The Essential Augustine
ness, are thirsty for more than they can take in. They say: "What did God do before He made heaven and earth?" or "How did the thought occur to Him to make something, when He never made anything before?"
Grant to them, O Lord, the ability to think well on what they say and to discover that one should not say "never" in reference to a situation where time does not exist. Thus, when a man says that one "never" made anything, what else is said but that one made it at no time? May they see, then, that time cannot be at all without creation, and may they stop talking this foolishness. May they be inclined forward also to those things which are before, and understand that Thou art before all periods of time, the Eternal Creator of all times, and that no periods of time and no creature, even one which may be above time, are coeternal with Thee.
CRITIQUE OF CYCLICISM*
This controversy some philosophers have seen no 13. other approved means of solving than by introducing cycles of time, in which there should be a constant renewal and repetition of the order of nature; and they have therefore asserted that these cycles will ceaselessly recur, one passing away and another coming, though they are not agreed as to whether one permanent world shall pass through all these cycles, or whether the world shall at: fixed intervals die out, and be renewed so as to exhibit a recurrence of the same phenomena—the things which have been, and those which are to be, coinciding. And from this fantastic Vicissitude they exempt not even the immortal soul that has attained wisdom, consigning it to a ceaseless transmigration between delusive blessedness and real misery. For how can that be truly called blessed which has no assurance of being so eternally, and is either in ignorance of the truth and blind to the misery that is approaching, or, Knowing it, is in misery and fear? Or if it passes to bliss and leaves miseries forever, then there happens in time a new thing which time shall not end. Why not then the world also? Why may not man too be a similar thing? So that, by following the straight path of sound doctrine, we escape I know not what circuitous paths, discovered by deceiving and deceived sages.
* City of God, XII, 13-15; trans. Dods.