The Sleepwalkers (37 page)

1.
The City of God

PLATO
had said that mortal man was prevented from hearing the Harmony of
the Spheres by the grossness of his bodily senses; the Christian
Platonists said that he lost that faculty with the Fall.

When
Plato's
images
strike
an
archetypal
chord,
they
continue
to
reverberate
on
unexpected
levels
of
meaning,
which
sometimes
reverse
the
messages
originally
intended.
Thus
one
might
venture
to
say
that
it
was
Plato
who
caused
that
Fall
of
philosophy
which
made
his
followers
deaf
to
the
harmonies
of
nature.
The
sin
which
led
to
the
Fall
was
the
destruction
of
the
Pythagorean
union
of
natural
and
religious
philosophy,
the
denial
of
science
as
a
way
of
worship,
the
splitting
up
of
the
very
texture
of
the
universe
into
a
vile
lowland
and
ethereal
highlands,
made
of
different
materials,
governed
by
different
laws.

This
"dualism
of
despair",
as
one
might
call
it,
was
carried
over
into
medieval
philosophy
by
the
Neoplatonists.
It
was
the
legacy
of
one
bankrupt
civilization:
Greece
at
the
age
of
the
Macedonian
conquest,
to
another
bankrupt
civilization:
the
Latin
world
at
the
age
of
its
conquest
by
the
Germanic
tribes.
From
the
third
century
A.D.
to
the
end
of
the
Empire,
Neoplatonism
had
reigned
without
a
rival
at
the
three
main
centres
of
philosophy,
Alexandria,
Rome,
and
the
Athenian
Academy.
By
that
process
of
natural
selection
in
the
realm
of
ideas
which
we
have
already
seen
at
work,
the
Middle
Ages
took
over
precisely
those
elements
in
Neoplatonism
which
appealed
to
their
mystic
aspirations
toward
the
Kingdom
of
Heaven,
and
which
echoed
their
despair
of
this
world
as
"the
lowest
and
vilest
element
in
the
scheme
of
things";
¹
while
the
more
optimistic
aspects
of
Neoplatonism
were
ignored.
Of
Plato
himself
only
the
Timaeus
,
that
masterpiece
of
ambiguity,
was
available
in
Latin
translation
(the
knowledge
of
Greek
was
dying
out);
and
though
Plotinus,
the
most
influential
among
the
Neoplatonists,
affirmed
that
the
material
world
partook
to
some
extent
of
the
goodness
and
beauty
of
its
Creator,
he
was
best
remembered
for
the
saying
that
he
"blushed
because
he
had
a
body".
It
was
in
this
distorted
and
extreme
form
that
Neoplatonism
was
absorbed
into
Christianity
after
the
collapse
of
the
Roman
Empire,
and
became
the
main
link
between
antiquity
and
medieval
Europe.

The
dramatic
symbol
of
this
fusion
is
the
chapter
in
St.
Augustine's
Confessions
in
which
he
describes
how
God
"brought
in
my
way
by
means
of
a
certain
man
–
an
incredibly
conceited
man
–
some
books
of
the
Platonists
translated
from
Greek
into
Latin."
²
Their
impact
on
him
was
so
powerful
that,
"being
admonished
by
all
this
to
return
to
myself,
I
entered
into
my
own
depth"
³
and
was
thus
set
on
the
road
to
conversion.
Although,
after
his
conversion,
he
complained
about
the
Neoplatonists'
failure
to
realize
that
the
Word
was
made
Flesh
in
Christ,
this
proved
no
obstacle.
The
mystic
union
between
Platonism
and
Christianity
was
consummated
in
the
Confessions
and
the
City
of
God
.

A
modern
translator
of
the
Confessions
wrote
about
Augustine:

"In
him
the
Western
Church
produced
its
first
towering
intellect
–
and
indeed
its
last
for
another
six
hundred
years...
What
he
was
to
mean
for
the
future
can
only
be
indicated.
All
the
men
who
had
to
bring
Europe
through
the
six
or
seven
centuries
that
followed,
fed
upon
him.
We
see
Pope
Gregory
the
Great
at
the
end
of
the
sixth
century
reading
and
rereading
the
Confessions
.
We
see
the
Emperor
Charlemagne
at
the
end
of
the
eighth
century
using
the
City
of
God
as
a
kind
of
Bible."
⁴

Now
this
Bible
of
the
Middle
Ages,
the
City
of
God
,
was
begun
in
413,
under
the
impact
of
the
sack
of
Rome;
and
Augustine
died
in
430,
while
the
Vandals
were
besieging
his
episcopal
city
of
Hyppo.
This
goes
a
long
way
toward
explaining
his
catastrophic
views
about
humanity
as
a
massa
perditiones
,
a
heap
of
depravity,
in
a
state
of
moral
death
where
even
the
newborn
child
carries
the
hereditary
stigma
of
original
sin;
where
infants
who
die
unbaptized
share
the
fate
of
eternal
damnation
with
the
vast
majority
of
mankind,
pagan
and
Christian.
For
salvation
is
only
possible
through
an
act
of
Grace
which
God
extends
to
individuals
predestined
to
receive
it
by
an
apparently
arbitrary
selection;
because
"fallen
man
cannot
do
anything
wellpleasing
to
God".
⁵
This
terrible
doctrine
of
predestination
was
taken
up
again
in
various
forms
at
various
ages
by
Cathars,
Albigenses,
Calvinists
and
Jansenists,
and
was
also
to
play
a
curious
part
in
the
theological
struggles
of
Kepler
and
Galileo.