St.
Augustine, City of God
(trans. Dods)
Book XXII.24. Of the Blessings with Which the Creator Has Filled
This Life, Obnoxious Though It Be to the Cursed. But we must now contemplate the rich and countless blessings with which
the goodness of God, who cares for all He has created, has filled this very
misery of the human race, which reflects His retributive justice. . . .
It is He, then, who has given to the human soul a mind, in which reason
and understanding lie as it were asleep during infancy, and as if they were
not, destined, however, to be awakened and exercised as years increase, so as
to become capable of knowledge and of receiving instruction, fit to understand
what is true and to love what is good. It is by this capacity the soul drinks
in wisdom, and becomes endowed with those virtues by which, in prudence,
fortitude, temperance, and righteousness, it makes war upon error and the other
inborn vices, and conquers them by fixing its desires upon no other object than
the supreme and unchangeable Good. And even though this be not uniformly the
result, yet who can competently utter or even conceive the grandeur of this
work of the Almighty, and the unspeakable boon He has conferred upon our
rational nature, by giving us even the capacity of such attainment? For over
and above those arts which are called virtues, and which teach us how we may
spend our life well, and attain to endless happiness—arts which are given to
the children of the promise and the kingdom by the sole grace of God which is
in Christ—has not the genius of man invented and applied countless astonishing
arts, partly the result of necessity, partly the result of exuberant invention,
so that this vigor of mind, which is so active in the discovery not merely of
superfluous but even of dangerous and destructive things, betokens an
inexhaustible wealth in the nature which can invent, learn, or employ such
arts? What wonderful— one might say stupefying—
advances has human industry made in the arts of weaving and building, of
agriculture and navigation! With what endless variety are designs in pottery,
painting, and sculpture produced, and with what skill executed! What wonderful
spectacles are exhibited in the theatres, which those who have not seen them
cannot credit! How skillful the contrivances for catching, killing, or taming
wild beasts! And for the injury of men, also, how many kinds of poisons,
weapons, engines of destruction, have been invented, while for the preservation
or restoration of health the appliances and remedies are infinite! To provoke
appetite and please the palate, what a variety of seasonings have been
concocted! To express and gain entrance for thoughts, what a multitude and
variety of signs there are, among which speaking and writing hold the first
place! What ornaments has eloquence at command to delight the mind! What wealth
of song is there to captivate the ear! How many musical instruments and strains
of harmony have been devised! What skill has been attained in measures and
numbers! With what sagacity have the movements and connections of the stars
been discovered! Who could tell the thought that has been spent upon nature,
even though, despairing of recounting it in detail, he endeavored only to give
a general view of it? In fine, even the defence of
errors and misapprehensions, which has illustrated the genius of heretics and
philosophers, cannot be sufficiently declared. For at present it is the nature
of the human mind which adorns this mortal life which we are extolling, and not
the faith and the way of truth which lead to immortality. And since this great
nature has certainly been created by the true and supreme God, who administers
all things He has made with absolute power and justice, it could never have
fallen into these miseries, nor have gone out of them to miseries eternal, —
saving only those who are redeemed,— had not an
exceeding great sin been found in the first man from whom the rest have sprung.
Moreover, even in the body, though it dies like that of the beasts, and
is in many ways weaker than theirs, what goodness of God, what providence of
the great Creator, is apparent! The organs of sense and the rest of the members, are not they so placed, the appearance, and form,
and stature of the body as a whole, is it not so fashioned, as to indicate that
it was made for the service of a reasonable soul? Man has not been created
stooping towards the earth, like the irrational animals; but his bodily form,
erect and looking heavenwards, admonishes him to mind the things that are
above. Then the marvellous nimbleness which has been
given to the tongue and the hands, fitting them to speak, and write, and
execute so many duties, and practise
so many arts, does it not prove the excellence of the soul for which such an
assistant was provided? And even apart from its adaptation to the work required
of it, there is such a symmetry in its various parts,
and so beautiful a proportion maintained, that one is at a loss to decide
whether, in creating the body, greater regard was paid to utility or to beauty.
Assuredly no part of the body has been created for the sake of utility which
does not also contribute something to its beauty. And this would be all the
more apparent, if we knew more precisely how all its parts are connected and
adapted to one another, and were not limited in our observations to what
appears on the surface; for as to what is covered up and hidden from our view,
the intricate web of veins and nerves, the vital parts of all that lies under
the skin, no one can discover it. For although, with a cruel zeal for science,
some medical men, who are called anatomists, have dissected the bodies of the
dead, and sometimes even of sick persons who died under their knives, and have
inhumanly pried into the secrets of the human body to learn the nature of the
disease and its exact seat, and how it might be cured, yet those relations of
which I speak, and which form the concord, or, as the Greeks call it, harmony,
of the whole body outside and in, as of some instrument, no one has been able
to discover, because no one has been audacious enough to seek for them. But if
these could be known, then even the inward parts, which seem to have no beauty,
would so delight us with their exquisite fitness, as to afford a profounder
satisfaction to the mind— and the eyes are but its ministers— than the obvious
beauty which gratifies the eye. There are some things, too, which have such a
place in the body, that they obviously serve no useful purpose, but are solely
for beauty, as e.g. the teats on a man's breast, or the beard on his face; for
that this is for ornament, and not for protection, is proved by the bare faces
of women, who ought rather, as the weaker sex, to enjoy such a defence. If, therefore, of all those members which are
exposed to our view, there is certainly not one in which beauty is sacrificed
to utility, while there are some which serve no purpose but only beauty, I
think it can readily be concluded that in the creation of the human body
comeliness was more regarded than necessity. In truth, necessity is a
transitory thing; and the time is coming when we shall enjoy one another's
beauty without any lust—a condition which will specially redound to the praise
of the Creator, who, as it is said in the psalm, has put on praise and
comeliness.
How can I tell of the rest of creation, with all its beauty and utility,
which the divine goodness has given to man to please his eye and serve his
purposes, condemned though he is, and hurled into these labors and miseries?
Shall I speak of the manifold and various loveliness of sky, and earth, and
sea; of the plentiful supply and wonderful qualities of the light; of sun,
moon, and stars; of the shade of trees; of the colors and perfume of flowers;
of the multitude of birds, all differing in plumage and in song; of the variety
of animals, of which the smallest in size are often the most wonderful—the
works of ants and bees astonishing us more than the huge bodies of whales?
Shall I speak of the sea, which itself is so grand a spectacle, when it arrays
itself as it were in vestures of various colors, now running through every
shade of green, and again becoming purple or blue? Is it not delightful to look
at it in storm, and experience the soothing complacency which it inspires, by
suggesting that we ourselves are not tossed and shipwrecked? What shall I say
of the numberless kinds of food to alleviate hunger, and the variety of
seasonings to stimulate appetite which are scattered everywhere by nature, and
for which we are not indebted to the art of cookery? How many natural
appliances are there for preserving and restoring health! How grateful is the
alternation of day and night! How pleasant the breezes that cool the air! How
abundant the supply of clothing furnished us by trees and animals! Who can
enumerate all the blessings we enjoy? If
I were to attempt to detail and unfold only these few which I have indicated in
the mass, such an enumeration would fill a volume. And all these are but the
solace of the wretched and condemned, not the rewards of the blessed. What then
shall these rewards be, if such be the blessings of a condemned state? What
will He give to those whom He has predestined to life, who has given such
things even to those whom He has predestined to death? What blessings will He
in the blessed life shower upon those for whom, even in this state of misery,
He has been willing that His only-begotten Son should endure such sufferings
even to death? Thus the apostle reasons concerning those who are predestined to
that kingdom: He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all,
how shall He not with Him also give us all things? Romans 8:32 When this
promise is fulfilled, what shall we be? What blessings shall we receive in that
kingdom, since already we have received as the pledge of them Christ's dying?
In what condition shall the spirit of man be, when it has no longer any vice at
all; when it neither yields to any, nor is in bondage to any, nor has to make
war against any, but is perfected, and enjoys undisturbed peace with itself?
Shall it not then know all things with certainty, and
without any labor or error, when unhindered and joyfully it drinks the wisdom
of God at the fountain-head? What shall the body be, when it is in every
respect subject to the spirit, from which it shall draw a life so sufficient,
as to stand in need of no other nutriment? For it shall no longer be animal,
but spiritual, having indeed the substance of flesh, but without any fleshly
corruption.