History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [203]
He realizes that he has not really solved all difficulties by this theory. 'My soul yearns to know this most entangled enigma,' he says, and he prays to God to enlighten him, assuring Him that his interest in the problem does not arise from vain curiosity. 'I confess to Thee, O Lord, that I am as yet ignorant what time is.' But the gist of the solution he suggests is that time is subjective: time is in the human mind, which expects, considers, and remembers.2 It follows that there can be no time without a created being,3 and that to speak of time before the Creation is meaningless.
I do not myself agree with this theory, in so far as it makes time something mental. But it is clearly a very able theory, deserving to be seriously considered. I should go further, and say that it is a great advance on anything to be found on the subject in Greek philosophy. It contains a better and clearer statement than Kant's of the subjective theory of time—a theory which, since Kant, has been widely accepted among philosophers.
The theory that time is only an aspect of our thoughts is one of the most extreme forms of that subjectivism which, as we have seen, gradually increased in antiquity from the time of Protagoras and Socrates onwards. Its emotional aspect is obsession with sin, which came later than its intellectual aspects. St Augustine exhibits both kinds of subjectivism. Subjectivism led him to anticipate not only Kant's theory of time, but Descartes' cogito. In his Soliloquia he says: 'You, who wish to know, do you know you are? I know it. Whence are you? I know not. Do you feel yourself single or multiple? I know not. Do you feel yourself moved? I know not. Do you know that you think? I do.' This contains not only Descarte's cogito, but his reply to Gassendi's ambulo ergo sum. As a philosopher, therefore, Augustine deserves a high place.
II. THE CITY OF GOD
When, in 410, Rome was sacked by the Goths, the pagans, not unnaturally, attributed the disaster to the abandonment of the ancient gods. So long as Jupiter was worshipped, they said, Rome remained powerful; now that the Emperors have turned away from him, he no longer protects his Romans. This pagan argument called for an answer. The City of God, written gradually between 412 and 427, was St Augustine's answer; but it took, as it proceeded, a far wider flight, and developed a complete Christian scheme of history, past, present, and future. It was an immensely influential book throughout the Middle Ages, especially in the struggles of the Church with secular princes.
Like some other very great books, it composes itself, in the memory of those who have read it, into something better than at first appears on re-reading. It contains a great deal that hardly anyone at the present day can accept, and its central thesis is somewhat obscured by excrescences belonging to his age. But the broad conception of a contrast between the City of this world and the City of God has remained an inspiration to many, and even now can be restated in non-theological terms.
To omit detail in an account of the book, and concentrate on the central idea, would give an unduly favourable view; on the other hand, to concentrate on the detail would be to omit what is best and most important. I shall endeavour to avoid both errors by first giving some account of the detail and then passing on to the general idea as it appeared in historical development.
The book begins with considerations arising out of the sack of Rome, and designed to show that even worse things happened in pre-Christian times. Among the pagans who attribute the disaster to Christianity, there are many, the Saint says, who, during the sack, sought sanctuary in the churches, which the Goths, because they were Christians, respected. In the sack of Troy, on the contrary, Juno's temple afforded no protection, nor did the gods preserve the city from destruction. The Romans never spared temples in conquered cities; in this respect, the sack of Rome was milder than most, and the mitigation was a result of