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QUESTIONS 29-30 55 from right to left or from front to back.3 Accordingly, to be able to see this, words must be set aside, and the mind4 -inust activate its own special resources. 30. HAS EVER YTHING BEEN CREA TED FOR MAN'S USE? There is the same difference between the terms honorablel and useful as between the terms enjoyable and useful. For although it can be maintained (though requiring some subtlety) that everything honorable is useful and everything useful is honorable, nevertheless, since the term honorable more appropriately and usually means "that which is sought for its own sake," and the term useful, "that which is directed to something else," we now speak in terms of this distinction, while safeguarding, of course, the fact that the word honorable and the word useful are in no way opposed to one another. For these two terms are sometimes thought to be mutually exclusive, but this is an uninformed opinion of the crowd. Therefore we are said to enjoy that from which we derive pleasure. We use that which we order toward something else from which we c;xpect to derive pleasure. 3 Augustine apparently means that the relativity of right and left and back and front is easily discerned, because we can easily turn our bodies in these directions and discover that the left is now the right, the right is now the left, and so on. However, because we rarely, if ever, are turned upside down onto our heads, we fail to notice the same relativity in up and down, and thus assume that they are absolute. 4 animo. The word honorable translates the Latin term honestum. An English word which adequately translates the Latin is as hard to come by as an adequate English word for the equivalent Greek term lealon. H. Hubbell, in his translation of Cicero, De inuentione, The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass. 1960), p. 326, note, remarks that honestum "denotes 'honour' in a broad sense; 'moral beauty' might be a more exact rendering." See below, Q. 31. 56 ST. AUGUSTINE Consequently every human perversion (also called vice) consists in the desire to use what ought to be enjoyed and to enjoy what ought to be used. In turn, good order (also called virtue) consists in the desire to enjoy what ought to be enjoyed and to use what ought to be used. Now honorable things are to be enjoyed, but useful things are to be used. I mean by honor the intelligible beauty which properly we call spiritual, whereas by usefulness I mean Divine Providence. Accordingly, though there are many visible beautiful things which are not appropriately called honorable, nevertheless, Beauty itself, by which whatever is beautiful is beautiful, is not at all visible. Again, many useful things are visible. But Usefulness itself, by which whatever is useful is useful to us, and which we call by the name Divine Providence, is not visible . Note well, however, that all corporeal beings are comprehended by the term visible. Therefore it is invisible beautiful things, i.e., honorable things, that should be enjoyed . But whether all should be is another question, although perhaps only things which ought to be enjoyed may properly be called honorable. All useful things, however, ought to be used according as there is need for each of them. And indeed, it is not so very absurd to think of animals as enjoying nourishment and all the bodily pleasures. However, only a living being possessed of reason can use anything. For the knowledge of that to which each thing must be ordered is not given to beings lacking reason, nor is it given to simple, dull rational beings. Nor can anyone use that which is to be ordered to an end of which he has no knowledge, and no one can know this except he who is wise. Accordingly those who do not use things well are usually and more correctly called abusers. For what is badly used benefits no one, and what is of no benefit obviously is not useful. But whatever is useful is useful by being used. Thus no one uses anything except what is useful. Therefore he does not use anything who uses it badly. Accordingly the perfect reason of man, which is called virtue , uses first of all itself to understand God, in order that it may enjoy him by whom also it has been made. It uses, [52.15.59.163] Project MUSE (2024-04-25...

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