Chapter XVII
27. Bear with me, O my God, while I speak a little of those talents, your gifts, and of the follies on which I wasted them. For a lesson was given me that sufficiently disturbed my soul, for in it there was both hope of praise and fear of shame or stripes. The assignment was that I should declaim the words of Juno, as she raged and sorrowed that she could not
Bar off Italy
From all the approaches of the Teucrian king.9
I had learned that Juno had never uttered these words. Yet we were compelled to stray in the footsteps of these poetic fictions, and to turn into prose what the poet had said in verse. In the declamation, the boy won most applause who most strikingly reproduced the passions of anger and sorrow according to the “character” of the persons presented and who clothed it all in the most suitable language. What is it now to me, O my true Life, my God, that my declaiming was applauded above that of many of my classmates and fellow students? Actually, was not all that smoke and wind? Besides, was there nothing else on which I could have exercised my wit and tongue? Your praise, O Lord, your praises might have propped up the tendrils of my heart by your Scriptures; and it would not have been dragged away by these empty trifles, a shameful prey to the spirits of the air. For there is more than one way in which men sacrifice to the fallen angels.
Chapter XVIII
28. But it was no wonder that I was thus carried toward vanity and was estranged from you, O my God, when men were held up as models to me who, when relating a deed of theirs — not in itself evil — were covered with confusion if found guilty of a barbarism or a solecism; but who could tell of their own licentiousness and be applauded for it, so long as they did it in a full and ornate oration of well-chosen words. You see all this, O Lord, and keep silence — “long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth” (cf. Ps 103:8 and Ps 86:15) as you are. Will you keep silence forever? Even now you draw from that vast deep the soul that seeks you and thirsts after your delight, whose “heart says to you, ‘Your face, LORD, do I seek’” (Ps 27:8). For I was far from your face in the dark shadows of passion. For it is not by our feet, nor by change of place, that we either turn from you or return to you. That younger son did not charter horses or chariots, or ships, or fly away on visible wings, or journey by walking so that in the far country he might prodigally waste all that you gave him when he set out.10 A kind Father when you gave; and kinder still when he returned destitute! To be wanton, that is to say, to be darkened in heart — this is to be far from your face.
29. Look down, O Lord God, and see patiently, as you are wont to do, how diligently the sons of men observe the conventional rules of letters and syllables, taught them by those who learned their letters beforehand, while they neglect the eternal rules of everlasting salvation taught by you. They carry it so far that if he who practices or teaches the established rules of pronunciation should speak (contrary to grammatical usage) without aspirating the first syllable of “hominem” [“ominem,” and thus make it “a uman being”], he will offend men more than if he, a human being, were to hate another human being contrary to your commandments. It is as if he should feel that there is an enemy who could be more destructive to himself than that hatred that excites him against his fellow man; or that he could destroy him whom he hates more completely than he destroys his own soul by this same hatred. Now, obviously, there is no knowledge of letters more innate than the writing of conscience — against doing unto another what one would not have done to himself.
How mysterious you are, “who are enthroned in the heavens” (Ps 123:1) in silence. O you, the only great God, who by an unwearied law hurls down the penalty of blindness to unlawful desire! When a man seeking the reputation of eloquence stands before a human judge, while a thronging multitude surrounds him, and inveighs against his enemy with the most fierce hatred, he takes most vigilant heed that his tongue does not slip in a grammatical error, for example, and say inter hominibus [instead of inter homines], but he takes no heed lest, in the fury of his spirit, he cut off a man from his fellow men [ex hominibus].
30. These were the customs in the midst of which I was cast, an unhappy boy. This was the wrestling arena in which I was more fearful of perpetrating a barbarism than, having done so, of envying those who had not. These things I declare and confess to you, my God. I was applauded by those whom I then thought it my whole duty to please, for I did not perceive the gulf of infamy wherein I was cast away from your eyes.
For in your eyes, what was more infamous than I was already, since I displeased even my own kind and deceived, with endless lies, my tutor, my masters, and parents — all from a love of play, a craving for frivolous spectacles, a stage-struck restlessness to imitate what I saw in these shows? I pilfered from my parents’ cellar and table, sometimes driven by gluttony, sometimes just to have something to give to other boys in exchange for their baubles, which they were prepared to sell even though they liked them as well as I. Moreover, in this kind of play, I often sought dishonest victories, being myself conquered by the vain desire for preeminence. And what was I so unwilling to endure, and what was it that I censured so violently when I caught anyone, except the very things I did to others? And, when I was myself detected and censured, I preferred to quarrel rather than to yield. Is this the innocence of childhood? It is not, O Lord, it is not. I entreat your mercy, O my God, for these same sins as we grow older are transferred from tutors and masters; they pass from nuts and balls and sparrows, to magistrates and kings, to gold and lands and slaves, just as the rod is succeeded by more severe chastisements. It was, then, the fact of humility in childhood that you, O our King, approved as a symbol of humility when you said, “for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 19:14).
Chapter XIX
31. However, O Lord, to you most excellent and most good, you Architect and Governor of the universe, thanks would be due you, O our God, even if you had not willed that I should survive my boyhood. For I existed even then; I lived and felt and was solicitous about my own well-being — a trace of that most mysterious unity from whence I had my being.11 I kept watch, by my inner sense, over the integrity of my outer senses, and even in these trifles and also in my thoughts about trifles, I learned to take pleasure in truth. I was averse to being deceived; I had a vigorous memory; I was gifted with the power of speech, was softened by friendship, and shunned sorrow, meanness, and ignorance. Is not such an animated creature as this wonderful and praiseworthy? But all these are gifts of my God; I did not give them to myself. Moreover, they are good, and they all together constitute myself. Good, then, is he that made me, and he is my God; and before him will I rejoice exceedingly for every good gift that, even as a boy, I had. But herein lay my sin, that it was not in him, but in his creatures — myself and the rest — that I sought for pleasures, honors, and truths. And I fell thereby into sorrows, troubles, and errors. Thanks be to you, my joy, my pride, my confidence, my God — thanks be to you for your gifts; but I ask that you preserve them in me. For thus will you preserve me; and those things that you have given me shall be developed and perfected, and I myself shall be with you, for from you is my being.
Book Two
He concentrates here on his sixteenth year, a year of idleness, lust, and adolescent mischief. The memory of stealing some pears prompts a deep probing of the motives and aims of sinful acts. “I became to myself a wasteland.”
Chapter I
1. I wish now to review in memory my past wickedness and the carnal corruptions of my soul — not because I still love them, but that I may love you, O my God. For love of your love I do this, recalling in the bitterness of self-examination my wicked ways, that you may grow sweet to me, you sweetness without deception! You sweetness happy and assured! Thus you may gather me up out of those fragments in which I was torn to pieces, while I turned away from you, O Unity, and lost myself among “the many.”1 For as I became a youth,