On Order 2.24–2.44

Here, when I saw that all were seeking God most zealously and each according to his strength, but were not keeping that very order which we were discussing, by which one arrives at the understanding of that ineffable majesty, I said: "I beg you, if, as I see, you love order very much, do not let us be preposterous and disordered. For although a most hidden reason promises to show that nothing happens outside the divine order, still, if we heard some schoolmaster trying to teach syllables to a boy whom no one had first taught letters, we would think him, I do not say to be laughed at as a fool, but to be bound as a madman, for no other reason, I think, than that he did not keep the order of teaching. But no one doubts that both ignorant men do many such things, which are criticized and laughed at by the learned, and madmen do things which do not escape even the judgment of fools; and yet a certain lofty discipline, very far removed even from the suspicion of the multitude, promises to show to minds that are studious and love only God and souls that even all these things, which we admit are perverse, are not outside the divine order, so clearly that sums of numbers could not be more certain to us."

"This discipline is the very law of God, which, always remaining fixed and unshaken with him, is as it were transcribed into wise souls, so that they know they live the better and the more sublimely, the more perfectly they contemplate it by understanding and the more diligently they keep it by living. This discipline, then, commands those who desire to know it to follow a twofold order at once, one part of which concerns life, the other learning. So young men devoted to it must live in such a way that they abstain from sexual pleasures, from the enticements of belly and throat, from immodest care and adornment of the body, from the empty business of games and the torpor of sleep and sloth, from rivalry, detraction, and envy, from ambition for honors and powers, and even from immoderate desire for praise itself; and let them believe that love of money is the surest poison of all their hope. Let them do nothing feebly, nothing rashly. In the sins of their own people let them either drive out anger entirely or so restrain it that it is like anger driven out. Let them hate no one, and want to cure every vice. Let them take great care, when they punish, that it is not too much, and when they pardon, that it is not too little. Let them punish nothing that does not serve for the better, indulge nothing that turns to the worse. Let them consider all over whom power has been given them as their own. Let them serve in such a way that it shames others to rule them, and rule in such a way that it delights others to serve them. In the sins of others let them not be troublesome to one who does not want it. Let them avoid enmities most carefully, bear them most calmly, end them most quickly. In every contract and dealing with men it is enough to keep this one common proverb: let them do to no one what they do not want to suffer. Let them not want to administer the state unless they are perfect; and let them hasten to be perfected within the senatorial age, or certainly within youth. But whoever turns to these things late should not think that nothing has been prescribed for him; for he will certainly keep these things more easily at a mellowed age. In every life, place, and time let them either have friends or strive to have them. Let them defer to the worthy even when they do not expect it, care less for the proud, and be least of all proud themselves. Let them live fittingly and harmoniously; let them worship God, think of him, and seek him, supported by faith, hope, and love. Let them wish for tranquility and a sure course of study for themselves and all their companions, and for themselves and whomever they can, a good mind and a peaceful life."

"It follows that I should say how the studious, who have resolved to live as has been said, ought to be educated. We are necessarily led to learning in a twofold way, by authority and by reason. In time authority is first, in reality reason. For what is put first in acting is one thing, what is valued more in desiring is another. So although the authority of good men seems more wholesome for the unskilled multitude, and reason more suited to the educated, still, because no man becomes skilled except from unskilled, and no unskilled man knows how he should present himself to his teachers and by what life he can become teachable, it comes about that for all who desire to learn great and hidden goods, only authority opens the door. Whoever has entered it follows without any hesitation the precepts of the best life, through which, when he has become teachable, he will then at last learn both how much reason those very things possess which he followed before reason, and what reason itself is, which, now firm and fit after the cradle of authority, he follows and grasps; and what intellect is, in which all things are, or rather which is itself all things; and what, beyond all things, is the principle of all things. To this knowledge few arrive in this life, and beyond it no one can advance even after this life. But those who, content with authority alone, apply themselves steadily only to good morals and right desires, either despising or unable to be educated in the liberal and best disciplines, I do not know how I could call them happy while they live among men; yet I believe without wavering that as soon as they have left this body, they will be freed the more easily or with the more difficulty according as they have lived more or less well."

"Authority is partly divine, partly human; but the true, firm, and highest is that which is called divine. In it one must fear the wonderful deceitfulness of the aerial animals, which by certain divinations about things pertaining to these senses of the body, and by some pronouncements, are accustomed most easily to deceive souls that are curious about perishing fortunes, or desirous of fragile powers, or fearful of empty wonders. That authority, then, is to be called divine which not only surpasses all human ability in sensible signs, but, acting as man himself, shows him how far it has lowered itself for his sake, and commands him not to be held by the senses, to which those things seem wonderful, but to fly up to the intellect, showing at the same time both how much it can do here, and why it does these things, and how little it values them. For it ought to teach its power by deeds, its mercy by humility, and its nature by precept; all of which are handed down more secretly and more firmly by the sacred rites into which we are initiated, in which the life of the good is most easily purified, not by the windings of disputations but by the authority of the mysteries. Human authority, however, generally deceives; yet it seems rightly to excel in those who, as far as the senses of the unskilled can grasp, give many proofs of their teaching and do not live otherwise than they teach one should live. If some gifts of fortune are added to them, by whose use they appear great and by whose contempt greater, it is altogether very difficult for anyone to be rightly blamed for believing them when they give precepts for living."

Here Alypius said: "A very great image of life has been set before our eyes by you, both fully and briefly; and although we long for it through your daily precepts, you have made us more eager and ardent today. I would wish, if it were possible, that not only we but all men should now reach it and cling to it, if these things were as easy to imitate as they are wonderful to hear. For somehow (may it be far from us at least!) the human mind, while on hearing these things it proclaims them heavenly, divine, and altogether true, behaves otherwise in desiring, so that it seems to me most true that either divine men live thus or men do so not without divine help." I said to him: "These precepts for living, which please you very much as always, Alypius, although expressed here in my words for the occasion, you know very well were not invented by me. For the books of great and almost divine men are full of them. I thought I should say this not for your sake but for these young men, so that they may not rightly despise them as if they had only my authority. For I do not want them to believe me at all except when I teach and give reasons; and I think it was in order to stir them up, for the greatness of the matter, that you put in that remark. For these things are not difficult for you to follow, since you seized them with such eagerness and entered on them with such an impulse of admirable nature that I have become your teacher in words, and you mine in things. For there is now no cause for lying, nor even an occasion; for I do not think you become more studious by false praise, and these are present who know both of us, and this discourse will be sent to one to whom none of us is unknown."

"But I think you believe there are fewer good men devoted to the best morals than is probable to me, if you do not think otherwise than you said. Many lie completely hidden; and in many who are not hidden, those very things that are wonderful are hidden; for they are in the mind, which cannot be perceived by sense, and which often, when it wants to fit in with the conversations of vicious men, says things it seems either to approve or to desire. It also does many things unwillingly, either to avoid men's hatred or to escape seeming awkward; and when we hear or see this, we can hardly judge otherwise than this sense reports, and so it comes about that we believe many are not such as they themselves and their intimates know them to be. I would like you to persuade yourself of this from certain great goods of mind in some of our friends, which only we know. For this error also rests on no small cause: that not a few suddenly turn to a good and wonderful life, and until they become known by some more conspicuous deeds, they are believed to be what they were. For, not to go further, who that had known these young men before would easily believe that they seek great things so zealously, that at this age they have suddenly declared such great enmity to pleasures? So let us drive this opinion from our mind; for that divine help too, which you fittingly and religiously placed at the end of your speech, carries out the office of its mercy more widely among all peoples than some think. But let us return, if you please, to the order of our discussion, and, since enough has been said about authority, let us see what reason means."

"Reason is that movement of the mind which is capable of distinguishing and connecting the things that are learned. To use it as a guide to understanding God, or even the soul, whether in us or everywhere, is possible for a very rare kind of men, for no other reason than that it is hard for anyone who has gone out into the business of these senses to return into himself. So, although in these deceptive things men try to do everything by reason, almost everyone is wholly ignorant of what reason itself is and of what sort it is. It seems strange, but so it is. It is enough to have said this for the present; for if I wanted now to show you so great a thing as it should be understood, I would be as foolish as arrogant, even if I professed that I had already perceived it. Still, as far as it has deigned to go forth into things that seem known to us, let us track it meanwhile, if we can, as the discussion we have undertaken requires."

"And first let us see where this word that is called reason is usually used; for this should move us most, that man himself was defined by the ancient wise men thus: man is a rational, mortal animal. Here, the genus being set down, which is called animal, we see two differentiae added, by which, I believe, man was to be reminded both where he must return and from what he must flee. For as the soul's going forth slipped down to mortal things, so its return ought to be into reason. By one word, 'rational,' he is separated from beasts; by the other, 'mortal,' from divine beings. So unless he holds to the former, he will be a beast; unless he turns away from the latter, he will not be divine. But since very learned men usually distinguish sharply and subtly between rationale and rationabile, this is by no means to be neglected for our purpose. For they called rational (rationale) what uses reason or can use it, and reasonable (rationabile) what has been made or said by reason. So we can call these baths and our conversation reasonable, but rational either the one who made them or us who are speaking. So reason proceeds from the rational soul into the things that are made or said reasonably."

"So I see two things in which the power and force of reason can be brought near even to the senses themselves: the works of men, which are seen, and words, which are heard. In both the mind uses a twofold messenger, as the body requires, one that of the eyes, the other that of the ears. So when we see something shaped with parts agreeing with each other, we say not absurdly that it appears reasonably; and likewise, when we hear something harmonize well, we do not hesitate to say that it sounds reasonably. But anyone would be laughed at if he said 'it smells reasonably' or 'it tastes reasonably,' except perhaps in things arranged by men for some purpose, that they should smell or taste or be hot or something else in that way: as if someone should say that a place from which snakes are driven by strong odors smells so reasonably, looking at the reason why it was done; or that a drink which a doctor has prepared is reasonably bitter or sweet; or that a bath which he has ordered to be warmed for a sick man is reasonably hot or tepid. But no one entering a garden and putting a rose to his nose dares to praise it thus: 'How reasonably it smells!' Not even if a doctor has ordered him to smell it (for then the prescription or the gift is called reasonable, but not the smell); nor is this because that scent is natural. For although a stew is seasoned by a cook, we can say it is reasonably seasoned, but that it tastes reasonably, when there is no outside reason but present pleasure is satisfied, is in no way said in ordinary speech. For if one asks about the person to whom the doctor gave a drink why it had to taste sweet to him, something else is brought in for which it is so, namely the kind of disease, which is no longer in that sense but is otherwise in the body. But if one licking something, spurred by the goad of the gullet, is asked why it is sweet, and answers, 'Because I like it' or 'Because I enjoy it,' no one will call it reasonably sweet, unless perhaps his enjoyment is necessary for something and what he chews was prepared that way for that reason."

"We have, as far as we could investigate, certain traces of reason in the senses, and, as regards sight and hearing, even in pleasure itself. The other senses usually claim this name not in their own pleasure but for the sake of something else, and that is the act of a rational animal done for some end. But as regards the eyes, in which the agreement of parts is called reasonable, it is usually called beautiful; as regards the ears, when we speak of a reasonable harmony and say that a rhythmical song is reasonably composed, it is now called by its own name, sweetness. But neither in beautiful things, as regards what attracts us, nor in the sweetness of the ears, when a struck string sounds clearly and purely, do we usually call it reasonable. It remains, then, that we admit that in the pleasure of these senses what pertains to reason is where there is a certain measure and modulation."

"So in this very building, considering each part well, we cannot fail to be offended that we see one door at the side and another almost in the middle, yet not placed in the middle. For in things that are built, an unequal measure of parts, when no necessity compels it, seems to do a kind of injury to the sight itself. But that inside three windows, one in the middle and two at the sides at equal intervals, pour light on the bath: how it delights us as we look more carefully, and how it carries the mind into itself! The thing is clear and need not be opened to you with many words. Hence the architects themselves now call this 'reason' in their own term, and say that parts placed discordantly 'have no reason.' This extends widely and spreads into almost all the arts and works of men. Now in poems, in which we likewise say there is a reason pertaining to the pleasure of the ears, who does not perceive that measure is the craftsman of all this sweetness? But when an actor dances, since to those who watch well all those gestures are signs of things, although a certain rhythmic movement of the limbs delights the eyes by that same measure, the dance is still called reasonable because it signifies and shows something well, apart from the pleasure of the senses. For if he makes a winged Venus and a cloaked Cupid, even though he depicts it with wonderful movement and placing of the limbs, he does not seem to offend the eyes, but through the eyes the mind, to which those signs of things are shown; for the eyes would be offended if he did not move beautifully. For that pertained to sense, in which the soul, by the very fact that it is mixed with the body, perceives pleasure. So sense is one thing, what comes through sense another; for beautiful movement soothes the sense, but beautiful signification in the movement soothes, through the sense, the mind alone. This is noticed even more easily in the ears; for whatever sounds pleasantly pleases and attracts the hearing itself; but what is well signified by the same sound is brought by the messenger of the ears but is referred to the mind alone. So when we hear those verses, 'why winter suns hasten so to dip themselves in the Ocean, or what delay stands in the way of the slow nights,' we praise the meter in one way and the thought in another, and we do not say with the same understanding 'it sounds reasonably' and 'it is said reasonably.'"

"So there are now three kinds of things in which the reasonable appears: one in deeds directed to some end, the second in teaching, the third in delighting. The first warns us to do nothing rashly, the second to teach rightly, the last to contemplate happily; the former belongs to morals, these two to the disciplines, which we are now discussing. For that in us which is rational, that is, which uses reason and either makes or follows reasonable things, because it was bound by a kind of natural bond in fellowship with those with whom reason itself was common to it (and man could not be most firmly united to man unless they talked together and so, as it were, poured their minds and thoughts into each other), saw that words must be imposed on things, that is, certain signifying sounds, so that, since they could not perceive each other's minds, they might use sense as an interpreter to unite them to themselves. But the words of the absent could not be heard; so that reason produced letters, marking and distinguishing all the sounds of the mouth and tongue. But it could do none of these things if the multitude of things seemed to extend infinitely without some fixed limit. So the usefulness of numbering was noticed under great necessity. When these two had been discovered, the profession of copyists and calculators was born, a kind of infancy of grammar, which Varro calls litteratio; what it is called in Greek I do not quite recall at present."

"Then reason, advancing further, noticed that of those same sounds of the mouth by which we spoke and which it had already marked with letters, some flowed from the throat without any collision, as it were unknotted and simple, by a variously controlled opening; others still held some sound by a different pressure of the mouth; and the last could not break forth unless the first were joined to them. So it named the letters, in the order in which they have been set out, vowels, semivowels, and mutes; then it marked syllables; then words were arranged into eight kinds and forms, and all their movement, completeness, and joining were distinguished skillfully and subtly. From there, not forgetful of numbers and measure, it turned its mind to the various durations of the sounds and syllables themselves, and found that some lengths of time were double, others single, by which long and short syllables were extended. It marked these too and arranged them into fixed rules."

"Grammar could now have been complete; but because by its very name it proclaims that it professes letters (hence in Latin it is called litteratura), it came about that whatever worthy of memory was committed to letters necessarily belonged to it. So one name indeed, but a thing infinite, manifold, more full of cares than of pleasure or truth, was added to this discipline: history, laborious not so much for the historians themselves as for the grammarians. For who would put up with it that a man should seem ignorant who has not heard that Daedalus flew, while he who invented it does not seem a liar, he who believed it a fool, and he who asks about it shameless? Or, in which matter I usually pity our friends greatly, that if they have not answered what the mother of Euryalus was called, they are accused of ignorance, while they do not dare to call those who ask them such things vain, silly, and idly curious?"

"So that reason, grammar having been perfected and arranged, was prompted to seek and attend to that very power by which it had produced the art; for by defining, dividing, and gathering it had not only arranged and ordered it but had also defended it from every creeping in of falsehood. When, then, would it pass on to building other things, unless it first distinguished, marked, and arranged its own machines and instruments, as it were, and brought forth the discipline of disciplines itself, which they call dialectic? This teaches how to teach, this teaches how to learn; in it reason itself shows and discloses what it is, what it wants, what it can do. It knows how to know; it alone not only wants but is also able to make men knowers. But since foolish men, in matters which they are urged to rightly, usefully, and honorably, generally follow not that most pure truth itself, which a rare mind sees, but their own feelings and habit, they needed not only to be taught as far as they could but often and most of all to be moved. This part of itself which did this, more full of necessity than of purity, with a lap very full of delights to scatter to the people so that they might deign to be led to their own advantage, it called rhetoric. Thus far that part which is called reasonable in signifying has been advanced by liberal studies and disciplines."

"From here that reason wished to snatch itself up to the most blessed contemplation of divine things themselves. But so as not to fall from a height, it sought steps and built itself a road through its own possessions and order. For it desired a beauty which it alone and simple could behold without these eyes; it was hindered by the senses. So it turned its gaze a little toward those very senses which, crying out that they possessed the truth, were calling it back with untimely noise as it hurried on to other things. And first it began with the ears, because they said that those very words were theirs with which it had already made grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. But reason, most powerful in distinguishing, quickly saw what difference there was between a sound and that of which it was a sign. It understood that nothing pertained to the judgment of the ears but sound, and that sound was threefold: either in the voice of a living being, or in what breath makes in instruments, or in what is produced by striking. To the first pertained tragic or comic actors or choruses of any kind and absolutely all who sing with their own voice; the second was assigned to flutes and similar instruments; to the third were given citharas, lyres, cymbals, and everything that is musical by being struck."

"But it saw that this material was most worthless unless the sounds were shaped by a fixed measure of time and a controlled variety of high and low pitch. It recognized that from here came those seeds which in grammar, when it was turning over syllables with careful consideration, it had called feet and accents; and because in words themselves it was easy to notice the shortness and length of syllables scattered in speech in nearly equal numbers, it tried to arrange those feet into fixed orders and join them; and in this, first following the sense itself, it imposed measured joints, which they call caesuras and members. And so that the course of the feet should not roll on further than its judgment could sustain, it set a limit from which it should turn back, and from that very turning it called it verse. But what was not measured by a fixed end, yet ran in reasonably ordered feet, it marked with the name of rhythm, which in Latin could be called nothing but number. So poets were born from it. Seeing in them great moments not only of sounds but also of words and things, it honored them very highly and gave them power over whatever reasonable lies they wished. And since they derived their stock from that first discipline, it allowed the grammarians to be their judges."

"In this fourth step, then, whether in rhythms or in modulation itself, it understood that numbers reign and perfect the whole. It examined most carefully of what kind they were; it found them divine and eternal, especially since with their help it had woven together all the preceding things. And now it bore it very hard that their splendor and clarity should be discolored by the bodily matter of sounds. And since what the mind sees is always present and is approved as immortal (and numbers appeared to be of this kind), while sound, because it is a sensible thing, passes into the past and is impressed on memory, by a reasonable lie, reason now favoring the poets, it was invented that the Muses are the daughters of Jupiter and Memory. Hence this discipline, sharing in sense and intellect, found the name of music."

"From here it set out into the riches of the eyes, and surveying earth and sky, it perceived that nothing pleased it but beauty, and in beauty shapes, in shapes measures, in measures numbers; and it asked itself whether such a line and such a roundness, or any other form and shape, were there such as the intelligence contained. It found them far inferior, and that what the eyes saw was in no respect to be compared with what the mind discerned. These too, distinguished and arranged, it reduced to a discipline and called geometry. The movement of the heavens moved it greatly and invited it to consider it carefully. There too, through the most constant changes of seasons, through the fixed and defined courses of the stars, through the measured spaces of their intervals, it understood that nothing ruled but that measure and those numbers; and, likewise defining and distinguishing and binding them into order, it produced astronomy, a great argument for the religious and a torment for the curious."

"In all these disciplines, then, everything presented itself to it as numerical; yet these stood out more manifestly in those measures which, thinking and turning them over within itself, it beheld as most true, while in the things that are sensed it recognized rather their shadows and traces. Here it lifted itself up greatly and presumed much; it dared to prove the soul immortal. It handled everything carefully; it perceived that it could do very much, and that whatever it could do, it could do by numbers. A certain wonder moved it, and it began to suspect that it might itself be that very number by which all things are numbered, or, if not, that that number was there where it was striving to arrive. And this it grasped with all its strength, which was to be the revealer of all truth, and that Proteus whom Alypius mentioned when we were inquiring about the Academics was as it were in its hands. For the false images of the things we number, flowing down from that most hidden one by which we number, snatch thought to themselves and often make it slip away when it is already held."

"If anyone does not yield to them, and reduces all those things which are spread widely and variously through so many disciplines to one simple, true, and certain thing, he is most worthy of the name of learned, and not rashly does he now seek those divine things, no longer only to be believed but also to be contemplated, understood, and retained. But whoever, whether still a slave of desires and gaping after perishing things, or already fleeing them and living chastely, does not know what nothing is, what formless matter is, what a lifeless formed thing is, what a body is, what the lifeless in a body is, what place is, what time is, what is in place, what is in time, what motion according to place is, what motion not according to place is, what stable motion is, what eternity is, what it is to be neither in place nor nowhere, what it is to be beyond time and always, what it is both to be nowhere and to be nowhere not, and never to be and never not to be: whoever, I say, not knowing these things, wishes to inquire and dispute, I do not say about that highest God, who is better known by not knowing, but about his own soul, will err as much as it is possible to err. But he will know these things more easily who has grasped simple and intelligible numbers; and he will grasp these who, strong in talent, at leisure by the privilege of age or of some good fortune, and vehemently on fire with zeal, has followed the order of disciplines we have described as far as is sufficient. For since all those liberal arts are learned partly for the use of life and partly for the knowledge and contemplation of things, it is very difficult to attain their use except for one who, very gifted from childhood itself, has applied himself most earnestly and constantly."