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| He Very Easily Understood the Liberal Arts and the Categories of Aristotle, But Without True Fruit.
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Chapter XVI.—He Very Easily
Understood the Liberal Arts and the Categories of Aristotle, But
Without True Fruit.
28. And what did it profit me that, when
scarce twenty years old, a book of Aristotle’s, entitled The
Ten Predicaments, fell into my hands,—on whose very name I
hung as on something great and divine, when my rhetoric master of
Carthage, and others who were esteemed learned, referred to it with
cheeks swelling with pride,—I read it alone and understood it?
And on my conferring with others, who said that with the assistance
of very able masters—who not only explained it orally, but drew
many things in the dust341
| 341 As the mathematicians did their figures, in dust or
sand. | —they scarcely understood it, and
could tell me no more about it than I had acquired in reading it by
myself alone? And the book appeared to me to speak plainly enough
of substances, such as man is, and of their qualities,—such as
the figure of a man, of what kind it is; and his stature, how many
feet high; and his relationship, whose brother he is; or where
placed, or when born; or whether he stands or sits, or is shod or
armed, or does or suffers anything; and whatever innumerable things
might be classed under these nine categories,342
| 342 “The categories enumerated by Aristotle are ὀυσία, πόσον,
ποῖον, πρόστι, ποῦ, πότε, κείσθαι, ἔχειν, ποιεῖν,
πάσχειν; which are usually rendered, as adequately as
perhaps they can be in our language, substance, quantity, quality,
relation, place, time, situation, possession, action, suffering.
The catalogue (which certainly is but a very crude one) has been by
some writers enlarged, as it is evident may easily be done by
subdividing some of the heads; and by others curtailed, as it is no
less evident that all may ultimately be referred to the two heads
of substance and attribute, or, in the language of
some logicians, ‘accident’” (Whately’s Logic,
iv. 2, sec. 1, note). “These are called in Latin the
prædicaments, because they can be said or predicated in the
same sense of all other terms, as well as of all the objects
denoted by them, whereas no other term can be correctly said of
them, because no other is employed to express the full extent of
their meaning” (Gillies, Analysis of Aristotle, c. 2). | —of which I have given some
examples,—or under that chief category of substance.
29. What did all this profit me, seeing it
even hindered me, when, imagining that whatsoever existed was
comprehended in those ten categories, I tried so to understand, O
my God, Thy wonderful and unchangeable unity as if Thou also hadst
been subjected to Thine own greatness or beauty, so that they
should exist in Thee as their subject, like as in bodies, whereas
Thou Thyself art Thy greatness and beauty? But a body is not great
or fair because it is a body, seeing that, though it were less
great or fair, it should nevertheless be a body. But that which I
had conceived of Thee was falsehood, not truth,—fictions of my
misery, not the supports of Thy blessedness. For Thou hadst
commanded, and it was done in me, that the earth should bring forth
briars and thorns to me,343
and that with labour I should get
my bread.344
30. And what did it profit me that I, the base
slave of vile affections, read unaided, and understood, all the
books that I could get of the so-called liberal arts? And I took
delight in them, but knew not whence came whatever in them was true
and certain. For my back then was to the light, and my face towards
the things enlightened; whence my face, with which I discerned the
things enlightened, was not itself enlightened. Whatever was
written either on rhetoric or logic, geometry, music, or
arithmetic, did I, without any great difficulty, and without the
teaching of any man, understand, as Thou knowest, O Lord my God,
because both quickness of comprehension and acuteness of perception
are Thy gifts. Yet did I not thereupon sacrifice to Thee. So, then,
it served not to my use, but rather to my destruction, since I went
about to get so good a portion of my substance345
into my own power; and I kept not
my strength for Thee,346
but went away from Thee into a far
country, to waste it upon harlotries.347
For what did good abilities profit
me, if I did not employ them to good uses? For I did not perceive
that those arts were acquired with great difficulty, even by the
studious and those gifted with genius, until I endeavoured to
explain them to such; and he was the most proficient in them who
followed my explanations not too slowly.
31. But what did this profit me, supposing
that Thou, O Lord God, the Truth, wert a bright and vast body,348
| 348 See iii. 12; iv. 3, 12; v. 19. | and I a
piece of that body? Perverseness too great! But such was I. Nor do
I blush, O my God, to confess to Thee Thy mercies towards me, and
to call upon Thee—I, who blushed not then to avow before men my
blasphemies, and to bark against Thee. What profited me then my
nimble wit in those sciences and all those knotty volumes,
disentangled by me without help from a human master, seeing that I
erred so odiously, and with such sacrilegious baseness, in the
doctrine of piety? Or what impediment was it to Thy little ones to have a
far slower wit, seeing that they departed not far from Thee, that
in the nest of Thy Church they might safely become fledged, and
nourish the wings of charity by the food of a sound faith? O Lord
our God, under the shadow of Thy wings let us hope, 349
defend us,
and carry us. Thou wilt carry us both when little, and even to grey
hairs wilt Thou carry us; 350
for our firmness, when it is Thou,
then is it firmness; but when it is our own, then it is infirmity.
Our good lives always with Thee, from which when we are averted we
are perverted. Let us now, O Lord, return, that we be not
overturned, because with Thee our good lives without any eclipse,
which good Thou Thyself art. 351
| 351 See xi. sec. 5, note, below. | And we need not fear lest we should
find no place unto which to return because we fell away from it;
for when we were absent, our home—Thy Eternity—fell
not. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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