Chapter II: Part 2

_S. Augustine._ I feel there is still something you would like to urge, even now. Do, please, confess it, no matter what it may be.

_Petrarch._ Nothing, only that I am much amazed I to think I should never yet have wished what I have believed I always wished.

_S. Augustine._ You still stick at that point. O well, to put an end to this kind of talk I will agree that you have wished sometimes.

_Petrarch._ What then?

_S. Augustine._ Do you not remember the phrase of Ovid--

"To wish for what you want is not enough;
With ardent longing you must strive for it."[6]

_Petrarch._ I understand, but thought that was just what I had been doing.

_S. Augustine._ You were mistaken.

_Petrarch._ Well, I will believe so.

_S. Augustine._ To make your belief certain, examine your own conscience. Conscience is the best judge of virtue. It is a guide, true and unerring, that weighs every thought and deed. It will tell you that you have never longed for spiritual health as you ought, but that, considering what great dangers beset you, your wishes were but feeble and ineffective.

_Petrarch._ I have been examining my conscience, as you suggested.

_S. Augustine._ What do you find?

_Petrarch._ That what you say is true.

_S. Augustine._ We have made a little progress, if you are beginning to be awake. It will soon be better with you now you acknowledge it was not well hitherto.

_Petrarch._ If it is enough to acknowledge, I hope to be able to be not only well but quite well, for never have I understood more clearly that my wishes for liberty and for an end to my misery have been too lukewarm. But can it be enough to desire only?

_S. Augustine._ Why do you ask?

_Petrarch._ I mean, to desire without doing anything.

_S. Augustine._ What you propose is an impossibility. No one desires ardently and goes to sleep.

_Petrarch._ Of what use is desire, then?

_S. Augustine._ Doubtless the path leads through many difficulties, but the desire of virtue is itself a great part of virtue.

_Petrarch._ There you give me ground for good hope.

_S. Augustine._ All my discourse is just to teach you how to hope and to fear.

_Petrarch._ Why to fear?

_S. Augustine._ Then tell me why to hope?

_Petrarch._ Because whereas so far I have striven, and with much tribulation, merely not to become worse, you now open a way to me whereby I may become better and better, even to perfection.

_S. Augustine._ But maybe you do not think how toilsome that way is.

_Petrarch._ Have you some now terror in store for me?

_S. Augustine._ To desire is but one word, but how many things go to make it up!

_Petrarch._ Your words make me tremble.

_S. Augustine._ Not to mention the positive elements in desire, it involves the destruction of many other objects.

_Petrarch._ I do not quite take in your meaning.

_S. Augustine._ The desire of all good cannot exist without thrusting out every lower wish. You know how many different objects one longs for in life. All these you must first learn to count as nothing before you can rise to the desire for the chief good; which a man loves less when along with it he loves something else that does not minister to it.

_Petrarch_. I recognise the thought.

_S. Augustine_. How many men are there who have extinguished all their passions, or, not to speak of extinguishing, tell me how many are there who have subdued their spirit to the control of Reason, and will dare to say, "I have no more in common with my body; all that once seemed so pleasing to me is become poor in my sight. I aspire now to joys of nobler nature"?

_Petrarch_. Such men are rare indeed. And now I understand what those difficulties are with which you threatened me.

_S. Augustine_. When all these passions are extinguished, then, and not till then, will desire be full and free. For when the soul is uplifted on one side to heaven by its own nobility, and on the other dragged down to earth by the weight of the flesh and the seductions of the world, so that it both desires to rise and also to sink at one and the same time, then, drawn contrary ways, you find you arrive nowhither.

_Petrarch._ What, then, would you say a man must do for his soul to break the fetters of the world, and mount up perfect and entire to the realms above?

_S. Augustine._ What leads to this goal is, as I said in the first instance, the practice of meditation on death and the perpetual recollection of our mortal nature.

_Petrarch._ Unless I am deceived, there is no man alive who is more often revolving this thought in his heart than I.

_S. Augustine._ Ah, here is another delusion, a fresh obstacle in your way!

_Petrarch._ What! Do you mean to say I am once more lying?

_Augustine._ I would sooner hear you use more civil language.

_Petrarch._ But to say the same thing?

_S. Augustine._ Yes, to say nothing else.

_Petrarch._ So then you mean I care nothing at all about death?

_S. Augustine._ To tell the truth you think very seldom of it, and in so feeble a way that your thought never touches the root of your trouble.

_Petrarch._ I supposed just the opposite.

_S. Augustine._ I am not concerned with what you suppose, but with what you ought to suppose.

_Petrarch._ Well, I may tell you that in spite of that I will suppose it no more, if you prove to me that my supposition was a false one.

_S. Augustine._ That I will do easily enough, provided you are willing to admit the truth in good faith. For this end I will call in a witness who is not far away.

_Petrarch_. And who may that be, pray?

_S. Augustine._ Your conscience.

_Petrarch_. She testifies just the contrary.

_S. Augustine._ When you make an obscure, confused demand no witness can give precise or clear answers.

_Petrarch._ What has that to do with the subject, I would like to know?

_S. Augustine._ Much, every way. To see dearly, listen well. No man is so senseless (unless he be altogether out of his mind) as never once to remember his own weak nature, or who, if asked the question whether he were mortal and dwelt in a frail body, would not answer that he was. The pains of the body, the onsets of fever, attest the fact; and whom has the favour of Heaven made exempt? Moreover, your friends are carried out to their burial before your eyes; and this fills the soul with dread. When one goes to the graveside of some friend of one's own age one is forced to tremble at another's fall and to begin feeling uneasy for oneself; just as when you see your neighbour's roof on fire, you cannot fool quite happy for your own, because, as Horace puts it--

"On your own head you see the stroke will fall."[7]

The impression will be more strong in case you see some sudden death carry off one younger, more vigorous, finer looking than yourself. In such an event a man will say, "This one seemed to live secure, and yet he is snatched off. His youth, his beauty, his strength have brought him no help. What God or what magician has promised me any surer warrant of security? Verily, I too am mortal."

When the like fate befalls kings and rulers of the earth, people of great might and such as are regarded with awe, those who see it are struck with more dread, are more shaken with alarm; they are amazed when they behold a sudden terror, or perchance hours of intense agony seize on one who was wont to strike terror into others. From what other cause proceed the doings of people who seem beside themselves upon the death of men in highest place, such as, to take an instance from history, the many things of this kind that, as you have related, were done at the funeral of Julius Cæsar? A public spectacle like this strikes the attention and touches the heart of mortal men; and what then they see in the case of another is brought home as pertaining also to themselves. Beside all these, are there not the rage of savage boasts, and of men, and the furious madness of war? Are there not the falls of those great buildings which, as some one neatly says, are first the safeguards, then the sepulchres of men? Are there not malignant motions of the air beneath some evil star and pestilential sky? And so many perils on sea and land that, look wheresoever you will, you cannot turn your gaze anywhither but you will meet the visible image and memento of your own mortality.

_Petrarch_. I beg your pardon, but I cannot wait any longer, for, as for having my reason fortified, I do not think any more powerful aid can be brought than the many arguments you have adduced. As I listened I wondered what end you were aiming at, and when your discourse would finish.

_S. Augustine._ As a matter of fact, you have interrupted me, and it has not yet reached its end. However, here is the conclusion--although a host of little pin-pricks play upon the surface of your mind, nothing yet has penetrated the centre. The miserable heart is hardened by long habit, and becomes like some indurated stone; impervious to warnings, however salutary, you will find few people considering with any seriousness the fact that they will die.

_Petrarch_. Then few people are aware of the very definition of man, which nevertheless is so hackneyed in the schools, that it ought not merely to weary the ears of those who hear it, but is now long since scrawled upon the walls and pillars of every room. This prattling of the Dialecticians will never come to an end; it throws up summaries and definitions like bubbles, matter indeed for endless controversies, but for the most part they know nothing of the real truth of the things they talk about. So, if you ask one of this set of men for a definition of a man or of anything else, they have their answer quite pat, as the saying goes; if you press him further, he will lie low, or if by sheer practice in arguing he has acquired a certain boldness and power of speech, the very tone of the man will tell you he possesses no real knowledge of the thing he sets out to define. The best way of dealing with this brood, with their studied air of carelessness and empty curiosity, is to launch at their head some such invective as this, "You wretched creatures, why this everlasting labour for nothing; this expense of wit on silly subtleties? Why in total oblivion of the real basis of things will you grow old simply conversant with words, and with whitening hair and wrinkled brow, spend all your time in babyish babble? Heaven grant that your foolishness hurt no one but yourselves, and do as little harm as possible to the excellent minds and capacities of the young."

_S. Augustine._ I agree that nothing half severe enough can be said of this monstrous perversion of learning. But let me remind you that your zeal of denunciation has so carried you away that you have omitted to finish your definition of man.

_Petrarch_. I thought I had explained sufficiently, but I will be more explicit still. Man is an animal, or rather the chief of all animals. The veriest rustic knows that much. Every schoolboy could tell you also, if you asked him, that man is, moreover, a rational animal and that he is mortal. This definition, then, is a matter of common knowledge.

_S. Augustine._ No, it is not. Those who are acquainted with it are very few in number.

_Petrarch._ How so?

_S. Augustine._ When you can find a man so governed by Reason that all his conduct is regulated by her, all his appetites subject to her alone, a man who has so mastered every motion of his spirit by Reason's curb that he knows it is she alone who distinguishes him from the savagery of the brute, and that it is only by submission to her guidance that he deserves the name of man at all; when you have found one so convinced of his own mortality as to have that always before his eyes, always to be ruling himself by it, and holding perishable things in such light esteem that he ever sighs after that life, which Reason always foresaw, wherein mortality shall be cast away; when you have found such a man, then you may say that he has some true and fruitful idea of what the definition of man is. This definition, of which we were speaking, I said it was given to few men to know, and to reflect upon as the nature of the truth requires.

_Petrarch._ Hitherto I had believed I was of that number.

_S. Augustine_. I have no doubt that when you turn over in your mind the many things you have learned, whether in the school of experience or in your reading of books, the thought of death has several times entered your head. But still it has not sunk down into your heart as deeply as it ought, nor is it lodged there as firmly as it should be.

_Petrarch_. What do you call sinking down into my heart? Though I think I understand, I would like you to explain more clearly.

_S. Augustine._ This is what I mean. Every one knows, and the greatest philosophers are of the same opinion, that of all tremendous realities Death is the most tremendous. So true is this, that from ever of old its very name is terrible and dreadful to hear. Yet though so it is, it will not do that we hear that name but lightly, or allow the remembrance of it to slip quickly from our mind. No, we must take time to realise it. We must meditate with attention thereon. We must picture to ourselves the effect of death on each several part of our bodily frame, the cold extremities, the breast in the sweat of fever, the side throbbing with pain, the vital spirits running slower and slower as death draws near, the eyes sunken and weeping, every look filled with tears, the forehead pale and drawn, the cheeks hanging and hollow, the teeth staring and discoloured, the nostrils shrunk and sharpened, the lips foaming, the tongue foul and motionless, the palate parched and dry, the languid head and panting breast, the hoarse murmur and sorrowful sigh, the evil smell of the whole body, the horror of seeing the face utterly unlike itself--all these things will come to mind and, so to speak, be ready to one's hand, if one recalls what one has seen in any close observation of some deathbed where it has fallen to our lot to attend. For things seen cling closer to our remembrance than things heard.

And, moreover, it is not without a profound instinct of wisdom that in certain Religious Orders, of the stricter kind, the custom has survived, even down to our own time (though I do not think it makes for good character altogether), of allowing the members to watch the bodies of the dead being washed and put in shrouds for their burial; while the stern professors of the Rule stand by, in order that this sad and pitiful spectacle, thrust forsooth beneath their very eyes, may admonish their remembrance continually, and affright the minds of those who survive from every hope of this transitory world.

This, then, is what I meant by sinking down deeply into the soul. Perchance you never name the name of Death, that so you may fall in with the custom of the time, although nothing is more certain than the fact or more uncertain than the hour. Yet in daily converse you must often speak of things connected with it, only they soon fly out of mind and leave no trace.

_Petrarch._ I follow your counsel the more readily because now I recognise much in your words that I have myself revolved in my own breast. But please, if you think it well, will you impress some mark on my memory which will act as a warning to me and prevent me from this time henceforth from telling lies to myself and fondling my own mistakes. For this, it seems to me, is what turns men from the right way, that they dream they have already reached the goal, and make therefore no effort any more.

_S. Augustine._ I like to hear you speak so. Your words are those of a man alert and watchful, who will not bear to be idle and trust to chance. So here is a test which will never play you false: every time you meditate on death without the least sign of motion, know that you have meditated in vain, as about any ordinary topic. But if in the act of meditation you find yourself suddenly grow stiff, if you tremble, turn pale, and feel as if already you endured its pains; if at the same time you seem to yourself as if you were leaving your body behind, and were forced to render up your account before the bar of eternal judgment, of all the words and deeds of your past life, nothing omitted or passed over; that nothing any more is to be hoped for from good looks or worldly position, nothing from eloquence, or riches, or power: if you realise that this Judge takes no bribe and that all things are naked and open in His sight; that death itself will not turn aside for any plea; that it is not the end of sufferings, but only a passage: if you picture to yourself a thousand forms of punishment and pain, the noise and wailing of Hell, the sulphurous rivers, the thick darkness, and avenging Furies,--in a word, the fierce malignity everywhere of that dark abode; and, what is the climax of its horror, that the misery knows no end, and despair thereof itself is everlasting, since the time of God's mercy is passed by; if, I say, all these things rise up before your eyes at once, not as fictions but as truth, not as being possible, but inevitable, and of a surety bound to come, yes, and even now at the door; and if you think on these things, not lightly, nor with desperation, but full of hope in God, and that His strong right hand is able and ready to pluck you out of so great calamities; if you but show yourself willing to be healed and wishful to be raised up; if you cleave to your purpose and persist in your endeavour, then you may be assured you have not meditated in vain.

_Petrarch_. I will not deny you have terrified me greatly by putting so huge a mass of suffering before my eyes. But may God give me such plenteous mercy as that I may steep my thought in meditations like these; not only day by day, but more especially at night, when the mind, with all its daily interests laid aside, relaxes and is wont to return upon itself. When I lay my body down, as those who die, and my shrinking mind imagines the hour itself with all its horrors is at hand: so intently do I conceive it all, as though I were in the very agony of dying, that I shall seem to be already in the place of torment, beholding what you speak of and every kind of anguish. And so stricken shall I be at that sight, so terrified and affrighted, that I shall rise up (I know it) before my horrified household and cry aloud, "What am I doing? What suffering is this? For what miserable destruction is Fate keeping me alive? Jesu, by Thy mercy,

"Thou whom none yet hath conquered, succour me,"[8]

"Give Thy right hand to me in misery
Through the dark waves, O bear me up with Thee,
That dying I may rest and be in peace."[9]

Many other things shall I say to myself, as one in a fever whose mind every chance impression carries hither and thither in his fear; and then I go talking strangely to my friends, weeping and making them weep, and then presently after this we shall return to what we were before. And since these things are so, what is it, I ask, which holds me back? What little hidden obstacle is there which makes it come to pass that hitherto all these meditations avail nothing but to bring me troubles and terrors: and I continue the same man that I have ever been; the same, it may be, as men to whom no reflections like these have ever come? Yet am I more miserable than they, for they, whatever may be their latter end, enjoy at least the pleasures of the present time; but as for me, I know not either what my end will be, and I taste no pleasure that is not poisoned with these embittering thoughts.

_S. Augustine._ Vex not yourself, I pray you, when you ought rather to rejoice. The more the sinner feels pleasure in his sin, the more unhappy should we think him and the more in need of pity.

_Petrarch._ I suppose you mean that a man whose pleasures are uninterrupted comes to forget himself, and is never led back into virtue's path; but that he who amid his carnal delights is sometime visited with adversity will come to the recollection of his true condition just in proportion as he finds fickle and wayward Pleasure desert him.

If both kind of life had one and the same end, I do not see why he should not be counted the happier who enjoys the present time and puts off affliction to another day, rather than the man who neither enjoys the present nor looks for any joy hereafter; unless you are perhaps moved by this consideration that in the end the laughter of the former will be changed to more bitter tears?

_S. Augustine._ Yes, much more bitter. For I have often noticed that if a man throws away the rein of reason altogether (and in the most excessive pleasure of all this is commonly the case), his fall is more dangerous than that of the man who may come rushing down from the same height, but keeps still some hold, though feebly, on the reins. But before all else I attach importance to what you said before, that in the case of the one there is some hope of his conversion, but in that of the other nothing remains but despair.

_Petrarch._ Yes, that is my view also; in the meanwhile, however, have you not forgotten my first question?

_S. Augustine._ What was it?

_Petrarch_. Concerning what keeps me back. I asked you why I am the only one to whom the profound meditation on Death, that you said was so full of benefit, brings no good whatever.

_S. Augustine._ In the first place it is perhaps because you look on death as something remote, whereas when one thinks how very short life is and how many divers kinds of accidents befall it, you ought not to think death is far away. "What deludes almost all of us," as Cicero says, "is that we regard death from afar off." Some correctors--I would prefer to call them corruptors--of the text have wished to change the reading by inserting a negative before the verb, and have maintained that he ought to have said, "We do NOT regard death from afar off." For the rest, there is no one in his senses who does not see death one way or another, and in reality Cicero's word _prospicere_ means to see from afar. The one thing that makes so many people suffer illusion in their ideas on death is that they are wont to forecast for their own life some limit, which is indeed possible according to nature, but at which, nevertheless, very few arrive. Hardly any one, in fact, dies of whom the poet's line might not be quoted--

"Grey hairs and length of years he for himself
Expected."[10]

The fault may touch you nearly, for your age, your vigorous constitution and temperate way of life perchance have fostered a like hope in your heart.

_Petrarch._ Please do not suspect that of me. God keep me from such madness--

"As in that monster false to put my trust!"[11]

If I may borrow the words Virgil puts in the mouth of his famous pilot Palinurus. For I too am cast upon a wide ocean, cruel and full of storms. I sail across its angry waves and struggle with the wind; and the little boat I steer shivers and seems to be letting in the water in every part. I know well she cannot hold out for long, and I see I have no hope at all of safety unless the Almighty Pity put forth His strong right hand and guide my vessel rightly ere it be too late, and bring me to shore--

"So that I who have lived upon the waters may die
in port."[12]

Of this I think I should have a good hope, because it has never been my lot to put any confidence in those riches and power on which I see so many of my contemporaries, yes, and older men as well, relying. For what folly would it be to pass all one's life in toil and poverty and care, heaping up riches, just to die at last and have no time to enjoy them? So, then, in truth, I regard this dark shadow of death, not as something afar off, but very nigh and ever at the doors. And I have not forgotten a certain little verse I wrote in my youth at the end of a letter to a friend--

"E'en while we speak, along a thousand ways
With stealthy steps up to our very door
Death creeps."

If I could say words like these at that time of life, what shall I say now that I am more advanced in age and more experienced in what life is? For everything I see or hear or feel or think seems, unless I deceive myself, connected in my mind with that last end. And yet the question still remains, what is it that holds me back?

_S. Augustine._ Give humble thanks to God who so regards you and guides you with his merciful rein, and so pricks you with his spur. It is not surely possible, that he who thus has the thought of death before him day by day should ever be doomed to death eternal.

But since you feel, and rightly so, that something still is wanting, I will try and unfold to you what it is, and, if God so please, remove it also; to the end that you may arise and with free, uplifted mind shake off that old bondage that so long has kept you down.

_Petrarch_. O would that indeed you may prove able so to help me, and I on my part be capable of receiving such a boon!

_S. Augustine._ It shall be yours if you wish. The thing is not impossible. But in the nature of man's actions two things are required, and if either be wanting, the action will come to nought. There must be will, and that will must be so strong and earnest that it can deserve the name of purpose.

_Petrarch._ So let it be.

_S. Augustine_. Do you know what stands in the way of your purpose of heart?

_Petrarch._ That is what I want to know; what for so long I have earnestly desired to understand.

_S. Augustine_. Then listen. It was from Heaven your soul came forth: never will I assert a lower origin than that. But in its contact with the flesh, wherein it is imprisoned, it has lost much of its first splendour. Have no doubt of this in your mind. And not only is it so, but by reason of the length of time it has in a manner fallen asleep; and, if one may so express it, forgotten its own beginning and its heavenly Creator.

And these passions that are born in the soul through its connection with the body, and that forgetfulness of its nobler nature, seem to me to have been touched by Virgil with pen almost inspired when he writes--

"The souls of men still shine with heavenly fire,
That tells from whence they come, save that the flesh
And limbs of earth breed dullness, hence spring fears,
Desire, and grief and pleasures of the world,
And so, in darkness prisoned, they no more
Look upward to heaven's face."[13]

Do you not in the poet's words discern that monster with four heads so deadly to the nature of man?

_Petrarch_. I discern very clearly the fourfold passion of our nature, which, first of all, we divide in two as it has respect to past and future, and then subdivide again in respect of good and evil. And so, by these four winds distraught, the rest and quietness of man's soul is perished and gone.

_S. Augustine._ You discern rightly, and the words of the Apostle are fulfilled in us, which say, "The corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things."[14] Of a truth the countless forms and images of things visible, that one by one are brought into the soul by the senses of the body, gather there in the inner centre in a mass, and the soul, not being akin to these or capable of learning them, they weigh it down and overwhelm it with their contrariety. Hence that plague of too many impressions tears apart and wounds the thinking faculty of the soul, and with its fatal, distracting complexity bars the way of clear meditation, whereby it would mount up to the threshold of the One Chief Good.

_Petrarch_. You have spoken admirably of that plague in many places, and especially in your book on _True Religion_ (with which it is, indeed, quite incompatible). It was but the other day that I lighted on that work of yours in one of my digressions from the study of philosophy and poetry, and it was with very great eagerness that I began to peruse it. Indeed, I was like a man setting out from his own country to see the world, and coming to the gate of some famous city quite new to him, where, charmed by the novelty of all around, he stops now here, now there, and looks intently on all that meets his gaze.

_S. Augustine._ And yet in that book, allowing for a difference of phraseology such as becomes a teacher of catholic truth, you will find a large part of its doctrine is drawn from philosophers, more especially from those of the Platonist and Socratic school. And, to keep nothing from you, I may say that what especially moved me to undertake that work was a word of your favourite Cicero. God blessed that work of mine so that from a few seeds there came an abundant harvest. But let us come back to the matter in hand.

_Petrarch._ As you wish; but, O best of Fathers, do not hide from me what that word was which gave you the starting-point of so excellent a work.

_S. Augustine._ It was the passage where in a certain book Cicero says, by way of expressing his detestation of the errors of his time: "They could look at nothing with their mind, but judged everything by the sight of their eyes; yet a man of any greatness of understanding is known by his detaching his thought from objects of sense, and his meditations from the ordinary track in which others move."[15] This, then, I took as my foundation, and built upon it the work which you say has given you pleasure.

_Petrarch._ I remember the place; it is in the _Tusculan Orations._ I have been delighted to notice what a habit it is of yours to quote those words here and elsewhere in your works; and they deserve it, for they are words that seem to blend in one phrase truth and dignity and grace. Now, since it seems good to you, pray return to our subject.

_S. Augustine._ This, then, is that plague that has hurt you, this is what will quickly drive you to destruction, unless you take care. Overwhelmed with too many divers impressions made on it, and everlastingly fighting with its own cares, your weak spirit is crushed so that it has not strength to judge what it should first attack or to discern what to cherish, what to destroy, what to repel; all its strength and what time the niggard hand of Fate allows are not sufficient for so many demands. So it suffers that same evil which befalls those who sow too many seeds in one small space of ground.

As they spring up they choke each other. So in your overcrowded mind what there is sown can make no root and bear no fruit. With no considered plan, you are tossed now here now there in strange fluctuation, and can never put your whole strength to anything. Hence it happens that whenever the generous mind approaches (if it is allowed) the contemplation of death, or some other meditation that might help it in the path of life, and penetrates by its own acumen to the depths of its own nature, it is unable to stand there, and, driven by hosts of various cares, it starts back. And then the work, that promised so well and seemed so good, flags and grows unsteady; and there comes to pass that inward discord of which we have said so much, and that worrying torment of a mind angry with itself; when it loathes its own defilements, yet cleanses them not away; sees the crooked paths, yet does not forsake them; dreads the impending danger, yet stirs not a step to avoid it.

_Petrarch._ Ah, woe is me! Now you have probed my wound to the quick. There is the seat of my pain, from there I fear my death will come.

_S. Augustine._ It is well. You are awakening to life. But as we have now prolonged our discussion enough for to-day, let us, if you will, defer the rest until to-morrow, and let us take a breathing space in silence.

_Petrarch._ Yes, I am tired somewhat, and most gladly shall I welcome quiet and rest.

[1] _Æneid,_ ix. 641.

[2] _S. Augustine Confessions_, viii. 8.

[3] _S. Augustine Confessions,_ viii. 12.

[4] _Æneid_, iv. 449.

[5] Publius Cyrus.

[6] Ovid, _Pontic._, III i. 35.

[7] Horace, _Epist.,_ I. 18, 83.

[8] _Æneid,_ vi 365.

[9] _Ibid.,_ vi 370.

[10] _Æneid,_ x. 649.

[11] _Ibid.,_ v. 849.

[12] Seneca, _Letters,_ xix.

[13] _Æneid,_ vi. 730-34.

[14] Book of wisdom, ix. 15

[15] _Tusculan Orations,_ i. 16.

DIALOGUE THE SECOND

S. AUGUSTINE--PETRARCH

_S. Augustine_. Well, have we rested long enough?

_Petrarch._ Certainly, if it so please you.

_S. Augustine._ Let me hear if you feel now in good heart and confidence. For when a man has been ill, a hopeful spirit in him is no small sign of returning health.

_Petrarch._ What hope I have is no whit in myself: God is my hope.

_S. Augustine._ It is wisely spoken. And now I return to our theme. Many things are against you, many temptations assail, but you yourself still seem ignorant both of their numbers and their strength. And what in warfare generally happens to one who, from a distance, sees some closely marshalled battalion, has happened to you. Such a man is often deceived into thinking his foes fewer in number than they are. But when they draw nearer, when they have deployed their serried ranks before his eyes in all their martial pomp, then his fears soon increase, and he repents him of his boldness. So likewise will it be with you when I shall display before your eyes, on this side and on that, all the evils that are pressing upon you and hemming you in from every quarter. You will be ashamed of your own boldness, you will be sorry you were so light-hearted, and begin to bewail that in its sore straits your soul has been unable to break through the wedged phalanx of your foes. You will discover presently how many foolish fancies of too easy victory you have let come into your mind, excluding that wholesome dread to which I am endeavouring to bring you.

_Petrarch_. Indeed, you make me horribly afraid. That my danger was great I have always been aware; and now, in spite of this, you tell me I have very much under-estimated it, and indeed that, compared with what they should be, my fears have been nothing at all. What hope have I then left?

_S. Augustine_. It is never time to despair. Be sure of that. Despair is the very last and worst of evils, and therefore I would have you make it a first principle to put it away wholly.

_Petrarch_. I knew the truth of the maxim, but in my dread forgot it at the moment.

_S. Augustine_. Now give me all your attention, look and listen while I recall words of your favourite seer.

"Behold what foemen gather round your walls
And at your gates make sharp their gleaming sword
To murder you and yours."[1]

Look what snares the world spreads for you; what vanities it dangles before your eyes; what vain cares it has to weigh you down. To begin at the beginning, consider what made those most noble spirits among all creatures fall into the abyss of ruin; and take heed lest in like manner you also fall after them. All your forethought, all your care will be needed to save you from this danger. Think how many temptations urge your mind to perilous and soaring flights. They make you dream of nobleness and forget your frailty; they choke your faculties with fumes of self-esteem, until you think of nothing else; they lead you to wax so proud and confident in your own strength that at length you hate your Creator. So you live for self-pleasing and imagine that great things are what you deserve. Whereas if you had a truer remembrance, great blessings ought to make you not proud but humble, when you realise that they came to you for no merit of your own. What need for me to speak of the Eternal Lord God when even to earthly lords men feel their minds more humbly bound if they experience any bounty of theirs which they are conscious of being undeserved. Do we not see them striving to merit afterwards what they feel they should have earned before?

Now let your mind realise, as it easily can, on what paltry grounds your pride is set up. You trust in your intellect; you boast of what eloquence much reading has given you; you take pleasure in the beauty of your mortal body. Yet do you not feel that in many things your intellect fails you? Are there not many things in which you cannot rival the skill of the humblest of mankind? Nay, might I not go further and, without mentioning mankind, may I not say that with all your labour and study you will find yourself no match in skill for some of the meanest and smallest of God's creatures? Will you boast, then, of intellect after that? And as for reading, what has it profited you? Of the multitude of things you have perused how many have remained in your mind? How many have struck root and borne fruit in due season? Search well your heart and you will find that the whole of what you know is but like a little shrunken stream dried by the summer heat compared to the mighty ocean.

And of what relevance is it to know a multitude of things? Suppose you shall have learned all the circuits of the heavens and the earth, the spaces of the sea, the courses of the stars, the virtues of herbs and stones, the secrets of nature, and then be ignorant of yourself? Of what profit is it? If by the help of Scripture you shall have discovered the right and upward path, what use is it if wrath and passion make you swerve aside into the crooked, downward way? Supposing you shall have learned by heart the deeds of illustrious men of all the ages, of what profit will it be if you yourself day by day care not what you do?

What need for me to speak of eloquence? Will not you yourself readily confess how often the putting any confidence in this has proved vain? And, moreover, what boots it that others shall approve what you have said if in the court of your own conscience it stands condemned? For though the applause of those who hear you may seem to yield a certain fruit which is not to be despised, yet of what worth is it after all if in his heart the speaker himself is not able to applaud? How petty is the pleasure that comes from the plaudits of the multitude! And how can a man soothe and flatter others unless he first soothe and flatter himself? Therefore you will easily understand how often you are deluded by that glory you hope for from your eloquence, and how your pride therein rests but upon a foundation of wind. For what can be more childish, nay, might I not say more insane, than to waste time and trouble over matters where all the things themselves are worthless and the words about them vain? What worse folly than to go on blind to one's real defects, and be infatuated with words and the pleasure of hearing one's own voice, like those little birds they tell of who are so ravished with the sweetness of their own song that they sing themselves to death? And furthermore, in the common affairs of every-day life does it not often happen to you to find yourself put to the blush to discover that in the use of words you are no match even for some whom you think are very inferior men? Consider also how in Nature there are many things for which names are altogether wanting, and many more to which names have indeed been given, but to express the beauty of them--as you know by experience--words are altogether inadequate. How often have I heard you lament, how often seen you dumb and dissatisfied, because neither your tongue nor your pen could sufficiently utter ideas, which nevertheless to your reflecting mind were very clear and intelligible?

What, then, is this Eloquence, so limited and so weak, which is neither able to compass and bring within its scope all the things that it would, nor yet to hold fast even those things that it has compassed?

The Greeks reproach you, and you in turn the Greeks, with having a paucity of words. Seneca, it is true, accounts their vocabulary the richer, but Cicero at the beginning of his treatise _On the Distinctions of Good and Evil_ makes the following declaration, "I cannot enough marvel whence should arise that insolent scorn of our national literature. Though this is not the place to discuss it, yet I will express my conviction, which I have often maintained, not only that the Latin tongue is not poor, as it is the fashion to assert, but that it is, in fact, richer than the Greek;"[2] and as he frequently repeats elsewhere the same opinion, so, especially in the _Tusculan Orations_, he exclaims, "Thou Greek that countest thyself rich in words, how poor art thou in phrases."[3]

This is the saying, mark you, of one who know quite well that he was the prince of Latin oratory, and had already shown that he was not afraid to challenge Greece for the palm of literary glory. Let me add that Seneca, so notable an admirer of the Greek tongue, says in his _Declamations_, "All that Roman eloquence can bring forward to rival or excel the pride of Greece is connected with the name of Cicero."[4] A magnificent tribute, but unquestionably true!

There is, then, as you see, on the subject of the primacy in Eloquence a very great controversy, not only between you and the Greeks, but among our own most learned writers themselves. There are in our camp those who hold for the Greeks, and it may be among them there are some who hold for us, if at least we may judge from what is reported of the illustrious philosopher Plutarch. In a word, Seneca, who is ours, while doing all justice to Cicero, gives his final verdict for the Greeks, notwithstanding that Cicero is of the contrary opinion.

As to my own opinion on the question in debate, I consider that both parties to the controversy have some truth on their side when they accuse both Latin and Greek of poverty of words: and if this judgment be correct in regard to two such famous languages, what hope is there for any other?

Bethink you therefore what sort of confidence you can have in your own simple powers when the whole resources of that people of which you are but a little part are adjudged poor, and how ashamed you should be to have spent so much time in pursuing something which cannot be attained, and which, if it could be, would prove after all but vanity itself.

I will pass on to other points. Are you perhaps inclined to plume yourself on your physical advantages? But think what a thread they hang upon! What is it you are most pleased with in this way? Is it your good health and strength? But truly nothing is more frail. It is proved by the fatigue you suffer from even little things. The various maladies to which the body is liable; the stings of insects; a slight draught of air, and a thousand other such small vexations all tell the same tale. Will you perchance be taken in by your own good-looking face, and when you behold in the glass your smooth complexion and comely features are you minded to be smitten, entranced, charmed? The story of Narcissus has no warning for you, and, content with gazing only at the outward envelope of the body, you consider not that the eyes of the mind tell you how vile and plain it is within. Moreover, if you had no other warning, the stormy course of life itself, which every day robs you of something, ought to show you how transient and perishing that flower of beauty is. And if, perhaps, which you will hardly dare affirm, you fancy yourself invincible by age, by illness, and whatever else may change the grace of bodily form, you have at least not forgotten that Last Enemy which destroys all, and you will do well to engrave in your inmost heart and mind this word of the satirist--

"'Tis death alone compels us all to see
What little things we are."[5]

Here, unless I am mistaken, are the causes that inflate your mind with pride, forbid you to recognise your low estate, and keep you from the recollection of death. But others there still are that I now propose to pass in review.

_Petrarch._ Stop a little, I beg you, lest, overwhelmed by the weight of so many reproaches, I have no strength or spirit to reply.

_S. Augustine._ By all means say on. Gladly will I hold my peace.

_Petrarch._ You have astonished me not a little by casting in my teeth a multitude of things of which I am perfectly sure they have never entered my head at all. You allege that I trusted in my own intelligence. But surely the one sign I have given of possessing some little intelligence is that never have I counted on that faculty at all. Shall I pride myself on much reading of books, which with a little wisdom has brought me a thousand anxieties? How can you say I have sought the glory of eloquence, I, who, as you yourself acknowledged a moment ago, am wont above all things to complain that speech is inadequate to my thoughts? Unless you wish to try and prove the contrary, I may say that you know I am always conscious of my own littleness, and that if by chance I have ever thought myself to be anything, such a thought has come but rarely and then only from seeing the ignorance of other men; for, as I often remark, we are reduced to acknowledge, according to Cicero's celebrated phrase, that "what powers we may possess come rather from the feebleness of others than from any merit in ourselves."

But even were I endowed as richly as you imagine with those advantages of which you speak, what is there so magnificent about them that I should be vain? I am surely not so forgetful of myself nor so feather-brained as to let myself trouble about cares of that sort. For what use in the world are intellect, knowledge, eloquence, if they can bring no healing to a soul diseased? I remember having given expression already in one of my letters to my sad sense of this truth.

As to what you remarked with an air of quasi gravity about my physical advantages, I must confess it makes me smile. That I of all men should be thought to have plumed myself on my mortal and perishing body, when every day of my life I feel in it the ravages of time at work! Heaven save me from such folly!

I will not deny that in the days of my youth I took some care to trim my head and to adorn my face; but the taste for that kind of thing has gone with my early years, and I recognise now the truth of that saying of the Emperor Domitian who, writing of himself in a letter to a lady friend, and complaining of the too swift decay of the goodliness of man, said, "Know you that nothing is so sweet, but nothing also is so fleeting, as the beauty of the body."[6]

_S. Augustine._ It would be an easy task to refute all you have advanced, but I prefer that your own conscience should send the shaft of shame to your heart rather than words of mine. I will not labour the point or draw the truth from you by torture; but as those who take revenge magnanimously, I will merely prefer a simple request that you will continue to avoid what you profess you have hitherto avoided.

If by any chance the fashion of your countenance should at any time have stirred the least motion of conceit, then I beg you to reflect what soon those bodily members must become, though now they please your eye: think how their destiny is to be foul and hideous, and what repulsion they would cause even in yourself were you able to see them then. Then call often to mind this maxim of the Philosopher: "I was born for some higher destiny than to be the slave of my body."[7] Assuredly it is the very climax of folly to see men neglect their real selves in order to cosset the body and limbs in which they dwell. If a man is imprisoned for a little while in some dungeon, dark, damp, and dirty, would he not seem to have lost his senses if he did not shield himself as far as he was able from any contact with the walls and soil? And with the expectation of freedom would he not eagerly listen for the footsteps of his deliverer? But if giving up that expectation, covered with filth and plunged in darkness, he dreads to leave his prison; if he turns all his attention to painting and adorning the walls which shut him in, in a vain endeavour to counteract the nature of his dripping prison-house, will he not rightly be counted a wretched fool?

Well, you yourself know and love your prison-house, wretched that you are! And on the very eve of your issuing or being dragged therefrom you chain yourself more firmly in it, labouring to adorn what you ought to despise, if you would follow the advice you yourself had tendered to the father of the great Scipio in your poem called _Africa._

"The bonds and fetters known and suffered long,
The clogs on liberty are hateful to us,
And the new freedom now attained we love."[8]

Wonderful is it if you made others give the counsel which you yourself refuse! But I cannot disguise from you one word in your discourse which to you may seem very humble, but to me seems full of pride and arrogance.