The Confessions of Saint Augustine | Page 9

seemed to hang over me after my boyhood!
These my mother foresaw; and preferred to expose to them the clay whence I might
afterwards be moulded, than the very cast, when made.
In boyhood itself, however (so much less dreaded for me than youth), I loved not study,
and hated to be forced to it. Yet I was forced; and this was well done towards me, but I
did not well; for, unless forced, I had not learnt. But no one doth well against his will,
even though what he doth, be well. Yet neither did they well who forced me, but what
was well came to me from Thee, my God. For they were regardless how I should employ
what they forced me to learn, except to satiate the insatiate desires of a wealthy beggary,
and a shameful glory. But Thou, by whom the very hairs of our head are numbered, didst
use for my good the error of all who urged me to learn; and my own, who would not learn,
Thou didst use for my punishment- a fit penalty for one, so small a boy and so great a
sinner. So by those who did not well, Thou didst well for me; and by my own sin Thou
didst justly punish me. For Thou hast commanded, and so it is, that every inordinate
affection should be its own punishment.
But why did I so much hate the Greek, which I studied as a boy? I do not yet fully know.
For the Latin I loved; not what my first masters, but what the so-called grammarians
taught me. For those first lessons, reading, writing and arithmetic, I thought as great a
burden and penalty as any Greek. And yet whence was this too, but from the sin and

vanity of this life, because I was flesh, and a breath that passeth away and cometh not
again? For those first lessons were better certainly, because more certain; by them I
obtained, and still retain, the power of reading what I find written, and myself writing
what I will; whereas in the others, I was forced to learn the wanderings of one Aeneas,
forgetful of my own, and to weep for dead Dido, because she killed herself for love; the
while, with dry eyes, I endured my miserable self dying among these things, far from
Thee, O God my life.
For what more miserable than a miserable being who commiserates not himself; weeping
the death of Dido for love to Aeneas, but weeping not his own death for want of love to
Thee, O God. Thou light of my heart, Thou bread of my inmost soul, Thou Power who
givest vigour to my mind, who quickenest my thoughts, I loved Thee not. I committed
fornication against Thee, and all around me thus fornicating there echoed "Well done!
well done!" for the friendship of this world is fornication against Thee; and "Well done!
well done!" echoes on till one is ashamed not to he thus a man. And for all this I wept not,
I who wept for Dido slain, and "seeking by the sword a stroke and wound extreme,"
myself seeking the while a worse extreme, the extremest and lowest of Thy creatures,
having forsaken Thee, earth passing into the earth. And if forbid to read all this, I was
grieved that I might not read what grieved me. Madness like this is thought a higher and a
richer learning, than that by which I learned to read and write.
But now, my God, cry Thou aloud in my soul; and let Thy truth tell me, "Not so, not so.
Far better was that first study." For, lo, I would readily forget the wanderings of Aeneas
and all the rest, rather than how to read and write. But over the entrance of the Grammar
School is a vail drawn! true; yet is this not so much an emblem of aught recondite, as a
cloak of error. Let not those, whom I no longer fear, cry out against me, while I confess
to Thee, my God, whatever my soul will, and acquiesce in the condemnation of my evil
ways, that I may love Thy good ways. Let not either buyers or sellers of
grammar-learning cry out against me. For if I question them whether it be true that
Aeneas came on a time to Carthage, as the poet tells, the less learned will reply that they
know not, the more learned that he never did. But should I ask with what letters the name
"Aeneas" is written, every one who has learnt this will answer me aright, as to the signs
which men have conventionally settled. If, again, I should ask which might be forgotten
with least detriment to the concerns of