The World's Greatest Books - Volume 9 Part 2

All realism is suppressed as brutal. It is a world which amuses itself with the flattering illusion that it lives above the clouds and breathes mythological air. That is why all vehemence, the cry of Nature, all suffering, thoughtless familiarity, and every frank sign of love shock this delicate medium like a bombsh.e.l.l; they shatter this collective fabric, this palace of clouds, this enchanted architecture, just as shrill c.o.c.kcrow scatters the fairies into hiding. These fine receptions are unconsciously a work of art, a kind of poetry, by which cultivated society reconstructs an idyll that is age-long dead. They are confused memories of the golden age, or aspirations after a harmony which mundane reality has not in it to give.

_Goethe Under the Lash_

I cannot like Goethe: he has little soul. His understanding of love, religion, duty, patriotism, is paltry and even shocking. He lacks an ardent generosity. A central dryness, an ill-cloaked egoism show through his supple and rich talent. True, this selfishness of his at least respects everyone's liberty and applauds all originality; but it helps no one, troubles itself for no one, bears no one's burden; in a word, it lacks charity, the great Christian virtue. To his mind perfection lies in personal n.o.bility, and not in love. His keynote is aesthetic and not moral. He ignores sanct.i.ty, and has never so much as reflected on the terrible problem of evil. He believes in the opportunity of the individual, but neither in liberty nor in responsibility. He is a stranger to the social and political aspirations of the mult.i.tude; he has no more thought for the disinherited, the feeble, the oppressed, than Nature has.

The profound disquiet of our era never touches Goethe; discords do not affect the deaf. Whoso has never heard the voice of conscience, regret and remorse, cannot even guess at the anxiety of those who have two masters, two laws, and belong to two worlds, the world of Nature and the world of Liberty. His choice is already made; his only world is Nature.

But it is far otherwise with humanity. For men hear indeed the prophets of Nature, but they hear also the voice of Religion; the joy of life attracts them, but devotion moves them also; they no longer know whether they hate or adore the crucifix.

_Nothing New Under the Sun_

Jealousy is a terrible thing; it resembles love, but is in every way its contrary; the jealous man desires, not the good of the loved one, but her dependence on him and his triumph over her. Love is the forgetfulness of Self; but jealousy is the most pa.s.sionate form of egoism, the exaltation of the despotic, vain and greedy Self, which cannot forget and subordinate itself. The contrast is complete.

The man of fifty years, contemplating the world, finds in it certainly some new things; but a thousand times more does he find old things furbished up, and plagiarisms and modifications rather than improvements. Almost everything in the world is a copy of a copy, a reflection of a reflection; and any real success or progress is as rare to-day as it has ever been. Let us not complain of it, for only so can the world last. Humanity advances at a very slow pace; that is why history continues. It may be that progress fans the torch to burn away; perhaps progress accelerates death. A society which should change rapidly would only arrive the sooner at its catastrophe. Yes, progress must be the aroma of life, and not its very substance.

To renounce happiness and think only of duty; to enthrone conscience where the heart has been: this willing immolation is a n.o.ble thing. Our nature jibes at it, but the better self will submit to it. To hope for justice is the proof of a sickly sensibility; we ought to be able to do without justice. A virile character consists in just that independence.

Let the world think of us what it will; that is its affair, not ours.

Our business is to act as if our country were grateful, as if the world judged in equity, as if public opinion could see the truth, as if life were just, and as if men were good.

_The Only Art of Peace and Rest_

Few people know of our physical sufferings; our nearest and dearest have no idea of our interviews with the king of terrors. There are thoughts for which there is no confidant, sorrows which may not be shared.

Kindness itself leads us to hide them. One suffers alone; one dies alone; alone one hides away in the little apartment of six boards. But we are not forbidden to open this solitude to our G.o.d. Thus the soliloquy of anguish becomes a dialogue of peace, reluctance becomes docility, suffocation becomes liberty.

Willing what G.o.d wills is the only art of peace and rest. It is strange to go to bed knowing that one may not see to-morrow. I knew it well last night; yet here I am. When one counts the future by hours, and to-night is already the unknown, one gives up everything and just talks with oneself. I return to my mind and to my journal, as the hare returns to its form to die. As long as I can hold pen and have a moment of solitude I will recollect myself before this my echo, and converse with my G.o.d.

Not an examination of conscience, not an act of contrition, not a cry of appeal. Only an Amen of submission ... "My child, give Me your heart."

ST. AUGUSTINE

Confessions

Aurelius Augustine was born at Tagaste, a city of Numidia, on November 13, 354. This greatest of the Latin Christian Fathers was the son of a magistrate named Patricius, who was a pagan till near the close of his life. Augustine was sent to school at Madaura, and next to study at Carthage. His mother, Monica, early became an ardent Christian, and her saintly influence guided the youth towards the light; but entanglement in philosophic doubts constrained him to a.s.sociate with the Manichaeans, and then with the Platonists. His mental struggles lasted eleven years. Going to Rome to teach rhetoric, he was invited to Milan to lecture, and there was attracted by the eloquent preaching of Bishop Ambrose. His whole current of thought was changed, and the two became ardent friends. In 391, Augustine was ordained priest by Valerius, Bishop of Hippo, whose colleague he was appointed in 395. At the age of 41, he was designated Bishop of Hippo, and filled the office for 35 years, pa.s.sing away in his 76th year, on August 28, 430, during the third year of the siege of Hippo by the Vandals under Genseric. His numerous and remarkable works stamp him as one of the world's transcendent intellects. His two monumental treatises are the "Confessions" and "The City of G.o.d."

_I.--Regrets of a Mis-spent Youth_

"Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised." My faith, Lord, should call on Thee, which Thou hast given me by the incarnation of Thy Son, through the ministry of the preacher, Ambrose. How shall I call upon my G.o.d? What room is there within me, wherein my G.o.d can come?

Narrow is the house of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that it may be able to receive Thee. Thou madest us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.

I began, as yet a boy, to pray to Thee, that I might not be beaten at school; but I sinned in disobeying the commands of parents and teachers through love of play, delighting in the pride of victory in my contests.

I loved not study, and hated to be forced to it. Unless forced, I did not learn at all. But no one does well against his will, even though what he does is good. But what was well came to me from Thee, my G.o.d, for Thou hast decreed that every inordinate affection should carry with it its own punishment.

But why did I so much hate the Greek which I was taught as a boy? I do not yet fully know. For the Latin I loved; not what my first masters, but what the so-called grammarians taught me. For those first lessons--reading, writing, and arithmetic--I thought as great a burden and as vexatious as any Greek. But in the other lessons I learned the wanderings of aeneas, forgetful of my own, and wept for the dead Dido because she killed herself for love; while, with dry eyes, I endured my miserable self-dying among these things, far from Thee, my G.o.d, my life.

Why, then, did I hate the Greek cla.s.sics, full of like fictions to those in Virgil? For Homer also curiously wove similar stories, and is most pleasant, yet was disagreeable to my boyish taste. In truth, the difficulty of a foreign tongue dashed as with gall all the sweetness of the Greek fable. For not one word of it did I understand, and to make me learn I was urged vehemently with cruel threats and stripes. Yet I learned with delight the fictions in Latin concerning the wicked doings of Jove and Juno, and for this I was p.r.o.nounced a helpful boy, being applauded above many of my own age and cla.s.s.

I will now call to mind my past uncleanness and the carnal corruptions of my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my G.o.d.

What was it that I delighted in, but to love and to be loved? But I kept not the measure of love of soul to soul, friendship's bright boundary, for I could not discern the brightness of love from the fog of l.u.s.t.

Where was I, and how far was I exiled from the delights of Thy house, in that sixteenth year of my age, when the madness of licence took the rule over me? My friends, meanwhile, took no care by marriage to prevent my fall; their only care was that I should learn to speak excellently, and become a great orator. Now, for that year my studies were intermitted; whilst, after my return from Madaura--a neighbouring city whither I had journeyed to learn grammar and rhetoric--the expenses for a further journey to Carthage were provided for me; and that rather by sacrifice than by the ordinary means of my father, who was but a poor citizen of Tagaste. But yet this same father had no concern how I grew towards Thee; or how chaste I were; or, so that I were but eloquent, how barren I were to Thy culture, O G.o.d.

But while in that my sixteenth year I lived with my parents, the briers of unclean desires grew rank over my head, and there was no hand to root them out. My father rejoiced to see me growing towards manhood, but in my mother's breast Thou hadst already begun Thy temple, whereas my father was as yet but a catechumen, and that but recently. I remember how she, seized with a holy fear and trembling, in private warned me with great anxiety against fornication. These seemed to me womanish advices which I should blush to obey. But they were Thine, and I knew it not. I ran headlong with such blindness that amongst my equals I was ashamed of being less shameless than others when I heard them boast of their wickedness. I would even say I had done what I had not done that I might not seem contemptible exactly in proportion as I was innocent.

_II.--Monica's Prayers and Augustine's Paganism_

To Carthage I came, where there sang in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I denied the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I beclouded its brightness with the h.e.l.l of l.u.s.t.

Stage plays always carried me away, full of images of my miseries and of fuel to my fire. In the theatres I rejoiced with lovers, when they succeeded in their criminal intrigues, imaginary only in the play; and when they lost one another I sorrowed with them. Those studies also which were accounted commendable, led me away, having a view of excelling in the courts of litigation, where I should be the more praised the craftier I became. And now I was the head scholar in the rhetoric school, whereat I swelled with conceit. I learned books of eloquence, wherein I desired to be eminent. In the course of study I fell upon a certain book of Cicero which contains an exhortation to philosophy, and is called "Hortensius." This book changed my disposition, and turned my prayers to Thyself, O Lord. I longed with an incredible ardour for the immortality of wisdom, and began now to arise a wish that I might return to Thee. I resolved then to turn my mind to the Holy Scriptures, to see what they were; but when I turned to them my pride shrank from their humility, disdaining to be one of the little ones.

Therefore, I fell among men proudly doting, exceeding carnal, and great talkers, who served up to me, when hungering after Thee, the Sun and Moon, beautiful works of Thine, but not Thyself. Yet, taking these glittering phantasies to be Thee, I fed thereon, but was not nourished by them, but rather became more empty. I knew not G.o.d to be a Spirit.

Nor knew I that true inward righteousness, which judgeth not according to custom, but out of the most righteous laws of Almighty G.o.d. Under the influence of these Manichaeans I scoffed at Thy holy servants and prophets. And Thou "sentest Thine hand from above," and deliveredst my soul from that profound darkness. My mother, Thy faithful one, wept to Thee for me, for she discerned the death wherein I lay, and Thou heardest her, O Lord. Thou gavest her answers first in visions. There pa.s.sed yet nine years in which I wallowed in the mire of that deep pit and the darkness of error. Thou gavest her meantime another answer by a priest of Thine, a certain bishop brought up in Thy Church, and well studied in books, whom she entreated to converse with me and to refute my errors. He answered that I was as yet unteachable, being puffed up with the novelty of that heresy. "But let him alone awhile," saith he; "only pray to G.o.d for him, he will of himself, by reading, find what that error is, and how great its impiety." He told her how he himself, when a little one, had by his mother been consigned over to the Manichaeans, but had found out how much that sect was to be abhorred, and had, therefore, avoided it. But he a.s.sured her that the child of such tears as hers could not perish. Which answer she took as an oracle from heaven.

Thus, from my nineteenth year to my twenty-eighth we lived, hunting after popular applause and poetic prizes, and secretly following a false religion. In those years I taught rhetoric, and in those years I had conversation with one--not in that which is called lawful marriage--yet with but one, remaining faithful even unto her. Those impostors whom they style astrologers I consulted without scruple. In those years, when I first began to teach rhetoric in my native town, I had made one my friend, only too dear to me from a community of studies and pursuits, of my own age, and, as myself, in the first bloom of youth. I had perverted him also to those superst.i.tions and pernicious fables for which my mother bewailed me. With me he now erred in mind, nor could my soul be happy without him But behold Thou wert close on the steps of Thy fugitives, at once "G.o.d of Vengeance" and Fountain of Mercies, turning us to Thyself by wonderful means. Thou tookest that man out of this life, when he had scarce filled up one whole year of my friendship, sweet to me above all sweetness of that my life. For long, sore sick of a fever, he lay senseless in a death-sweat; so that, his recovery being despaired of, he was baptised in that condition. He was relieved and restored, and I essayed to jest with him, expecting him to do the same, at that baptism which he had received when in the swoon. But he shrank from me as from an enemy, and forbade such language. A few days afterwards he was happily taken from my folly, that with Thee he might be preserved for my comfort. In my absence he was attacked again by the fever, and so died. At this grief my heart was utterly darkened. My native country was a torment, and my father's house a strange unhappiness to me. At length I fled out of the country, for so my eyes missed him less where they were wont to see him. And thus from Tagaste I came to Carthage.

_III.--The Influence of St. Ambrose on Augustine's Life_

I would lay open before my G.o.d that nine and twentieth year of my age.

There had then come to Carthage a certain Bishop of the Manichaeans, Faustus by name, a great snare of the Devil, and many were entangled by him through the smooth lure of his language. Because he had read some of Cicero's orations and a few of Seneca's books, some of the poets, and such volumes of his own sect as were written in good Latin, he acquired a certain seductive eloquence. But it soon became clear that he was ignorant in those arts in which I thought he excelled, and I began to despair of his solving the difficulties which perplexed me. He was sensible of his ignorance in these things, and confessed it, and thus my zeal for the writings of the Manichaeans was blunted. Thus Faustus, to so many a snare of death, had now, neither willing nor witting it, begun to loosen that wherein I was taken. Thou didst deal with me that I should be persuaded to go to Rome and to teach there rather what I was teaching at Carthage, my chief and only reason being that I heard that young men studied there more peacefully, and were kept under a more regular discipline. My mother remained behind weeping and praying. And, behold, at Rome I was received by the scourge of bodily sickness, and I was going down to h.e.l.l, carrying all the sins that I had committed. Thou healdest me of that sickness that I might live for Thee to bestow upon me a better and more abiding health. I began then diligently to teach rhetoric in Rome when, lo! I found other offences committed in that city, to which I had not been exposed in Africa, for, on a sudden, a number of youths plot together to avoid paying their master's salary, and remove to another school. When, therefore, they of Milan had sent to Rome to the prefect of the city, to furnish them with a rhetoric reader for their city, I made application that Symmachus, then prefect of the city, would try me by setting me some subject for oration, and so send me. Thus to Milan I came, to Ambrose the bishop, best known to the whole world as among the best of men, Thy servant. To him I was unknowingly led by Thee, that by him I might knowingly be led to Thee. That man of G.o.d received me as a father, and showed me an episcopal kindness at my coming. Thenceforth I began to love him. I was delighted with his eloquence as he preached to the people, though I took no pains to learn what he taught, but only to hear how he spake.

My mother had now come to me. When I had discovered to her that I was now no longer a Manichaean, though not yet a Catholic Christian, she was not overjoyed as at something unexpected. But she redoubled her prayers and tears for me now that what she had begged of Thee daily with tears was in so great part realised; and she hurried the more eagerly to the church, and hung on the lips of Ambrose, whom she loved as "an angel of G.o.d," because she knew that by him I had been brought to that wavering I was now in. I heard him every Lord's Day expound the word of truth, and was sure that all the knots of the Manichaeans could be unravelled. So I was confounded and converted. Yet I panted after honours, gains, marriage--and in these desires I underwent most bitter crosses.

One day, when I was preparing to recite a panegyric on the Emperor [probably the Emperor Valentinian the Younger], wherein I was to utter many a lie, and, lying, was to be applauded by those who knew I lied, while pa.s.sing through the streets of Milan, I observed a poor beggar joking and joyous. I sighed, and spoke to the friends around me of the many sorrows of the phantoms we pursued--for by all our effort and toil we yet looked to arrive only at the very joyousness whither that beggar had arrived before us. I was racked with cares, but he, by saying "G.o.d bless you!" had got some good wine; I, by talking lies, was hunting after empty praise. Chiefly did I speak of such things with Alypius and Bebridius, of whom Alypius was born in the same town with me, and had studied under me, and loved me. But the whirlpool of Carthaginian habits had, when he lived there, drawn him into follies of the circus. One day as I sat teaching my scholars, he entered and listened attentively, while I by chance had in hand a pa.s.sage which, while I was explaining, suggested to me a simile from the circensian races, not without a jibe at those who were enthralled by that folly. Alpius took it wholly to himself, and he returned no more to the filths of the circensian pastimes in Carthage. But he had gone before me to Rome, and there he was carried away with an incredible eagerness after the shows of gladiators. Him I found at Rome, and he clave to me and went with me to Milan, that he might be with me, and also practise something of the law that he had studied. Bebridius also left Carthage, that with me he might continue the search after truth.

Meantime my sins were being multiplied. Continual effort was made to have me married, chiefly through my mother's pains, that so once married, the health-giving baptism might cleanse me. My concubine being torn from my side as a hindrance to my marriage, my heart, which clave unto her, was torn and wounded; and she returned to Africa, leaving with me my son by her. But, unhappy, I procured another, though no wife.

To Thee be praise, Fountain of Mercies! I was becoming more miserable, and Thou drewest nearer to me in my misery!

_IV.--The Birth of a New Life_

My evil and abominable youth was now dead. I was pa.s.sing into early manhood. Meeting with certain books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin, I therein read, not in the same words, but to the same purpose, that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with G.o.d, and the Word was G.o.d." But that "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" I read not there. That Jesus humbled Himself to the death of the Cross, and was raised from the dead and exalted unto glory, that at His name every knee should bow, I read not there.