BIBL MA|

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NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

1VTATURE, MIRACLE

AND SIN : A Study of

St. Augustine's Conception of

the Natural Order. - - - By
T. A. LAGEY, M.A.

THE PRINGLE STUART
LECTURES FOR 1914

BfBf ... MAI

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DEDICO

PREFACE

THESE lectures were delivered in the Schools at
Oxford during the summer term of the year 1914,
on the appointment of the Warden and Council
of Keble College under the terms of the Pringle
Stuart Trust. They are printed for the most part
as read, but some passages were omitted in the
Schools for lack of time, and other gaps after
wards observed in the argument have been filled.
In the fourth lecture I have expanded the single
sentence which was all that I could devote to an
interesting suggestion made two or three days pre
viously by Dr. Sanday. The sixth has undergone a
drastic revision, which owes not a little to a brief and
pungent criticism passed upon it at the time of
delivery by Mr. Way of the Pusey House.

I have tried to keep close to my subject, and I hope
it will be allowed that on the whole I have been
successful. Some strength of will was needed, for
St. Augustine's discursiveness is an infectious quality,
and he spreads another snare, even more insidious,
for the interested reader. If on one page he seems
to belong to a world almost grotesquely antique,
on the next he may stand forth as a modern of all

viii PREFACE

times. That is due partly to his large humanity,
partly to his devouring curiosity and wide sweep of
vision. He is constantly provoking discussion of a
question of to-day, and his challenge will no doubt
be repeated to-morrow. But my task has been to
find out what he himself thought, not what he may
suggest to successive ages. His suggestions will
perhaps be the more fruitful if we are careful to
make sure what they meant for his own mind.

These two disturbing qualities make quotation
from his works a perilous adventure. He was a
master of phrase, a rhetorician born and made, but
a laborious thinker ; his dialectic circled round his
words with disconcerting digression. A sparkling
epigram, an apparently precise definition, leaps to
the eye ; it is well to be careful, to look backward
and forward, and to look far. Indexing is as danger
ous with him as versicular quotation with St. Paul.
Well-known flowers of speech, culled from his luxuri
ant garden, have a history. Every student of the
history of dogmatic theology knows what has been
built on his vivid remark, * accedit uerbum ad ele-
mentum et fit sacramentum ' — an incomplete quota
tion even of a single sentence. Thousands have cited
'Securus iudicat orbis terrarum,' for one who has
taken the trouble to find out what he meant by it.

Consideration of this difficulty has induced me
to make for myself a rule which may seem whimsical,
but in which I have found safety. Where two
sets of reference numbers are current in the editions,
one for longer chapters and the other for shorter
sections, I have made a point of using the larger
divisions. If this gives a little more trouble to a

PREFACE ix

reader who wishes to follow up a reference or to
catch me tripping, his time may be well spent.

There is an Appendix. I have ventured to
disinter two essays, previously published, which
deal less academically with some of the topics of the
lectures. One of them was written many years
ago, at a time when I had read nothing of St. Augus
tine except some minor treatises, with parts of the
Confessions and De Ciuitate Dei. How far he had
then influenced me I cannot say. My memory
calls up no consciousness of indebtedness, but, looking
back, I think that something must have filtered into
my mind from his to make me write this essay. It
was, to be sure, very imperfectly assimilated. I
hope that my present acquaintance with him, which
is certainly wider, may also be found less super
ficial. A third essay, on Dr. McTaggart's Idealism,
appears here for the first time.

I must apologize to the reader for faults in the
correction of the press due to the present weak
ness of my sight. I have had valuable help, but
there is no sufficient substitute for the author's eye.
The references, happily, were twice verified before
my trouble began, but two small errors have been
detected, and perfection is far to seek in this field ;
a third revision intended has been found im
practicable.

The publication of the book has been delayed
for many months by the disturbance of business
due to the war. The delay has an effect. Some of
the controversies glanced at in the lectures may seem
to be antiquated, like many disputes, by this great
cataclysm in human affairs. But in other respects

x PREFACE

the questions treated are made even more urgent.
The war and its incidents, the appalling collapse
of Christian civilization, the abandonment in certain
quarters of the barest pretence of conforming to
Christian ideals, make the problem of evil more
insistent than it has ever been for our generation.
We have returned to that loosening of social order,
that contempt for law, that domination of material
power, which in other ages forced upon men the
question whether there is any moral government
of the world, or any eternal standard of right ; it
will not be surprising if the notion of an equally eternal
and indestructible force of evil, set in conflict with
good, comes into new prominence. Moral dualism
is a refuge from solid thinking always welcome to
a faltering intelligence ; it is always resurgent in
Christendom, and a recrudescence of it at the present
time may be a greater peril than appears on the
surface. St. Augustine's hard fight for the moral
unity of creation may have to be renewed in our
selves ; his great syntheses will help us, and his
mistakes may warn us off treacherous ground.

T. A. L.

March, 1916.

CONTENTS

LECTURE I

PAGE

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION 1-25

Augustine and Augustinianism i

The origins of Augustine :

Christian ....... 7

African .8

Manichaean ....... 9

Sceptic 12

Neoplatonic ... . .20

His conversion . . . . . . .23

LECTURE II

THE CONTENT OF THE IDEA 26-48

Various meanings of the word Natura ... 26

Rerum natura ....... 29

Cursus naturae . . . . . . 31

Dualism and Monism ...... 33

Plurality of natures 34

Determination by creative will .... 37

Created will ..... 39

The source of Evil . .... 41

Mutability . • 43

Human misery ....... 46

Augustine and Plato 47

xii CONTENTS

LECTURE III

HUMAN WILL AND FREEDOM .... 49-70

Augustine's interest ethical ..... 49
Cosmic freedom :

Self-evident 50

An essential characteristic of human nature . 53

Determination of the will . . . . • 53

Will an ultimate reality 55

Definition of will 56

Will regarded as cause . . . . . • 57

Divine prescience 61

Its conflict with freedom ..... 66

Time and eternity 67

LECTURE IV

MIRACLE 71-91

Ordo causarum . . . . . . -71

Including Will .72

Natural laws ........ 73

Portents included in the course of nature. . . 75
Definition of Miracle ...... 76

Omnipotence 81

Credulity 82

Dr. Sanday's distinction : Miracles not supra naturam 85
The conception of a closed order and of intervention 86

LECTURE V

GOOD AND EVIL 92-114

The goodness of nature ...... 92

The conception of goodness :

In abstract being ...... 93

In God ........ 97

Justification of God ...... 97

Human goodness :

The Stoic conception 99

The Platonic ... 100

CONTENTS xiii

PAGE

Physics and Ethics at one : Goodness is fitness . 101
Whence unfitness in God's work .... 102

Evil a defect of good 103

The cause of it :

Not the intractability of matter . . .105
Nor metaphysical remoteness . . . .105

But the tendency in nihilum .... 106

Criticism of this idea . . . . . .108

Reduction of evil to peccatum 114

LECTURE VI

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 115-143

Definitions of sin 115

The condition of freedom . . . . .117

Why choice of evil is possible . . . .118

Sinfulness as the penalty of sin . . . .122

Concupiscence . . . . . . .124

Nature and grace 128

Non posse peccare . . . . . . .130

Is sin a power in the world ? 132

Original sin ........ 134

Its causes :

Heredity 137

Human solidarity . . . . . .138

Concupiscence in generation . . . .139

The problem left unsolved . . . . .140

Augustine's fidelity to fact 141

APPENDIX I
THE LIMITS OF THE SUPERNATURAL .... 145

APPENDIX II
NATURE AND SUPERNATURE 154

APPENDIX III

DR. McTAGGART'S IDEALISM . . . . . i6l

NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN
LECTURE I

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION

THE founder of this Lecture gave his benefaction for
the purpose of promoting the study of the writings
of the Early Fathers of the Church, and also of the
writings of John Keble. Invited by the trustees to
read the first set of lectures on the foundation,
I thought it my duty to bear in mind this double
intention. It need not be difficult, for Keble, entirely
as he was of his own time and place in the history of
Christianity, so steeped himself in certain branches
of patristic theology that many openings might be
found for entering into that way of reference to
Catholic antiquity in which he wished his whole
thought to move. But what may seem easy in
general is not always easy for this or that person.
The habitual movement of my own mind is so different
from that of this master, revered and loved, that
I hesitated before the task imposed. One subject
I put aside expressly because my treatment of it
would be likely rather to conflict with Keble's habit
of thought than to illustrate it. Seeking another.

2 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

and turning over some of his less familiar writings,
I lighted upon an essay dealing with Miller's Bampton
Lectures, in the course of which he passes judgment
on a certain theological exaggeration characteristic
of the time. Let me read this passage : — ' As there
fore it is a sound rule in common life to make up
our minds beforehand that in those whom we admire
most there is some evil, and in those for whom we
fear most some good, though neither perhaps be
yet discernible by us : so the Scripture doctrine of
original and actual sin, being no more than this
position generalized and accounted for, is found
strictly in accordance with real observation. And it
is grievously to be lamented that many good and
wise men should have so far forgotten this as to
have given, unnecessarily, double ground of grievous
offence, by stating the doctrine of man's guiltiness
as if God had positively declared it equal in every
case, and infinite in all. We say " double ground
of offence : " for it is notorious that to the speculative
unbeliever this statement must be a stumbling-block,
because it seems immediately to contradict experience ;
and to the practical one it supplies an excuse too
sure to be taken hold of, in the encouragement which
it gives him to lay his own sin upon Adam's, or upon
his Maker ; in its tendency to foster that worst
kind of fatalism, whereby we look upon certain crimes
as matters of course, much to be regretted indeed, but
as regularly to be expected in certain seasons and
situations as fog in autumn, or blight in spring.' 1

1 Occasional Papers and Reviews, 1877, p. 195. The essay
was not published until it appeared in this collection, but it
was evidently written soon after the delivery of the lectures
in the year 1817, and intended for publication in some Review.

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION 3

The teaching here reprobated is commonly reck
oned to be Augustinian. Its disseminators have
always claimed St. Augustine as their patron, and
their opponents have in many cases surrendered
him without investigation.

Here was a subject made to my hand. What is,
in truth, the teaching of St. Augustine about the
depravity of human nature ? But that question
cannot be isolated. Man is but a part of the natural
universe, the rerum natura. The whole must be
considered as a whole, and the most superficial
acquaintance with the writings of Augustine makes
it plain that he was himself peculiarly aware of this
necessity. It is soon evident that for him nature is
nothing if not a continuum. But then two questions
are forced upon the reader.

The first is concerned with a problem always
urgent, the moral difficulty confronting all monistic
ways of thinking, the problem of the appearance of
evil in the world. We must not ask how St. Augus
tine solved the problem, for he left it unsolved ;
but we may ask how he stated the problem, how
he related evil of all kinds, and especially human
depravity, to the natural order. Did he evade the
difficulty by outfacing evil and reducing it to a kind
of inferior good ? Did he, on the other hand, attri
bute to it a mode of existence which involves a per
manent and universal dualism, a conflict inherent
in nature ? Or, finally, did he find some midway track
between these courses of thought ? We have to
ask how he related sin to nature.

The second question is one that is urgent in
our day. What is Miracle, and how related to

4 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

nature ? It is a question which, did not much trouble
Augustine, though he could not altogether escape it ;
for whole ages it slept, because men rested in a
conception of nature which allowed ample room for
miraculous occurrences ; it is possible that we may
soon achieve another conception equally elastic ;
but at the present time most of us are in difficulties,
and we cannot approach the study of St. Augustine's
conception of nature without asking how he found
room in it for those miracles which he unhesitat
ingly believed to happen. Happily, he had occasion
now and then to consider the question for himself, and
his incidental treatment of it may serve to satisfy
our curiosity ; perhaps, also, it may afford us some
help in the readjustment of our own ideas. We
have to inquire, then, how St. Augustine related
miracle to nature.

The bounds of my subject are thus determined.
There are whole tracts of St. Augustine's teaching which
I dare not, indeed, neglect, because the mystery of
nature so possessed his soul that flashes of thought
concerning it leap out from the most unexpected
places, but which have no content bearing expressly
on my theme. It is well. A reader of St. Augustine
draws a deep breath of relief when he passes away,
never for a long spell, from the Donatist controversy.
It is always cropping up, but there are times when
it is at least in the background, and we shall not be
troubled with it. The worst that we have to put up
with professedly is the block of the antipelagian
treatises. These have a charm for some minds. Saint-
Cyran is said to have read them all through, care
fully, thirty times. That may account for a good

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION 5

deal in Jansenism. Others find in them much that
is unlovely ; a hardness, a cold and relentless ratio
cination, that handles human actions and human
fortunes as if they were cog-wheels in some huge
machine, and grinds out consequences with fatalistic
inevitability. Others, again, think to find something
worse : the attribution to God of a tyrannous will,
a justice that rejoices against mercy. A third
opinion, more obviously wide of the mark, has con
siderable vogue. It has become a commonplace to
say that Augustine, under the stress of the Pelagian
controversy, relapsed into Manichaeism. It amazes
me that anyone acquainted with his writings can
repeat the stale slander. The charge was laid against
him in his own day by Julian of Eclanum,1 but that
was mere bludgeon-work of controversy ; a more
penetrating criticism might have found in the same
department of his teaching a dangerous likeness to
the Platonic form of dualism. The Pelagians, indeed,
began by making great play with his earlier writings
against the Manichseans. When he proceeded to fill
up the interstices of the argument in which they had
entrenched themselves, they accused him of going
back on his conclusions. He did modify them as
he saw need, but he continued to affirm without
wavering the great principles which he had main
tained from the time of his conversion. In debate
with Julian, no less than when writing de libero
arbitrio, he affirmed the fundamental doctrine that
sin is a spontaneus defectus a bono2 To the very

1 Contra lulianum, i. 3. ' Tu qui tarn crebro nobis Mani-
chaeorum nomen opponis.'

2 Ibid. i. 8, ' Bonorum auctor est Deus, dum auctor est
naturarum, quarum spontaneus defectus a bono non indicat a

6 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

end he kept bringing up, with almost wearisome
iteration, the phrase which he made a kind of catch
word : * Omnis natura, in quantum natura est,
bonum est.' The phase of St. Augustine's thought
with which we are concerned is singularly stable
and consistent. If the hammerer of the Pelagians
seem to you another man than the urbane author
of the Dialogues or the passionate pilgrim of the
Confessions, you will do well to remember that you
are dealing with one who was always various. He
was of a largeness and a depth to find room for many
moods. At the crisis of his conversion he did not
wear his heart on his sleeve, but discoursed serene
philosophy with friends and pupils in the pleasant
retreat of Cassiciacum. I can doubt neither the
superficial veracity of the Dialogues, nor the story of
the deep agony of soul that you read in the Confes
sions. Look at him on all sides, and in those early
days you will find traces of the grim judgment which
becomes dominant when he is at grips with the
smooth prophesyings of the Pelagians ; you will find
no less in his latest writings the fundamental postulates
from which he set out.

But what is the starting point ? He himself
dated everything from his conversion. Until his
thirty-second year he was a mere seeker. Then he
pictured himself as entering into the truth, and
reducing all his speculations to order. He apologized
for including in his Retractations even those books

quo factae sunt, sed unde factae sunt ; et hoc non est aliquid,
quoniam penitus nihil est, et ideo non potest auctorem habere
quod nihil est.' Cf. De Libero Arbitrio, iii. I, where he shows
that the movement of the will from good to evil ' non est utique
naturalis sed uoluntarius.'

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION 7

which he wrote in the first days of his renunciation,
before he was practised in Christian thought and
letters ; all that was earlier was negligible. We
can hardly follow him in this judgment. We want
to know what he brought of the glory and honour
of the nations into the Christian Church ; and
happily he has himself supplied sufficient evidence
of the formative influences which made his thought
what it was.

I must keep as closely as possible to my own
subject, which is not the whole of St. Augustine's
thought, but a part of it. Let us rapidly consider
his formation.

Of his humanity it is needless to say much. The
whole world, and not Christendom alone, acknow
ledges the Confessions for one of the great human
documents of history. Other qualities need con
sideration.

He was a Christian in some sense from the first,
a catechumen. ' While yet a boy,' he says, ' I heard
of the eternal life promised us through the coming of
our Lord God who humbled Himself to the level
of our pride.' That implies a considerable amount
of Christian teaching. He knew enough to desire
baptism when sick.1 It will not do to lay much stress

1 Confess, i. n. ' Audieram enim ego adhuc puer de uita
aeterna promissa nobis per humilitatem domini Dei nostri
descendentis ad superbiam nostram, et signabar iam signo crucis
eius et condiebar eius sale iam inde ab utero matris meae, quae
multum sperauit in te. Uidisti, domine, cum adhuc puer essem et
quodam die pressu stomachi repente aestuarem paene moriturus,
uidisti, Deus meus, quoniam custos meus iam eras, quo motu
animi et qua fide baptismum Christi tui, Dei et domini mei,
flagitaui a pietate matris meae et matris omnium nostrum,
ecclesiae tuae.'

8 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

on his mother's influence. It has been suggested
that he never understood her, and I am disposed to
think that is true ; the mind of a woman was probably
a sealed book to him ; however that may be, the
Monnica of Cassiciacum, and of the wonderful days
at Rome that followed, was a very different woman
from the pious but rather frivolous girl who found
herself so helpless in dealing with his boyish esca
pades. Still, he grew up under her eye, more or less
Christian.

In the next place he was an African. It means

a good deal. Climatic influence made the Romans

of the African provinces what they would not have

been elsewhere. Their literature from Appuleius

onwards bears the mark of it. The Garden of Allah

was close at hand, then as now. There is a hardness

and coarseness of fibre in the people of this country

which produced effects in ecclesiastical controversy.

Tertullian did not live there for nothing. The

Circumcellions were thoroughly African, and if

we knew all we should probably find them fairly well

matched by Catholic zealots. The ' foeda et intem-

perans licentia scholasticorum,' which drove Augustine

from Carthage to teach in the more disciplined schools

of Rome,1 was characteristic. There is a particular

aspect of nature, and especially of human nature,

proper to the country. Things will stand out in vivid

nakedness. I am inclined to attribute to this the

brutality — there is no other word for it — displayed

by Augustine in his treatment of women. You find

it in his conduct towards the mother of his son,

the faithful companion of many years, whom he

1 Confess, v. 8.

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION 9

dismissed, in view of a suitable marriage, with
considerable regard for his own loss, but little or
none for her feelings.1 You find it in his conduct
towards the young bride chosen for him by his mother
at Milan, whom he accepted coldly and then tossed
aside without further thought.2 You find it in the
curious lack of reserve, the downright indelicacy, with
which he would discuss the most intimate matters
of sex in his public discourses. You find it in the
frank animality of which he made no secret, while he
rode it on the curb. There was a touch of romance
in his youth, when he was in love with love — * amare
amabam,' he says ; 3 but it was burnt out of his
manhood. There are finer things which you may put
down to the same influence. In his incessant use
of imagery there is a vivid appreciation of nature.
If the fierceness of the African sun was in his veins,
the splendour of it inspired his frequent comparison
of that corporeal shining with the uncreated light of
God's presence.4 While you reverence the saint in
Augustine, you are never allowed for long to forget
that he is an African saint.

The third influence to be reckoned with is Mani-
chaeism. This must not be misunderstood. The

1 Confess, vi. 15. ' Auulsa a latere meo tamquam impediment o
coniugii cum qua cubare solitus eram, cor, ubi adhaerebat,
concisum et uulneratum mihi erat et trahebat sanguinem, et
ilia in Africam redierat uouens tibi alium se uirum nescituram
relict o apud me naturali ex ilia filio meo/

1 Ibid. vi. 13. 3 Ibid. iii. i.

4 See, for example, De Genesi contra Manichaeos, i. 3. ' Solis
istius lumen non illuminat omnem hominem, sed opus hominis
et mortales oculos, in quibus nos uincunt aquilarum oculi, qui
solem istum multo melius quam nos dicuntur adspicere. Illud
autem lumen non inrationabilium auium oculos pascit, sed pura
corda eorum qui Deo credunt.'

io NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

Manichaeism which. Augustine knew was not the pure
offshoot of Persian dualism to which that name
properly belongs. It was the doctrine of Faustus, of
the Epistula Fundamenti ; a doctrine which professed
to be distinctively Christian. ' Manichseus apostolus
lesu Christi ' is the name in which the Epistle was
written. Augustine tells us why he was drawn to
this doctrine. There were two attractions. In the
first place it offered a simple solution of the problem
of evil, which had the farther advantage of delivering
the evil doer from responsibility for his acts.1 In the
second place it promised complete intellectual enlight
enment. The Catholic Church bade men believe,
assent to doctrines unproved and irrational ; but
the Manichsean teachers would lead the disciple
on from proof to proof, asking only for adhesion to
what was made good at each step.2 There were
fantastic mythologies in their writings, but the
meaning of these would be gradually unfolded. To
the perfect, all would be clear.

It seems to have been chiefly this promise of proof,
this appeal to the intellect, which drew the young
Augustine. He describes himself as passionately

1 De Libero Arbitrio, i. 2. ' E. Die mihi unde male faciamus.
A. lam quaestionem moues quae me admodum adulescentum
uehementer exercuit, et fatigatum in haereticos impulit.'
Confess, v. io. ' Adhuc enim mihi uidebatur non esse nos qui
peccamus, sed nescio quam aliam in nobis peccare naturam, et
delectabat superbiam meam extra culpam esse, et, cum aliquid
mali fecissem, non confiteri me fecisse, ut sanares animam
meam, quoniam peccabat tibi, sed excusare me amabam et
accusare nescio quid aliud, quod mecum esset et ego non essem/

2 De Utilitate Credendi, i. ' Non aliam ob causam nos in
tales homines incidisse, nisi quod se dicebant, terribili auctoritate
separata, mera et simplici ratione eos qui se audire uellent
introducturos ad Deum et errore omni liberaturos.'

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION 11

seeking the truth, ' apertum et sincerum uerum
tenere atque haurire cupientem.' l And observe — it
is important for us — that what he was seeking was
the truth of nature. There was in him at this time
the making of a natural philosopher. According
to our modern notions there is something tragic in
his turning aside from this course. He was ready to
be an explorer, a discoverer. And not without fruit.
He acquired some knowledge of elementary astronomy,
and thereupon found the Manichaean myths of the
heavenly bodies to be ridiculous.2 He was told to
wait until he had heard Faustus. Faustus came
to Carthage, and Augustine found him a windbag.3
Perhaps he would have been less dissatisfied if he had
not discovered that the famous teacher had read
nothing but some of Cicero's orations, a little of
Seneca, some fragments of poetry, and the Latin
books of his own sect. It is probable that he did
Faustus less than justice, but all the scholar in him
revolted from this pretentious professor of little
learning, and all his confidence in the Manichaean
teachers went by the board. If you are inclined to
complain that he did not afterwards apply the same
measure to Christian teachers, you must remember
that these made no such parade of universal know
ledge. The Manichaeans promised too much, and
failed him.

With what result ? It seems that Augustine
gave up once and for all his dream of penetrating the
secrets of nature. He never lost his interest in
phenomena. That is constantly reappearing. He
arrived eventually at a fairly complete synthesis of

1 De U tilitate Credendi, i. a Confess, v. 3. 3 Ibid. 6.

12 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

the known and the unknown. But he was content
to leave vast tracts unknown. He acquired the
Socratic attitude, questioning, but confessing that no
answer could be found.1

For a time he took refuge in the complete scep
ticism of the Academy. He resumed, indeed, his
place in the Catholic Church as a catechumen, but not
hopefully. He would wait for more light. Fourteen
years afterwards he gave in the Confessions a curious
account of his attitude at this time. Philosophic
scepticism had destroyed his belief in Manichseism,
but he could not commit his soul to the Academics,
because they had not * the saving name of Christ.'
He was casting back. e Spes mea a iuuentute mea,'
he cries, ' ubi mihi eras et quo recesseras ? ' 2 There
is probably some measure of afterthought in this, but
you should read it along with his curious testimony that
when he was first drawn to the study of philosophy at

1 Enchir. 3. ' Cum ergo quaeritur, quid credendum sit quod
ad religionem pertineat, non rerum natura ita rimanda est
quemadmodum ab eis quos physicos Graeci uocant : nee metuen-
dum est ne aliquid de ui et numero elementorum, de motu atque
ordine et defectibus siderum, de figura caeli, de generibus et na-
turis animalium, fruticum, lapidum, fontium, fluminum, montium,
de spatiis locorum et temporum, de signis inminentium tempes-
tatum, et alia sexcenta de eis rebus, quas illi uel inuenerunt uel
inuenisse se existimant, Christianus ignoret : quia nee ipsi omnia
reppererunt tanto excellentes ingenio, flagrantes studio, abun-
dantes otio, et quaedam humana coniectura inuestigantes,
quaedam uero historica experientia perscrutantes, et in eis quae
se inuenisse gloriantur plura opinantes potius quam scientes.
Satis est Christiano rerum creatarum causam, siue caelestium
siue terrestrium siue uisibilium siue inuisibilium, non nisi boni-
tatem credere Creatoris.' But cf. In loan. 53. ' Non quia ista
negata sunt nobis, cum Deus magister dicat : Nihil est occultum
quod non reuelabitur ; sed in quo peruenimus in eo ambulemus.'
Also De Trinit. iii. 2 ; infra, p. 79.

2 Confess, v. 14 ; vi. i. De Util. Cred. 8.

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION 13

nineteen years of age by reading Cicero's Hortensius,
he shrank from complete and enthusiastic surrender
to that guidance because the name of Christ was not
there ; that name he had drunk in with his mother's
milk, and without it nothing could satisfy him.1 So
now, in his thirtieth year, he could not give himself
wholly to a philosophy that was not Christian. But
the Dialogue Contra Academicos, written immediately
before his baptism, seems to imply a closer entangle
ment than his memory afterwards charged him
with.2 During his sojourn at Rome, and in the first
year of his public teaching at Milan, it is pretty clear
that he went far in the profession of scepticism. Some
little time later, he wrote of his escape from that net
with an air of great relief.3

This, however, should be observed. In the letter
to Hermogenianus, sent with a copy of the Dialogue,
he hints that the teaching of the Academics was
popularly misunderstood,4 and in the Dialogue
itself there is a suggestion that their scepticism

1 Confess, iii. 4.

E Contra A cad. ii. 9. ' Tune ergo nescis nihil me certum
adhuc habere quod sentiam, sed ab eo quaerendo Academicorum
argumentis atque disputationibus impediri. Nescio enim
quomodo fecerunt in animo quandam probabilitatem, ut ab
eorum uerbo nondum recedam, quod homo uerum inuenire non
possit ; unde piger et prorsus segnis effectus eram, nee quaerere
audebam quod acutissimis ac doctissimis uiris inuenire non
licuit.'

3 Epist. i. 3. ' Non tam me delectat, ut scribis, quod Aca-
demicos uicerim — scribis enim hoc amantius forte quam uerius
— quam quod mihi abruperim odiosissimum retinaculum, quo a
philosophiae ubere desperatione ueri, quod est animi pabulum
refrenabar.'

* Ibid. i. i. ' Academicos ego ne inter iocandum quidem
unquam lacessere auderem . . . nisi eos putarem longe in aliam
quam uulgo creditum est fuisse sententiam.'

i4 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

was little more than a pose ; they veiled their meaning
behind such words as probabile, which were under
stood only by the keener intellects among their
hearers.1 This may indicate either that Augustine
did not go very deeply into their thought, and sus
pected the presence of an esoteric sense beyond, or
that he himself was conscious of such posing in his
experiments with their philosophy.

The lasting effect of these expriements may be
found in Augustine's correlation of faith and reason.
Credere meant for him the acceptance of statements
or opinions on authority. ' Quod intellegimus,' he
wrote in early days, c debemus rationi : quod credi-
mus auctoritati.' 2 But the word auctoritas must
not be misunderstood. It had not yet started on its
travels to acquire the sense of arbitrary command
in which it is now used. It still meant for Augustine
pretty much what it meant for Cicero. This will
be clearly seen from his comment in the Retracta
tions on the sentence just now quoted. Substituting
scimus for intellegimus, he says that in common
parlance we need not be afraid to speak of knowing
' quod idoneis testibus credimus ' 3 The reference to
( sufficient witness,' which is constant with him, is thus
identified with the reference to authority. We be
lieve the records of history on such authority, without
the knowledge that comes of immediate experience.4

In his first book against Manichseism, De Utilitate

1 Contra Acad. ii. 10, 13.

* De Util. Cred. n. Cf. Soliloquia, i. 3. ' Omne quod scimus
recte fortasse etiam credere dicimus ; at non omne quod credimus
etiam scimus.' 3 Retract, i. 14.

4 De Util. Cred. n. ' Credo enim sceleratissimos coniuratos
uirtute Ciceronis quondam interf ectos : atqui id non solum nescio,
sed etiam nullo pacto me scire posse certo scio.' Cf . Confess, vi. 5.

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION 15

Credendi, Augustine frankly confessed that the
scepticism of the Academy helped to deliver him from
the spurious intellectualism to which he had sur
rendered himself. But he explained also why he
could not rest in this new way of thinking. The
human mind, so intensely alive, so keen, so clear-
seeing, how could it be incapable of attaining truth ?
The difficulty could arise only from ignorance of
method : since this could not be discovered by
introspection, it must be accepted ' ab aliqua
diuina auctoritate.' x Two things stand out here :
an obstinate conviction of the reality of self, and an
obstinate trust in God as one who can communicate
with men. The former is expressed in a passage
of the Soliloquies which anticipates Descartes : * You
who would know yourself, do you know that you
are ? I know it. How do you know this ? I know
not. Do you know that you are moved ? I know
not. Do you know that you think ? I know it.' 2
Augustine brought scepticism to a pragmatic test.
He found himself compelled to affirm some things
because he could not get away from them ; he found
himself compelled to believe some things because
he could not do without them.

1 De UtiL Cred. 8.

2 Soliloq. ii. i. ' Tu qui uis te nosse, scis esse te ? Scio.
Unde scis ? Nescio. Simplicem te sentis an multiplicem ?
Nescio. Mover! te scis ? Nescio. Cogitare te scis ? Scio. Ergo
uerum est cogitare te ? Uerum.' Cf. De Lib. Arbitr. ii. 3, where
he makes this the fundamental axiom of existence : ' Prius abs
te quaero, ut de manifestissimis capiamus exordium, utrum tu
ipse sis : an tu fortasse metuis ne in hac interrogatione fallaris,
cum utique, si non esses, falli omnino non posses ? ' Compare
also De Ciuit. Dei, xi. 26, where it is the primary certainty.
' Nulla in his ueris Academicorum argumenta formido dicentium

" Quid si falleris ? " Si enim fallor, sum.'

16 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

I am not at present concerned with the use which
he made of the principle of authority in finding his
way to the Catholic Faith. But his conception of
nature, which is our concern, depends on the same
principle. Here also the maxim ' Crede ut intellegas '
holds good. Here also ' fides praecedit rationem.' 1

Something must be taken for granted, upon which
the mind may work. Augustine's concentration
upon ethical and religious interests made him work
out his theory of knowledge in this region alone, but
his theory is applicable to all kinds of knowledge.
In the Dialogue De Ordine he states the process
succinctly. Authority and reason are both necessary
for learning. Authority is prior in time, though not
in reality. There must be a process from inexperi
ence to experience ; but the inexperienced does not
even know how to learn, and therefore authority
must open the way to him. Entering on this way
without doubting, he is taught by precept, and so
will at length learn the reasonableness of what he
has accepted without reasoning.2

Here is a method which, if applied to the study
of phenomena, would approach closely to the scien-

1 In loan. 29, 6. Epist. cxx. 3.

* De Ordine, ii. 9. ' Ad discendum necessario dupliciter
ducimur, auctoritate atque ratione. Tempore auctoritas, re
autem ratio prior est. . . . Quia nullus hominum nisi ex imperito
peritus fit, nullus autem imperitus nouit qualem se debeat
praebere docentibus et quali uita esse docilis possit, euenit ut
omnibus bona magna et occulta discere cupientibus non aperiat
nisi auctoritas ianuam. Quam quisque ingressus sine ulla dubi-
tatione uitae optimae praecepta sectatur ; per quae cum docilis
factus fuerit, turn demum discet et quanta ratione praedita sint
ea ipsa quae secutus est ante rationem, et quid sit ipsa ratio
quam post auctoritatis cunabula firmus et idoneus iam sequitur
et comprehendit.'

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION 17

tific process of working hpyothesis and verification.
Augustine learnt it in his struggle with. Academic
scepticism. It was not the less truly his method
because he made but a partial application of it. He
reckoned credulity a vice,1 but we certainly count
him credulous. He could not make up his mind
whether to take as fact or as fiction the wildest
inventions of Appuleius. But the character of the
doubt should be observed. It is contemptuous ;
' aut indicauit aut finxit,' he says, and dismisses
the subject.2 It did not matter whether such stories
were true or not ; they were not worth verifying.
The philosophers of the Academy had taught him not
to affirm anything ; he refused compliance, but he
had learnt not to deny rashly. He read wonderful
stones in books of respectable authority like those
of Varro ; 3 he accepted them with indifference
knowing that some very strange things are probably
true, and that our knowledge of nature is limited ;
he was curious, but nothing more ; his attention
was engaged with things of real moment. In regard
to these he had escaped from scepticism. ' Deum
et animam scire cupio,' he cried, and for the rest,
* Nihil omnino.' 4 Here, too, he knew that know
ledge was limited ; for example, he could find no
answer to a question about the origin of the soul

1 De Util. Cred. 9. ' Ipsa, inquis, credulitas, a qua creduli
nominantur, uitium quoddam mihi uidetur esse : alioquin hoc
nomen non pro conuicio obiectare soleremus . . . Interim accipio
hanc opinionem ac distinctionem.'

2 De Ciuit. Dei, xviii. 18. ' Appuleius in libris quos Asini
Aurei titulo inscripsit sibi ipsi accidisse ut accept o ueneno,
humano animo permanente, asinus fieret aut indicauit aut
finxit.'

3 Ibid. vi. 2 seqq. 4 Soliloq. i. 2.

c

1 8 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

which was constantly baffling him, and he tried
in vain to draw Jerome into a discussion of it ; x
but there were some matters on which authority
and reason could speak with positive results. Here
he was busy, eagerly questioning and boldly answer
ing. Elsewhere he was more or less contentedly
uncertain. His very credulity was touched with
scepticism. He stiffened in this attitude as he grew
old ; in the Retractations he withdrew the praise
bestowed in the Dialogues on the liberal sciences ;
many holy men, he says, had been ignorant of these,
and many versed in them were not holy.2 In this
way Augustine became the father of much obscur
antism ; but his own practice was to drain all the
sources of knowledge that seemed to him accessible.
Alike in the flush of his conversion and when preaching
to his little flock at Hippo, he demanded the applica
tion of the mind even to the deepest things of God.

The impulse of learning, he says at the end of
the Dialogue Contra Academicos, comes from the two
forces of authority and reason ; he was now firmly
resolved to accept the authority of Christ, but his
affections were set no less on understanding than
on believing the truth.3 Many years afterwards

1 De Lib. Arbitr. iii. 20 : Epist. clxvi.

2 Retract. i. 3. ' In his libris displicet mihi . . . quod multum
tribui liberalibus disciplinis, quas multi sancti multum nesciunt,
quidam autem qui sciunt eas sancti non sunt.'

8 Contra A cad. iii. 20. ' Nulli autem dubium est gemino
pondere nos impelli ad discendum, auctoritatis atque rationis.
Mihi autem certum est nusquam prorsus a Christi auctoritate
discedere ; non enim reperio ualentiorem. Quod autem sub-
tilissima ratione persequendum est — ita enim iam sum affectus
ut quid sit uerum non credendo solum sed etiam intellegendo
apprehendere impatienter desiderem — apud Platonicos me in
terim quod sacris nostris non repugnet reperturum esse confido.'

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION 19

he warned his people against neglect of intelligence
in the words of the psalm, ' Be ye not like to horse
and mule, which have no understanding.' The deep
things of God were to be understood. The human mind
was created for that function. And things of sense
were no less the work of God than spiritual things.
Here also piety called men to understand. There were
practical limits to knowledge, but none in principle.1
Augustine's brief passage through scepticism was
of no small importance in his formation. Unlike
Manichaeism, it contributed something positive and
permanent. But incomparably more important was
the next influence under which he came. It was not
to the faith of a Christian that he turned from scep
ticism. The grip that Christianity had upon him must
not be ignored ; but, while holding him, it did not
satisfy him. There is in the Confessions a flashing
phrase which possibly gave birth to Francis Thomp
son's c Hound of Heaven.' He addresses God : ' Tu
inminens dorso fugitiuorum tuorum.' 2 A conscious
ness of God drove him from the Academy, but not
yet into the arms of the Church. Christianity as
he knew it, as then presented in the Latin tongue,
was perhaps too unsystematic to satisfy his craving
for ordered truth. I have quoted the account which
he gave to his friend Honoratus of his passage from
scepticism ; elsewhere he tells more. At Milan, a
man whom he unkindly describes as c inmanissimo
tyfo turgidum ' brought to his notice ' quosdam
Platonicorum libros.' 3 It was a case of love at first
sight. Augustine became a Platonist.

1 In Ps/xlii. ; In loan. 53. Supra, p. 12.

2 Confess, iv. 4. 3 Ibid. vii. 9.

c 2

20 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

What did he know of Plato and Platonics ? That
question brings up the further question of his know
ledge of Greek. He tells us how he loathed it as a
boy ; he learnt enough of it under the ferule to be
able to correct the mistakes of others, and this he
was rather fond of doing, but it is doubtful whether
he could read a Greek book without labour and
weariness. He read the Timaeus in Cicero's trans
lation.1 He quotes five or six of the other Dialogues.
The books that he read at Milan were translated into
Latin by Victorinus, who, as Augustine afterwards
learnt, had been a convert late in life to Christianity.2
What were they ? He does not name them ; but
there is no doubt that they were the Enneads of
Plotinus. He says expressly in one place that the
Platonics are those more recent philosophers who
would not call themselves Peripatetics or Academics,
and he names as the most distinguished of them
Plotinus, lamblichus, Porphyry, and Appuleius.3
It was upon the Neoplatonism of Plotinus that
Augustine lighted.

It never ceased to influence him. It gave to
whole tracts of his thought their lasting form. In
the passage which I last quoted from the Dialogue
Contra Academicos, he says that he confidently ex
pected to find in the Platonics materials, consonant
with the Christian faith, for that rational apprehen
sion of the truth after which he was thirsting. In
later years this enthusiasm faded, and in the Retracta
tions he found fault with it, but to the end he testified
that Plato's near approach to the truth might raise

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xiii. 16. 2 Confess, viii. 2.

3 De Ciuit. Dei, viii. 12.

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION 21

a question whether he had not drawn from the fount
of inspiration.1 It is while this influence is still
fresh upon him that you find him talking with his
mother of the access of the soul to God in the very
terms of the mystic ascent of Plotinus. There is a
characteristic difference, for the philosopher lacks
the tense note of personality sounding in the words
' intra in gaudium domini tui ; ' but the prelimin
aries are the same. If you say that the Confessions
were written ten years later, and the account of that
wonderful discourse may owe something to literary
artifice, you are only arguing for the permanence
of the impression.2 Augustine himself said that the
study of the Platonics brought him to the Christian
faith. There is in his story much that bears imme
diately' upon our subject. Apart from the doctrine
of the Word, which he found in these books and
afterwards found completed in the Gospel, apart
from the doctrine of the One, pure and holy, the
source of all, which threw him back upon himself
to the realization of his own vileness — apart from
these dominant doctrines there were other things,
of less moment indeed, but still fruitful in the forma
tion of his Christian thought.

He learnt from Plotinus that in all things below
God there is an admixture of being and not-being.

1 Retract, i. i. ' Laus quoque ipsa qua Platonem uel Platoni-
cos seu Academicos philosophos tantum extulit, quantum ipsos
impios homines non oportuit, non inmerito mini displicuit.'
De Ciuit. Dei, viii. n. ' Quod et me plurimum adducit ut pene
assentiar Platonem illorum librorum expertem non fuisse.'

2 Confess, ix. 10. ' Si cui sileat tumultus carnis, etc.' Plotinus :
Ennead. v. I, 2. ^crv^ov Be avrrj €CTTO> /XT) /xoVov TO

/cat 6 TOV craJttaTO? /cAvSwv, dAAa KOL TraV TO Trepieyov.
, ^crv^os Se OdXacrcra KOI aijp /cat avros ovpavos, K.T.A..

22 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

God is pure being ; these other things are, since they
are from Him ; at the same time they are not, since
they are not what He is. That alone truly is which
is immutable. Thought was delivered from the ebb
and flow of mere phenomena, and found even in the
most transitory things an element of permanence.

Then he learnt that existence is good. All things
that are, as being, are good. Things that are in process
of corruption are good, in so far as they partake of
being. They are not supremely good, for they have
no true immutable being, else were they not corrupt
ible ; but if they were not in some degree good there
would be no sense in saying that they are corrupted.
Corruption is a loss of good, priuatio boni ; but not
of all good, else would they cease to be. Thus he
found the source of evil.1

That is of first-rate importance. His rejection
of the Manichaean mythology had left him face to
face with this problem of evil : ' quod quaerebam,' he
says, ( unde esset.' 2 To have no answer to that
question was intolerable, and for that reason alone
he would probably have done battle with scepticism.
One of his troubles with Christianity was that the
doctrine of an omnipotent Creator seemed to make
God the author of evil, a monism which was worse
than the Manichaean dualism. Plotinus delivered
him from that nightmare. There was no substance
that was not either God or created by God ; but evil
was no substance ; it was the loss of the goodness
which inheres in substance.

This conception of evil is, so far, purely meta
physical. But moral evil, or sin, would easily be
1 Confess, vii. 9-12. 2 Ibid. vii. 7.

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION 23

subsumed under it. Augustine always had a con
science of sin, but of sin as a thing to be resented.
He was drawn to Manichaeism by the doctrine that
sin was inevitable under existing conditions, a fault
for which he therefore had no responsibility ; he
was held to it by the promise of liberation from this
necessity when he should escape from connexion
with the substance of evil. He now learnt to regard
it as a falling away from his own proper and natural
good, the cause of which he must find in himself.
There was a remedy, to be sought in a return to that
goodness from which he had lapsed. But how ?

You must not think of Augustine as converted
by philosophic reasoning. He speaks rather bitterly
of those who could point whither one should go,
but could not indicate the way. The first effect of
this new reading was not good : ' inflabar scientia,'
he says. He thought that, if he had read the Pla
tonics when already an instructed Christian, they
might have led him astray. The beatitude of Plotinus
to be won by sheer withdrawal from contaminating
influences, was not for him.1 To begin with, his
will was weak. He would and he would not. Those
were the days when he cried ' Give me chastity and
continence, but not just now ; ' when he replied to
the call of holiness, ' Suffer yet awhile.' 2 In the
second place, there was an infirmity of the flesh.
Christianity meant for Augustine a tremendous
renunciation. No half-measures would satisfy him.
There were many things to be given up, and one
thing in particular. For some reason which eludes
inquiry he was persuaded that, in his case, it involved
1 Confess, vii. 120. * Ibid. viii. 5, 7.

24 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

the renunciation of marriage, and complete continence
in the celibate state. This seemed to be impossible-
You need not imagine him a profligate or a volup
tuary. It is probable that he was always temperate
in the indulgence of appetite. But renunciation
was another matter. The habitually chaste Alypius
urged him to adopt the celibate life, as good for
philosophic study ; he replied that he could not
endure it, and he afterwards reproached himself
for having thus tempted his friend to a morbid
curiosity.1 When he dismissed the mother of Adeo-
datus, in view of the marriage arranged by Monnica,
he could not put up with the proposed delay, and
callously took a temporary mistress.2 Bear in mind
that this was immediately before the crisis of his
conversion. His soul was clamouring for the uita
beata which Plotinus taught him to seek in communion
with God, but the way was barred. He embarked
on the study of St. Paul's writings, where he found
the same conflict described. He could still discuss
beatitude in philosophical fashion with his friends
at Cassiciacum, but he knew that he must find some
other way. St. Paul's doctrine of grace laid hold on
him : there was a gift of God. The aspiration after
ascent to the One was complemented by the idea of
the stooping of the One to meet him. The stories
told him by Porticianus of the Egyptian hermits
and of the officers of the Court who were moved by
their example, broke down his conviction of the im
possibility of this thing. If they could make renun
ciation, why not he ? He was ready for the critical
and decisive words, * Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ,
1 Confess, vi. 12. 2 Ibid. vi. 15.

THE MAN AND HIS FORMATION 25

and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the
lusts thereof.' 1

I have thought it necessary to follow St. Augustine
into the secrets of his spiritual struggle, in order to
complete this rapid survey of his formation, but I
must conclude by returning to my proper subject.
Augustine brought with him into the Christian Church
a connected conception of nature as the work of the
One God. As such, it partakes of that goodness
which is sheer existence. But it was created out of
nothing, and has a tendency to return to nothing.
That is evil, a merely negative state, a loss of good.
To this purely metaphysical conception the intensity
of his struggle with sin added a rich moral content,
and the note of vivid personality. He applied this
conception to the problems of Christian doctrine.
It was not drawn from Christian doctrine ; or, if
his elementary Christian training had contributed
anything to it, the form at least came from another
source. It was not easily applied to Christian doctrine ;
Augustine, convinced of the truth of both alike, did
not hesitate to use some force in effecting the con
nexion. You often see him struggling with incom
patibilities. In one province of the doctrine of sin
he was landed in difficulties of his own making,
from which he found no escape. This conception
of Nature, its problems, its triumphs, and its failures,
will be the subject of these lectures.

1 Confess, vii. 21 ; viii. 6, 12.

LECTURE II

THE CONTENT OF THE IDEA

I MUST bespeak your attention to-day for some dry
verbalism. It is useless to talk about Nature unless
we understand in what sense we are using an equi
vocal term. We must be careful in dealing with St.
Augustine's use of it, for he is not himself verbally
consistent. There are in his writings inconsistencies
common to all who use the word or its equivalent in
various languages, and others which are consequent
upon his own special way of thinking.

Take this first. The Manichaeans interpreted
the conflict of wills in a human soul by the assumption
of two warring natures, good and evil ; he replied
that such opposing purposes were not two only, but
many, and on this hypothesis the natures also must
be many : ' non iam duae sed plures.' * This he
considers evidently absurd ; but in a different con
nexion he speaks without hesitation, and constantly,
of a plurality of natures.

Take this again. Where there is a distinction to

be drawn between physics and ethics, you will find

him contrasting natura and uoluntas : he discusses,

for example, the question whether the movement of

1 Confess, viii. 10.

THE CONTENT OF THE IDEA 27

the soul is natural or voluntary.1 Yet nothing is
more integral to his thought than the conception
of uoluntas as a natural endowment of man, without
which human nature would not be what it is. Volun
tary movement is therefore a perfectly natural
movement for man.

Once more, when you come across a contrast of
natura and mores, some offences being contra naturam
and others contra mores bominum* you will walk
warily, reflecting that custom is a natural growth,
and you will ask how the distinction can stand.
You may then pursue the subject further, and find
him saying elsewhere that all faults alike are contra
naturam? You turn the page, and read of uitia
naturalia*

There are verbal inconsistencies, therefore, and
other less obvious discrepancies which show that
the word natura is sometimes used with less than
its largest content. It is a familiar linguistic diffi
culty. Indeed you will find in St. Augustine almost
the whole range of the common use, not to say the
abuse, of the derivative in modern English.

For one use or abuse of the word, however, there
was little room in his thought. What is barbarously
but conveniently called natura naturans disappeared
before the intensity of his theism. He had no need
to personify nature as a worker, since he saw in nature
nothing but the direct work of God. The avoidance

1 De Lib. Arbitr. iii. i.

z Confess, iii. 8. Contra Faustum, xxii. 47.

3 De Ciuit. Dei, xxi. i. ' Omne autem uitium naturae nocet,
ac per hoc contra naturam est.'

* Ibid. xii. 3. ' Non enim quisquam de uitiis naturalibus sed
de uoluntariis poenas luit.'

28 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

of this thought was of a piece with his emphatic
repudiation of the Stoic pantheism. If there be such
a thing as anima mundi, he says, it certainly is not
what we mean by God.1 But he could not avoid
an occasional lapse into less theistic language. In
one place he speaks of nature as the agent by whose
working medicine becomes a remedy for sickness ;
in another he makes nature the giver of qualities
or powers to fire and water ; qualities which, as a rule,
he more accurately calls the natura or uis naturalis
of things, given to them by the Creator.2 But such
lapses into common speech, which are not numerous
in his writings, no more indicate a weakening
of his fundamental thought than our talk of
sunrise implies a concession to the Ptolemaic
astronomy.

Another common use of the word he allowed
with hesitation for a time, but afterwards rejected.
Faustus the Manichaean alleged certain miracles
of the gospel as done contra naturam. Augustine
demurred. In a sense it was true ; with a glance at
St. Paul's phrase, irapa faa-iv, 3 he allowed that in
a certain fashion of speech the word natura stands
for the ordinary course of events familiarly known
to us. But even so he would not allow an argument
to be based on this popular use, and at a later period,

1 Retract, i. 1 1 . ' Hoc sane inconcusse retinendum esse non
dubito, Deum nobis non esse istum mundum, siue anima eius
ulla siue nulla sit.' It will be seen in De Immortal. Animae, 15,
how he clung to the conception of anima mundi.

2 De Genes, ad Lit. ix. 15. ' Natura id agit interiore motu
nobisque occultissimo.' De Ciuit. Dei, xxi. 7. 'At hoc esse
potius contra naturam uidetur, quae non igni sed aquae dedit
salem soluere, torrere autem igni non aquae.'

3 Rom. xi. 24.

THE CONTENT OF THE IDEA 29

as we shall see, he was even less tolerant of it in
serious discussion.1

We will turn to the more seriously determined
uses of the word. You must observe one broad
distinction, belonging to the common use of language,
which needs careful watching in Augustine. Natura
sometimes means the whole frame of things — rerum
natura ; at other times it stands for parts of the
whole, distinguished by their specific constitution or
qualities.

And first, of the rerum natura : how does he
understand it ? Quite alien from his thought is the
dualism which sets nature over against God. All
that occurs in nature is the work of God, but you
are not to think of God as setting up an external order
of nature, and then standing apart, directing and
controlling it from without. The distinction between
God and the works of God remains always clear.
The works of God are not God ; if there be an anima
mundi, that also is a creature, and not the creator,
nor even a demiurge. But God and the works of
God are conceived as being in one continuous order.
There is no clear cut distinction of nature and super-
nature ; there is nothing absolutely supernatural.
Nature includes all that exists. Augustine speaks

1 Contra Faustum, xxvi. 3. ' Dici autem humane more
contra naturam esse quod est contra naturae usum mortalibus
notum nee nos negamus. . . . Contra naturam non incongrue
dicimus aliquid Deum facere, quod facit contra id quod nouimus
in natura. Hanc enim etiam adpellamus naturam, cognitum
nobis cursum solitumque naturae, contra quern Deus cum aliquid
facit magnalia uel mirabilia nominantur. Contra illam uero
summam naturae legem, a notitia remotam siue impiorum siue
adhuc infirmorum, tarn Deus nullo modo facit quam contra se
ipsum non facit.' Cf . De Ciuit. Dei, xxi. 8. Infra, pp. 76 seqq.

3o NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

freely of natura Dei, or in metaphysical terms of trie
natura quae summe est, or, in his more Platonizing
mood, of that quae summum atque incommutabile
bonum est.1 Is this a case of using the same word
for disparate ideas ? No ; you must not separate
this nature of God by an impassable chasm from the
nature of God's works. Augustine argues in his
treatise De Anima that the human soul is not -pars
Dei or eiusdem naturae* but he is here using the
word in its second sense, to which we will come
presently ; the human soul is of another nature than
God just as it is of another nature than the soul of
a dog. But God and man, man and dog, are in the
same system. There is an ordo naturarum, con
tinuous ' ab eo quod summe est ad id quod minus
est.' 3

This continuous ordo is the rerum natura. If you ask
in what it consists, you will find a continuous sequence
of natural causes : ' naturalium causarum ordo.' 4
Can it be known as such ? In the Enchiridion
Augustine deprecates a curious investigation of the
rerum natura^ or the study of physics, on the ground
that for a Christian it is sufficient to acknowledge in
the goodness of the Creator the cause of all created
things.5 This scientific pessimism had grown upon
him in his old age, but even then he was not agnostic
in principle. In the more philosophic mood of his
treatise De Trinitate he had been able to express

1 De Util. Cred. p. 18. De Ciuit. Dei, xii. 2, 6. Contra
Julian, i. 8.

2 De Anima, ii. 3. Cf. Plotinus, Enn. v. i, 2. Averts ovcra
erepa oiv Kooyxet /cat &v KLVCL KOL a ^rjv TTOICI.

8 De Ciuit. Dei, xii. 8. 4 Ibid, xiv. n.

5 Enchir. g. Supra, p7i2.

THE CONTENT OF THE IDEA 31

admiration of the investigators of such secrets,
who follow even extraordinary events at which most
men stand agape and track them to their true place
in the natural order. The task is very difficult,
perhaps waste of time, but not impossible.1

There is, then, a cursus naturae. To the use of
this phrase Augustine is pretty constant. The course
of nature is knowable, but imperfectly. When it is
important to distinguish what is more or less familiar,
he speaks of naturae usitatissimus cursus. This
implies the existence of another sequence of causes,
which is not the less natural and orderly because it
is manifest only at comparatively rare intervals.
The two sequences must not be kept in separate
compartments ; they are to be conceived as inter
penetrating one another in all the phenomena of
the world. There is no hard and fast limit, for scien
tific investigation may transfer a cause and effect from
one side of the distinction to the other, and men
cease to marvel at what is so explored.2 Augustine
tells us how he shuddered when he first saw a magnet
draw to itself fragments of iron, but he was soon able
to place it in the customary course of nature.3 The
distinction is only that of the known and the unknown,
the usual and the unusual.

But did not Augustine leave a whole group of causes
and effects permanently on the side of the unknown ?
In the ninth book De Genesi, he distinguishes two
modes of the working of God's providence, the creative
and the administrative.4 The work of creation —
and bear in mind that Augustine understood this

1 De Trinit. iii. 2. Infra, p. 84. a Ibid.

8 De Ciuit. Dei, xxi. 4. * De Genes, ad Lit. ix. 18.

32 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

to be a single simultaneous act, creauit omnia simul l —
started the sequence of causes in rebus which can be
explored ; for the work of administration there are
certain causes reserved by God in se ipso absconditae.
As if to show what snares of language are about our
feet, Augustine says that things done in this way are
effected non naturali motu rerum sed mirabiliter ; but
you must not judge his thought by that lapse. You
will judge him more fairly by an earlier passage in the
same treatise, where he is confronted with the question
how God moves created things. We do not know,
he says, how the mind moves the body, and what we
do not know in respect of our own acts we cannot
hope to know in respect of another's.2 So the acts
of God done in the administration of the world are
brought under the same rule as the acts of a man.
The secret causes hidden in the divine nature are
related to the known causes 'of created nature. They
are properly natural.

There is no room here for the deistic conception
of nature constructed, wound up, and set going by
the Creator. Equally excluded is the idea of an
absolutely transcendental Ruler of the universe.
God is conceived at once as the first in a continuous
sequence of causes, and as acting immediately within
the resultant system of phenomena. On the other
hand, a merely immanental divinity is no less out of
question. To attain to the knowledge of the immut
able substance of God, he says, is to pass beyond the
confines of this changing universe of things corporal

1 De Genes, ad Lit. viii. 20. Compare, however, Epist. clxvi.
8, where he treats as tenable Jerome's opinion ' quod singulas
animas singulis nascentibus etiam modo Deus faciat.'

* Ibid. viii. 21.

THE CONTENT OF THE IDEA 33

and incorporal, and so to learn that the whole of
nature which is not God Himself is made by God.1
Sometimes this dualism finds crude expression, as
when he says that the world is the greatest of visible
things and God the greatest of invisible things.2

Dualism I call it, and let drop a dangerous word.
Wherever there is dichotomy there is incipient
dualism, and Augustine loved dichotomy ; but you
must always look to find his two subsumed under one.
There is a striking example in a passage of the treatise
De Anima to which I have already referred. 6 Omnis
natura,' he says, ' uel Deus est, uel ex Deo.' That
which is ex Deo is either made or not made. That
which is not made is either begotten of God or pro
ceeding from God.3 It is a daring attempt to bring
the mystery of the Trinity and the phenomena of
the world into a single conception. The word natura
stands for the idea under which all is subsumed.
You will find dualism of this kind everywhere in St.
Augustine, but the dualism is never final.

Shall we then speak of his monism ? I will do so
with caution ; a false impression may easily be con
veyed. Foreign to his thought is that element of
necessity which seems to be involved in monism
as commonly understood. If I take the meaning
of Plotinus correctly, his thought also was not mon
istic in this sense. The One and the All are not
identical, as they would be if emanation from the
One were eternally necessary. In Augustine the
distinction is of the clearest. With his strong sense
of personality and his frank use of anthropomorphism,

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xi. I. a Ibid. 4.

3 De Anima, ii. 3.

34 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

he had no difficulty in basing the unity of nature on
the one supreme will of the Creator, consciously and
continuously exercised. In another connexion we
shall have to consider the perplexing element in that
unity caused by the presence of created wills ; it is
sufficient to say here that these are an integral
part of the system. The system holds together as
the expression of an ever active but immut
able will. Nature is not more separable from
God than sunshine from the sun. In this sense
only you may call St. Augustine's thought
monistic.

It is time to turn to his other use of the word
natura. And first, he is continually compelled to
employ it, for the purpose of polemic, in the Mani-
chaean sense. Here it stands for that which is self-
existent, co-eternal with other existences. There
is no such plurality, he says ; it is one of his last words
that there is no aliena natura which can interfere with
the nature that is of God.1 Over against the nature
of God, who is supreme being, there can be no opposed
nature, but only sheer non-existence : ' contraria
natura non est nisi quae non est.' 2 But his polemic
in this connexion was not exclusively directed against
Manichaeans. Others among his beloved Platonics
thought of a nature, formless but self-existent and
eternal, of which, as praejacent material, the world
was made. You may look into the popular tract,
De Fide et Symbolo, to see how peremptorily he could
treat this notion. God has made one thing of another,
he says — man of the dust of the earth, for example —
but this praejacent material was itself created by
God ; the ultimate term of the series thus begun
1 Retract, i. 15. 2 De Ciuit. Dei, xii. 2.

THE CONTENT OF THE IDEA 35

is that all things were called into being out of
nothing.1

The existence of any nature independent of God
is thus ruled out of court ; but in another sense,
plurality of natures and differences of nature are
everywhere emphasized, not to say exaggerated, by
Augustine. He had no hankering after physical unifi
cations. His attitude was that of a common-sense
realism. Things are what they are, and as a rule
they are what they seem. They are what they are be
cause they are so made by the constituent will of God.
For their specific differences his usual word is natura.
The nature of a man is different from the nature of a
horse ; the difference has an ethical value, because
the unreasonableness which calls for bit and bridle
is natural to the one, but is a fault in the other :
* quod equo natura est homini crimen est.' 2 By
an easy transition natura then comes to mean a
class of individuals distinguished by common quali
ties : c naturae quae corrumpi possunt ' 3 are marked
off by the capacity for going to pieces, or of sinking,
as he would say, towards the nothingness out of
which they were called. Sometimes, indeed, he pre
fers the word species, as in the characteristic assertion :
6 Species ipsas Deus fecit, non priuationes.' 4 He
has in mind his dominating thought that evil is but
the loss of natural good, and you see that species
and natura are interchangeable terms.

Here, however, we may detect a subtle shifting
of the word. There would be no point in using
either term for designating an object merely as an
object. Yet Augustine sometimes comes near to

1 De Fide et Symbolo, 2 ; infra, p. 105, a In Ps. ciii. 4.

* Contra Ep. Fundamenti, 36. * De Genes. Imperf. 5.

D 2

36 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

such use. Natura shares with substantia the ambi
guity of application alike to the genera] and to the
particular. These terms also are interchangeable.
I will give you three examples, taken from different
periods. In the early dialogue De Libero Arbitrio
he says expressly, ' Naturam uoco quae et substantia
dici solet.' l In a popular exposition of the evil
of falsehood he writes : ' Ne quis putet aliquam
substantiam uel naturam ueritati esse contrariam.' 2
In the antipelagian treatise Contra lulianum you
may read : ' Natura est ipsa substantia et bonitatis
et malitiae capax.' 3 The confusion caused by the
ambiguity of the word substantia is well known, and
the same difficulty occurs at times in Augustine's
use of the word natura. It is aggravated by his
fondness for epigram. There is an evident straining
after effect in the sentence : * Uitium ita contra
naturam est ut non possit nisi nocere naturae.' 4
This can only mean that a vice injures an individual
existing in nature because it is a disturbance of
the order of nature. Such an use of the word would
be impossible if it were not habitually employed for
the distinction of objects, not merely as objects,
but by their qualities.

We are remitted, therefore, to the consideration
of these qualities. We must be careful to approach
them on the right side. They are not to be thought
of as constituting this or that nature ; the will of
God is the only constituent power, and by the same
will these qualities are imposed on things when created.
Things are what they are suae determinatione naturae,

1 De Lib. Arbitr. iii. 13. 2 In Ps. v.

3 Contra lulianum, i. 8. * De Ciuit. Dei, xi. 17.

THE CONTENT OF THE IDEA 37

and the will of the Creator is the determinant. He
can put it even more peremptorily : ' Uoluntas
conditoris conditae rei cuiusque natura est.' 1 Then
are natures fixed ? In the ordinary course of nature,
yes ; but Augustine will tell you that the will of God
is not exhausted in the act of creation. Changes of
nature, the most portentous, are to be referred to
the same cause. As he says elsewhere, certain
seminal principles were implanted in things whereby
they should in the course of nature become what
they were to be, but the results can be varied by the
continuing operation of the will of God.2

This postulate seemed to Augustine so obvious
that he could use it with perfect simplicity in argu
ment against those who questioned the possibility
of the resurrection of the body and of the fire of
eternal judgment. It is well known, he says, that
extraordinary things do occur : what do these people
say of them ? Agrigentine salt, for example, melts
in fire and crackles in water, reversing the usual
behaviour of salt in the ordinary course of nature : what
do they say to this ? They say that it is the nature
of this particular kind of salt so to do. A short
answer, and sufficient, he allows. Well then, since
God is the author of all natures, why should we be
expected to give a better reason for the marvels
which we believe. It is the will of Almighty God :
that is enough. It is the will of God that quick
lime should boil in water and be cold in oil, that straw
should keep ice from melting and warm apples to their
ripening, that hard and beautiful wood should turn

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xxi. 8.

2 De Genes, ad Lit. ix. 17 ; infra, p. 89.

38 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

into ugly and fragile charcoal, and at the same time,
wonderful to relate, should become incorruptible
instead of corruptible. It is the will of God : what
more can be said to account for anything ? 1

You are not to infer from this that Augustine lived
in fairyland, in an irrational universe where anything
might happen. He did not understand by the will
of God a whimsical indetermination. He believed
in the fixity of the course of nature, the inevitable
sequence of cause and effect. It was his business to
proclaim in a Christian sense that Oneness of God
which he had learnt of the Platonics, and Oneness
implied an immutable fixity of purpose. But it
was no undifferentiated unity, no mere negation
of multiplicity. The Unity of God means infinite
richness of content, excluding nothing ; therefore
the works by which God is known are infinitely
various ; we know a small part of them as sequence
of cause and effect ; the rest we may refer by unknown
sequences to Him as the First Cause.

I have stepped aside from my immediate subject.
Resuming, I would say that for the mind of St.
Augustine those qualities of created things which he
calls natures are ordinarily fixed and necessary.
' Creatoris uoluntas,' he says, * rerum necessitas est.'
But this must be taken with some qualification. It
is in the nature of a young man to grow old. But
what if he die before old age is reached ? That, says
Augustine, is the effect of another set of causes,
either worked into the texture of the world or reserved
in the will of God.2 Either event is equally natural

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xxi. 7. What agrigentinus sal may be I
confess I do not know. 2 De Genes, ad Lit. vi. 15-16.

THE CONTENT OF THE IDEA 39

and inevitable. There is no such thing as chance.
Already in his earliest writings he had suggested
that when we speak of chance we are merely confessing
our ignorance of causes.1 Only in this sense is it a
chance whether the young grow old or not. That
result will inevitably follow from natural qualities,
unless the course of things be complicated by other
causes, working in a like inevitable order. That
which happens in any case is the effect of an immense
multiplicity of causes, few of which are open to our
investigation, but all are assumed as working in
flawless order. If on the one hand Augustine rejected
the Stoic doctrine of predestination, he condemned
on the other hand, even more vehemently than the
Stoics themselves, Cicero's denial of a determined
sequence of causes.2 There are some tremendous
consequences that will have to be faced. Things are
not merely what they are, beasts are not merely
what they are, men are not merely what they are,
by reason of the nature given to them ; but also
their actions, in so far as they are capable of action,
are determined by that nature, except as modified
by the influence of causes, external to themselves,
which run up ultimately to the will of God.

To put it so is to make it seem that Augustine's
conception of nature, under God, was purely deter-
minist. But then comes in the great complication.
What of the books de libero arbitrio, which were the

1 Contra Acad. i. i. ' Fortasse quae uulgo fortuna nominatur
occulto quodam ordine regitur, nihilque aliud in rebus casum
uocamus nisi cuius ratio et causa secreta est.'

2 De Ciuit. Dei, v. 9. ' Quod uero negat ordinem omnium
causarum esse certissimum et Dei praescientiae notissimum,
plus eum quam Stoici detestamur.'

4o NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

first-fruits of his official Christian teaching ? What
of the insistence on the human will, its working and
its effects, with which he perpetually assailed the
ethical determinism of the Manichaeans ? What of
the unfaltering, if unsuccessful, endeavour of his later
years to achieve in controversy with the Pelagians
a just synthesis of the sovranty of grace and that
human freedom without which morality and sin
have no meaning ? Here would be the place to enter
on this subject. But I am not going to tackle it at
the end of a lecture. It must be postponed, even
though I have in the meantime to pass on to aspects
of nature which depend in part on the working of this
disputed force. This only I will say, to keep myself
in line. Augustine thinks of the human will as an
integral part of human nature. Without it man
would not be man. It is one of the endowments,
given him by the Creator, without which he would
not be what he is. This being so, the action of the
human will is a part of the whole course of nature ;
it comes into a sequence of causes, a sequence on the
one side among the most obscure, on the other side
perhaps the most completely explored of all that we
can investigate. The action of the will is therefore
natural action, and yet it differs so much from all
other natural activities that, as we have seen, Augus
tine could, at some expense of accuracy, distinguish
between voluntary and natural movements.1 Natural
motions are here those with the determination of
which the human will has little or nothing to do;
to-day, I suppose, we should call them automatic,
though that ill-used word would be used far more
1 Supra, p. 27.

THE CONTENT OF THE IDEA 41

appropriately where there is conscious self-deter
mination. For the present, I assume the existence
of this faculty of will, and go on to complete in
other respects my survey of nature as seen through
the eyes of St. Augustine.

Since all created things are called out of nothing
by the will of God, and only by the continual opera
tion of the same will are sustained in that kind of
existence which is proper to them, it follows that
they have a tendency to return to nothing ; should
the sustaining will be withdrawn, they lapse into
not-being. And since it is good to be, or in any
measure to share that existence which is found
supremely and perfectly in God, it follows that to
cease to be must in some sort be an evil.1 So
much Augustine learnt from his Platonics. But
in one respect he would not follow them. Plotinus
conceived creation in the terms of a cold and imper
sonal emanation from the One, becoming more and
more remote from the source, and therefore tending
inevitably to extinction. In his cosmological scheme
he placed sensible matter at the outer verge of being,
where it trembled on the brink of the abyss of nothing
ness. It was as light fades away in distance.2 To
be implicated with matter was therefore a misfortune,
an evil, for spiritual beings.3 Augustine's experience
of Manichaeism was sufficient to put him on his guard
against such conclusions; his conception of creative will
and of the divine providence made them impossible.

1 Confess, vii. 12. z Ennead. ii. 4, 5 ; iv. 3, 9.

3 Ibid. iv. 8, 4. EiA/^TTTai ovv Trecrova-a /cat Trpos ra> SeoyAO)
ovara Kal rfj alcrOrjcrcL evepyoOcra Sta TO K<oAve<r$ai TO> vw evepyeiv
, Te0a<j60at re Aeyerat KCU cv o-Tr^Xatu) cii/at.

42 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

It is important to note this limitation of Augustine's
Platonism. I doubt whether he was quite aware of
it himself. He seems to have read so much of his
own into Plotinus that he supposed himself to be
still following his guide when diverging. It is difficult
to ascertain what #eo? meant for Plotinus ; the con
ception of godhead is shot through the web of his
thought with baffling irrelevance ; but it is probable
that Augustine took it without hesitation in the sense
of his own bold anthropomorphism. Personal will
was for him the most real thing in the universe,
and the source of all subordinate reality. Much
that is persistently vague in his teacher thus became
clear cut in his own thought, and the consequences
are important. The clear cut may be no more true
than the vague, but it is incomparably more religious.
For that very reason it induces peril of idolatry.
Augustine himself, for all his strong conviction that
the sensible world was an imperfect copy of the
intelligible, may not have kept himself always aware
that his boldly outlined images of the unseen were but
images ; and some of his disciples seem to have had
no suspicion of it. The risk was worth running.
There may be safety in a vast vagueness, but there
is not much vitality.

The difference that I am noting is not the dis
tinction of immanence and transcendence. Neither
Plotinus nor Augustine was baffled by that Scylla-
Charybdis of theology. Nothing can be more clearly
marked than the contrast of e/cel and evravda in
Plotinus, and Augustine followed him without diffi
culty ; yet for both alike there was a continuity of
Here and Beyond that made a brusque transcendent-

THE CONTENT OF THE IDEA 43

ism nonsense. But there is a difference. You may
say that Augustine transferred to the Heaven of
Heavens much of what Plotinus would reckon to
be of the earth, earthy. I think you may be nearer
the mark if you draw two different plans of the
continuum. For Plotinus, eVe? is central, evravda
peripheral ; for Augustine, hie mundus, the world of
human experience, is central, the other world is
peripheral and all-embracing. This figure brings
me back to the point. We were considering Augus
tine's refusal to follow his guides to the conclusion
that union with body is a misfortune for spirit. It
is not the body, he constantly insisted, but the cor
ruptibility of the body, which presses down the soul.
He appealed audaciously from the Platonics to Plato,
to the myth of the created gods in the Timaeus,
bringing their promised immortality and indissolu-
bility into forced comparison with the Christian belief
in the resurrection of the body.1 But he had better
standing ground than these ingenuities. He steeped
himself in the healthy naturalism of the Hebrew
Psalms. Here he found the Lord rejoicing in his
works. That joy reaches to the utmost bounds of
creation. If men puff themselves up mountain-
high in a false spirituality, let them reflect, he says,
that a sparrow is winged and feathered by the care
of God.2

Yet there is the fact that all corporal things are
mutable and have a tendency to annihilation. But
Augustine refused to see any fault in this mutability,

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xiii. 16.

2 In Ps. x. ' Si uos montes esse dicitis per superbiam,
oportet quidem esse passerem pennatum uirtutibus et praeceptis
Dei.'

44 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

It is interesting to observe that his confidence in
the order and completeness of the world brought
him into remarkably close touch with some undis
covered principles of physics. It was enough for
him that God had created material things in this
condition of flux and variation, but as usual he tried
to rationalise his belief, and as a consequence he
seems to have come near to grasping the principle
of the conservation of energy. At the end of his
argument against the Manichaean Epistula Funda-
menti he sets out his conception of these changes.
Things pass away, but not into utter nothingness.
Speech affords an illustration. A word spoken is
gone ; it drops into silence, which is the mere negation
of sound ; and yet a whole sentence is produced by
a succession of vanishing syllables. So, too, the whole
beauty of the world is made up of transitory things ;
it stands in birth and death.1 He returned to this
thought when writing De Ciuitate Dei. Everything
in its proper natural order retains the measure of being
assigned to it ; things to which a temporary being
is assigned move towards that end which the plan
of the universe requires : ' in eum exitum quern
ratio gubernandae uniuersitatis includit ; ' there
fore, even when they perish, they pass away only

1 Contra Ep. Fund. 41. ' Nam et species uocis emissae
praeterit et silentio premitur, et tamen sermo noster ex prae-
tereuntium uerborum decessione ac successione peragitur, et
moderatis silentiorum interuallis decenter suauiterque distin-
guitur. Ita sese habet etiam temporalium naturarum infima
pulcritudo, ut rerum transitu peragatur et distinguatur morte
nascentium. Cuius pulcritudinis ordinem et modos si posset
capere sensus noster atque memoria, ita nobis placeret ut defectus
quibus distinguitur nee corruptiones uocare auderemus.' Infra,
no.

THE CONTENT OF THE IDEA 45

in such sort that something else consequently and
meetly comes into existence.1

So St. Augustine satisfied himself about the
transitoriness of mundane things. He looked at the
world as a whole, and found it fair. It was like a
picture, the beauty of which is made up of light and
shade.2 The African hardness, which I have ventured
to ascribe to him, possibly helped to deliver him for
good or for evil from the sentiment which makes
the world seem to some minds unendurable. c Nature
red in tooth and claw ' gave him no more trouble
than the lions roaring after their prey gave to the
Hebrew poet. He dismissed such anxieties with
something like contempt. Pain was but evidence
of the movement towards good which is in the
world.3 I am not attributing to Augustine any
originality. The image of the picture in light and
shade is one of his borrowings from Plotinus, who
taught him the unreasonableness of expecting all
things in the world to be alike good, or conversely of
making a lesser good positively evil.4 But if not

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xii. 5.

2 Ibid. xi. 23. ' Sicut pictura cum colore nigro loco suo
posito, ita uniuersitas rerum, si quis possit intueri, etiam cum
peccatoribus pulcra est.' So Plotinus, Ennead. iii. 2, u.

3 De Lib. Arb. iii. 22. ' Dolor autem quern bestiae sentiunt
animarum etiam bestialium uim quamdam in suo genere mira-
bilem laudabilemque commendat. Hoc ipso enim satis apparet in
regendis animandisque suis corporibus quam sint appetentes
unitatis. Quid est enim aliud dolor nisi quidam sensus diuisionis
uel corruptionis impatiens ? '

4 Ennead. ii. 9, 13. /cat OVK aTratrryreov TrdXiv ayaOovs Travra?,
ov$ OTL /XT) TOVTO SwciTov /Ae/z<£e<r$ai Trpo^€ip<a<5 TraAtv a^LOvcrL /xrySev
Siac^epetv ravra eKeiVwv, TO TC KCLKOV /xr) i/o/xt^ctv aXXo ri rj TO
cvSeecrrepov ct? <£pov?7(7iv KCU lAarrov ayaOov /cat det Trpos TO oyxiKpo-
Tepov. A difficult and probably defective text, the essential
meaning of which I hope I have seized.

46 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

original, this confidence in the good ordering of
the world acquired a new robustness from his
conception of will.

Human misery, however, was another story. He
was not an unmitigated optimist. He was not
like Emerson, taken by Carlyle to view the
squalor of Shoreditch, and saying contentedly
that it had its place in the great scheme of things.
He had battled with sin, and come off scarred.
The stress of this conflict was in part, no doubt,
responsible for that complete predominance of
the ethical element in his thought which made him
unwilling to include uitia naturalia among evil
things. There is a real remoteness from God,
but it is a moral remoteness only, and is unnatural.1
Nature is thus vitiated. I reserve this moral
corruption of nature for separate treatment,
noting only these points for the completion of
my present task. This kind of vice darkens and
weakens what is good in nature, which nevertheless
remains good in so far as it is natural.2 In one of
his vivid comparisons he likens vitiated nature to the
state of a man trying to walk with broken legs.3
That condition is penal, and therefore is part of the
good and righteous ordering of the world ; 4 it is

1 De Lib. Arb. ii. 14. ' Ueritatem autem atque sapientiam
nemo amittit inuitus ; non enim locis separari ab ea quisquam
potest, sed ea quae dicitur a ueritate et sapientia separatio
peruersa uoluntas est qua inferiora diliguntur.'

8 De Ciuit. Dei, xii. 3. ' Naturae illae quae ex malae uolun-
tatis uitio uitiatae sunt, in quantum uitiatae sunt, malae sunt :
in quantum autem naturae sunt, bonae sunt.'

9 De Natura et Gratia, 49.

* De Natura Boni, 37. ' Recte ordinans in poenis qui se
peruerse ordinauerunt in peccatis.'

THE CONTENT OF THE IDEA 47

therefore in a secondary sense natural ; l man is
brought to this misery by his own habit, not by
nature — ' non natura sed consuetudine ' — but this
consuetudo becomes a kind of nature. * Natura nobis
facta est poena.' For this reason alone St. Paul could
say that men are by nature children of wrath.2

Let us conclude. In his introduction to the
'TimczuS) Jowett attributes the obscurity of that
dialogue to ' the desire to conceive the whole of nature
without any adequate knowledge of the parts.'
He laments this weakness of the ancient philosophers,
but excuses it on the ground that ' before men could
observe the world they must be able to conceive the
world.' The judgment is characteristic of its time — •
forty years ago. At the present day we are perhaps
less complacent in our judgment of the ancients.
We find this fault in most philosophies. It is cer
tainly in Hegel. And then we may begin to doubt
whether it is a fault, whether the excuse put forward
is not the rule for all philosophy. We are not so
confident about our knowledge of the parts. The
more we learn, the more there is to learn. We see
that a synthesis of the parts, made even forty years
ago, would have been defective, and we are afraid that
if we make one now it may after all be only partial.
If we must have a conception of the whole, it has to
be sought some other way. St. Augustine sought
it. We know incomparably more of physics and
physiology than he did ; we may be inclined to think

1 De Lib. Arb. iii. 19. ' Ipsam naturam aliter dicimus, cum
proprie loquimur, naturam hominis in qua primum in suo genere
inculpabilis factus est, aliter istam in qua ex illius damnati poena
et mortales et ignari et carni subditi nascimur.'

2 De Fide et Symbolo, n. In Ps. xxxvii.

48 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

that we know more of psychology, since we have
invented a name for that science ; but it is not clear
that our knowledge will be more successful than his
ignorance in attaining to a conception of the whole.
He passed by physics, of which he was very curious
but knew little, to attempt an ethical construction
of the world. In this he improved on his masters ;
he was sometimes nearer to Plato than Plotinus
himself. But he improved even on Plato, by putting
the whole stress upon Will. If once or twice he
wavered in the Platonic direction, as if confusing
moral evil with ignorance, it was only for a moment.1
He was taught to put the stress on Will, partly by
his own experience, partly by the wholesome anthro
pomorphism of the Hebrew and the Christian religion.
I will pluck another flower from Jowett's introduc
tion : — ' The Platonic compared with the Jewish
description of the process of creation has less of
freedom or spontaneity ; the Creator in Plato is
still subject to a remnant of necessity which he cannot
wholly overcome.' Augustine found no necessity
in creation, but abounding Will, spontaneous, free ;
thence a world that is at once rational and moral :
that is to say, the world of our experience.

1 De Util. Cred. 12. ' Sapientes uoco, non cordatos et in-
geniosos homines, sed eos quibus inest, quanta inesse homini
potest, ipsius hominis Deique firmissime percepta cognitio, atque
huic cognition! uita moresque congruentes. . . . Solus igitur
sapiens non peccat.'

LECTURE III

HUMAN WILL AND FREEDOM

I SHALL consider in this lecture the place of created
will in the order of nature as conceived by St. Augus
tine. We must remember that he did not set man,
as a free agent, on a solitary pinnacle ; he spoke as
positively of angelic wills as of human. It is needless
for our present purpose to raise any question about
this exploration of a less familiar field. Will, free
choice of action, is our subject, in whatever kind of
nature it is found or assumed, but we shall study it
best in man.

Augustine approached this subject on the ethical
side. He seems to have been interested hardly at all
in its physical or purely psychological aspect. He
explains in the Retractions that he wrote the treatise
De Lib era Arbitrio to meet the necessitarian con
ception of sin which was, in his judgment, the worst
feature of Manichaeism. That is evident, indeed,
from the treatise itself, and one finds nothing else
where in his writings to indicate a more detached
interest. If ethics were always predominant in his
philosophy, the predominance is nowhere so marked
as here.

It is possible, however, to separate the strands of

50 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

his argument, and it will be convenient to do so.
In this lecture I shall try as far as possible to prescind
the ethical interest, and to ascertain what was at the
back of Augustine's mind. How did he place human
freedom cosmically, in the order of nature ? We
shall in this way avoid one difficulty : we can for the
present steer clear of his amazing paradox that
the most perfect liberty is non posse peccare. There
is no lack of other difficulties. Augustine seems at
times to have tackled the most intractable of all
questions almost with a light heart, and certainly
with a confidence which few serious thinkers have
imitated ; but problems which he had solved to his
own satisfaction were pressed upon him anew by
others, and he found that he could no more escape
from them than the world has done since his time.

Augustine approached the human will as a reality
self-evident, and to be accepted on the basis of com
mon sense. He puts the question bluntly in the dia
logue De Libero Arbitrio : ' Is there such a thing as a
will of our own ? ' Evodius answers with an affected
scepticism, ' I do not know.' The retort is, £ Do you
wish to know ? ' The English distinction of wish
and will disguises the thrust. For the purpose of
the argument the distinction is invalid. The faintest
wish is a choice of one thing rather than another ;
the strongest will is but the same kind of choice
intensified into a resolution of endeavour. ' Uisne
hoc scire ? ' To say ' yes,' is to acknowledge the
existence of uoluntas. Evodius still plays the sceptic,
and replies, ' I do not know that either.' Augustine
turns on him roughly : * Then ask me nothing more.
It is useless to answer one who does not wish for

HUMAN WILL AND FREEDOM 51

information. And besides, you cannot be my friend
unless you wish me well.' The force of common
speech prevails, and Evodius confesses, ' Negari non
potest nos habere uoluntatem.' l

That is legitimate reasoning. There is no getting
away from the fact that I do at times choose one
thing rather than another. I can distinguish my
own voluntary actions from actions which are invol
untary, and the distinction is not vitiated because
there are some actions on the border line about which
my judgment may be mistaken. ' Sentimus et
nouimus,' says Augustine, we perceive and know
that some things are not done by us unless we choose
to do them.2 Nothing is better known to us, he
says elsewhere, than our own will, for I should not
know that I wish for a thing if I did not know what
will is.3 There is some playing with words here.
Augustine seems to have supposed that in the passage
from verb to substantive, from uelle to uoluntas,
there was a real advance of thought. But for his
argument uelle suffices.

The testimony of bare consciousness is reinforced
by that of the moral sense. For Augustine there
was no escape from the fact of sin, or from the con
demnation of sin by the conscience. But how can
a man be condemned if he is not a free agent ? The
necessary, inevitable sin of which the Manichaeans
talked could not rightly be called sin at all. It would
have no implication of guilt. This argument is so
constant with him that citation is hardly needed,

1 De Lib. Arb. i. 12. 2 De Ciuit. Dei, v. g.

8 De Duabus Animabus, 10. ' Nobis autem uoluntas nostra
notissima est ; neque enim scirem me uelle si quid sit uoluntas
ipsa nescirem.'

£ 2

52 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

but take this from the tract De Uera Religione:
6 Sin is so entirely a voluntary evil that an act is not
sin at all if it be not voluntary.' * I choose this because
of the way in which he guards the statement in the
Retractions. We can speak of involuntary sins,
he there says, which are committed in ignorance or
under stress of temptation, ' quia uel a nescientibus
uel a coactis perpetrantur ; ' but there is always some
element of will in such actions ; the ignorant man
makes an ignorant judgment, and he who under
stress of concupiscence does the thing he would not
yields with some measure of willingness to his appe
tite.2 That is important, for it shows Augustine
with his finally matured judgment defending some
remnant of freedom even in those whom he would
reckon most enslaved.

This will remind us also of his own explanation
that in writing de libero arbitrio he had in view human
nature as created in its original integrity. This was
not an afterthought, forced upon him by the Pelagian
controversy ; it is in the dialogue itself : ' Cum de
libera uoluntate recte faciendi loquimur, de ilia
scilicet in qua homo factus est loquimur.' 3 Human
nature is vitiated ; that is a cardinal point of doctrine
which Augustine never allowed himself to forget.
The corruption of human nature involves some loss of
freedom. All that we shall have to consider later ;
but some degree of freedom is so essential to the
constitution of human nature that, if all were lost,
man would cease to be man. Though our soul be

1 De Uer. Rel. 14. ' Usque adeo peccatum uoluntarium est
malum, ut nullo modo sit peccatum si non sit uoluntarium.'

2 Retract, i. 13. * De Lib. Arb^iiL 18.

HUMAN WILL AND FREEDOM 53

weakened by sin, he says, it is yet on a loftier plane
of being than the light of the sun. Even a vicious
horse is better than a stone ; so he who sins by free
will is more excellent than a creature which does not
sin for lack of freedom ; the worst drunkard is a
nobler being than the good wine which he drinks
to his own hurt.1

So Augustine treats the will as an indestructible
element in human nature. As such, it has a fixed place
in the cursus naturae. What is that place ? What
is the relation of will to the other forces of nature ?

The worst defect in St. Augustine's treatment
of the subject is the inadequacy of his consideration
of the motives on which the determination of the will
turns. We must pick our words carefully here. We
must not speak of the will being determined by
motives, however dominant, for it is the capital
principle of his thought that man is ultimately self-
determining ; but self-determination means judg
ment, and this judgment is always exercised upon
motives. In his later years he was concerned to
maintain the sovranty of divine justice and divine
grace ; he held it impious folly to deny that God can
at pleasure turn to a good purpose the evil wills of
men.2 It is this consideration that gives us a familiar
phrase about the power of God to order the unruly
wills and affections of sinful men. But you must not
take this to mean the forcing of the will itself to
become good. If mala uoluntas were so forced, it
would cease to be uoluntas. It is the power to con-

1 De Lib. Arb. iii. 5.

2 Enchir. 25. ' Quis porro tarn impie desipiat ut dicat Deum
malas hominum uoluntates, quas uoluerit, quando uoluerit, ubi
uoluerit, in bonum non posse conuertere ? '

54 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

trol events that is in question. Freedom of the
will, liberum arbitrium, is one thing : freedom of
achievement is another thing. There is much more
than such beneficial ordering in the work of grace,
as understood by Augustine ; he certainly held that
inveterate evil will cou]d not become good will
without the help of divine grace, but this was a
motive working with other motives, on which human
judgment was exercised. In the first stage of his
thought he recognized equally inclusive motives of
another sort. He was interested only in motives to
sin, but from his treatment of them you can deduce
a more general conception. He puts the case of a
motive too powerful to be resisted ; then there is no
sin in yielding. If it can be resisted, then to yield is
sin. He puts the case of deception : is it possible
to guard against this ? If so, to let oneself be misled
is sin ; if not, there is no sin, for there is no truly
voluntary act. But sins are unquestionably com
mitted in such cases ; therefore it is evident that
resistance or caution is possible.1 The argument
is circular, you may say, or at least elliptical ; but
that is because its orbit is traced round the foci, the
two fixed points which are the facts of human choice
and human sin. Augustine will not allow us to call
in question those two facts of human experience.
He does sometimes use the language of determinism.
c Quod amplius nos delectat, secundum id operemur
necesse est.' 2 So he says in his exposition of the
Epistle to the Galatians. The merest hedonist could
hardly say more. But an isolated sentence will
seldom give you Augustine's mind, and when you
1 De Lib. Arbitr. iii. 18. 2 Expos. Ep. ad Galatas, v. 22,

HUMAN WILL AND FREEDOM 55

follow the explanation, you will soon find this domin
ant delectation interpreted, not in the sense of an
impact to which the will is passive, but of an energy
of love : ' Manifestum est certe secundum id nos
uiuere quod sectati fuerimus ; sectabimur autem
quod dilexerimus.' If the will is necessarily deter
mined by the strongest motive, the supreme strength
may be imparted to this motive by an affection which
is itself a preference founded in freedom of choice.
If that movement, again, is circular, it is because
human nature is in fact rounded to itself, and is
endowed with a function of originality.

Behind Augustine's investigation of motives, left
incomplete because of his contented acquiescence
in facts, lies the conviction that will is an ultimate
reality. ' Quid opus est quaerere unde iste motus
existat ? ' This movement of the soul ' non est
utique naturalis sed uoluntarius.' When we call
an act voluntary we are assuming a cause behind
which we cannot get to any other cause short of the
original will of the Creator. He contrasts with the
voluntary movement of a man the natural movement
of a stone in falling, which he could hardly have
placed more accurately if he had read Newton.1
Nothing is more clearly in our own power, he says,
than the will ; and weakly corroborates this strong
assertion by observing that as soon as we will a
thing, the will is present.2 What cause can there be
of will, he asks, prior to will ? It is the root of the
whole matter.3 He said the same thing later, when
writing De Ciuitate Dei. We must not seek an

1 De Lib. Arbitr. iii. i. 2 Ibid. iii. 3.

3 Ibid. iii. 17. 'A radice ista uoluntatis non receditur.'

$6 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

efficient cause of evil will. He is concerned, of
course, to show that there is no natural evil which
can cause it ; it springs spontaneously from human
nature, which is a good thing. He closes the question,
after a fashion to which he was too much addicted,
with a verbal quip. ' Non enim est efficiens, sed
deficiens.' 1 He is thinking of his favourite con
tention that evil is a loss of good, and not something
positive ; but why should there not be an efficient
cause of a loss ? And what is the efficient cause of
a good will ? The creative will of God ? But the
creative act produces man, able to choose freely
this or that. Whichever he may choose, the power
of choice springs equally from creative will. In the
Enchiridion Augustine will face the consequence
squarely, saying that nothing, good or evil, can be
done unless the Almighty should will it to be done,
either by way of permission or by way of action.2
What man chooses to do is done by divine permission,
with no anterior cause except the gift of the power.
Reviewing his own Manichaean errors, Augustine
observed that freedom from compulsion is of the
essence of will. He thus arrived at a formal defini
tion, in which ethical complications are for once
ignored. ' Uoluntas est animi motus, cogente nullo,
ad aliquid uel non amittendum uel adipiscendum.' 3
The motion is therefore spontaneous ; so he described
it in the height of the Pelagian controversy ; sin
is ' spontaneus defectus a bono.' 4

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xii. 7.

8 Enchir. 95. ' Non ergo fit* aliquid nisi omnipotens fieri
uellet ; uel sinendo ut fiat, uel ipse faciendo.'

3 De Duabus Animabus, 10.

4 Contra lulianum, i. 8. Infra, p. 107.

HUMAN WILL AND FREEDOM 57

The human will, thus empowered by the Creator,
becomes a cause. It is in causarum ordine. But
we must not place it low down as a link in a con
tinuous chain. It comes into the course of nature
direct from the First Cause. It is not a disturbance,
because it has its appointed place. But it is a new
cause. When brought in, it produces effects for
which there is no secondary cause antecedent to
itse]f. The free action of a man has, therefore, a kind
of secondary creative power. It is not properly
creative, because it cannot call natures into being,
but it does produce new qualities in existing natures.
You find him saying that in plain terms. c Tantum
ualent uoluntates ut earum naturarum, quarum
sunt, faciant qualitates.' * If you ask about a man
of evil will, * qualis sit,' the answer must be ' malus.'
But he is not bad by reason of his nature or substance,
for that is good ; he is called bad because of the
quality impressed upon him by his will. Evil will
does not produce an evil substance, for there is no
such thing ; but it does produce a real quality in
a substance which is otherwise good. Put aside the
ethical interest, and it remains that the will is pro
ductive. The will of man impresses certain qualities
on a quantity of wood — we had better not talk peri-
patetically of matter and form — and produces some
thing new. Let us accept the truth of common
speech : he makes a chair. ' There is an angel in this
block of marble,' said Michelangelo, c and I am going
to release him.' But the sculptor did more : he made
the angel.

It follows that the human will may produce an
1 Contra lulianum, i. 8.

58 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

effect contrary to trie will of the Creator. 6 But who
withstandeth His will ? ' demands St. Paul, or rather
a disputant supposed by St. Paul ; and Augustine
felt the pressure of the question.1 He extended the
meaning of omnipotence beyond the original signi
ficance of the word, and beyond what the Greek
word TravTo/cpdrcop seems able to convey, and so was
entangled in a difficulty ; but he extricated himself
by falling back on the natural sense of universal
sovranty. Opposition to God, and even successful
opposition, does not mean effective withdrawal from
under the sovranty of God. In the first place, it
comes within the rule that the will of God controls
all things, ' uel sinendo uel faciendo.' But further,
Augustine depicts a large scheme of omnipotence,
in which with infinite patience God controls the
wills of men, bending them to a far-off purpose.
God is ordinator no less than creator ; if he is natur-
arum bonarum creator, he is also malarum uoluntatum
ordinator ; if human wills make a bad use of good
things, he in turn makes a good use even of evil
wills.2 God has not so ordered nature that a creature
endowed with free judgment can overpower the
will of the Creator, even though he be able at times
to do something contrary to that will. When you
sin, he says, do not suppose that something has
happened to God against his will, for you are still

1 See, for example, Enchir. 25.

8 De Ciuit. Dei, xi. 17. ' Non itaque esset uitium recedere a
Deo, nisi naturae cuius id uitium est potius competeret esse cum
Deo. Quapropter etiam uoluntas mala grande testimonium
est naturae bonae. Sed Deus, sicut naturarum bonarum optimus
creator est, ita malarum uoluntatum iustissimus ordinator, ut
cum male illae utuntur naturis bonis, ipse bene utatur etiam
uoluntatibus malis.'

HUMAN WILL AND FREEDOM 59

under his hand and cannot evade his power ; whatever
you may choose to do, the Almighty will not lack
means for fulfilling his will in you.1 That he said in
popular exposition of a Psalm. In solid argument,
de Ciuitate Dei, he expounded scriptural sayings
about God's repentance, or change of purpose, as
to be understood tropically of that imperfect exhibi
tion of the divine purpose which is contained in the
known order of natural causes : behind, and out of
sight, is the unchanging purpose alike of doing good,
of suffering evil, and of bringing ultimate good out
of evil. Therefore no man by the exercise of his own
will can compel any change in the divine decrees.
You must let me read you the passage : —

' Sed quia Deus cuncta praesciuit, et ideo
quoque hominem peccaturum ignorare non potuit,
secundum id quod praesciuit atque disposuit ciui-
tatem sanctam debemus adserere, non secundum
illud quod in nostram cognitionem peruenire non
potuit quia in Dei dispositione non fuit. Neque
enim homo peccato suo diuinum potuit perturbare
consilium, quasi Deum quod statuerat mutare com-
pulerit ; cum Deus praesciendo utrumque praeue-
nerit, id est, et homo quern bonum ipse creauit quam
malus esset futurus, et quid boni etiam sic de illo
esset ipse facturus. Deus enim etsi dicitur statuta
mutare — unde tropica locutione in scripturis etiam
paenituisse legitur Deum — iuxta id dicitur quod homo

1 In Ps. ex. ' Si peccaueris, non putes hominem fecisse quod
uoluit et Deo accidisse quod noluit. Sicut enim uult ut homo
non peccet, ita uult peccanti parcere ut reuertatur et uiuat ;
ita uult postremo in peccato perseuerantem punire, ut iustitiae
potentiam contumax non euadat. Itaque quicquid elegeris
omnipotent! non deerit unde suam de te compleat uoluntatem.'

60 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

sperauerat uel naturalium causarum ordo gestabat,
non iuxta id quod se omnipotens facturum esse
praesciuerat.' 1

I think you will capture Augustine's thought
best if you picture man as exposed to a rain of influ
ences so various as more or less to neutralize one
another, leaving him in a condition of unstable
equilibrium. Other creatures are entirely controlled
and moved by natural impulses ; they are in ordine
causarum to such effect that an irresistible current
carries them along. Their course can be calculated
by an intelligence large enough and acute enough to
ascertain either the real causes of their movements
or the usual direction of the forces which drive them.
The date of an eclipse can be accurately determined
by an astronomer. The behaviour of sheep in given
circumstances can be predicted pretty certainly by
an experienced shepherd. If the constitution of
human nature were altogether like that of other creat
ures, we should be able, by a more difficult and com
plicated calculation of the same kind, to plan before
hand the actions of men. The skill of the shepherd
might be matched in the study of ethics ; politics
would approximate to an exact science. With
sufficient knowledge it would be possible to measure
the influences at work in every case, and the sum
of the motives acting upon him as forces would give
the direction in which a man would go. Man would
not ultimately be more unstable than any other
creature, animate or inanimate. But if he has a
power of choice, originating in himself, he can alter
the balance of forces by leaning this way or that in
1 De Ciuit. Dei, xiv. n.

HUMAN WILL AND FREEDOM 61

a manner altogether incalculable. Freedom does not
imply the absence of motive ; it means that to the
multitude of motives pressing on the man from with
out is added a motive from within strong enough to
determine the instability which is the result of their
cross currents.

So far I think it is clear that Augustine's con
ception of nature was large enough to allow room for
the play of human will. Freedom does not mean here
merely an unlimited capacity for desire ; cupiditas
is not uoluntas ; will is mockery unless a man is free
to act on his own judgment. Freedom of human
action is, of course, limited ; following his own
judgment, man comes up sooner or later against
impassable bars. But Augustine would not set
bounds of eternal necessity, for he acknowledged no
such thing ; the restraint is exercised by the living,
yielding, controlling will of God ; the only rerum
necessitous is creatoris uoluntas}- He thus attributes
to the system of nature an elasticity which is denied
to any purely mechanical scheme.

But there remains an immense question. I ask
you to recall that fine argument which I have just
now quoted, about the unchanging purpose that
brings good out of evil. It fetches me up against a
difficulty which we have not yet faced. It was built
by Augustine upon a foundation which for the moment
I purposely ignored. We must come to it. ' Quia
Deus cuncta praesciuit ' — that is why Augustine
could see an eternal purpose working through all
the aberrations of man. And what is involved in
foreknowledge ?

1 De Genes, ad Lit. vi. 15.

6z NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

Augustine stumbled on that question from the
first. One does not know whether Evodius in the
dialogue De Libero Arbitrio is a merely conventional
interlocutor, or whether his difficulties were actually
propounded by Augustine's friend of that name.
This is one of them. If God, he asks, has fore
knowledge of all things that will be, how can there be
any freedom ? If God foreknew the sin of man, how
could that sin be a work of free will ? If God fore
knows that a thing will happen, happen it must.
How can there be freedom of will where there is
this inevitable necessity ? 1

Augustine was not afraid of putting the difficulty
strongly. It is a great question, he says, but there
is an easy reply. Easy it is ; but few readers, I should
say, can have found it sufficient. ' Why do you
think,' he asks, c that there is a contradiction between
our free choice and the foreknowledge of God ?
Because it is God's, or because it is foreknowledge ? '
Evodius elects the former alternative. ' But if you
know beforehand that a man will do something,'
continues Augustine, c is he not bound to do it ? '
' That is so,' replies Evodius, ' for my knowledge
would not be knowledge unless I knew something
fixed and assured.' So necessity follows, if at all,
on any foreknowledge, not only on that of God.
Evodius accepts this, correcting his former statement.
' But you do not compel the man,' says Augustine,
' to do what you know him to be going to do. He
certainly will do it, otherwise you could not know,
but your foreknowledge does not make him do it.
You know that he will do it, but none the less he
1 De Libero Arbitrio, iii. 2.

HUMAN WILL AND FREEDOM 63

does it of his own free will. In the same way God
does not compel men to do what he foresees them
doing.'

You will see at once that Augustine here draws
a comparison that will not hold good. He is arguing
as if divine knowledge were of exactly the same kind
as human knowledge. Five or six years later he had
to come to closer quarters with the question. His
old friend Simplicianus, now Bishop of Milan, con
sulted him about the changes of purpose attributed
to God. Augustine replied that neither knowledge
nor foreknowledge, neither scientia nor praescientia,
can be predicated of God in the strict sense of the
words. They are terms of human experience ; know
ledge is of things past, foreknowledge is of things
future ; but neither past nor future is to be thought
of in the eternity of God. Therefore when we speak
of God's knowledge, we use the word in a special
sense, and a comparison of human and divine know
ledge is absurd — inridenda.1 Yes : but then his reply
to Evodius goes by the board.

What is this foreknowledge which we attribute
to God ? The category of time is improperly intro
duced, as a concession to human modes of thought.
It follows that things which to us are past, present, or
future, are to God neither past nor future, nor yet
properly present. For by the present we mean that
which is now passing, and will in a moment be past.
Eternity is existence without relations of time. Then
how is it possible to speak of foreknowledge ? The
word introduces the relation of futurity which is
supposed to be prescinded.

1 Ad Simplicianum, ii. 2.

64 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

I would ask you to observe that this conception
is not properly Christian. Augustine did not draw
it from the Scriptures either of the Old or of the New
Testament, or from any ecclesiastical source. When
he says that God neither was nor will be, he is Platon-
ising.1 The Hebrew or Christian way of speaking
is rather to say that God was and is and is to come.
You may interpret that as a poetical phrase excluding
temporal relations, since that which is of all three
times is of none in particular ; but this will be an
afterthought. The foreknowledge implied in the
prophecies of the Old Testament is in the proper
sense knowledge of the future ; it is strictly com
parable with human foresight, the calculation of
consequences from causes more or less known ; it
always seems to be contingent ; it is capable of being
referred to an extraordinary knowledge of causes
secretly working towards a definite end, which may
nevertheless be frustrated by other causes cutting
across them.

You can draw from this source the conception of a
course of nature so orderly and regular as to allow a
far range of prevision, which shall yet be subject to
modification by the free action of the human will.
You may assume also factors tending to the deter
mination of the will which so lie open to a sufficiently
penetrating intelligence as to allow the prediction of
human actions ; but even the smallest remnant of
free choice, undetermined by external causes, will
introduce an inevitable element of contingency.

1 Plotinus, Ennead. iii. 7, 3. o ovv n/fjTe TJV /x^r« lorrat,
cart fjiovov, TOVTO ecrTws €XOV TO etvat TO) /x,?) fjL€Taj3dX\€W ei5 TO ecrrai
av xeTa3e3ATKeVai fcrrlv o atwv.

HUMAN WILL AND FREEDOM 65

One can imagine Augustine constructing a scheme
of the world on these lines, and making the most
of the repentances of God in illustration. Indeed, his
doctrine of the economy of grace, where God appears
as ordinator uoluntatum malarum, loudly demands such
a scheme. But he was barred out from this by
his acceptance of the Platonic conception of eternity,
incongruously interpreted in terms of time, which
involved him in the difficulties of absolute fore
knowledge.

How absolute he made it, and into what diffi
culties it brought him, may be seen from his treatment
of the case of Hezekiah. The story of the king's
sickness, of his predicted death, of his prayer and
his recovery, would seem to be a crucial example of
the divine repentances and of the contingency of
prophecy. What does Augustine make of it ? You
will find it in the sixth book De Gene si ad Liter am.
A chain of causes was leading Hezekiah to immediate
death, but other causes known to God from eternity
were prolonging his life for fifteen years ; if this was
granted in answer to his prayer, it was because
God had from eternity foreseen the prayer and the
answer. Augustine does not account for the first
prophecy of immediate death ; he would perhaps
refer it to a revelation of the temporal causes working
to that end. The most interesting part of the com
ment is the conclusion : ' What God foreknew was
necessarily bound to happen.' Quod praesciebat neces-
sario futurum erat*

1 De Genes, ad Lit. vi. 17. ' Secundum quasdam futurorum
causas moriturus erat Ezechias, cui Deus addidit quindecim
annos ad uitam, id utique faciens quod ante constitutionem

66 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

Then what freedom is there ? Augustine was
continuously wrestling with the problem, sometimes
using means that were little more than verbal quib
bling. In the fifty-third tract on St. John, he says
that God must not be supposed to compel our actions,
for He foreknows them as our own, and if they are
not really our own, God's foreknowledge is at fault,
which is impossible ; we freely resolve to do what
we will, and our resolution was foreknown.1 That
is merely to state the antinomies of the problem,
without any solution. In the fifth book De Ciuitate
Dei you will find him almost comically angry with
Cicero for denying the possibility of divination on
the ground of the freedom of the will. To Cicero's
contention that foreknowledge is possible only if
there be a fixed ordo causarum, which excludes vol
untary action, he replies that our wills are included
6 in causarum ordine qui certus est Deo.' That is
true in a large sense, and is involved in his con
ception of nature ; but if it means that our wills
are wholly determined by precedent causes — and

mundi se facturum esse praesciebat et in sua uoluntate seruabat.
Non ergo id fecit quod futurum non erat ; hoc enim magis erat
futurum quod se facturum esse praesciebat. Nee tamen illi anni
additi recte dicerentur, nisi ad aliquid adderentur quod se aliter
in aliis causis habuerat. Secundum aliquas igitur causas in-
feriores iam uitam fmierat ; secundum illas autem quae sunt in
uoluntate et praescientia Dei, qui ex aeternitate nouerat quid
illo tempore facturus erat — et hoc uere futurum erat — tune erat
fmiturus uitam quando finiuit uitam ; quia etsi oranti con-
cessum est, etiam sic eum oraturum ut tali orationi concedi
oporteret ille utique praesciebat, cuius praescientia falli non
poterat ; et ideo quod praesciebat necessario futurum erat.'
I follow the readings of Zycha in C.S.E.L.

1 In loan. 153. ' Ipsorum enim praesciuit peccata, non sua,
non cuiusquam alterius, sed ipsorum. Quapropter si ea quae
ille praesciuit ipsorum non sunt ipsorum, non uere ille praesciuit.

HUMAN WILL AND FREEDOM 67

nothing less fits the argument — he is in conflict
with his own doctrine of the originality of will.
Hard pressed, he falls back on his mastery of
phrase. ' Non ergo propterea nihil est in nostra
uoluntate quia Deus praesciuit quid futurum
esset in nostra uoluntate ; non enim qui hoc
praesciuit nihil praesciuit.' 1 That is epigram, not
argument.

Was there no escape ? I think we can see that
Augustine, when he wrote the eleventh book of the
Confessions, was labouring to find a way out of the
difficulty by analysis of the idea of time. Consider
his argument with himself on the subject, and his
passionate appeal to God for guidance. It was not
on a metaphysical subtlety that he so expended
himself. He was moved to the depth of his moral
being by this problem of reconciliation. What was
the divine prescience ? How could it stand with
human freedom ? How could the future be revealed
to men, for whom the future does not exist ? * It
is beyond me,' he cries ; ' I cannot attain unto it ;
but of Thee I shall have attainment, if Thou give
it, dear light of my blinded eyes.' 2 He seems to
have felt that a solution was just evading him.
He had learnt, probably from Plotinus, to distin-

1 De Ciuit. Dei, v. 9.

2 Confess, xi. 19. ' Quisnam ille modus est quo doces futura
cui futurorum quicquam non est ? Uel potius de futuris doces
praesentia ? Nam quod non est nee doceri utique potest. Nimis
longe est modus iste ab acie mea ; inualuit ex me, nee potero
ad ilium ; potero autem ex te, cum dederis tu, dulce lumen
occultorum oculorum meorum.' I follow Knoll's reading. It
would be grammatically simpler to refer cui futurorum quicquam
non est to God, ' for whom there is no future ; ' but the context
seems to demand a reference to the present non-existence for
man of things future.

F 2

68 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

guish between duration and time, and he could adjust
the former conception to the Christian idea of God.
He had read in the Psalms, ' Ipsi peribunt, tu autem
permanes.' This gave him a phrase. ' Nulla tempora
tibi coaeterna sunt,' he says, * quia tu permanes ;
at ilia, si permanerent, non essent tempora.' 1 He
had lifted from Plato the conception of time as a
measure inherent in created things ; the world was
not made in time, but with time.2 He thought
for a while that he could identify it as distentio ipsius
animi, making it a mere form of perception.3 Dura
tion and time would then run parallel courses ;
or rather, time would be a measurement of duration,
exclusively proper to human experience. In that
case, past and future would have a meaning in re
spect of duration ; they would be a clumsy way of
describing, in the terms of our broken experience,
its continuous flow ; futureness would have some
correspondence with reality.

It seems to me that Augustine was feeling his way
along these lines when he harped on the common-
sense notion that what is future does not yet exist.
It cannot therefore be seen. But its causes exist,
and may be known ; from which it is possible to

1 Confess, xi. 17. Plotinus, Ennead. iii. 7, 7. TO yap oTacriv
77 TO €(TTr]Ko<s r) crracrecus re Aeyeiv TravraTratrt TTO/O/HO rijs eVyotas av
ctv; TOV \povov ovSajjirj rov avrov oWos. Time, as a flux of suc
cession, is contrasted with the stability of abiding existence.

2 Timaeus, p. 37. EIKU> o' iirwoel Kivrjrov nva aiwvos Tronjcrai,
/cat StaKcxr/Acoi/ a/xa ovpavov Troiet p^ivovro^ alwvos ev en KOT' apiO/AW
iovcrav atconov etKOva, TOVTOV oV 8y \povov wvo/xcx/ca/xev. rj/jL€pa<s yap
Kal i/UKTas /cat /Jif)va<s Kal eviaurovs OVK oVras irpiv ovpavov yeveo-Oai,
TOTC a/xa cKetVa) ^wta-ra/xeva) rr/v yevecrtv avrwv /jt^^avarai.
De Ciuit. Dei, xi. 6. ' Non est mundus factus in tempore, sed
cum tempore.'

3 Confess, xi. 26.

HUMAN WILL AND FREEDOM 69

foresee the future. I see the dawn : I predict the
sunrise. Is it thus that God reveals the future in
prophecy, making known its antecedent causes which
now are ? Augustine shrank from the question.
This also was beyond him.1

A tempting conclusion must have danced before
his eyes. There was an epigram ready made. It
would be quite in his style to say that, since things
future do not exist, to know the future is to know
nothing. That would be a way of getting rid of
this troublesome foreknowledge, without impugning
the omniscience of God ; for knowledge is of things
that are, and knowledge of nothing is not knowledge.
His avoidance of this quibble indicates the high
seriousness of his inquiry. He was more entirely
candid when speaking to himself or to God, as in the
Soliloquies and the Confessions, than when disputing
with an adversary. But such an epigram might
be tolerable even here ; it need not be a mere quip.
If time is a copy of eternity — a Platonic notion
which is not quite so nonsensical as Jowett thought —
there is room for comparison. If measured time
differs from duration only as the mode of human being
differs from the mode of divine being, futurity and
the nonentity of future things may have some meaning
also for God. Augustine could be boldly anthropo
morphic on occasion. Here his boldness deserted
him. He realised that for man the present is a

1 Confess, xi. 18. ' Quoquo modo se itaque habeat arcana
praesensio futurorum, uideri nisi quod est non potest. Quod
autem iam est, non futurum sed praesens est. Cum ergo uideri
dicuntur futura, non ipsa, quae nondum sunt, id est quae futura
sunt, sed eorum causae uel signa forsitan uidentur, quae iam
sunt.'

70 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

mere point — the turning-point from past to future.1
But he held to the incongruous notion that the divine
existence can be conceived in terms of an enduring
present. He was tied to the arid abstraction which
makes eternity nothing else but a point of time,
and so a mere negation of time.

That was the cause of his trouble, from which
he never escaped. He maintained the freedom of
the human will. With complete and ineluctable
inconsistency, he maintained the divine foreknow
ledge in a sense which involved, as he admitted in his
more unguarded moments, a necessary determination
of the will.

1 Confess, xi. 15. ' Quod tamen ita raptim a future in praeteri-
tum transuolat, ut nulla morula extendatur. Nam si extenditur,
diuiditur in praeteritum et futurum : praesens autem nullum
habet spatium.'

LECTURE IV

MIRACLE

WE have seen that, according to the mind of St.
Augustine, there is a cursus naturae, which may be
otherwise described as an ordo causarum. In arguing
against Cicero's denial of vaticination, he urges
the principle that nothing is made or done without
an efficient cause preceding. He attributes the divine
foreknowledge, in his more tempered treatment of
the subject, to the fixity of this order, by reason of
which consequences may be reckoned already existent
in their antecedents. So far he is in pretty close
agreement with most modern thought. We part
company from him in respect of the importance which
we attach to the investigation of causes. This sort
of thing seemed to him mere curiosity, rather puerile,
and reprehensible if it should distract the mind from
more serious pursuits. It must be admitted that
he himself shows in his writings many traces of such
curiosity, and the results may be held to justify
his condemnation of its indulgence. Much of the
investigation that he found possible was indeed futile,
and he could not anticipate the triumphs of an unborn
science to which even the trivialities of natural
history should bring precious materials. But if his

72 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

natural history seems to us childish, his natural
philosophy was not fundamentally different from
our own. It assumed a continuous chain of causality.
Yet there is a difference, perhaps not altogether
to St. Augustine's disadvantage. The place that he
found for Will in the production of consequences
made room for certain facts of experience which seem
to wander homeless in some other systems, and
in others again are provided for by the elimination of
the one thing that is surely known about them.
The human will is not for Augustine an intrusive
element, at odds with all natural causes ; neither,
on the other hand, does he attempt violently to bring
it into a false co-ordination with them. Will is for
him a force in nature, unique, but only as gravitation
is unique ; and it is included with other forces in the
ordo causarum. In spite of the convenient distinction
between natural and voluntary motion, will is for
him an integral part of the rerum natura. He does
not succeed in establishing a complete continuity,
because in the operation of will he recognises an
element of comparative originality. However much
the determination of will may be controlled by
prevenient motives, there is at some point a self-
determination which is free. But even this free
action of the human spirit is brought within the
system by the ultimate reference of all force to the
originating will of God the Creator. He is able in
this way to get rid of the fortuitous causes l which
he found to be assumed in Cicero's account of con
tingency. They can be brought, hypothetically
at least, within the ambit of voluntary causes. We
1 De Ciuit. Dei, v. 9. Supra, pp. 39, 66.

MIRACLE 73

are left, therefore, with the single distinction of
natural and voluntary causes ; but the distinction is
merely provisional, for voluntary causes are funda
mentally natural, and natural causes also may be
described as voluntary, since they spring from the
will of God.

The will of God is not whimsical. Before his
baptism Augustine spoke doubtfully of the doctrine
of chance, suggesting only that what is so called
may be the working of ordered causes unknown
to us.1 In later days he had no doubts on this head.
Omnipotence does not mean reckless power, but the
strength of wisdom.2 The course of nature is ordered.
It is subject to necessity ; not the blind necessity
of the Stoics, but a law intelligently imposed. c Crea-
toris uoluntas rerum necessitas est.' 3 Augustine's
conception of the divine foreknowledge constantly
reinforces this sense of inevitable order, but apart
from that questionable element of his thought, his
conception of creation is sufficient to establish the
point. He speaks of the laws of nature in a fashion
that would almost satisfy the demands of modern
science. There is ratio et causa even of the most
casual occurrences. 4 Omnis iste naturae usitatissimus
cursus habet quasdam naturales leges suas.' 4 He
is sparing in the use of this phrase, but it sometimes
falls from his pen so incidentally as to seem clearly
familiar. Discussing the years of the antediluvian
patriarchs, he remarks as a matter of course that,

1 Contra Acad. i. i.

2 De Genes, ad Lit. ix. 17. ' Neque enim potentia temeraria
sed sapientiae uirtute omnipotens est, et hoc de unaquaque re in
tempore suo facit quod ante in ea fecit ut possit.'

3 Ibid. vi. 15. 4 De Genes, ad Lit. ix. 16.

74 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

according to a well-known law of nature, a boy cannot
procreate children at the age of twelve years.1

By a law of nature Augustine probably meant
something more congruous to the word than is now
usually intended. He had a clear vision of a legis
lator. But the practical effect is much the same.
For this legislator has an unchanging purpose. His
laws do not vary, and they bind all creatures. We
are not concerned here with a moral law, which free
wills may flout, but with laws of causation, which
control with equal rigour voluntary and involuntary
motions. For Augustine had no illusions about the
limits of human action. I can will what I will, but
to perform what I will is another matter. Some
things are naturally within my power ; I may have a
will to do other things, but the will is futile. Our
wills can do just so much as God has willed them
to be able to do.2

Augustine would probably have limited human
action much more narrowly than we do. I am not
thinking only of the artificial harnessing of the forces
of nature which we have achieved. There is some
thing less obvious. We know the material universe
as consisting of masses, large and small, which hang
in such delicate equilibrium that the slightest move
ment of the smallest mass affects the position of all
the rest. If I walk across the room, I move the sun
a measurable distance. And I choose for myself
whether I will do this. By a voluntary act I can

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xv. 12. ' Quis potest hac aetate generare
usitata ista nobisque notissima lege naturae ? '

2 De Ciuit. Dei, v. 10. ' Nostrae uoluntates tantum ualent
quantum Deus eas ualere uoluit.'

MIRACLE 75

move the sun. I think that St. Augustine would have
accused me of impiety for making such a claim. How
ever that may be, he certainly dreamt of no power
so far-reaching given to man. He set narrower
bounds. But whether they be narrow or wide, the
point is that his conception of nature involves the
setting of such bounds. Man is a free agent within
limits. He is not the only free agent. Other wills
are to be recognised as operative, no less than the
human will. All these work within a scheme, an
ordered frame, which is determined by the will of
the Creator. And that supreme will works by self-
determination through the same order, which is indeed
itself. It follows that Augustine's thought allowed
no room for any action upon nature from without.
No will — of God, of angel, of demon, or of man —
could be pictured as a foreign power, intervening
in the course of nature. Once more I must note the
absence of that distinction of nature and super-
nature which afterwards invaded theology.

And what, then, of miracle ? It is our con
ception of the unitormity or continuity of nature,
so near akin to that of St. Augustine, which makes
of the miraculous a fretting problem for us. What
problem was there for Augustine ? None whatever.
He discussed many questions about miracles, but he
does not seem to have been aware of any question
about miracle in general. He takes the occurrence
of miracles as a matter of course, of common notoriety.
Particular miracles, or particular groups of miracles,
might be challenged, but it does not seem to have
occurred to him that any wider question could be
raised. There is consequently in his writings no

76 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

broad treatment of the subject; if we would frame
one according to his mind, it has to be pieced together
from scattered indications. Moreover, his attitude is
such that to get from him what we need we sometimes
have to invert his arguments. A modern reader
discovers with something of a shock that a sentence
often quoted by apologetic writers was framed by St.
Augustine, not for the defence of the credibility of
miracles, but for the assertion of the continuity of
nature. ' Portentum fit,' he says, ' non contra
naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.' * Observe
where that sentence occurs. He is discussing the
doctrine of hell-fire, to which some objected that it
was contrary to the nature of a human body to be
burnt without being consumed. In reply he refers
to a portent reported by Varro. Why did Varro
call it a portent ? Because it seemed to be contrary
to nature. But that was a mistake. Nothing occurs
in nature which is contrary to nature ; it seems so
to us only because it is the effect of some natural
causes which are unknown to us. The fact, you
see, is taken for granted ; the authority of Varro is
incontestable ; what Augustine labours to show
is that the fact is no violation, no disturbance of the
course of .nature. Miracles are visible ; this inter
pretation of miracle requires an act of faith.

But what did Augustine mean by a miracle ?
Much may turn upon a definition. There are dis
putations on this subject which seem to have no other
turning-point. How did he understand miraculum ?
It was a wonder. I think that to some extent he
was at the mercy of the word. He may have used
1 De Ciuit. Dei, xxi. 8. Supra, p. 28.

MIRACLE 77

his little Greek to the extent of observing that in the
canonical books of the New Testament the works of
power which accompanied the preaching of the gospel
are rarely described by a corresponding word of that
idiom. I believe there is only one instance.1 Thau
maturges belonged to other religions ; Christianity
seemed to avoid the name. But he might reflect
further that wonder was at all events the first and
most general effect of such works ; to call them
miracula was not to fall out with the facts. And if
Augustine sometimes laid undue stress on the merely
marvellous, he kept well in view the causes of amaze
ment. In one of his earlier books there is a definition
which will serve equally well for the study of his
latest : ' Miraculum uoco quidquid arduum aut in-
solitum supra spem uel facultatem mirantis apparet.'2
Here are two factors making an event miraculous.
First, there is a percipient mind, which is moved to
wonder. Secondly, the thing done is alternatively
either unexpected because unusual, or difficult beyond
the measure of the beholder's power. We may work
from this definition.

The phrasing is less happy than might be expected,
for Augustine's neatness in this kind of sentence stands
out as a rule in striking contrast with his diffuse and
clumsy periods. The definition needs explication.
Two kinds of miracle are maladroitly conjoined ;
the kind which a beholder instinctively compares
with his own actions, telling himself that it is beyond
his power to do the like, and another kind which

1 Matt. xxi. 15. TO, 0auyuacrta a eTrot^crc. And this may perhaps
refer only to the moral miracle of the cleansing of the Temple.

2 De Util. Cred., p. 16.

78 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

provokes no such comparison. It is evident that
the former kind must be regarded as the act of a volun
tary agent ; the latter need not be so regarded. At
the present day, if I am not mistaken, the former
kind alone would be reckoned properly miraculous,
the most amazing and inexplicable recovery from
sickness would be excluded from that category unless
there were supposed to be some definite relation of
the event to a personal influence. St. Augustine
did not so limit the category. He would make it
include every unusual and inexplicable event, without
reference to any voluntary action, other than the
ultimate ordering of the will of God.

This I would press, for there is an important
consequence. I cannot find any hard and fast line
drawn by St. Augustine between one kind of wonder
working and another. He passes without any feeling
of incongruity from freaks of nature, or conjuring
tricks displayed in popular shows, to the veiled work
ing of natural causes, thence to magic arts, and finally
to the signs and wonders which tempters of God
may demand under colour of religion.1 He contem-

1 Confess, x. 35. ' Ex hoc morbo cupiditatis in spectaculis
exhibentur quaeque miracula. Hinc ad perscrutanda naturae,
quae praeter nos non est, operta proceditur, quae scire nihil
prodest et nihil aliud quam scire homines cupiunt. Hinc etiam,
si quid eodem peruersae scientiae fine per artes magicas quaeritur.
Hinc etiam in ipsa religione Deus temptatur, cum signa et
prodigia flagitantur non ad aliquam salutem, sed ad solam
experientiam desiderata.' All previous editors had read with
codd. ' quae praeter nos est/ but Knoll seems to have been
clearly right in restoring the negative, which Cod. Sessorianus
retains. The ordinary reading gives the facile but pointless
sense of ' external nature ; ' the more difficult reading with the
negative points to a distinction between those secrets of nature
which are entirely pvaeter nos, beyond our ken, and others which
are not so inaccessible. Cf. De Trinitate, iv. n. 'Facile est

MIRACLE 79

plates the removal of certain things from the category
of miracle by means of progressive science. There
is an ' ordo naturalis,' he says in the third book De
Irinitate, which custom has robbed of its wonder ;
but some things belonging to that order occur so rarely
as to inspire amazement, until investigation brings
them within the compass of the human understanding,
and many recorded repetitions abate surprise.1 Recall
the definition of Miracle, and you will see that in this
case what was insolitum is no longer supra spem.
The thing which was miraculous is miraculous no
longer. This relativeness of miracle appears even
in Augustine's most popular teaching. Does the
Psalmist talk of God's wondrous works ? Augustine
takes occasion to explain that a thing is wonderful
in proportion to the abstruseness of its cause.2

Portents, prodigies, tricks of magic, miracles of

enim spiritibus nequissimis per aerea corpora facere multa quae
mirentur animae terrenis corporibus aggrauatae etiam melioris
affectus. Si enim corpora ipsa terrena nonnullis artibus et
exercitationibus modificata in spectaculis theatricis tanta miracula
hominibus exhibent ut ei qui nunquam uiderunt talia narrata
uix credant, quid magnum est diabolo et angelis eius de corporeis
elementis per aerea corpora facere quae caro miretur.' These
two passages conclusively indicate the extension of the term
miraculum for St. Augustine's mind.

1 Ibid. iii. 2. ' Alius est ordo naturalis in conuersione et
mutabilitate corporum qui, quamuis etiam ipse ad nutum Dei
seruiat, perseuerantia tamen consuetudinis amisit admirationem,
sicuti sunt quae uel breuissimis uel certe non longis interuallis
temporum caelo terra marique mutantur, siue nascentibus siue
occidentibus rebus, siue alias aliter atque aliter apparentibus ;
alia uero, quamuis ex ipso ordine uenientia, tamen propter
longiora interualla temporum minus usitata ; quae licet multi
stupeant, ab inquisitoribus huius saeculi comprehensa sunt, et
progressu generationum, quo saepius repetita et a pluribus cognita,
eo minus mira sunt.'

2 In Ps. cxviii. 27. ' Quanto enim quaeque res abstrusiores
habet causas tanto est mirabilior.'

80 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

the gospel, miracles of the saints — all are brought
under one general rubric, as things startling and
inexplicable. They differ among themselves ; they
can be classified, but by qualities only. For example,
after propounding the definition of miracle which I
have quoted, Augustine proceeds to distinguish two
kinds : those which induce wonder alone, and those
which also promote sentiments of gratitude and
goodwill.1 All alike are miracles. But further, these
various events, broadly described as miraculous, must
not be too sharply distinguished from others which are
not miraculous. What is there among all the works
of God, he asks, which would not be marvellous, were
it not cheapened by daily use ? 2 The most ordinary
operations of nature, he says elsewhere, would be
miracles to one seeing them for the first time ; we
pass them by unnoticed, not because we have mastered
their secrets — for nothing is more obscure than the
causes of growth, of the opening or falling leaf, of
the moving stars, of colour and sound, of taste and
scent — but merely because of constant familiarity.3
Indeed, the common things of the world, when justly

1 De Util. Cred. 16. ' In duo diuidimtur : quaedam enim
sunt quae solam faciunt admirationem, quaedam uero magnam
etiam gratiam beneuolentiamque conciliant.'

2 Epist. cxxxvii. 3. ' Quid autem non mirum facit Deus in
omnibus creaturae motibus, nisi consuetudine quotidiana uiluis-
sent ? '

3 De Util. Cred. 16. ' Nam diei et noctis uices et constant-
issimum ordinem reruni caelestium, annorum quadrifariam
conuersionem, decidentes redeuntesque frondes arboribus, in-
finitam uim seminum, pulcritudinem lucis, colorum sonorum
odorum saporumque uarietates, da qui primum uideat atque
sentiat, cum quo tamen loqui possimus, hebescit obruiturque
miraculis ; nos uero haec omnia non cognoscendi facilitate —
quid enim causis horum obscurius ? — sed certe sentiendi assi-
duitate contemnimus."

MIRACLE 8 1

estimated, are seen to be greater than those of rare
and exceptional occurrence which move us to wonder.1
And so he passes on to some reflexions which have
become commonplaces. Any marvellous thing which
happens in the world is less marvellous than the
world taken as a whole.2 The government of the
whole world is a greater miracle than the feeding
of five thousand men from five loaves.3 More mar
vellous than any miracle wrought by man is man
himself.4

It may be necessary to observe that these remarks
are not evasions of a distressed apologetic. Augustine
was anxious to fit miracles into the general scheme
of things, not for the purpose of countering objections
to miracle, but rather with the intention of showing
that such abnormal events did not break up the con
tinuity of nature. He was defending the universality
of providence, the doctrine of the unity and omnipot
ence of God, against theories of chance, of pluralism,
of intrusive agencies. It is true that he had some
times to contend with doubters or deniers, but he
seems to have regarded them as either cranks or
partisans. It was only particular miracles that were
called in question. He shrewdly remarks that im-
pugners of the miracles recorded in Holy Scripture

1 De Ciuit. Dei, x. 12. ' Cum ea sapienter intuemur, inusita-
tissimis rarissimisque maiora sunt.'

2 Ibid. ' Quicquid igitur mirabile sit in hoc mundo, profecto
minus est quam totus hie mundus.'

8 In loan. 24. ' Maius enim miraculum est gubernatio
totius mundi quam saturatio quinque milium hominum de
quinque panibus, et tamen hoc nemo miratur. Illud mirantur
homines, non quia maius est, sed quia rarum est.'

4 De Ciuit. Dei, x. 12. ' Omni miraculo quod fit per
hominem maius miraculum est homo.'

G

82 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

would eagerly take credit for similar incidents reported
of Appuleius or Apollonius of Tyana.1 There can be
little doubt that he is here speaking from real experi
ence. The field of miracle was a field of competition.
There was less of this, perhaps, in Augustine's day
than at some earlier periods, but it continued. He
felt the pressure of signs and wonders which might
deceive even the elect, and argued that the quality
as well as the quantity of miracles should be tested.
A visible marvel, he says, does not always indicate
the presence of invisible wisdom.2 The miracles of
Christian saints, he urges, can be distinguished from
similar wonders recorded of pagan gods, for these
are demons labouring to pass themselves off as divine,
while the saints claim no such honour, but bear witness
to the one true God, theirs and ours.3 The argument
is forced, but it shows two things : first, that miracles
were taken generally as indisputable facts, and
secondly, that Augustine would measure them by
a moral standard. Test a miracle, he says elsewhere,
by its purpose : is it done for the glory of God or for
the glorification of the doer ? 4

A question is here inevitable. Augustine reckoned
credulity a vice : did he himself escape that vice
in regard to miracles ? He had an insatiable curiosity,
which also he was inclined to blame, and a readiness
to accept marvels on the slenderest evidence. The
authority of the written page weighed much with him,
he exaggerated the value of common report, and he
seems to have had a childlike confidence in travellers'
tales. But remember what he himself had seen.

1 Epist, cii. 6. 2 De Sermone Domini in Monte, ii. 25.

3 De Ciuit. Dei, xxiii. 10. * LXXXIII. Quaest. 79.

MIRACLE 83

He had seen a magnet with, a pendent chain of iron
rings, and shuddered at the sight. The world before
his eyes was full of inexplicable things, c plenus
innumerabilibus miraculis.' * Why boggle at one or
two more ? He was credulous, not because he was
greedy of miracle, or anxious to sustain a wavering
faith, but for sheer excess of evidence. He was not
greedy of miracle. His warnings against the tempta
tion of God implied in seeking after a sign are pretty
constant. He comments on the comparative rarity
of evangelic miracles in his own day, remarking with
content that if they were common they would lose
all moving power.2 That was in the early days of his
conversion. Much later he encountered the objection
that such miracles do not happen. He replied with
the story of the relics of Protasius and Gervasius,
but referred with greater fervour to the standing
miracle of the conversion of the world, which would
be all the greater if the preaching of the gospel had
not been supported by stupendous marvels.3 Here
is a very modern touch. It must be admitted, I
think, that he acted with some inconsistency when
he sent a priest and a clerk of his own monastery,
who accused each other of grave disorders, to be tested
by a miracle at the shrine of St. Felix of Nola, as he
had heard of a thief being detected at Milan ; but the
open letter in which he tells the story shows how
deeply he was moved and agitated by the scandal,
and his pastoral earnestness redeems what he himself,
at another time, might have condemned as pre
sumption. It is significant that he sent the accused

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xxi. 7. 2 De Util. Cred. 16.

3 De Ciuit. Dei, xxii. 8.

84 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

so far because he had heard of no such miracle being
done at the numerous shrines of saints in Africa.1

Looking at miracles, then, through the eyes of St.
Augustine, you must regard them as events occurring
in the course of nature, but oat of the ordinary course.
The explanation is sometimes forced. The portent of a
speaking ass must be taken as natural, in the sense,
not that speech is natural to the dumb beast, but
that the beast is naturally subject to a potent will.2
Taken by itself, that would seem to imply an arbitrary
intervention, or the physics of fairyland. But you
must correlate it with a conception more general.
The will of the Creator is the nature of each created
thing.3 There are monstrous births as well as normal
births, exceptional events as well as ordinary events,
all with their several places in the economy of nature.
The ordinary is more familiar to us, but not more
natural. There are sequences of cause and effect so
customary that we cease to wonder at them ; others
more abstruse are equally consequential. Moses'
rod takes the form of a serpent unnaturally, as it seems
to us who know nature only in part ; but this wonder
happens in the course of nature as known to God.4
God works alike in the ordinary way of nature and
in extraordinary ways ; it is by the will of God
that water is drawn through root and branches to
the grape, and distills in wine ; it was by the will
of God that water became wine at Cana with unwonted

1 Epist. Ixxviii. 2 De Genes, ad Lit. ix. 17.

3 De Ciuit. Dei, xxi. 8. ' Uoluntas tanti utique conditoris
conditae rei cuiusque natura est.'

4 De Genes, ad Lit. vi. 13. ' Nee ista cum fiunt contra
naturam fiunt, nisi nobis, quibus aliter naturae cursus innotuit,
non autem Deo cui hoc est natura quod fecerit.'

MIRACLE 85

swiftness.1 Everything that happens has a natural
cause, and stands in the order of nature. But of that
order we know little. And so you come to St. Augus
tine's culminating conclusion ; a miracle is done, ' non
contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.'

Within the last few days Dr. Sanday has been ask
ing us to distinguish. He accepts the contention of
St. Augustine that a miracle is not contra naturam ;
but he takes this in a negative sense, and not, like
the African Father, in a positive sense. It means for
him, not so much that all marvels actually occurring
must have a place in the natural order, but rather
that some asserted miracles must be ruled out because
they are inconsistent with what is known in that
order. He then makes, or finds, a distinction. Some
recorded miracles he would place, not contra naturam^
but supra naturam.'2' He limits nature, but allows a
transcendence of the limits ; there is something
beyond, a region of * higher spiritual forces ; ' these
produce effects which are apparently within the
natural order though not of it, and are to be considered
possible because not inconsistent with its normal
constituents. These forces are supra naturam^ and
to the events resulting from their action is attributed
the quality of a like elevation. The events them
selves are supra naturam^ and it is on this account
that they are properly miraculous. I might step
aside to criticise this conception of miracle, interesting
as coming so freshly from such a source, but my
present concern is only to ask how it may illustrate,
by agreement or contrariety, the conception of St.

1 De Genes, ad Lit. vi. 13. Cf. De Trinitate, iii. 5.

* Bishop Gore's Challenge to Criticism, p. 23. Infra, pp. 154-160.

86 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

Augustine. I shall then observe that the limitation
implied in Dr. Sanday's distinction would be impos
sible for Augustine ; there is for him nothing above
and beyond that nature which is continuous ' ab eo
qui summe est ' to the last effect of the last sub
ordinate cause ; there are higher and lower forces,
but the highest are within the course of nature. The
conclusion is imperative. According to the mind of
St. Augustine, a miracle can no more be supra naturam
than contra naturam. All things that happen are
within the natural order.

If you would compare this conception of nature
and miracle with that which has now been current
for some centuries, I think you will find the difference
coming in when the course of nature is taken to be a
sort of closed order. The theologians of the school
took over from the peripatetic philosophy the notion
of a system, complete, compact, entirely knowable,
cohering in a causal nexus. They hung this upon
the idea of creation out of nothing by the Word of
God, so that the whole system sprang into existence
with all its potentialities at the fiat of the Creator.
There was thus set up an approximate dualism of
God and the world ; not a true dualism, for that
would involve the eternity of the world, but a dualism
in working ; God will have imparted to the world cer
tain causal powers, which then work in a measure
independently. He is a kind of emperor, reigning
apart, while the affairs of the empire are managed
by local authorities deriving their functions from the
throne. A miracle will then be an act of God inter
vening directly, and to that extent disturbing the
natural order. It is not merely unusual, unexpected,

MIRACLE 87

transcending the narrow field of causality that is
known to us ; it is altogether apart from nature ;
it is, in the style of St. Thomas, £ praeter ordinem
totius naturae creatae.' *• In a word, it is a super
natural event.

The juristic temper of the Middle Ages found
an opportunity here. Augustine spoke of leges natu-
rales as expressions of the controlling will of God.2
These leges became iura, with an implication of self-
subsistence. What the legislator commanded was
lex ; what became stable in the social order was ius,
and even the Prince could not without grave reason
depart from this or modify it at his will. The natural
order was likened to the social order. God became
in some sort a constitutional monarch. He had
prerogatives : among them the prerogative of dis
pensation. Bartolus of Sassoferrato, the great jurist
of the fourteenth century, expressly brought miracles
under this head of government : iura naturalia, he
says, are mutable by divine empiry, or at the bidding
of one to whom God has granted that power, as we
see in the case of miracles.3 But dispensation is

1 S.T. i. no, 4. See, however, in 5. contra Gent. iii. 100,
the proof that miracles, regarded from this point of view, are
non contra naturam.

2 Supra, p. 73.

3 Woolf, Bartolus of Sassoferrato, p. 13, quotes as follows :
' Iura enim non ad singulares personas, sed generaliter constitu-
untur et etiam de necessario se habentibus. Leges enim con-
stringunt hominum uitas, et eis omnes oboedire oportet, maxime
quia est inuentio et donum Dei, ut ait Demosthenes et retulit
Martianus. Nee praedictis obuiat quia mutabilia sunt per
Principis imperium, uel alterius cui attinet, quia etiam quae iura
naturalia sunt mutabilia sunt diuino imperio uel alterius cui
Deus concesserit, ut in miraculis declaratum est : nee tamen per
hoc minus dicuntur necessario se habere.' Mr. Woolf has been
good enough to correct an error of transcription for my benefit.

88 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

confessedly an undesirable exercise of power, uulnus
in legem,) to be tolerated only when there is a just
and necessary cause. Hence the maxim, ' miracula
non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.' It
seems to have been felt that there was a touch of
impropriety in such interferences with the course of
nature. The feeling grew stronger as the domain
of natural law was more accurately mapped. The
great paradox of the nineteenth century, insistence
on law coupled with doubt or denial of the existence
of a law-giver, left no room for a dispensing power.
The other paradox of the time, the tacit assumption
that the part of nature more or less accurately mapped
is a faithful representation of the whole, and the
supposed discovery that within this range miracles
do not happen, completed the doctrine of the closed
order.1 There seems to be a genuine feeling that
miracle is indecent. If we used the language of the
school we should call it inconveniens. Even a con
vinced theist may be disposed — forgive the irreverence
— to warn off the Creator from this ground. The
profane witticism of the Jansenist pasquinade finds
a new meaning :

De par le Roi, defense a Dieu
De faire miracle en ce lieu.

' Ce lieu ' is the world as we know it.

It is not to be denied that support for this devel
opment can be extracted from the writings of St.
Augustine. Passages isolated from their context can

1 Sir Oliver Lodge wrote in the Times of November 28, 1914 :
'The average scientific man has made up his mind that things
out of the common are impossible, and he will not listen with
any seriousness to evidence for them.'

MIRACLE 89

be cited, and have been cited, in defence of almost
every new position taken up. We have seen with
what strictness he would sometimes define the sequence
of cause and effect. On the other hand, his doctrine
of reserved causes, those which are not implanted
in the creature but retained in the custody of the
divine will, lends itself to a theory of interference.1
I will direct your attention to one passage which has
never been used, so far as I know, in this fashion, but
which may lend some colour even to the fantastic
notion of dispensation. He has been speaking of the
leges naturales by virtue of which living beings
generate only their own kind. They have this
inherent power by the will of God, not apart from
God, and the Creator has in himself a further power
to produce from them something other than their
own seminales rationes allow.2 That looks very
much like an exaggerated anticipation of the greater
variations in which biologists have recently been

1 De Genes, ad Lit. vi. 18. 'Si autem non omnes causas
creatura primitus condita praefixit, sed aliquas in sua uoluntate
seruauit, non sunt quidem illae quas in sua uoluntate seruauit ex
istarum quas creauit necessitate pendentes.'

* Ibid. ix. 17. ' Omnis iste naturae usitatissimus cursus
habet quasdam naturales leges suas, secundum quas et spiritus
uitae, qui creatura est, habet quosdam appetitus suos deter
minates quodam modo, quos etiam mala uoluntas non possit
excedere, et elementa mundi hums corporei habent definitam
vim qualitatemque suam, quid unumquodque ualeat uel non
ualeat, quid de quo fieri possit uel non possit. Ex his uelut
primordiis rerum omnia quae gignuntur suo quaeque tempore
exortus processusque sumunt, finesque et decessiones sui cuiusque
generis. Unde fit ut de grano tritici non nascatur faba, uel de
faba triticum, uel de pecore homo, uel de homine pecus. Super
hunc autem motum cursumque rerum naturalem potestas crea-
toris habet apud se posse de his omnibus facere aliud quam
eorum quasi seminales rationes habent ; non tamen id quod non
in eis posuit ut de his fieri uel ab ipso possit. Supra, p. 37.

9o NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

seeking the origin of species ; but before the
appearance of this hypothesis it would have
looked still more like a suspension of natural law.
The passage might be quoted in support of a
theory of miraculous intervention, whether reduced
to the category of dispensation or otherwise
conceived.

This use of isolated texts, however, becomes
impossible when you take St. Augustine's conception
of nature and miracle as a whole. He is not invariably
consistent. That is not to be expected. He was
feeling his way through a maze of natural causes,
a very small part of which was explored, with no clue
but a conviction that all was rationally ordered, and
that what seemed intrusive was part of a connected
plan. It was not a labyrinth of stone, built and left
by a master mind, but was in part a complicated dance
of living powers, threading the pillars and gateways
of the world. The designer himself was present,
taking part in the action, controlling every movement.
The traveller's comfort was an assurance that these
evolutions were not laid out for his bewilderment,
but that by observing them closely he might find his
way. ' The miracles of Jesus Christ,' says Augustine
in one of his profoundest moods, 'were wrought for
the purpose of drawing the human mind from visible
things to the task of understanding God. For inas
much as he is not of a substance to be seen by our
eyes, and his miracles whereby he rules and admin
isters the whole created world are cheapened by
constant use, so that few or none will note his wonder
ful works in each grain of seed, he has of his mercy
reserved to himself some works to be done at befitting

MIRACLE 91

times apart from the customary course of nature, in
order that, beholding things not greater but unwonted,
they for whom the daily round is naught may stand
amazed.' 1

It is possible that before long we may find our
selves in thought nearer to St. Augustine than to St.
Thomas Aquinas or Herbert Spencer.
1 In loan. 24.

LECTURE V

GOOD AND EVIL

' OMNIS natura, in quantum natura est, bonum est.' 1

That sentence became, as I have said, a catchword

in the mouth of St. Augustine. It summed up his

contention against Manichaeism, and in his later

years he was maintaining against the followers of

Pelagius the limitation which it implied. ' Bonum

est.' Subject to the limitation implied in the words

* in quantum natura est,' he might have gone further

and said ' bona est ; ' for evil things, he maintained,

are not evil by nature. He did, in fact, say as much,

and that in the latest stage of his thought, when

the saying could be sufficiently guarded : ' Omnis

natura, etiam si uitiosa est, in quantum natura est,

bona est ; in quantum uitiosa est, mala est.' 2 An

earlier assertion, more rashly made, he corrected

in his Retractations ; it should be applied only to that

' quae proprie natura dicitur,' to nature as originally

called into being by God.3 Things as they are may

have become evil ; it is risky to call them good

because of some remnant of good that is still in them ;

1 De Natura Boni, I ; et alibi.

1 Enchiridion, p. 4. Cf. De Ciuit. Dei, xii. 3 ; supra, p. 46.
3 De Duabus Animabus, 12. ' Natura esse malae animae
nullo modo queunt.' Retract, i. 15.

GOOD AND EVIL 93

but neither, on the other hand, are they entirely evil ;
no work of God, however spoilt, ceases to be God's
creature, and as such it is still bonum aliquid, a good
thing.

What did Augustine mean when he called a thing
good ? In the first place, he meant that it exists.
To be is good. Obviously. And yet there is much
circular argument about the point, which seems to
indicate dissatisfaction or restlessness. The goodness
of abstract being is, indeed, a thin conception. St.
Augus^ne did not feed freely on abstractions. His
Platonic studies had not destroyed in him the Roman
or African inclination to the concrete. He faced
the conception rather as involving the proposition
that the thing which exists is good. Est was more
for him than esse. But then he was confronted with
the fact of experience, not to be gainsaid, that some
things which exist are bad. He could, however,
enjoy abstraction to the point of abstracting the
category of being from that which is, so as to arrive
at something indisputable : ' Quicquid est, in quantum
est, bonum est.' l This abstract being may then be
treated quantitatively ; a thing may have more or
less of it ; a diminution of it is a diminution of good
ness, and so evil comes in. ' Quicquid minus est quam
erat, non in quantum est sed in quantum minus est,
malum est.' 2

You might suppose, then, that evil stands to
good as non-existence to existence. But no : the
philosophy of the abstract may draw that con
clusion, but Augustine still holds by the concrete.
Evil things do in fact exist, but you cannot abstract

1 De UeraRel. n. 2 Ibid. 12.

94 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

their evil from them as a positive quality. It is
negative ; a mere diminution. It is only a tendency
to non-existence. Therefore it co-exists with good,
but has no other mode of existence. It is only a
good thing that can suffer diminution of goodness,
only an existing thing that can be moving towards
non-existence. In other words, only a good thing
can be evil.1 It is Augustine's favourite paradox.
Evil is the diminution of good, to the point of extinc
tion ; 2 but when that point is reached where a thing
has lost all its goodness, it has lost its being; there
is nothing. And since there can be no further
diminution of good, this particular evil ceases ; it
cannot continue in any way of itself. ' Ergo quae-
cumque sunt, bona sunt.' 3

Goodness, then, is a positive quality inherent
in that which is. Evil is merely negative. We
must not only deny it the substantiality which the
Manichaeans attributed to it ; even as a quality
we must refuse to allow it any positive existence.
Good and evil are not properly in opposition, for they

1 Enchir. 4 ; to the conclusion, ' Non igitur potest esse
malum, nisi aliquod bonum. Quod cum dici uideatur absurde,
connexio tamen ratiocinationis huius uelut ineuitabiliter nos
compellit hoc dicere.' Infra, p. 107.

2 Confess, iii. 7. ' Priuationem boni usque ad quod omnino
non est.'

3 Ibid. vii. 12. ' Aut igitur nihil nocet corruptio, quod fieri non
potest, aut, quod certissimum est, omnia quae corrumpuntur
priuantur bono. Si autem omni bono priuabuntur, omnino non
erunt. Si enim erunt et corrumpi iam non poterunt, meliora
erunt, quia incorruptibiliter permanebunt. Et quid monstrosius
quam ea dicere omni bono amisso facta meliora? Ergo si omni bono
priuabuntur, omnino nulla erunt : ergo quamdiu sunt, bona
sunt. Ergo quaecumque sunt, bona sunt, malumque illud, quod
quaerebam unde esset, non est substantia, quia si substantia esset
bonum esset.'

GOOD AND EVIL 95

are not on the same plane of reality. You may
illustrate this from Augustine's treatment of two
physical phenomena, one of which he understood
much better than the other. To compare evil with
darkness was common form, and the comparison
served him well, for he was aware that darkness was
nothing else but defect of light. We need not trouble
ourselves about his particular conception of the
nature of light, which he took to be corporeal ;
the point is that he assigned to it a real existence,
which darkness had not.1 But he was not so well
informed about the physics of heat. He took heat
and cold to be positive qualities counteracting each
other. He could speak of them almost as if they
were substances — a heat that makes things hot and
a coldness that makes things cold. ' What is hotter
than heat itself ? ' he asks.2 But in the same breath
he speaks of the swiftness that makes things swift.
There follows a not very profound examination of
the phenomena of motion, and I think you will
conclude that on this occasion he was speaking
mere commonplaces. You may sometimes be told
that an express train was ' velocity itself,' but you
will not credit your informant with belief in a sub
stance so named. So in this passage we need not

1 De Gen. contra Manich. i. 4. ' Ubi lux non est, tenebrae
sunt ; non quia aliquid sunt tenebrae, sed ipsa lucis absentia
tenebrae dicuntur.' Cf. Confess, xii. 3. In Psalmvii. ' Non quod
aliqua sit natura tenebrarum. Omnis enim natura, in quantum
natura est, esse cogitur. Esse autem ad lucem pertinet : non
esse ad tenebras. Qui ergo deserit eum a quo factus est et
inclinat in id unde factus est, id est in nihilum, in hoc peccato
tenebratur.'

2 In Psalm, cxlvii. ' Quid calidius ipso calore quo calet
quicquid fit calidum ? '

96 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

see anything but the meaningless convention of
certain philosophies which would say that velocity
makes things swift, and heat makes things hot. But
even so, Augustine could not compare good and
evil with heat and cold, as he compared them with
light and darkness. I am tempted to observe that
we could do so in his name, since we understand
coldness to be nothing but loss of heat, and the
catastrophe that awaits us at the absolute zero of
temperature, if I am rightly informed about that
mystery, is not unlike the result of the absolute zero
of good as conceived by him.

But can we imagine St. Augustine playing with
these arid speculations about the good of abstract
being ? Well, he did more than play with them.
They came to him with his Platonizing, and he took
them very seriously. They were never far from the
forefront of his mind. But they could not satisfy
him. He improved on his Platonics. The summum
bonum was for him far more than supreme being. He
read Plato himself with a difference. What Plato
said in myth he read as reality. He was more daringly
and more consistently anthropomorphic. He pictured
the Eternal as good in the ethical, human sense,
and so he interpreted Plato's doctrine that the
motive of creation was the unselfish desire of God
to make creatures like himself. He was helped by
Cicero's translation, in which the apxn KvpicordTi)
of the Timaeus became ' causa iustissima.' For
Augustine, goodness is never without ethical content.1

1 Plato, Timaeus, 29. Aeycojatv Brj SL' rfvrwa alrLav yivecrw
KCLL TO TTO.V ToSe 6 £vvi<TTa<s £vve<TTr)crcv. 'Aya$os ^v, dya#a> Se ovSets
TTC/H ovSevos ovSeVorc eyyiyverai <f>06vo<s. TOVTOV 8' CKTO? a>j/ Trai/ra

Tavrrjv &)

GOOD AND EVIL

97

I speak, as before, of his bold anthropomorphism.

But it was limited. Push it far enough, and you

come up against the protest of John Stuart Mill,

who refused to call good a being conceived as doing

things that would be condemned in a man. I do

not think that Augustine would have had much

patience with that refusal. He would probably

have called it petulance. He would not make man

the measure of God. He was fully satisfied with

St. Paul's grim rejoinder : c Nay, but, O man, who art

thou that repliest against God ? ' He would not

set up two moral standards, one for the sovran will

of God and one for the subject will of man ; but he

would brush aside as absurd the contention that the

imperfect apprehension of the single standard by

means of which men judge one another is the true

measure of absolute goodness. He was seldom happy,

as it seems to me, in his attempts to justify the

obscure working of providence in nature, or the

scriptural records which he took to be indisputable

revelations of the divine will ; but that is partly

because he was less sensitive than we are to some

moral perplexities ; he touches us more nearly when

he leaves questions frankly unsolved, declaring his

conviction that God's judgment is certainly righteous,

but inscrutable.

Then why justify God ? Can that be attempted
without the assumption of a standard of goodness or

yeve<reo)? KOL KOCT/X,OV /-taAcoV av TL<S ap^v Kvptwrar^v Trap
tfrpovifjuov aTToSe^d/xevos opOorara aTroSe^otr' av. There is a cha
racteristically Roman touch in Cicero's rendering of ayaOos by
probus, of KvpitoTttTT; by iustissima, and the tendency to identify
goodness with justice was always dogging the footsteps of
Augustine himself.

98 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

rectitude external to God ? In view of Augustine's
ordinary postulates, no such standard can be sought ;
there can be no moral arraignment, no moral defence,
of what God does. Whatever ethical content you
may read into the idea of goodness will be consequent,
not antecedent ; you are forced back to find your
only standard in bare existence ; whatever is, is right*
Yet Augustine laboured this way and that, sometimes
in face of insuperable difficulties, to justify God.
Why?

The only answer, I think, is to be found in a
certain moral necessity of our nature. As we are
restless until we rest in God, so are we driven to seek
a harmony in the whole of nature, and especially
a correspondence of our nature with its Author.1
But we have a natural habitus animi> which we call
justice ; and there is a natural law of right : ' natura
ius est quod non opinio genuit sed quaedam innata
uis inseruit.' 2 Knowing this, we are impelled to
correlate our own sense of right and the known opera
tions of God. So far as we fail to do this, our thought
is incoherent. When Augustine labours to justify
the ways of God, he is not attempting the impossi
bility of judging them by some external standard ;
he is comparing one work of God with another, for
the purpose of reducing his own knowledge of both to
coherence.

1 Confess, i. i. ' Tu excitas ut laudare te delectet, quia
fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donee requiescat
in te.' This seems to be the sense of the baffling words ad te.

8 Qu. Ixxxiii. 31. Cf. De Util. Cred. 12 ; ' Sapientes uoco,
non cordatos et ingeniosos homines, sed eos quibus inest, quanta
inesse homini potest, ipsius hominis Deique firmissime percepta
cognitio, atque huic cognitioni uita moresque congruentes.'
Both Socrates and the Stoics are here at bare arm's length.

GOOD AND EVIL

99

The coherence of nature implies an ethical purpose
in the Creator of which the ethical purpose of man
is an imperfect image. We can therefore more or
less accurately trace that purpose. I am here
speaking of ethical purpose in the broadest possible
sense. In everything there is an intention, a
irpoalpevis. We shall find a thing good in proportion
as it fulfils the purpose of its maker : goodness is
suitability. That is covered by two words out of
three in a passage of the book Zte Natura Boni :
6 Omnia enim, quanto magis moderata speciosa
ordinata sunt, tanto magis utique bona sunt.' *
Moderatum and ordinatum stand for adaptation to
purpose, and I think you will not find it difficult
to bring speciosum under the same rubric. There is
a ' lex aeterna,' identified as c ratio diuina uel uoluntas
Dei,' which requires the conservation of natural
order ; that which obeys this law is good.2 I shall
cite once more the saying, ' Quod equo natura est
homini crimen est.' 3 The irrationality of horse and
mule, requiring bit and bridle, befits them as much
as it would disgrace a man. The beasts of the field
are blessed because they fulfil the purpose of their
being : * in sua natura quam acceperunt peragunt
uitam.' 4

You might expect Augustine to adopt the Stoic
standard of human goodness : 0/^.0X070^6^0)9 TVJ
(frvo-ei, &v> He comes near it in the Dialogue contra
Academicos, where he reckons it beatitude to live
' secundum id quod in homine optimum est.' This
that is best in man is then defined as ' mens et ratio,'

1 De Nat. Boni, 3. 2 Contra Faustum, xxii. 27.

8 Supra, p. 35. * De Gen. contra Manich. ii. 17.

H a

ioo NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

and the good of life is thus to be in all things rational.1
That, however, savours rather of Plato than of the
Porch. Compare the passage in the book De Utilitate
Credendi, where he says bluntly fi recta ratio est
ipsa uirtus,' and draws the conclusion, ' solus igitur
sapiens non peccat.' * Wisdom is here ' ipsius hominis
Deique cognitio.' In later years he shifted his
ground. He saw that even what was best in man
might become an unsafe standard. He found a
fundamental absurdity in the Stoic ethics, which
bade man seek beatitude by living in accordance
with nature, and at the same time advised an escape
from life by suicide, if natural troubles became more
than one could bear with dignity.8 He found similar
flaws in all human standards. So the earlier definition
was revised. In the Retractations, Augustine con
fessed that he should have made beatitude consist
in living, not according to the best that is in man,
but c secundum Deum.' 4 But to live ' secundum
Deum ' is to live according to the will of the Creator,
and the will of the Creator is, for Augustine, the order
of nature. It may seem, therefore, that you are
brought back to the Stoic maxim ; and that would
be true, were there not a serious difference between
the Stoic conception of <f>vo-i$ and St. Augustine's
conception of nature.

Here we are at the critical point of our investi
gation. Augustine allowed no separation of physics
and ethics ; there was, at most, a topical distinction.
Still less could he recognize any border line between
physic and metaphysic. All was held in unity by

1 Contra Acad. i. 2. * De Util. Cred. 12.

8 De Ciuit. Dei, xix. 4. * Retract, i. I.

GOOD AND EVIL 101

his conception of Will, the creative and ordaining
will of God. If I may venture to evoke him as dis
putant in the controversies of our day, he would
certainly have rejected the dualism of Huxley's
contrast between nature and civilization : a nature
in which the relentless struggle for existence makes
for continual progress through the survival of the
fittest, and a civilization which cuts athwart that
natural process to seek a wholly disparate method
of advancement. If he adopted a theory of evolution
— his own doctrine of seminales rationes would suit
a more recent theory than Huxley's, but let that
pass — I think he would ask how civilized man,
regarded as the product of a causal order, could be
anything else but what that order made him ; he
would bring to bear his conception of unity and
continuity, would show that civilization itself is a
product of cosmic evolution, would correlate the
Law of the Jungle and the Law of the City upon the
one sure base of the will of God. Just as we have
seen that his system allows no absolute distinction
of nature and supernature, so now we must observe
that it affords no room for two separate planes of
being, physical and ethical. It is therefore a mistake
to say that he confused cosmic or metaphysical good
with ethical good. He did not confuse them ; he
reduced them logically to a single category. Good
ness is suitability. That is good which fills its
proper place, fitting harmoniously into the whole
system of nature, which is the working of the
will of God.

But what then is evil ? Unfitness. But how
can this be ? If all things issue from one .creative

102 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

act,1 or even if they come from the continuous working
of one self-consistent will, how can there be any dis
crepancy, any lack of correspondence, any unfitness ?
Each thing will have its place in accordance with the
general plan, and there is no alien or intrusive power
that can force it elsewhere. If this be the standard
of goodness, we seem to be heading straight for inviol
able optimism. Assume the perfect goodness of the
Creator, and the world that he has made will be the
best of all possible worlds ; assume his omnipotence,
the absence of any independent power that might
interfere,2 and in this best of worlds all will be ordered
for the best. If Augustine had not been a stern realist,
he might have been carried far in this sense by his
reaction from the Manichaean hypostatizing of evil.
Being what he was, and having his experiences behind
him, he could not reduce all even to gradations of
goodness.3 I shall try to show presently that the
pressure of his argument forced him to eliminate much
that is commonly reckoned evil, and to attribute the
ordinary valuation !of it to imperfect apprehension ;
but his consciousness of sin gave him certain facts
which could not be explained away. They had to be
accounted for. I have already, in my second lecture,
glanced at his attitude in face of this difficulty ; I
must now bespeak your attention to it more in detail.
Whence, then, is evil ?

But, first, what is evil ? It is needless to pile up

1 De Genes, ad Lit. viii. 20. ' Creauit omnia simul.'
* Confess, vii. 13. ' Et tibi omnino non est malum, nonsolum
tibi sed nee uniuersae creaturae tuae, quia extra non est aliquid,
quod inrumpat et corrumpat ordinem quern imposuisti ei.'

8 Ibid. vii. 7. ' lam itaque me, adiutor meus, illis uinculis
solueras ; et quaerebam unde malum, et non erat exitus.'

GOOD AND EVIL 103

citations. Augustine's most familiar doctrine is that
which he himself says he learnt from the Platonics,1
that evil is merely negative, a defect of good.
He seems to have seized on this at once as solving
the riddles which had formerly driven him to Mani-
chaeism.2 From the doctrine thus received at the
beginning of his conversion he never swerved. Even
when his theology has taken its gloomiest coJour,
he still maintains that ' animorum quaecunque sunt
uitia, naturalium sunt priuationes bonorum.' 3 He
has various phrases of the same sense. Evil is nothing
else but corruptio 4 ; it is nothing if not a bonitate
defectus.5 These terms are borrowed from Plotinus,
for whom evil is o-re/^o-t? or eXXe^t? rov aydOov,6
and there can be little doubt that Augustine took
them ready-made from the translation of Victorinus.
He begins to part company with his teachers when he
insists on the essential goodness of that in which there
is a falling away. Plotinus thought of all that is good
in the world of human experience as being lodged
in something * other,' not good, which makes failure
inevitable.7 There is no such c other ' for Augustine,
and no inevitable evil. All nature is good, and evils
are uitia naturarum? I have referred to the com
parison of evil with darkness, which is merely absence

1 Confess, vii. 12, 13.

1 Ibid. iii. 7. ' Quibus rerum ignarus perturbabar et recedens
a ueritate ire in earn mihi uidebar, quia non noueram malum non
esse nisi priuationem boni.'

• Enchiridion, 3. * Contra Ep. Fund. 35.

6 Contra lulianum, i. 8. 8 Ennead. i. 8, i ; iii. 2, 5.

7 Ibid. ' 'AvayKTj 8e tfAAai/av etvat cvravOa dya#ov, OTI ei> aAAa>.
TO ovv aAXo, fv $ cart TO dya0ov, ercpov ayaflov ov Troiet rrjv

8 Contra lulianum, i. 8.

io4 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

of light.1 The same conception of evil as negative
is otherwise expressed in Augustine's continuous
denial that it is in any way substantial or has any
natural existence. Here too I will not accumulate
examples, but will note only the emphatic teaching
of the Enchiridion. An injury done to the body
by disease or wound is nothing else but a loss of
health, and healing is not the removal of an evil from
the body to continue in existence elsewhere, as would
be the case if it were a substance ; the disorder is a
mere accident of the body's existence, and merely
ceases when health is restored.2 That is Augustine's
last word on the subject, as it was his first.

But to ascertain what evil is was not to account for
it. Manichaeism was so far countered ; but can the
human mind be satisfied with a simple refutation of
error ? Augustine's mind could not. There was
an obvious difficulty. If nature is the work of God,
entirely good, whence comes this tendency to failure ?
What is the cause of this loss, this corruption ? How
can nature be vitiated ? How is evil possible ?
If you seek an efficient cause, Augustine rebukes
you ; it is a case of deficiency, not of efficiency.3

1 Supra, p. 95.

1 Enchiridion, 3. ' Nam sicut corporibus animalium nihil
est aliud morbis et uulneribus adfici quam sanitate priuari — neque
enim id agitur, cum adhibetur curatio, ut mala ista quae inerant ,
id est morbi ac uulnera, recedant hlnc et alibi sint, sed utique
ut non sint ; non enim ulla substantia sed carnalis substantiae
uitium est uulnus aut morbus, cum caro sit ipsa substantia, et
profecto aliquid bonum, cui accidunt ista mala, id est priuationes
eius boni quod dicitur sanitas — ita et animorum quaecunque
sunt uitia naturalium sunt priuationes bonorum, quae, cum
sanantur, non aliquo transf eruntur, sed ea quae ibi erant nusquam
erunt, quando in ilia sanitate non erunt.'

8 Supra, p. 56.

GOOD AND EVIL 105

But that play of words leaves you where you were.
If he will have it so, let us ask what is the deficient
cause ? Augustine thought that he had found it. I
have already stated his conclusion ; let us now
examine it.

And first observe how he ruled out what he would
learn from Plato. He could not trace evil to the
resistance of an intractable material from which the
world was formed. That was but one remove from
Manichaeism. He found mention, even in Scripture,
of a materia informis from which the world was made,
but this also was created by God, and created with
a capacity for receiving form.1 This also was good,
and entirely subject to the will of God. That avenue
was closed.

Equally intolerable was the Plotinian reduction
of evil to metaphysical remoteness from the One ;
partly because Plotinus identified this remoteness
with matter, and so would lead him back by another
way to the practical consequences of Manichaeism.
It was always against those practical consequences
that Augustine was in revolt, and any theory involving
them stood condemned.

1 Wisdom, xi. 18. Krurcura rov KOCT^OV e
The Vulgate has ' quae creauit orbem terrarum ex materia
inuisa.' Augustine was acquainted with the better rendering
' qui fecisti mundum ex materia informi,' and he comments :
' Nullo modo credendum est illam ipsam materiam de qua
factus est mundus, quamuis informem, quamuis inuisam,
quocunque modo esset, per se ipsam esse potuisse, tanquam
coaeternam et coaeuam Deo ; sed quemlibet modum suum,
quern habebat ut quoquo modo esset et distinctarum rerum
formas posset accipere, non habebat nisi ab omnipotente Deo,
cuius beneficio est res non solum quaecunque formata sed etiam
quaecunque formabilis.' De Fide et Symbolo, 2. Cf. Confess.
xii. 3. Supra, p. 34.

106 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

What then ? We come to the solution which he
persistently put forward, and which evidently satisfied
him. He may have loved it the better because it
was the child of his own wit. Starting from the
metaphysical identification of good with being,
he observed that all created things were called into
being out of not-being : that is to say, out of nothing
ness, e nihilo. Lucretius, if none other, would give
him the phrase, and insistence on it would be an
apt rejoinder to Epicurean physics. This contingent
being is therefore the root of goodness for created
things ; it is their nature so to be, and by nature they
are good. But, because they were called out of
nothingness, they have a tendency to return thither :
that is, to fall away from their proper goodness.
Evil is such falling away.

St. Augustine's writings are full of this thought.
Illustrations may be found everywhere. Take this
from the passage about darkness in the exposition of
the seventh Psalm, to which I have already referred : *
' Qui deserit eum a quo factus est et inclinat in id
unde factus est, id est in nihilum, in hoc peccato
tenebratur.' Take this, again, from the sixth book
de Ciuitate Dei. It is asked how the will can go
wrong, and the conclusion of an elaborate investi
gation is that a nature, originally good, is perverted
to evil choice, ' quia ex nihilo facta est.' 2 In the
treatise Contra Epistulam Fundamenti you read that
natures are capable of corruption because they are
not produced from God's substance but are made by
him of nothing : * non de Deo genitae, sed ab eo
de nihilo factae.' 3 Long after he says the same in
1 Supra, p. 95. * De Ciuit. Dei, vi. 6. 3 Contra Ep. Fund. 36.

GOOD AND EVIL 107

the first book Contra lulianum. Natures would not
be mutable if they were de Deo ; they can fall away
from good because they are de nihilo. *

So far we are concerned with good only as it is
identified with being. It is obvious that the tendency
in nihilum can be found only in things that actually
exist : when the bourne is reached, they will exist
no longer. Hence the paradox that evil is found
only in things that are good. We know it, not as total
deprivation of good, but as a movement away from
good. Things purely good can exist, says Augustine,
things purely evil cannot ; there can be no nature
in which no element of good remains.2 Even at
the end, when the ethical interest has almost excluded
all else, you find him arguing in the Enchiridion, as
formerly in the Confessions : ' So long as nature is
being corrupted there is in it some good of which it
is being deprived. If it can lose no more good, it
becomes incorruptible by process of corruption,
which is absurd. If it be totally corrupted, then
indeed no good will remain in it, for it will cease to
exist. Corruption therefore can destroy good only
by destroying nature.' 3 But he is not content with
this dry metaphysic. Goodness belongs to the cate
gory of quality, as well as to that of existence. In
all things that exist there are certain good qualities,
and evil is recognized only in evil qualities which are
a set-off to these. You ask of a man, qualis sit ?
and the answer is mains? He argues curiously that
corrupt gold is worth more than incorrupt silver,

1 Contra lulian. i. 18. a De Ciuit. Dei, xii. 3 ; xix. 13.

8 Enchir. 4. Cf. Confess, viii. 12. Supra, p. 94.
1 Contra lulianum, i. 8. Supra, p. 57.

io8 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

by virtue of its abiding qualities.1 In this sense you
should read the penetrating remark : ' Nullius uitupe-
ratur uitium nisi cuius natura laudatur.' 2 When he
is at grips with Pelagianism, and is being driven
to make the worst of fallen human nature, he still
emphasizes the good things that man retains, ' in
formatione, uita, sensibus, mente.' 3 Qualities are set
against qualities, but the good qualities of any given
thing'are wrapped up with its existence, because they
were impressed upon it by the will that called it into
being ; the loss of those qualities will be a relapse
towards nothingness, in nihilum.

Here, then, Augustine places the origin of evil.
Can we accept his account of it ? There is an obvious
question. Why should things created by God out
of nothing have this tendency to return to nothing ?
If you watch his argument critically you will find that
he often seems to be on the verge of treating this
nibil as if it were a real state of existence. But that
would be to fall back upon the very dualism that
he is combating. His nihil would answer either to
the Manichaean Kingdom of Darkness, as Julian of
Eclanum roundly asserted that it did, or to the
Platonic materia informis, into which things might
relapse through loss of form. It is hard to say how
far Augustine was unconsciously affected by this
latter conception. The v\rj of Plotinus, on which
he must have expended much thought, was not the
prejacent material of the world, imperfectly plastic
and therefore resistant, which Plato imagined ; the
theory of emanation allowed no more independence

1 De Natura Boni, 5. 2 De Libero Arbitrio, iii. 13.

8 De Nat. et Gratia, 3.

GOOD AND EVIL 109

of the One than did his own doctrine of Creation ;
in the Plotinian system matter is an effect of extreme
differentiation, and the idea has been boldly rendered
in modern terminology as ' the limitation inseparable
from finitude.' l Room might be found for that idea
in St. Augustine's system also, but not for making
this work of God the source of evil. Against the
Plotinian doctrine of the necessity of evil he stood firm.
I think you will get hold of his fundamental
thought in a passage that I have quoted, where he
gives to the phrase de nihilo fieri a negative sense.2
The point is that created things are not de Deo ;
and since there is nothing of independent existence
over against God, there is no other alternative, but
they are de nihilo. And since they are not de Deo,
they do not share the immutability of God. They
have a certain relation to the supreme and immutable
good, and this relative existence is their own proper
good ; but, being mutable, they are necessarily
capable of falling away from this good, and such
falling away is their proper evil. The origin of evil
lies, therefore, in the mutability of created things,
and this mutability is due to their being de nihilo, and
not de Deo. So far good. But it seems to me that
Augustine was fascinated with this idea de nihilo,
and played with it dangerously. It is obvious that a
falling away from the good of being is a movement
towards not-being, and so he made a graphic scheme
of good and evil as a process de nihilo in nihilum.

1 I have borrowed this from an unpublished essay by Mr. W.
Montgomery, editor with Dr. Gibb of the Confessions.

2 Contra Ep. Fund. 36. Supra, p. 106. The argument is
further developed, De Anima et eius Origine, ii. 3.

i io NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

What was originally a mere way of accounting for
the mutability of things took on the appearance
of a causal explanation, and he narrowly escaped
the fantastic error of attributing to this nihil a real
existence. It may serve to show how persistent
is the peril of dualism.

But now there is another difficulty. If God has
created things mutable, is not mutability their natural
constitution, and therefore good ? Unquestionably.
I quoted in my second lecture Augustine's description
of the process by which one thing perishing gives
birth to another,and so maintains the course of nature.1
He argues the case more elaborately in the third
book De Libero Arbitrio. Fruits of the earth are
consumed as such, and so are corrupted, when a
man eats them. Is that evil ? No, for they are
finding their proper use in the order of nature. With
characteristic insistence on etymology, he says that
you vituperate only what is vicious. Natural muta
tions are not blameworthy ; he is unwilling to call
them corruptions ; at all events they are not vicious :
4 Aut nee corruptiones quidem dicendae sunt, aut
certe, quia uitiosae non sunt, dignae uituperatione
esse non possunt.' 2 He was not always so careful
of his words ; you will find him speaking of uitia
naturalia for which no punishment is due.3 But
that is only a verbal discrepancy. He had and
retained a firm grip on the principle that a vicious
mutation, an evil, is one that disturbs the order of
nature.

That is thoroughly sound. Things have not a

1 Supra, p. 44. a De Libero Arbitrio, iii. 14.

8 De Ciuit. Dei, xii. 3. Supra, p, 27.

GOOD AND EVIL in

merely individual existence in nature ; they are part
of an order, and their proper good is to fill their
proper place in that order whether by enduring or
by changing. But as you pursue this thought evil
seems to be a vanishing quantity. A diminishing
measure of existence, minus esse, defectus a bono
corruptio^ priuatio boni — what is left of it all ? Are
individual things so entirely wrapped up in the
universe that their good is nothing else but what
they contribute to the general good ? Is it enough
that loss to one is gain to another ? That is Emer
sonian optimism. Is our human language at fault
when we speak of things becoming worse ? Ought
we to say merely that they are changing ? Is it
a mistake to complain that our clothes are wearing
out ? Is it wrong to say that wine goes bad ?

Augustine stood by common sense and common
speech, but I think it must be allowed that in this
particular he parted from it in search of more accurate
thought. Doing so, he revealed the inadequacy of
the notion that mutability means a tendency in
nihilum. In point of fact, as he plainly saw, things
do not tend by natural mutation to become nothing :
they tend to become something else in nature. But
do they always tend to become something equally
good ? He cites an instance of a rise in the scale
of being : the fruits of the earth are transmuted into
human flesh.1 But what of other cases ? If salt
has lost its savour, it may still be fit for the dung
hill, and fitness is goodness. What is corrupted wine
good for ? Augustine was troubled about men with
sore eyes : the splendour of the African sun was good,
1 De Lib. Arbitr. iii, 14, ut supra.

ii2 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

but it caused them excruciating pain. At one time
he was disposed to blame the owner of the eyes for
opening them ; x at another time he seems by analogy
to make the soreness a penalty for sin.2 This latter
notion belongs to another connexion, but both are
evasions. Augustine forgot that the patient ox may
have sore eyes. I noted in my first lecture his African
callousness to the sufferings of the brute creation.
You may perhaps look further for an explanation ;
there is some depth of meaning in his remark that
body, as such, is incapable of misery.3 But he had a
broader and more general solution of these difficulties.
It is our perception that is at fault. Our range of
vision is so narrow that we cannot trace the plan
of goodness. There is in the dialogue De Ordine a fine
simile of an excessively short-sighted man examining
a tessellated pavement ; he can see only two or three
fragments of marble, apparently thrown down at
random, and can make nothing of the pattern.4

Augustine was convinced that the world was
well ordered, but he held this rather by an act of
faith in God than by experience. Yet, even so, he
could exult in the visible splendour of nature. His
dreary censure of the Epistula Fundamenti is relieved
by a vivid chapter in which he sets against the horrors

1 De Lib. Atbitr. iii. 14, ut supra.

a De Nat. Boni, p. 38. ' Nam nee ipse ignis aeternus, qui
cruciaturus est impios, mala natura est, habens modum et
speciem et ordinem suum nulla iniquitate deprauatum, sed
cruciatus est damnatis malum, quorum peccatis est debitus.
Neque enim et lux ista, quia lippos cruciat oculos, mala natura
est.'

3 De Lib. Arb. iii. 9. ' Nulla autem corpora, quantum ad
sese attinet, uel beata possunt esse uel misera, quanquam
beatorum aut miserorum corpora possunt esse.'

4 De Ordine, i. I.

GOOD AND EVIL 113

of the material world depicted by the Manichaean
the countervailing beauties and the joyous aspects
of nature. 'I join with you/ he says, ' in all your
fault-finding ; join with me in the praise of all good
things.' 1 For the sake of argument he could vituper
ate uitia naturalia taken by themselves, but the
world should be looked at as a whole and it would be
found magnificent. Apart from controversy he could
expatiate more freely on the beauty of nature. He
would show how the truth and goodness of God
exceed all our human experience, and to heighten
the comparison he makes the most of this. ' You
love what is good ; ' he says, c for good is the earth
with its towering mountains and rolling hills and
wide stretches of plain ; good and pleasant is the
fruitful meadow ; good is a well-ordered house,
roomy and lightsome ; good are living bodies, good
the temperate and wholesome air, good is savoury
and health-giving food, good is health itself without
pain or weakness ; good is the face of man, comely
and cheerful and richly coloured ; good is the soul of
a friend in pleasant comradeship and faithful love ;
good is a righteous man ; good is wealth and its
convenience ; good is the sky with sun and moon and
stars ; good are the angels in their holy obedience ;
good is human speech, informing and moving the
hearer ; good are the tuneful numbers and the sense
of poetry.' 2

Omnis natura bonum est. We come back to that.
Cosmic evil is a possibility, because created things
are mutable and may fall away from their proper
good ; but seek it in fact and you will not find it.

1 Contra Ep. Fund. 31. * De Trinitate, viii. 3.

1 14 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

God is not only bonus creator ; he is also iustissimus
ordinator. His mercy is over all his works ; all are
ordered meetly, the rerum natura is good, and God
can rejoice in his works to the uttermost.1

Is this conclusion dazing ? Does it reduce all
our questions and answers to nonsense ? We have
watched Augustine dealing with the common experi
ence of evil in the world, and struggling with its
problems ; we have noted his careful adhesion to
fact, his stern rejection of explanations which explain
things away, his uncompromising realism. For him,
I have said, things are what they are, and are for the
most part what they seem. Yet now he seems to drive
us to the conclusion that evil is the nothing from
which it springs, a sick fancy, a misreading of nature.

But has he eliminated evil ? No. There is one
check on his optimism ; there remains something
contra naturam. There is the fact of sin. Created
wills can fall away perversely from their proper good,
and do fall. When all other evil is eliminated from
nature, this remains. The discordance of uitia
naturalia may be resolved into the harmony of the
world ; sin alone and its consequences are obstinately
evil. ' Hoc est totum quod dicitur malum, peccatum
et poena peccati.' 2 This remains to be examined.
The examination may reveal the cause of the pre
judice that finds evil in the course of nature.

1 Plotinus came close to this relative optimism. While evil
is c:AAeu/rts TOV ayaOov, it is to be observed that TO eAXeiTrov oXiyov
TOV ayaOov is not evil, but only oYai/ Trai/rcAws cAAeiTny oVep eo-Tti/
•Y] v\Tf), i.e. abstract matter, TO 6'Ao>s KOLKOV. Ennead. i. 8, 5 and
15. But Augustine would be repelled by this, and he probably
reached his conclusion by independent reasoning.

2 De Uera Rel. 12.

LECTURE VI

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

* NEC ipsius diaboli natura, in quantum natura est,
malum est.' 1 Here also, in the typical evil one,
Augustine finds the goodness of nature surviving.
This particular nature is not in good estate ; there
is a balancing statement added : ( sed peruersitas
earn malam facit.' The typical sinner is therefore at
once both good and evil ; good in respect of nature,
evil in respect of the perversion of nature ; ' nee
malum unquam potest esse ullum ubi bonum est
nullum.' 2

Sin, as we have seen, is the only malum which
Augustine will definitely recognize as such — sin and
its consequences. We have to ascertain the place
of this evil in Augustine's conception of nature.

He attempts many definitions of sin. He was
severely Platonic, as I have remarked, in the early
work De Utilitate Credendi : ' Omne factum, si
recte factum non est, peccatum est,' and that is not
rightly done c quod non a recta ratione proficiscitur.'

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xix. 13. Cf. De Vera Rel. 13. ' Nee
aliquid sanctificatis malus angelus oberit, qui diabolus dicitur ;
quia et ipse, in quantum angelus est, non est malus, sed in
quantum peruersus propria uoluntate.'

* Enchir. 13.

I 2

ii6 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

The consequence is boldly drawn : ' Solus igitur
sapiens non peccat.' * That, however, is not a true
definition. Here is one drawn from the same thought :
' Peccatum est factum uel dictum uel concupitum
aliquid contra aeternam legem,' lex aeterna being then
identified as ratio diuina* But this will be found too
large ; it will include acts which are not properly
voluntary, and it was of paramount importance with
Augustine from first to last to maintain ' peccatum
nusquam esse nisi in uoluntate.' 8 In later years he had
to defend that judgment against misrepresentation,
but he stood by it. The will must have a place in
every true definition of sin. You find it in the defini
tion of human perverseness as c fruendis uti uelle
atque utendis frui.' 4 He makes will the prime factor
when he sets down the formal definition : ' Peccatum
est uoluntas retinendi uel consequendi quod iustitia
uetat et unde liberum est abstinere.' 5 He draws
this from no recondite source ; it is not given by
obscure revelation ; it is what ' omnis mens apud
se diuinitus conscriptum legit.' It rests on the
sufficient testimony of the human conscience.

Sin is here taken in the abstract. For practical
purposes some modification of the definition will be
necessary. The stress laid on the will, for example,
seems to support the Stoic doctrine of the equality
of all sins, against which Augustine contended
laboriously in a long letter to Jerome.6 On the other
hand, the condition of freedom introduced into the
definition raises a peculiar difficulty. Will and

1 De Util. Cred. 12 ; supra, 100. a Contra Faustum, xxii. 27.
3 De Duab. Anim. 10. * Qu. Ixxxiii. 30.

B De Duab. Anim. n. • Ep. clxvii. 2.

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 117

freedom are here distinguished. There is a sense
in which they are inseparable : liberum arbitrium
is a necessary condition of uoluntas. But while the
internal operation of the will is free, or it would not
be will, external action according to the determina
tion of the will may be impossible ; or, conversely,
action may be imposed by constraint without the
determination of the will, and perhaps contrary
to it. Augustine is concerned to establish the
principle that no action done under constraint,
however vile or injurious, is properly sinful. There
fore he interposes the difference, ' unde liberum est
abstinere.' But if this be pressed, a consequence
will ensue which he certainly did not intend. It will
follow that neither consent of the will to an action
done under compulsion, nor the determination of the
will to an action which is forcibly restrained, can be
sinful. But we shall see presently that the sinfulness
of consent to an act which cannot be avoided is a
cardinal point in Augustine's treatment of one problem
of sin,1 and his theory of omnipotence requires the
assumption that evil wills are sooner or later reduced
to impotence by restraint of the divine government
of the world.2 We must therefore understand the
condition, ' unde liberum est abstinere,' only in a
negative sense. An act done under constraint is
not sinful, but freedom from external constraint is not
a necessary condition of sin. ' Quicquid uis et non
potes, factum Deus computat.' 8 In saying that,
Augustine does but conform to the canons of all
ethical judgment. It is a platitude. The one

1 Infra, pp. 127, seqq, * Supra, p. 58.

8 In Psalm. Ivii. 3.

ii8 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

essential element in sin is mala uoluntas. We have
seen that Augustine disallowed the search for any
cause behind this. It is spontaneus defectus a bono.1
There is nothing more to be said. Do not suppose that
he is here riding the high horse of a 'priori assump
tion. He depends entirely upon practical reasoning.
He is quite pragmatic. Sin is what the human
conscience condemns. He argues from the case of
a sleeping man whose hand is made to transcribe
something vile. You cannot condemn the man ;
he himself has no uneasy conscience ; why ? Because
he has not consented to the deed.2 Not the deed, but
the will behind the deed, is sin. And behind the
will there is nothing. It is ultimate.

But the will is from God. Why was man thus
created ? When he has eliminated all other evil
from nature, Augustine has to face this ; man is
naturally capable of evil will. Why ?

The pressure of the question was perhaps the
heavier upon him because of the sharp distinction
that he drew between man and the rest of the animal
creation. He could recognize created will in angels,
demons, and men : nowhere else. Brute beasts, he
held, are innocent because incapable of choice be
tween good and evil, and therefore incapable of sin.
Viewing the distinction broadly, we can follow him
here. Passing from one level of life to another, we
can see that new conditions are reached, new powers
and new responsibilities. But we do not find it so
easy to mark the turning-point. Even if we shrink
from saying with Bergson that the first appearance

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xii. 6 ; Contra lulian. i. 8. Supra, p. 56.

2 De Duab. An. 10.

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 119

of life involves indetermination, and that slight
changes of contour in the amoeba are the result of
an act of will, we may still acknowledge rudimentary
movements of a spontaneous kind in various forms
of life ; thence we pass by insensible degrees to
animals which seem incontestably to exercise a certain
power of deliberate choice, and we are compelled
to compare these gradations with those of the human
embryo and the child. Augustine took no account
of these refinements. He could not escape the
appeal of unconscious infancy, but he disposed of
it by the analogy of sleep ; human intelligence is
there in full measure, but is not yet awakened.1 The
denial of a rudimentary conscience to horse or dog
diminishes that continuity of nature which Augustine
maintained, and makes the problem of sin the more
abrupt. The defectibility of man may, indeed,
be brought under the general head of a natural
tendency in nihilum, but that kind of mutability
has been explained as not involving evil ; man has
a proper good, a natural endowment, to depart from
which is sin, an evil incontestable ; he is naturally
capable of this evil, and even inclined to it, if the
tendency in nihilum is for all created things a natu
ral tendency. Optimism fails here. How shall we
account for this natural tendency to evil ?

Augustine was not usually disposed to attempt
an answer when a question seemed to impugn the
sovranty of God. It is useless, not to say impertinent,

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xxii. 24. ' Ipse itaque animae humanae
mentem dedit, ubi ratio et intellegentia in infante sopita est
quodam modo, quasi nulla sit, excitanda scilicet atque exserenda
aetatis accessu, qua sit scientiae capax atque doctrinae et
habilis perceptioni ueritatis et amoris boni.'

120 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

to ask why nature is what it is. But he could occa
sionally stoop or rise to such speculation, and then
he guessed pretty much as others have guessed. c It
seems to me,' he says, ' that man would not have
had much to boast of in leading a good life merely
because there was none to lead him astray.' I This
apology for the existence of a tempter covers the
whole case of the possibility of sin. It is of a piece
with his vigorous assertion of the superiority of sinful
man to the sinless ox. Sin is possible in order that
man may achieve the honour of abstaining from it.
Posse non peccare is the glory of human freedom.

This argument is based on the dignity of man
according to the purpose of creation. But under
stress of polemic Augustine tried another apology.
He stumbled on what he read in Isaiah : ' Ego
facio bona et condo mala.' 2 The Manichaeans made
play with it in their polemic against the Old Testa
ment ; he retorted on them the words of St. Paul :
' Quisquis templum Dei corruperit, corrumpet eum
Deus.' 3 He defended this reading by reference to
the Greek. Then God is in some sense the author
of corruption. In what sense ? Augustine answers
that God did not indeed make man corruptible, but
made him in such sort that, if he corrupted himself,
he might be handed over to corruption as a penalty.4

1 De Gen. ad Lit. xi. 4. ' Non mihi uidetur magnae laudis
futurum fuisse hominem, si propterea posset bene uiuere quia
nemo male suaderet.'

8 Is. xlv. 7. In the Vulgate, ' Ego Dominus, et non est
alter, formans lucem et creans tenebras, faciens pacem et creans
malum.'

8 i Cor. in. 17. Vulgate : ' Si quis autem templum Dei
uiolauerit, disperdet ilium Deus.'

* Contra Ep. Fundamenti, 38-9.

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 121

There, you may think, you see him at his worst :
ingenious, unconvincing, repulsive. It comes to this,
that God made man capable of sinning, in order that
he might reap the fruits of sin. That thought is
intolerable ; Augustine was caught in an evil snare of
controversial exegesis.

But it will not do so to dismiss the judgment
of such a man. It is probable that what repels will
be found to have a close relation to important truths ;
he may be struggling with a profundity in which
he has lost his footing. The Roman tendency to
regard justice, including penal justice, as an end in
itself seems to be making itself felt. But I am rather
disposed to seek another explanation of this strange
conception of the divine purpose. There can be no
doubt that here, as elsewhere, Augustine started
from the facts of human life. It is a fact, obvious
alike to the intensity of St. Paul and to the frivolity
of Ovid, that I approve certain acts as good, desire
to do them, purpose to do them, but do otherwise.
* Uideo meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.' But
if I thus fail to do my own will, how shall I be blamed ?
Yet the common sense of mankind blames me, and
my conscience consents to the condemnation. What
then becomes of the doctrine that sin is an act of the
will ? Augustine had two answers, which he did not
reduce to consistency, though he wrote them on the
same page. On the one hand he found in this im
potence of the will an element of slothful consent,
attested by the slowness of men to lay hold on the
succours of grace when offered. On the other hand
he traced the cause of it to sin previously indulged ;
sin breeds a sinful habit, and so an incapacity for

122 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

avoiding sin is a guilty state, the guilt of which,
proceeds from the original act that was done in the
state of freedom.1

The former reply prepared for Augustine some
difficulties in the Pelagian controversy ; the latter
was probably at all times more in accordance with
his mind, and became one of his most characteristic
doctrines. Sinfulness is the penalty of sin. It is
an evil habit ; and so you arrive at the reduction of
all evil to the twofold head, peccatum et poena peccati.

This theory of penalty must be examined. There
is an obvious difficulty on the threshold. If this state
of weakness be a penalty ordained by the divine
justice, how can it be called evil ? You will remember
that when it is a question of external penalties — of
hell-fire, for example — he insists that they are good
in themselves, as befits the ordinance of God, and
become evil to those who suffer because of their own
corrupted nature : they are as sunshine to sore eyes.2
But now we are concerned with that interior state
itself which turns good things to evil. It is good,
because just, he will say, that the sinner should be
thrown into that state. At times he advances the
proposition that all punishment is good ; it is no more
evil than any other dark passage of nature, forming
an integral part of the beautiful harmony of creation.3

1 De Lib. Arb. iii. 18—19. * D& Ciuit. Dei, xii. 4. Supra, p. 112.

3 De Uera Rel. 23. ' Neque de peccatis poenisque eius
animae efftcitur ut uniuersitas ulla deformitate turpetur ; quia
rationalis substantia, quae ab omni peccato munda est, Deo sub-
iecta, subiectis sibi ceteris dominatur ; ea uero, quae peccauit,
ibi ordinata est ubi esse tales decet, ut Deo conditore atque
rectore uniuersitatis decora sint omnia. Et est pulcritudo
uniuersae creaturae per haec tria inculpabilis, damnationem
peccatorum, exercitationem iustorum, perfectionem beatorum.'

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 123

If he had been able to regard all punishment as
corrective,1 he would have been clear of the difficulty ;
he knew, and defended, the value of correptio, and he
might have brought poena by the same way into the
category of good ; but he treated the impotence which
is the penalty of sin, not as a means of correction,
but as itself needing the correction of grace. It is
itself called sin, though with some impropriety of
language. It is our shame, he says, that the flesh is
not subject to our rule, for this rebellion is due to
the weakness that we have earned by sinning, and so
it is called c the sin that dwelleth in our members.' 2
It is a standing corruption of nature, and is so far
permanent that it becomes a kind of second nature.
6 Consuetude in naturam uersa est.' 3 One of Augus
tine's most emphatic sayings on this head occurs,
not in controversy or in a formal treatise, but by
way of casual reference in the commentary on the
Psalms : ' Natura nobis facta est poena.' 4 Here also
he makes the most of the sense of poena : the result
is ex uindicta. It is, indeed, a natural consequence,
' ilium enim praecedens meruit ista sequentia ; ' 5
to fall away by one's own choice from good is to
become evil by one's own act, but the control of all
natural courses by the originating will of the Creator

1 He expressly repudiates this, De Ciuit. Dei, xxi. 13, and
elsewhere. When he writes ' ut peccati dedecus emendet poena
peccati ' (De Lib. Arbitr. iii. 9), he is thinking of the harmony
of nature.

* De Peccatorum Mentis, ii. 22. ' Nobis pudendum est quod
imperio nostro caro non seruit, quia hoc fit per innrmitatem quam
peccando meruimus, uocaturque peccatum habitans in membris
nostris. Sic est autem hoc peccatum ut sit poena peccati.'

3 De Fide et Symbolo, n. 4 In Ps. xxxvii.

6 De Lib. Arb. iii. 19.

124 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

necessitates the acceptance of the result as in some
sort an act of God. c Ego facio bona et condo mala.'
There were practical perils as well as intellectual
difficulties in this point of view. If the result is in
any way an act of God, why struggle against it ? The
thought may induce an irresponsible acquiescence
in sin as complete as that which followed logically
from Manichaean necessity. The induction was made ;
Augustine frankly recognized the zeal of Pelagius, at
the outset of his controversy, against those who sought
a defence for their sins in the plea of human infirmity.1
The persistent evil of antinomianism was evidently
pushing forward under the shelter of Augustine's
doctrine.

What cover did he afford ? Looking back at the
end of his life to the definition of sin upon which I
have been working, he saw that the ' uoluntas
retinendi uel consequendi ' might in the penal state of
sinfulness be more accurately distinguished as cupi-
ditas.2 If uoluntas, it was perverted. But there is no
entire perversion of the will, for that would mean
the destruction of human nature. There is, there
fore, in fallen man a conflict of wills ; or, to speak more
precisely, a conflict between uoluntas, continuing
in its natural goodness, and that which he calls
indiscriminately cupiditas, concupiscentia, and libido.

1 De Natura et Gratia, i . ' Uidi hominem zelo ardentissimo
accensum aduersus eos qui, cum in suis peccatis humanam
uoluntatem debeant accusare, naturam potius accusantes
hominum per illam se excusare conantur.' Ibid. p. 7 : ' Quanto
igitur zelo accensus est libri hums, quern misistis, conditor
aduersus eos qui peccatis suis patrocinium de naturae humanae
infirmitate perquirunt, tanto et multo ardentiore zelo nos oportet
accendi, ne euacuetur crux Christi.'

8 Retract, i. 15.

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 125

He observed with great accuracy that our bodily
movements are controlled partly by the natural force
of will, partly by these perverted impulses. And
further, no movements of the body are in themselves
sinful ; the fleshly appetites are in themselves natural
and good ; even those which are habitually associated
with sin would have had their proper exercise, he
says, if man had remained unfallen.1 But more ;
even in our fallen state all human actions are still
good in so far as they are natural. If a lame man
sets out to do a good deed, the deed is not the less
good because he halts by the way.2 That is Augustine's
matured judgment, found in an antipe]agian treatise.
I think he says somewhere — but I cannot recover
the place — that in an act of murder the skill and
strength with which the knife is driven home are
good ; the evil is only in the perverted will directing
their use.

There are, then, three sources of human action
to be reckoned with : the corporal appetites, which
are natural and good ; the naturally good will, by
which the appetites ought to be directed and con
trolled ; and the perversion of will, which is con
cupiscence. But it may then be contended that the

1 De Nupt. et Concupisc. i. i. ' Pudenda concupiscentia nulla
esset, nisi homo ante peccasset, nuptiae uero essent, etiam si
nemo peccasset ; fieret quippe sine isto morbo seminatio
nliorum in corpore uitae illius, sine quo nunc fieri non potest in
corpore mortis huius.' Cf. De Ciuit. Dei, xiv. 21 :' Amissa
potestate cui corpus ex omni parte seruiebat.'

J Ibid. i. 7 : ' Tanquam si quispiam pede uitiato ad aliquod
bonum etiam claudicando perueniat, nee propter claudicationis
malum mala est ilia peruentio, nee propter illius peruentionis
bonum bona est claudicatio : ita nee propter libidinis malum
nuptias condemnare nee propter nuptiarum bonum libidinem
laudare debemus.'

126 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

man himself, the responsible person, is represented
by the natural appetites and the natural will, which
remain good. St. Paul may seem to imply as much
when he says : * The good that I would I do not.'
The perverted will, concupiscence or lust, becomes
something not himself, an evil power in him against
which he vainly struggles, and for the works of which
he is not answerable. In a critical letter to Vitalis
of Carthage, Augustine did not shrink from saying
that as a consequence of sin man lies ( sub potestate
tenebrarum.' 1 He made much of this enslavement.
Facing relentlessly the apostolic teaching about
1 bond-servants of corruption,' he asks what freedom
they enjoy except when of their own pleasure they do
evil.2 This was not mere theory or dialectic. He
was drawing upon his own experience. In the first
book de Libero Arbitrio you will find a graphic de
scription of the state of captivity.3 Elsewhere he
treats it as a diminution of the reasoning faculty, by
which man is brought down to brutishness.4 But
in that case does not responsibility for sin disappear ?
Is there sin at all ? What becomes of the words
unde liberum est abstinere in the definition ? Augus
tine did in set terms avow that there is for fallen
man a dura necessitas.5 In a work which he left
unfinished because he was dissatisfied with it, he
went so far as to say that there are in man's fallen
state ' peccata naturalia quae necesse est committi.' 6
That shows what thoughts were troubling him long
before the pressure of the Pelagian controversy

1 Ep. ccxvii. 3. 2 Enchirid. 30.

3 De Lib. Arb. i. n. * De Gen. contra Manich. i. 20.

6 Retract, i. i. 6 De Genes. Imperf. i.

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 127

began. Pelagius himself lie condemned from the
first for saying that the human will could naturali
possibilitate avoid sin ; 1 in other words, that posse
non peccare still holds good. You may say, he
retorts, that a man sound on his feet has the power
of walking, but do not say it of a man with broken
legs.2 That is reasonable ; but is it reasonable
to blame the poor wretch for not walking ?
What becomes of the further responsibility of
fallen man ?

It was this crucial question, arising out of the
most practical considerations, that drove Augustine
to his theory of poena peccati. As we have seen, he
did not consistently put this forward as the only
answer. The fact of the enslavement of man by
the sinful habit he took to be indisputable ; the
fact of man's continued responsibility he took to be
equally unassailable ; both facts were verified by
experience and by conscience ; a theory correlating
the facts was of minor importance. But he cast
about for such a theory. We shall probably go with
him readily enough when he insists on the remnant
of freedom with which the man consents to his
degrading servitude, or on his neglect of the succours
of grace.3 This explanation appears even in the
antipelagian treatises. ' God does not command
impossibilities,' he says, ' but bids you do what you
can and ask for what is beyond your power.' 4 That

1 Ep. cclxxviii.

2 De Nat. et Grat. 49. ' De homine sanis pedibus tolera-
biliter dici potest, " Uelit, nolit, habet ambulandi possibilitatem; "
confractis uero, etsi uelit, non habet. Uitiata est natura de qua
loquitur/

8 Supra, pp. 52, 117. * De Nat. et Grat. 43.

128 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

recalls the great cry of weakness passing into strength :
' Da quod rubes et iube quod uis.' l It is not to be
denied that this touch of optimism conflicts with
much that he says about the distribution of grace
according to the divine predestination ; but you must
not look for consistency there, and it is worthy of
note that in the Retractations he harks back to the
notion of succour as a gift to be had for the asking.
He there places the will ' sub dominante cupiditate,'
but only * nisi forte si pia est ut oret auxilium.' In
so far as this is done, he adds, ' in tantum liberata
est.' 2 But it must be allowed that he leans more
usually to the other explanation of responsibility.
The enslavement of the will is a penal state, an
infirmity ' quam peccando meruimus,' and so, if the
sinner's responsibility for a particular sin is conse
quently diminished, he is yet responsible for the
original loss of power. But that leaves over the vexed
question of birth-sin, to which we must presently
return.

Before we tackle this, however, there is something
else to be considered. St. Augustine's doctrine of
grace lies outside my proper limits. He did not
exactly set grace over against nature ; indeed he
accused Pelagius, rather unfairly, of doing this ; 8
but he sharply distinguished the two conceptions.
In the formal complaint which he and his African
colleagues addressed to Innocent of Rome, Pelagius
was more accurately accused of identifying nature

1 Confess, x. 29. 8 Retract, i. 15.

8 Retract, ii. 42. ' Hominis naturam contra Dei gratiam,
qua iustificatur impius et qua Christian! sumus, quanta potuit
argumentatione defendit.'

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 129

and grace, ' quae non est natura.' 1 It was in
part a question of the use of words ; Pelagius
might have alleged the authority of Cicero for saying
that gratia means the general providence and bene
volence of God,2 but Augustine with good reason
insisted on using the word in a specific Christian
sense. It is that ' qua Christiani sumus.' It is to
be distinguished from the natural providence of God :
' non est natura, sed qua saluatur natura.' But if
you would enter into the mind of St. Augustine, you
must not make it a superadded endowment. It is
a remedy for the disorder of sin. ' Gratia Dei est
qua nobis donantur peccata ut reconciliemur Deo.' 3
Room is left for supralapsarian theories, for Thomist
and Scotist controversy ; Augustine himself is con
cerned only with saving grace. You may call this
healing influence supernatural in the sense that it lies
entirely beyond the scope of man's natural powers ;
that is emphatically asserted, and the fault of Pelagius
was to obscure if not to deny the limitation ; but for
reasons which I have given it seems to me unwise
to use the word in connexion with St. Augustine's
teaching. He keeps the operation of grace within the
ambit of nature. It is the revival of human freedom ;
it is the restoration of the integrity of human nature.

1 Ep. clxxvii. 6. ' Ne nimium essemus onerosi, signa fecimus
his locis, ubi petimus inspicere non graueris, quern ad modum sibi
obiecta quaestione quod gratiam Dei negaret, ita respondit ut earn
esse non diceret nisi naturam in qua nos condidit Deus. Si autem
hunc esse suum librum negat aut eadem in libro loca, non con-
tendimus ; anathematizet ea, et illam confiteatur apertissime
gratiam quam doctrina Christiana demonstrat et praedicat esse
propriam Christianorum, quae non est natura sed qua saluatur
natura.'

2 De Nat. Deorum, i. 43. ' Epicurus uero ex animis hominum
extraxit radicitus religionem, cum dis inmortalibus et opem et
gratiam sustulit.* 8 Expos. Ep. ad Galatas, i. 3.

K

130 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

But there is one exception to this which I must
notice, because it may raise a doubt whether after all
he meant by liberty anything which can reasonably
be so called. As we have seen, posse non peccare
was for him the crown of the original freedom of
human nature. But in his later writings you will find
a frequent insistence on the strange paradox that
supreme liberty is non fosse peccare, and this he
assumes to be the final work of grace. But how can
non posse be a note of liberty ? It is useless to say
that true freedom is freedom to do what is right, for
that is the condition of the inanimate and the brute
creation, which has no choice, no liberum arbitrium.
Augustine may have been influenced by the Platonic
conception of the two inclinations of the soul, towards
the things of reason and towards the things of sense,
from which it follows that a man is truly free only
when he moves in the one direction without being
hampered by the contrary inclination. There seems
to be a glance at this notion when he says that the
soul, delivered from this present misery, will be
semper sapiens* But I think that he was brought to
his conception of non posse peccare partly by a sheer
paralogism. He thought of liberty for fallen man
in the passive sense of enfranchisement from the
domination of concupiscence. He wrote passionately
to Vitalis of Carthage that anyone who opposes the
doctrine of grace must be willing his own captivity.2

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xi. 10.

8 Ep. ccxviii. 3. ' Si uere uolumus defendere liberum arbit
rium, non oppugnemus unde fit liberum. Nam qui oppugnat
gratiam qua nostrum ad declinandum a malo et faciendum
bonum liberatur arbitrium ipse arbitrium suum adhuc uult esse
captiuum/

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 131

* Liberata est,' and only so can the human will be
rightly called uoluntas. Now it is obvious that such
enfranchisement will be the more complete if there
is no fear, no possibility of falling back into servitude.
' Multo liberius erit arbitrium,' he says, c quod omnino
non poterit seruire peccato.' 1 In this sense, yes ; but
he confuses two kinds of liberty : internal freedom,
and deliverance from an external domination. In the
hard dialectic of the unpleasant treatise De Correptione
et Gratia the two are put side by side without any
perception of their disparity : ' Prima libertas uolun-
tatis erat posse non peccare ; nouissima erit multo
maior, non posse peccare.' 2 Yet from this false
identification Augustine was carried forward to a
sublime thought. The end of the City of God is the
eternal felicity of the redeemed and their indefectible
union with God. God cannot sin ; neither can they :
God is free ; so too are they.3 One shrinks from
criticism of such rapture, and yet I must say that
Augustine runs a grave risk in thus comparing a
creaturely non posse peccare with the divine. For
posse peccare is precisely the possibility of falling
away from God. Deliverance from that risk of
freedom may be described with strict accuracy as a
supernatural work of grace, not indeed as raising
man to a state of absolute supernature, but relatively
as removing him out of his proper condition in nature.

1 Enchiridion, 28. 2 De Correp. et Grat. 12.

3 De Ciuit. Dei, xxii. 30. ' Certe Deus ipse mimquid quia
peccare non potest, ideo liberum arbitrium habere negandus est ?
Erit ergo illius ciuitatis et una in omnibus et inseparabilis in
singulis uoluntas libera, ab omni malo liberata et impleta omni
bono, fruens indeficienter aeternorum iucunditate gaudiorum,
oblita culparum, oblita poenarum, nee tamen ideo suae libera-
tionis oblita ut liberator! suo sit ingrata.'

K 2

1 32 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

It is something additional to the restoration of natural
liberty. But does it leave man free ? Freedom
of the will stands in the absence of any absolutely
dominant motive ; if the Love of God be such a
motive, does freedom remain ? There is something
in Jeremy Taylor's remark that freedom is an imper
fection, a state of weakness. Non posse peccare may
be the supreme beatitude of man, but I think that
Augustine was ill-advised in trying to make out that
it is freedom. The attempt throws a doubt on the
sincerity of his vindication of human freedom under
other conditions, a doubt which is resolved only at
the expense of his consistency in the use of words.

To return from these heights, we find him main
taining that the effect of sin is a loss of freedom, not
complete, but sufficient to make the sinner unable
always and entirely to resist the impulse of appetite.
Surveying mankind as a whole, Augustine saw that
this enslavement did not affect individuals alone ;
the uniuersa massa was suffering disablement.1 Shall
we then say that sin was become a power in the world ?
Augustine's language about the he]plessness of man
lent a handle to those who accused him of building
again the dualism which he had destroyed. How can
that which has no substantial existence dominate
that which has ? If sin be dominant, where is the
omnipotence of God ? He has two answers.

In the first place the omnipotence of God is seen
in the judgment of sin. He is ' malarum uoluntatum
iustissimus ordinator.' 2 Sinners do not escape, and
by the overruling of Providence their perverseness
turns to their own ruin. ' Si his bonis quisque

1 De Nat. et Grat. 5. 8 De Ciuit. Dei, xi. 17.

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 133

male uti uoluerit, nee sic uincit Dei uoluntatem, qui
etiam iniustos iuste ordinare nouit : ut si ipsi per
iniquitatem uoluntatis suae male usi fuerint bonis
illius, ille per iustitiam potestatis suae bene utatur
malis ipsorum, recte ordinans in poenis qui se peruerse
ordinauerunt in peccatis.' ] Augustine was able to
think of punishment as restoring the balance of nature
disturbed by ill-doing. Suffering follows guilt, the
natural order is justified, and he is content ; c non
est peruersum,' he says, ( imo conuenientissimum
et ordinatissimum apparet.' 2 The hardness of the
Roman temper is there. All men are in the same
tale, and c iuste utique damnantur, quia sine peccato
non sunt.' 3 So the omnipotence of God and the
impotence of sin are asserted. The fire of hell is like
the sunlight that tortures sore eyes ; it is glorious and
splendid, ' habens modum et speciem et ordinem
suum, nulla iniquitate deprauatum ; ' 4 so the punish
ment of sinners, which is an evil to them, is good in
the whole order of the universe. Dante learnt of
Augustine the inscription of Hell-gate : —

Fecemi la divina potestate,

La somma sapienza, e'l primo amore.

But at this rate poena peccati will soon cease to be
malum.

There is another answer, perhaps more to our taste :
( nulli naturae nocere peccata nisi sua.' 5 Augustine

1 De Nat. Boni, p. 37. Cf. Ep. cxlix. 2 : ' Sicut illorum
nequitiae est male uti bonis operibus ems, sic illius sapientiae
est bene uti malis operibus eorum.'

2 De Lib. Arb. iii. 20, where the extreme case of inherited
guilt is in question.

3 De Nat. et Graf. 4. * De Nat. Boni, 38 ; supra, p. 112.
6 De Gen. contra Manich. ii. 29 ; cf. Retract, i. 10 ; infra, p. 139.

134 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

frequently insists that the sinner cannot really upset
the counsel of God, cannot bring any accident to the
divine nature, or hinder the fulfilment of the divine
will, cannot prevent God from bringing good out of
evil.1 And if sin does not disturb the order of nature,
it can hurt none but the soul that sins. The sinner
injures himself, and none else ; he brings himself
alone under the tyranny of sinful habit. But that
hardly seems to be in accord with experience. What
is the meaning of temptation ? In the Retractations
Augustine desperately argued that he who wrongs
a righteous man does not really injure him, but
rather adds to his reward in heaven.2

This brings us to a grave question, the last that I
shall raise. Men are born in sin. What shall we
make of that ? How can a new-born child lie under
guilt, and be liable to the penalty of sin ? The
pressure of the question upon the mind of Augustine
is revealed in his eager request for help from Jerome.
6 Tell me,' he wrote, ' pray tell me what sin there is
in the little ones that they should need remission
by the sacrament of Christ. Or if they do not sin, by
what justice are they tied to the sin of another, so
as to be damned if the Church does not come to their
aid ? So many thousands of souls lost by the death
of babes without baptism, what equity is here ? ' 3

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xi. 17, xiv. n ; In Psalm, ex. ; Enchirid. 24.

1 Retract, i. 10.

3 Ep. clxvi. 4. ' Doce ergo, quaeso, quod doceam, doce
quod teneam, et die mihi, si animae singillatim singulis hodieque
nascentibus fiunt, ubi in paruulis peccent ut indigeant in sacra-
mento Christi remissione peccati peccantes in Adam ex quo caro
est propagata peccati, aut, si non peccant, qua iustitia creatoris
ita peccato obligantur alieno, cum exinde propagatis membris
mortalibus inseruntur, ut eas, nisi per ecclesiam subuentum

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 135

I extract the marrow of his questions, without the
guarding expressions, to show how keenly he was
aware of the moral difficulties of the case. He was
putting them only as they arise in the face of one
theory of the origin of the soul, but they are there
for all theories.

It is important to bear in mind that we are con
cerned here with poena peccati^ not with peccatum
properly so called. It is only by a sort of metonymy
that the infirmity or corruption of nature is called
sin. But this distinction affords no help, for such cor
ruption is due to antecedent sin, and in the case of
these children there is an imputation of guilt. That
was precisely what was being called in question. When
he made this eager appeal to Jerome, Augustine
was already engaged with the Pelagian heresy, which
he identified as a denial of the guilt remitted in
the baptism of infants.1 He did not hesitate to call
this guilt peccatum originate.

What is the basis of the doctrine of original sin ?
It is twofold. First, there is the authority of the
Church, exhibited not only in formal doctrine but
still more in the practice of religion. Augustine
met the Pelagians at every point with the fact that

fuerit, damnatio consequatur, cum in earum potestate non sit
ut eis possit gratia baptismi subueniri. Tot igitur animarum
milia, quae in mortibus paruulorum sine indulgentia Christiani
sacramenti de corporibus exeunt, qua aequitate damnantur, si
nouae creatae nullo suo praecedente peccato sed uoluntate crea-
toris singulae singulis nascentibus adhaeserunt, quibus eas
animandis ille creauit et dedit, qui utique nouerat quod unaquae-
que earum nulla sua culpa sine baptismo Christi de corpore fuerat
exitura ? '

1 Ep. 3. ' Qui modo noua quaedam garrire coeperunt,
dicentes nullum reatum esse ex Adam tractum qui per baptismum
in infante soluatur.'

136 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

infants were held to be in need of redemption. That
would be meaningless if they were not in the power
of sin. They were baptized for the remission of sin.
That would be meaningless if they were not guilty.1
As an argumentum ad hominem this certainly did not
lack force, for the Pelagians claimed to be Catholic
Christians, and were committed to the practice of
the Catholic Church. But for Augustine to argue thus
was much more than to score a point in debate. The
authority of the Catholic Church was for him one
of the great facts of life. Other facts also were
adducible in corroboration. The second basis of the
doctrine is the observed fact that infants suffer some
of the consequences of sin.2 Here, as always, you
find him to the best of his ability holding fast to the
realities of life. The facts being observed, he will
not tolerate any attempt to escape from them.

1 Quotation is hardly necessary, but two passages out of
many may be cited. De Peccat. Mentis, i. 18 : ' Christus pro
impiis mortuus est. Isti autem qui, ut manifestum est, nihil
in sua propria uita impie commiserunt, si nee originaliter ullo
impietatis uinculo detinentur, quomodo pro eis mortuus est qui
pro impiis mortuus est ? Si nulla originalis peccati aegritudine
sauciati sunt, quomodo ad medicum Christum, hoc est ad perci-
piendum sacramentum salutis aeternae, suorum curantium pio
timore portantur ? ' De Nuptiis et Concup. ii. 32 : ' Ipse dicit,
" Quo modo rei sunt paruuli pro quibus Christus mortuus est ? "
Nos respondemus, Imo paruuli quo modo rei non sunt pro quibus
Christus mortuus est ? '

* De Peccat. Mentis, iii. 10 : 'Si anima non est ex traduce
ergo quae ista iustitia est ut recens creata et ab omni delicto
prorsus inmunis, ab omni peccati contagione penitus libera,
passiones carnis diuersosque cruciatus et, quod est horribilius,
etiam daemonum incursus in paruulis sustinere cogatur ? Neque
enim aliquid horum caro sic patitur ut non ibi anima potius, quae
uiuit et sentit, poenas luat.' Observe that he is not defending
the traducian theory, but he follows Pelagius in putting the case.
Compare the curious study of infantile faults in Confess, i. 7.

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 137

To theorize about the facts, to account for them,
is another matter. It may be impossible, but it
can be tried. Augustine made the attempt. His
consciousness of the difficulty of the task is revealed
in his trial of three inconsistent explanations.

He was at first inclined to put all down to heredity.
When man was fallen, he says, it was not equitable
that he should generate offspring in better condition
than himself.1 The puzzling question of the origin of
the soul was here embarrassing, and conversely he could
urge this difficulty as a reason for suspending judg
ment upon it.2 Here it was that he sought in vain the
help of Jerome. He had himself laboured in early
days to show that even if the soul is not derived, like
the body, from parental substance, the weakness which
it acquires by union with the body is a misfortune
consistent with creative goodness. On no other
occasion did he come so near to affording an avenue
of approach for the Pelagian heresy. The soul, he
suggested, may be joined to the body, which is born
in a corrupt state, for the express purpose of rising
to higher things ; only if that duty be left undone
will it share the guilt and degradation of the flesh.3

1 De Libero Arb. iii. 20 ; ' Non enim damnato primo homine
sic adempta est beatitude ut etiam fecunditas adimeretur.
Poterat enim et de prole eius, quamuis carnali et mortali, aliquod
in suo genere fieri decus ornamentumque terrarum. lam uero
ut meliores gigneret quam ipse esset non erat aequitatis.'

8 De Anima tt eius Origine, i. 13.

3 De Libero Arb. iii. 20 : ' Non enim mediocria bona sunt
non solum quod anima est, qua natura iam omne corpus praecedit,
sed etiam quod facultatem habet ut adiuuante creatore seipsam
excolat, et pio studio possit omnes acquirere et caper e uirtutes,
per quas et a difncultate cruciante et ab ignorantia caecante
liberetur. Quod si ita est, non erit nascentibus animis ignorantia
et dimcultas supplicium peccati sed proficiendi admonitio et

138 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

You may detect here some savour of the Plotinian
doctrine of the descent of soul into body. Augustine,
however, kept clear of any suggestion that the body
is evil, claiming for it derivation from a good source,
and capacity for restored perfection. He took not a
word of this back in the Retractations, but when
working his way slowly through the books De Ciuitate
Dei he put the doctrine of heredity in safer because
more general terms. What man became by the
penalty of sin his offspring is in a sense by nature,
because ' quod est parens, hoc est et proles.' l Augus
tine does not seem to have observed that in natural
generation the original nature of the parent should
be reproduced, and not the accidental qualities that
may have been acquired. Yet he could speak of a
natura seminalis in a way to suggest that conclusion.2
The intractable question of the origin of the soul,
however, remained unsolved, baffling all theories
of heredity, and in the long run you find him falling
back wearily on a still more general conception
of the solidarity of human nature. The Pelagians
had now pushed home the question how new-born

perfectionis exordium. Non enim ante omne meritum boni
operis paruum est accepisse naturale iudicium, quo sapientiam
praeponat error! et quietem difficultati, ut ad haec non nascendo
sed studendo perueniat. Quod si agere noluerit, peccati rea
iure tenebitur, tanquam quae non bene usa sit ea facultate quam
accepit.'

1 De Ciuit. Dei, xiii. 3.

* Ibid. 14 : ' Nondum erat nobis singillatim creata et
distributa forma in qua singuli uiueremus, sed iam natura erat
seminalis ex qua propagaremur.' He seems to be scenting after
' germ-plasm/ but promptly turns the other way, adding : ' qua
scilicet propter peccatum uitiata et uinculo mortis obstricta
iusteque damnata, non alterius conditionis homo ex homine
nasceretur.'

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 139

infants could be injured by the sins of others, and
he replied that they have the common human nature
which has been vitiated by human sin.1 But that
comes perilously near to a denial of individual life,
nor is it clear how this theory can be reconciled with
the sinlessness of the Son of Man.

In the interval between the publication of these
two suggestions, Augustine formulated a theory
which is intimately associated with his name, and
which has had grave consequences in theology. He
attributed original sin to the lustfulness which in
greater or less degree accompanies the act of genera
tion.2 The act itself, he was careful to insist, is
natural and good, and in a sinless man he reckoned
that it would have been completely controlled by
reason, conformably to the will of the Creator ; 3
but as things are he finds a certain taint of sin always
present. It is here that he uses that striking figure
of the lame man going lamely about a good work.
The universal instinct of modesty and reserve,
which he illustrates by the contrast of the wilful
indecency of the Cynics, is the witness of the human
conscience to this element of shame.4

1 Retract, i. 10. ' Possunt sane Pelagian! ad suum dogma
trahere istam sententiam, et ideo dicere paruulis aliena non
nocuisse peccata, quia dixi nulli naturae nocere peccata nisi sua,
non intuentes ideo paruulos, qui utique pertinent ad humanam
naturam, trahere originale peccatum quia in primis hominibus
natura humana peccauit, ac per hoc naturae humanae nulla
nocuere peccata nisi sua.'

• This first appears explicitly in De Peccat. Mentis, i. 29,
written when as yet he could praise Pelagius personally. The
argument is developed in the two books De Nuptis et Concupis-
centia, in which he deals at large with the objection that his
doctrine dishonours marriage.

3 De Nupt. et Concup. i. i and 21. * Ibid. i. 22.

140 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

But for his very imperfect acquaintance with the
physiology of generation, it is improbable that Au
gustine would have ventured on this hypothesis. He
seems to have thought that conception immediately
accompanied the sexual act. Even so he found
almost insuperable difficulties. There should have
been a difference in the result as there was more
or less of sin mingled with the act of generation,
but he could see no difference between the offspring
of adultery and the children of a chaste marriage,
and it was a puzzling fact that the children of the
enfranchised were themselves born in servitude.1
He cites in illustration the fact that the seed of an
oil-olive produces an oleaster ; but that throws
the argument into confusion, for it is misleading
to compare an orderly natural process with a dis
order of nature. Augustine attributes the sinlessness
of our Lord to the absence of this contamination,2
and it is obvious that if the element of concupiscence
were entirely eliminated from an act of natural
generation, the result, according to the hypothesis,
would be a conception naturally immaculate. This
hypothesis therefore excludes the other two theories
of heredity and of human solidarity, and is in turn
precluded by them.

It is clear that Augustine did not succeed in
explaining, even to his own satisfaction, the perplexing
problem of original sin. An examination of his
treatment of it shows it resting unexplained on the
twofold basis of human experience and ecclesiastical
authority. It is to his credit that he did not grasp
at the traducian hypothesis of the origin of the soul,
1 De Nupt. et Concup. i. 19. * Ibid. i. 24.

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 141

which would have gone far to solve his difficulty.
This reserve is characteristic of all that is best in
his treatment of nature. From fidelity to fact he
seldom swerved, and never without return. He
had the courage to leave things unexplained, perhaps
always reluctantly, but without false shame. Two
things he held fast through all perplexity : the fact
that human nature, perhaps alone of all that we
know by experience, is terribly vitiated ; and the
fact that no degree of corruption can entirely destroy
the good that is inherent in nature. The sinful
soul, in spite of sin, is more glorious than beings
incapable of sin. ' Sicut enim melior est uel aberrans
equus quam lapis, propterea non aberrans quia
proprio motu et sensu caret, ita est excellentior crea-
tura quae libera uoluntate peccat quam quae propterea
non peccat quia non habet liberam uoluntatem.' 1
Though he did not himself say that the virtues of
fallen man are splendida uitia, that bold assertion of
Augustinian theology comes near to his real thought.2
But if they are vices, remember that they are splendid.
I have completed my review of the cursus naturae
as it presented itself to the eyes of St. Augustine.
It is orderly and good, the expression of the constant
will of God. Apparent dislocations of the orderly

1 De Lib. Arbitr. iii. 5.

* It is probably based on De Ciuit. Dei, xix. 25 : ' Nam
qualis corporis atque uitiorum potest esse mens domina, ueri Dei
nescia nee eius inperio subiugata sed uitiosissimis daemonibus
corrumpentibus prostituta ? Proinde uirtutes quas sibi habere
uidetur, per quas inperat corpori et uitiis ad quodlibet adipis-
cendum uel tenendum, nisi ad Deum retulerit, etiam ipsae uitia
sunt potius quam uirtutes.' But he defends this judgment
rather on practical than on theoretic grounds, finding such virtues
infected with inordinate pride.

142 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

sequence of cause and effect are shown to be nothing
else but obscure instances of natural process in ways
which human experience has not yet explored.
What seems to be evil is reduced to its true pro
portions, and becomes an element in the harmony of
nature which is discordant only to ears imperfectly
percipient. But there is one exceptional thing,
one cause of movement left undetermined by the
sovran will of God. Created will, in angel or man,
is free. The creature therefore can turn away from
good. There is no objective evil to be chosen by
preference, but it is possible to go this way or that
in search of good, and self-determination contrary
to the will of God becomes evil. It is the only form
of evil. It entails consequences which are in a
secondary sense evil, but which are so controlled by
the sovranty of God as to redress the balance of
nature and to resolve discord into harmony. Sin,
and continuance in sin, alone remains evil. But
even this is made possible for a good end. Man is
made capable of sinning in order that he may be free
to render a service of love. Thus the possibility
of sin contributes to the glory of nature. Actual
sin, however, is a disorder, removing the sinner from
his proper place in nature. Here may be found
the cause of the persistent delusion by which we are
led to discover evil in nature. Fallen man is thrust
into the neighbourhood of other creatures ; he knows
himself to be evil, and consequently thinks evil
of all that he resembles. Because it would be an
evil thing for me to lay waste fenced cities into
ruinous heaps, therefore I infer that pestilence and
earthquake are evil ; because I know that it is wrong

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 143

for me to be like horse or mule, whose mouths must
be held with bit and bridle, therefore the qualities
to the likeness of which I have sunk seem to me
evil in themselves. Augustine escaped from this
error, to draw a scheme of the world in which all
things are good, sin only excepted, and to surmise
that sin also may in the long run be turned to the
glory of God. He lost himself in some labyrinthine
by-ways, but the scheme on the whole is coherent.

APPENDICES

i

THE LIMITS OF THE SUPERNATURAL

(From the Guardian of July 27, 1892)

IN one of those weighty and pregnant sentences in which the
author of the Analogy glances outside his own proper subject,
he writes as follows : —

' Nor is there any absurdity in supposing that there may
be beings in the universe whose capacities, and knowledge,
and views may be so extensive as that the whole Christian
dispensation may to them appear natural — i.e. analogous
or conformable to God's dealings with other parts of His
creation ; as natural as the visible known course of things
appears to us/

I cannot help thinking that we have here an example of
Butler's grave irony, that to his own mind this supposition
was more than a possibility, but that he accepted the crude
antithesis of the natural and the supernatural as expressing
the common thought of his day, and as affording a basis
for his polemic against the Deists. I wish to put forward for
consideration the suggestion that this old antithesis, if harm
less once, has become fraught with mischief ; and that the
logical defence of religion should now proceed upon the lines
hinted at in this pregnant sentence of Butler, the antithesis
being suppressed.

Of what nature is the antithesis ? Is it purely logical,
or is it metaphysical ? If it is the former, it can be dispensed

146 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

with ; it is merely a mode of distinguishing our mental opera
tions. That is natural which we perceive or apprehend by
certain faculties of our mind ; that is supernatural which we
perceive or apprehend by certain other faculties : the natural,
say, we apprehend by sense or by the understanding, the
supernatural by faith. Then there is no need to suppose any
fixed limit between the two ; for there is not necessarily any
difference between the object of the understanding and the
object of faith. That which is at one time apprehended by
faith only may at another time come within the purview of
the understanding. Faith may vanish into sight without
any change in our exterior conditions. But in that case it is
needless to distinguish sharply between faith and our other
faculties. If faith is the gift of God, so also is the under
standing,, If it is obscured in individuals, so also is sight or
hearing. If it is clouded or even destroyed by sin, so also
undoubtedly are many other powers of the perfect man which
are allowed on all hands to be natural. We may then regard
faith as part of the ordinary equipment of the complete and
perfect man, and so dispense with the logical antithesis of the
natural and the supernatural.

But if the antithesis be a metaphysical one, the matter is
more serious. And it can hardly be doubted that in England
at least it does so present itself to most minds. It suggests
the co-existence of two whole worlds of being ; they are not
distinguished merely as cognizable to us by separate faculties ;
each has its own substantial existence ; each its own laws,
which are not necessarily alike ; and the one might be annihi
lated leaving the other unaffected. The natural and the super
natural have hard and fast limits : the one is cognizable to
sense or understanding, the other is eternally to be appre
hended by faith only, or by some spiritual faculty of perception
hereafter to be developed, which shall transcend the moral
certitude of faith ; in this spiritual sense only will faith be
swallowed up in sight.

Such is perhaps the common acceptance of the antithesis.
It is certainly the source of much difficulty and conflict.
Is it true, or is it false ? If it be true, we must face
the difficulties and fight out the conflict. But if it is false,

APPENDICES 147

and can be got rid of, there may be great gain, and some
of the attacks upon religion may lose all their force. In a
certain state of public thought this antithesis, even if erron
eous, could do little harm. God was recognized, even by the
opponents of religion, as the Author of nature. The defenders
acknowledged the same Author of the supernatural order
as the proper object of religion. The dual universe was
co-ordinated under one Creator and Governor. There was
presumably an analogy between the two orders, and something
of the supernatural order might be surmised by faith from
the study of nature ; there was a natural religion ; but for
the most part faith required direct instruction from the
Creator ; religion was revealed. In this state of the public
mind religion could be attacked only by a blank denial of the
supernatural order, which was an irrational proceeding, or by
the assertion of an incongruity in the accepted laws and facts
of the supernatural order, which showed that it was not from
the Author of nature but was the product of a disordered
fancy. Such was the attack which Butler, in the concen
trated argument of his few pages, crushed conclusively.

The attack has shifted its ground, and now proceeds on
two separate lines. The first is that of materialism and
positivism. No author of nature is acknowledged, and there
fore the existence of the supernatural order can rationally
be denied — nay, must be denied. A self-existent universe
cannot be dual ; if nature be self-existent it is the universe,
and there is room for nothing beside. The second is that of
agnosticism. If there be two separate orders in the universe,
so entirely antithetic, how can they interact ? A super
natural world there may be, but it is not cognizable to our
natural faculties ; and, furthermore, since conduct is a matter
of our natural existence, this supernatural order cannot con
cern our conduct. But the essential thought of Christianity —
of religion at large — is supernatural influence over conduct.
Religion is therefore an irrational absurdity — the imagined
interaction of two worlds between which there is no bridge of
communication. It was perhaps in partial anticipation of
this objection that the shrewd but narrow mind of Paley
demurred to the description of miracles as supernatural, and

L 2

148 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

substituted the neutral term ' superhuman.' It is perplexing
to find a supernatural force affecting so natural a thing as
bodily disease.

If the foregoing be correct, the present-day attack upon
religion rests entirely upon the antithesis of the natural and
the supernatural. The process is obvious. We yield up the
natural order to the man of science. He searches it through
and through ; he finds it complete and consistent. We cannot
gainsay him ; we believe it to come from the creative will of
the unchanging God. Our searcher can find no room for
arbitrary action or interference ; he will not hear of any
inroad from without, any intervention from another world ;
he finds nature self-sufficient and self-contained, impene
trable to any action of the supernatural. And since we are
clearly of the natural order ourselves, the supernatural, if it
exist at all, is outside of us, alien to us, unknowable.

We find it impossible to answer the logic of the agnostic,
nor do we know how to meet the blank denial of the materialist,
who says that he can trace our holiest feelings to the vibration
of a nerve-centre. The result is that we are disposed to
retire to our trenches, to take our stand behind the breast
work of the faith of which we are conscious. There may be
safety here for the individual, but it is an inglorious safety ;
we leave the enemy to vaunt his triumph, and we leave ex
posed to him the souls that have not so robust a self-defence.
Another result is seen in a tendency to withdraw faith and
religion more and more into a remote and circumscribed
province of their own. There is an inclination to abandon
morality entirely to the natural order, an acceptance of the
hedonism which it is the special duty of religion to combat.
In a word, we are face to face with an exaggerated spirituality ;
it is hard to say where lies the greatest danger — on this side
materialism, on that side spiritualism.

If we would defend historic Christianity we must either
shatter the logic of agnosticism and materialism, or else we
must remove the foundation on which they stand. If Chris
tianity be true, and the logic unanswerable, then the founda
tion must be false. It consists in the metaphysical antithesis
of the natural and the supernatural ; we have supplied it,

APPENDICES 149

in fact, ourselves. If this be destroyed, the attack is paralysed.
The materialist and the agnostic cannot consistently reassert
the separate supernatural order if we renounce it. If we
pronounce it, in Butler's words, c as natural as the visible
known course of things,' they can hardly gainsay us. The
hardest materialist, the most arrogant positivist, does not
pretend to have penetrated all the recesses of nature ; if we
tell him that those facts known as supernatural are the result
of natural causes as yet untraced, he may suspend his judgment,
but he cannot rationally deny the phenomena. If we accept
the universe as one, we shall see alike in the action of quinine,
and in the touch of the thaumaturgic hand, the operation
of causes moved by the will of God. In the one case the
operation is just a little more traceable; that is all. Both
are natural ; in Butler's definition ' similar, stated, and
uniform.' We shall permit the man of science to investigate
the natural causes of the * miracle,' and if they baffle him we
shall bid him be patient, for nature has not yet revealed to
him all her secrets. In what respect is it more miraculous
that a human will should cast a mountain directly into the
sea, than that a human will should set in motion countless
molecules of nerve and muscle stuff, with the result that
the Isthmus of Darien is cut through ? Only that in the one
case the process is very imperfectly understood, while in the
other it is not understood at all.

It is impossible within the limits of an article like this to
do more than barely indicate the lines which the argument
might take. If we hold a monistic theory of the universe
we have our answer to the materialist's objection to ' inter
ference.' The word becomes unmeaning. We hold with
him that nature is all and one, only it is far wider than he
thinks. There is no without from which interference can
come. God is not without. He acts in nature, and His
action is uniform. His action on the matter of the
universe is as uniform, as natural, and at the same time, we
shall be bold to say, as free as the action of man's will upon
the matter of his muscles.

The agnostic again loses on this hypothesis the hard and
fast line between the knowable and the unknowable on which

ISO NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

he bases his polemic. The whole universe is in itself knowable,
and its parts pass by insensible gradations from the known
to the unknown. The faculty of faith by which we appre
hend the unknown is itself a part of the one natural order
of the universe.

Shall we then abandon the term, and cease to speak of
the supernatural ? That would be difficult, perhaps impos
sible. Our thought cannot cast loose from words, or treat
them in any such arbitrary fashion. The word ' supernatural '
corresponds with an existing, and perhaps an indestructible
idea. What is possible and necessary is to clear the idea
from false and mischievous accretions, and to see that the
word does not, in use, slip from the control of the idea.

The idea of the supernatural is defined by the idea of the
natural. Its meaning is determined by the limit set between
the two. The sharp antithesis between the two presupposes
an absolute fixity for this limit. It is taken for granted that
the two are finally and essentially different. We may have
been mistaken in our calculation of the boundary ; we may
have supposed a phenomenon to be supernatural which
further experience has proved to be natural ; but the limit,
though miscalculated, is real and abiding, traceable if not
yet traced. The conception of the universe which I would
urge as the true one conciliates this antithesis. The universe
is one ; one not merely as a dual existence co-ordinated under
one creative will or law — the argument of the Analogy — but
one in essence and in order, one in cause and operation, one
alike to science and to philosophy, and one to the theology
which is the sum of all sciences and the key to all philosophies.
And if the universe be ontologically one, it is a false philosophy
which should read into it even a logical dualism.

But if we abandon as false the dualism which sets the
supernatural and the natural in antithesis, how shall we define
the supernatural ? It must be defined by the idea of the
natural. The only limit that can now be recognized is that
marked out by the extent of our knowledge. It has always
been acknowledged by those to whom the antithesis was
most dear that the natural world is that in which the under
standing works. Let this be accepted as the definition of

APPENDICES 151

the natural — modes of existence which are understood, and then
by inevitable dichotomy the supernatural will be modes of
existence which are not understood.

We shall then see that this is no immovable limit, but, on
the contrary, one that is shifting continually with the advance
of science. We shall even see that the limit cannot be the
same for all minds. To some minds phenomena will remain
supernatural which to others are clearly natural. But we
shall not deride the former as superstitious, nor denounce the
latter as impious. We shall see that the former are not
morally inferior, unless in like manner the man who does not
know Chinese is morally inferior to the man who knows it ;
but we shall regard the latter as having made a real progress —
a progress that is fulfilling the purpose of God, bringing
them one step nearer to that perfection of knowledge suggested
by Butler, which makes the whole Christian dispensation
appear natural, ' as natural as the visible known course of
things appears to us.'

We may thus usefully and safely retain the term super
natural. It will represent those modes of existence, of the
reality of which we have no doubt, being convinced thereof
by the assurance of faith or even by the evidence of experience,
but the causality of which our understanding has failed to
investigate. Its proper use will be regulated by the average
intelligence of the average educated man. There will always
be many minds to whom the mysteries of nature are a sealed
book ; they will not be our standard. There may from time
to time be exalted spirits that can see, by some divine intuition,
far into the dim vista of causes ; we shall, according to our
temperament or our judgment, deride them as madmen,
denounce them as impostors, or reverence them as inspired.
Time and the slow growth of knowledge will show whether
they were prophets or seers of lying visions ; but in neither
case will they be our standard. The ' supernatural ' will
remain for us all that lies for the time being beyond the actual
understanding of intelligent men.

It is obvious that this will not be a contraction, but rather
an expansion of the term. We shall have to recognize as
supernatural those phenomena of life, such as the assimilation

152 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

of matter by the organic germ, which are the chosen study
of the biologist, but which have as yet defied his analysis.
And it would perhaps be no small gain to the clearness of our
views if we were to arrive at the unity of thought as regards
all the phenomena of life which such a classification, even if
only temporary, would involve. Life has its higher and lower
forms, its higher and lower powers, its higher and lower
aims ; in all, or nearly all of them, it seems to be the meeting-
point of spirit and matter ; and it is exactly in this con
currence of spirit and matter that belief and scepticism find
their battle-ground. Creation, miracles, sacraments, and
prayer all rest upon the veritable interaction of spirit and
matter. If, then, we can arrive at a natural philosophy
which shall classify all these great religious phenomena,
so to call them, under a common head with all the indisputably
veritable phenomena of life, of whatever character — if all
alike are certainly supernatural, because sealed to the under
standing, probably similar in their mode of causation, and
conceivably, though with varying probability, capable of
investigation by the methods of science, then we shall not,
indeed, have * reconciled J science and faith — the phrase
itself is an absurdity — but we shall have taken away the
grounds alike for the contempt of the sciolist and for the
jealousy of the believer. Tell a man of science that your
prayer may bring rain, and he smiles incredulous ; tell
him that this is effected by an immediate causation, differing
in kind from those which he knows to be the causes of rain,
and he will probably grow angry and intolerant. But tell
him that just as your spoken wish, acting through a very
obscure chain of causes, brings you a cup of water from a
friendly hand, so your wish uttered in prayer, acting in exactly
the same manner upon a slightly more obscure chain of causes,
brings you water from the clouds, and he can but suspend
his judgment ; laughter will now be evidence only of shallow-
ness and narrowness. Tell him that the healing of disease
by a word is but a miraculous — that is, an extraordinary
— manifestation of knowledge and will, of the same kind as
that which guides the surgeon's knife, and you may at least
silence his answer that * Miracles do not happen.' They are

APPENDICES 153

happening every day. The wonder is only a matter of
degree.

It is to meet a new attack that I propose this change of
front. I do not regard it as involving anything of concession
or compromise. I think of it rather as a forward movement,
a counter-attack. I would not have the spiritual give ground ;
I would have it seize the whole field.

II

NATURE AND SUPERNATURE

(From the Church Times of May 15 and 22, 1914)

FOR many years I have sat contentedly at the feet of Dr.
Sanday. His influence over me began by accident, when I
was yet a schoolboy and he was little known ; it suffered
partial eclipse for a time, when I was of the age that demands
abundance of clear-cut definition ; but it returned full tide,
commanding both interest and gratitude. His great charm
as a teacher is that he challenges criticism. There is per
haps no man who has less of the magisterial temper. He
does not reserve his judgments until they are completely
rounded ; he publishes tentative solutions of difficulties,
and fresh statements of questions which he does not pretend
to have solved. The Bishop of Oxford has talked about
sincerity, with a glance, it would seem, in his direction. But
he is the most liquidly sincere of men. He loves to do his
critical work, testing his belief and the grounds for it,
under the eyes of men. There are those who would
have him work in secret until he has some assured result ;
they dread his inchoate syntheses and incomplete analyses ;
they expect disappointment from the former and un
necessary disturbance from the latter. But he knows that
the way to settlement lies through disturbance, and the
way to fruition through disappointment. He would take
his disciples by the hand to go with him all the way,
not transport them to the end of the journey on a magic
carpet. Therefore he is perfectly candid with them, perfectly

APPENDICES 155

sincere ; not always perfectly wise, seldom or never perfectly
prudent.

He replies to the Bishop of Oxford, not without anger.
His habitual candour forbids him to make a secret of it. * I
must confess,' he writes, * that I began this pamphlet 1 in
an indignant mood.' But if he let the sun go down twice
or thrice upon his wrath, he hastened to abate it. In the
finished pamphlet there is left hardly a trace of such feeling.

* As I look back,' he concludes, * I am conscious of having
passed through more than one turbid vein both in writing
and in thinking. But, as I bring what I have written to an
end, I hope that I can do so on the noble note of Samson
Agonistes, " With calm of mind, all passion spent." For any
sins of thought or of word of which I may have been guilty,
at any stage of this controversy, I humbly ask forgiveness.'
I resume my place at his feet.

But critically. He would ask nothing else of a disciple.
My criticism, whatever it may be worth, must go pretty deep,
for I would burrow under the very foundations of his argu
ment. There are three articles of the Creed which he inter
prets in a sense different from that in which they are commonly
received, and his interpretation is the result of a * compre
hensive inquiry into the general subject of Miracles and the
Supernatural.' I set aside the article of the Ascension, for
it does not seem to me that in this case Dr. Sanday's inter
pretation differs seriously from that of most orthodox Chris
tians. There remain the article of the Virgin-birth, and
the article of the Resurrection of our Lord. Dr. Sanday's
claim is that he believes both. * I would ask leave,' he says,

* to affirm once more my entire and strong belief in the central
reality of the Supernatural Birth and the Supernatural
Resurrection.' But the ordinary interpretation of these
events makes them, in his judgment, miraculous after a
fashion that raises a great difficulty. It is needless to say
that he has no vulgar objection to miracle. Describing
the process by which he reached his present standpoint, he
says : ' I was not disposed to put any limit to the divine

1 Bishop Gore's Challenge to Criticism : a Reply to the Bishop
of Oxford's Open Letter on The Basis of Anglican Fellowship.

156 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

power or to ascribe any necessity to natural law as such. I
did not for a moment doubt the power of God to make what
exceptions He pleased. I only asked for better evidence of
His will to make them.' That is the point. He requires
evidence. And these two events, as commonly understood,
are miraculous in such sort that exceptional evidence is
required ; there is an overwhelming presumption, itself
founded on evidence, against their occurrence. He is at
Hume's standpoint, with a difference ; not all miracles, but
these miracles, are incredible.

He thinks that his attitude cannot be said, in the Bishop
of Oxford's words, to be based ' on a mistaken view of
natural law, and on something much less than a Christian
belief in God.' I am quite sure that his belief in God does
not fall short of that of any Christian, but I do contend that
his view of natural law is entirely mistaken, and that his
difficulties are mainly due to this mistake.

He does not ascribe any necessity to natural law as such.
No ; but for one who has the Christian idea of God, natural
law means creative will. And this imposes a necessity.
Dr. Sanday would, no doubt, accept the saying of St. Augustine
that Creatoris uoluntas is rerum necessitas. And the Will
of God is stable. Thus a theistic conception of the world
provides for that continuous and necessary order of nature
which it is difficult to explain on any other hypothesis. To
accept miracles in vulgar profusion should not be easier for
a believer in God than for an unbeliever, but rather more
difficult. He should expect the course of nature to be most
orderly, most regular, most uniform.

It does not, however, seem quite as regular as we might
expect, and some of the apparent irregularities are what
we call miracles. Are they real irregularities ? Dr. Sanday
takes them for such, calling them ' exceptions.' He then
distinguishes. Some of them occasion little difficulty. ' I
was perfectly ready,' he says, * to accept and believe whatever
could be explained by the operation of a higher cause in the
course of nature.' I demur to this language. What are
' higher ' and * lower ' causes in nature ? The comparison
seems to me unmeaning. He continues : * But as we see

APPENDICES 157

the Divine Providence in action, the highest cause never
contradicts the lower. It overrules it and diverts it from its
original direction, but it never breaks the proper sequence
of cause and effect.' That is loosely said. When I hold up
a stone I do directly counteract the force which draws it
towards the earth. That force is not in abeyance ; it is
working all the time, but it is ' contradicted.' And it is
mutual contradiction that produces the result. To say
that one cause overrules and diverts another is a very inexact
statement. The truth is rather that various causes contri
bute to an effect, which is the result of their combination.
Everything that happens in nature is thus the result of an
incalculable number of concurrent causes, some of which we
can trace, while the rest are beyond our ken. That may be
held just as true of a miracle as of all other events.

Pursuing his line of thought, Dr. Sanday tested evidence,
and this is what he found : * There was abundant evidence
for the operation of higher spiritual causes ; but when it came
to a breach of the physical order, the evidence was always
found to be insufficient.' That pleases me, in that spiritual
causes are kept within the physical order ; Dr. Sanday will
not tease us with the false distinction of natural and spiritual,
which we owe to Luther's mistranslation of ^v^i/cos. But
I want to know how anything can be identified as * a breach
of the physical order.' If anything happens, it is presumably
in the physical order ; if anything is said, on good evidence
or bad, to have happened, how can I determine that its occur
rence would be out of the physical order ? What is the
standard by which I recognize this order ? Do I know it
right through, so that I can tell at a glance that some alleged
event does not belong to it ? If Dr. Sanday had been shut
in a dungeon for the last fifty years, and now issuing forth
heard a man pretending to hold an audible conversation with
a friend across the sea, I am sure that he would consider the
alleged marvel a breach of the physical order, and he would
probably find the evidence insufficient ; in a word, he would
accuse the man of romancing. It could soon be explained,
of course ; but for the moment the use of the telephone
would seem to be a breach of the physical order. To an

158 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

ignorant man, no doubt ; but how wide is the distance between
one man's ignorance and another man's knowledge ? Does
any man so know nature through and through as to be able
to say that an alleged event is a breach of the physical order ?

Taking this for a possibility, Dr. Sanday went forward to
a distinction * between events that are supra naturam —
exceptional, extraordinary, testifying to the presence of
higher spiritual forces — and events, or alleged events, that
are contra naturam, or involve some definite reversal of the
natural physical order.' I suspect this coupling of the words
natural and physical as if they had distinct meanings, and
I also fear that spiritual forces are here distinguished from
natural forces ; but I must delve deeper than this for effective
criticism. What are these things supra naturam which Dr.
Sanday finds credible ? They are events, unusual and there
fore miraculous, but events that we can observe, note, and
record. And where do they occur ? Where, if not in nature ?
Then they are not supra naturam. But is it on account of
their cause that they are thus described ? Do they occur
without a natural cause ? But what is a natural cause ?
What else but the cause of something which occurs in nature ?
This occurs in nature : therefore it has a natural cause.
This causes something in nature : therefore it is a natural
cause. What escape is there ? For a theist the Will of God
is the ultimate cause of all that is in nature ; therefore the
Will of God is the supreme natural cause. What theist
denies it ?

Supra naturam ; what does it mean ? I can find no meaning
in the phrase except on the assumption of a closed order of
nature, contained within fixed limits. What is outside ? God ?
Various spiritual forces ? But what ground have we for such
dualism ? If God be the Supreme Natural Cause, how shall
we place Him outside nature ? Where shall we set the
limits of nature ? I do not know any sense in which things
occurring in nature can be described as supra naturam> or
ascribed to causes supra naturam. This description or ascrip
tion seems to suggest a false supernaturalism. Dr. Sanday
says that he believes in the Supernatural Birth and the
Supernatural Resurrection of our Lord. Good : there is a

APPENDICES 159

true sense of the word. But the term is relative. That is
supernatural to a given part of nature which lies outside its
ordinary endowment. There are powers in man which are
supernatural to a dog, and equally the scenting power of a
hound is supernatural to a man. Miraculous power is super
natural to a man because it is apart from his ordinary endow
ments. To work a miracle is precisely to do something which
a man in the ordinary course of nature cannot do ; it is
extraordinary. But that is all. The fact that it is done
in nature shows that it is not supra naturam. To put it
there is to set up an absolute distinction of nature and super-
nature, of the natural and the supernatural. There is no
such distinction in reality. The true distinction is merely
relative, and is within the large order of nature taken as a
whole.

So I go farther than Dr. Sanday. He allows events supra
naturam^ disallows events contra naturam. I allow neither.
He quotes the saying of St. Augustine that portents happen
non contra naturam sea contra quam est nota natura. What
more is needed ? If he woke to-day from fifty years' sleep,
the use of the telephone would seem to him contra naturam,
but only because it would be contrary to his knowledge of
nature. How do the * nature miracles ' of the Gospel differ
from this miracle of modern science as it would have appeared
to our grandfathers ? Dr. Sanday may safely refuse credence
to any story told of things contra naturam. I, for my part,
will refuse credence to any story that may be told of things
supra naturam. But by what method of divination does Dr.
Sanday ascertain that the story of the Birth or of the Resur
rection, as ordinarily told, comes under either head ? If
these things happened, they happened in nature, and had
natural causes. They were extraordinary events, perhaps
unique, but not the less natural. Unique things do happen,
and happen in ways to confound our expectations based on
the ordinary course of nature. The sporting of plants may
serve for an example. We do not suppose this to be contra
naturam or supra naturam. So, too, it is only in a loose
sense of the word that we say it is unnatural for a man to be
born with six toes ; we assume a natural cause for it, though

160 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

it does not occur in the ordinary course of nature. Those
greater variations to which recent biologists of the school of
De Vries look for the origin of species are of the same kind ;
they do not occur in any known sequence of cause and effect.
But they occur in nature, and we assume for them an unknown
natural cause. If one should think that cause to be nothing
else but the will of God, it would none the less be a natural
cause. Let such cause be assumed for the Birth of Christ.
* Ex parte matris,' says St. Thomas, * natiuitas ilia fuit
naturalis.' Of the other part is the operation of God, * mira-
culosa,' says St. Thomas, but what more natural ? Dr.
Sanday says that he could not easily bring himself to regard
that Birth as unnatural. Let us ask him to do no such
thing.

Sitting at his feet to criticize as well as to learn, I must
tell him my mind, that his attitude is based precisely on
' a mistaken view of natural law,' a view inherited from the
mediaeval schoolmen, a view of nature as a closed order,
contained within fixed limits and more or less thoroughly
explored. I am not merely answering him. If .the egoism
may be pardoned, I would like to say that I wrote and pub
lished the first adumbration of this argument as long ago as
the year 1892. I have learnt much since then; not least
from Dr. Sanday.

Ill

DR. McTAGGART'S IDEALISM

SAMUEL JOHNSON did not dispose of Berkeley by kicking a
stone. The stone, the foot, and the Doctor's temper, were
alike parts of the ideal construction of the world. Berkeley's
destructive criticism has not been answered, and is not likely
to be answered ; he has left it certain that the existence of
Matter, as a real Thing independent of the mind which con
structs it out of formless sensation, is at least unproved, and
is to all appearance unprovable ; but as a constructive
theory his Idealism is open to grave objections. Attempts
have been made to amend it. Dr. McTaggart has worked
hard in this sense ; he has filled up some gaps, and his system
is interesting, if only as calling attention to a need which is
still left unsatisfied.

An ideal construction of the universe starting from the
human mind rests on a foundation too narrow for the build
ing. Geocentric Idealism, so to call it, is compatible with
a geocentric universe ; but it is at odds with itself when it
constructs an universe in which Man is seen as occupying the
surface of one of the smaller satellites of one of the smaller
suns. This curious arrangement does not make the thing
impossible. It is possible that we, occupying the position
which our own intelligent observation assigns to us, may be
ourselves the authors of the whole grouping ; but the con
clusion is staggering, and the mind can hardly accept it. If
we get over the difficulty presented by the light of a c Nova '
reaching us for the first time after a journey measured by
decades or centuries, there are still more complicated prob-

M

162 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

lems, and the circumstances of the discovery of Neptune rise
in protest.

Dr. McTaggart comes to the rescue. His scheme of a
collegiate intelligence might be required to complete even a
geocentric Idealism, for Berkeley's doctrine leads direct to
Solipsism. Solipsism is tolerable on a purely theistic basis,
and it may stand on the Monism which the dualism of Plotinus
demands for its complement ; but it can account for no
single universe ideally constructed by the human mind.
Dr. McTaggart will not hear of a theistic hypothesis, for he
insists on starting from common human experience, and
he has too keen a sense of reality for pure Monism. He
thinks there is good ground for believing in a common or
collegiate reason. Men are Selfs ; of that he has no doubt ;
but they are evidently capable of common action, and why
not in the region of pure thought ? Thus he escapes from
Solipsism. But his conception carries him farther. He
escapes also from planetary conditions ; indeed, from exist
ence in time as ordinarily understood. He assigns to the
Selfs which we know as telluric men a boundless existence.
Coming here they recognize one another in bodies, each of
which is e only a temporary combination of matter * — a part,
that is to say, of the whole construction that we make of
sensation ; they existed before that combination was made,
and they will continue to exist when it is dissolved. The
immortality of man is the corner-stone of Dr. McTaggart' s
system ; he does not believe in the absorption of the Self
into the Whole. He thus arrives at a collegiate intelligence
which is eternal. Here is made that ideal construction of
the Universe, glimpses of which we catch in our fleshly taber
nacles. The discovery of Neptune is explained.

There is one obvious thing to be said of all this. It is
pure mythology ; it falls into line with the more detailed
story of Er, the son of Armenius. It is not on that account
to be rejected, for mythologies tell much truth ; neither
philosophy nor religion can very well dispense with them. I
would further observe that Dr. McTaggart arrives at his
goal by an Act of Faith. I shall not quarrel with him on
that account. Belief in something that I cannot prove

APPENDICES 163

underlies almost every action of my life. Our ordinary
beliefs, though dialectically unproved or unsusceptible of
proof, can be verified by experience ; they are found to
work, and we are all pragmatist enough to be thereby com
forted. But Dr. McTaggart's faith stretches beyond the
confines of experience. If he ask me to say his Credo, he
makes severe demands upon me. He supposes an unanimity
of Selfs which passes anything known to my experience.
Nay, it contradicts my experience. Men, as I know them
on this planet, are unanimous in hardly anything. There
are a thousand millions of us or more, and our minds are
about as various as our bodies. Perhaps it may be said that
the divergences frequent among us in our fleshly tabernacles
are due to the corruptible body which presses down the soul,
and that other Selfs in happier circumstances are free from
them. Our few millions may be treated as a negligible
minority set against an infinite number of such happier
Selfs. But this other-worldliness engenders doubt. What
guarantee have I that all those other Selfs are not subject
to planetary conditions like ours ? Reasoning from analogy,
I should expect that to be the case. Then the farther you
extend the bounds of the universe the harder of attainment
becomes this unanimity. A

There is something else in Dr. McTaggart's hypothesis
even more inexplicably at variance with my knowledge of
my own self. I stumble on the familiar difficulty of Causation.
The causes studied by natural philosophers are part and
parcel of the whole ideal construction. They run a course,
and imperatively demand a beginning. Unless the whole
construction is at fault, there must be this beginning ; and
the construction is incomplete if no provision is made for it.
Now what is it that I really know of Causation ? My know
ledge springs from the fact that I myself can do things.
I view myself as a Cause ; I see other things done which are
not done by myself, or not wholly by myself, and I look for
other causes. I throw a stone. When I come to analyse this
action with sufficient scientific knowledge, I can distinguish
various elements in the movement of the stone. I observe
that it describes a curve, more or less accurately corre-

1 64 NATURE, MIRACLE, AND SIN

spending to a section of a cone. I observe eccentricities
which appear to be caused by the wind. I observe still more
erratic movements, which I am able to refer to the shape of
the stone, especially if it be flat, and I learn to attribute
these to the pressure of the atmosphere at rest. I conclude
to a number of causes determining the flight of the stone,
over which I seem to have no control. But there is another
cause residing in myself. I throw the stone at a mark. Its
flight is determined, partly by my aim, partly by my skill
or lack of skill in throwing, partly by those other causes
which I cannot control. What is meant by my aim ? It is
an intention, a purpose, of hitting something. That inten
tion springs from a desire. But the desire, of itself, is
infructuous. It promotes action, but not necessarily ; I
am able to refrain from action. I can choose, in many
cases, whether I will act or refrain from acting. We arrive
at the Will. What is the Will ? Not a separable part of
myself — any such notion seems to be unfounded ; not even
a separable endowment of my nature — any such notion is
superfluous ; but simply an operation of my Self. I choose
to hit that object with a stone. My choice is suggested by
various motives, but it remains mine. How do I give it
effect ? By an obscure physiological process my Will produces
motion — the motion of the stone. I can trace the move
ment back from the stone to my fingers, from my fingers
to muscles, from muscles to nerves, from nerves to a cell of
the brain ; I arrive at an imperceptible movement of the
molecules of that cell. What sets them in motion ? It is
an act of Will. I myself set them in motion, and the rest
follows. This I know of causation ; to deny my knowledge
of it is to deny all knowledge. It is the whole of my
immediate knowledge in this field. I infer other causes from
my knowledge of this cause.

This being so, what is more reasonable than to suppose
that all causation springs from Will ? The causes that are not
within my own control I reasonably refer to a Will other than
my own. What Will is this ? Shall we assume a collegiate
Will corresponding to the collegiate Thought which makes
the ideal construction of Dr. McTaggart's universe ? The

APPENDICES 165

assumption would go far to complete his scheme, but is it
tolerable ? If absolute unanimity of thought in a multitude
of Selfs be accepted with difficulty, it is far more difficult
to accept a like unanimity of Will. The demand made upon
us by such an Act of Faith is enormous. The hypothesis
of theism seems more reasonable, and the mythology of
the first chapter of Genesis holds together better than that
which Dr. McTaggart designs. An Act of Faith in one God,
the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, in whose
Thought the universe is ideally constructed, from whose Will
all proceeds, of whose Thought we so partake that we can
read the structure of things, and of whose Will we have an
image in ourselves — this is possible. The hypothesis of
Creative Will involves tremendous moral difficulties, with
which St. Augustine did battle as few men have done before
or since, but it satisfies the understanding.

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