Augustine: Earlier Writings (continued)
ON FREE WILL 209 be passed over entirely or to be deferred for later consideration, there is no obstacle preventing us from answering the question with which we are dealing at present in such a way as to make clear that by the upright, just, unshaken and changeless majesty and substance of the Creator souls pay the penalty for their own sins. These sins, as we have explained at great length, are to be ascribed to nothing but to their own wills, and no further cause for sins is to be looked for.
64. If ignorance and moral difficulty are natural to man, it is from that condition that the soul begins to progress and to advance towards knowledge and tranquillity until it reaches the perfection of the happy life. If by its own will it neglects to advance by means of good studies and piety—for the capacity to do so is not denied to it—it justly falls into a still graver state of ignorance and struggle, which is now penal, and is ranked among inferior creatures according to the appropriate and fitting government of the universe. Natural ignorance and natural impotence are not reckoned to the soul as guilt. The guilt arises because it does not eagerly pursue knowledge, and does not give adequate attention to acquiring facility in doing right. It is natural for an infant not to know how to speak and not to be able to speak. But that ignorance and inability are not only blameless according to the rules of the teachers, but are also attractive and pleasing to human feeling. In this case there is no faulty failure to acquire the power of speaking, nor, if possessed, was it lost through any fault. If we supposed that happiness was to be found in eloquence and it was thought criminal to commit a fault in speaking, as it is thought criminal to commit a fault in action, no one would put the blame on our infancy, though as infants we began to acquire eloquence. But clearly one would be deservedly blamed if by perversity of will one either remained in the infantile condition or fell back into it. In the same way, if ignorance of the truth and difficulty in doing right are natural to man, and he has to begin to rise from that condition to the happiness of wisdom and tranquil Hty, no one rightly blames him for the natural condition from which he started. But if he refuses to progress, or voluntarily falls back from the path of progress, he will justly and deservedly pay the penalty.
65. But his Creator is to be praised on all counts. He gave him the power to rise from such beginnings to ability to attain the chief good. He renders aid as he advances. He completes and perfects his advance. And if he sins, that is, if he refuses to rise
A.E.W.— 14 from these beginnings to perfection or if he falls back from any progress he may have made, he imposes on him a most just condemnation according to his deserts. The soul was not created evil because it was not given all that it had power to become. All corporeal things however perfect are far inferior to the soul's beginning, though anyone who takes a sane view of things judges that they, too, are to be praised in their own kind. That the soul does not know what it should do is due to its not yet having received that gift. It will receive it if it makes a good use of what it has received. It has received the power to seek diligently and piously if it will. That it cannot instantly fulfil the duty it recognizes as duty, means that that is another gift it has not yet received. Its higher part first perceives the good it ought to do, but the slower and carnal part is not immediately brought over to that opinion. So by that very difficulty it is admonished to implore for its perfecting the aid of him whom it believes to be the author of its beginning. Hence he becomes dearer to it, because it has its existence not from its own resources but from his goodness, and by his mercy it is raised to happiness. The more it loves him from whom it derives its existence, the more surely it rests in him, and enjoys his eternity more fully. We do not rightly say of a young shoot of a tree that it is sterile, because several summers must pass before at the appointed time it reveals its fruitfulness. Why should not the Author of the soul be praised with due piety if he has given it so good a start that it may by zeal and progress reach the fruit of wisdom and justice, and has given it so much dignity as to put within its power the capacity to grow towards happiness if it will? xxiii, 66. Against this reasoning, ignorant men are wont to repeat a calumny based upon the deaths of infants and certain bodily torments with which we often see them afflicted. They say: What need had the infant to be born if it was to die before it had acquired any merit in life? How is it to be reckoned in the future judgment, seeing that it cannot be put among the just since it performed no good works, nor among the evil because it never sinned? I reply: If you think of the all-embracing complexity of the universe, and the orderly connection of the whole creation throughout space and time, you will not believe that a man, whatsoever he may be, can be created superfluously. Why, not even the leaf of a tree is created superfluously. But it is idly superfluous to inquire about the merits of one who has done nothing to merit anything. There is no need to fear lest there be a life lived which is neither righteous nor sinful, nor