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Confessions. Augustine of Hippo
Читать онлайн.Название Confessions
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isbn 9781681922850
Автор произведения Augustine of Hippo
Жанр Словари
Издательство Ingram
Chapter VI
7. Still, dust and ashes as I am, allow me to speak before your mercy. Allow me to speak, for, behold, it is to your mercy that I speak and not to a man who scorns me. Yet perhaps even you might scorn me; but when you turn and attend to me, you will have mercy upon me. For what do I wish to say, O Lord my God, but that I know not whence I came into this life-in-death. Or should I call it death-in-life? I do not know. And yet the consolations of your mercy have sustained me from the very beginning, as I have heard from my fleshly parents, from whom and in whom you formed me in time — for I cannot remember. Thus, even though they sustained me by the consolation of woman’s milk, neither my mother nor my nurses filled their own breasts — but you, through them, gave me the food of infancy according to your ordinance and your bounty, which underlie all things. For it was you who caused me not to want more than you gave, and it was you who gave to those who nourished me the will to give me what you had given them. And they, by an instinctive affection, were willing to give me what you had supplied abundantly. It was, indeed, good for them that my good should come through them, though, in truth, it was not from them but by them. For it is from you, O God, that all good things come — and from my God is all my health. This is what I have since learned, as you have made it abundantly clear by all that I have seen you give, both to me and to those around me. For even at the very first I knew how to suck, to lie quiet when I was full, and to cry when in pain — nothing more.
8. Afterward I began to laugh — at first in my sleep, then when waking. For this I have been told about myself and I believe it — though I cannot remember it — for I see the same things in other infants. Then, little by little, I realized where I was and wished to tell my wants to those who might satisfy them, but I could not! For my wants were inside me, and my elders were outside, and they could not by any power of theirs come into my soul. And so I would fling my arms and legs about and cry, making the few and feeble gestures that I could, though indeed the signs were not much like what I inwardly desired. And when I was not satisfied — either from not being understood or because what I got was not good for me — I grew indignant that my elders were not subject to me and that those on whom I actually had no claim did not wait on me as slaves — and I avenged myself on them by crying. That infants are like this, I have myself been able to learn by watching them; and they, though they knew me not, have shown me better what I was like than my own nurses who knew me.
9. And, behold, my infancy died long ago, but I am still living. But you, O Lord, whose life is forever and in whom nothing dies — since before the world was, indeed, before all that can be called “before,” you were, and you are the God and Lord of all your creatures; and with you abide all the stable causes of all unstable things, the unchanging sources of all changeable things, and the eternal reasons of all nonrational and temporal things — tell me, your suppliant, O God, tell me, O merciful One, in pity tell a pitiful creature whether my infancy followed yet an earlier age of my life that had already passed away before it. Was it such another age that I spent in my mother’s womb? For something of that sort has been suggested to me, and I have myself seen pregnant women. But what, O God, my joy, preceded that period of life? Was I, indeed, anywhere — or anybody? No one can explain these things to me, neither father nor mother, nor the experience of others, nor my own memory. Do you laugh at me for asking such things? Or do you command me to praise and confess to you only what I know?
10. I give thanks to you, O Lord of heaven and earth, giving praise to you for that first being and my infancy, of which I have no memory. For you have granted to man that he should come to self-knowledge through the knowledge of others, and that he should believe many things about himself on the authority of the womenfolk. Now, clearly, I had life and being; and, as my infancy closed, I was already learning signs by which I could communicate my feelings to others.
From what place could such a creature come but from you, O Lord? Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself? Or is there any other source from which being and life could flow into us, save this, that you, O Lord, have made us — you with whom being and life are one, since you yourself are supreme being and supreme life both together. For you are infinite and in you there is no change, nor an end to this present day — although there is a sense in which it ends in you since all things are in you and there would be no such thing as days passing away unless you sustained them. And since “your years have no end” (Ps 102:27), your years are an ever-present day. And how many of our and our fathers’ days have passed through this your day and have received from it what measure and fashion of being they had? And all the days to come shall so receive and so pass away. “But you are the same” (Ps 102:27)! And all the things of tomorrow and the days yet to come, and all of yesterday and the days that are past, you will gather unto you. What is it to me if someone does not understand this? Let him still rejoice and continue to ask, “What is this?” Let him also rejoice and prefer to seek you, even if he fails to find an answer, rather than to seek an answer and not find you!
Chapter VII
11. “Hear me, O God! Woe to the sins of men!” When a man cries thus, you show him mercy, for you created the man but not the sin in him. Who brings to remembrance the sins of my infancy? For in your sight there is none free from sin, not even the infant who has lived but a day upon this earth. Who brings this to my remembrance? Does not each little one, in whom I now observe what I no longer remember of myself? In what ways, in that time, did I sin? Was it that I cried for the breast? If I should now so cry — not indeed for the breast, but for food suitable to my condition — I should be most justly laughed at and rebuked. What I did then deserved rebuke but, since I could not understand those who rebuked me, neither custom nor common sense permitted me to be rebuked. As we grow, we root out and cast away from us such childish habits. Yet I have not seen anyone who is wise who cast away the good when trying to purge the bad. Nor was it good, even in that time, to strive to get by crying what, if it had been given me, would have been hurtful; or to be bitterly indignant at those who, because they were older — not slaves, either, but free — and wiser than I, would not indulge my capricious desires. Was it a good thing for me to try, by struggling as hard as I could, to harm them for not obeying me, even when it would have done me harm to have been obeyed? Thus, the infant’s innocence lies in the weakness of his body and not in the infant mind. I have myself observed a baby to be jealous, though it could not speak; it was livid as it watched another infant at the breast.
Who is ignorant of this? Mothers and nurses tell us that they cure these things by I know not what remedies. But is this innocence, when the fountain of milk is flowing fresh and abundant, that another who needs it should not be allowed to share it, even though he requires such nourishment to sustain his life? Yet we look leniently on such things, not because they are not faults, or even small faults, but because they will vanish as the years pass. For, although we allow for such things in an infant, the same things could not be tolerated patiently in an adult.
12. Therefore, O Lord my God, you who gave life to the infant, and a body which, as we see, you have furnished with senses, shaped with limbs, beautified with form, and endowed with all vital energies for its well-being and health — you command me to praise you for these things, to give thanks to the Lord, and to sing praise to his name, O Most High (cf. Ps 92:1). For you are God, omnipotent and good, even if you had done no more than these things, which no other but you can do — you alone who made all things fair and ordered everything according to your law.
I am loath to dwell on this part of my life of which, O Lord, I have no remembrance, about which I must trust the word of others and what I can surmise from observing other infants, even if such guesses are trustworthy. For it lies in the deep murk of my forgetfulness and thus is like the period that I passed in my mother’s womb. But if “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps 51:5), where, I pray you, O my God, where, O Lord, or when was I, your servant, ever innocent? But see now, I pass over that period, for what have I to do with a time from which I can recall no memories?
Chapter VIII