The Essential Augustine
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS LIFE 159 they will even be praiseworthy. In fact, the will is present in all feelings; indeed, they are all nothing but movements of will. For what are cupidity and joy but the will tending to consent to the objects that we do will? What are fear and sorrow but the will tending to dissent from the objects that we volitionally reject? And when we consent by inclining toward the objects that we will, that is cupidity; when we consent by taking pleasure in the objects that we will, then that is called joy. Similarly, when we dissent from something that has happened against our will, such a will-act is sorrow. In general then, depending on the diversity of things that are desired or rejected, as a man's will is attracted or repelled, so is it changed or diverted into one or the other of these emotions. That is why the man who lives according to God and not according to man should be a lover of the good, and consequently he should hate the evil. Moreover, since no person is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is so because of a fault, he who lives according to God owes a perfect hatred to evil men: not that he should hate the man on account of his fault, nor love the fault because of the man, but he should hate the fault and love the man. For, when the fault is repaired, there will remain something that should be wholly loved and in no way hated.
..-. And so, right will is a good love and perverse 7h will is evil love. Love, then, that yearns to possess what is loved is cupidity, and when it takes pleasure in its possession, that is joy; when it tries to avoid what is opposed to it, that is fear, and when it suffers the occurrence of such opposition, that is sorrow. Hence, these feelings are evil if the love is evil; they are good if it is good.
MORAL EVIL STEMS FROM BAD WILL*
If the further question be asked, What was the ef6. ficient cause of their evil will? there is none. For what is it which makes the will bad, when it is the will itself which makes the action bad? And consequently the bad will is the cause of the bad action, but nothing is the efficient cause of the bad will. For if anything is the cause,
* City of God, XII, 6; trans. Dods.
this thing either has or has not a will. If it has, the will is either good or bad. If good, who is so left to himself as to say that a good will makes a will bad? For in this case a good will would be the cause of sin; a most absurd supposition. On the other hand, if this hypothetical thing has a bad will, I wish to know what made it so; and that we may not go on forever, I ask at once, what made the first evil will bad? For that is not the first which was itself corrupted by an evil will, but that is the first which was made evil by no other will. For if it were preceded by that which made it evil, that will was first which made the other evil. But if it is replied,
"Nothing made it evil; it always was evil," I ask if it has been existing in some nature. For if not, then it did not exist at all; and if it did exist in some nature, then it vitiated and corrupted it, and injured it, and consequently deprived it of good. And therefore the evil will could not exist in an evil nature, but in a nature at once good and mutable, which this vice could injure. For if it did no injury, it was no vice; and consequently the will in which it was, could not be called evil. But if it did injury, it did it by taking away or diminishing good. And therefore there could not be from eternity, as was suggested, an evil will in that thing in which there had been previously a natural good, which the evil will was able to diminish by corrupting it. If, then, it was not from eternity, who, I ask, made it? The only thing that can be suggested in reply is that something which itself had no will, made the will evil. I ask, then, whether this thing was superior, inferior, or equal to it? If, superior, then it is better. How, then, has it no will, and not rather a good will? The same reasoning applies if it was equal; for so long as two things have equally a good will, the one cannot produce in the other an evil will. Then remains the supposition that that which corrupted the will of the angelic nature which first sinned, was itself an inferior thing without a will. But that thing, be it of the lowest and most earthly kind, is certainly itself good, since it is a nature and being, with a form and rank of its own in its own kind and order. How, then, can a good thing be the efficient cause of an evil will? How, I say, can good be the cause of evil? For when the will abandons what is above itself, and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil—not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked. Therefore it is not an inferior thing which has made the will evil, but it is itself which has become so by wickedly and inordinately desiring an inferior thing.