12. Summa Contra Gentiles, III. xciii.
INTRODUCTION XV own Statement that "to deny fate is to deny divine providence."
Like Hegel, St. Augustine found relief for the mental torture occasioned by the tragic spectacle of human history in the consideration that what happened could not have been otherwise. Yet, because of his practical purpose, he dwelt more fully than Hegel was inclined to do on the myriad violations of normative laws and on the individual and collective failures through which the higher reason of history realizes its purposes. Viewed philosophically, in the grand sweep of its historical development, the civitas terrena, or worldly civilization of man, is awesome to behold. In its material and intellectual structures are embodied the loftiest aspirations of worldly men. Yet how painful it is for most of us, St. Augustine remarks again and again, to realize that, as an instrument for the pursuit of happiness and peace, the whole thing has been a pathetic failure. Countless individuals, generation upon generation, have gone down into death unwillingly, painfully, clinging to life, yet trampled underfoot by misfortunes. The efforts of earnest men to combat disease, to alleviate poverty, to prevent crime, to banish ignorance, to escape natural disasters, to put an end to wars, are but measures of the actual extent of misery and suffering.
And how colossal have been the collective failures! Whole nations annihilated in war, or constrained for security to order their subjects to go out and commit the worst brutalities, devastating the cities of their enemies, butchering men, women, and children indiscriminately, often only to find when victory has come that they have at-
12. Summa Contra Gentiles, III. xciii.
XVI INTRODUCTION tained, perhaps, the very opposite of what they fought for, losing more in victory than they feared to lose in defeat. No nation St. Augustine reminds us—desires to perish. Yet, in the past all have gone down, all have proved mortal, like the men who build them. For the common good, for the safety of the republic, brave men have willingly sacrificed all things else they held dear. Great soldiers have silenced their consciences, allowing their hearts to harden, lest they should hesitate, when defeat and victory hang in the balance, to match and surpass, if necessary, the enemy's brutality. And what lies, betrayals of pacts, crimes, low deceptions have statesmen not found it necessary to commit in order to realize the public policy they have pledged themselves to serve!
In other words, according to St. Augustine, the world is such that, at the very top of the social order, in positions of highest trust, men are often required to commit acts of the very kind that civilizing society, with its laws and education, attempts to repress in the conduct of the mass of its members. The sad truth is, obviously, that, considering the mass of men as a whole, not an iota of their self-destructive force is ever really charmed out of them. For if we observe closely, we cannot help seeing that pohtical regimes—whether they be tiny city states or world governments—are able to maintain a semblance of peace and order in the world only by using coercive force, veiled or naked, to restrain coercive force. If the responsible few in public ofl&ce fail to hold on to the power concentrated in their hands, or neglect to use it effectively when necessary, it will inevitably drain back into the hands