Richardson—Augustine of Hippo qua Patriot, 39 
of temporal misfortune. If (Gregory the Great, strengthened by 
what he could grasp of this philosophy, might not be carried off 
his feet by the flood of evils of the latter portion of the sixth cen¬ 
tury, how much less might Augustine be moved by the lesser in¬ 
undation of the early fifth! 
On the other hand, from his very pessimism Augustine squeezes 
a cheerful and optimistic view of life. Positive though it be as 
an experience,^® evil is, in its essence, negative. The only truly 
evil thing is evil will, and evil will, itself, as will, is good, for the 
good God could form it only like Himself. The creative Provi¬ 
dence, forseeing in its own eternity the necessary imperfections 
of temporal creatures made from nothing, plans the proper al¬ 
lowances and provides the appropriate compensations. The darker 
the background, the brighter the foreground: the sharper the con¬ 
diment, the more piquant the sauce. The great and final Judg¬ 
ment will explicate and justify those lesser and daily judgments 
which perturb and perplex the human heart. The ills of life are 
incidents in the war of the two Cities. In His own time God will 
segregate the realm of Satan, and the City of God, centered ever 
in its Pounder, be seised of repose unchanging and eternal peace.^® 
Augustine, therefore, disciple of Plotinus and Neo-Platoniser of 
Christianity, is not unpatriotic when he comforts his contemporaries 
by an attempted valuation of temporal trials in terms of eternity. 
In summary, then, it may be affirmed that one^s appreciation 
and estimate of St. Augustine ^s attitude must necessarily be af¬ 
fected by one own^ inmost and deeply private reaction to that 
‘ ^ other-worldliness ” and mysticism natural to historical Chris¬ 
tianity. For the writer, the truth has best been expressed in two 
mutually supplementary statements of De Pressense: ‘^We feel 
that Christian as he is, he remains still a citizen, ’ ’ and ‘ ‘ He mourns 
. . . but his tears do not conceal from him the destinies of the 
City of God.”«« 
Gf. Augustine’s Confessions, Books VII, VIII. Paul Elmer More, Shelburne Es¬ 
says, 6th, Series, Augustine, 88-89: “It [the Tolle, lege; tolle, lege scene] summoned 
him from the intellectual consideration of evil as a negation of good to the conviction 
of sin as something for which he was morally and terribly responsible. . . . Evil was 
the deliberate setting apart of the human will from the divine will, the voluntary separa¬ 
tion of the soul from the source of life.” 
For an excellent study of the Neo-Platonic character of Augustine’s theology, vid. 
L. Grandgeorge, Saint Augustin et le Neo-PIatonIsme, 1896, 
Quoted by Angus, op. cit., 64-65. 
