This holds not only for words, even the words of Scripture, but also for the sacraments and for the Incarnation of Christ Contra epistulam fundamenti After a long discussion of how verbal signs signify things or states of mind and how they relate to other signs, it turns out, rather surprisingly, that we do not learn things from signs at all because in order to understand the meaning of a sign we already have to be acquainted with the thing signified.
This does not mean that words are useless. Just as the spoken word signifies a concept that we have formed within our mind and communicates it to others, so Christ incarnate signifies the divine Logos and admonishes and assists us to turn to it cf. In De trinitate Augustine expands this to a theory about how the inner word or concept is formed The inner word is generated when we actualize some latent or implicit knowledge that is stored in our memory. It is not a sign, nor of linguistic nature Augustine insists that it is neither Latin nor Greek nor Hebrew , but rather seems to be a kind of a-temporal intellectual insight that transcends language cf.
De catechizandis rudibus 3. Properly speaking, then, the theory of the inner word is not a linguistic theory at all. Like most ancient philosophers, Augustine thinks that the human being is a compound of body and soul and that, within this compound, the soul—conceived as both the life-giving element and the center of consciousness, perception and thought—is, or ought to be, the ruling part.
The rational soul should control the sensual desires and passions; it can become wise if it turns to God, who is at the same time the Supreme Being and the Supreme Good. In his Manichean phase, he conceived of both God and the soul as material entities, the soul being in fact a portion of God that had fallen into the corporeal world where it remained a foreigner, even to its own body De duabus animabus 1; Confessiones 8.
After his Platonist readings in Milan had provided him with the adequate philosophical means to think about immaterial, non-spatial reality Confessiones 7. MacDonald , and bodies, which are subject to temporal and spatial change Letter The soul is of divine origin and even god-like De quantitate animae 2—3 ; it is not divine itself but created by God the talk about divinity of the soul in the Cassiciacum dialogues seems to be a traditional Ciceronian element, cf.
In the Soliloquia 2. Phaedo dc. It says that since truth is both eternal and in the soul as its subject, it follows that soul, the subject of truth, is eternal too. This is fallacious, because if truth is eternal independently of the soul it cannot be in the soul as in its subject i.
After De immortalitate animae , Augustine never returned to his proof. But neither did he disown it; as late as De trinitate He also sticks to his conviction that immortality is a necessary condition of happiness but insists that it is not a sufficient condition, given that immortality and misery are compatible cf.
De civitate dei 9. Resurrection, however, is not susceptible of rational proof; it is a promise of God that must be believed on Scriptural authority De trinitate ib. Together with an essentially Platonic notion of the soul, Augustine inherits the classical problems of Platonic soul-body dualism. De quantitate animae 22 if it is incorporeal itself? And how are corporeal and psychic aspects related to each other in phenomena that involve both body and soul, especially if, like passions and desires, these are morally relevant?
These problems are further complicated by the Platonic axiom that incorporeal entities, being ontologically prior to corporeal ones, cannot be causally affected by them. With Plotinus, he insists that sense perception is not an affection which the soul passively undergoes as Stoic materialism would have it, where sensory perception was interpreted as a kind of imprint in the soul but its active awareness of affections undergone by the body De quantitate animae 41; 48; De Genesi ad litteram 7.
In De musica 6. In addition to the usual five senses, Augustine identifies a sensory faculty that relates the data of the senses to each other and judges them aesthetically but not morally; De musica 6.
In Neoplatonism it was disputed how soul, being immortal, immaterial and ontologically superior to body, came to be incorporated nevertheless. Augustine addresses the issue in the horizon of his doctrine of creation and, in the period of the Pelagian Controversy, of the debate about the transmission of original sin see 9.
Gender, Women and Sexuality. In De libero arbitrio 3. After all these options come to the fore again Letters Augustine discards none of them officially except for the notion, wrongly associated with Origenism, which was considered a heresy at the time, that incorporation was a punishment for a sin committed by the pre-existent soul De civitate dei In practice, he narrows the debate down to the alternative between creationism and traducianism, which appear to have been the only options taken seriously by his Christian contemporaries.
Augustine deploys what we may call his philosophy of the mind most fully in his great work on Nicene Trinitarian theology, De trinitate. Having removed apparent Scriptural obstacles to the equality and consubstantiality of the three divine persons bks. The basis for this move is, of course, Genesis — Augustine follows a long-standing Jewish and Patristic tradition, familiar to him from Ambrose, according to which the biblical qualification of the human being as an image of God referred not to the living body a literalist reading vulnerable to the Manichean charge of anthropomorphism, cf.
Confessiones 6. The general pattern of his argument is the Augustinian ascent from the external to the internal and from the senses to God; but since human reason is, whether by nature or due to its fallen state, hardly capable of knowing God, Augustine this time is obliged to interrupt and re-start the ascent several times. The final book shows that the exercise of analyzing the human mind does have preparatory value for our thinking about the Trinity but does not yield insight into the divine by being simply transferred to it De trinitate The last element ensures the active character of perception and intellection but also gives weight to the idea that we do not cognize an object unless we consciously direct our attention to it MacDonald b.
Augustine begins by arguing in a manner reminiscent of his cogito-like argument; see 5. This pre-reflexive self-awareness is presupposed by every act of conscious cognition. As the mind in its fallen state is deeply immersed in sensible reality, it tends to forget what it really is and what it knows it is and confounds itself with the things it attaches the greatest importance to, i.
The result are materialist theories about the soul, which thus derive from flawed morality De trinitate If it follows the Delphic command, however, the mind will realize that it knows with certainty that it exists, thinks, wills etc. And as the substance or essence of the mind cannot be anything other than what it knows with certainty about itself, it follows that nothing material is essential to the mind and that its essence must be sought in its mental acts ib.
Again, the ethical side of the theory should not be overlooked. As a strong voluntary element is present in and necessary for an act of cognition, what objects imaginations, thoughts we cognize is morally relevant and indicative of our loves and desires. And while the triadic structure of the mind is its very essence and hence inalienable, Augustine insists that the mind is created in the image of God, not because it is capable of self-knowledge, but because it has the potential to become wise, i.
He takes it as axiomatic that happiness is the ultimate goal pursued by all human beings e. Confessiones Wetzel , 42— This structure Augustine inscribes into his Neoplatonically inspired three-tiered ontological hierarchy Letter The Supreme Being is also the greatest good; the desire of created being for happiness can only be satisfied by the creator.
If we turn away from him and direct our attention and love to the bodies—which are not per se bad, as in Manicheism, but an infinitely lesser good than God—or to ourselves, who are a great good but still subordinate to God, we become miserable, foolish and wicked Letter Just as after the Fall all human beings are inevitably tainted by sin, we need to be purified through faith in order to live well and to restore our ability to know and love God De diversis quaestionibus We love absolutely only what we enjoy, whereas our love for things we use is relative and even instrumental De doctrina christiana 1.
The only proper object of enjoyment is God cf. Wickedness and confusion of the moral order results from a reversal of use and enjoyment, when we want to enjoy what we ought to use all created things, e. An obvious problem of this system is the categorization of the biblically prescribed love of the neighbor.
Are we to enjoy our neighbor or to use her? The problem is inherited from ancient eudaimonism, where it takes some philosophical effort to reconcile the intuition that concern for others is morally relevant with the assumption that ethics is primarily about the virtue and happiness of the individual.
Augustine is aware of the problem and gives a differentiated answer. In De doctrina christiana 1. Love of the neighbor thus means to desire his true happiness in the same way as we desire our own. Confessiones 4. In principle Augustine follows the view of the ancient eudaimonists that virtue is sufficient or at least relevant for happiness. There are however several important modifications.
True virtue guarantees true happiness, but there is no true virtue that is not a gift of grace. The perfect inner tranquility virtue strives for will only be achieved in the afterlife. Virtue is an inner disposition or motivational habit that enables us to perform every action we perform out of right love. There are several catalogues of the traditional four cardinal virtues prudence, justice, courage and temperance that redefine these as varieties of the love of God either in this life or in the eschaton De moribus 1.
This does not mean that virtue becomes non-rational for Augustine love and will are essential features of the rational mind; see 6. The criterion of true virtue is that it is oriented toward God. Even if Augustine occasionally talks as if the four cardinal virtues could be added to the Pauline or theological virtues of love, faith and hope to make a sum of seven Letter A. These modifications have several interesting consequences. Even though Augustine postpones the happiness that is the reward of virtue to the afterlife, he does not make virtue a means to an end in the sense that virtue becomes superfluous when happiness is reached.
To the contrary, he insists that virtue will persist in the eschaton where it will be transformed into eternal unimpeded fruition of God and of the neighbor in God.
Then it will indeed be its own reward and identical with happiness Letter Both eschatological virtue and virtue in this life are thus love of God; they only differ in that the latter is subject to hindrances and temptation. For this reason, those who have true love of God—e. When analyzing virtue in this life, Augustine takes up the Stoic distinction, familiar to him from Cicero De officiis 1. Augustine therefore distinguishes between true i.
Among other things, this distinction underpins his solution of the so-called problem of pagan virtue Harding ; Tornau b; Dodaro a: 27—71; Rist — because it permits ascribing virtue in a meaningful sense to pagan and pre-Christian paradigms of virtue like Socrates without having to admit that they were eligible for salvation.
From this point of view, Socrates is closer to Paul than to Nero, even though his virtue will not bring him happiness, i. It is closely related to virtue and often used synonymously with will e. De civitate dei As in the Symposium and in Plotinus Enneads I. In a more general way, love means the overall direction of our will positively toward God or negatively toward ourselves or corporeal creature De civitate dei The former is called love in a good sense caritas , the latter cupidity or concupiscence cupiditas , i.
The root of sin is excessive self-love that wants to put the self in the position of God and is equivalent with pride De civitate dei In his earlier work, Augustine has some difficulties incorporating love of neighbor into the Platonic and eudaimonist framework of his thinking De doctrina christiana 1. After , in the context of his reflections on the Trinity and his exegesis of the First Epistle of John esp.
In loving our neighbors, we of necessity love that love which enables us to do so itself, which is none other than God; love of God and love of neighbor are, accordingly, co-extensive and, ultimately, identical De trinitate 8. He keenly insists that each and every action, even if it is externally good and impressive, can be motivated either by a good or an evil intention, by right or perverse love, by charity or pride. This goes for the actions prescribed by the Sermon of the Mount and even for martyrdom In epistulam Iohannis tractatus decem 8.
It is therefore impossible to give casuistic rules for external moral behavior. In a sense, his ideal agent is a successor of the Stoic and Neoplatonic sage, who always acts out of inner virtue or perfect rationality the latter Augustine replaces with true love but adapts his outward actions to the external circumstances cf.
Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos On the one hand, this limits the authority of other people—including those endowed with worldly power or an ecclesiastical office—to pass moral judgments. Augustine repeatedly recommends withholding judgment so as to preserve humility De civitate dei 1. On the other hand, Augustine makes our inner motivational and moral life opaque even to ourselves and fully transparent only to God Confessiones We can never be fully sure about the purity of our intentions, and even if we were, we could not be sure that we will persist in them.
All human beings are therefore called to constantly scrutinize the moral status of their inner selves in a prayerful dialogue with God as it is dramatized in the Confessiones. Such self-scrutiny may well be self-tormenting; the obsession of Western Christianity with inner latent guilt here has its Augustinian roots.
Catholic bishops are therefore obliged to compel heretics and schismatics to re-enter the Catholic church even forcibly, just as a father beats his children when he sees them playing with snakes or as we bind a madman who otherwise would fling himself down a precipice Letter Obviously, this is a paternalistic argument that presupposes superior insight in those who legitimately wield coercive power. And as even the Church in this world is a mixed body of sinners and saints see 8.
History and Political Philosophy , it may be asked how individual bishops can be sure of their good intentions when they use religious force Rist — Augustine does not address this problem, presumably because most of his relevant texts are propagandistic defenses of coercion against the Donatists.
Though other Latin philosophers, especially Seneca, had made use of the concept of will voluntas before Augustine, it has a much wider application in his ethics and moral psychology than in any predecessor and covers a broader range of phenomena than either Aristotelian boulesis roughly, rational choice or Stoic prohairesis roughly, the fundamental decision to lead a good life. Augustine comes closer than any earlier philosopher to positing will as a faculty of choice that is reducible neither to reason nor to non-rational desire.
Augustine admits both first-order and second-order volitions, the latter being acts of the liberum voluntatis arbitrium , the ability to choose between conflicting first-order volitions Stump ; Horn ; den Bok Like desires, first-order volitions are intentional or object-directed and operate on all levels of the soul.
Like memory and thought, will is a constitutive element of the mind see 6. It is closely related to love and, accordingly, the locus of moral evaluation. We act well or badly if and only if our actions spring from a good or evil will, which is equivalent to saying that they are motivated by right i.
With this basic idea in view, Augustine defends the passions or emotions against their Stoic condemnation as malfunctions of rational judgment by redefining them more neutrally as volitions voluntates that may be good or bad depending on their intentional objects De civitate dei 9.
As in Stoicism, the will to act is triggered by an impression generated by an external object visum. To this the mind responds with an appetitive motion that urges us to pursue or to avoid the object e. But only when we give our inner consent to this impulse or withhold it, does a will emerge that, circumstances permitting, results in a corresponding action.
The will is the proper locus of our moral responsibility because it is neither in our power whether an object presents itself to our senses or intellect nor whether we take delight in it De libero arbitrio 3. The only element that is in our power is our will or inner consent, for which we are therefore fully responsible.
Thus, a person who has consented to adultery is guilty even if his attempt actually to commit it is unsuccessful, and a victim of rape who does not consent to the deed keeps her will free of sin even if she feels physical pleasure De civitate dei 1. Temptations of this kind are, in Augustine, not personal sins but due to original sin, and they haunt even the saints.
Our will must be freed by divine grace to resist them Contra Iulianum 6. In the s, opposing the dualistic fatalism of the Manicheans, he uses the cogito-like argument see 5. Harrison A contemporaneous definition of will as a movement of soul toward some object of desire emphasizes the absence of external constraint, and the ensuing definition of sin as an unjust volition see above seems to endorse the principle of alternative possibilities De duabus animabus 14— In De libero arbitrio , free will appears as the condition of possibility of moral goodness and hence as a great good itself; but as it is not an absolute good which is God alone but only an intermediate one, it is liable to misuse and, hence, also the source of moral evil De libero arbitrio 2.
With all this, Augustine is basically in harmony with the traditional view of early Christian theology and exegesis, which is still adopted in the s by Julian of Aeclanum when he blames Augustine for having fallen back into Manichean fatalism and quotes his early definitions against him Julian, Ad Florum , in Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum 1.
Things change with Ad Simplicianum 1. The optimistic-sounding claim in the first book of De libero arbitrio 1. But he never questions the principle that we have been created with the natural ability to freely and voluntarily choose the good, nor does he ever deny the applicability of the cogito argument to the will cf. De civitate dei 5.
What grace does is to restore our natural freedom; it does not compel us to act against our will. What this means is best illustrated by the narrative of Confessiones 8 for particularly lucid interpretations, see Wetzel —; J. Though he identifies with the former, better will rather than with the latter that actually torments him, he is unable to opt for it because of his bad habits, which he once acquired voluntarily but which have by now transformed into a kind of addictive necessity ib.
Using medical metaphors reminiscent of Hellenistic moral philosophy, he argues that his will lacked the power of free choice because the disease of being divided between conflicting volitions had weakened it ib.
Before, when he had just continued his habitual way of life, this had been a non-choice rather than a choice, even though, as Augustine insists, he had done so voluntarily. In substance, this remained his line of defense when, in the Pelagian controversy, he was confronted with the charge that his doctrine of grace abolished free will De spiritu et littera 52—60; cf.
De correptione et gratia 6. While the Pelagians thought that the principle of alternative possibilities was indispensable for human responsibility and divine justice, Augustine accepts that principle only for the first humans in paradise Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum 1.
In a way, by choosing wrongly Adam and Eve have abandoned free will both for themselves and for all humankind. Original sin transformed our initial ability not to sin into an inability not to sin; grace can restore ability not to sin in this life and will transform it into inability to sin in the next De civitate dei The problem of the origin of evil unde malum , he claims, had haunted him from his youth Confessiones 7.
At first, he accepted the dualist solution of the Manicheans, which freed God from the responsibility for evil but compromised his omnipotence ib. After having encountered the books of the Platonists, Augustine rejected the existence of an evil substance and endorsed the Neoplatonic view argued e. In his mature view, which was largely developed during his anti-Manichean polemics, everything that has being is good insofar as it has been created by God. There are of course different degrees of goodness as well as of being Letter Creation and Time.
A created being can be said to be evil if and only if it falls short of its natural goodness by being corrupted or vitiated; strictly speaking, only corruption itself is evil, whereas the nature or substance or essence for the equivalence of the terms see De moribus 2.
While this theory can explain physical evil relatively easily either as a necessary feature of hierarchically ordered corporeal reality De ordine 2. Augustine answers by equating moral evil with evil will and claims that the seemingly natural question of what causes evil will is unanswerable. His most sustained argument to this effect is found in his explanation of the fall of the devil and the evil angels, a case that, being the very first occurrence of evil in the created world, allows him to analyze the problem in its most abstract terms De civitate dei The cause can neither be a substance which, qua substance, is good and unable to cause anything evil nor a will which would in turn have to be an evil will in need of explanation.
The fact that evil agents are created from nothing and hence are not, unlike God, intrinsically unable to sin is a necessary condition of evil but not a sufficient one after all the good angels successfully kept their good will. In this context Augustine, in an interesting thought experiment, imagines two persons of equal intellectual and emotional disposition of whom one gives in to a temptation while the other resists it; from this he concludes that the difference must be due to a free, spontaneous and irreducible choice of the will De civitate dei Here at least Augustine virtually posits the will as an independent mental faculty.
As he points out himself, his conviction that human beings in their present condition are unable to do or even to will the good by their own efforts is his most fundamental disagreement with ancient, especially Stoic, virtue ethics De civitate dei After and because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, we have lost our natural ability of self-determination, which can only be repaired and restored by the divine grace that has manifested itself in the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ and works inwardly to free our will from its enslavement to sin.
Augustine emphasizes the necessity of grace for both intellectual understanding and moral purification already in his earliest works cf. Soliloquia 1. This explanation is explicitly rejected in Ad Simplicianum 1.
The bridge between the two worlds, however, was not philosophic contemplation, as Plato and Neoplatonism each suggested, but, rather, dutiful devotion to God. In addition, Augustine rejected the Neoplatonist notion that there existed any perfect happiness in the material world that human beings could enjoy if they led their lives in the appropriate manner.
Instead, the material world was forever tainted by the allure of bodily temptations and the inescapable finality of earthly existence. Goodness consists in the proper assignment of relative value to material and spiritual goods. Original sin can thus be understood in terms of mistaken perception, and is of intellectual rather than bodily origin City of God Augustine first confronts the question of whether war can be divinely sanctioned in the context of defending the continuity of the Old Testament with the New Testament against his frequent scholarly opponent, the Manicheans.
In Against Faustus , he claims that divine authorization can render an otherwise contemptible agent or act praiseworthy, provided it is motivated by faithful submission. As to the spirit in which war ought to be waged, Augustine is insistent that it be punitive, rather than preventive or defensive. A just war must be punitive, not preventive or defensive, and undertaken on behalf of a lawful authority.
As citizens, men may wage just war in the service of their country, but, as individuals, they are not justified in engaging in civil resistance, even if their country is the source of an injustice. Their primary concern ought to be correcting and converting the one who causes the suffering. The goal of any attempt at correction, whether or not it involves violence, is peace, understood as the restoration of an earthly order analogous to the perfectly ordered peacefulness of the kingdom of heaven.
As Augustine thought the world to be divided into two halves, the material and the spiritual, so, too, did he consider man to be a composite being, divided into the body and the soul. It is the province of the immaterial and immortal soul to rule over the body De Animae Quantitate This was the least satisfactory stage in his mental development, though his external circumstances were increasingly favorable.
As a catechumen of the Church, he listened regularly to the sermons of Ambrose. Morally his life was perhaps at its lowest point. On his betrothal, he had put away the mother of his son; but neither the grief which he felt at this parting nor regard for his future wife, who was as yet too young for marriage, prevented him from taking a new concubine for the two intervening years. Sensuality, however, began to pall upon him, little as he cared to struggle against it. His idealism was by no means dead; he told Romanian, who came to Milan at this time on business, that he wished he could live altogether in accordance with the dictates of philosophy; and a plan was even made for the foundation of a community retired from the world, which should live entirely for the pursuit of truth.
With this project his intention of marriage and his ambition interfered, and Augustine was further off than ever from peace of mind. In his thirty-first year he was strongly attracted to Neoplatonism by the logic of his development.
The idealistic character of this philosophy awoke unbounded enthusiasm, and he was attracted to it also by its exposition of pure intellectual being and of the origin of evil. These doctrines brought him closer to the Church, though he did not yet grasp the full significance of its central doctrine of the personality of Jesus Christ. In his earlier writings he names this acquaintance with the Neoplatonic teaching and its relation to Christianity as the turning-point of his life.
The truth, as it may be established by a careful comparison of his earlier and later writings, is that his idealism had been distinctly strengthened by Neoplatonism, which had at the same time revealed his own will, and not a natura altera in him, as the subject of his baser desires. This made the conflict between ideal and actual in his life more unbearable than ever. Yet his sensual desires were still so strong that it seemed impossible for him to break away from them. Help came in a curious way.
A countryman of his, Pontitianus, visited him and told him things which he had never heard about the monastic life and the wonderful conquests over self which had been won under its inspiration. When Pontitianus had gone, with a few vehement words to Alypius, he went hastily with him into the garden to fight out this new problem.
Then followed the scene so often described. Overcome by his conflicting emotions he left Alypius and threw himself down under a fig-tree in tears. This was at the end of the summer of Augustine, intent on breaking wholly with his old life, gave up his position, and wrote to Ambrose to ask for baptism. The months which intervened between that summer and the Easter of the following year, at which, according to the early custom, he intended to receive the sacrament, were spent in delightful calm at a country-house, put at his disposal by one of his friends, at Cassisiacum Casciago, 47 m.
Here Monnica, Alypius, Adeodatus, and some of his pupils kept him company, and he still lectured on Vergil to them and held philosophic discussions. The whole party returned to Milan before Easter , and Augustine, with Alypius and Adeodatus, was baptized. Plans were then made for returning to Africa; but these were upset by the death of Monnica, which took place at Ostia as they were preparing to cross the sea, and has been described by her devoted son in one of the most tender and beautiful passages of the Confessiones.
Augustine remained at least another year in Italy, apparently in Rome, living the same quiet life which he had led at Cassisiacum, studying and writing, in company with his countryman Evodius, later bishop of Uzalis. Here, where he had been most closely associated with the Manicheans, his literary warfare with them naturally began; and he was also writing on free will, though this book was only finished at Hippo in In the autumn of , passing through Carthage, he returned to Thagaste, a far different man from the Augustine who had left it five years before.
Alypius was still with him, and also Adeodatus, who died young, we do not know when or where. Here Augustine and his friends again took up a quiet, though not yet in any sense a monastic, life in common, and pursued their favorite studies. About the beginning of , having found a friend in Hippo to help in the foundation of what he calls a monastery, he sold his inheritance, and was ordained presbyter in response to a general demand, though not without misgivings on his own part.
The years which he spent in the presbyterate are the last of his formative period. The very earliest works which fall within the time of his episcopate show us the fully developed theologian of whose special teaching we think when we speak of Augustinianism. There is little externally noteworthy in these four years. He took up active work not later than the Easter of , when we find him preaching to the candidates for baptism.
The plans for a monastic community which had brought him to Hippo were now realized. In a garden given for the purpose by the bishop, Valerius, he founded his monastery, which seems to have been the first in Africa, and is of especial significance because it maintained a clerical school and thus made a connecting link between monastics and the secular clergy.
Other details of this period are that he appealed to Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, to suppress the custom of holding banquets and entertainments in the churches, and by had succeeded, through his courageous eloquence, in abolishing it in Hippo; that in a public disputation took place between him and a Manichean presbyter of Hippo, Fortunatus; that his treatise De fide et symbols was prepared to be read before the council held at Hippo October 8, ; and that after that he was in Carthage for a while, perhaps in connection with the synod held there in The intellectual interests of these four years are more easily determined, principally concerned as they are with the Manichean controversy, and producing the treatises De utilitate credendi , De duabus animabus contra Manichaos first half of , and Contra Adimantum or He has entered so far into St.
However much we are here reminded of the later Augustine, it is clear that he still held the belief that the free will of man could decide his own destiny. His opinion on this point did not change till after he was a bishop. The more widely known Augustine became, the more Valerius, the bishop of Hippo, was afraid of losing him on the first vacancy of some neighboring see, and desired to fix him permanently in Hippo by making him coadjutor-bishop,-a desire in which the people ardently concurred.
But Valerius carried his plan through, and not long before Christmas, , Augustine was consecrated by Megalius. It is not known when Valerius died; but it makes little difference, since for the rest of his life he left the administration more and more in the hands of his assistant. Space forbids any attempt to trace events of his later life; and in what remains to be said, biographical interest must be largely our guide. His special and direct opposition to Manicheanism did not last a great while after his consecration.
About he wrote a tractate Contra epistolam [Manichcet] quam vocant fundamenti ; in the De agone christiano , written about the same time, and in the Confessiones , a little later, numerous anti-Manichean expressions occur.
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