On Order 1.1–1.22

To see or to explain the order of things, Zenobius, both the order proper to each thing and especially that of the universe, by which this world is held together and ruled, is very difficult and very rare for men. Besides, even if someone could do this, he cannot also manage to find a hearer worthy of such divine and obscure matters, either by merit of life or by some settled habit of learning. And yet there is nothing that all the best minds seek more eagerly, nothing that those who look upon the reefs and storms of this life with head held as high as they can are more eager to hear and learn, than how it comes about both that God cares for human affairs and that so great a perversity is spread everywhere in human affairs that it seems attributable not to a divine governance but not even to a slave's, if such power were given him. Therefore those who care about such things are left, as if by necessity, to believe one of two things: either that divine providence does not reach down to these last and lowest things, or that all evils are committed by the will of God. Both are impious, but the latter more so. For although to believe that anything is abandoned by God is both most ignorant and most dangerous to the mind, yet among men themselves no one has ever accused another of being unable to do something; and blame for negligence is much more clear of guilt than blame for malice and cruelty. So reason is as it were compelled, not forgetful of piety, to hold either that these earthly things cannot be administered by divine things, or that they are neglected and despised rather than governed in such a way that every complaint against God should be mild and blameless.

But who is so blind in mind as to hesitate to attribute to divine power and governance whatever reason there is in the movement of bodies beyond human arrangement and will? Unless perhaps the limbs of even the tiniest animals are shaped by chance with such fixed and subtle measure; or someone could admit that what he denies was made by chance was made other than by reason; or indeed we shall dare, with some trifles of vain opinion, to remove from the most hidden judgment of the divine majesty what we marvel at throughout the whole of nature as ordered in each single thing without any effort of human art. 'But this itself is the more full of questions,' it may be said, 'that the limbs of a flea are arranged wonderfully and distinctly, while human life meanwhile is tossed and fluctuates with the inconstancy of countless disturbances.' But in this way, if someone saw so narrowly that his gaze could take in no more than the measure of one small tile in a mosaic pavement, he would blame the craftsman as ignorant of order and composition, because he thought the variety of little stones was confused, being unable to see and survey together those inlaid pieces fitting into the face of one beauty. For nothing else happens to less educated men, who, unable to embrace and consider with their weak minds the whole fitting together and design of things, think that if something offends them, because it is great to their thought, a great ugliness clings to things.

The greatest cause of this error is that man is unknown to himself. Yet to know himself he needs a great habit of withdrawing from the senses and of gathering the mind into itself and keeping it within itself. Only those attain this who either cauterize by solitude or heal by the liberal disciplines certain wounds of opinions which the course of daily life inflicts. For the mind, thus restored to itself, understands what the beauty of the universe is, which is surely named from 'one'; and so that beauty cannot be seen by the soul that goes out into many things and with greed pursues poverty, which it does not know can be avoided only by separation from multitude. By multitude I mean not of men but of all things the senses touch. And do not wonder that it suffers want the more, the more it seeks to embrace many things. For as in a circle, however large, there is one middle point to which all things converge, which geometers call the kentron, and although the parts of the whole circumference can be divided innumerably, there is nothing besides that one point by which the rest are measured equally and which rules over all as by a kind of law of equality; but if you wish to go out from there to any part, all is lost the more one proceeds into very many: so the mind, poured out from itself, is beaten about by a kind of immensity and worn down by true beggary, when its nature compels it to seek the one everywhere and multitude does not allow it to find it.

But what these things I have said are, what cause there is of the error of souls, and how all things fit together into one and are perfect and yet sins are to be avoided, you will surely grasp, my Zenobius. For I know your mind, and your soul that loves beauty of every kind without the excess and filth of lust; this, as a sign of future wisdom in you, by divine right forbids harmful desires, so that you may not desert your cause, lured by false pleasures; nothing more shameful or dangerous than such a betrayal can be found. You will grasp these things, then, believe me, when you have devoted yourself to learning, by which the mind is purified and cultivated, before which it is in no way fit to have divine seeds entrusted to it. What all this is like, what order it demands, what reason promises to the studious and good, what sort of life we, your dearest friends, live, and what fruit we gather from liberal leisure: these books will teach you sufficiently, I think, books dearer to us for your name than for our labor; especially if you, choosing the better things, will place and fit yourself into that very order about which I write to you.

For when a pain in the stomach had compelled me to leave the school, although, as you know, I was already trying to take refuge in philosophy even without any such necessity, I at once went to the country house of our very close friend Verecundus. Why should I say that he was glad of it? You know very well the man's singular goodwill toward everyone, and especially toward us. There we discussed among ourselves whatever seemed useful, employing a stenographer, indeed, to take everything down, which I saw was good for my health. For since I was held back by some care in speaking, no immoderate contention crept in during the discussion; and also, if we chose to commit anything of ours to writing, there was no need to say it differently and no labor of recollection. Those who took part in these things with me were Alypius and my brother Navigius, and Licentius, who had suddenly and wonderfully given himself to poetry; military service had also given Trygetius back to us, who, like a veteran, had fallen in love with history; and we also had some books.

But one night, when I had woken as usual and was silently turning over by myself what came into my mind from I know not where (for through love of finding the truth it had become my habit to lie awake, thinking about whatever it might be, either the first or certainly the last part of the night, about half of it, if such concerns were present; and I did not allow myself to be called away from myself by the young men's night studies, because they also worked so much through the whole day that it seemed to me too much if they took some of the night as well for the labor of study; and they also had this rule from me, that they should do something with themselves apart from books and accustom their minds to dwell with themselves): so, as I said, I was awake, when behold, the sound of water flowing past behind the baths drew me to listen and was noticed more attentively than usual. It seemed to me very strange that the same water, rushing over the stones, now murmured more clearly, now more softly. I began to ask myself what the cause might be. I confess nothing occurred to me, when Licentius, striking a piece of wood beside his bed, frightened off some troublesome mice and in this way showed that he was awake. I said to him: "Licentius, have you noticed (for I see your Muse has lit you a lamp for night work) how irregularly that channel sounds?" "This is not new to me," he said. "For once, when I had woken longing for fair weather and put my ear to it, to hear whether rain was coming on, that water was doing what it is doing now." Trygetius agreed. For he too, lying in his bed in the same room, was awake without our knowing it; for it was dark, which in Italy is almost necessary even for the wealthy.

So when I saw that our school, as much of it as was present (for Alypius and Navigius had gone to the city), was not asleep even at those hours, and that the course of the waters was prompting me to say something about it, I said: "What do we think is the cause of this sound alternating so? For we do not suppose that anyone at these hours is interrupting that flow so often by crossing it or by washing something." "What do you think," said Licentius, "except that somewhere leaves of some kind, which in autumn fall continually and in great numbers, are pushed into the narrows of the channel and are sometimes overcome and give way, but when the water that was pressing has passed through, gather again and pack together; or something else happens through the varied fall of floating leaves that likewise serves now to hold back, now to release that flow?" It seemed probable to me, having nothing else, and, praising his ingenuity, I confessed that I had found nothing, though I had long sought why it was so.

Then, after a short silence, I said: "Rightly you wondered at nothing and kept yourself indoors with Calliope." "Rightly," he said, "but now you have plainly given me something great to wonder at." "What is that?" I said. "That you," he said, "wondered at these things." "For where does wonder usually arise," I said, "or what is the mother of this fault, but a thing unusual and outside the evident order of causes?" And he said: "Outside the evident order, I accept; for nothing seems to me to happen outside order." Here I was roused with a livelier hope than I usually have when I ask something of them, because a young man's mind, turned to these things almost suddenly only yesterday, had conceived so great a thing, when no question about these matters had ever been discussed between us before. "Good," I said, "good; indeed very good; you have thought much, you have dared much. This, believe me, goes far beyond Helicon, to whose summit you are trying to reach as if to heaven. But I would very much like you to stand by this statement; for I will try to shake it." "Leave me to myself for now, please," he said; "for I have turned my mind hard to something else." Here, fearing somewhat that, carried away completely by his zeal for poetry, he might be swept far from philosophy, I said: "I am provoked to attack those verses of yours, which you are singing and howling in every kind of meter, and which are trying to raise between you and the truth a more monstrous wall than the one between your lovers; for they at least breathed through an ingrained little crack." For he had then begun to sing of Pyramus.

When I had said this in a sterner voice than he expected, he fell silent for a while. And I had already left the matter I had begun and returned to myself, not wanting vainly and foolishly to occupy one already occupied; then he said: "'I, like a mouse, by my own betrayal': nothing could be said more aptly in Terence than can now be said by me about myself. But perhaps that last part will be turned to the opposite; for what he says, 'Today I am done for,' perhaps today I shall be found. For if you do not despise what superstitious people usually do, taking omens even from mice, if by my noise I warned that mouse or rat which betrayed me to you as awake to return to its hole and keep quiet, if it has any sense, why should I not myself be warned by that noise of your voice to do philosophy rather than sing? For that is, as I have begun to believe while you prove it daily, our true and unshaken dwelling. So, if it is not troublesome to you and you think it ought to be done, ask what you will; I will defend the order of things as best I can, and assert that nothing can happen outside order. For I have so imbibed and drunk it in with my mind that even if someone overcomes me in this discussion, I will attribute even that not to any rashness but to the order of things. For not the thing itself, but Licentius, will be overcome."

Rejoicing, I gave myself back to them. Then I said to Trygetius: "What do you think?" "I favor order very much," he said, "but still I am uncertain and want so great a matter to be discussed most carefully." "Then let that side have your favor," I said; "for your uncertainty I think you share with Licentius and with me." "Not at all," said Licentius; "I am certain of this opinion. For why should I hesitate to pull down the wall you mentioned before it has fully risen? For truly poetry cannot turn me away from philosophy as much as distrust of finding the truth can." Then Trygetius said with joyful words: "We now have, what is more, a Licentius who is not an Academic. For he used to defend them most zealously." "Leave these things now, please," he said, "lest it twist me away and break me off from some divine thing, I know not what, which has begun to show itself to me, and on which I hang gaping." Here, seeing my joys overflowing far more richly than I had ever dared even to wish, I eagerly poured out this verse: "So may that Father God bring it about!" For he himself, if we follow, will lead us where he bids us go and where to set our dwelling, he who now gives an omen and glides into our minds. For it is not the 'lofty Apollo' who in caves, on mountains, in groves, stirred up by the smell of incense and the slaughter of cattle, fills madmen; it is surely another, that other lofty one, truthful, and (why should I go around with words?) truth itself, whose prophets are all who can be wise. So let us set to work, Licentius; relying on piety, as worshipers, let us stamp out with our feet the deadly fire of smoky desires.

"Now ask, I beg you," he said, "if I can explain this great thing, whatever it is, and in my own words too." "Answer me this first," I said: "from what does it seem to you that this water flows in not at random but by order? For that it glides over little wooden channels and is led all the way to our use can pertain to order. For it was done by men using reason, so that by one course of it they might both drink and bathe, and it followed from the advantages of the place that it should be so. But that those leaves, as you say, fell so that what we wondered at came about: by what order of things, then, and not rather by chance, shall we think this was done?" "As if," he said, "it could seem to anyone who looks most clearly that nothing can happen without a cause, that they ought to have fallen, or could have fallen, otherwise than they fell! What? Do you want me now to go through the positions of the trees and the branches, and the very weight that nature has put on the leaves? What? Why should I seek the mobility of the air, by which they fly about, or the softness by which they descend, and their various falls according to the state of the sky, their weight, their shapes, and countless other more obscure causes? These are hidden from our senses, deeply hidden; yet that which is enough for the question we have taken up is somehow not hidden from the mind: that nothing happens without a cause. For a tiresome questioner may go on to ask: 'What was the cause for trees to be planted there?' I will answer that men followed the richness of the soil. 'What if they are not fruit trees and sprang up at random?' Here too I will answer that we see too little; for the nature that produced them is by no means random. What more? Either let me be taught that something happens without a cause, or believe that nothing happens except by a fixed order of causes."

I said to him: "Though you may call me a tiresome questioner (for I can hardly not be one, having fought to keep you from conversing with Pyramus and Thisbe), I will still go on to ask you. For what good (to say nothing of countless other things) did that nature, which you want to seem ordered, produce these very trees that bear no fruit?" While Licentius was thinking what to say, Trygetius said: "Is the use of trees given to men only in fruits? How many other uses there are, from shade, from wood, and finally from the very branches or leaves!" "Please do not give these answers to his questions," said Licentius. "For countless things can be brought forward from which men have no use, or it is so hidden or so slight that it cannot be dug out or defended by men, especially by us. Let him rather teach us how something happens which no cause has preceded." "We will see about that later," I said. "For it is not now necessary for me to be the teacher, since you, who have professed yourself certain of so great a thing, have still taught me nothing, though I am very eager to learn and lie awake days and nights for this alone."

"Where are you sending me?" he said. "Is it because I follow you more lightly than those leaves follow the winds by which they are thrown into the stream, so that it is not enough for them to fall unless they are also carried along? For what else will it be when Licentius teaches Augustine, and things that are in the middle of philosophy?" "Please," I said, "do not either cast yourself down so much or raise me up. For I too am a boy in philosophy, and when I ask questions I do not care much through whom he answers me, who daily receives me complaining, of whom I believe you will one day be a prophet; and this 'one day' is perhaps not far off. But others too, far removed from studies of this kind, can teach something when they are bound to the company of the disputants as by the chains of questions. And that something is not nothing. Or do you not see (I will gladly use your own comparison) that those very leaves which are carried by the winds and float on the waves resist somewhat the rushing river and remind men of the order of things, if indeed what you defend is true?"

Here Licentius, even leaping from his bed for joy, said: "Who would deny, great God, that you administer all things by order? How all things hold together! How they are pressed into their knots by fixed successions! How great and how many things have happened so that we should be saying this! How great things happen so that we may find you! For from where does this itself flow and derive, if not from the order of things: that we woke up, that you noticed that sound, that you sought its cause with yourself, that you did not find the cause of so small a thing? A mouse even appears so that I, awake, may be revealed. Finally, even your own speech, perhaps without your intending it (for no one has it in his power what comes into his mind), is somehow turned around so as to teach me what I should answer you. For I ask you: if these things that we have said are committed to writing, as you have arranged, and spread a little more widely to men's notice, does it not seem so great a matter that some great prophet or Chaldean, consulted about it, ought to have answered long before it happened? And if he had answered, he would be called so divine, so exalted by everyone's praise, that still no one would ask him why a leaf fell from a tree, or whether a wandering mouse troubled a man lying down. For did any of them ever either say such future things of himself or was he compelled by a client to say them? Yet if he foretold that a certain not ignoble book would come to be, and saw that it would necessarily happen (for he could not divine otherwise), surely whatever the tumbling of leaves in the field and whatever the meanest little animal in the house does are as necessary in the order of things as that writing. For it is made of these words, which, without those meanest things preceding, could neither come into the mind nor come forth from the mouth nor be handed down to posterity. So now, I ask, let no one ask me why each thing happens. It is enough that nothing happens, nothing is born, which some cause has not begotten and moved."

"It appears, young man," I said, "that you do not know how many things have been said against divination, and by what sort of men. But answer now, not whether anything happens without a cause (for I see you do not want to answer that now), but whether that order you have undertaken to defend seems to you something good or something evil." And he, hesitating a little, said: "You have not asked in such a way that I can answer one of the two. For I see a kind of middle here. Order seems to me neither good nor evil." "What at least do you think," I said, "is contrary to order?" "Nothing," he said; "for how can anything be contrary to that which has occupied the whole, held the whole? For what is contrary to order must necessarily be outside order; but I see nothing outside order; so one must think nothing is contrary to order." "Then is error not contrary to order?" said Trygetius. "Not at all," he said; "for I see no one err without a cause; but the series of causes is included in order, and error itself is not only begotten by a cause but also begets something of which it is the cause. Therefore, inasmuch as it is not outside order, it cannot be contrary to order."

And when Trygetius had fallen silent and I could not contain myself for joy, because I saw that the young man, son of a very dear friend, was becoming mine too, and not only that but was already rising and growing into a friend for me, and that he, of whose zeal even for ordinary letters I had despaired, was coming with full force into the middle of philosophy as if he had recognized his own possession: while I was silently marveling at this and glowing with thanksgiving, suddenly he, as if seized by some inspiration, cried out: "O, if only I could say what I want! Words, wherever you are, I beg you, come to my aid. Both good and evil things are within order. Believe it, if you will; for how to explain it I do not know."

I marveled and kept silent. But Trygetius, when he saw that the man, his intoxication as it were somewhat slept off, had become approachable and been restored to conversation, said: "What you say seems to me absurd, Licentius, and plainly foreign to the truth; but please bear with me a little and do not drive me off by shouting." "Say what you like," he said; "for I do not fear that you will take me away from what I see and almost hold." "I wish," said Trygetius, "that you were not straying from that order which you defend, and were not carried away into so great a carelessness, to put it mildly, toward God. For what could be said more impious than that even evils are contained in order? For certainly God loves order." "Indeed he loves it," said Licentius; "it flows from him, it is with him; and if anything can be said more fittingly about so lofty a matter, think it over with yourself, please. For I am not fit to teach you these things now." "What should I think over?" said Trygetius. "I accept exactly what you say, and what I understand is enough for me. For you certainly said both that evils are contained in order and that order itself flows from the highest God and is loved by him. From this it follows both that evils are from the highest God and that God loves evils."

At this conclusion I feared for Licentius. But he, groaning at the difficulty of finding words, and not at all seeking what to answer but how to bring out what was to be answered, said: "God does not love evils, and for no other reason than that it is not of order for God to love evils; and he loves order greatly for this reason, that through it he does not love evils. But how can evils themselves not be in order, since God does not love them? For this itself is the order of evils, that they are not loved by God. Or does it seem to you a small order of things that God both loves good things and does not love evil ones? So evils, which God does not love, are not outside order, and yet he loves order itself; for he loves this very thing, to love good things and not to love evil ones, which belongs to a great order and a divine arrangement. And because this order and arrangement preserves the harmony of the universe by distinction itself, it comes about that evils too must exist. So, as from antitheses in a certain way, which also delights us in a speech, from contraries the beauty of all things together is fashioned."

After this he was silent a little, and suddenly, raising himself toward where Trygetius had his bed, he said: "For I ask you, please: is God just?" Trygetius was silent, greatly wondering, as he told us afterward, and shuddering at the speech of his fellow student and friend, suddenly breathed upon with new inspiration. While he was silent, Licentius went on thus: "If you answer that God is not just, you must see what you are doing, you who were accusing me of impiety a while ago. But if, as we are taught and as we perceive by the very necessity of order, God is just, he is just precisely by giving each his own. But what distribution can be spoken of where there is no distinction? Or what distinction, if all things are good? Or what can be found outside order, if by God's justice each is given his own according to the deserts of good and evil? But we all confess that God is just; therefore everything is included in order." Having said this, he threw himself back on his bed, and, now in a gentler voice, since no one said a word to him, he said: "Do you, who drove me to this, have nothing to answer me either?"

I said to him: "Some new religion has come upon you, I see. But I will answer what seems good by daylight, which seems to me already returning, unless that brightness that is falling on the windows belongs to the moon. At the same time we must be silent, so that oblivion may not swallow up such great goods of yours, Licentius. For when would our writings not demand that these things be committed to them? I will tell you plainly what I think. I will argue against you as much as I can; for no greater triumph can be given me than if you defeat me. But if your weakness, which, less fed by learning in the disciplines, perhaps could not sustain so great a God, gives way either to cunning or to some sharp error of the men whose side I will try to take, the thing itself will remind you how much strength you must prepare in order to return to him more firmly; and at the same time because I want this discussion of ours to turn out more polished, for I do not owe it to coarse ears. For our Zenobius often discussed much with me about the order of things, and I could never satisfy him when he inquired into deep matters, whether because of the obscurity of the things or because of the shortness of time. And he was so impatient of frequent postponements that, to force me to answer more carefully and fully, he even challenged me with a poem, and a good poem, so that you may love him the more. But it could not be read to you then, since you were very far from the study of these things, nor can it now. For his departure was so sudden and disturbed by that commotion that none of these things could come to our minds; for he had decided to leave it with me to answer, and many things come together for this conversation to be sent to him. First, because it is owed; next, because it is fitting that his goodwill toward us be shown in this way what sort of life we are now leading; and finally, because in joy at your hope he yields to no one. For when he was present, out of friendship for your father, or rather for all of us, he was very anxious lest certain sparks of your talent, which he carefully noticed, should be not so much fanned into flame by my care as extinguished by your carelessness; and when he learns that you are also devoted to poetry, he will be so glad that I seem already to see him exulting."

"You will do nothing more pleasing to me," he said; "but whether you laugh at my changeableness and boyish levity, or it truly happens in us by some divine nod and order, I would not hesitate to tell you: I have suddenly become lazier about those meters; something else, something far different, has now shone on me with light. Philosophy is more beautiful, I confess, than Thisbe, than Pyramus, than that Venus and Cupid, and all such loves of every kind." And with a sigh he gave thanks to Christ. How shall I say I received this: gladly, or what shall I not say? Let each take it as he will; I do not care, except that perhaps I rejoiced beyond measure.

Meanwhile, after a little while, the day broke. They got up, and I, in tears, prayed much, when I heard Licentius singing that prophetic verse joyfully and chattily: "God of hosts, turn us and show your face, and we shall be saved." The evening before, after supper, when he had gone outside for the needs of nature, he had sung it rather too loudly for our mother to bear that such things should be sung repeatedly in that place. For he said nothing else, since he had lately drunk in the very melody of the chant and loved it, as happens, as an unusual tune. That most religious woman, as you know, rebuked him precisely because the place was unsuitable for the canticle. Then he had said jokingly: "As though, if some enemy shut me in here, God would not hear my voice!"