Augustine answered her: “You are my guide, my Counsellor, my Sovereign, my Ruler; what is it, then, you would have me say in your presence?”
“I would,” she replied, “that some human voice speak to the ears of this mortal man. He will better bear to hear truth so. But seeing that whatever you shall say to him he will take as said by me, I also will be present in person during your discourse.”
Augustine answered her, “The love I bear to this sick man, as well as the authority of her who speaks, make it my duty to obey.” Then, looking kindly at me and pressing me to his heart in fatherly embrace, he led me away to the most retired corner he could find, and Truth herself went on a few steps in front. There we all three sat down. Then while Truth listened as the silent Judge, none other beside her being present, we held long converse on one side and the other; and because of the greatness of the theme, the discourse between us lasted over three days. Though we talked of many things much against the manners of this age, and on faults and failings common to mankind, in such wise that the reproaches of the Master seemed in a sense more directed against men in general than against myself, yet those which to me came closest home I have graven with more especial vividness on the tablet of my memory. That this discourse, so intimate and deep, might not be lost, I have sot it down in writing and made this book; not that I wish to class it with my other works, or desire from it any credit. My thoughts aim higher. What I desire is that I may be able by reading to renew as often as I wish the pleasure I felt from the discourse itself. So, little Book, I bid you flee the haunts of men and be content to stay with me, true to the title I have given you of “My Secret”: and when I would think upon deep matters, all that you keep in remembrance that was spoken in secret you in secret will tell to me over again.
To avoid the too frequent iteration of the words “said I,” “said he,” and to bring the personages of the Dialogue, as it were, before one’s very eyes, I have acted on Cicero’s method and merely placed the name of each interlocutor before each paragraph. My dear Master learned this mode himself from Plato. But to cut short all further digression, this is how Augustine opened the discourse.
Æneid, i. 327-28.
De Amicitiâ, i.
DIALOGUE THE FIRST. S. AUGUSTINE — PETRARCH
S. Augustine. What have you to say, O man of little strength? Of what are you dreaming? For what are you looking? Remember you not you are mortal?
Petrarch. Yes, I remember it right well, and a shudder comes upon me every time that remembrance rises in my breast.
S. Augustine. May you, indeed, remember as you say, and take heed for yourself. You will spare me much trouble by so doing. For there con be no doubt that to recollect one’s misery and to practise frequent meditation on death is the surest aid in scorning the seductions of this world, and in ordering the soul amid its storms and tempests, if only such meditation be not superficial, but sink into the bones and marrow of the heart. Yet am I greatly afraid lest that happen in your case which I have seen in so many others, and you be found deceiving your own self.
Petrarch. In what way do you mean? For I do not clearly understand the drift of your remarks.
S. Augustine. O race of mortal men, this it is that above all makes me astonished and fearful for you, when I behold you, of your own will clinging to your miseries; pretending that you do not know the peril hanging over your heads and if one bring it under your very eyes, you try to thrust it from your sight and put it afar off.
Petrarch. In what way are we so mad?
S. Augustine. Do you suppose there is any living man so unreasonable that if he found himself stricken with a dangerous ailment he would not anxiously desire to regain the blessing of health?
Petrarch. I do not suppose such a case has ever been heard of.
S. Augustine. And do you think if one wished for a thing with all one’s soul one would be so idle and careless as not to use all possible means to obtain what one desired?
Petrarch. No one, I think, would be so foolish.
S. Augustine. If we are agreed on these two points, so we ought also to agree on a third.
Petrarch. What is this third point?
S. Augustine. It is this: that just as he who by deep meditation has discovered he is miserable will ardently wish to be so no more; and as he who has formed this wish will seek to have it realised, so he who seeks will be able to reach what he wishes. It is clear that the third step depends on the second as the second on the first. And therefore the first should be, as it were, a root of salvation in man’s heart. Now you mortal men, and you yourself with all your power of mind, keep doing your best by all the pleasures of the world to pull up this saving root out of your hearts, which, as I said, fills me with horror and wonder. With justice, therefore, you are punished by the loss of this root of salvation and the consequent loss of all the rest.
Petrarch. I foresee this complaint you bring is likely to be lengthy, and take many words to develop it. Would you mind, therefore, postponing it to another occasion? And that I may travel more surely to your conclusion, may we send a little more time over the premisses?
S. Augustine. I must concede something to, your slowness of mind; so please stop me at any point where you wish.
Petrarch. Well, if I must speak for myself, I do not follow your chain of reasoning.
S. Augustine. What possible obscurity is there in it? What are you in doubt about now?
Petrarch. I believe there is a multitude of things for which we ardently long, which we seek for with all our energy, but which nevertheless, however diligent we are, we never have obtained and never shall.
S. Augustine. That may be true of other desires, but in regard to that we have now under discussion the case is wholly different.
Petrarch. What makes you say that?
S. Augustine. Because every man who desires to be delivered from his misery, provided only he desires sincerely and with all his heart, cannot fail to obtain that which he desires.
Petrarch. O father, what is this I hear? There are few men indeed who do not feel they lack many things and who would not confess they were so far unhappy. Every one who questions his own heart will acknowledge it is so. By natural consequence if the fulness of blessing makes man happy, all things he lacks will so far make him unhappy. This burden of unhappiness all men would fain lay down, as every one is aware; but every one is aware also that very few have been able. How many there are who have felt the crushing weight of grief, through bodily disease, or the loss of those they loved, or imprisonment, or exile, or hard poverty, or other misfortunes it would take too long to tell over; and yet they who suffer these things have only too often to lament that it is not permitted them, as you suggest, to be set free. To me, then, it seems quite beyond dispute that a multitude of men are unhappy by compulsion and in spite of themselves.
S. Augustine. I must take you a long way back, and as one does with the very young whose wits are slight and slow, I must ask you to follow out the thread of my discourse from its very simplest elements. I thought your mind was more advanced, and I had no idea you still needed lessons so childish. Ah, if only you had kept in mind those true and saving maxims of the wise which you have so often read and re-read with me; if, I must take leave to say, you had but wrought for yourself instead of others; if you had but applied your study of so many volumes to the ruling of your own conduct, instead of to vanity and gaining the empty praise of men, you would not want to retail such low and absurd follies.
Petrarch. I know not where you want to take me, but already I am aware of the blush mounting to my brow, and I feel like schoolboys in presence of an angry master. Before they know what they are accused of they think of many offences of which they are guilty, and at the very first word from the master’s lips they are filled with confusion. In like case I too am conscious of my ignorance and of many other faults, and though I perceive not the drift of your admonition, yet as I know almost everything bad may be brought against me, I blush even befo
re you have done speaking. So pray state more clearly what is this biting accusation that you have made.
S. Augustine. I shall have many things to lay to your charge presently. Just now what makes me so indignant is to hear you suppose that any one can become or can be unhappy against his will.
Petrarch. I might as well spare my blushes. For what more obvious truth than this can possibly be imagined? What man exists so ignorant or so far removed from all contact with the world as not to know that penury, grief, disgrace, illness, death, and other evils too that are reckoned among the greatest, often befall us in spite of ourselves, and never with our own consent? From which it follows that it is easy enough to know and to detest one’s own misery, but not to remove it; so that if the two first steps depend on ourselves, the third is nevertheless in Fortune’s hand.
S. Augustine. When I saw you ashamed I was ready to give you pardon, but brazen impudence angers me more than error itself. How is it you have forgotten all those wise precepts of Philosophy, which declare that no man can be made unhappy by those things you rattle off by name? Now if it is Virtue only that makes the happiness of man, which is demonstrated by Cicero and a whole multitude of weighty reasons, it follows of necessity that nothing is opposed to true happiness except what is also opposed to Virtue. This truth you can yourself call to mind even without a word from me, at least unless your wits are very dull.
Petrarch. I remember it quite well. You would have me bear in mind the precepts of the Stoics, which contradict the opinions of the crowd and are nearer truth than common custom is.
S. Augustine. You would indeed be of all men the most miserable were you to try to arrive at the truth through the absurdities of the crowd, or to suppose that under the leadership of blind guides you would reach the light. You must avoid the common beaten track and set your aspirations higher; take the way marked by the steps of very few who have gone before, if you would be counted worthy to hear the Poet’s word —
“On, brave lad, on! your courage leading you,
So only Heaven is scaled.”
Petrarch. Heaven grant I may hear it ere I die! But I pray you to proceed. For I assure you I have by no means become shameless. I do not doubt the Stoics’ rules are wiser far than the blunders of the crowd. I await therefore your further counsel.
S. Augustine. Since we are agreed on this, that no one can become or be unhappy except through his own fault, what need of more words is there?
Petrarch. Just this need, that I think I have seen very many people, and I am one of them, to whom nothing is more distressful than the inability to break the yoke of their faults, though all their life long they make the greatest efforts so to do. Wherefore, even allowing that the maxim of the Stoics holds good, one may yet admit that many people are very unhappy in spite of themselves, yes, and although they lament it and wish they were not, with their whole heart.
S. Augustine. We have wandered somewhat from our course, but we are slowly working back to our starting-point. Or have you quite forgotten whence we set out?
Petrarch. I had begun to lose sight of it, but it is coming back to me now.
S. Augustine. What I had set out to do with you was to make clear that the first step in avoiding the distresses of this mortal life and raising the soul to higher things is to practise meditation on death and on man’s misery; and that the second is to have a vehement desire and purpose to rise. When these two things were present, I promised a comparatively easy ascent to the goal of our desire. Unless haply to you it seems otherwise?
Petrarch. I should certainly never venture to affirm this, for from my youth upwards I have had the increasing conviction that if in any matter I was inclined to think differently from yourself I was certain to be wrong.
S. Augustine. We will please waive all compliments. And as I observe you are inclined to admit the truth of my words more out of deference than conviction, pray feel at liberty to say whatever your real judgment suggests.
Petrarch. I am still afraid to be found differing, but nevertheless I will make use of the liberty you grant. Not to speak of other men, I call to witness Her who has ever been the ruling spirit of my life; you yourself also I call to witness how many times I have pondered over my own misery and over the subject of Death; with what floods of tears I have sought to wash away my stains, so that I can scarce speak of it without weeping; yet hitherto, as you see, all is in vain. This alone leads me to doubt the truth of that proposition you seek to establish, that no man has ever fallen into misery but of his own free will, or remained, miserable except of his own accord; the exact opposite of which I have proved in my own sad experience.
S. Augustine. That complaint is an old one and seems likely to prove unending. Though I have already several times stated the truth in vain, I shall not cease to maintain it yet. No man can become or can be unhappy unless he so chooses; but as I said at the beginning, there is in men a certain perverse and dangerous inclination to deceive themselves, which is the most deadly thing in life. For if it is true that we rightly fear being taken in by those with whom we live, because our natural habit of trusting them tends to make us unsuspicious, and the pleasantly familiar sound of their voice is apt to put us off our guard, — how much rather ought you to fear the deceptions you practise on yourself, where love, influence, familiarity play so large a part, a case wherein every one esteems himself more than he deserves, loves himself more than he ought, and where Deceiver and Deceived are one and the same person?
Petrarch. You have said this kind of thing pretty often to-day already. But I do not recollect ever practising such deception on myself; and I hope other people have not deceived me either.
S. Augustine. Now at this very moment you are notably deceiving yourself when you boast never to have done such a thing at all; and I have a good enough hope of your own wit and talent to make me think that if you pay close attention you will see for yourself that no man can fall into misery of his own will. For on this point our whole discussion rests. I pray you to think well before answering, and give your closest attention, and be jealous for truth more than for disputation, but then tell me what man in the world was ever forced to sin? For the Seers and Wise Men require that sin must be a voluntary action, and so rigid is their definition that if this voluntariness is absent then the sin also is not there. But without sin no man is made unhappy, as you agreed to admit a few minutes ago.
Petrarch. I perceive that by degrees I am getting away from my proposition and am being compelled to acknowledge that the beginning of my misery did arise from my own will. I feel it is true in myself, and I conjecture the same to be true of others. Now I beg you on your part to acknowledge a certain truth also.
S. Augustine. What is it you wish me to acknowledge?
Petrarch. That as it is true no man ever fell involuntarily, so this also is true that countless numbers of those who thus are voluntarily fallen, nevertheless do not voluntarily remain so. I affirm this confidently of my own self. And I believe that I have received this for my punishment, as I would not stand when I might, so now I cannot rise when I would.
S. Augustine. That is indeed a wise and true view to take. Still as you now confess you were wrong in your first proposition, so I think you should own you are wrong in your second.
Petrarch. Then you would say there is no distinction between falling and remaining fallen?
S. Augustine. No, they are indeed different things; that is to say, different in time, but in the nature of the action and in the mind of the person concerned they are one and the same.
Petrarch. I see in what knots you entangle me. But the wrestler who wins his victory by a trick is not necessarily the stronger man, though he may be the more practised.
S. Augustine. It is Truth herself in whose presence we are discoursing. To her, plain simplicity is ever dear, and cunning is hateful. That you may see this beyond all doubt I will go forward from this point with all the plainness you can desire.
Petrarch. You could give me
no more welcome news. Tell me, then, as it is a question concerning myself, by what line of reasoning you mean to prove I am unhappy. I do not deny that I am; but I deny that it is with my own consent I remain so. For, on the contrary, I feel this to be most hateful and the very opposite of what I wish. But yet I can do nothing except wish.
Collected Poetical Works of Francesco Petrarch Page 67
