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| He Deplores His Wretchedness, that Having Been Born Thirty-Two Years, He Had Not Yet Found Out the Truth. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter VII.—He Deplores His
Wretchedness, that Having Been Born Thirty-Two Years, He Had Not
Yet Found Out the Truth.
16. Such was the story of Pontitianus. But
Thou, O Lord, whilst he was speaking, didst turn me towards myself,
taking me from behind my back, where I had placed myself while
unwilling to exercise self-scrutiny; and Thou didst set me face to
face with myself, that I might behold how foul I was, and how
crooked and sordid, bespotted and ulcerous. And I beheld and
loathed myself; and whither to fly from myself I discovered not.
And if I sought to turn my gaze away from myself, he continued his
narrative, and Thou again opposedst me unto myself, and thrustedst
me before my own eyes, that I might discover my iniquity, and hate
it.659 I had known
it, but acted as though I knew it not,—winked at it, and forgot
it.
17. But now, the more ardently I loved those
whose healthful affections I heard tell of, that they had given up
themselves wholly to Thee to be cured, the more did I abhor myself
when compared with them. For many of my years (perhaps twelve) had
passed away since my nineteenth, when, on the reading of Cicero’s
Hortensius,660
660 See iii. sec. 7, above. | I was roused to a desire for
wisdom; and still I was delaying to reject mere worldly happiness,
and to devote myself to search out that whereof not the finding
alone, but the bare search,661
661 It is interesting to compare with this passage the
views contained in Augustin’s three books, Con.
Academicos,—the earliest of his extant works, and written
about this time. Licentius there maintains that the “bare
search” for truth renders a man happy, while Trygetius contends
that the “finding alone” can produce happiness. Augustin does
not agree with the doctrine of the former, and points out that
while the Academics held the probable to be attainable, it could
not be so without the true, by which the probable is measured and
known. And, in his De Vita Beata, he contends that he who
seeks truth and finds it not, has not attained happiness, and that
though the grace of God be indeed guiding him, he must not expect
complete happiness (Retractations, i. 2) till after death.
Perhaps no sounder philosophy can be found than that evidenced in
the life of Victor Hugo’s good Bishop Myriel, who rested in the
practice of love, and was content to look for perfect happiness,
and a full unfolding of God’s mysteries, to the future
life:—“Aimez-vous les uns les autres, il declarait cela
complet, ne souhaitait rien de plus et c’était là toute sa
doctrine. Un jour, cet homme qui se croyait ‘philosophe,’ ce
senateur, déjà nommé, dit à l’évêque: ‘Mais voyez donc le
spectacle du monde; guerre de tous contre tous; le plus fort a le
plus d’ésprit. Votre aimez-vous les uns les autres est une
bêtise.’—‘Eh bien,’ répondit Monseigneur Bienvenu, sans
disputer, ‘si c’est une bêtise, l’âme doit s’y enfermer
comme la perle dans l’huitre.’ Il s’y enfermait donc, il y
vivait, il s’en satisfaisait absolument, laissant de côté les
questions prodigieuses qui attirent et qui épouvantent, les
perspectives insoudables de l’abstraction, les précipices de la
métaphysique, toutes ces profondeurs convergentes, pour
l’apôtre, à Dieu, pour l’athée, au néant: la destinée, le
bien et le mal, la guerre de l’être contre l’être, la
conscience de l’homme, le somnambulisme pensif de l’animal, la
transformation par la mort, la récapitulation d’existences qui
contient le tombeau, la greffe incompréhensible des amours
successifs sur le moi persistant, l’essence, la substance, le Nil
et l’Ens, l’âme, la nature, la liberté, la nécessité;
problèmes à pic, épaisseurs sinistres, où se penchent les
gigantesques archanges de l’ésprit humain; formidables abimes
que Lucrèce, Manon, Saint Paul, et Dante contemplent avec cet œil
fulgurant qui semble, en regardant fixement l’infini, y faire
eclore les étoiles. Monseigneur Bienvenu était simplement un
homme qui constatait du dehors les questions mystérieuses sans les
scruter, sans les agiter, et sans en troubler son propre ésprit;
et qui avait dans l’âme le grave respect de
l’ombre.”—Les Misérables, c. xiv. | ought to have been preferred before the treasures
and kingdoms of this world, though already found, and before the
pleasures of the body, though encompassing me at my will. But I,
miserable young man, supremely miserable even in the very outset of
my youth, had entreated chastity of Thee, and said, “Grant me
chastity and continency, but not yet.” For I was afraid lest Thou
shouldest hear me soon, and soon deliver me from the disease of
concupiscence, which I desired to have satisfied rather than
extinguished. And I had wandered through perverse ways in a
sacrilegious superstition; not indeed assured thereof, but
preferring that to the others, which I did not seek religiously,
but opposed maliciously.
18. And I had thought that I delayed from day to day
to reject worldly hopes and follow Thee only, because there did not
appear anything certain whereunto to direct my course. And now had
the day arrived in which I was to be laid bare to myself, and my
conscience was to chide me. “Where art thou, O my tongue? Thou
saidst, verily, that for an uncertain truth thou wert not willing
to cast off the baggage of vanity. Behold, now it is certain, and
yet doth that burden still oppress thee; whereas they who neither
have so worn themselves out with searching after it, nor yet have
spent ten years and more in thinking thereon, have had their
shoulders unburdened, and gotten wings to fly away.” Thus was I
inwardly consumed and mightily confounded with an horrible shame,
while Pontitianus was relating these things. And he, having
finished his story, and the business he came for, went his way. And
unto myself, what said I not within myself? With what scourges of
rebuke lashed I not my soul to make it follow me, struggling to go
after Thee! Yet it drew back; it refused, and exercised not itself.
All its arguments were exhausted and confuted. There remained a
silent trembling; and it feared, as it would death, to be
restrained from the flow of that custom whereby it was wasting away
even to death.
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