CHAPTER XXII

AUGUSTINE ON MAGIC AND ASTROLOGY Date and influence of Augustine—Christianity and magic—Censure of magic and theurgy as well as _Goetia_—Magic due to demons—Marvels wrought by magic—Cannot be equalled by most Christians—Miracles of heretics—Theory of demons—Limitations to the power of magic—Its fantastic character—Samuel and the witch of Endor—Natural marvels—Relation between magic and science—Superstitions akin to magic—Survival of pagan superstition among the laity—Augustine’s attack upon astrology—Fate and free will—Argument from twins—Defense of the astrologers—Elections—Are animals and plants under the stars?—Failure to disprove the control of nature by the stars—Natural divination and prophetic visions—The star at Christ’s birth—Nature of the stars—Orosius on the Priscillianists and Origenists—Augustine’s letter—Attitude toward astronomy—Perfect numbers. [Sidenote: Date and influence of Augustine.] The utterances of Augustine concerning magic and astrology have been reserved for separate treatment in this chapter, partly because of his late date, 354 to 430 A. D., partly because of the voluminousness of his writings, but especially because of his approach to and influence upon the thought of the middle ages. It is, moreover, in his epoch-making book, _The City of God_, which better than any other single event marks, or at least sums up, the transition from classical to medieval civilization, from the life of the ancient city to that of the medieval church, that he descants with especial fulness upon magic, demons, and astrology, although he often also refers to these themes in his other treatises, which we shall cite as well. I separate the words, magic and astrology, here because Augustine, like most of the fathers, does so. Of Augustine’s discussion of the Biblical account of creation in his _Confessions_ and _De Genesi ad litteram_ I shall not treat, having already presented Basil’s _Hexaemeron_ as an example of this type of work and of the Christian attitude toward natural science.[2159] But later in treating of medieval writers on nature I may have occasion to point out certain passages in which they may have been influenced by Augustine. [Sidenote: Christianity and magic.] Even though writing in the fifth century Augustine still finds it necessary to defend Christ against those who imagine that He has converted peoples to Himself by means of the magic art.[2160] And he tells us of books of magic which are ascribed to Christ Himself or to the apostles Peter and Paul.[2161] In reply to such charges or assertions he insists that Christians have nothing to do with magic, and that their miracles “were wrought by simple confidence and devout faith, not by incantations and spells compounded by an art of depraved curiosity.”[2162] And he brings the counter-charge against Roman religion that King Numa, its founder, learned its secrets and sacred rites by means of hydromancy or necromancy.[2163] He admits, however, that condemnation of magic and legislation against it had begun before Christianity.[2164] [Sidenote: Magic and theurgy censured as well as _Goetia_.] Augustine uniformly speaks of magic with censure and several times adverts to “the crimes of magicians.”[2165] He speaks, however, of _goetia_ or sorcery as “a more detestable name” than _magia_ and of “theurgy” as “an honorable name.” He also states that some persons draw a distinction between the _malefici_ or sorcerers or practitioners of _goetia_, whom they call truly guilty of illicit arts and deserving of condemnation, and those who practice theurgy, whom they call praiseworthy. Porphyry, for instance, had stated that theurgy was useful to purge the soul and prepare it to receive spirits and to see God. Augustine, however, holds that in other passages Porphyry condemned theurgy, and in any case he himself refuses to sanction it.[2166] He stoutly denies that “souls are purged and reconciled to God through sacrilegious likenesses and impious curiosity and magic consecrations.”[2167] Very possibly Augustine would have classed as improper theurgy some of the use of powerful names described by Origen. [Sidenote: Magic due to demons.] At any rate Augustine declares that theurgists and sorcerers alike “are entangled in the deceitful rites of demons who may masquerade under the names of angels.”[2168] For it is to demons that Augustine, like most of our Christian writers, attributes both the origin and the success of magic. The demons are enticed by men to work marvels, not by offerings of food, as if they were animals, but by symbols which conform to the individual taste of each as a spirit, namely, various stones, plants, trees, animals, incantations, and ceremonies,[2169]—a good brief summary of the materials and methods of magic. Augustine believes that the spirits had first to instruct men what rites to perform and by what names to call them in order to summon them. [Sidenote: Marvels wrought by magic.] But when once the demons have revealed their secrets, henceforth the charms of the magic art have efficacy. Of the marvels worked by means of magic Augustine has little doubt; to deny them would indeed in his opinion be to deny the truth of the Scriptures, to whose accounts of Pharaoh’s magicians,[2170] the witch of Endor, and the Magi and the star, he adverts many times in his various works. If actors in the theater and performers in spectacles are able by art and exercise to display astounding alterations in the appearance of their earthly bodies, why may not the demons with their aerial bodies produce marvelous changes in elementary substances or by occult influence construct phantom images to delude human senses?[2171] Augustine even grants that the magicians are able to terrify the inferior spirits into obedience to their commands by adjuring them by the names of superior spirits, and thereby with divine permission “to exhibit to the eye of sense certain results which seem great and marvelous to men who through weakness of the flesh are incapable of beholding things eternal.” He does not regard this as inconsistent with the assertion of Jesus that Satan cannot cast out Satan, since while it may be that thus demons are expelled from sick bodies, the evil one thereby only the more surely takes possession of the soul.[2172] [Sidenote: Cannot be equalled by most Christians.] Augustine further grants that magicians, although stained with crime, can at present work miracles which most Christians and even most saints cannot perform. For this, however, he finds Scriptural precedent. Pharaoh’s magicians performed feats which none of the Children of Israel could equal except Moses who excelled them by divine aid. Augustine, like earlier fathers, usually fails to mention Aaron in this connection.[2173] This superiority of magicians to most Christians in working marvels Augustine believes is divinely ordained so that Christians may remain humble and practice works of justice rather than seek to perform miracles. Magicians seek their own glory; the saints strive only for the glory of God. And the more marvelous are the feats of magic, the more Christians should shun them; the greater the power of the demons, the closer Christians should cling to that Mediator who alone can raise men from the lowest depths.[2174] [Sidenote: Miracles of heretics.] Like Origen, Augustine further distinguishes the miracles wrought by heretics both from magic and from the miracles of true Christians. He holds that every soul in part controls itself and exercises as it were a private jurisdiction, in part is subject to the laws of the universe just as any citizen is amenable to public jurisdiction. Therefore magicians perform their marvels by private contracts with demons; good Christians perform theirs by public justice; bad Christians perform theirs by the appearance or signs of public justice.[2175] This view would seem to indicate that God, like the demons, regards the signs alone and not the character and purpose of the performer, so that Christian miracles, if they can be duplicated by heretics, would appear to be largely a matter of procedure and art, like magic. [Sidenote: Theory of demons.] For his theory of demons and their characteristics Augustine seems largely indebted to Apuleius, whom he cites in several chapters of the eighth and ninth books of _The City of God_. In his separate treatise, _The Divination of Demons_,[2176] he explains their ability to predict the future and to perform marvels by the keenness of their sense, their rapidity of movement, their long experience of nature and life, and the subtlety of their aerial bodies. This last quality enables them to penetrate human bodies or affect the thoughts of men without men being aware of their presence. Augustine, however, of course does not believe that the world of nature is completely under the control of the demons. God alone created it and He still governs it, and the demons are able to do only as much as He permits.[2177] [Sidenote: Limitations to the power of magic.] There were, for example, some things which Pharaoh’s magicians could not do and in which Moses clearly excelled them. They were able to change their rods into snakes but his snake devoured theirs. How the magicians got their rods back, if at all, neither Augustine nor the Book of Exodus informs us. But whether with or without their magic wands, they were still able to duplicate one or two of the plagues sent upon Egypt. Augustine explains that neither they nor the demons who helped them really created snakes and frogs, but that there are certain seeds of life hidden away in the elemental bodies of this world of which they made use. But their magic failed them when it came to the reproduction of minute insects.[2178] Augustine furthermore has some hesitation about accepting the stories of magic transformations of men into animals, which he represents as current in his own day as well as in times past, so that certain female inn-keepers in Italy are said to transform travelers into beasts of burden by a magic potion administered in the cheese, just as Circe transformed the companions of Ulysses and as Apuleius says happened to himself in the book that he wrote under the title, _The Golden Ass_. These stories, in Augustine’s opinion, “are either false or such uncommon occurrences that they are justly discredited.”[2179] He does not believe that demons can truly transform the human body into the limbs and lineaments of beasts, but the strange personal experiences of reliable persons have convinced him that men are deceived by dreams, hallucinations, and fantastic images. [Sidenote: Its fantastic character.] Thus, as we have already seen over and over again, the fantastic and deceptive character of magic is dimly realized. Usually, however, when Augustine represents “the powers of the air” as deceiving men by magic, the deceit consists merely in the magicians’ imagining that they are working the marvels which are really performed by demons, or in men being lured into subjection to Satan and to their ultimate and eternal damnation through the attractions of the magic art.[2180] [Sidenote: Samuel and the witch of Endor.] Augustine twice responded to questions concerning the witch of Endor’s apparent invocation of the spirit of Samuel, repeating in his _De octo Dulcitii quaestionibus_[2181] what he had already said in _De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum_.[2182] In certain respects Augustine’s treatment of the problem differs from those which we have previously examined. What, he asks, if the impure spirit which possessed the _pythonissa_ was able to raise the very soul of Samuel from the dead? Is it not much more strange that Satan was allowed to converse personally with God concerning the tempting of Job, and to raise the very Christ aloft upon a pinnacle of the temple? Why then may not the soul of Samuel have appeared to Saul, not unwillingly and coerced by magic power but voluntarily under some hidden divine dispensation? Augustine, however, also thinks it possible that the soul of Samuel did not appear but was impersonated by some phantasm and imaginary illusion made by diabolical machinations. He can see no deceit in the Scripture’s calling such a phantom Samuel, since we are accustomed to call paintings, statues, and images seen in dreams by the names of the actual persons whom they represent. Nor does it trouble him that the spirit of Samuel or pretended spirit predicted truly to Saul, for demons have a limited power of that sort. Thus they recognized Christ when the Jews knew Him not, and the damsel possessed of a spirit of divination in _The Acts_ testified to Paul’s divine mission. Augustine leaves, however, as beyond the limits of his time and strength the further problem whether the human soul after death can be so evoked by magic incantations that it is not only seen but recognized by the living. In his answer to Dulcitius he further calls attention to the passage in _Ecclesiasticus_ (XLVI, 23) where Samuel is praised as prophesying from the dead. And if this passage be rejected because the book is not in the Hebrew canon, what shall we say of Moses who appeared to the living long after his death? [Sidenote: Natural marvels.] Augustine had some acquaintance with ancient natural science and in one passage rehearses a number of natural marvels which are found in the pages of Pliny and Solinus in order to show pagans their inconsistency in accepting such wonders and yet remaining incredulous in regard to analogous phenomena mentioned in the Bible. So Augustine rehearses the strange properties of the magnet; asserts that adamant can be broken neither by steel nor fire but only by application of the blood of a goat; tells of Cappadocian mares who conceive from the wind; and hails the ability of the salamander to live in the midst of flames as a token that the bodies of sinners can subsist in hell fire. Augustine also admits “the virtue of stones and other objects and the craft of men who employ these in marvelous ways.”[2183] He denies, however, that the Marsi who charm snakes by their incantations are really understood by the serpents. There is some diabolical force behind their magic, as when Satan spoke to Eve through the serpent.[2184] [Sidenote: Relation between magic and science.] Once at least, however, Augustine associates science and magic. In his _Confessions_, after speaking of sensual pleasure he also censures “the vain and curious desire of investigation” through the senses, which is “palliated under the name of knowledge and science.” This is apt to lead one not only into scrutinizing secrets of nature which are beyond one and which it does one no good to know and which men want to know just for the sake of knowledge, but also “into searching through magic arts into the confines of perverse science.”[2185] [Sidenote: Superstitions akin to magic.] Of this dangerous borderland between magic and science Augustine has more to say in some chapters of his _Christian Doctrine_.[2186] After mentioning as prime instances of human superstition idolatry, other false religions, and the magic arts, he next lists the books of soothsayers (_aruspices_) and augurs as of the same class, “though seemingly a more permissible vanity.” In his _Confessions_,[2187] however, he tells of a soothsayer who offered not only to consult the future for him, but to insure him success in a poetical contest in which he was to engage in the theater. The incident is a good illustration of the fact that prediction of the future and attempting to influence events go naturally together, and that arts of divination cannot be separated either in theory or practice from magic arts. In the _Christian Doctrine_ Augustine is inclined further to put in the same class all use of invocations, incantations, and characters, which he regards as signs implying pacts with evil spirits, and the use of which in working cures he asserts is condemned by the medical profession. He is also suspicious of ligatures and suspensions, and states that it is one thing to say, “If you drink the juice of this herb, your stomach will not ache,” and is another thing to say, “If you suspend this herb from the neck, your stomach will not ache. For in one case a healing application is worthy of approval, in the other a superstitious signification is to be censured.” Augustine recognizes, however, that such ligatures and suspensions are called “by the milder name of natural remedies (_physica_)”; and if they are applied without incantations or characters, possibly they may heal the body naturally by mere attachment, in which case it is lawful to employ them. But they may involve some signal to demons, in which case the more efficacious they are, the more a Christian should avoid them. [Sidenote: Survival of pagan superstition among the laity.] The same attitude toward superstitious medicine is shown in a sermon attributed to Augustine but probably spurious.[2188] Here a tempter is represented as coming to the sick man and saying, “If you had only employed that enchanter, you would be well now; if you would attach these characters to your body, you could recover your health.” Or another comes and says, “Send your girdle to that diviner; he will measure and scrutinize it and tell you what to do and whether you can recover.” Or a third visitor may recommend someone who is skilled in fumigation. The preacher warns his hearers not to succumb to such advice or they will be sacrificing to the devil; whereas if they refuse such treatment and die, it will be a glorious martyr’s death. The preacher, however, is not over-sanguine that his advice will be heeded, as he has often before admonished his hearers against pagan superstitions, and yet reports keep coming to him that some are continuing such practices. He therefore “warns them again and again” to forsake all diviners, _aruspices_, enchanters, phylacteries, augury, and observance of days, or they will lose all benefit of the sacrament of baptism and will be eternally damned unless they perform a vast amount of penance. The observance of days other than the Lord’s Day is here condemned on the ground that God made the other six days without distinction. In another supposititious sermon[2189] the practice of diligently observing on which day of the week to set out on a journey is censured as equivalent to worshiping the planets, or rather the pagan gods whose names they bear and who are said here to have originally been bad men and women who lived at the time that the Children of Israel were in Egypt. The preacher is even opposed to naming the days of the week after such persons or planets and exhorts his hearers to speak simply of the first day, second day, and so on. [Sidenote: Augustine’s attack upon astrology.] Nor will Augustine, to return to his remarks in the _Christian Doctrine_,[2190] exempt “from this genus of pernicious superstition those who are called _genethliaci_ from their consideration of natal days and now are also popularly termed _mathematici_.” He holds that they enslave human free will by predicting a man’s character and life from the stars, and that their art is a presumptuous and fallacious human invention, and that if their predictions come true, this is due either to chance or to demons who wish to confirm mankind in its error.[2191] In his youth, when a follower of the Manichean sect, Augustine had been a believer in astrology and thereby “sacrificed himself to demons” at the same time that, owing to his Manichean scruples against animal sacrifice, he refused to employ a _haruspex_.[2192] Perhaps on this account he felt the more bound to warn his readers against astrology in his old age. He often attacks the casters of horoscopes in his works and especially in the opening chapters of the fifth book of _The City of God_, on which we may center our attention as being a rather more elaborate discussion than the other passages and including almost all the arguments which he advances elsewhere. These arguments are not original with him, but his presentation of them was perhaps better known in the middle ages than any other.[2193] [Sidenote: Fate and free will.] The objection to astrology as fatalistic does not come with the best grace from Augustine, the great advocate of divine prescience and of predestination, and in his discussion in _The City of God_ he is forced to recognize this fact. He holds that the world is not governed by chance or by fate, a word which for most men means the force of the constellations, but by divine providence. He starts to accuse the astrologers of attributing to the spotless stars, or to the God whose orders the stars obediently execute, the causing of human sin and evil; but then recognizes that the astrologers will answer that the stars simply signify and in no way cause evil, just as God foresees but does not compel human sinfulness. [Sidenote: Argument from twins.] Thus thwarted in his attempt to show that the astrologers enslave the human will, although in other passages he still gives us to understand that they do,[2194] Augustine adopts another line of argument, that from twins, an old favorite, which he twists first one way and then another, proposing to the astrologers a series of dilemmas as he finds them likely to escape from each preceding one. He seems to have been much impressed by the thought that at the same instant and hence with the same horoscope persons were born whose subsequent lives and characters were different. He brings forward Esau and Jacob as examples, and states that he himself has known of twins of dissimilar sex and life. Moreover, he tells us in his _Confessions_ that he was finally induced to abandon his study of the books of the astrologers, from which the arguments of “Vindicianus, a keen old man, and of Nebridius, a youth of remarkable intellect,” had failed to win him, by hearing from another youth that his father, a man of wealth and rank, had been born at precisely the same moment as a certain wretched slave on the estate.[2195] [Sidenote: Defense of the astrologers.] But the astrologers reply that even twins are not born at precisely the same instant and do not have the same horoscope, but are born under different constellations, so rapidly do the heavens revolve, as the astrologer Nigidius Figulus neatly illustrated by striking a rapidly revolving potter’s wheel two successive blows as quickly as he could in what appeared to be the same spot. But when the wheel was stopped and examined, the two marks were found to be far apart. Augustine’s counter argument is that if astrologers must take into account such small intervals of time, their observations and predictions can never attain sufficient accuracy to insure correct prediction; and that if so brief an instant of time is sufficient to alter the horoscope totally, then twins should not be as much alike as they are nor have as much in common as they do,—for instance, falling ill and recovering simultaneously. To this the astrologers are likely to respond that twins are alike because conceived at the same instant, but somewhat dissimilar in their life because of the difference in their times of birth. Augustine retorts that if two persons conceived simultaneously in the same womb may be born at different times and have different fates after birth, he sees no reason why persons who are born of different mothers at the same instant with the same horoscope may not die at different dates and lead different lives. But he does not recognize that very likely the astrologers would agree with him in this, since they often held that the influence of the stars was received variously by matter. He also asks why a certain sage is said to have selected a certain hour for intercourse with his wife in order to beget a marvelous son—possibly an inaccurate allusion to the story of Nectanebus[2196]—unless the hour of conception controls the hour of birth, and consequently twins conceived together must have the same horoscope. He also objects that if twins fall sick at the same time because of their simultaneous conception, they should not be of opposite sex as sometimes happens. [Sidenote: Elections.] With this Augustine turns from the case of twins to urge the inconsistency of the astrological doctrine of elections, suggested by the story of the sage who chose the favorable moment for intercourse with his wife. He holds that this practice of choosing favorable times is inconsistent with the belief in nativities which are supposed to have determined and predicted the individual’s fate already. He also inquires why men choose certain days for setting out trees and shrubs or breeding animals, if men alone are subject to the constellations. [Sidenote: Are animals and plants under the stars] This last clause indicates how exclusively Augustine’s attacks are directed against the prediction of man’s life from the stars, and how little he has to say regarding the stars’ control of the world of nature in general. He now goes on to consider this latter possibility, but interprets it too in the narrow sense of horoscope-casting, and as implying that every herb and beast must have its fate absolutely determined by the constellations at its moment of birth. This appears, however, to have been a widespread belief then, since he tells us that men are accustomed to test the skill of astrologers by submitting to them the horoscopes of dumb animals, and that the best astrologers are able not only to recognize that the reported constellations mark the birth of a beast rather than that of a human being, but also to state whether it was a horse, cow, dog, or sheep. Nevertheless, Augustine feels that he has reduced the art of casting horoscopes to an absurdity, as he feels sure that beasts and plants which are so numerous must frequently be born at precisely the same instant as human beings. Furthermore, it is plain that crops which are sown and ripen simultaneously meet with very diverse fates in the end. Augustine thinks that by this argument he will force the astrologers to say that men alone are subject to the stars, and then he will triumphantly ask how this can be, when God has endowed man alone of all creatures with free will. Having thus argued more or less in a circle, Augustine regains the point from which he had started, or rather, retreated. [Sidenote: Failure to disprove the control of nature by the stars.] Augustine cannot then be said to have advanced any telling arguments against some sort of control of inferior nature by the motions and influence of the heavenly bodies. He leaves the fundamental hypothesis of astrology unrebutted. His attention is concentrated upon genethlialogy, the superstition that the time and place of birth and nothing else determine with mathematical certainty and mechanical rigidity the entirety of one’s life. This seems nevertheless to have been a superstition which was very much alive in his time, which he felt he must take pains repeatedly to refute, and to which he himself had once been in bondage. But he could not have studied the books of the astrologers very deeply, as he ascribes views to them which many of them did not hold. Also he seems never to have read the _Tetrabiblos_ of Ptolemy. His attack upon and criticism of astrology was therefore narrow, partial, and inadequate, and did not prevent medieval men from devoting themselves to that subject, although they might cite his objections against ascribing to the constellations an influence subversive of human free will. But he cannot be said to have admitted the control of the stars over the world of nature. Apparently the most that he was willing to concede was that it was not absurd to say that the influence of the stars might produce changes in material things, as in the varying seasons of the year caused by the sun’s course and the alternating augmentation and diminution of tides and shell-fish due, as he supposed, to the moon’s phases. He concludes his discussion of the subject in _The City of God_ by saying that, all things considered, if the astrologers make many marvelously true predictions, they do so by the aid and inspiration of the demons and not by the art of noting and inspecting horoscopes, which has no sound basis. [Sidenote: Natural divination and prophetic visions.] In another work Augustine tells of some young men who, while traveling, as a boyish prank pretended to be astrologers and either by mere chance or by natural and innate power of divination hit upon the truth in the predictions which they supposed that they were inventing. In the same context he proceeds to discuss in a credulous way the possibility of marvelous prophetic visions, concerning which he tells one or two other tall tales from his personal experience. He is, however, doubtful how far the human soul itself possesses the power of divination, which he is inclined to attribute rather to spirits, good or bad. But owing to Satan’s ability in disguising himself as an angel of light it is often very difficult to tell to which sort of spirit to ascribe the vision in question.[2197] [Sidenote: The star at Christ’s birth.] In Augustine’s time there were those who held that Christ Himself had been “born under the decree of the stars,” because of the statement in the Gospel according to Matthew that the Magi had seen His star in the east. Of this matter Augustine treats in several of his works.[2198] He denies that this would be true even if other men were subject to the fatal influence of the stars, which he denies as usual on the ground of free will. He contends that the star was not one of the planets or constellations but a special creation, since it did not keep to a regular course or orbit, but came to where the child lay. But how did the Magi know that it was the star of Christ when they saw it in the east, unless by astrology? Augustine can only suggest that this was revealed to them by spirits, whether good or bad he does not know.[2199] Augustine further affirms that the star did not cause Christ to live a marvelous life, but Christ caused the star to make its marvelous appearance. “For, when born of a mother, He showed earth a new star in the sky, Who, when born of the Father, formed both heaven and earth.” And, “when He is born, new light is revealed in a star; when He dies, old light is veiled in the sun.” But these rhetorical flourishes and antitheses seem to attest rather than dispute the significance of celestial phenomena, so that Augustine cannot be said to have answered the astrological contention anent Christ’s birth very satisfactorily. [Sidenote: Nature of the stars.] The problem of the nature of the stars is one which Augustine prefers to leave unsolved, although it comes up several times in his writings.[2200] Whether they are simply lucid bodies without sense or intelligence, as some think; or have happy intellectual souls of their own, as Plato taught; whether they are to be classed with the Seats, Dominions, Principalities, and Powers of whom the apostle speaks; and whether they are ruled and animated by spirits: all these are questions which Augustine puts, but concerning whose answers he feels uncertain. His fullest discussion of the matter is in a letter against the Priscillianists to which we now come. [Sidenote: Orosius on the Priscillianists and Origenists.] An interchange of letters between Augustine and his Spanish disciple Orosius deals with the error of the Priscillianists and Origenists.[2201] Nothing is said to convict them of magic, which was, however, the charge on which Priscillian was put to death, but astrological tenets are ascribed to them. Orosius states that Priscillian taught that the soul was born of God and instructed by angels, but that it descended through certain circles of the heavens and was caught by evil principalities and thrust into different bodies; and that it remained subject to _Mathesis_ or the laws of astrology until Christ set it free by His passion on the cross. Like the astrologers, continues Orosius, Priscillian associated the signs of the zodiac with the different members of the human body, Aries and the head, Taurus and the neck, and so on;[2202] and he also taught that the names of the patriarchs of the twelve tribes were “members of the soul,” Reuben in the head, Judah in the breast, Levi in the heart, and so on. Orosius adds that the Origenists regard the sun, moon, and stars not as elemental luminaries but as rational powers; and we have seen that Origen himself did so. [Sidenote: Augustine’s letter.] Augustine in his reply states that we can see that the sun, moon, and stars are celestial bodies, but not that they are animated. He agrees firmly with Paul that there are Seats, Dominions, Principalities, and Powers in the heavens, “but I do not know what they are or what the difference is between them.” On the whole, Augustine is inclined to regard this state of ignorance as a blissful one. He is somewhat troubled by the verses in the Book of Job, “How shall man be just in the sight of God, or how shall one born of woman purify himself? If He commands the moon and it does not shine, and if the stars are not pure before Him, how much more is man rottenness and the son of man a worm?” From this passage the Priscillianists infer that the stars have a rational spirit and are not free from sin, yet are placed in the heaven because their fault is less than that of sinful mankind. Origen too had argued, “If the stars are living and rational beings, there will undoubtedly appear among them both an advance and a falling back. For the language of Job, ‘the stars are not clean in His sight,’ seems to me to convey some such idea.”[2203] Augustine evades this difficulty by questioning whether this passage is to be received as of divine authority, since it is uttered by one of Job’s comforters and not by Job himself, of whom alone it is said that he had not sinned with his lips against God. [Sidenote: Attitude towards astronomy.] So set is Augustine against astrology that he even holds that Christians may well leave the subject of astronomy alone, “because it is related to the most pernicious error of those who utter a fatuous fatalism,” although he recognizes that there is nothing superstitious in predicting the future positions of the stars themselves from knowledge of their past movements. But except that to know the course of the moon is useful in determining the date of Easter, knowledge of the stars is of little or no help in interpreting the divine Scriptures.[2204] In another passage Augustine is somewhat perturbed by the assertion of astronomers that there are many stars equal to or greater than the sun in size, but which seem smaller because they are farther off,—an assertion which seems to conflict with the statement of Genesis that in creating the sun and moon “God made two great lights.” Augustine, however, does not stop to contest the point at length but leaves it with the excuse that Christians have many better and more serious matters to occupy their time than such subtle investigations concerning the relative magnitude of the stars and the intervals of space between them.[2205] [Sidenote: Perfect numbers.] Augustine himself, however, was not above occupying his readers’ time with discussion of the occult significance of numbers, towards belief in which he shows himself inclined. Six was a perfect number in his estimation, since God had created the world in six days, although He might have taken less or more time; and the Psalmist made no idle remark in saying that the Deity had ordered all things according to measure, number, and weight. Also six is the first number which can be obtained from adding together its factors: one, two, and three. Augustine was going on to say that seven was also a perfect number, when he checked himself lest he digress at too great length and seem “too eager to display his smattering of science.” Hence he merely added that one indication of seven’s perfection was its composition of the first complete odd number, three, and the first complete even number, four.[2206] It is therefore not surprising to find ascribed to Augustine a sermon on the correspondence between the ten plagues of Egypt and the ten commandments which opens by remarking that it is not without cause that the number of precepts in God’s law is the same as the number of plagues with which Egypt was afflicted.[2207]