Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
main to keep it there. One will no longer have faith since things can no longer be mixed with falsity and be wrongly interpreted; nor does anything remain to be hoped for, since the soul rests in secure possession of everything. There are, then, three things the soul needs: that it be healthy; that it gaze; that it see. For these, three others—faith, hope, and love—are needed. For healing and gazing, faith and hope are necessary; for seeing, all three are necessary in this life; but in the life to come, only love.49
Augustine Conversing
with Augustine
Few texts illustrate the range of Augustine's early philosophical and religious concerns as briefly (and playfully) as the following letter to Nebridius, one of Augustine's closest friends. Augustine had sent him the Cassiciacum dialogues, and Nebridius sent back a letter expressing how delighted he was that Augustine had arrived at wisdom and happiness. Here Augustine replies, touching on core concerns and revealing glimpses of his deeper moods. The letter illustrates how Platonic perspectives then shaped his outlook ( for example, the sense of this world as a shadowlands; a sharp body-soul dualism). Through much of the letter, he re-enacts for Nebridius the same inner question-and-answer style of Soliloquies. From Letter 3:
(1) You almost convinced me, not, of course, that I am happy, for that is the reward of the wise alone, but that I am comparatively happy—as we say that a person is, comparatively, a person when measured against that [ideal] person Plato knew, or that things are, comparatively, round or square as we look at them, even though they are far from these qualities as the mind of the expert perceives them. I read your letter by lamplight after dinner. It was almost time for bed, but not quite time for sleep. So I reflected for a long time, sitting on my bed, and Augustine held this conversation with Augustine:
"Is it not true that I am happy, as Nebridius claims?" "Not really, for even he does not dare to deny that there are still fools, and how could happiness be the portion of fools?"
"That's tough! As if happiness were an insignificant thing or as if there were any other misery than folly? How, then, did he reach this conclusion? Was it by reading those treatises that he came to believe me wise?"
"But joy is not premature, especially in a person whose weighty reasoning power I know how to estimate. This, then, must be it: He wrote what he thought would give me the most pleasure, because what I had set down in
49. Soliloquia 1.6.12–7.14 (BA 5:50–54); my trans., based on Gilligan, FOTC 5:359. See retr. 1.4.3.
The Philosopher 63 those works had given him pleasure, and he wrote with joy, without a thought of what should be allowed a joyous pen."
"But what if he had read the Soliloquies?" "He would have been much more enthusiastic, and yet he would not have found anything else to call me but happy. So he bestowed this supreme title on me, and reserved to himself no other term to use in case he should be feeling even more enthusiastic. See what joy does!"
(2) "But where is the life of happiness to be found? Where? Where is it? Oh, if only it were to consist in rejecting the atomism of Epicurus!50 Oh, if only it were to consist in knowing that there is nothing below but the material world! Oh, if only it were to consist in knowing that the outer edge of a sphere revolves more slowly than its center—and other such things we know [for certain]! But, now, how or in what sense I am happy, that I do not know. . . .
(3) "But wait—let us see what this thought brings to mind. Surely the world of the senses is said to be a reflection of a certain intelligible one. It is a matter of wonder that in the case of images we see what mirrors reflect, for, however large the mirrors, they do not reflect larger images even of the tiniest objects. But in small mirrors (such as the pupils of the eyes), a very small image is formed in proportion to the reflecting surface even if a larger object is presented. Therefore, it is possible for the images of objects to be made smaller if the mirror is smaller, but they cannot be enlarged if the mirror is enlarged. There is certainly some mystery hidden here. But now it is time to go to sleep. For I appear happy to Nebridius not by searching for something but by finding it. But what is this something? Is it this power of reasoning which I cherish as my most beloved and in which I find my greatest joy?"
(4) "Of what do we consist?" "Of soul and body." "Which of these is better?" "The soul, of course." "What is to be praised in the body?" "Nothing else than beauty." "What is beauty of the body?" "A harmony of its parts along with a certain pleasing color." "Is this form better when it is true or when it is false?" "Who could doubt that it is better when it is true?" "But where is it true?"
50. "Epicurus": The Greek philosopher Epicurus of Samos (341–270 b.c.e.). His views were best known to the Latin-speaking world through Lucretius's poem On the Nature of Things (De natura rerum). For an overview, A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 14–74. Augustine and other Christian thinkers tended to caricature Epicureanism as a philosophy of hedonism; see s. 150; civ. Dei 5.20; 8.5; 11.5; 14.2; 18.41.