Augustine Letters 1 – 4: Simple English translation

Here are letter 1 through letter 4 translated in a simple style as mentioned before.

Letter 1

Augustine to Hermogenianus

I would never dare to attack the Academics—not even in jest. The authority of such great men is weighty, and I wouldn’t disregard them unless I believed their real opinion was quite different from what most people assume. That’s why I tried to follow their example rather than fight them—because honestly, I’m not able to refute them. 

It seemed fitting for the times that, if anything pure flowed from Plato’s fountain, it should be hidden away in shady, thorny places, where only a few people could drink. If it flowed out in the open, the great crowd would rush in and muddy it, so that nothing pure could remain. And really, what belief is more “fitting” for the masses than to think the soul is nothing but a body? Against that kind of thinking, I believe God wisely raised up the Academic approach. 

But things are different in our own day. We hardly see any true philosophers—only people dressed in the philosopher’s cloak, and I don’t think they deserve so great a title. So now it seems necessary to bring people back into the hope of finding truth. If the Academics’ clever words once scared some people away from seeking understanding, I want to call them back. Otherwise, a strategy that was once helpful for uprooting deep errors could now end up blocking the growth of knowledge. 

Back then, the rivalry between different schools of thought was so passionate that the only danger was people accepting something false as true. When someone was shaken from what he thought was unshakably certain, he would only search harder and more carefully for what was real. People were more earnest in their morals, and truth was sensed as lying hidden in the deepest layers of reality and of the soul. 

But now things are different. People avoid hard work and neglect the pursuit of learning. So when they hear that even the sharpest philosophers concluded that nothing can be fully known, they just give up—closing their minds forever. The more energetic ones don’t dare to think they could succeed where Carneades himself failed, even though he devoted incredible energy, talent, study, and even a long life to the pursuit. And if anyone does resist laziness enough to read those same books, which seem to prove that human understanding is impossible, they fall asleep in such a stupor that not even the trumpet of heaven could wake them. 

That’s why I value your honest judgment of my little books so highly. I trust your wisdom and friendship so much that I know neither error nor flattery will find a place in your reply. So I ask you especially to consider carefully, and write back to me: do you approve of what I suggested near the end of the third book? Perhaps I phrased it more as a suspicion than a certainty, but I believed it was more useful to accept than to dismiss as unbelievable. 

Whatever the case, what pleases me is not so much that I “defeated the Academics” (as you kindly say—though I think more out of affection than accuracy), but that I broke free from that hateful chain: the despair of truth. That despair had been holding me back from the rich nourishment of philosophy, and from the truth itself, which is the food of the soul.

Letter 2

Augustine to Zenobius

We both agree, I think, that everything we experience with our physical senses is constantly changing. It slips away, it flows, it never stays the same even for a moment. In Latin, we say such things “are not,” because they cannot truly be present. That’s why true and divine philosophy urges us to restrain and quiet the most harmful love of such things—a love full of punishment—so that our whole mind, even while still living in this body, might bear and burn for realities that are always the same, and not for some passing beauty that is only a stranger to us.

Because of this, and because the mind sees you as true and simple—someone who can be loved without anxiety—we still admit that we long to meet you and see you. When you are absent from us in body and separated by distance, we still desire your presence as long as we are allowed to. If I know you well, you even love this fault in us. And because you wish all good things for your dearest friends, you probably fear that we will be “cured” of this longing.

But if you are so strong in mind that you can both recognize this snare and even smile at those caught in it, then you are indeed remarkable and different. As for me, while you are away, I want to be missed. Yet I watch myself as much as I can and strive to love nothing that can be taken from me against my will.

In the meantime, I urge you—whatever you are doing—to finish the discussion you began with us, if we truly care for ourselves. I would never allow it to be completed with Alypius, even if he wanted to; but in fact, he doesn’t. It’s simply not in his nature right now to work with me. So let us keep you with us by as many letters as we can, though I don’t know why you keep slipping away.

Letter 3

Augustine to Nebridius

I’m not sure whether it was your flattering words or something real that made me feel as you wrote; it came on me suddenly, without much reflection, and I’m not sure how far I should trust it. You’re wondering what I mean. Well, you almost persuaded me—not that I’m truly happy (that belongs only to the wise), but that I’m “sort of” happy, the way we call something “roundish” or “square-ish” even when it’s far from perfectly round or square. Last night after supper I read your letter by lamplight; I was already lying down but not yet asleep. And there I was, Augustine talking with Augustine in bed: “Is Nebridius right? Are we happy?” Of course not; even he wouldn’t deny we’re still foolish. “But what if even fools can be happy?” That’s hard to swallow, because what misery is greater than foolishness itself? 

Why did you think so? Did reading those little books of mine lead you to believe me wise? Surely your joy isn’t that reckless, especially since I know how weighty your judgment is. No, you wrote what you thought would delight me, because you yourself were delighted by whatever you found in my writings. You wrote in joy and didn’t stop to ask what your joyful pen should or shouldn’t commit to paper. If you had read the Soliloquies, you’d have rejoiced even more—but still you wouldn’t have found a better name for me than “happy.” So you quickly poured the highest title on me, leaving yourself nothing greater to say. See what joy can do! 

But where is this happy life? Where? Oh, if it really existed, it would drive away Epicurus’s atoms. If it really existed, it would know there’s nothing “below” except the world. If it really existed, it would know that the outermost sphere moves more slowly than the middle, and other such things we know. But how can I be happy when I don’t even know why the world is so big? The geometry that makes it what it is would allow it to be as large as anyone pleased. Or how can I avoid admitting that bodies can be divided without limit, unless I suppose there’s some smallest base-unit from which a definite number of particles arises? 

If no body is absolutely smallest, how can there be one absolutely largest? Unless perhaps what I once told Alypius in a very hidden way has real force: that the intelligible number grows infinitely but cannot be infinitely diminished—you can’t break it beyond the monad; while the sensible number (the measure of bodies) can be diminished without limit but cannot be increased without limit. And so perhaps rightly philosophers place “riches” in the intelligible world but “poverty” in the sensible. What’s more pitiful than something always capable of becoming less? What’s richer than something that can grow as much as you wish, go where you wish, return when you wish, and—best of all—love that which cannot be diminished? Whoever understands these numbers loves the monad above all, and no wonder; through it the others are loved. Yet why is the world so large? It could have been larger or smaller. I don’t know; it’s simply as it is. And why here rather than there? In such matters, wherever it were, the question would still arise. 

One thing especially puzzled me—the infinite division of bodies. Perhaps the answer lies in that opposite “force” of the intelligible number. But wait—let’s consider this new thought: surely the sensible world is said to be some kind of image of an intelligible one. Yet look at mirrors: however large the mirror, it never gives back an image bigger than the object. In small mirrors—like the pupils of our eyes—even a large face appears tiny. So the images of bodies can be made smaller if the mirrors shrink; but they cannot be made larger by enlarging the mirrors. Clearly something is hidden here—but now it’s time to sleep. For I don’t seem to be made happy by searching, but perhaps by finding. And what is that “something”? Maybe it’s that little line of reasoning I love to caress as if it were my own and which pleases me too much. 

What are we made of? Soul and body. Which is better? Obviously the soul. What do people praise in the body? Nothing but beauty. And what is bodily beauty? The harmony of parts with a certain pleasant color. Where is that form truer—where it’s genuine or where it’s false? Who doubts it’s better where it’s genuine? And where is it genuine? In the soul. Therefore the soul is to be loved more than the body. But in what part of the soul is this truth? In the mind and the understanding. What opposes it? The senses. Therefore the senses must be resisted with all the soul’s strength. And if sensible things please us too much? Make them not please. How? By getting used to going without them and by seeking better things. But what if the soul dies? Then either truth dies, or truth isn’t understanding, or understanding isn’t in the soul, or something mortal can contain something immortal. But our Soliloquies already show that none of these is possible; yet by some bad habit we still fear and hesitate. Finally, even if the soul did die—which I’m convinced it cannot—we’ve at least made sure that happiness cannot consist in the joy of bodily pleasures. 

In all this perhaps, Nebridius, I seem to you if not happy, at least “quasi-happy.” Let me seem so to myself as well—what do I lose by it, and why should I deny myself a good opinion? These were my thoughts; then I prayed, as usual, and slept. 

I wanted to write this to you because it delights me that you thank me for hiding nothing that comes to my lips. And I rejoice that I please you this way. With whom could I play the fool more gladly than with one who cannot be displeased with me? Yet if it’s really up to fortune that one human loves another, see how “happy” I am—so glad about things of chance, and desiring such goods to overflow on me. But the truest sages—the only ones who may rightly be called happy—refused to fear or desire fortune’s goods. Or is it “refused to be desired”? You decide. It’s a nice coincidence, because I want you to teach me this declension. For when I join similar verbs I get unsure. “I desire” goes like “I flee,” “I taste,” “I throw,” “I take”—but is the passive “fugiri” or “fugi”? “sapiri” or “sapi”? I don’t know. I could look at “jaci” and “capi,” but I’m afraid lest someone catch me and make me a laughing-stock, proving that “to throw” and “to take” are one thing but “to flee,” “to desire,” and “to taste” another. Likewise I don’t know whether in these three the penultimate syllable should be long and inflected or heavy and short. 

So I’ve provoked you into a longer letter. Please let me read you a little longer. I can’t write as much as it pleases me to read you.

Letter 4

Augustine to Nebridius

It’s amazing to me—completely unexpected—what I found when I went back to see which of your letters I still owed a reply to. I discovered only one left, the one where you asked us to tell you, since you imagine our retreat is as peaceful as you wish it were with you here, how far we’ve advanced in distinguishing between the nature of things perceived by the senses and those grasped by the mind. But I think you already know this: the more deeply someone becomes entangled in false opinions, the more easily the mind grows used to them by living with them. How much more easily then can this happen with truths! Yet this happens only gradually—just as we mature with age. There’s a huge difference between a child and a young man, but if you asked a boy every day whether he had become a young man yet, he would never say so.

Please don’t take this to mean that we’ve reached some kind of “mental youth,” a stable strength of understanding in these matters. We’re still children—but, as the saying goes, perhaps “fine” children, and not bad ones. For often, when the eyes of the mind are disturbed and weighed down by the worries and wounds of sensible things, that little line of reasoning you know so well gives us a breath of relief: that the mind and understanding are better than the bodily eyes and this everyday sight. That wouldn’t be true unless the things we understand were more real than the things we see. Consider with me whether anything truly strong can be brought against this reasoning.

For my part, refreshed by it and praying to God for help, I’ve begun to lift myself toward Him and toward the things that are most truly true. Sometimes I’m filled with such a confident sense of the things that abide forever that I marvel at needing any reasoning at all to believe in them—they’re as present to me as I am present to myself. Think about this too; I confess you’re even more diligent in such matters than I am, lest I still unknowingly owe you a reply to something. For it’s hard to believe that all the burdens I once counted could be laid down so suddenly, even though I don’t doubt you’ve received my letters for which I have no replies.