Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/208

 190 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. to the intensity and harmony of life included in a single aim — God : mihi adhaerere Deo honum est. Augustine's works are never the product solely of the mind ; the whole man speaks in them, the entire human consciousness recognizing that the truths of love are as valid as the truths of reason. His thoughts are not mere thoughts, but expressions of the whole soul, and therefore always involving desire and aversion; his supreme conception, God, is also his supreme desire. The life of the soul is not mere knowing or contem- plation, but includes a striving according to desire or aversion ; for the soul has always these, cupido, amor, ira, or timor. Augustine is primarily sure of his own thoughts and feelings. In accord with them he constructs his con- ception of God, and loves Him : so his theology rests on his psychology. God and the soul are the objects of his love and his desire to know: Deum et animam scire cupio. Niliilne plus ? Nihil omnino} There- fore he abjures the blithe world around him, and creates a new world of God and the soul of man. Augustine's personality includes qualities which singly were possessed by other men. He may not have been the Roman imperator that Ambrose was, but he had an equally authoritative character; the flock-guiding Christian bishop speaks in his sermons. There also exists in Augustine the juristic nature of TertuUian. That great African's flame of reason is matched by the fervent arguments of Augustine's more balanced, but equally impassioned mind. And the woman-nature which was in Jerome exists more 1 Solil, 1, 7.