14 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



nomy are among the secrets of nature which 

 Augustine rejoices to say he no longer desires 

 to know ; because, in his mind, Astronomy 

 took the form of Astrology, to which in his 

 youth he had been much addicted. But 

 Augustine is right when he detects this same 

 love of mere knowledge in the instinctive 

 arrest of his attention by the commonest 

 works of nature. He desires to be de- 

 livered even from this. He has given up 

 many pleasures of the eye and curiosities of 

 the mind in which he once delighted, — not 

 only the transits of the heavenly bodies and 

 the response of oracles, but even the public 

 spectacles of the Roman world. Still, he 

 deplores that this wretched love of mere 

 knowledge, — this lust of the eyes, — is ever 



