History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [197]
Jerome's letters express the feelings produced by the fall of the Roman Empire more vividly than any others known to me. In 396 he writes:9
'I shudder when I think of the catastrophes of our time. For twenty years and more the blood of Romans has been shed daily between Constantinople and the Julian Alps. Scythia, Thrace, Macedonia, Dacia, Thessaly, Achaia, Epirus, Dalmatia, the Pannonias—each and all of these have been sacked and pillaged and plundered by Goths and Sarmatians, Quadi and Alans, Huns
and Vandals and Marchmen…. The Roman world is falling: yet we hold up our heads instead of bowing them. What courage, think you, have the Corinthians now, or the Athenians or the Lacedaemonians or the Arcadians, or any of the Greeks over whom the barbarians bear sway? I have mentioned only a few cities, but these once the capitals of no mean States.'
He goes on to relate the ravages of the Huns in the East, and ends with the reflection: 'To treat such themes as they deserve, Thucydides and Sallust would be as good as dumb.'
Seventeen years later, three years after the sack of Rome, he writes:10
'The world sinks into ruin: yes! but shameful to say our sins still live and flourish. The renowned city, the capital of the Roman Empire, is swallowed up in one tremendous fire; and there is no part of the earth where Romans are not in exile. Churches once held sacred are now but heaps of dust and ashes; and yet we have our minds set on the desire of gain. We live as though we were going to die to-morrow; yet we build as though we were going to live always in this world. Our walls shine with gold, our ceilings also and the capitals of our pillars; yet Christ dies before our doors naked and hungry in the person of His poor.'
This passage occurs incidentally in a letter to a friend who has decided to devote his daughter to perpetual virginity, and most of it is concerned with the rules to be observed in the education of girls so dedicated. It is strange that, with all Jerome's deep feeling about the fall of the ancient world, he thinks the preservation of virginity more important than victory over the Huns and Vandals and Goths. Never once do his thoughts turn to any possible measure of practical statesmanship; never once does he point out the evils of the fiscal system, or of reliance on an army composed of barbarians. The same is true of Ambrose and of Augustine; Ambrose, it is true, was a statesman, but only on behalf of the Church. It is no wonder that the Empire fell into ruin when all the best and most vigorous minds of the age were so completely remote from secular concerns. On the other hand, if ruin was inevitable, the Christian outlook was admirably fitted to give men fortitude, and to enable them to preserve their religious hopes when earthly hopes seemed vain. The expression of this point of view, in The City of God, was the supreme merit of St Augustine.
Of St Augustine I shall speak, in this chapter, only as a man; as a theologian and philosopher, I shall consider him in the next chapter.
He was born in 354, nine years after Jerome, and fourteen years after Ambrose; he was a native of Africa, where he passed much the greater part of his life. His mother was a Christian, but his father was not. After a period as a Manichæan, he became a Catholic, and was baptized by Ambrose in Milan.
He became bishop of Hippo, not far from Carthage, about the year 396. There he remained until his death in 430.
Of his early life we know much more than in the case of most ecclesiastics, because he has told of it in his Confessions. This book has had famous imitators, particularly Rousseau and Tolstoy, but I do not think it had any comparable predecessors. St Augustine is in some ways similar to Tolstoy, to whom, however, he is superior in intellect. He was a passionate man, in youth very far from a pattern of virtue, but driven by an inner impulse to search for truth and righteousness.