The Psychology of a Saint
St. Augustine. By Rebecca West. (Peter Davies. 55.) THE character and career of St. Augustine have attracted writers of many differing schools of thought. He is, indeed, a subject offering rich opportunities to the novelist, the psychologist, the philosopher, as well as to the student of religion. His strangely compounded and many-sided perso- nality, his exuberant if incomplete self-revelations give each of these classes opportunity to produce a full-length and super- ficially convincing portrait whilst omitting all those elements which they cannot accommodate or do not understand. Miss Rebecca West's brilliant and provocative sketch emphasizes, as perhaps we might expect, aspects of Augustine which the more respectful biographer hardly perceives ; and is for this reason valuable to those who wish to penetrate the draperies of tradition and catch a glimpse of the real man. But, taken alone, it no more reveals that real man to us than a clinical report reveals the soul of the patient to whom it belongs.
Miss West, for whom St. Augustine is a spoilt artist, gifted with imaginative genius and severely hampered by the Oedipus complex, lays bare his psychology with precision and wit ; but leaves on one side the spirituality by which that difficult psychology was transformed. No one can pretend that the natural Augustine was a very nice man, even though his eagerness, freshness and vitality—the peculiar glamour of his personality—made him intensely attractive to his friends. We are driven to a reluctant agreement that, while he " was a saint and a genius and a most lovable child of earth, he was often not a gentleman," more especially when engaged in the dangerous business of theological controversy. But the naturally nice do not, as a rule, provide the best raw material for sanctity. It is the desperately felt need of holiness which supports those sufferings that are the price of holiness. 0 felie culpa! The objectionable elements in Augustine's natural make-up are not the least valuable part of his equip- ment when seen in the other-worldly light.
It is not Miss West's fault if we fail to realize what these elements were ; or what a very mixed business it was to be a Christian in the fourth century. She opens with a brilliant historical survey, pointing out—not perhaps without a malicious glance at our present distress—the unhappy charac- teristics of the age. " Prices soared, and at the same time cur- rency fell ; and a mob of tax-collectors who were licensed brigands skinned the remnants of the moneyed classes." Thus Augustine spent his youth in an atmosphere of fmancial inse- curity ; between an uncongenial father harassed by economic troubles and a devoted but possessive mother who did not want him to grow up. The disconcerting inability to succeed at his job, which is so common an attribute .of undeveloped genius, added to the tension of his life. All therefore con, duced to feed his craving for a Reality which should rescue him from the confusions of use and wont." Readers of the Confessions know the story of his successive attempts to satisfy this craving with spiritual food as inadequate to his need as " vegetarianism to a lion " ; and the crisis in which his problem was at last resolved. Miss West's account is full of life and colour. Nevertheless it is difficult to feel that HAI superb narrative is improved by being read through Freudian spectacles ; or that it is reasonable to say of Augustine that after the death of Monica there was for him " nothing in the universe save his mother and her son." The truth surely is that there never was more than one thing in the universe for him ; and he never knew peace until he accepted the
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