The Essential Augustine
bodily framework holds together, there is in the remains a kind of peace among the members and hence the body remains suspended. And inasmuch as the earthly body tends towards the earth and rests on the bond by which it is suspended, it tends thus to its natural peace, and the voice of its own weight demands a place for it to rest; and though now lifeless and without feeling, it does not fall from the peace that is natural to its place in creation, whether it already has it or is tending towards it. For if you apply embalming preparations to prevent the bodily frame from mouldering and dissolving, a kind of peace still unites part to part and keeps the whole body in a suitable place on the earth—in other words, in a place that is at peace with the body. If, on the other hand, the body receive no such care but be left to the natural course, it is disturbed by exhalations that do not harmonize with one another and that offend our senses; for it is this which is perceived in putrefaction until it is assimilated to the elements of the world, and particle by particle enters into peace with them. Yet throughout this process the laws of the most high Creator and Governor are strictly observed, for it is by Him the peace of the universe is administered. For although minute animals are produced from the carcass of a larger animal, all these little atoms, by the law of the same Creator, serve the animals they belong to in peace. And although the flesh of dead animals be eaten by others, no matter where it be carried nor what it be brought into contact with nor what it be converted and changed into, it still is ruled by the same laws which pervade all things for the conservation of every mortal race and which bring things that fit one another into harmony.
The peace of the body then consists in the duly pro13. portioned arrangement of its parts, The peace of the irrational soul is the harmonious repose of the appetites, and that of the rational soul the harmony of knowledge and action. The peace of body and soul is the well-ordered and harmonious life and health of the living creature. Peace between man and God is the well-ordered obedience of faith to eternal law. Peace between man and man is well-ordered concord. Domestic peace is the wellordered concord between those of the family who rule and those who obey. Civil peace is a similar concord among the citizens. The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. The peace of all things is the tranquillity of
THE TWO CITIES
order. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal, each to its own place. And hence, though the miserable, in so far as they are such, do certainly not enjoy peace, but are severed from that tranquillity of order in which there is no disturbance, nevertheless, inasmuch as they are deservedly and justly miserable, they are by their very misery connected with order. They are not, indeed, conjoined with the blessed, but they are disjoined from them by the law of order. And though they are disquieted, their circumstances are notwithstanding adjusted to them, and consequently they have some tranquillity of order, and therefore some peace. But they are wretched because, although not wholly miserable, they are not in that place where any mixture of misery is impossible. They would, however, be more wretched if they had not had that peace which arises from being in harmony with the natural order of things. When they suffer, their peace is in so far disturbed; but their peace continues in so far as they do not suffer, and in so far as their nature continues to exist. As, then, there may be life without pain, while there cannot be pain without some kind of life, so there may be peace without war, but there cannot be war without some kind of peace, because war supposes the existence of some natures to wage it, and these natures cannot exist without peace of one kind or other.
And therefore there is a nature in which evil does not or even cannot exist; but there cannot be a nature in which there is no good. Hence not even the nature of the devil himself is evil, in so far as it is nature, but it was made evil by being perverted. Thus he did not abide in the truth, but could not escape the judgment of the Truth; he did not abide in the tranquillity of order, but did not therefore escape the power of the Ordainer. The good imparted by God to his nature did not screen him from the justice of God by which order was preserved in his punishment; neither did God punish the good which He had created, but the evil which the devil had committed. God did not take back all He had imparted to his nature, but something He took and something He left, that there might remain enough to be sensible of the loss of what was taken. And this very sensibility to pain is evidence of the good which has been taken away and the good which has been left. For, were nothing good left, there could be no pain on account of the good which had been lost. For he who sins is still worse if he rejoices in his loss of righteousness. But he who is in pain, if he derives no benefit from it, mourns at least the loss of health. And as righteousness and health are both good things, and as the loss of any good thing is matter of grief, not of joy—if, at least, there is no compensation, as spiritual righteousness may compensate for the loss of bodily health—certainly it is more suitable for a wicked man to grieve in punishment than to rejoice in his fault. As, then, the joy of a sinner who has abandoned what is good is evidence of a bad will, so his grief for the good he has lost when he is punished is evidence of a good nature. For he who laments the peace his nature has lost is stirred to do so by some relics of peace which make his nature friendly to itself. And it is very just that in the final punishment the wicked and godless should in anguish bewail the loss of the natural advantages they enjoyed, and should perceive that they were most justly taken from them by that God whose benign liberality they had despised. God, then, the most wise Creator and most just Ordainer of all natures, who placed the human race upon earth as its greatest ornament, imparted to men some good things adapted to this life, to wit, temporal peace, such as we can enjoy in this life from health and safety and human fellowship, and all things needful for the preservation and recovery of this peace, such as the objects which are accommodated to our outward senses, light, night, the air, and waters suitable for us, and everything the body requires to sustain, shelter, heal, or beautify it; and all under this most equitable condition, that every man who made a good use of these advantages suited to the peace of this mortal condition, should receive ampler and better blessings, namely, the peace of immortality, accompanied by glory and honor in an endless life made fit for the enjoyment of God and of one another in God, but that he who used the present blessings badly should both lose them and should not receive the others. :
TWO KINGDOMS AFTER THE RESURRECTION*
After the resurrection, however, when the final, uni111, versal judgment has been completed, there shall be two kingdoms, each with its own distinct boundaries: the one Christ's, the other the devil's; the one consisting of the good, the other of the bad—both, however, consisting of angels and men. The former shall have no will, the latter no power, to sin, and neither shall have any power to choose
* Enchiridion, 111; trans. Dods.
death; but the former shall live truly and happily in eternal life, the latter shall drag out a miserable existence in eternal death without the power of dying; for the life and the death shall both be without end. But among the former there shall be degrees of happiness, one being more preeminently happy than another, and among the latter there shall be degrees of misery, one being more endurably miserable than another.
X. PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
Augustine was a pioneer in the study of the meaning of history. Before his time, historians were chiefly storytellers, little concerned with anything more than a surface record of human events. His thinking in this area may be called either a philosophy or a theology of history; the name is not important but his accomplishment is.
Implicit in the Augustinian view of history are the essential beliefs of Christianity: there is but one God; all men are creatures with a single ancestor in Adam; all things and events come under the care of divine Providence; mankind has fallen from a more privileged original condition and is now subject to suffering and other evils; man has been redeemed through the Incarnation of Christ; all men should try to attain final happiness with God in a future life. Seen from the point of view of this Christian setting, the events of temporal history become actions in the drama of redemption and eternal salvation.
If there was a prevailing theory of history before Augustine, it could be summed up in one word: fatalism. In ancient literature man was regarded as a puppet bound to the wheel of fate. Time was thought to revolve in giant cycles. Men were doomed to a perpetual recurrence of the same trials and petty joys. No linear progress was possible: man lived on a huge merry-go-round from which escape was utterly impossible. As Toynbee has said of this cyclicism: "We can hardly escape the conclusion that we are the perpetual victims of an everlasting cosmic practical joke, which condemns us to endure our sufferings and to overcome our difficulties and to purify ourselves of our sins—only to know in advance that the automatic and inevitable lapse of a certain meaningless measure of time cannot fail to stultify all our human eeseen (Cited from A Study of History, IV 30, in Shinn, p. 141. Augustine broke this wheel of fate by appealing to one