to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might
love, in love with loving, and I hated safety.... To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to
me; but more, when I obtained to enjoy the person I loved. I defiled, therefore, the spring of
friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I beclouded its brightness with the hell of
lustfulness." * These words describe his relation to a mistress whom he loved faithfully for
many years, †and by whom he had a son, whom he also loved, and to whom, after his
conversion, he gave much care in religious education.
The time came when he and his mother thought he ought to begin to think of marrying. He
became engaged to a girl of whom she approved, and it was held necessary that he should break
with his mistress. "My mistress," he says, "being torn from my side as a hindrance to my
marriage, my heart which clave unto her was torn and wounded and bleeding. And she returned
to Africa [ Augustine was at this time in Milan], vowing unto Thee never to know any other
man, leaving with me my son by her." ‡ As, however, the marriage could not take place for
two years, owing to the girl's youth, he took meanwhile another mistress, less official and less
acknowledged. His conscience increasingly troubled him, and he used to pray: "Give me
chastity and continence, only not yet." § At last, before the time had come for his marriage,
religion won a complete victory, and he dedicated the rest of his life to celibacy.
To return to an earlier time: in his nineteenth year, having achieved proficiency in rhetoric, he
was recalled to philosophy by Cicero. He tried reading the Bible, but found it lacking in
Ciceronian dignity. It was at this time that he became a Manichæan, which grieved his mother.
By profession he was a teacher of rhetoric. He was addicted to astrology, to which, in later life,
he was averse, because it teaches that "the inevitable cause of thy sin is in the sky." ∥ He read
philosophy, so far as it could be read in Latin; he mentions particularly Aristotle Ten
Categories, which, he says, he understood without the help of a teacher. "And what did it profit
me, that I, the vilest slave of evil passions, read by myself all the books of so-called 'liberal'
arts;
* Confessions, Bk. III, Ch. I.Â
§
Ibid., Bk. VIII, Ch. VII.â
€
Ibid., Bk. IV, Ch. II.â
€
¡Ibid., Bk. VI, Ch. XV.â
ˆ
¥Ibid., Bk. IV, Ch. III.