The Essential Augustine (continued)
crowded with the deceiving impressions of sensible objects, impressions which arise from the sensible world, are transmitted by the body, and give rise to the most varied beliefs and errors. We must try, therefore, to achieve perfect mental health, that we may attain to the vision of the immutable pattern of things, to the beauty which is always constant with itself and everywhere the same, beauty never distorted by changes of place or time, but standing out one and the same under all circumstances, the beauty whose very existence men discredit, but which in fact has the most true, the highest form of existence. All other things are born, die, pass in constant flux, and slip away—yet, in so far as they exist, they have certainly been produced by that eternal God
- in accordance with His truth. It is given only to the rational and intelligent souls among all these creatures to enjoy the contemplation of his eternal nature, to be moved and adorned by it, and to be able to merit eternal life.
GOD, MUTABLE SPIRITS, AND BODIES*
The highest good, than which there is no higher, 1. is God, and consequently He is unchangeable good, hence truly eternal and truly immortal. All other good things are only from Him, not of Him. For what is of Him, is Himself. And consequently if He alone is unchangeable, all things that He has made, because He has made them out of nothing, are changeable. For He is so omnipotent, that even out of nothing, that is out of what is absolutely nonexistent, He is able to make good things both great and small, both celestial and terrestrial, both spiritual and corporeal. But because He is also just, He has not put those
' things that He has made out of nothing on an equality with that which He begat out of Himself. Because, therefore, no good things whether great or small, through whatever gradations of things, can exist'except from God; but since every nature, so far as it is nature, is good, it follows that no nature can exist save from the most high and true God: because all things even not in the highest degree good, but related to the highest good, and again, because all good things, even those of most recent origin, which are far from the highest good, can have their existence only from the highest good. Therefore every spirit, though subject to
* The Nature of the Good, 1-25; trans. Dods.