Augustin de Candolle

“ A curious element of hereditary influence in developing men addicted to high mental effort may be found in considering the condition of the clergy of a country. It is not indifferent, M. de Candolle observes, "whether some categories of the instructed, intelligent, and respectable public, be restricted to celibacy or not. Laying aside all dogmatism and views respecting the discipline of the clergy, the result, relative to instruction, is not the same for a country where there are, for example, forty or fifty thousand celibate ecclesiastics, or the same number of clergymen fathers of families. ”

“ S'il est facile d'affirmcr que le Corchorus de Thunberg n'est point de ce genre, et qu'il appartient, comme Linne l'a pense, a la famille des RosacSes, il Test un peu moins de decider sa place dans cette famille; il ne peut 6tre un Rubus, parceque ses fruits ne paroissent nuUcment destines a devenir cliarnus, et que d'ailleurs son port et la couleur meme de sa fleur s'y opposent trop fortement; il paroit avoir plus de rapports avec les Spirees ”

“ It was deemed clear that he had not the Spirit of Christ, and no efforts of the archbishop could induce the British clergy to yield to any of his demands. Thereupon Augustine broke up the conference with an angry threat that, if the British clergy would not accept peace with their brethren, they must look for war with their foes, and if they would not proclaim the way of life to the Saxons, they would suffer deadly vengeance at their hands. Thus, unsuccessful, Augustine returned to Canterbury, and there relaxed none of his efforts to evangelize the Saxon tribes. ”

“ Malgre I'intimite que ces deux genres presentent dans I'ensemble de leurs caracti;res, et la possibilite qu'on soitun jour forc6 de les reunir, j'ai cru qu'il etoit plus convenable de les considerer comme distincts; leurs differences, quoique legeres, me paroissent suffisantes pour autoriser cette separation: 1. Le Kerria a tou- jours de 5 a 8 ovaires au moins ; le Purshia n'en a qu'un d'aprfes Pursh. M. Robert Brown y a vu 2 ovaires dans une fleur qu'il a analysee ”

“ La graine du Kerria est attachee lateralement vers le milieu de l'ovaire; celle du Purshia est attachee a sa base. 3. Les styles du A'errm^ fleur simple sont longs, filiformes, bien distincts des ovaires, tandis que celui daPurshia est court, et senible n'etre qu'une simple sommite d'ovaire retrecie et attenuee; oserai-je meme ajouter que les ovaires sont glabres, peut-etre iiidehiscens dans le Kerria, velus et susceptibles d'une legfere dehiscence dans le Purshia; que le Kerria a des stipules axillaires trfes distinctes, tandis que celles du Purshia manquent ”

“ Le Kerria et le Purshia ont entr'eux des rapports trcs^intimes; l'un et l'autre sont dcs sous-arbrisseaux de pays temperes et analogues [2] , munis de bourgeons ecailleux, ct depourvus d'6pines et d'aiguilions; lours feuilles sont siniples, alternes, dentees, rapprochecs sur de petits rameaux latcraux; leurs fleurs naissent le plus souvent solitaires, et pedonculces au sommet de ces petits rameaux; elles sont composees de 5 petales jaunes arrondis, attaches au calice, et d'un grand nombre d etamines perigynes ”

“ And John Calvin, the soberest of men, supports Augustine, the most impulsive of men, in saying the same thing. All things which happen to the saints are so overruled by God that what the world regards as evil the issue shows to be good. For what Augustine says is true, that even the sins of saints are, through the guiding providence of God, so far from doing harm to them, that, on the contrary, they serve to advance their salvation. ”

“ Augustine reached England in 597, and found that his path had been made easy by the fact that Bertha, wife of Ethelbert, King of Kent, was a Christian. He soon effected the conversion of the king himself, and his labours were so rapidly successful that at Christmas, 597, no less than ten thousand Saxons were baptized at the mouth of the Medway. The archiepiscopal pall, and a papal Bull, creating Augustine first English archbishop, were duly sent from Rome, and the royal palace in Canterbury, with an old church—Roman or British—close by, were handed over to him by Ethelbert. ”

“ Frutex ramosissimus inermis, cortice cinereo, ramulis lateralibus brevibus h gemma squammosa ortis: folia in ramulis conferta basi cuneata apice gross^ bidentata supra villosasubtus cano-tomentosa : stipulae nullae aut minimee: flores paen^ lutei. Purshin tridentata. ”

“ Thus it came about that Barbarians held against other Barbarians one of the last Roman citadels in Africa. From the end of May, 430, Hippo was blockaded on the land side and on the side of the sea.
In great tribulation, Augustin resigned himself to this supreme humiliation, and to all the horrors which would have to be endured if the city were captured. As a Christian, he left all to the will of God, and he would repeat to those about him the words of the Psalm: "Righteous art Thou, O Lord, and upright are Thy judgments." ”

“ An active mind like Augustin's could not remain indifferent before this spectacle of the world thrown open by Rome to all men of talent. He had the soul of a poet, quick to enthusiasm; the sight of the Eagles planted on the Acropolis at Carthage moved him in a way he never forgot. He acquired the habit of seeing big, and began to cast off race prejudices and all the petty narrowness of a local spirit. When he became a Christian he did not close himself up, like the Donatists, within the African Church. His dream was that Christ's Empire upon earth should equal the Empire of the Cæsars. ”

“ Whilst they all went to Geneva, De Candolle prepared for and went on an excursion into Italy. During the visit to Italy, in 1808, politics came in the way of botany, and nothing was heard of De Candolle for a month, his letters having gone astray; but he turned up at Geneva, well, and in good spirits, for he heard that he had a chance of being made a member of the Institute. But he [116] found that even great scientific men have their little foibles and favourites, and he did not get elected. In fact, he never was elected a member, although he was the most distinguished botanist of the age. ”

“ Augustin takes no heed of that. Of himself he no longer thinks; he no longer belongs to himself. If he has accepted the episcopate, it is so as to give himself altogether to the Church, to be all things to all men. He is the man-word, the man-pen, the sounding-board of the truth. He becomes the man of the miserable crowds which the Saviour covered with His pity. He is theirs, to convince them and cure them of their errors. He is a machine which works without ever stopping for the greater glory of Christ. Bishop, pastor, leader of souls—he has no desire for anything else. ”

“ Augustin was not a man to keep quiet, nor yet to spend his strength in small local quarrels. He saw big; he did not imprison himself within the limits of his diocese. He knew that Numidia and a good part of Africa were in the hands of the Donatists; that they had a rival primate to the Catholic primate at Carthage; that they had even sent a Pope of their community to Rome. In a word, they were in the majority. Everywhere a dissenting Church rose above the orthodox Church, when it did not succeed in stifling it altogether. At all costs the progress of this sect must be stopped. ”

“ The world pursues him and occupies him even in his retreat. He says to himself that down there at Rome, at Carthage, at Hippo, there are men speaking in the forums or in the basilicas, whispering in secret meetings, seducing poor souls defenceless against error. These impostors must be immediately unmasked, confounded, reduced to silence. With all his heart Augustin throws himself into this work at which he excels. Above all, he attacks his old friends the Manichees.... ”

“ Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, to the time of Archbishop Lanfranc of blessed memory, there was no archdeacon in the city and diocese of Canterbury. But from the time of Archbishop Theodore, who was sixth from St. Augustine, to the time of the aforesaid Lanfranc, there was in the church of St. Martin's, a suburb of Canterbury, a bishop ordained by Theodore, under the authority of Pope Vitalian, who in all [35] the city and diocese of Canterbury undertook duties in the place of the archbishop, conferring holy orders, consecrating churches, and confirming children during his absence. ”

“ On the death of Augustine of Canterbury, it had seemed good to all the wise men of the race, the Witangemote, that not London but Canterbury should be the seat of the Primacy, where Augustine’s body lay. King Offa, by reason of his enmity with the venerable archbishop Jaenbert and the people of Kent, set to work to divide the province into two. The most pious Adrian, at the request of the said king, had done what no one before had presumed to do, had raised the Mercian prelate to the dignity of the pallium. Kenulf did not blame either of them ”

“ Still another object may be discerned in these educational treatises—namely, to prove to the pagans that one may be a Christian and yet not be a barbarian and ignorant. Augustin's position in front of his adversaries is very strong indeed. None of them can attempt to cope with him either in breadth of knowledge, or in happy versatility, or in plenitude of intellectual gifts. He had the entire heritage of the ancient world between his hands. Well might he say to the pagans: "What you admire in your orators and philosophers, I have made my own. ”

“ And living in this atmosphere of mistrust, hypocrisy, bribery, and cruelty—small wonder if the Carthaginian fell into bitter reflections upon Roman corruption. However impressive from the front, the Empire was not nice to look at close at hand.
But Augustin was, above all, home-sick. When he strolled tinder the shady trees of the Janiculum or Sallust's gardens, he already said to himself what he would repeat later to his listeners at Hippo: "Take an African, put him in a place cool and green, and he won't stay there. He will feel he must go away and come back to his blazing desert." ”

“ It is the battle of every moment, the never-ceasing combat of body and spirit, which the poets of that time dramatized, and which is the history of the Christian of all times. The stake of the battle is a soul. The upshot is the final triumph, the redemption of a soul.
What makes the life of Augustin so complete and so truly typical is that he fought the good fight, not only against himself, but against all the enemies of the Church and the Empire. If he was a doctor and a saint, so was he too the type of the man of action in one of the most disheartened periods. ”

“ I urge you to save the Roman city. Rule your soldiers like a good Count. Do not trust too much to your own strength. Put your glory in Him Who gives courage, and you will never fear any enemy. Farewell!"
The words do not matter much. Whatever may have been Augustin's last farewell to the defender of Hippo, it was no doubt couched in language not unlike this. In any case, posterity has wished to believe that the dying bishop maintained to the end his unyielding demeanour face to face with the Barbarians. ”

“ The whole moral crisis that Augustin is about to undergo might be summed up in these few words so concentrated and so strong. No more to scatter himself among the multitude of vain things, no more to let himself flow along with the minutes as they flowed; but to pull himself together, to escape from the rout so as to establish himself upon the incorruptible and eternal, to break the chains of the old slave he continues to be so as to blossom forth in liberty, in thought, in love—that is the salvation he longs for. If it be not yet the Christian salvation, he is on the road which leads to that. ”

“ Augustin entreats the Prefect of Africa not to put any Donatists to death because, if he does so, no ecclesiastic can make complaint of them, for they will prefer to suffer death themselves rather than be the cause of it to others. Yet Augustin approved of the imperial laws which banished and fined them and deprived them of their churches and of testamentary power, and he consoled them by telling them that God did not wish them to perish in antagonism to Catholic unity. To constrain any one from evil to good, he argued, was not oppression, but charity ”

“ Neither God nor man was answerable for sin and pain, since it was the other, the Dark Principle, who distributed them through the world among men. Augustin, who continued to sin, continued likewise to be very comfortable with such a system of morals and metaphysics. Besides, he was not one of those convinced, downright minds who feel the need to quarrel noisily with what they take to be error. No one has opposed heresies more powerfully, and with a more tireless patience, than he has. ”

“ If the writer who wants to write beautiful things ought to put himself beforehand into some sort of a state of grace, wherein not only vile actions, but unworthy thoughts become impossible, the Christian, in like manner, must cleanse and prepare his inward eye to perceive the divine verities. Augustin grasped this thought in reading St. Paul. But what, above all, appealed to him in the Epistles, was their paternal voice, the mildness and graciousness hidden beneath the uncultivated roughness of the phrases. He was charmed by this. How different from the philosophers! ”

“ In Augustin's case, these reports of his lectures at Cassicium have at least the value of shewing us the state of soul of the future Bishop of Hippo at a decisive moment of his life.
For these Dialogues, although they look like school exercises, reveal the intimate thoughts of Augustin on the morrow of his conversion. While he seems to be refuting the Academics, he is fighting the errors from which he, personally, had suffered so long. He clarified his new ideal. No; the search for truth, without hope of ever reaching it, cannot give happiness. And genuine happiness is only in God. ”