdom or from wisdom to folly, which can be said to be done neither foolishly nor wisely, and which people living in this life can understand only from its contrary. For no mortal becomes wise unless he passes from folly to wisdom; and if the passage itself is made foolishly, it is certainly not made well, which is most senseless to say; but if it is made wisely, there was already wisdom in the man before he passed to wisdom, which is no less absurd; from which it is understood that there is something intermediate which can be called neither. So too, when the first man passed from the citadel of wisdom to folly, that passage was neither foolish nor wise. It is as in sleep and waking: falling asleep is not the same as sleeping, nor is waking up the same as being awake, but each is a kind of passage from one to the other. But there is this difference, that these usually happen without the will, while those never happen except through the will; and so most just retributions follow.

But nothing draws the will to do anything except something seen; and what anyone takes or rejects is in his power, but by what sight he is touched is in no one's power. So we must admit that the mind is touched by sights both from higher and from lower things, so that the rational substance may take from either what it wills, and from the merit of its taking misery or happiness follows. Thus in paradise the sight from higher things was the command of God; the sight from lower things was the suggestion of the serpent. For neither what was commanded him by the Lord nor what was suggested by the serpent was in man's power. But how free it is, and unhindered by all the bonds of difficulty, for one set in the very health of wisdom not to yield to the sights of lower allurement can be understood even from this, that even fools overcome them when they are passing over to wisdom, though with the distress of giving up the pestilent sweetness of pernicious habits. Here it can be asked: if sights from both sides were present to man, one from the command of God, the other from the suggestion of the serpent, from where was the counsel of seeking impiety suggested to the devil himself, by which he fell from the lofty seats? For if he were touched by no sight, he would not choose to do what he did; for if something had not come into his mind, he would in no way have turned his intention to wickedness. From where, then, did it come into his mind, whatever it was that came into his mind, to undertake the things by which from a good angel he became a devil? For one who wills certainly wills something; and unless it is suggested from outside through the bodily sense, or comes into the mind in hidden ways, he cannot will it. So two kinds of sights must be distinguished: one that proceeds from the will of one who persuades, such as that of the devil, by consenting to whom man sinned; the other from the things that lie before either the attention of the mind or the senses of the body. Before the attention of the mind there lies (apart from the unchangeableness of the Trinity, which does not lie below it but rather stands above it) first the mind itself, by which we perceive that we live; then the body, which it governs, so that for any work it moves the member needed when it is needed. And before the senses of the body lie all bodily things. But that in the contemplation of the highest wisdom (which is certainly not the mind, for it is unchangeable) the mind, which is changeable, should also behold itself and in a way come into its own mind, happens only through the difference by which it is not what God is, and yet is something that can please it next after God. But it is better when it forgets itself for love of the unchangeable God, or utterly despises itself in comparison with him. If, however, meeting itself, as it were, it pleases itself so as to imitate God perversely, wanting to enjoy its own power, it becomes the less the greater it wants to be. And this is: “The beginning of all sin is pride,” and, “The beginning of man's pride is to apostatize from God.” To the pride of the devil was added a most malevolent envy, so that he persuaded man to that pride through which he knew he himself had been condemned. Hence it came about that man received a punishment corrective rather than destructive, so that, as the devil had offered himself to man as an example of pride, the Lord, through whom eternal life is promised us, offered himself to man as an example of humility; so that, Christ's blood having been paid out for us, after labors and ineffable miseries, we may cling to our liberator with such love, and be so carried away by his brightness, that no sights from lower things may twist us away from the higher vision; although, even if something were suggested to this intention of ours by desire for lower things, the everlasting condemnation and torment of the devil would call us back. But so great is the beauty of justice, so great the delight of eternal light, that is, of unchangeable truth and wisdom, that even if one were not permitted to remain in it longer than the space of a single day, for this alone countless years of this life, full of delights and of an abundance of temporal goods, would rightly and deservedly be despised. For not falsely, nor with small feeling, was it said: “For one day in your courts is better than thousands.” Although it can also be understood in another sense, so that the thousands of days are understood as the changeableness of time, while the unchangeableness of eternity is called by the name of one day. I do not know that I have omitted anything that our answer owed to your questions, as far as the Lord has deigned to grant; although, even if something occurs to you, the measure of the book now compels us to make an end and at last to rest from this discussion.