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[ 70 ] the rise and fall of soul and self
as one who had progressed from youthful immersion in the world of the flesh to
mature concern with the life of the spirit. In telling this story, he opened a door to the
exploration of human subjectivity only hinted at in previous writers. Like Socrates,
he stressed the importance of caring for one’s soul, and he was driven to understand
himself as a knower. But the similarities between these two should not blind us to
the greater psychological depth and complexity of Augustine’s self-analysis or to
the novel uses to which he put its results.
Perhaps most importantly, Augustine developed the idea of internal, psycho-
logical conflict: “I have become an enigma to myself,” he wrote, “and herein lies
my sickness.” He relates that although he longed to become a Christian, he felt
that he could not become one because of his weakness of will and addiction to
sensual pleasure. When a person gives into lust, he said, a habit is formed that if
unchecked “hardens into compulsion”: “The enemy had my power of willing in
his clutches, and from it had forged a chain to bind me.” The “new will” toward
Christianity that had begun to emerge in him “was not yet capable of surmount-
ing that earlier will”
toward sensual pleasure. The reason, he said, that his mind
“cannot rise with its whole self on the wings of truth” is that “it is heavily bur-
dened by habit.” “There are two wills,” he said, “and neither is the whole: what
one has the other lacks.” They fought it out, making of his soul a battlefield in
which spirit and lust were locked in mortal combat. He longed for internal peace,
but even in his longing for it he was conflicted. “O Lord,” he begged, “make me
chaste, but please not yet.”
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By thus using himself as a model, Augustine sug-
gested a general theory of internal conflict: “When the mind commands itself to
will something, it would not be giving the order if it did not want this thing.”
Generally, what the mind wants, and therefore wills, immediately translates into
action—one wills one’s hand to move, and it moves. However, when the mind is
conflicted, it “commands itself and meets with resistance.” How, Augustine
asked, is it possible for a person not to try to do what his mind commands?
One possibility, Augustine claimed, is that in the human person, there are
two wills, one of which is one’s own and one of which is alien. But a volition that
comes from within, Augustine decided, “is not some alien thing” but comes from
the mind’s one and only self. So, when there is internal conflict, the mind cannot
possibly “be giving the order with its whole self.” In short, the problem is that
the volition does not proceed from a unified mind. In as much as the mind “issues
the command, it does will it, but inasmuch as the command is not carried out, it
does not will it”:
I was the one who wanted to follow that course, and I was the one who wanted not
to. I was the only one involved. I neither wanted it wholeheartedly nor turned from it
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