marriage, as the desire for privacy shows, people are ashamed of sexual intercourse, because "this
lawful act of nature is (from our first parents) accompanied with our penal shame." The cynics
thought that one should be without shame, and Diogenes would have none of it, wishing to be in
all things like a dog; yet even he, after one attempt, abandoned, in practice, this extreme of
shamelessness. What is shameful about lust is its independence of the will. Adam and Eve, before
the fall, could have had sexual intercourse without lust, though in fact they did not.
Handicraftsmen, in the pursuit of their trade, move their hands without lust; similarly Adam, if
only he had kept away from the apple-tree, could have performed the business of sex without the
emotions that it now demands. The sexual members, like the rest of the body, would have obeyed
the will. The need of lust in sexual intercourse is a punishment for Adam's sin, but for which sex
might have been divorced from pleasure. Omitting some physiological details which the translator
has very properly left in the decent obscurity of the original Latin, the above is Saint Augustine's
theory as regards sex.
It is evident from the above that what makes the ascetic dislike sex is its independence of the will.
Virtue, it is held, demands a complete control of the will over the body, but such control does not
suffice to make the sexual act possible. The sexual act, therefore, seems inconsistent with a
perfectly virtuous life.
Ever since the Fall, the world has been divided into two cities, of which one shall reign eternally
with God, the other shall be in eternal torment with Satan. Cain belongs to the city of the Devil,
Abel to the City of God. Abel, by grace, and in virtue of predestination, was a pilgrim on earth and
a citizen of heaven. The patriarchs belonged to the City of God. Discussion of the death of
Methuselah brings Saint Augustine to the vexed question of the comparison of the Septuagint with
the Vulgate. The data, as given in the Septuagint, lead to the conclusion that Methuselah survived
the flood by fourteen years, which is impossible, since he was not in the Ark. The Vulgate,
following the Hebrew manuscript, gives data from which it follows that he died the year of the
flood. On this point, Saint Augustine holds that Saint Jerome and the Hebrew manuscript must be
right. Some people maintained that the Jews had deliberately falsified the Hebrew