Confessions (The World's Classics)

by Augustine of Hippo

‘Do we love anything except that which is beautiful? What then is a beautiful object? And what is beauty? What is it which charms and attracts us to the things we love? It must be the grace and loveliness inherent in them, or they would in no way move us.’ I gave the subject careful attention, and saw that in bodies one should distinguish the beauty which is a kind of totality and for that reason beautiful, and another kind which is fitting because it is well adapted to some other thing, just as part of the body is adapted to the whole to which it belongs as a shoe to a foot and like instances. This thought bubbled up in my mind like a spring from the deepest level of my heart, and I wrote On the Beautiful and the Fitting in two or three books, I think—you know, God, for I have forgotten. I no longer have this work; I do not know how it went astray from me.

For if I put the question to anyone whether he prefers to find joy in the truth or in falsehood, he does not hesitate to say that he prefers the truth, just as he does not hesitate to say he wants to be happy. The happy life is joy based on the truth. This is joy grounded in you, O God, who are the truth, ‘my illumination, the salvation of my face, my God’ (Ps. 26: 1; 41:12). This happy life everyone desires; joy in the truth everyone wants. I have met with many people who wished to deceive, none who wished to be deceived. How then did they know about this happy life unless in the same way that they knew about the truth? They

Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.25