Augustine: Earlier Writings (continued)
ON FREE WILL 183 will see that the opinion that non-existence is better than miserable existence depends on the extent to which you ignore what supremely exists; and that you wish to be because you derive your origin from him who supremely is.
21. If, therefore, you wish to escape misery, love the very desire you have to exist. For if you wish more and more to exist, you will draw near to him who exists supremely. And give thanks now that you exist. You may be inferior to the blessed, but you are superior to things which have not even the will to beatitude, though many of these things are praised by miserable men. All things are to be praised for the reason that they exist; for what exists is for that reason alone good. The more fully you love to have being the more fully will you desire eternal life, and choose to be formed so that your affections will not be set on temporal things. Emotions kindled by love for temporal things are unjust and uncontrolled. And temporal things, before they come to be, are not; while they are in existence, they are fleeting; and when gone, will not be. When they come into being in the future, they are not yet. When they are past, they already are not. How can things be possessed abidingly, if the beginning of their existence is a step towards their end? He who loves existence approves them so far as they have existence, but loves what has eternal existence. If, loving temporal things, he was weak and variable, loving eternal things he will be made strong. If he was distracted by love of transient things, by love of that which abides he will be made stable. He will remain, and possess being, which he wished, inasmuch as he feared non-existence. He could not stand fast when he was snared by love of fleeting things. Do not therefore let it displease you, rather let it give you the greatest pleasure, that you prefer even miserable existence to non-existence, even if thereby you hope to escape misery. If you begin by wishing to exist, and add a desire for fuller and fuller existence, you rise in the scale, and are furnished for hfe that supremely is. So also you will keep yourself from every fall whereby lowest existence passes into non-existence and undermines the strength of him who loves it. Hence he who prefers non-existence to miserable existence, cannot attain non-existence, and therefore must remain miserable. He who loves existence more than he hates misery can, by seeking an ever fuller existence, exclude the misei7 he hates. When he has attained perfect existence after his kind, he will not be miserable. viii, 22. See how absurd and stupid it is to say: I should