The Essential Augustine
ERROR AND IGNORANCE*
For although we ought with the greatest possible care 17. to avoid error, not only in great but even in little things, and although we cannot err except through ignorance, it does not follow that, if a man is ignorant of a thing, he must forthwith fall into error. That is rather the fate of the man who thinks he knows what he does not know.
For he accepts what is false as if it were true, and that is the essence of error. But it is a point of very great importance what the subject is in regard to which a man makes a mistake. For on one and the same subject we rightly prefer an instructed man to an ignorant one, and a man who is not in error to one who is. In the case of different subjects, however—that is, when one man knows one thing, and another a different thing, and when what the former knows is useful, and what the latter knows is not so useful, or is actually hurtful—who would not, in regard to the things the latter knows, prefer the ignorance of the former to the knowledge of the latter? For there are points on which ignorance is
- better than knowledge. And in the same way, it has sometimes been an advantage to depart from the right way—in traveling, however, not in morals. It has happened to myself to take the wrong road where two ways met, so that I did not pass by the place where an armed band of Donatists lay in wait for me. Yet I arrived at the place whither I was bent, though by a roundabout route; and when I heard of the ambush, I congratulated myself on my mistake, arid gave thanks to God for it. Now, who would not rather be the traveler who made a mistake like this, than the highwayman who made no mistake? And hence, perhaps, it is that the prince of poets puts these words into the mouth of a lover in misery: [Virgil, Eclog. 8.41] "How I am undone, how I have been carried away by an evil error!" for there is an error which is good, as it not merely does no harm, but produces some actual advantage. But when we look more closely into the nature of truth, and consider that to err is just to take the false for the true, and the true for the false, or to hold what is certain as uncertain, and what is uncertain as certain, and that error in the soul is hideous and repulsive just in proportion as it appears fair and plausible
Enchiridion, 17; trans. Dods. 41 when we utter it, or assent to it, saying, "Yea, yea; Nay, nay"—surely this life that we live is wretched indeed, if only on this account, that sometimes, in order to preserve it, it is necessary to fall into error. God forbid that such should be that other life, where truth itself is the life of the soul, where no one deceives, and no one is deceived. But here men deceive and are deceived, and they are more to be pitied when they lead others astray than when they are themselves led astray by putting trust in liars. Yet so much does a rational soul shrink from what is false, and so earnestly does it struggle against error, that even those who love to deceive are most unwilling to be deceived. For the liar does not think that he errs, but that he leads another who trusts him into error. And certainly he does not err in regard to the matter about which he lies, if he himself knows the truth; but he is deceived in this, that he thinks his lie does him no harm, whereas every sin is more hurtful to the sinner than to the sinned against.
III. THREE LEVELS
OF REALITY
While Augustine has no metaphysics in the Aristotelian sense of a discipline that transcends the considerations of physics, he does offer a general view of reality that is distinctive and important. All natures are placed on three levels: God is at the top; the human soul stands in the middle; all bodies are on the lowest level. God_is wholly immutable: He can suffer no change, either in time or place. Bodies, on the contrary, are completely mutable: they grow older in time atid are buffeted about in place. Souls are mutable in time but immutable in place. It might be noted that angels, as created and finite spirits, belong on the same level as souls;
that is one reason why Augustine makes angels co-citizens with men, in the two "Cities" which we shall examine in Chapter IX. There are only these three kinds of natures: divine, psychic and corporeal.
As an intermediary nature between the divine and the corporeal, the human soul is initially in a condition of instability, or tension, between what lies below and above. We have noted in Chapter II how man's mental gaze may turn upward or downward. Such "turning" is an affair of will: if man turns his attention up to God, this is conversio (a key source of the idea of religious conversion); but if man turns away from God, it does not matter to what else he turns, this is aversio or perversio. It is not that bodies are morally evil, but simply that Augustine thinks that a person cannot look both ways at once and with equal interest. One is either for God or against Him. Those who judge that temporal, earthly matters are most important are thereby putting God in a position of secondary value. In the long run there will be but two kinds of men: those who love God and those who love something else. This duality will be important in Chapters IX and X. For the present, it is enough to situate.it in terms of the threefold hierarchy of being.
God, on the highest level, dwells in eternity. It is not until the next century that Boethius will coin the standard theological definition of eternity (the total and simultaneous possession of unending life), but Augustine is quite clear on the utter unlikeness of eternity and time. With God are the eternal truths and principles, the rationes aeternae, which are like Platonic Forms residing in God's mind. They are actually the divine Ideax Mutability, change, has no place on this highest level.
On the lowest level, all is subject to change. The created principles of vital changes, growth, reproduction and other biological activities, are certain infinitesimal "seeds" (rationes seminales), created by God in the very texture of matter. Seminal reasons are not bulky seeds, like beans or grains of wheat, but are hidden factors in beans, wheat, etc., which ensure that only beans grow from beans, and wheat from wheat. All such growths and changes take place in time, which is the duration (manentia) characteristic of creatures.
Other than principles of vital change, there would not seem to be any created, natural "forces" in the world of Augustine.
He did not know the four-cause theory of Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics. Causality meant efficient production to Augustine; in a very real serise, all efficacy in the inanimate universe of bodies is directly and immediately supplied by God. (See the section in Chapter V: "God Works Throughout Nature.") Of course, the teaching that divine Ideas are the eternal patterns of all created things is equivalent to a theory of exemplary causality; it is not treated as such by Augustine, however.
In a very important sense, Augustine's geography of being reduces to a two-level system: all natures are either Creator or creature, eternal or temporal, immutable or mutable, and so on. Yet man's soul must be fitted in between, as we have seen; it requires an intermediate sort of nature for its initial location.
All natures, from top to bottom, are good in themselves. Bodies are inferior to souls and infinitely below the divine —yet there is no suggestion in Augustinianism that corporeal things, or matter, are evil. Augustine saw evil as a real occurrence but not as a nature. Each instance of evil is like a wound in being, a lack or privation of some perfection that is expected to be present but is not. This privative explanation of evil should not be misunderstood. Augustine is not saying that evil is nothing, a mere negation, or an unreal abstraction. Few men have been more aware of the terrible importance of evil, both moral and physical. Reacting to
THREE LEVELS OF REALITY 45
Manicheism which tried to assign a positive nature to evil, Augustine stressed the idea that evil is a hole or gap in nature, in order, or in goodness. Like any hole, it is there and one can fall into it and hurt oneself—but there is no stuff that holes are made of, nor are there evil natures.
CREATOR, HUMAN SOUL, BODY*
Now every creature of God is good [1 Tim. 4:4] 2.18. and every man, in so far as he is a man, is a creature—but not by virtue -of the fact that he is a sinner. So, God is the Creator of both human body and soul. Neither of these is evil, nor does God hate either of them: for He hates none of the things that He has made. But the conscious soul (animus) is better than the body; while God, the Maker and Founder of both, is still mrore excellent and He hates nothing in man except sin. Sin for man is a disorder and perversion: that is, a turning away
(aversio) from the most worthy Creator and a turning toward (conversio) the inferior things that He has created,
NATURES ON THREE LEVELSt
As I know you well, I ask you to accept and ponder 2s the following brief sentences on a great theme. There is a nature which is susceptible of change with respect to both place and time, namely, the corporeal. There is another nature which is in no way susceptible of change with respect to place, but only with respect to time, namely, the spiritual. And there is a third Nature which can be changed neither in respect to place nor in respect to time: that is, God. Those natures of which I have said that they are mutable in some respect are called creatures; the Nature which is immutable is called Creator. Seeing, however, that we affirm the existence of anything only in so far as it continues and is one (in consequence of which, unity is the condition essential to beauty in every form), you cannot fail to distinguish, in this classification of natures, which exists in the highest possible manner, and which occupies the low-
Questions for Simplicianus, I, 2.18; trans. V.J.B. } Letter 18, to Coelestinus; trans. Dods.