The Essential Augustine (continued)
y vo 136 THE ESSENTIAL AUGUSTINE"
But why sensible objects give pleasure, and why it is 58. that when we get a better taste of them we love them more strongly, no one who rightly un erstands them will presume to explain. For just as we and al rational souls rightly judge of inferior things by the criterion of truth, so we are judged by that only Truth when we cling to it. But that Truth is not judged even by the Father, for it is not inferior to Him; therefore, what the Father judges, He judges by Truth itself.
PLATO'S VIEW OF GOD*
But, among the disciples of Socrates, Plato was the 4. one who shone with a glory which far excelled that of the others, and who not unjustly eclipsed them all. By birth, an Athenian of honorable parentage, he far surpassed his fellow-disciples in natural endowments, of which he was possessed in a wonderful degree. Yet, deeming himself and the Socratic discipline far from sufficient for bringing philosophy to perfection, he traveled as extensively as he was able, going to every place famed for the cultivation of any science of which he could make himself master. Thus he learned from the Egyptians whatever they held and taught as important; and from Egypt, passing into those parts of Italy which were filled with the fame of the Pythagoreans, he mastered, with the greatest facility, and under the most eminent teachers, all the Italic philosophy which was then in vogue. And, as he had a peculiar love for his master Socrates, he made him the speaker in all his dialogues, putting into his mouth whatever he had learned, either from others, or from the efforts of his own powerful intellect, tempering even his moral disputations with the grace and politeness of the Socratic style. And, as the study of wisdom consists in action and contemplation, so that one part of it may be called active, and the other contemplative—the active part having reference to the conduct of life, that is, to the regulation of morals, and the contemplative part to the investigation into the causes of nature and into pure truth—Socrates is said to have excelled in the active part of that study, while Pythagoras gave more attention to its contemplative part, on which he brought to bear all the force of his great
* City of God, VII, 4; trans. Dods.