CITY OFGOD(BOOKXII) 297
For, suppose we say that the man himself made his will evil. Very well, but what
was the man himself before he made his will evil? He was a good nature, created by
God, the immutable God.
Take a person who says that the one who consents to the temptation and enticement
made his own will evil although previously he had been entirely good. Recall the facts.
The one consents, while the other does not, to a sinful desire concerning a beautiful
person; the beauty was seen by both equally, and before the temptation both men were
absolutely alike in mind and body. Now, the person who talks of a man making his own
will evil must ask why the man made his will evil, whether because he is a nature or
because he is nature made out of nothing? He will learn that the evil arises not from the
fact that the man is a nature, but from the fact that the nature was made out of nothing.
For, if a nature is the cause of an evil will, then we are compelled to say that evil
springs from good and that good is the cause of evil—since a bad will comes from a
good nature. But how can it come about that a good, though mutable, nature, even
before its will is evil, can produce something evil, namely, this evil will itself?
CHAPTER 7
No one, therefore, need seek for an efficient cause of an evil will. Since the “effect” is,
in fact, a deficiency, the cause should be called “deficient.” The fault of an evil will
begins when one falls from Supreme Being to some being which is less than absolute.
Trying to discover causes of such deficiencies—causes which, as I have said, are not
efficient but deficient—is like trying to see darkness or hear silence. True, we have some
knowledge of both darkness and silence: of the former only by the eyes; of the latter
only by the ears. Nevertheless, we have no sensation but only the privation of sensation.
So there is no point in anyone trying to learn from me what I know I do not
know—unless, perhaps, he wants to know how not to know what, as he ought to know,
no one can know. For, things we know, not by sensation, but by the absence of sensa-
tion, are known—if the word says or means anything—by some kind of “unknowing,”
so that they are both known and not known at the same time. For example, when the
vision of the eye passes from sensation to sensation, it sees darkness only when it
begins not to see. So, too, no other sense but the ear can perceive silence, yet silence can
only be heard by not being heard.
So, too, it is only the vision of the mind that discerns the species intellegibilis
when it understands intelligible realities. But, when the realities are no longer intelligi-
ble, the mind, too, knows by “unknowing.” For “who can understand sins?” (Ps. 18:13).
CHAPTER 8
This I know, that the nature of God can never and nowhere be deficient in anything,
while things made out of nothing can be deficient. In regard to these latter, the more
they have of being and the more good things they do or make—for then they are doing
or making something positive—the more their causes are efficient; but in so far as they
fail or are defective and, in that sense, “do evil”—if a “defect” can be “done”—then
their causes are “deficient.” I know, further, that when a will “is made” evil, what hap-
pens would not have happened if the will had not wanted it to happen. That is why the
punishment which follows is just, since the defection was not necessary but voluntary.