§ 179. THE WORKS OF AUGUSTINE. 1009
amma et ejus origine (-119). Other philosophical works on grammar, dialectics (or ars hene disjputandi), rhetoric, geometry, and arithmetic, are lost.'
These works exhibit as yet little that is specifically Christian and church ly ; but they show a Platonism seized and consecrated by the spirit of Christianity, full of high thoughts, ideal views, and discriminating argument. They were designed to present the different stages of human thought by which he himself had reached the knowledge of the truth, and to serve others as steps to the sanctuary. They form an elementary introduction to his theology. He afterwards, in his Retractations, withdrew many things contained in them, like the Platonic view of the pre-existence of the soul, and the Platonic idea that the acquisition of knowledge is a recollection or excavation of the knowledge hidden in the mind.'' The philosopher in him afterwards yielded more and more to the
way about this son of his illicit loTe: "We took with us [on retnrnirag from the country to Milan to receive the sacrament of baptism] also the boy Adeodatus, the son of my carnal sin. Thou hadst formed him well. He was but just fifteen years old, and he was superior in mind to many grave and learned men. I acknowledge Thy gifts, 0 Lord, my God, who createst all, and who canst reform our deformities ; for I had no part in that boy but sin. And when we brouglit him up in Thy nurture, Thou, only Thou, didst prompt us to it; I acknowledge Thy gifts. There i.-J my book entitled, De Magistro ; he speaks with me there. Thou knowest that all tilings there put into his mouth were in his mind when he was sixteen years of ago. That maturity of mind was a terror to me ; and who but Thou is the artificer of such wonders ? Soon Thou didst take his life from the earth ; and I think more quietly of him now, fearing no more for his boyhood, nor his youth, nor his whole life. We took him to ourselves as one of the same age in Thy grace, to be trained in Tliy nurture ; and we were baptized together ; and all trouble about the past fled from us."
' The books on grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, and the ten Categories of Aristotle, in the Appendix to the first volume of the Bened. ed., are spurious. For the genuine works of Augustine on these subjects were written in a different form (the dialogue) and for a higher purpose, and were lost in his own day. Comp. Retract. i. c. 6. In spite of this, Prantl (Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, pp. 665-674, cited by Huber, 1. c. p. 240) has advocated the genuineness of the Prineipia dialectics, and Huber inchnes to agree. Gangauf, 1. c. p. 5, and Nourrisson, i. p. 37, consider them spurious.
'' 'H na^Tjo-is ovK aWo rt ^ avd/xv-qiTti. On this Plato, in the Phaedo, as is well known, rests his doctrine of pre-existence. Augustine was at first in favor of the idea, Solil. ii. 20, n. 35 ; afterwards he rejected it, Retract, i. 4, § 4.
1010 THEBD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
theologian, and his views became more positive and empirical though in some cases narrower also and more exchisive. Yet he could never cease to philosophize, and even his later works, Bspecially De Trinitate and De Civitate Dei, are full of pro found speculations. Before his conversion he followed a particular system of philosophy, first the Manichsean, then the Platonic; after his conversio'.i he embraced the Christian philosophy, which is based on the divine revelation of the Scriptures, and is the handmaid of theology and religion ; but at the same time he prepared the way for the catholic ecclesiastical philoso])hy, which rests on the authority of the church, and became complete in the scholasticism of the middle age.
In the history of philosophy he deserves a place in the liighest rank, and has done greater service to the science of sciences than any other father, Clement of Alexandria and Origen not excepted. He attacked and refuted the i)aga7i philosophy as pantheistic or dualistic at heart; he shook the superstitions of astrology and magic; he expelled from philosophy the doctrine of emanation, and the idi'a that God is the soul of the world ; he substantially advanced psychology; he solved the question of the origin and the natui-e of evil more nearly than any of his predecessors, and as nearly as most of his successors ; he was the first to investigate thoroughly the relation of divine omnipotence and omniscience to human freedom, and to construct a theodicy ; in short, he is properly the founder of a Christian philosophy, and not only divided with Aristotle the empire of the mediaeval scholasticism, but furnished also living germs for new systems of philosophy, and will always be consulted in the speculative establishment of Christian doctrines.
III. Apologetic works against Pagans and Jews. Among these the twenty-two books, De Civitate Dei, are still well worth reading. They form the deepest and richest apologetic work of antiquity ; begun in 413, after the occu]->ation of Romo by the Gothic king Alaric, finished in 42G, and often separately published. They condense his entire theory of the world and of man, and arc the first attempt at a compiehensive ])hilo80
g 179. THE WOliKS OF AUGUSTINE. 101 i
phy of universal history under the dualistic view of two antag* onistic currents or organized forces, a kingdom of this world which is doomed to final destruction, and a kingdom of God which will last forever.'
lY. Eeligious-Theological works of a general nature (in part anti-Manichsean) : De utilitate credendi, against tho Gnostic exaltation of knowledge (392) ; De fide et symbolo, a discourse which, though only presbyter, he delivered on the Apostles' Creed before the council at Hippo at the request of the bishops in 393 ; De doctrina Christiana iv libri (397 ; the fourth book added in 426), a compend of exegetical theology for instruction in the interpretation of the Scriptures according to the analogy of the faith ; De catechizandis rudibus, likewise for catechetical purposes (400) ; Enchiridion, or De fide, spe et caritate, a brief compend of the doctrine of faith and morals, which he wrote in 421, or later, at the request of Laurentius ; hence also called Manuale ad Laurentium.
Y. Polemic-Theological works. These are the most copious sources of the history of doctrine. The heresies collectively are reviewed in the book De hferesibns ad Quodvultdeum, written between 428 and 430 to a friend and deacon in Carthage, and giving a survey of eighty-eight heresies, from the Simonians to the Pelagians.^ In the work De vera religione (390) Augustine proposed to show that the true religion is to be found not with the heretics and schismatics, but only in the catholic church of that time.
' In the Bened. ed. torn. vii. Comp. Ketract. ii. 43, and above, § 12. The City of God and the Confessions are the only writings of Augustine which Gibbon thought good to read (chap, xxxiii.). Huber (1. c. p. 315) says: "Augustine's philosophy of history, as he presents it in his Civitas Dei, has remained to this hour the standard philosophy of history for the church orthodoxy, the bounds of which tliis orthodoxy, unable to perceive in the motions of the n odern spirit the fresh morning ai» of a higher day of history, is scarcely able to transcend." Nourrisson devotes a special chapter to the consideration of the two cities of Augustine, the City of the World and the City of God (tom. ii. 43-88). Compare also the Introduction to Saisset's Traduction de la Cite de Dieu, Par. \85~).
" This work is also Incorporated in the Corpus haereseologicum of Fr. Oeblei^ lorn. i. pp. 192-225.