-
Foreword
- The Catholic University of America Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
FOREWORD nHE CITY OF GOD (De civitate Dei) is not only one of St. Augustine's masterpieces, but ranks, along with . the Confessions, among the classics of all literature. It is hardly possible to analyze the contents of this vast work, which, in spite of its overall plan, is marked by so many digressions. The purpose of this Introduction is to focus the reader's attention on Augustine's main theme, and to emphasize its historical importance. In his notion of a universal religious society is to be sought the origin of that ideal of a world society which is haunting the minds of so many today. Augustine, it is true, did not pose exactly the same problem; that is why we should not read the City of God in the hope of finding therein the solution. Nevertheless, the problem posed and resolved by Augustine is certainly the origin of ours, and, if we are failing to resolve our problem, it is probably because we are forgetting that its solution presupposes a solution of the problem resolved by Augustine. Our contemporaries aspire after a complete unity of all peoples: one world. They are quite right. The universal society which they are endeavoring to organize aims at being a political and temporal society. In this regard they are again right. Perhaps their most serious mistake is in imagining that a universal and purely natural society of men is possible without a universal religious society, which would unite men in the acceptance of the same supernatural truth and in the love of the same supernatural good. Xl xu FOREWORD I The Problem of a Universal Society Christianity was born in the Roman Empire, which itself was merely a vast extension of the City of Rome, or, if the formula seems imprudent, which owed to Rome its laws, its order and whatever unity it possessed. But, first of all, what was Rome? Many and divers explanations of its origin have been proposed; and, since the specialists themselves have not as yet found a solution of the problem acceptable to everyone, it would be imprudent to make a choice for them, and still more imprudent to build upon anyone of their hypotheses.l No one, however, doubts that Rome, as Athens, was one of the ancient cities, each of which was either a state or the center of a state. Weare safe in admitting that these cities were, first of all, peopled by men united by the bond of common blood.2 At the time of Pericles, 451 B.C., it was stilI the law that only the children of a legitimately married Athenian father and mother could be citizens of Athens. The division of the Greek cities into phratries and associations, a division found again in the familia and Roman gens, soundly confirms this hypothesis. I A. PiganioI. Essai sur les origines de Rome. (Paris 1917). 2 \Vilamowitz.Moellendorf, 'Staat und Gesellschaft der Griechen: in Die Kultur der Gegenwart, II, 42-51, IV, 97, 100. Cf., also, Ernest Barker, Greek Political Theory. Plato and his Predecessors (London 1917), a complete revision of the same author's Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, published in 1906. Note the interesting remark in the Preface (p. viii) to the effect that the Laws are the most modern (or mediaeval) of all the writings of Plato. FOREWORD XUI However, it in no way rules out the penetrating views formerly developed by Fustel de Coulanges in his classic work, The A ncient City. Therein, the family was described as already bound to religious beliefs and sacred rites, from which it was inseparable. In direct opposition to historical materialism, de Coulanges professed what might not too incorrectly be called an 'historical spiritualism.' By this is meant simply that, if man is no longer governed in our day as he was twenty-five centuries ago, it is because he no longer thinks as he thought then.3 Thence comes the basic thesis that 'history does not study material facts and institutions alone; its true object of study is the human mind; it should aspire to know what this mind has believed, thought and felt in the different ages of the life of the human race.'4 From such a viewpoint, it is religion which dominates from on high the family and the ancient city. Founded on the religious worship of the hearth, that is, of the household fire, which was not simply metaphorical but real, each family constituted first and...