The Happy Life; Answer to Skeptics; Divine Providence and the Problem of Evil; Soliloquies

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BOOK ONE Chapter 1 II0 PERCEIVE and to grasp the order of reality proper to each thing, and then to see or to explain the , . order of the entire universe by which this world is truly held together and governed-that, Zenobius,l is a very difficult and rare achievement for men. Moreover, even if one had this power, he is not thereby enabled to find an audience fitted for such divine and hidden things, either by personal worth or by an acquired habit of learning. And yet there is nothing that the most gifted minds search out more eagerly, nothing that those who, with heads uplifted as much as they may, still see the rocks and storms of this life below-there is nothing that these are more desirous of hearing and learning than how it is that God has a care for human affairs, and nevertheless perversity is so serious and widespread that it must seem unattributable not only to God's governance, but even to a hireling's management, if indeed such management could be entrusted to a hireling. Wherefore; those who ponder these matters are seemingly forced to believe either that Divine Providence does not reach to these outer limits of things or that surely all evils are committed by the will of God. Both horns of this dilemma are impious, but particularly the latter. For, although it is unsound and most perilous to the soul to hold that anything is beyond God's control, yet even among men no one is blamed for what he could not do or prevent. The imputing of lOur only sources of information regarding Zenobius are the references to him in De ordine and in two letters. In 386 Augustine wrote a letter to Zenobius (Ep. 2); another, from a certain Dioscorus to Augustine, in 410 (Ep. 117) , conveys the information that Zenobius had been made a magister memoriae, i.e., a secretary in the imperial government. 239 240 SAINT AUGUSTINE negligence is indeed much more pardonable than the charge of ill will or cruelty. Reason, therefore, not unmindful of piety, is in a manner forced to hold that things of earth cannot be governed by powers divine or that they are neglected and unnoticed, rather than to hold that they are governed in such wise that all complaining about God is inoffensive and blameless. (2) But who is there so dull of mind that he will hesitate to attribute to divine power and divine government whatever there is of order in corporeal operations, apart from human arrangement and will? Unless, perhaps, by some play of nonsense we shall have the hardihood to hold [one of three hypotheses]: (1) that the most accurately measured and fitted organic parts of the smallest animals are the result of chance; (2) that what one admits to be not the work of chance can in any way not be the effect of design; or (3) that what we find marvelous in every single thing throughout the universe, arranged in a manner surpassing the utmost efficiency of human power, belongs not to the hidden control of divine majesty. Yet, here is a point suggestive of even more queStioning: that the organic parts of a flea are marvelously fitted and framed, while human life is surrounded and made restless by the inconsistency of countless disorders. On this line of reasoning, if one were examining the details in an inlaid pavement, and if his searching eye could grasp no more than the outline of one little cube, he might censure the artificer for lacking skill of arrangement and order. On this account he might think the uniformity of the little stones disarranged, just because the drawn lines, harmonizing into one integral form of beauty, could not be seen and examined all at once. Something very similar to this is found in the case of un- DIVINE PROVIDENCE AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 241 instructed men, who, on account of their feeble mentality, are unable to grasp and to study the integral fittingness of things. They think that the whole universe is disarranged if something is displeasing to them, just because that thing is magnified in their perception. (3) The chief cause of this error is that man does not know himself. Now, for acquiring this self-knowledge, he needs a constant habit of withdrawing from things of the senses2 and of concentrating his thought within...