Inheriting from his father a passionate nature, he formed while still a mere youth an irregular union with a girl, by whom he became the father of a son, whom in a fit of pious emotion he named Adeodatus ("by God given"), and to whom he was passionately attached. In his Confessions he afterwards described this period of his life in the blackest colours; for in the light of his conversion he saw behind him only shadows. Yet, whatever his youthful aberrations, Augustine was from the first an earnest student. His father, noticing his early promise, destined him for the brilliant and lucrative career of a rhetorician, for which he spared no expense in training him. Augustine studied at his native town and afterwards at Madaura and Carthage, especially devoting himself to the works of the Latin poets, many traces of his love for which are to be found in his writings. His acquaintance with Greek literature was much more limited, and, indeed, it has been doubted, though without sufficient reason, whether he could use the Greek scriptures in the original. Cicero's Hortensius, which he read in his nineteenth year, first awakened in his mind the spirit of speculation and the impulse towards the knowledge of the truth. But he passed from one phase of thought to another, unable to find satisfaction in any. Manichaeism, that mixed product of Zoroastrian and Christian-gnostic elements, first enthralled him. He became a fervent member of the sect, and was admitted into the class of auditors or "hearers." Manichaeism seemed to him to solve the mysteries of the world, and of his own experiences by which he was perplexed. His insatiable imagination drew congenial food from the fanciful religious world of the Manichaeans, decked out as this was with the luxuriant wealth of Oriental myth. His strongly developed sense of a need of salvation sought satisfaction in the contest of the two principles of Good and Evil, and found peace, at least for the moment, in the conviction that the portions of light present in him would be freed from the darkness in which they were immersed. The ideal of chastity and self-restraint, which promised a foretaste of union with God, amazed him, bound as he was in the fetters of sensuality and for ever shaking at these fetters. But while his moral force was not sufficient for the attainment of this ideal, gradually everything else which Manichaeism seemed to offer him dissolved before his criticism. Increasingly occupied with the exact sciences, he learnt the incompatibility of the Manichaean astrology with the facts. More and more absorbed in the problems of psychology, he realized the insufficiency of dualism, which did not solve the ultimate questions but merely set them back. The Manichaean propaganda seemed to him invertebrate and lacking in force, and a discussion which he had with Faustus, a distinguished Manichaean bishop and controversialist, left him greatly disappointed.
Meanwhile nine years had passed. Augustine, after finishing his studies, had returned to Tagaste, where he became a teacher of grammar. He must have been an excellent master, who knew how to influence the whole personality of his pupils. It was then that Alypius, who in the later stages of Augustine's life proved a true friend and companion, attached himself to him.
Continued on page two.
This article is from the 1911 edition of an encyclopedia, which is out of copyright here in the U.S. See the encyclopedia main page for disclaimer and copyright information.
