co-ordinating the trio measure, number and weight, with another trio, whose translation is not
Book TV 247 how much13 in seeking or avoiding it, preferring or disregarding it. But this measure of spirits and minds is kept in bounds by another measure, this number formed by another number, and this weight drawn by the gravitational pull of another weight.
But the measure without measure is the standard for what derives from it, while it does not itself derive from anything else; the number without number, by which all things are formed, is not formed itself; the weight without weight to which are drawn, in order to rest there, those whose rest is pure joy is not itself drawn to anything else beyond it.
9. But if you only know the words "measure" and "number" and "weight" with reference to visible objects, you have a slave's knowledge of them.14 So you should rise above everything you know in that way, or if you are not yet able to do so, at least do not cling to words which you can only think about in a mean and abject manner. These words, you see, will have all the richer a flavor for you as referring to higher things, the less you are mere flesh with reference to lower things.15 But there are perhaps people who are trying to achieve serenity of mind and spirit by gazing on those sublime realities, and do not like applying to them words which they have learned to use in connection with feeble and worthless things; well, they are certainly not to be coerced into doing this. Provided, after all, that they understand what has to be understood, there is no need to worry very much about what it is called. It is, however, important to know what kind of likeness these lower things have to those higher realities. There is, you see, no other route along which reason can rightly direct its course and its efforts to move from here to there.16
13. Weighing in the ancient world also connoted pricing or valuing things. 1n this section he is co-ordinating the trio measure, number and weight, with another trio, whose translation is not always a simple matter: modus, species, ordo. He will be doing it again and again in this particular book of The Literal Meaning of Genesis. 1 usually translate them by "limit" or "bound," "form" or "specific form," and "order," for this latter sometimes substituting "direction," "guidance," and on one occasion "destiny." His most sustained discussion and explanation of this trio is in his little work. On the Nature of the Good. The most accessible modern discussion of them is to be found in Jim O'Donnell's Commentary on the Confessions, volume 2, 46 and the following, on Confessions 1,1,12. Precisely what he meant a little earlier by "there is a numbering of the spirit's passions and powers" (et est numerus et affectionum animi et virtutum), 1 am rather at a loss to say. 14. You know them serviliter, in a servile fashion. He is making in effect a distinction like the conventional one he also often makes between servile fear and filial fear, the latter being precisely, in Latin, the fear oUiberi, free-born children, for their father. He also doubtless had at the back of his mind Jesus' argument with "the Jews" in Jn 8:3 1 -36, where he tells them that the truth will set them free, and they reply that they are the seed of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. 15. An untranslatable play on words: "these words will be all the more cara to you as referring to higher things, the less you are caro with reference to lower things."
1 6. Here in fact, while not coercing these very "spiritual" people, he is hinting broadly enough that their imageless spirituality is totally misconceived.