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| That His Grief Ceased by Time, and the Consolation of Friends.
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Chapter VIII.—That His Grief
Ceased by Time, and the Consolation of Friends.
13. Times lose no time, nor do they idly roll
through our senses. They work strange operations on the mind.299
| 299 As Seneca has it: “Quod ratio non quit, sæpe
sanabit mora” (Agam. 130). | Behold, they
came and went from day to day, and by coming and going they
disseminated in my mind other ideas and other remembrances, and by
little and little patched me up again with the former kind of
delights, unto which that sorrow of mine yielded. But yet there
succeeded, not certainly other sorrows, yet the causes of other
sorrows.300
| 300 See iv. cc. 1, 10, 12, and vi. c. 16. | For whence
had that former sorrow so easily penetrated to the quick, but that
I had poured out my soul upon the dust, in loving one who must die
as if he were never to die? But what revived and refreshed me
especially was the consolations of other friends,301
| 301 “Friendship,” says Lord Bacon, in his essay
thereon,—the sentiment being perhaps suggested by Cicero’s
“Secundas res splendidiores facit amicitia et adversas partiens
communicansque leviores” (De Amicit. 6),—“redoubleth
joys, and cutteth griefs in halves.” Augustin appears to have
been eminently open to influences of this kind. In his De Duab.
Anim. con. Manich. (c. ix.) he tells us that friendship was one
of the bonds that kept him in the ranks of the Manichæans; and
here we find that, aided by time and weeping, it restored him in
his great grief. See also v. sec. 19, and vi. sec 26, below. | with whom I did love what instead
of Thee I loved. And this was a monstrous fable and protracted lie,
by whose adulterous contact our soul, which lay itching in our
ears, was being polluted. But that fable would not die to me so oft
as any of my friends died. There were other things in them which
did more lay hold of my mind,—to discourse and jest with them; to
indulge in an interchange of kindnesses; to read together pleasant
books; together to trifle, and together to be earnest; to differ at
times without ill-humour, as a man would do with his own self; and
even by the infrequency of these differences to give zest to our
more frequent consentings; sometimes teaching, sometimes being
taught; longing for the absent with impatience, and welcoming the
coming with joy. These and similar expressions, emanating from the
hearts of those who loved and were beloved in return, by the
countenance, the tongue, the eyes, and a thousand pleasing
movements, were so much fuel to melt our souls together, and out of
many to make but one.
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