Augustine | There is no virtue without a miracle.

~ 26-27 March 1951 ~

“Went on reading St. Augustine. Interested to note that he left Carthage, where he had been teaching, to go to Rome because in Carthage his students were so undisciplined (‘the license of the students is gross, and beyond all measure’). Convinced more than ever that St. Augustine, and those like him, alone have found the answer to life, which is to ‘slaughter our self-conceits like birds, the curiosities by which we voyage through the secret ways of the abyss like the fish of the sea, our carnal lusts like the beasts of the field’ in order that ‘you, O God, you the consuming fire, should burn up those dead cares and renew the men themselves to immortal life.’ Walking around St. James’ Park I thought intensely of the difference between Tolstoy and St. Augustine. Tolstoy tried to achieve virtue, and particularly continence, through the exercise of his will; St. Augustine saw that, for man, there is no virtue without a miracle. Thus St. Augustine’s asceticism brought him serenity, and Tolstoy’s anguish, conflict, and the final collapse of his life into tragic buffoonery.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, 1903-1990,
writing in his diary