City of God by Saint Augustine (426 AD)
TL;DR: We are not perfect, but be good anyway.
Philosophy Books are always a slog to read. Mixing Religion and Philosophy, It becomes a grind.
Augustine may have originally wrote this as a counterpoint to Pagans calling Christianity caused the downfall of Rome citing various points against Pagan Religion and Pagan Philosophy. And then expounding on the past, present and future states of two cities: Of Man, and of God.
In comparison of the two cities: the City of Man, and the City of God. The City of God is a heavenly future, a paradise where the good, justice and virtue would reign; a republic centered in Christ. The City of Man is a flawed society where people live by the flesh, founded on the fratricide of Abel by Cain.
Another point Augustine raises is that of the "Original Sin", that we're all heirs of the sin of Adam and Eve. Now this could go into a lengthy debate depending on where a person's belief stands. In translation, we're all flawed. None of us are perfect.
Perhaps in the middle of this is that, Man has a tendency to believe that he is the center of the universe. That he could create the perfect city. That he can be the "perfect man". But such is not the case, people are always going to have disagreements. Perfection cannot be reached. We're all flawed.
(This seems so pessimistic) and what do we do then? Well, here's a start,
Know that we're not perfect, be kind to others.
We're not the center of the universe, suspend your ego.
We're flawed, but what we do besides that is entirely on us.
On Adversity
For, in the same fire, gold gleams and straw smokes;under the same flail the stalk is crushed and the grain threshed;
there is another reason, well known to Job, why even good men must drink the bitter cup of temporal adversity: in order that the human spirit may test its mettle and come to know whether it loves God with the virtue of religion and for His own sake.
Depraved by prosperity and unchastened by adversity, you desire, in your security, not the peace of the State but liberty for license.
The City of God
Glorious beyond compare is the heavenly city. There, victory is truth, dignity is holiness, peace is happiness, life is eternity.
On Man
A good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but, what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.
Happiness
Happiness is not a goddess, but a gift of God.
God is not the soul of all things but the maker of all souls; by His light alone the soul can be happy, if it is not ungrateful for His grace.
Introspection
An intention looking to the future must be connected with a memory looking to the past.
Philosophy
The pursuit of wisdom follows two avenues-action and contemplation. [...] The former deals with the conduct of life, that is to say, with the cultivation of morals. Contemplative philosophy considers natural causality ad truth as such.
Phantasiae
Stoic Theory [...], certain impressions made on the mind are invonluntary and beyond control, and that when these impressions are provoked by alarming and formidable external causes, even a philosopher is bound to yield momentarily to movement of either fear or depression. Thus such emotions may seem to anticipate the proper function of intellect and reason, yet no judgment is made concerning the evil of the exterior cause nor is any approval or consent given to the emotions.
Mercy
Of all your virtues none is more admirable and pleasing than your mercy.
God
Of all visible things, the universe is the greatest; of all invisible realities, the greatest is God.
Reason and Passion
Reason seeks for what seems true in the light of the intellect, while passion craves for what seems pleasant to the senses.
Learning
Thus does Divine Providence teach us not to be foolish in finding fault with things but, rather, to be diligent in finding out their usefulness or, if our mind and will should fail us in the search, then to believe that there is some hidden use still to be discovered, as in so many other cases, only with great difficulty. This effort needed to discover hidden usefulness either helps our humility or hits our pride.
The Holy Trinity
This same Trinity is also the source, the light, the joy of the Holy City 'which is above' with the holy angels. [...] It is; it knows; it loves. Its life is in the eternity of God; its light is in the truth of God; its joy is in the goodness of God.
God
Plato: God is the sole Author of all being, the Giver of Intelligence, and the Inspirer of that love which makes possible a life that is both good and happy.
Mastery
There are three requisites if an artists wants to produce something: natural endowment, education and practice. The Criterion of the first is genius; of the second: knowledge; of the third, the thing produced.
Things judged for our comfort
We should pay no attention to those who praise fire for its light but condemn its heat-on the principle that a thing should be judged not by its nature, but by our comfort or inconvenience. They like to see it, but hate to be burnt. What they forget is that the same light which they like is injurious and unsuitable for weak eyes, and that the heat which they hate is, for some animals, the proper condition for a healthy life.
The Church
Thus, the Garden is the Church itself, as we can see from the Canticle of Canticles; the four rivers are the four Gospels; the fruit-bearing trees are the saints, as the fruits are their works; and the tree of life is, of course, the Saint of saints, Christ; and the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the free choice of our own will.
The Two Cities
Two kinds of society, [...] we have rightly called the two cities. One city is that of men who live according to the flesh. The other is men who live according to the spirit.
Sin
For, when we choose to sin, what we want is to get some good or get rid of something bad. The lie is in this, that what is done for our good ends in something bad, or what is done to make things better end by making them worse.
Soul
It is not only because of the flesh that the soul is moved by desires and fears, by joy and sorrow, but that it can also be agitated by these same emotions welling up within the soul itself.
Desire, Fear, Sadness
The consent of the will in the search for what we want is called what we desire. So, too, fear is aversion from what we do not wish to happen, as sadness is disagreement of the will with something that happened against our will.
Pride
Pride is the beginning of all sin. And what is pride but an appetite for inordinate exaltation?
Humility and Pride
There is, then, a kind of lowliness which in some wonderful way causes the heart to be lifted up, and there is a kind of loftiness which makes the heart sink lower.
The Two Cities
The humble City is the society of the holy men and good angels; the proud city is the society of the wicked men and evil angels. The one City began with the love of God; the other had its beginnings in the love of self.
The city of man seeks the praise of men, whereas the height of glory for the other is to hear God in the witness of conscience.
Goodness
Unlike material possessions, goodness is not diminished when it is shared, either momentarily or permanently, with others, but expands and, in fact, the more heartily each of the lovers of goodness enjoys the possession the more does goodness grow.
Choice
Learn not to expect too much from the freedom of the power of choice, but should trust in the 'hope to call upon the name of the Lord God'.
Common Nature
The simple truth is that the bond of common nature makes all human beings one.
Happiness
I left the philosophers alone for a while. Now I come back to them. These men, in all their laborious investigations, seem to have had one supreme and common objective: to discover what manner of living is best suited to laying hold upon happiness.
Adversity and Prosperity
Divine Providence sees to it that she has both some solace of prosperity that she may not be broken by adversity and some testing of adversity that she may not be weakened by prosperity.
Supreme Good and Evil
In regard to what is supremely good and supremely evil, philosophers have taken many different stands-all striving with the highest earnestness to determine what it is that makes men happy. By definition, our supreme end is that good which is sought for its own sake, and on account of which all other goods are sought. [...] The ultimate evil is not one in which evil comes to an end, but the one in which evil reaches the very height of harm.
She holds eternal life is the supreme good and eternal death the supreme evil, and that we should live rightly in order to obtain the one and avoid the other.
Goals
Varro: four ends which men naturally pursue. [...] These ends are: first, pleasure aroused by the pleasant stirring of our bodily senses; second, calm, in the sense of the absence of all bodily vexation; third, that combination of pleasure and serenity which Epicurus called, in a single word, pleasure; fourth, the primary demands of nature which include, besides pleasure and calm, such needs of our body as wholeness, health, security, and such needs of our soul as man's innate spiritual powers, whether great or small.
Man's Nature
In man's nature he finds two elements, body and soul.
Peace
The peace, then, of the body lies in the ordered equilibrium of all its parts; the peace of the irrational soul, in the balanced adjustment of its appetites; the peace of the reasoning soul, in the harmonious correspondence of conduct and conviction;the peace of body and soul taken together, in the well-ordered life and health of the living whole. Peace between a mortal man and his Maker consists in ordered obedience, guided by faith, under God's eternal law; peace between man and man consists in regulated fellowship. The peace of a home lies in the ordered harmony of authority and obedience between members of a family living together. The peace of the political community is an ordered harmony of authority and obedience between citizens. The peace of the heavenly City lies in a perfectly ordered and harmonious communication of those who find their joy in God and in one another in God. Peace, in is final sense, is the calm that comes of order. Order is an arrangement of like and unlike things whereby each of them is disposed in its proper place.
Love God and one another
God teaches him two chief commandments, the love of God and the love of neighbor. [...] Right order here means, first, that he harm no one, and second, that he help whoever he can. [...] they do not command out of lust to domineer, but out of a sense of duty-not out of pride like princes but out of solicitude like parents.
Indifference to Fortune
It is still good for our souls to lean to attach no importance to the good or ill fortune which we see visited without distinction upon the good and the bad.
Peace of God
St. Paul assures us, 'the peace of God... surpasses all understanding.
Will
It is true that, with Adam's sin, we lost our right to grace and glory, but, with our right, we did not lose our longing to be happy. [...] The conclusion is that, in the everlasting City, there will remain in each and all of us an inalienable freedom of the will, emancipating us from every evil and filling us with every good, rejoicing in the inexhaustible beatitude of everlasting happiness, unclouded by the memory of any sin or of sanction suffered, yet with no forgetfulness of our redemption nor any loss of gratitude for our Redeemer.
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