The Essential Augustine (continued)
THREE LEVELS OF REALITY 65 immutability of eternity, truth, and will, moves spiritual creation in the course of time, and also moves corporeal creation through both time and place.
EVIL: THE PRIVATION OF THE GOOD*
By the Trinity, thus supremely and equally and un10. changeably good, all things were created; and these are not supremely and equally and unchangeably good, but yet they are good, even taken separately. Taken as a whole, however, they are very good, because their ensemble constitutes the universe in all its wonderful order and beauty.
And in the universe, even that which is called evil, 11. when it is regulated and put in its own place, only enhances our admiration of the good; for we enjoy and -value the good more when we compare it with the evil. For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present—namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshly substance—the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is, privations of the good which we call health—are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else.
All things that exist, therefore, seeing that the Crea12. tor of them all is supremely good, are themselves good. But because they are not, like their Creator, supremely and unchangeably good, their good may be diminished and increased. But for good to be diminished is an evil, although, however much it may be diminished, it is neces-
Enchiridion, 10-12; trans. Dods. sary, if the being is to continue, that some good should remain to constitute the being. For however small or of whatever kind the being may be, the good which makes it being cannot be destroyed without destroying the being itself. An uncorrupted nature is justly held in esteem. But if, still further, it be incorruptible, it is undoubtedly considered of still higher value. When it is corrupted, however, its corruption is an evil, because it is deprived of some sort of good. For if it be deprived of no good, it receives no injury; but it does receive injury, therefore it is deprived of good. Therefore, so long as a being is in process of corruption, there is in it some good of which it is being deprived; and if a part of the being should remain which cannot be corrupted, this will certainly be an incorruptible being, and accordingly the process of corruption will result in the manifestation of this great good. But if it do not cease to be corrupted, neither can it cease to possess good of which corruption may deprive it. But if it should be thoroughly and completely consumed by corruption, there will then be no good left, because there will be no being. Wherefore corruption can consume the good only by consuming the being. Every being, therefore, is a good; a great good, if it can not be corrupted; a little good, if it can: but in any case, only the foolish or ignorant will deny that it is a good. And if it be wholly consumed by corruption, then the corruption itself must cease to exist, as there is no being left in which it can dwell.
IV. MAN'S SOUL
It could be argued that Augustine's greatness as a thinker rests as much on his psychology as on any other facet of his thought. Oddly, his approach to the study of man and his soul is very empirical. Like a modern psychologist or phenomenologist, Augustine usually starts with some concrete fact or event in man's conscious life, describes it, and then asks himself what it means. His remarkable analysis of auditory sensation in the sixth Book On Music deserves to be better known. It begins with the experience of hearing a spoken line of poetry and proceeds to a mathematical interpretation of the various stages in this psychological event. I know of no other such description of an auditory sensation 'in the history of philosophy or psychology. Nearly all similar studies have concentrated on visual or tactile experience.
Augustine's interest in human consciousness stemmed, of course, from his mature conviction that incorporeal activity is much more important than corporeal events. As a very young man, he had found it impossible to think what a spiritual substance might be. The seventh Book of the Confessions tells how he first conceived God as a huge, amorphous mass—like a giant sponge extending throughout the world and beyond it. Platonic philosophy showed him how to think of a real but incorporeal substance, in terms of the dynamic source of activities rather than of that which occupies space. From this point onward, Augustine was convinced that immaterial natures are better than, and more real than, bodies. It is in terms of this background that we should approach his statement (On the Moral Behavior of the Catholic Church, I, 27, 52) that man is "a soul using a body" (anima utens corpore). In much the same context, he defined the human soul as "a rational substance designed to rule the body" (Mage nitude of the Soul, 13, 22). Later, more mature writings (such as The Trinity) will put more stress on the unity of man as a whole, but there is always the impression that he thought of man's soul and body as two substances loosely bound together. Even his last works contrast the basic nature of soul and body. A body is always something extended in three dimensions (The Soul and Its Origin, IV, 21, 35), while soul is by definition, it would seem, unextended.
Functionally, Augustine distinguishes (in the first selection that follows) various degrees of actuality in the existence of the soul. To be, to live, to sense, and to understand form a graded series of more and more noble acts. Even within the area of sense perception, he sets internal sensing above the external function and discusses the ranking of the various external sense functions.
Out of the analysis of hearing (already mentioned) arises a famous general definition of sensation as "a modification of the body which does not, of itself, escape the soul" (passio corporis per seipsam non latens animam; see On the Magnitude of the Soul, 25, 48, and our second selection in this chapter). This means that sense perception is an action of the soul through the body, and in no way a production of anything in consciousness from the activity of bodily things. Briefly, his theory is a one-way interactionism: soul can move body, but no body can produce any modification in any soul. This is one of the few instances of a purely active theory of sensation in Western philosophy.
Augustine's is not a faculty psychology; there are no distinct operative powers in the Augustinian soul. Unfortunately, many scholars have failed to grasp this, particularly those trained in the traditions of Thomism. When Augustine describes the functions of man's soul in terms of memory, understanding, and will (memoria, intelligentia, voluntas), he is not at all thinking of dierent powers. Rather, as he clearly states in our third selection of this chapter, the whole soul is memory, the whole soul is intelligence, and the whole soul is will. This is a trinitarian psychology in which the diversity of functions of remembering, knowing, and willing does not entail any real difference within the nature of the soul. For those familiar with Aristotelian or Scholastic philosophy, the point may be put as follows: Augustine pays little attention to the theory of substance and its accidents; he takes it that the activities of the soul stem directly from its own nature, without any accidental potencies intervening. This is what makes Augustine's psychology an ideal base for his meditations on the divine Trinity.
His ability as a describer of the inner aspects of human Consciousness is nowhere more obvious than in the noted
MAN'S SOUL 69 passage on memory and its contents, printed here from the Confessions. Existentalists and phenomenologists now stress the close examination of the immediate data of consciousness; this has become the favorite starting point for these schools of contemporary philosophy. Augustine's descriptive interiorism is a recognized anticipation of this trend.
Finally, a word should be said on the three types of "vision" represented in our last selection of this chapter, from the Literal Commentary on Genesis. The lowest kind is the seeing of bodies through the medium of corporeal light and by means of the eyes of the body: it is the soul that is seeing, but he calls it corporeal vision. The second type of vision is accomplished by the soul viewing images of bodily things: this is spiritual vision (named from a special meaning of "spirit" which Augustine explains in our selection). Cogitation is the name given to the activity of thinking on this second, imaginative level. On the highest plane of vision, the soul sees intelligible truths without the help of any images: this is intellectual vision. In effect, Augustine is claiming that man is capable of imageless thought. The higher visions do not depend on the inferior ones: we do not have here any suggestion that the meanings seen by intellectual vision are "abstracted" from prior or concomitant 'sensations. On the contrary, intellectual cognition comes from above the soul, not from things below it. It should be added that the soul as will (that is, as active) functions on all three levels of vision. One's attention must be turned to the objects appropriate to each level: this directing of the gaze of the soul is accomplished by volitional effort. I see or hear because I wish to do so. Augustine does not separate cognition, feeling, desiring, loving, and so on, as many other psychologists do. These functions are fused in the unity of human psychic experience.
EXISTENCE, LIFE, SENSE, AND REASON*
Let us then pursue the following order of inquiry: 7s first, how is it manifest that God is; next, whether goods, whatsoever their kind or degree, are from Him; finally, whether free will is to be accounted a good.
On Free Choice, II, 3, 7-8, 10; trans. C.M. Sparrow, St. Augustine on Free Will (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Studies, 1947), pp. 38-43. Used with permission.