But there was—or there would have been, had they continued to dwell in Paradise—a crucially important difference. Adam and Eve were meant to reproduce, Augustine insisted, without involuntary arousal. “They would not have had the activity of turbulent lust in their flesh, … but only the movement of peaceful will by which we command the other members of the body.” Untroubled self-command—arousal only when you will yourself to be aroused; no arousal when you do not—was for Augustine the heart of what it meant to be free.
