rather than the Creator, or become vain in our
St. Augustine could have been no error in religion had not the soul worshipped in place of its God either a soul or a body or some phantasm of its own, possibly two of these together or all of them at once.
In this life the soul should have frankly accepted the temporal condition of human society but should have directed its regard to eternal things and worshipped the one
God without whose changeless permanence no mutable thing could have any abiding existence. Anyone who studies his own emotions can learn that the soul is mutable, not in space certainly but in time. That body is mutable both in space and time is easy for anyone to observe. Phantasms are nothing but figments of corporeal shapes appearing to bodily sense.
It is the easiest thing in the world to commit * them to memory as they appear or, by thinking about them, to divide or multiply, contract or expand, set in order or disturb, or give them any kind of shape. But when truth is being sought it is difficult to be on one's guard against them and to avoid them.
19. Do not, then, let us serve the creature rather than the Creator, or become vain in our thoughts. That is the rule of perfect religion.
If we cleave to the eternal Creator we must necessarily be somehow affected by eternity.
But because the soul, implicated in and overwhelmed by its sins, cannot by itself see and grasp this truth, if in human experience there