Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
22.
Marriage as originally instituted and blessed by God
For myself, however, I have no shadow of doubt that to increase and multiply and fill the earth in accordance with God’s blessing is a gift of marriage, and that God instituted marriage from the beginning, before man’s Fall, in creating male and female: the difference in sex is quite evident in the physical structure. And the actual blessing was obviously attached to this work of God, for the words, ‘he created them male and female’, are immediately followed, in the scriptural account, by this statement: ‘And God blessed them, saying, “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth and hold sway over it”’, and so on.
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Now it is true that we can quite properly give this a spiritual meaning; however, we cannot interpret ‘male’ and ‘female’ allegorically, by finding an analogy in the individual, namely a distinction between the ruling element and the ruled. There is no denying the obvious evidence of bodies of different sex, which shows that it would be a manifest absurdity to deny the fact that male and female were created for the purpose of begetting children, so as to increase and multiply and fill the earth. And when the Lord was asked whether it was allowed to dismiss a wife for any cause whatever (since Moses allowed the giving of a bill of divorce because of the hardness of heart of the Israelites) his reply had nothing to do with the spirit which commands and flesh which obeys, or the rational mind which rules and the irrational desire which submits to rule, or the contemplative virtue which is pre-eminent and the active virtue which is subject to it, or the intellectual power of the mind and the body’s perception. The Lord’s answer explicitly concerned the marriage bond which binds the two sexes to one another. He said,
Have you not read that the Creator made the male and female from the start? And that he said: ‘This is why a man will say goodbye to his father and mother, and will be joined to his wife, and they will be two in one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God joined together, man must not separate.
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It is certain then that at the beginning male and female were constituted just as two human beings of different sex are now, in our observation and knowledge, and that they are said to be ‘one’ either on account of their being joined together in marriage, or because of
woman’s origin, since she was created from the man’s side. For the Apostle appeals to this latter fact as an illustration, a precedent instituted by God, when he admonishes husbands, telling them that each one of them should love his wife.
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23.
Would procreation have taken place in paradise, if no one had sinned
?
If anyone says that there would have been no intercourse or procreation if the first human beings had not sinned, he is asserting, in effect, that man’s sin was necessary to complete the number of the saints. For if they would have remained in solitude by refraining from sin, because, as some imagine, they could not have bred if they had not sinned, it follows that sin was essential if there were to be a number of righteous people, instead of a single pair. But if that is absurd beyond belief, we must believe instead that even if no one had sinned there would have come into being a number of saints sufficient to complete the muster of that Blessed City, as large a number as is now being assembled, through God’s grace, from the multitude of sinners, so long as the ‘children of this world’ beget and are begotten.
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It follows that, if there had been no sin, marriage would have been worthy of the happiness of paradise, and would have given birth to children to be loved, and yet would not have given rise to any lust to be ashamed of; but, as it is, we have no example to show how this could have come about. Yet that does not mean that it should seem incredible that the one part of the body could have been subject to the will, without the familiar lust, seeing that so many other parts are now in subjection to it. We move our hands and feet to perform their special functions, when we so will; this involves no reluctance on their part, and the movements are performed with all the ease we observe in our own case and in that of others. And we observe it particularly in craftsmen engaged in all kinds of physical tasks, where natural powers which lack strength and speed are developed by active training. Then why should we not believe that the sexual organs could have been the obedient servants of mankind, at the bidding of the will, in the same way as the other, if there had been no lust, which came in as the retribution for the sin of disobedience?
In Cicero’s discussion of the different types of government, in his book
On the Commonwealth
,
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the author takes an analogy from human nature. He says, it will be remembered, that the members of the body are governed like children, because of their ready obedience, while the perverted elements of the soul are coerced like slaves under a harsher régime. Now in the order of nature the soul is unquestionably ranked above the body; and yet the soul itself finds it easier to rule the body than to rule itself. In fact, this lust we are now examining is something to be the more ashamed of because the soul, when dealing with it, neither has command of itself so as to be entirely free from lust, nor does it rule the body so completely that the organs of shame are moved by the will instead of by lust. Indeed if they were so ruled they would not be
pudenda
– parts of shame.
As it is, the soul is ashamed of its body’s resistance when the body is subordinate to it by reason of its inferior nature. When the soul is in opposition to itself in respect of the other emotions, it feels less shame just because it is conquered by itself, and thus is itself the victor. No doubt this victory is disordered and perverse, because it is due to elements which ought to be subject to reason, yet it is a victory won by the soul’s elements, and therefore, I repeat, the soul is conquered by itself. For when the soul defends itself in an orderly fashion, so that the irrational impulses are subordinated to the reason and the intellect, that is a laudable and virtuous victory, provided that the reason is itself subjected to God. Nevertheless, the soul is less ashamed when it is divided against itself by the disobedience of its perverted elements than when the body does not yield to its will and obey its command; for the body is something different from it, inferior to it, and the body’s natural substance has no life without the soul.
But when restraint is imposed by the will’s control on the other members, without whose assistance the organs that are excited by lust in defiance of the will cannot satisfy their appetite, then decency is preserved, not because the pleasure of sin has been foregone but because it has been forestalled. Without doubt, the marriage in paradise would not have known this opposition, this resistance, this tussle between lust and will, or at least the contrast between the insatiability of lust and the self-sufficiency of the will, had there not been that guilt of disobedience which was followed by disobedience as a punishment. Instead of this, the will would have received the obedience of all the members, including the organs of sex.
Then the instrument created for the task would have sown the seed
on ‘the field of generation’
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as the hand now sows seed on the earth, and there would be no cause for modesty to object when I wish to discuss this subject in detail, no reason for decency to insist on my asking pardon, with an apology to pure ears. Discussion could then have free scope, without any fear of obscenity, to treat of any idea that might come to mind when thinking about bodily organs of this kind. Nor would there be any reason for calling the actual words obscene; in fact whatever was said on this subject could be as respectable as any talk about other parts of the body. Accordingly, if anyone has indecent thoughts in approaching what I am now writing, it is his own guilt that he should beware of, not the facts of nature. He should censure the actions prompted by his own depravity, not the words imposed on me by necessity. The modest and religious reader or hearer will readily excuse my use of such words, provided that I refute the infidelity which bases its argument not on a faith in things outside our experience but on its perception of the facts of our experience. What I am saying will not shock the reader who is not horrified at the Apostle’s attack on the horrible vices of the women who ‘instead of natural practices have changed to practices contrary to nature’,
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especially as, unlike the Apostle, I am not now mentioning and condemning abominable obscenities. Nevertheless, in explaining, to the best of my powers, the processes of human generation, I must endeavour, like him, to avoid obscene words.
24.
The power of the will over the body
Then (had there been no sin) the man would have sowed the seed and the woman would have conceived the child when their sexual organs had been aroused by the will, at the appropriate time and in the necessary degree, and had not been excited by lust. For we set in motion, at our command, not only those members which are fitted with bones and joints, like the hands, feet and fingers, but also those which are loosely constructed of pliant tissues and muscles, which we can move, when we choose, by shaking, which we extend by stretching, which we twist and flex, contract and harden – such parts, I mean, as those of the mouth and face, which the will moves, as far as it can. In fact, even the lungs, which are the softest of all the internal organs and for that reason are protected in the cavity of the chest, are controlled by the will for the purpose of drawing breath and expelling it, and for producing and modulating the vocal sounds. In the same way as
bellows serve the purpose of smiths and of organists, the lungs are obedient to the will of a man when he breathes out or breathes in, or speaks or shouts or sings.
I pass over the fact that some animals are endowed with a natural power of moving the covering which clothes their whole body; if they feel anything in any part which needs to be driven away, they can move their hide at the spot, and only there, where they feel the irritation, and thus they can by this quiver shake off not only flies but even spears that are sticking into them. Man has not this ability; but surely that does not mean that the Creator could not have bestowed it, at his pleasure, on any animate creatures? Then man himself also may have once received from his lower members an obedience which he lost by his own disobedience. It would not have been difficult for God to fashion him in such a way that even what is now set in motion in his flesh only by lust should have been moved only by his will.
We do in fact find among human beings some individuals with natural abilities very different from the rest of mankind and remarkable by their very rarity. Such people can do some things with their body which are for others utterly impossible and well-nigh incredible when they are reported. Some people can even move their ears, either one at a time or both together. Others without moving the head can bring the whole scalp – all the part covered with hair – down towards the forehead and bring it back again at will. Some can swallow an incredible number of various articles and then with a slight contraction of the diaphragm, can produce, as if out of a bag, any article they please, in perfect condition. There are others who imitate the cries of birds and beasts and the voices of any other men, reproducing them so accurately as to be quite indistinguishable from the originals, unless they are seen. A number of people produce at will such musical sounds from their behind (without any stink) that they seem to be singing from that region. I know from my own experience of a man who used to sweat whenever he chose; and it is a well-known fact that some people can weep at will and shed floods of tears.
Far more incredible is the phenomenon which a great many of our brothers witnessed in recent times. There was a presbyter in the diocese of Calama, named Restitutus. Whenever he pleased (and he was often asked to perform the feat by people who desired to have firsthand experience of so remarkable a phenomenon) he would withdraw himself from all sensations, to the accompaniment of cries like those of someone making lamentation, and would then he immobile, exactly like a corpse. When pinched and pricked he felt nothing whatsoever;
and even when he was burned by the application of fire he was quite insensible to pain, except later on from the resulting burn. That this immobility was not achieved by an effort of endurance, but through loss of sensitivity is proved by the fact that no trace of breathing was observed in him, as in a dead man. However, he related that he heard people talking, if they spoke with particular clarity, though they sounded as if a long way off.
We observe then that the body, even under present conditions, is an obedient servant to some people in a remarkable fashion beyond the normal limitations of nature; this is shown in many kinds of movements and feelings, and it happens even in men who are living this present troubled life in the corruptible flesh. If this is so, is there any reason why we should not believe that before the sin of disobedience and its punishment of corruptibility, the members of a man’s body could have been the servants of man’s will without any lust, for the procreation of children? It was because man forsook God by pleasing himself that he was handed over to himself, and because he did not obey God he could not obey himself. Hence came the more obvious misery where man does not live as he wishes to live. If he lived as he wished, he would consider himself happy; yet even so he would not be really happy if he lived in degradation.