Augustine: Earlier Writings (continued)
ON FREE WILL l6l matters which belong to wisdom, and how you rejoiced to know them. Ev.—Yes. That is so. xvi, 41. Aug.—What do we do when we are eager to be wise? Don't we with all possible keenness give our whole soul, so to speak, to what is mentally discerned, and keep it steadfastly fixed on that, so that it may not rejoice in any private possession of its own which will imp Hcate it in transient things, but, having put off all affections for things temporal and spatial, it may apprehend what remains ever one and the same? For as the soul is the whole life of the body, so is God the happy life of the soul. While we do as I have just described, so long as we continue, we are in the way \in via]. If it is given us to rejoice in these true and certain blessings as they ghmmer for us even now on our still darkly shadowed way, perhaps this is what Scripture means when it describes how wisdom deals with the lovers who come to her. For it is written: "In their paths she appeareth unto them graciously, and in every purpose she meeteth them" (Wisdom 6:16). Wherever you turn she speaks to you through certain traces of her operations. When you are falling away to external things she recalls you to return within by the very forms of external things. Whatever delights you in corporeal objects and entices you by appeal to the bodily senses, you may see is governed by number, and when you ask how that is so, you will return to your mind within, and know that you could neither approve nor disapprove things of sense unless you had within you, as it were, laws of beauty by which you judge all beautiful things which you perceive in the world.
42. Behold the heaven, the earth, the sea; all that is bright in them or above them; all that creep or fly or swim; all have forms because all have number. Take away number and they will be nothing. From whom have they their being if not from him who has made number? For they exist only in so far as they have number. The artificers of all corporeal forms work by number and regulate their operations thereby. In working they move their hands and tools until that which is fashioned in the outer world, being referred to the inward light of number, receives such perfection as is possible, and, being reported on by the senses, pleases the internal judge who beholds the supernal ideal numbers. Do you ask who moves the limbs of the artificer? It will be number, for they, too, move by number. Suppose there is no actual work in hand and no intention to make anything, but the motions of the limbs are done for pleasure, that will be dancing. Ask what delights you in dancing