St. Augustine on the Study of Law1
From St. Augustine’s Confessions
Those studies also, which were accounted commendable, had a view to excelling in the courts of litigation; the more bepraised, the craftier. Such is men's blindness, glorying even in their blindness. And now I was chief in the rhetoric school, whereat I joyed proudly, and I swelled with arrogancy, though (Lord, Thou knowest) far quieter and altogether removed from the subvertings of those "Subverters" (for this ill-omened and devilish name was the very badge of gallantry) among whom I lived, with a shameless shame that I was not even as they. With them I lived, and was sometimes delighted with their friendship, whose doings I ever did abhor -i.e., their "subvertings," wherewith they wantonly persecuted the modesty of strangers, which they disturbed by a gratuitous jeering, feeding thereon their malicious birth. Nothing can be liker the very actions of devils than these. What then could they be more truly called than "Subverters"? themselves subverted and altogether perverted first, the deceiving spirits secretly deriding and seducing them, wherein themselves delight to jeer at and deceive others.
Habebant et illa studia quae honesta vocabantur ductum suum intuentem fora litigiosa, ut excellerem in eis, hoc laudabilior, quo fraudulentior. tanta est caecitas hominum de caecitate etiam gloriantium. et maior etiam eram in schola rhetoris, et gaudebam superbe et tumebam typho, quamquam longe sedatior, domine, tu scis, et remotus omnino ab eversionibus quas faciebant eversores (hoc enim nomen scaevum et diabolicum velut insigne urbanitatis est), inter quos vivebam pudore impudenti, quia talis non eram. et cum eis eram et amicitiis eorum delectabar aliquando, a quorum semper factis abhorrebam, hoc est ab eversionibus quibus proterve insectabantur ignotorum verecundiam, quam proturbarent gratis inludendo atque inde pascendo malivolas laetitias suas. nihil est illo actu similius actibus daemoniorum. quid itaque verius quam eversores vocarentur, eversi plane prius ipsi atque perversi, deridentibus eos et seducentibus fallacibus occulte spiritibus in eo ipso quod alios inridere amant et fallere.
Endnotes
1 From Book III of St. Augustine’s Confessions, 3.3.6 (English Translation by E. B. Pusey). ⇑
