15. Ps. X. 6.
274 ST. AUGUSTINE rang with applause. Thus, the kinship of human souls stirs the feeling of all so naturally that every man feels himself a neighbor of every other man.
Therefore, with that love which the divine law commands, a man ought to love God and himself and his neighbor; yet three commandments were not given and it was not said: 'on these three,' but
these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets,' that is, on the love of God with the whole heart and the whole soul and the whole mind, and of the neighbor as oneself, doubtless to make it clear that there is no other love by which a man loves himself than that by which he loves God. Whoever loves himself in any other way ought to be said rather to hate himself, since he thus becomes wicked and is deprived of the light of justice, when he turns from a higher and more excellent good and is directed upon himself as to something lower and defective, and what is so truthfully written then takes place in him: 'He that loveth iniquity hateth his own soul.' ^^ Thus, as no one loves himself except by loving God, there was no need of man being commanded to love himself, once the commandment to love God has been given. He ought, then, to love God and his neighbor as himself so as to lead whatever men he can to worship God, using as means either the comforting force of kindness, or the imparting of learning, or the restraint of discipline, because he knows that 'on these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.'
Whoever chooses this with careful discrimination is prudent; whoever is turned from it by no trial is strong; he who is enticed by no other pleasure is temperate; the one who is puffed up by no