CHAPTER II
ANNE FREMANTLE
attributes, not in essence, but in quality or in some relation.
This notion of genus, as we have just described it, errs neither by excess nor by default.* } CHAPTER II St. Augustine
AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY STANDS
St. Augustine, and, in a way, he stands also at its end. For as at the beginning is the bridge he made between Christian and classical ideas, so at the end is the rediscovery, by the Reformers, Martin Luther (1483-1546), Calvin (15091564), Zwingli (1484-1531), of Augustine's own emphasis on "conversation as consisting of two crossed monologues" and of the "fact of thought as an indication of the existence of God." To show how short the step from Augustine's "I think, therefore God is," to René Descartes'
(1596-1650) "I think, therefore I am"—and how long—is one of the purposes of this book.
Augustine was born at Tagaste, in Roman Africa, near Tunis, in A.D. 354 and died as Bishop in Hippo, A.D.
430. His father was a pagan; his mother, Monica, a Christian. Augustine has left a most complete record of his childhood. He describes, in his Confessions, his child's joy in games, and his misery at school. And he analyzes a theft of pears made by him and a bunch of ragamuffin friends. They didn't even eat the pears, they raided the tree at night, just for sheer delight in doing what was forbidden. Whence came their delight was but one of the many questions he asked, and finally answered.
He was a brilliant child, and his parents sent him away from home to high school in Madaura, and later to Carthage. There he fell in love—"it is life that one loves in creatures, to love, and to be loved. And to love and to be
* Porphyry Jsagoge, trans. J. Tricot, Paris, 1926.
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loved was still more to me when I enjoyed the very body of the beloved," he wrote. And there, too, he discovered philosophy. It was the Hortensius of Cicero which showed him another love, the love of wisdom, and at nineteen he already felt the two loves tugging against each other. He became, then, a Manichaean. The founder of this system of thought was Manes, or Mani (?216-?276) a Persian who taught that there were two eternally opposing substances, light and darkness. Man had a possibility, while on earth, of becoming part of the kingdom of light; if he did, then he would transcend his body. If he failed, he would be reincarnated on an even lower plane, as animal and even as insect, forever chained to the earth. This was the Manichaean explanation of the problem of evil. Evil, for the Christian, not being created by God, does not really exist, is not, since all that is, is good. The Manichaeans believed that by eating no meat (which belonged to darkness) but by eating quantities of vegetables (and thus releasing their light into themselves) they would hasten the kingdom of light. Unfortunately, this practice led to many orgies, small children (particularly good conductors of light) being stuffed until they died of windy indigestion. The Manichaeans also condemned marriage and procreation as evil, but allowed fornication, which led to more orgies. Augustine began to see that this dualism, as practiced, had disadvantages. Then, too, he began to find flaws in the Manichaean system. He wrote at this time several books on the beautiful and the suitable, "two or three books, I think," he mentions, but they somehow got lost.
When the Manichaeans held a public disputation and were worsted, Augustine was really shaken. They persuaded him to wait for Faustus, the chief interpreter of Manes' doctrine.
But Faustus could not answer Augustine's questions, and, so, after nine years as a "Hearer," a Manichaean pupil, he left them and went to Rome. Only physically, so far, for he did not openly break with the Manichaeans, and, indeed, after his arrival in Italy owed them his job as professor of Rhetoric in Milan. For the prefect Symmachus, a pagan and a personal opponent of St. Ambrose (the same Symmachus whom Prudentius attacked in his long argumenta-
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tive poem), was delighted to nominate a young man known to be a Manichaean, and therefore anathema to the Christians. (Manes had claimed that he held his authority directly from Jesus Christ, and that the Catholic teaching was a perverted form of Christianity, so, for the Christians,
Manichaeans were a peculiarly nasty type of heretic.) Augustine, therefore, at exactly the time when he lost his
Manichaean convictions, publicly became a Manichaean appointee. Yet not long after in Milan he became a Christian, being baptized by St. Ambrose.
He has described, in some of the greatest prose passages ever written, his mind's journey and what led him to baptism. He pursues truth down the nights and down the days, and mourns everything that ever held him back.
{ Too late loved I Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within, and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee; deformed I, plunging amid those fair forms which Thou hadst made, Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Things held me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not at all. Thou calledst, and shoutedst and burstest my deafness. Thou flashedst, shonest and scatteredst my blindness .
. Thou did touch me, and I burned for Thy peace.* }
FOR AUGUSTINE, HIS CONVERSION WAS THE BEGINNING OF
his life as a philosopher. He had thought a lot before, but written little, and nothing that has remained. Now he was to become one of the most prolific, as well as profound, of philosophers. Many of his books have survived, and perhaps as many have disappeared during the fifteen hundred years which separate him from us. He wrote on a variety of subjects. Some of his books were to refute pagans or heretics, like the Manichaeans, in whose teaching he once
~ had believed. But in all his argumentative treatises, in his theology, history, and in his homilies, in his catechetical instructions and even in his letters, can be found a philosophy. His lovely question "quem colorem habet sapientia?"
* The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans. Edward B. Pusey.
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(tell me, what color has wisdom?) shows how intuitive a philosopher he was. And (although Augustine gratefully admits his debt to Plotinus and to the other neo-Platonists ) his philosophy is specifically Christian: "Not in the selfsame words," he relates, "but to the very same purpose, enforced by many and diverse reasons," he read in "certain books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin, that the Word was with God, and the Word was God. But that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, that I read not there."
Among the problems that constantly recurred to him, as much after his conversion as before, as they had occurred to Aristotle, Plato and Plotinus, and as today they confront
J. P. Sartre, Bertrand Russell, Martin Heidegger, or any other philosopher, alive or dead, were: What are things?
Are they, at all? What is totally outside of time? What only inside of it? How can man's free will coexist with God's providence? The answers were, as has been said, more complicated after Europe became Christian, for thereafter on the authority of divine revelation the full Catholic Faith had a priori to be accepted: the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption, and all their consequences. Philosophy's function thereafter was to apply its method to the exact interpretation of the data of revelation, and to proceed along the runway as far as the wheels of human reason could take the human machine, before it turned into the wind, and was air-borne by faith.
Augustine's ideas on being and nonbeing, on the reality of created things—"they are, and they are not, they are, because from God they derive existence; they are not, because they only have being, they are not being"—are illustrated by the following passages from the Confessions:
{ God made heaven and earth, and fills them, because by filling them he created them. Thee none loseth but who leaveth. And who leaveth Thee, whither goeth or fleeth he, but from Thee well pleased to Thee displeased?
. For wheresoever the soul of man turns itself, unless toward Thee, it is riveted upon sorrows, yea, though it is riveted on things beautiful. And yet they, out of Thee, and out of the
E gl ee ai a ae
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| oF soul, were not, unless they were from Thee. They rise, and set; and by rising, they begin as it were to be; they grow, that they may be perfected; and perfected, they wax old and witner; and all grow not old, but all wither. So then when they rise and tend to be, the more quickly they grow that they may be, so much the more they haste not to be.
This is the law of them. Thus much hast Thou allotted them, because they are portions of things, which exist not all at once, but by passing away and succeeding, they together complete that universe, whereof they are portions.
But in these things is no place of repose; they abide not, they flee; and who can follow them with the senses of the flesh? yea, who can grasp them, when they are hard by? For the sense of the flesh is slow, because it is the sense of the flesh; and thereby is it bounded. It sufficeth for that it was made for; but it sufficeth not to stay things running their course from their appointed starting place to the end appointed. ...
The Word itself calleth thee to return: and there is the place of rest imperturbable, where love is not forsaken, if itself forsaketh not. Behold, these things pass away, that others may replace them, and so this lower universe be completed by all his parts. }
"IF GOD EXISTS, WHAT IS HE?" AUGUSTINE ASKS:
{ What then do I love, when I love my God? who is He above the head of my soul? By my very soul will I ascend to Him. I will pass beyond that power whereby I am united to my body, and fill its whole frame with life. Nor can I by that power find my God; for so horse and mule that have no understanding might find Him; seeing it is the same power, whereby even their bodies live. But another power there is, not that only whereby I animate, but that too whereby I imbue with sense of my flesh, which the Lord hath framed for me: commanding the eye not to hear, and the ear not to see; but the eye, that through it I should see, and the ear, that through it I should hear; and to the other senses severally, what is to each their own peculiar seats
__ and offices; which, being divers, I the one mind, do through
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them enact. I will pass beyond this power of mine also; for this also have the horse, and mule, for they also perceive through the body...
I will pass then beyond this power of my nature also, rising by degrees unto Him Who made me. And I come to the fields and spacious palaces of my memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images, brought into it from things of all sorts perceived by the senses. There is stored up, whatsoever besides we think, either by enlarging or diminishing, or any other way varying those things which the sense hath come to; and whatever else hath been committed and laid up, which forgetfulness hath not yet swallowed up and buried. When I enter there, I require what I will to be brought forth, and something instantly comes; others must be longer sought after, which are fetched, as it were, out of some inner receptacle; others rush out in troops, and while one thing is desired and required, they start forth, as who should say "Is it perchance I?" These
I drive away with the hand of my heart, from the face of my remembrance; until what I wish for be unveiled, and appear in sight, out of its secret place. Other things come up readily, in unbroken order, as they are called for; those in front making way for the following; and as they make way, they are hidden from sight, ready to come when I will.
All which takes place when I repeat a thing by heart...
These things do I within, in that vast court of my memory. For there are present with me, heaven, earth, sea, and whatever I could think on therein, besides what I have forgotten. There also meet I with myself, and recall myself, and when, where, and what I have done, and under what feelings. There be all which I remember, either on my own experience or other's credit. Out of the same store do I myself with the past continually combine fresh and fresh likenesses of things which I have experienced, or, from what I have experienced, have believed: and thence again infer future actions, events and hopes, and all these again I reflect on, as present. "I will do this or that," say I to myself, in that great receptacle of my mind, stored with the images of things so many and so great, "and this or that will follow." "O that this or that might be!" "God avert this
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or that!" So speak I to myself: and when I speak the images of all I speak of are present, out of the same treasury of memory; nor would I speak of any thereof, were the images wanting. ...
Yet not these alone does the unmeasurable capacity of my memory retain. Here also is all, learnt of the liberal sciences and as yet unforgotten; removed as it were to some inner place, which is yet no place: nor are they the images thereof, but the things themselves. For, what is literature, what the art of disputing, how many kinds of questions there be, whatsoever of these I know, in such manner exists in my memory, as that I have not taken in the image, and left out the thing, or that it should have sounded and passed away like a voice fixed on the ear by that impress, whereby it might be recalled, as if it sounded, when it no longer sounded; or as a smell while it passes and evaporates into air affects the sense of smell, whence it conveys into the memory an image of itself, which remembering, we renew; or as meat, which verily in the belly hath now no taste, and yet in the memory still in a manner tasteth; or as any thing which the body by touch perceiveth, and which when removed from us, the memory still conceives. For those things are not transmitted into the memory, but their images only are with an admirable swiftness caught up, and stored as it were in wondrous cabinets, and thence wonderfully by the act of remembering, brought forth...
Wherefore we find, that to learn these things whereof we imbibe not the images by our senses, but perceive within by themselves, without images, as they are, is nothing else, but by conception, to receive, and by marking to take heed that those things which the memory did before contain at random and unarranged, be laid up at hand, as it were in that same memory where before they lay unknown, scattered and neglected, and so readily occur to the mind familiarised to them. And how many things of this kind does my memory bear which have been already found out, and as I said, placed as it were at hand, which we are said to have learned and come to know which were I for some short space of time to cease to call to mind, they are again so buried, and glide back, as it were, into the deeper
THE AGE OF BELIEF
recesses, that they must again, as if new, be thought out thence, for other abode they have none: but they must be drawn together again, that they may be known; that is to say, they must as it were be collected together from their dispersion: whence the word "cogitation" is derived. For cogo (collect) and co-gito (recollect) have the same relation to each other as ago and agito, facio and factito. But the mind hath appropriated to itself this word (cogitation), so that, not what is "collected" anyhow, but what is
"re-collected," i.e., brought together, in the mind, is properly said to be cogitated, or thought upon.
The memory containeth also reasons and laws innumerable of numbers and dimensions, none of which hath any bodily sense impressed; seeing they have neither colour, nor sound, nor taste, nor smell, nor touch. I have heard the sound of the words whereby when discussed they are denoted: but the sounds are other than the things. For the sounds are other in Greek than in Latin; but the things are neither Greek, nor Latin, nor any other language. I have seen the lines of architects, the very finest, like a spider's thread; but those are still different, they are not the images of those lines which the eye of flesh showed me: he knoweth them, whosoever without any conception whatsoever of a body, recognises them within himself.
All these things I remember, and how I learnt them I remember.
. And I perceive that the present discerning of these things is different from remembering that I oftentimes discerned them, when I often thought upon them. I both remember then to have often understood these things; and what I now discern and understand, I lay up in my memory, that hereafter I may remember that I understand it now. So then I remember also to have remembered; as if hereafter I shall call to remembrance, that I have now been able to remember these things, by the force of memory shall I call it to remembrance.
The same memory also contains the affections of my mind, not in the same manner that my mind itself contains them, when it feels them; but far otherwise, according to a power of its own. For without rejoicing I remember myself to have joyed; and without sorrow do I recollect my
ees .
ST. AUGUSTINE
past sorrow. And that I once feared, I review without fear; and without desire call to mind a past desire.
Sometimes, on the contrary, with joy do I remember my fore-past sorrow, and with sorrow, joy. Which is not wonderful, as to the body; for mind is one thing, body another.
If I therefore with joy remember some past pain of body, it is not so wonderful. But now seeing this very memory itself is mind (for when we give a thing in charge, to be kept in memory, we say, "See that you keep it in mind"; and when we forget, we say, "It did not come to my mind," and, "It slipped out of my mind," calling the memory itself the mind); this being so, how is it that when with joy I remember my past sorrow, the mind hath joy, the memory hath sorrow; the mind upon the joyfulness which is in it, is joyful, yet the memory upon the sadness which is in it, is not sad? Does the memory perchance not belong to the mind? Who will say so?
The memory then is, as it were, the belly of the mind, and joy and sadness, like sweet and bitter food; which, when committed to the memory, are as it were, passed into the belly, where they may be stowed, but cannot taste. Ridiculous it is to imagine these to be alike; and yet are they not utterly unlike.
But behold, out of my memory I bring it, when I say there be four perturbations of the mind, desire, joy, fear, sorrow; and whatsoever I can dispute thereon, by dividing each into its subordinate species, and by defining it, in my memory find I what to say, and thence do I bring it: yet am
I not disturbed by any of these perturbations, when by calling them to mind, I remember them; yea, and before I recalled and brought them back, they were there; and therefore could they, by recollection, thence be brought.
Perchance, then, as meat is by chewing the cud brought up out of the belly, so by recollection these out of the memory.
Why then does not the disputer, thus recollecting, taste in the mouth of his musing the sweetness of joy, or the bitterness of sorrow? Is the comparison unlike in this, because not in all respects like? For who would willingly speak thereof, if so oft as we name grief or fear, we should be compelled to be sad or fearful? And yet could we not speak of them, did we not find in our memory, not only the
THE AGE OF BELIEF
sounds of the names according to the images impressed by the senses of the body, but notions of the very things themselves which we never received by any avenue of the body, but which the mind itself perceiving by the experience of its own passions, committed to the memory, or the memory of itself retained, without being committed unto it.
But whether by images or no, who can readily say? Thus, I name a stone, I name the sun, the things themselves not being present to my senses, but their images to my memory.
I name a bodily pain, yet it is not present with me, when nothing aches: yet unless its image were present to my memory, I should not know what to say thereof, nor in discoursing discern pain from pleasure. I name bodily health; being sound in body, the thing itself is present with me; yet, unless its image also were present in my memory,
I could by no means recall what the sound of this name should signify. Nor would the sick, when health were named, recognise what were spoken, unless the same image were by the force of memory retained, although the thing itself were absent from the body. I name numbers whereby we number: and not their images, but themselves are present in my memory. I name the image of the sun, and that image is present in my memory. For I recall not the image of its image, but the image itself is present to me, calling it to mind. I name memory, and I recognise what I name. And where do I recognise it, but in the memory itself? Is it also present to itself by its image, and not by itself?
What, when I name forgetfulness, and withal recognise what I name? whence should I recognise it, did I not remember it? I speak not of the sound of the name, but of the thing which it signifies: which if I had forgotten, I could not recognise what that sound signifies. When then I remember memory, memory itself is, through itself, present with itself: but when I remember forgetfulness, there are present both memory and forgetfulness; memory whereby
I remember, forgetfulness which I remember. But what is forgetfulness, but the privation of memory? How then is it present that I remember it, since when present I cannot remember? But if what we remember we hold it in memory, yet, unless we did remember forgetfulness, we could never
ST. AUGUSTINE
at the hearing of the name recognise the thing thereby signified, then forgetfulness is retained by memory. Present then it is, that we forget not, and being so, we forget. It is to be understood from this that forgetfulness, when we remember it, is not present to the memory by itself, but by its image: because if it were present by itself, it would not cause us to remember, but to forget. }
AUGUSTINE CONCLUDES THAT PAST AND FUTURE ARE ALL
measured, as is the present too, by memory; indeed all reality, including God Himself, lurks there, in man's memory:
{ Thou hast given this honor to my memory, to reside in it; but in what quarter of it Thou residest, that am I considering. For in thinking on Thee, I passed beyond such parts of it as the beasts also have, for I found Thee not there among the images of corporeal things: and I came to those parts to which I committed the affections of my mind, nor found Thee there. And I entered into the very seat of my mind (which it hath in my memory, inasmuch as the mind remembers itself also), neither wert Thou there: for as Thou art not a corporeal image, nor the affection of a living being (as when we rejoice, condole, desire, fear, remember, forget, or the like); so neither art Thou the mind itself; because Thou art the Lord God of the mind; and all these are changed, but Thou remainest unchangeable over all, and yet hast vouchsafed to dwell in my memory, since I learnt Thee. And why seek I now in what place thereof
Thou dwellest, as if there were places therein? Sure I am that in it Thou dwellest, since I have remembered Thee ever since I learnt Thee, and there I find Thee, when I call Thee to remembrance.
Where then did I find Thee, that I might learn Thee? For in my memory Thou wert not, before I learned Thee.
Where then did I find Thee, that I might learn Thee, but in Thee above me? Place there is none; we go backward and forward, and there is no place. Every where, O Truth, dost
Thou give audience to all who ask counsel of Thee, and at once answerest all, though on manifold matters they ask
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Thy counsel. Clearly dost Thou answer, though all do not clearly hear. All consult Thee on what they will, though they hear not always what they will.}
HOW CAN A HUMAN BEING APPREHEND THINGS WITHOUT
using the five senses, without sensory data? This is indeed another problem: how does the human mind know itself?
Here, from his On the Trinity, Augustine tries to make at least one point clear.
{ For the mind cannot love itself, except also it knows itself, for how can it love what it does not know? Or if anybody says that the mind, from either general or special knowledge, believes itself of such a character as it has by experience found others to be, and therefore loves itself, he speaks most foolishly. For whence does a mind know another mind, if it does not know itself? For the mind does not know other's minds and not know itself, as the eye of the body sees other eyes, and does not see itself; for we see bodies through the eyes of the body, and unless we are looking into a mirror, we cannot refract and reflect the rays into themselves which shine forth through those eyes and touch whatever we discern. But whatever is the nature of the power by which we discern through the eyes, certainly, whether it be rays or anything else, we cannot discern with the eyes that power itself, but we inquire into it with the mind, and if possible, understand even this with the mind. As the mind, then, itself gathers the knowledge of corporeal things through the senses of the body, so of incorporeal things through itself. Therefore it knows itself also through itself, since it is incorporeal, for if it does not know itself, it does not love itself.* }
AUGUSTINE'S APPROACH TO WHAT IS TODAY CALLED THE
"space-time continuum," while it owes much to Plotinus (whose little treatise Of Time and Eternity deals with the same problems as Dr. W. T. Stace's book of the same name,
. Augustine, On the Trinity, Book IX, Chap. III from Basic Writings of St. Augustine, ed. Whitney Oates (Random House).
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published in 1952), still has much that is his own. "I heard once from a learned man," Plotinus writes, "that the motions of the sun, moon and stars, constituted time, and I assented not. For why should not the motions of all bodies rather be times? Or, if the lights of heaven should cease, and a potter's wheel run round, should there be no time by which we might measure those whirlings?
. Or, while we were saying this, should we not be speaking in time?"
Time, according to Dr. Einstein, can be treated, for the purposes of physics, as if it were a fourth dimension of a space-time continuum. Augustine says:
{ Present of things past, memory; present of things present, sight; present of things future, expectation. I see three times, and I confess there are three. Let it be said tao,
"there be three times, past, present, and to come": in our incorrect way. ...
I said then even now, we measure times as they pass, in order to be able to say, this time is twice so much as that one; or, this is just so much as that; and so of any other parts of time, which be measurable. Wherefore, as I said, we measure times as they pass. And if any should ask me,
"How knowest thou?" I might answer, "I know, that we do not measure, nor can we measure things that are not; and things past and to come, are not." But time present how do we measure, seeing it hath no space? It is measured while passing, but when it shall have passed, it is not measured; for there will be nothing to be measured. But whence, by what way, and whither passes it while it is a~measuring? whence, but from the future? Which way, but through the present? whither, but into the past? From that therefore, which is not yet, through that, which hath no space, into that, which now is not. Yet what do we measure, if not time in some space? For we do not say, single, and double, and triple, and equal, or any other like way that we speak of time, except of spaces of times. In what space then do we measure time passing? In the future, whence it passeth through? But what is not yet, we measure not. Or in the present, by which it passes? but no space, we do not meas~
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: i
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_ ure: or in the past, to which it passes? But neither do we measure that which now is not.
Does not my soul most truly confess unto Thee, that I do measure times? Do I then measure, O my God, and know not what I measure? I measure the motion of a body in time; and the time itself do I not measure? Or could I indeed measure the motion of a body how long it were, and in how long space it could come from this place to that, without measuring the time in which it is moved? This same time then, how do I measure? do we by a shorter time measure a longer, as by the space of a cubit, the space of a rood? for so indeed we seem by the space of a short syllable, to measure the space of a long syllable, and to say that this is double the other. Thus measure we the spaces of stanzas, by the spaces of the verses, and the spaces of the verses, by the spaces of the feet, and the spaces of the feet, by the spaces of the syllables, and the spaces of long, by the space of short syllables; not measuring by pages (for then we measure spaces, not times); but when we utter the words and they pass by, and we say it is a long stanza, because composed of so many verses; long verses, because consisting of so many feet; long feet, because prolonged by so many syllables; a long syllable because double to a short one. But neither do we this way obtain any certain measure of time; because it may be that a shorter verse, pronounced more fully, may take up more time than a longer, pronounced hurriedly. And so for a verse, a foot, a syllable.
Whence it seemed to me that time is nothing else than protraction; but of what, I know not; and I marvel, if it be not of the mind itself? For what, I beseech Thee, O my
God, do I measure when I say, either indefinitely this is a longer time than that, or definitely, this is double that?
That I measure time, I know; and yet I measure not time to come, for it is not yet; nor present, because it is not protracted by any space; nor past, because it now is not. What then do I measure? Time passing, not past? It is in thee, my mind, that I measure times .
. the impression, which things as they pass cause in thee, remains even when they are gone. This it is, which still present, I measure, not the
ST. AUGUSTINE
things which pass by to make this impression. This I measure, when I measure time
. the past increasing by the diminution of the future, until by the consumption of the future all is past.
But how is that future diminished or consumed, which as yet is not? or how that past increased, which is now no longer, save that in the mind which enacteth this, there be three things done? For it expects, it considers, it remembers; that so that which it expecteth, through that which it considereth, passeth into that which it remembereth. Who therefore denieth, that things to come are not as yet? and yet, there is in the mind an expectation of things to come.
And who denies past things to be now no longer? and yet is there still in the mind a memory of things past. And who denieth the present time hath no space, because it passeth away in a moment? and yet our consideration continueth, through which that which shall be present proceedeth to become absent. It is not then future time that is long, for as yet it is not: but a long future is "a long expectation of the future," nor is it time past, which now is not, that is long; but a long past, is "a long memory of the past."* }
THERE
IS ANOTHER
PHILOSOPHICAL
PROBLEM WHICH exercised Augustine, as it very much exercises people today, and that is, whether we can apprehend meaning without words or signs? whether, as Augustine put it, "certain things can be taught without signs. Things themselves are not learned through words." This question has been tossed to and fro lately by thinkers such as the late A. H. Korzybski, the living Japanese Kagawa, Susanne Langer and I. A.
Richards. The question whether there is a meaning prior to the sign has been discussed too in terms of their own disciplines by men such as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Jacques
Maritain and Sir Herbert Read. Here are some of the things Augustine wrote about the problem:
{ AUGUSTINE: Does it seem to you that anything which may be immediately done when one asks a question about * The Confessions of St. Augustine, (Op. cit.).
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it can be shown without a sign, or do you see some exception?
ADEODATUS
[aged 15—Augustine's son]:
Running through the items of this whole genus time and again, I do not indeed find anything in it which can be taught without some sign, except perhaps speaking and also possibly teaching. For I see that whatever I do after his question in order that he may learn, the questioner does not learn from the thing itself which he desires to have shown him. For if Iam asked what walking is when I am still, or doing something else, and if I, by walking immediately, try to teach without a sign what has been asked—all of which has been discussed earlier—then how shall I avoid having the asker think that walking consists in walking only so far as I walked? And if he did think that he would be misinformed, for if someone walked not so far or farther than I did the questioner would think that this individual had not walked.
And what I have said about this one word will be true of all the others which we thought could be shown without a sign, except the ones we excluded (talking and teaching).
AUG.: I accept that, in truth; but does it not seem to you that speaking is one thing and teaching another?
AD.: Surely it does, for if they were the same, none would teach without speaking, and since we teach many things by means of signs which are not words, who can doubt there is a difference?
AUG.: Are teaching and signifying the same or do they differ in some way?
AD.: I think that they are the same.
AUG.: What if it be said that we teach in order to signify?
Is the assertion not easily refuted by the former statement?
AD.: That is so.
AUG.: If then we signify that we may teach and do not teach in order to signify, teaching is one thing, signifying another.
AD.: That is true, nor did I answer correctly that both are the same.
AUG.: Now tell me if he who teaches what teaching is does it by signifying or in some other way.
AD.: I do not see that there is any other way.
ST. AUGUSTINE
AUG.: Therefore, what you said awhile ago is false, namely, that when someone asks what teaching is the thing itself can be taught without signs, since we see that not even this can be done without signifying. For you have granted that signifying is one thing, teaching another. And if, as it seems, they are different, and teaching is only by means of signifying, then teaching is not shown through itself (per se), as you thought. Consequently, nothing has yet been found which can be shown through itself except speaking which also signifies itself as well as other things. Yet since this is a sign also it is still not entirely clear what things can be taught without the aid of signs.
AD.: I have no reason for disagreeing with you.
AUG.: It has been proved, therefore, that nothing is taught without signs, and that cognition itself should be clearer to us than the signs by means of which we cognize, although all things which are signified cannot be greater than their signs.
AD.: It seems so.
AUG.: Do you recall by what great circumlocutions we at length reached this slight point? For since we began this interchange of words which has occupied us for some time, we have labored to discover the following three points:
1. whether anything can be taught without signs, 2. whether certain signs ought to be preferred to the things which they signify, 3. whether the cognition of things is superior to their signs. But there is a fourth point which I wish to know briefly from you, namely, whether you think that these points are so clear and distinct that you cannot doubt them.
AD.: I wish indeed to have arrived at certainty after such great doubts and complications, but your question disturbs me, although I do not know why, and keeps me from agreeing. ..
AUG.: I commend your hesitation. For it indicates a mind which is cautious and this is the greatest safeguard to equanimity. It is very difficult not to be perturbed when things we consider easily and readily provable are shaken by contrary arguments and, as it were, are wrenched from our hands. ...
But come, let us consider more diligently whether you
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'THE AGE OF BELIEF
think any of the points should be doubted. For consider, if someone unskilled in the art of bird-catching, which is done with reeds and bird-lime, should happen upon a fowler, carrying his instruments as he walked along though not fowling at the time, he would hasten to follow and in wonderment he would reflect and ask himseif, as indeed he might, what the man's equipment meant. Now if the fowler, seeing himself watched, were to exhibit his art, and skillfully employ the reed, and then noting a little bird nearby, if he were to charm, approach, and capture it with his reed and hawk, would the fowler not teach his observer without the use of signification, but rather by means of the thing itself which the observer desired to know?
AD.: I fear this observer of bird-catching is like the man whom I referred to above, who inquires about walking; for it does not seem that in this case the entire art of fowling is exhibited.
AUG.: It is easy to free you from that worry. For I suggest that an observer might be intelligent enough to recognize the whole complexity of the art from what he saw.
It is enough for our purpose if certain men can be taught without signs about some things, if indeed not about all things.
AD.: To that I can add that if the learner be very intelligent he will know what walking is fully when it has been shown by a few steps.
AUG.: That is agreeable. And I not only do not object, but I approve of your statement. For you see that the conclusion has been reached by both of us, namely, that some men can be taught certain things without signs, and that what we thought awhile back is false, that is, that there is nothing at all which can be shown without signs. For now of that sort, not one thing only or another, but thousands of things occur to the mind, which may be shown through themselves when no sign has been given. Why then do we hesitate, I pray you? For passing over the innumerable spectacles of men in every theater where things are shown through themselves without signs, surely the sun and this light bathing and clothing all things, the moon and the other stars, the lands and the seas, and all things
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_ §T. AUGUSTINE
which are generated in them without number, are all exhibited and shown through themselves by God and nature to those who perceive them.
If we consider this more carefully, then perhaps you may find that there is nothing which is learned by means of signs.
For when a sign is given me, if it finds me not knowing of what thing it is a sign, it can teach me nothing, but if it finds me knowing the thing of which it is the sign, what do
I learn from the sign?* }
HOW CAN MAN'S FREE WILL COEXIST WITH GOD'S ALL-
knowing and all-willing Providence? This is a contemporary problem too. Can any man's will be free if there is an omniscient Creator, whose will sustains the worlds and all that in them is? Can there be any free will if there is no.omniscient Creator? For if there is none, then Pavlov is right, who proved all man's actions are reflexes; or Freud, who saw man's will as compelled by unconscious drives, individual in his case, collective, if we believe his erstwhile disciple, C. G. Jung. Or, as Darwin claimed to prove, and the geneticists, as against Lysenko, it is the hereditary factors that condition man. Indeed, the problem of free will is as cogent today as in Augustine's time, and its relation to being has still to be thought through in the light of every new scientific discovery, as in the light of every new philosophic postulate.
Some of Augustine's ideas on this subject follow.
{ And I sought "whence is evil," and sought in an evil way; and saw not the evil in my very search. I set now before the sight of my spirit the whole creation, whatsoever we can see therein (as sea, earth, air, stars, trees, mortal creatures); yea, and whatever in it we do not see, as the firmament of heaven, all angels moreover, and all the spiritual inhabitants thereof. But Thee, O Lord, I imagined on every part environing and penetrating it, though every way infinite: as if there were a sea, everywhere, and on every side, through unmeasured space, one only boundless sea, and it
* Augustine, Concerning the Teacher, trans. George G. Leckie Copyright, 1938, D. Appleton-Century Co., Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publishers, Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.
THE AGE OF BELIEF
contained within it some sponge, huge, but bounded; that sponge must needs, in all its parts, be fi>' from *hit unme*sur7ble sea: so conceived I Thy crea ion, itself finite, full of Thee, the Infinite; and I said, Behol1 God, and behold what God hath created; and God is good, yea, most mightily and incomparably better than all these: but yet He, the Good, created them good; and see how He environeth and fulfils them. Where is evil then, and whence, and how crept it in hither? What is its root, and vhit its seed? Or hath it no being? Why then fe rr we and avoid what is not? Or if we fear it idly, then is tht very fear evil, whereby the soul is thus idly goaded and racked. Yea, and so much a greater evil, as we have nothing to ferr, and yet do fear. Therefore either is that evil whivh we fear, or else evil is, that we fear. Whence is it then? seeing God, the Good, hath created all these things good. He indeed, the greater and chiefest Good, hath created these lesser goods; still both Creator and created, all are good. Whence is evil?
Or, was there some evil matter of which He made, and formed, and ordered it, yet left something in it which He did not convert into good? Why so then? Had He no might to turn and change the whole, so that no evil should remain in it, seeing He is All-mighty? Lastly, why would He make any thing at all of it, and not rather by the same All-mightiness cause it not to be at all? Or, could it then be against His will? Or if it were from eternity, why suffered He it so to be for infinite spaces of times past, and was pleased so long after to make something out of it? Or if He were suddenly pleased now to effect somewhtt, this rather should the All-mighty have effected, that this evil matter should not be, and He alone be, the whole, true, sovereign, and infinite Good. Or if it was not good that He who was good should not also frame and create something that were good, then, that evil matter being taken aw»y and brought to nothing, He might form good matter, wh2reof to create all things. For he should not be All-mighty, if tle might not create something good without the aid of that matter which Himself had not created. These thoughts I revolved in my miserable heart, overcharged with most gnawing cares, lest I should die ere I had found the truth. }
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ST. AUGUSTINE
AUGUSTINE
SAW THAT THIS PROBLEM OF THE COexistence of man's free will and God's omniscience was irrevocably linked with the problem of God's very ex- — istence. And he wrote a whole book On the Free Choice of the Will from which these extracts are taken, to clarify the subject in his own mind. In the following passage he discusses with the Enquirer the possibility of arriving at a certain knowledge of God's existence.
{ E. That one will I plainly acknowledge to be God, than whom it is proved that nothing is superior.
A. That holds well. It will be enough for me then to show that there is some such thing, which you will acknowledge to be God; or, if there is one superior, you will grant that that is God. Wherefore, whether it is higher or whether it is not, when I shall have proved by God's assistance what I promised, that what is above reason exists, it will be proved that God exists.
E. Prove, then, what you are promising.
A. I shall do it: But first I ask whether the sense of my body is the same as yours, or whether my sense is distinctly mine, and your sense your own: which, if it were not so, I would be unable to see through my eyes what you do not see.
E. I grant that completely, though they (the senses) are the same in kind, we yet have each one distinct sense organs of seeing, of hearing, and all the others. For not only can one man see and also hear what another hears not, but someone may perceive by one of the senses what another perceives not. Whence it is evident that your organic sense is your own and my sense is mine.
A. That will be your answer too about that inner sense, or is it otherwise?
E. Nothing other surely. For that sense, mine own, perceives my sense action, yours perceives your own. Therefore am I frequently asked by one who sees something whether I also see it; because I perceive whether I see a thing or see it not, he who asks does not perceive.
A. How about reason—Has not every one of us his own reason? Since it may be that I understand something which
THE AGE OF BELIEF
you understand not; and whether or not I understand you can not know, but I know.
E. It is evident that individually we have each one his own rational mind.
A. Can you say also that individually we have each a sun, a moon, a lightbearing planet, and other such things which we see, though each one sees by his own proper sense organ?
E. I would not say that by any means.
A. We, many, therefore can see some one thing at the same time, while our senses are individually our own, by which simultaneously we perceive what we see all together; so that while my sense is mine, and your sense is your own, it can be that what we see is not, one thing mine, another yours: but that one object may be present to both of us, and may be seen at the same time by both.
E. That is very evident.
A. Come now, take note, and tell me whether anything can be found that all men reasoning see in common, each one by his own reason and his own mind, because that which is seen is present to all; yet is not so changed into the use of those to whom it is present as food and drink are changed, but remains complete and entire, whether they
(present) see it or do not see it: or possibly you think there is no such thing?
E. Even more—I see that there are many (such things), of which it is enough to state one—(that is) the ratio and the truth of numbers. They are present to all who reason, so that every one takes account of them, each one, by his own understanding, endeavors to comprehend; and one may be able to do this easily, another with difficulty, another not at all: while yet it (the truth, the ratio of numbers) holds itself forth equally to all who are able to grasp it. And yet, when any one grasps it, it is not changed nor turned into the nourishment of the one who has perceived.
And when someone goes wrong in the computing of ratios, it (the ratio itself) does not fail, but the computer fails so much the more in error as he sees less perfectly the ratio.
A. Right truly: —But I see that you, not unskilled in these things, have found readily what you would say. If yet
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ST. AUGUSTINE
someone were to say to you that those numbers are impressed on the soul, not from any nature that is their own, but from those things we reach by the organic sense of the body as images of some visible things, what would you say?
Or, would you think that too?
E. Not at all would I so think. For, if I did perceive numbers by a sense of the body, I could not therefore perceive by a sense of the body the ratios also of divisions of numbers and their united sums. By that light of the mind
I refute him, whosoever, by adding or subtracting, has given a wrong answer as his solution.
And whatsoever I touch by a sense of the body as this air and this earth, and any other bodies I there perceive, I know not how long they will endure. But seven and three are ten, not now only, but forever; and by no means at any time have seven and three not been ten; nor at any future time will seven and three not be ten. This inviolable truth of number therefore I have declared to be common to me and to anyone at all who reasons.
A. I oppose nothing to you answering things very true and very certain. But that numbers are not drawn from the senses of the body you see easily if you think how a number is called so many times as it has one—For example, if a number has twice one, it is called two; three times one, three, and, if ten times one, it will be called ten. And any number at all, so many times as it has one, thence has it its name, and by that it is called number.
But whosoever thinks over one accurately finds by consequence that it cannot be perceived by the senses of the body. For whatsoever is perceived by such a sense is proved to be, not one, but many; for it is a body, and therefore has parts innumerable; but in order not to pursue parts minute and too disjointed, however small that corpuscle may be, it surely has one side right, another left, and an upper and a lower, a far side and a near side. It has limits and the limits have a center.
For we must confess that these (dimensions) are inherent in a body how small soever it may be. We grant therefore that no body is truly and simply one. In which yet so many elements could not be enumerated but by a discerning cognition of one.
THE AGE OF BELIEF
When, therefore, I search for one in a body, and I am sure that I find it not there, I know indeed what I search there, and I know that I will not find it there, and that it cannot be found or rather that it does not there exist at all.
When therefore I have known that a body is not one (simple), there I have known what one is. For, if I did not know one, I could not enumerate things plural in a body.
But, wheresoever I have known one, I have not known it surely through a sense organ of the body. Because through a sense (organ) of the body I have known only body, which we prove to be not truly and simply one.
Moreover, if we have not perceived one by a sense organ of the body, we have perceived by that sense no number of those numbers which we discern by intelligence only.
For there is not one of them that is not named so many times as it has counted one, the perception of which (one) is not by the sense of the body.
For the half of any corpuscle consists in two parts which equal the whole. It too has its own half. So, therefore, are these two parts in a body that the two are not unrelated.
But that number which is called two, because it has twice that which is simply one, the half of it, that is, that thing which simply is one, cannot in turn have (be) a half or a third, or any other fraction, because it is a simple, truly one (integral).
Then again, because holding the order of numbers, we see two after one, which is found to be the number added, double one. Double two is not added in the order of sequence, but, the number three being interposed, four follows, which is double two. And through all the other numbers, by a fixed and changeless law this order is held firm. So that after one, that is, after the first of all numbers, the first is that which holds the double of one, that is, two follows one. After two the first is number three, the second number four—double two. After the third, that is, number three, itself excepted, the third is made the double of it
(three): For after the third, that is, after number three, the first is number four, the second number five, the third number six, which is the double of three. So also, after the fourth, the fourth number, itself excepted, is the double of
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ST. AUGUSTINE
AT four. For after the fourth, that is number four, the first is five, the second six, the third seven, the fourth eight, which is double four. And so, through all the other numbers, you will find what is paired in the first two, that is, what is proved in one and two; so that, as many times as any number is removed from the beginning, so many times after it, is its double.
That therefore which we see through all numbers to be immutable, fixed, and inviolate, whence do we see it? No one by any sense of the body reaches all numbers, because they (numbers) are unlimited. Whence therefore have we known, that this is so over all (numbers); or by means of what phantasy or phantasm is the truth so fixed of number over things unnumbered, so confidently seen, but by that light interior, which the corporeal sense knows not?
By these and by many such like arguments are nien forced to acknowledge—man to whom, thinking, God has given mental keenness, and whom stubbornness does not blind—that the ratio and the truth of numbers belong not to the senses of the body: and that they stand unchangeable and genuine; and this is a common truth, a thing to be seen by all those who use reason.
Wherefore, since many other things could be suggested that are present in common, and, in a manner public, to those who use reason, and by them are seen through the mind and reason of every individual discerning, and these things (objective) remain inviolate and changeless—( while this is so)—I yet not unwillingly have taken the fact that this ratio and the truth of number occurred to you in the first place, when you wanted to give an answer to that which I had asked.
However, I ask, what, think you, ought to be the right judgment on wisdom itself? Do you think that individual men have each one his own wisdom, or think you that wisdom is one, common to all, of which whosoever is partaker more completely, by that fact is he also the more wise?
E. I know not what you call wisdom: I see indeed that what is said or done wisely is regarded variously by men:
For they who are engaged in warfare seem to themselves
THE AGE OF BELIEF
to be acting wisely; and they who, disinclined to war, devote care and energy on tilling the soil, praise that more, and attribute it to wisdom; and they who are shrewd in making plans to acquire money seem to themselves to be wise; they again who disregard all these things and put aside all such things temporal and make it their whole study to investigate truth, so that they may know themselves and know
God, judge that this is the important work of wisdom; and they who are unwilling to give themselves to this leisure for the study and contemplating of truth, but rather by laboring and by cares and official duties, work for the welfare of men and engage themselves in the equitable ruling and governing of human conditions think themselves to be wise.
Wherefore, since we are studying this problem between ourselves, so that the answer to be given should not be what we believe, but what we hold by clear understanding, I will be unable to answer what you have asked until I know by contemplating and by a discerning reason that which by believing I hold wisdom to be.
A. Do you think that wisdom is other than truth in which . the highest good is discerned and held?—For all those whom you have enumerated, pursuing different things, seek good and shun evil: but for this reason they follow different ways, that good appears one thing to one, other to another. Whosoever, therefore, seeks what is not to be sought, even though he would not seek it unless it appeared good, is in error. For he is not in error who seeks nothing; nor is he in error who seeks what he ought to seek.
In so far, then, as all men seek a happy life they are not in error. But in so far as anyone holds not the way of life which leads to happiness, while he may say and insist that he aims to reach no other thing but happiness, yet is he in error. For it is error to follow anything that brings us not to that which we have the will to attain. And so far as one errs the more in the way of life so much the less is he wise; because he is so much the more remote from the truth, in which the highest good is discerned and held. But it is by the attaining and the holding of the highest good that
ST. AUGUSTINE
one is made happy, which, beyond controversy, is the aim of us all.
As it is established therefore that we all aim to be happy, so is it proved that we have the will to be wise, because no one is happy but by reason of the highest good, which is discerned and held in that truth which we call wisdom. As, therefore, before we are happy (contented) the notion of happiness is impressed on our minds: (For by that we know assuredly and without hesitation we say that we wish to be happy): So also, before we are wise, knowing, we have the notion of (knowing) impressed on the mind, by reason of which every one of us, if he is asked whether he wants to know, answers, without clouding the issue or doubt, that he does.
If, therefore, it is agreed between us now what wisdom is (knowing), which possibly you could not express in words
(for if in no way you discerned it in mind, you would in no way know that you have the will to know, and that you ought to have this will, which, I think, you will not deny),
I want you to tell me now whether you think that wisdom too (objective knowledge), like the ratio of numbers and truth, exhibits itself to all who use reason; or (because there are as many minds as there are men; and I see nothing of your mind) whether you think therefore that there are as many wisdoms as there are wise men.
E. If the highest good is one for all, it must be that the truth, in which the highest good is discerned and held, that is, wisdom, is one common to all.
A. But have you any doubt that the highest good, whatever that is, is one (the same) for all men?
E. Indeed, I am not sure, for I see different men rejoicing in different things as their highest good.
A. I, then, would have no one in doubt about the highest good just so as no one doubts that man can be happy only by attaining to the highest good. But, because the question is important, and possibly needs a long explanation, let us suppose that the highest goods are as many as are the diverse objects, which by different men are sought as their highest good. Does it then follow that wisdom also is not common to all, because those goods, which men discern
THE AGE OF BELIEF
and which they choose in wisdom, are many and different?
For, if you so think, you may doubt also about the light of the sun, whether it is (physically) one, because the things which we discern by it are many and different. Of which many things each one chooses, according to his own will, what he enjoys through the sense of the eyes. And one looks upon the height of some mountain freely, and he rejoices in that sight; another looks over the level plane of a field, another regards the curving lines of valleys, another the greenness of forests, another the moving level of the sea, another compares all these beautiful things, or some of them at once, for the delight of seeing them.
As therefore these things are many and diverse which men see and choose to enjoy in the light of the sun, the light yet itself is one, in which the sight of each one beholding sees and holds what delights; so too there may be many things good, and also different (aims of life), from which each one may choose what he will, and by seeing it and holding it, fix it as the highest good to be enjoyed by himself rightly and truly; and yet it may be that that light of wisdom, in which these things can be seen, is one, common to all wise men (knowing).
E. I confess, it may be so, and nothing stands in the way; so that there may be one wisdom common to all men, even if the highest aims be many and diverse. But I would like to know whether this is so. For when we grant (in theory) that a thing may be so, we admit not that (actually) it is so.
A. For the present we hold that wisdom is (knowledge, objective truth); but whether it is one common to all, or whether men individually have wisdom, each one his own, as each one has his own soul or his own mind, that we do not yet hold.
E. So it is.
A. Now, that which we do hold, that wisdom (objective truth) is, and that there are men who know, and that all men desire to be happy—where do we see that? For that you do see it, and see it to be true I cannot doubt at all.
This true, therefore do you so see as you see your own thought, which, if you make not known to me, I know not; or do you see, that you understand that this true can be
ST. AUGUSTINE
seen by me also, though (what you understand) is not declared to me by you?
E. Aye, more, so (do I see) that, even independent of my will, I doubt not that it can be seen by you too.
A. That one true objective, therefore, which we both see by our individual minds, is not that same common to each one of us?
E. Evidently it is.
A. Again, I believe that you deny not that we must aim at wisdom (knowledge); also that you grant that to be true.
E. I have no doubt at all.
A. Can we, then, deny that this likewise is true and that it is one; and, for all who know it, to be seen in common, though every individual one beholds it, not by means of my mind or your mind, but by his own mind, while that which is beheld is present in common to all who behold?
E. By no means (can we deny).
A. Again, will you not acknowledge that it is most true that we ought to live justly; that things less excellent are to be subordinate to things more excellent; that like things are to be compared to like; that to every one is to be given what belongs to him (or her or it): and that the evidence of the foregoing is common to me and to you and to all who see it?
E. I am agreed.
A. How then, will you be able to deny that the unspoiled is better than the spoiled; the eternal better than the temporal; the inviolable better than the violable?
E. Who can deny it?
A. Can any man, therefore, say that this true is his own; while it is present immutably to all to be contemplated by all who have the power to contemplate?
E. No one could say truly that it is his own, while it is as much one and common to all as it is true.
A. Wherefore you can in no way deny that there is an immutable truth, containing all those things that are immutably true, which (truth) you cannot say to be your own or mine, nor can you say that it belongs to any man; but that it is present, and in wonderful ways exhibits itself in common as an unseen and universal light to all that discern
THE AGE OF BELIEF
things immutably true. But who would say that all that is present in common to all reasoning and intelligent beings, belongs exclusively to the nature of any one of them?
You remember, surely, I think, what was said just a little time ago about the senses of the body—that those objects which we reach in common by the sense of the eyes and the ears, as are colors and sounds, which you and I see or hear simultaneously, do not belong to the nature of our eyes or our ears, but that they are physical qualities to be perceived by us in common.
So therefore you would not say that those (objective truths) which you and I in common perceive, each one by his own individual mind, pertain to the nature of the mind of either one of us. For you can not say that that which the eyes of two men see at the same time is (identified with) the eyes of one or the other; but it is some third objective, to which the sight of each one is directed.
E. That is very evident and very true.
A. Think you now, therefore, that this truth, about which we are talking much, and in which one soul we examine so many things—think you that it is more excellent than our mind is, or is it equal to our minds (on the same plane);
Or, again, is it less excellent?
But if it were less excellent we would judge, not according to it, but about it, as we judge of bodies (things corporeal), because they are inferior, and generally we say, not only that they are so or not so; but we say how a thing ought to be: So too of our soul, we know, not only that it is so (disposed or affected), but we know how it ought to be disposed.
Of bodies then, we so judge when we say: It is not so bright as it ought to be, or it is not four-squared, and many things in like manner. About souls, however, (we say): It is not apt as it ought to be; it is not gentle or not forceful, as the reason of our morals shall have reported.
All these things we judge according to those inner rules of truth which we discern in common. But upon the rules themselves no one passes judgment. For when one says that eternal things are preferred to things temporal, or seven and three are ten, no one says: so it ought to be; but,