hurlest down the penalty of blindness to unlawful desire!  When a 
man seeking the reputation of eloquence stands before a human 
judge, while a thronging multitude surrounds him, and inveighs 
against his enemy with the most fierce hatred, he takes most 
vigilant heed that his tongue does not slip in a grammatical 
error, for example, and say inter hominibus [instead of inter 
homines], but he takes no heed lest, in the fury of his spirit, he 
cut off a man from his fellow men [ex hominibus].

     30.  These were the customs in the midst of which I was cast, 
an unhappy boy.  This was the wrestling arena in which I was more 
fearful of perpetrating a barbarism than, having done so, of 
envying those who had not.  These things I declare and confess to 
thee, my God.  I was applauded by those whom I then thought it my 
whole duty to please, for I did not perceive the gulf of infamy 
wherein I was cast away from thy eyes.  

     For in thy eyes, what was more infamous than I was already, 
since I displeased even my own kind and deceived, with endless 
lies, my tutor, my masters and parents -- all from a love of play, 
a craving for frivolous spectacles, a stage-struck restlessness to 
imitate what I saw in these shows?  I pilfered from my parents' 
cellar and table, sometimes driven by gluttony, sometimes just to 
have something to give to other boys in exchange for their 
baubles, which they were prepared to sell even though they liked 
them as well as I.  Moreover, in this kind of play, I often sought 
dishonest victories, being myself conquered by the vain desire for 
pre-eminence.  And what was I so unwilling to endure, and what was 
it that I censured so violently when I caught anyone, except the 
very things I did to others?  And, when I was myself detected and 
censured, I preferred to quarrel rather than to yield.  Is this 
the innocence of childhood?  It is not, O Lord, it is not.  I 
entreat thy mercy, O my God, for these same sins as we grow older 
are transferred from tutors and masters; they pass from nuts and 
balls and sparrows, to magistrates and kings, to gold and lands 
and slaves, just as the rod is succeeded by more severe 
chastisements.  It was, then, the fact of humility in childhood 
that thou, O our King, didst approve as a symbol of humility when 
thou saidst, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."[38]

                          CHAPTER XIX

     31.  However, O Lord, to thee most excellent and most good, 
thou Architect and Governor of the universe, thanks would be due 
thee, O our God, even if thou hadst not willed that I should 
survive my boyhood.  For I existed even then; I lived and felt and 
was solicitous about my own well-being -- a trace of that most 
mysterious unity from whence I had my being.[39]  I kept watch, by 
my inner sense, over the integrity of my outer senses, and even in 
these trifles and also in my thoughts about trifles, I learned to 
take pleasure in truth.  I was averse to being deceived; I had a 
vigorous memory; I was gifted with the power of speech, was 
softened by friendship, shunned sorrow, meanness, ignorance.  Is 
not such an animated creature as this wonderful and praiseworthy?  
But all these are gifts of my God; I did not give them to myself.  
Moreover, they are good, and they all together constitute myself.  
Good, then, is he that made me, and he is my God; and before him 
will I rejoice exceedingly for every good gift which, even as a 
boy, I had.  But herein lay my sin, that it was not in him, but in 
his creatures -- myself and the rest -- that I sought for 
pleasures, honors, and truths.  And I fell thereby into sorrows, 
troubles, and errors.  Thanks be to thee, my joy, my pride, my 
confidence, my God -- thanks be to thee for thy gifts; but do thou 
preserve them in me.  For thus wilt thou preserve me; and those 
things which thou hast given me shall be developed and perfected, 
and I myself shall be with thee, for from thee is my being.

     

                          BOOK TWO

     
He concentrates here on his sixteenth year, a year of idleness, 
lust, and adolescent mischief.  The memory of stealing some pears 
prompts a deep probing of the motives and aims of sinful acts.  "I 
became to myself a wasteland." 

                           CHAPTER I

     1.  I wish now to review in memory my past wickedness and the 
carnal corruptions of my soul -- not because I still love them, 
but that I may love thee, O my God.  For love of thy love I do 
this, recalling in the bitterness of self-examination my wicked 
ways, that thou mayest grow sweet to me, thou sweetness without 
deception!  Thou sweetness happy and assured!  Thus thou mayest 
gather me up out of those fragments in which I was torn to pieces, 
while I turned away from thee, O Unity, and lost myself among "the 
many."[40]  For as I became a youth, I longed to be satisfied with 
worldly things, and I dared to grow wild in a succession of 
various and shadowy loves.  My form wasted away, and I became 
corrupt in thy eyes, yet I was still pleasing to my own eyes -- 
and eager to please the eyes of men.

                          CHAPTER II

     2.  But what was it that delighted me save to love and to be 
loved?  Still I did not keep the moderate way of the love of mind 
to mind -- the bright path of friendship.  Instead, the mists of 
passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence of the flesh, 
and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and