Of Two Souls

St. Augustine of Hippo

  1. 1. — By What Course of Reasoning the Error of the Manichæans Concerning Two Souls, One of Which is Not from God, is Refuted. Every Soul, Inasmuch as It is a Certain Life, Can Have Its Existence Only from God the Source of Life
  2. 2. — If the Light that is Perceived by Sense Has God for Its Author, as the Manichæans Acknowledge, Much More The Soul Which is Perceived by Intellect Alone
  3. 3. — How It is Proved that Every Body Also is from God. That the Soul Which is Called Evil by the Manichæans is Better Than Light
  4. 4. — Even the Soul of a Fly is More Excellent Than the Light
  5. 5. — How Vicious Souls, However Worthy of Condemnation They May Be, Excel the Light Which is Praiseworthy in Its Kind
  6. Chapter 6
  7. 7. — How Evil Men are of God, and Not of God
  8. 8. — The Manichæans Inquire Whence is Evil and by This Question Think They Have Triumphed
  9. 9. — Augustine Deceived by Familiarity with the Manichæans, and by the Succession of Victories Over Ignorant Christians Reported by Them. The Manichæans are Likewise Easily Refuted from the Knowledge of Sin and the Will
  10. 10. — Sin is Only from the Will. His Own Life and Will Best Known to Each Individual. What Will is
  11. 11. — What Sin is
  12. 12. — From the Definitions Given of Sin and Will, He Overthrows the Entire Heresy of the Manichæans
  13. Chapter 13
  14. 14. — Again It is Shown from the Utility of Repenting that Souls are Not by Nature Evil. So Sure a Demonstration is Not Contradicted Except from the Habit of Erring
  15. 15. — He Prays for His Friends Whom He Has Had as Associates in Error

1. Through the assisting mercy of God, the snares of the Manichæans having been broken to pieces and left behind, having been restored at length to the bosom of the Catholic Church, I am disposed now at least to consider and to deplore my recent wretchedness. For there were many things that I ought to have done to prevent the seeds of the most true religion wholesomely implanted in me from boyhood, from being banished from my mind, having been uprooted by the error and fraud of false and deceitful men. For, in the first place, if I had soberly and diligently considered, with prayerful and pious mind, those two kinds of souls to which they attributed natures and properties so distinct that they wished one to be regarded as of the very substance of God, but were not even willing that God should be accepted as the author of the other; perhaps it would have appeared to me, intent on learning, that there is no life whatsoever, which, by the very fact of its being life and in so far as it is life at all, does not pertain to the supreme source and beginning of life, which we must acknowledge to be nothing else than the supreme and only and true God. Wherefore there is no reason why we should not confess, that those souls which the Manichæans call evil are either devoid of life and so not souls, neither will anything positively or negatively, neither follow after nor flee from anything; or, if they live so that they can be souls, and act as the Manichæans suppose, in no way do they live unless by life, and if it be an established fact, as it is, that Christ has said: "I am the life," [[John 14.6]] that all souls seeing that they cannot be souls except by living were created and fashioned by Christ, that is, by the Life.