Augustine: Earlier Writings
ON FREE WILL 215 ask whether he acted foolishly or wisely in departing. If wisely he did right and committed no sin. If foolishly there was folly already in him, they say, which made him depart from wisdom. For without folly he could do nothing foolishly. Clearly there is some middle state of transition from wisdom to folly, which cannot be called either wisdom or folly; but it is not given to men to understand this except by way of contrast with both. No mortal becomes wise unless he passes from folly to wisdom. If there is folly in the actual transition it is not a good thing, but to say that would be mad. If there is wisdom in it, there must already be wisdom in a man before he makes the transidon to wisdom. But that is equally absurd. Hence we learn that there is an intermediate state which may be said to be neither folly nor wisdom. In the same way when the first man passed from the citadel of wisdom to folly, the transition in itself was neither foolish nor wise. In the matter of sleeping and waking, to be asleep is not the same thing as to fall asleep, nor is to be awake the same thing as to awake. There is a transitional state between sleeping and waking as between folly and wisdom. But there is this difference. In the former case there is no intervention of will; in the latter the transition never takes place except by the action of the will. That is why the consequence is just retribution.
XXV, 74. But the will is not enticed to do anything except by something that has been perceived. It is in a man's power to take or reject this or that, but it is not in his power to control the things which will affect him when they are perceived. We must admit, therefore, that the mind is affected by percepdons both of superior things and of inferior things. Thus the rational creature may take from either what it will, and, according to its deserts in making the choice, it obtains as a consequence either misery or happiness. In the Garden of Eden the commandment of God came to man's attention from above. From beneath came the suggestion of the serpent. Neither the commandment of God nor the suggestion of the serpent was in man's power. But if he has reached the healthy state of wisdom he is freed from all the shackles of moral difficulty, and has freedom not to yield to the enticing suggestions of inferior things. How free he is we can infer from the fact that even fools overcome them a5 they pass on to wisdom, though of course Uiey have the difficulty of trying to do without the deadly sweetness of the pernicious things to which they have been accustomed.
75. Here it may be asked, if man had impressions from both