The Essential Augustine
When we have answered these it will be clear enough, I think, whether free will was rightly given to man. Wherefore, in order that we may take our start from the most obvious things, I ask you whether you yourself exist, or whether you think you may be under an illusion as to that; although surely if you did not exist you could not possibly have an illusion. E. Go on rather to other matters. A. It is evident, then, that you exist; and since that could not be evident unless you were living, it is also evident that you live. Do you understand that these two things are very true?
. I understand thoroughly.
. Therefore this third thing is evident: you understand.
. It is evident.
. Which of these three do you think is most excellent?
. Understanding.
. Why do you think so?
. Because while there are three things: to exist, to live, to understand; even a stone exists, and a beast lives, yet I maa Ah do not think that a stone lives, or that a beast understands. But he who understands assuredly both exists and lives; wherefore I do not hesitate to judge that one more excellent in which all three are present, than that in which two or one are lacking. For though what lives certainly also exists, it does not follow that it also understands: of such sort, I judge, is the life of a beast. If something exists, moreover, it by no means follows that it lives and understands; for I may acknowledge that a corpse exists, but no one would say that it lives. But if the thing does not live, much less does it understand. A. We see then that of these three, two are wanting to the corpse, one to the beast, and none to man. | E. True. A. We also hold to be most excellent of the three which man has with the two others; namely, understanding, whose possession implies both existence and life. E. Surely.
A, Tell me now, whether you know that you have 8. those everyday bodily senses: seeing and hearing, and smelling, and tasting, and touching? E. I do. A, What do you think pertains to the sense of sight; I mean what do you think we perceive by sight? &. Anything corporeal.
MAN'S SOUL 71 uve you think we also perceive hardness and softness by sight E. No. A. What then properly pertains to the eyes, and is perceived by them? E. Color. A. What to the ears? E. Sound. A. What to smell? E. Odor. A. What to taste? E. Flavor. A. What to touch? E. Softness and hardness, smoothness and roughness, and many such things. A. How about the shapes of bodies: large, small, square, round, and such? Do we not perceive them both by touch and by sight, so that we cannot properly assign them either to touch or sight alone, but only to both? E. That is clear. A. You see then that certain senses have individually their Own proper objects about which they tell us, and that certain others have some objects in common. E. I see that too. A. Now can we by means of any of these senses distinguish what is proper to each sense, and what all or certain senses have in common? E. By no means: we judge that by a sort of interior sense. A, Is that perhaps reason itself, which the beasts have not? For it is by reason, I think, that we grasp these things, and so know that we have senses. E. I think rather that by reason we comprehend that there is a certain interior sense, to which all things are referred by the five ordinary senses. For the sense by which a beast sees is one thing, and that by which it seeks or avoids what it perceives by sight is another; for the first sense is in the eyes, but that other is in the soul itself. By it animals seek and appropriate what they like, and avoid and reject what they do not; not only what they see, but what they hear or perceive by the other senses. Nor can this sense be called sight or hearing or smell or taste or touch, but is something other than presides over all of them together, While we comprehend this by reason, as I have said, we cannot nevertheless call it reason, since the beasts also evidently have it.