About Life, Universe and Everything-III :Does life have any meaning?

Does life have any meaning?

“Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe,” said Slartibartfast, “there is a reason.”

Ford glanced sharply around. He clearly thought this was taking an optimistic view of things.

-Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Is there any meaning for human existence?

A Spinoza quote puts things in perspective:

“We are human. We suppose that all events lead up to man and are designed to sub serve his needs. But this is an anthropocentric delusion, like so much of our thinking.

The root of the greatest errors in philosophy lies in projecting our human purposes, criteria and preferences into the objective universe.”

Nietzsche also got it right.

He said: “The value (and meaning) of life cannot be assessed.” Not by any living person because he is an interested party.  

Hence the attempt by metaphysicians galore, to find order and an ultimate meaning to our existence is bound to fail, as they are all an ‘interested party’.

“The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?”- Pablo Picasso

But even Nietzsche’s ‘Amor Fati’- (i.e celebration of the moment, and accepting things as they    are, with no past and future also is) is an attempt to find some meaning for it all.

But it is in Man’ nature to try and find meaning to our existence.

Aristotle, for instance, believed in a final cause. That everything is guided in a certain direction from within.

He believed that there is purpose behind everything in nature. It rains so plants can grow; oranges and apple grow so that people can eat them.

Spinoza  believed that greatest good is the knowledge of union which mind has with the whole nature. Our Individual separateness is illusory; we are parts of the great stream of law and cause, parts of God. This is ditto Hindu philosophy.

He also said that there is no free will – necessities of survival determines instinct, instinct determines desire and desire determine thought and action.

Free will is compared to a stone’s thinking  as it falls through space, that it determines its own trajectory and selects the place and time of its fall.

Kant believed in a ‘universal moral law’. Basically saying ‘Do unto  others what you would do unto yourself.’

The moral law is absolute and unalterable, according to Kant.

Sartre, the existentialist, said “Man is condemned to be free.”

He saw freedom as a curse. Sartre said.” Man is condemned because he has not created himself-and is nevertheless free. Because having once been hurled into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

He believed that man must therefore create himself. He must create his own nature or “essence,” because it is not fixed in advance.

Bergson (1859–1941)had an undeniable logic for believing that ‘free will’ exists.   

He found it hard to believe that: “…every line of Shakespeare’s plays, and every suffering of his, soul; so that the somber rhetoric of Hamlet and Othello, of Macbeth and Lear, in every clause and every phrase, was written far off there in the distant skies and the distant eons, by the structure and content of that legendary cloud. What a draft upon credulity!”

“If determinists were right, and every act were the automatic and  mechanical resultant of pre-existent forces, motive would flow into action with lubricated ease. But on the contrary, choice is burdensome and effortful, it requires resolution, a lifting up the power of personality against the spiritual gravitation of impulse or habit or sloth, Choice is creation, and creation is labor.

What about Man himself? What is his true nature?

Schopenhauer (1788 –1860) has presented a not too pleasant but possibly a true picture of what human nature is.

Man was always thought as a rational ,conscious animal.

Schopenhauer says that under the conscious intellect, is a ‘will’ of imperious desire’.

The intellect is only a guide to the master-‘ the will’.

Will is ‘the strong blind man who carries on his shoulder the lame man who can see’.

What does the ‘Will’ make us do?

The primary instinct of man is his ‘Will to Reproduce’. We know that man can’t stop thinking about sex. There is a reason for it.

The will to reproduce is the means by which the ‘will’ can conquer death. Reproduction is the ultimate purpose of every organism.

Reproductive organs are the focus of will and form the opposite pole to the brain, which is the representative of knowledge.

Is there such a thing as love?

Not really. The ‘will to reproduce’ has  two parts:

One part is of course ‘Lust’.

The other part is the instinct of man to rear his children so that the ‘will’ is able to achieve immortality.

So love is essentially the ‘law of sexual attraction’  decided by mutual fitness to procreate. And the love that you feel for your children and near and dear ones is essentially aimed at perpetuation of the species.

Marriage is only for perpetuation of the species and not for pleasure of the individual. Nature does not care if the parents are ‘happy forever afterwards’, as long as reproduction is achieved.

Love is a deception practiced by nature; Marriage is attrition of love, and must be disillusioning.

The deception vanishes, once procreation is done – The individual discovers that he has been the dupe of the species.

“Life,” said Marvin dolefully, “loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.”

-Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

My take: Life, Universe and Everything

Let me try to make sense of what I have read so far.

First things first.                                                    

About Reality.

There is some merit in what Descartes, Locke, Kant etc said

That what we see of this world could possibly be only an apparent reality.

What the world is really like could be a matter of speculation. We see the world with the inherent limitations of our sense organs.

So you cannot dispute that.

But does it matter? Not really, I think.

This world as we see it, is our reality. Hence that is all that matters. We need to find ways and means to come to terms with it. Period.

All talks of what the ‘Ultimate reality’ could really be like should be left for idle chat with your drinking  buddies.

About God?

Well, I believe in what Kant  said.

You cannot speculate in a rational manner on the existence of God. It is best left to matters of ‘Faith’.

Theories of Aristotle that  ‘God’ is the ‘Prime Mover’, or Spinoza’s ‘God as ‘substance’, ‘the structure that holds the world together’  or Berkeley’s ‘the world existing only in the mind of God’ (akin to Advaita’s ‘Maya’ or illusion) etc are just that: Theories.

There’s no way of knowing what the truth is. All talk of God are pure speculation.

God of all religions is a matter of ‘Faith’ alone and should not be subject to theological nitpicking.

What about human existence?

“You know,” said Arthur thoughtfully, “all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I’ve had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going in the world, something big, even sinister, and no would tell me what it was.”

            “No,” said the old man, “that’s just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in Universe has that.”

            “Everyone?” said Arthur. “Well, if everyone has that perhaps it means something! Perhaps somewhere outside the Universe we know ….”

            “Maybe. Who cares?” said Slartibartfast before Arthur got too excited. “Perhaps I’m old and tired,” he continued, “but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.

Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Firstly, Man is not the centre of the Universe.

That the world should make any ‘sense’ and that events should lead to some kind of ‘ultimate reality’ is as Spinoza speculated, ‘an anthropocentric delusion’.

So is there any scope of any ‘limited’ meaning to human existence?

Well, what’s  stopping us from speculating?

Let’s start with some facts we know:

Every species on earth has one known common instinct: ‘Instinct for survival’. No dispute there.

Every living being would like to live forever, be immortal.

That’s not possible. So what’s the next best thing?

Immortality for the species? Well, why not?

How does one ensure immortality for the species? By reproduction, of course.

This would explain a lot, with respect to the behavioral pattern of all species on Earth, be it Plants, Animals and finally Humans.

Consider the facts.

The Plant Kingdom.

There’s not much complication here. Of course every Individual plant fights for its survival. And spreads its seeds to ensure immortality of its species.

The Animal Kingdom.

Animals are slightly more complicated than Plants. They can move, right? So their degree of intelligence will be more than plants.

But the primary instinct is still ‘the instinct for survival’. So they copulate and reproduce.

There are two aspects of Animals that are different from plants though.

One, the Animals takes care of their young.

Two, Animals tend to form ‘groups’, such as a ‘pack of wolves’ or ‘pride of lions’ etc.

But ,both ends are towards one aim: Propagation of  their species.

Animals need to care for their young, if their offspring   have to survive.

What about animal species apart from birds and mammals who do not care for their young like worms, squids, insects etc?

Well, they seem to ensure perpetuation of their species by laying more number of eggs, it seems.This will ensure that at least some will survive. Security in numbers.

And why do animals move in packs? Same thing- security in numbers.

What about Human Beings? They appear to be more complicated, of course.

But are they?

Firstly, similar to plants and animals, they have the same instinct for survival.

They copulate, reproduce and tend to their young. No complications there.

Why do we form societies? Simple answer is of course that it is same as animals- security in numbers.

But the wise Spinoza puts in nicely . I will quote him here:

“Fear of solitude is there in all men, as no one in solitude is strong enough to defend himself. Hence man tends towards social organization.”

“Men are not by nature meant for mutual forbearance of social order. Men are not born for citizenship, but must be made for it.”

So the immortal song by Pink Floyd:

“We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control” 

reverberates in our soul, because as Spinoza rightly said  “we are not meant for social forbearance”.

But we must simply lump it and be good members of society, because that is the only way we can survive as a species.

But that’s not all. Men are more complicated than Animals. In what sense?

An animal will eat, breed and sleep throughout its life, without a thought or ambition to do anything more.

Here Man is different. Eating, sleeping and breeding are not enough for man.

He wants more. He gets miserable and bored easily.

Why so? What’s the difference? Plants and animals have only one instinct, i.e ‘Instinct for survival’.

Man has also the same instinct- ‘Instinct for survival’. But he has one thing more, and this is what makes a man different.

He is a ‘Restless spirit’, born with ‘Strife within’.

You can never find ways and means to completely satisfy a man. He is born ‘restless’ and he will die ‘restless’, even if you give him the world and all the power and money.

He will still be bored or unhappy.

To paraphrase Schopenhauer:

“Pain is its basic stimulus and reality(of life), and pleasure is merely a negative cessation of pain”.

‘Restless’ or ‘miserable’. It’s your take. And that is the reality of human nature .

Buddha got it wrong: Desire is not the root cause of misery.

We are ‘miserable’ by nature, and hence we desire to get rid of the ‘misery’ or ‘restlessness’. 

That is human nature. And there is no ‘Nirvana’ or escaping being a ‘restless human’ till the day you die.

Because that is our nature. You can’t escape it.

There is no  ‘Happiness’ or ‘Sadness’ either. It is simply a human condition. Nature does not recognize ‘Happiness’ or ‘Sadness’. Only the ‘Restlessness in you, is the reality.

Nothing either good or bad,but thinking makes it so- Shakespeare

Religions which propagate 'eternal happiness' are talking of a state which is not ‘human’.

For one, it is not possible to be eternally happy (or sad for that matter). Secondly it is not desirable also.

It is not desirable because as Kant says: … (restlessness) is nature’s method of developing hidden capacities of life; Struggle is indispensible to accompaniment of progress.

Kant further says that if it were possible for men to be happy and content with what they have then:

“Men might have led an Arcadian shepherd life in complete harmony, contentment, and mutual love; but in that case all their talents would have forever remained hidden in their germ.”

“… Man wishes concord; but nature knows better what is good for his species; and she wills discord, in order that man may be impelled to a new exertion of his powers, and to the further development of his natural capacities.”

So this is the bad news:

Are you unhappy or bored? Well, fret not!  Because you are now one with nature! You are in sync with your soul!

And nature knows that you will do something , anything to get rid of this ‘restlessness’ or ‘misery’.

Maybe create beautiful music, make great works of art, build bridges, discover religion or give to charity…

Something , anything…As long as you get going and strive.

 “If ease of use were the only requirement, we would all be using tricycles.- Engelbert

And what about, when you are feeling ‘happy and blissful’?

Well, be rest assured that nature is now busy plotting to ruin your day. And get you back on grid. That is, to get you to being  ‘restless’ or ‘miserable’.

So the truth of human existence is:

‘Strife within’ is your true nature. Because that is the only secret of human progress.

You are born ‘restless’ and will die ‘restless’.

No religion can cure you, No money or power will quench your tempestuous soul.

And the day any religion or metaphysician is able to work out a ‘magic formula’ for eternal happiness, be rest assured:

That will be the end of human species as we know it. It will be decay and decadence.

So ‘Internal strife’ or ‘Restlessness’ is natural. Understand that  it is just nature’s way of asking you to move, to just do your thing.

Tendulkar, probably the greatest batsmen the world has known, mentioned about his ‘restlessness’ recently in an interview:

“…..Restlessness brings the best out of me, it’s a healthy sign. At the start of my career, when I used to toss and turn at night, I was fighting that feeling and wanting to go to sleep. Now I know that’s normal, so I’ll just get up and watch TV or something. I know it’s just my subconscious mind getting ready for a game. It’s about knowing yourself, and I know myself better now.

Tendulakar is wiser than we give him credit.

The more restless you are, the more successful you will be in life. Because the fire is within you.

So embrace your restlessness. It should not be a cause of misery anymore.

There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering. - Theodore Roosevelt

About Life, Universe and Everything-II:What about God? Does he exist?

What about God? Does he exist?

Man has always believed that he has an immortal ‘Soul’

Plato believed in it any case, as already mentioned.  The Soul is the seat of the intellect and it predates the human body that we assume in this life.

Plato had a nice theory to describe the restlessness we all feel:

He said the immortal soul, when it enters the body and awakens in this world, is struck by the imperfections of the ‘beings’ that he comes across. And has a vague recollection of the perfect state of all beings.

The soul then experiences a yearning or a ‘restlessness’ to return to its true state and move away from this shadowy world. The soul yearns to be free and returns to its perfect state.

Aristotle also believed in an immortal soul. He had a more complex definition for ‘Soul’.

But not as complex as his definition of God.

Aristotle’ God was not a  simple human God.

God was a being incorporeal, invisible, spaceless, sexless, passionless, changeless, perfect and eternal.

I will not even attempt to decipher what he means by that.

But there are certain things that God is not, as per Aristotle.

God is not the creator. The Universe of ‘matter’ is eternal.

Then what is he?

God is the ‘Prime mover’, the ‘source’/beginner of motion.

Not just a mechanical mover, but he is the total motive of all operations in the world.

God is the final cause of nature.

The divine cause and purpose of things.

He is pure energy.

But that’s not all. God is also a ‘self conscious spirit’

He has no desires, no will, no purpose;

He is activity so pure, he never acts.

He is absolutely perfect, therefore he cannot desire anything; hence does nothing.

His only occupation is to contemplate the essence of things; and he himself is the essence of all things; the form of all forms; his sole employment is the ‘contemplation of himself ’.

And what about the immortal soul of Aristotle?

He qualified the immortal soul as ‘pure thought’ undefiled by reality just as God is pure activity undefiled with action.

Another interesting view of God was by Plotinus(204–270 AD ).

He said that world is a span between two ‘poles’.

At one end is the divine light, which is God or what he calls as ‘the one’

At the other end is absolute darkness, which does not receive light from ‘the One’.

This ‘darkness’ has no existence. It is simply the absence of light.

The soul is illuminated by light from ‘the One’. While ‘matter’ i.e earth and stone, is darkness  that has no real existence

For Plotinus – Everything is one- for everything is God.

The Stoics(4^th century B.C), in their understanding of the world stated that:

“ The innermost essence of the world is harmony and order, both true and beautiful”- and they named it as ‘Cosmos’.

And this Cosmos is ‘Divine’. And we are all parts of this ‘Divine infinity’.

There is no death. Merely rites of passage.

When we leave the body , we merely merge with the divine Cosmos. And achieve salvation.

This ‘salvation’ promised by the Stoics was nothing personal. Because  when you achieve this form of immortality,  you lose your identity when you die.

We just become one with the Universe, and merge with the Cosmos.

In summary:

Cosmos is divine. We are parts of the Divinity. We achieve an impersonal Salvation when we leave our body.

This is where ‘Semitic’ religions gain ascendancy.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam promised a ‘Personal Salvation’.

One only had to follow the commandments laid down in their holy scriptures and a personal salvation was guaranteed.

There was no concept of an ‘Ultimate reality’ as in Oriental religions.

The period upto the 1500s are considered the dark ages. The world plunged into superstition, bigotry and religion was distorted by the powers that be, to keep society in a vice like grip.

The father of modern philosophy, Descartes, revived theological discussions.

Descartes derived that ‘God’ exists by his powers of ‘reason’.

The reasoning is slightly weird:

Descartes had proclaimed : ‘Cogito ergo sum’.

And hence had proved that ‘He was Real’ as he was a ‘thinking being’.

He further said that there was one more ‘thing’ that one could be certain of.

And that was that everyone had  an idea of a ‘perfect entity‘.

Descartes said that  if we have an idea of a  ‘perfect entity’, then it cannot  come from an ‘imperfect entity’.

Hence a ‘perfect entity’ exists. So there is God.

How’s that for logic?

Spinoza as already mentioned considered the ‘substance’ as the sub-strata of existence of this entire Universe.

And this ‘Substance’ was ‘Nature’ was ‘God’.

God is the inherent in all things.

All is in God; all lives and moves in God.

God is the casual chain or process, the underlying conditions of all things, the laws and structure of the world.

A bridge which has been built owes its existence to its design, its structure and laws of mathematics and mechanics.

This is what God is to the world. The world itself is sustained by its structure and its laws; it is upheld in the hand of God.

God is not human in any sense. If a triangle could speak, then it would say God is eminently triangular, A Circle would say that God is eminently circular and so on.

The ‘Will of God’ – is the sum of all causes and laws.

The ‘Intellect of God’ – is the sum of all mind. The mind of God is all mentality scattered over space and time, the diffused consciousness that animates the world.

Spinoza  said that all is god and god is all. There is nothing in this world that is not god. So when one gets inside the toilet to pooh, even the pooh is god.
Question: So if the pooh is god, then we should worship it because gods are supposed to be worshiped?
Answer: No way! Why worship a fellow god?!!

Berkeley, who had said ‘there is no matter only mind’ had  a different take on God, which is similar to Advaitic theories.

The ‘material world’ is an illusion according to Berkeley.

He said the existence of God is far more clearly perceived than the existence of man.

God is “intimately present in our consciousness, causing to exist for us in the profusion of ideas and perceptions that we are constantly subject to.”

The whole world around us and our whole life exist in God. He is the one cause of everything that exists. We exist only in the mind of God.

Advaita proclaims something similar- that the world is simply an illusion.

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.-Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Hume like Buddha rejected the idea of an immortal soul.

Hume said that the ‘Ego’ is in reality a long chain of simple impressions.

We have no ‘underlying personal identity’ or soul  beneath these perceptions and feelings which come and go.

Mind is “a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, slide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.”

We have no underlying “personal identity” beneath or behind these perceptions and feelings which come and go.

Again it was ‘Voltaire’ who did some plain talking on the concept of God. Below are a few quotes:

 “It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will.”

“The ‘first divine’ was the ‘first rogue’ who met the ‘first fool’.”

“Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.”           

Voltaire’s  story  of  “The Good Brahmin” is interesting.

The good Brahmin says  “I wish I had never been born!”

‘Why so?”

“Because,” the Brahmin says, “I have been studying these forty years, and I find that it has been so much time lost…. I believe that I am composed of matter, but I have never been able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought. I am even ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty like that of walking or digesting, or if I think with my head in the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my hand … I talk a great deal, and when I have done speaking I remain confounded and ashamed of what I have said.”

In a conversation with an old woman, his neighbor, the lady was asked if she had ever been unhappy for not understanding how her soul was made?

The Lady did not even comprehend the question. She had not, for the briefest moment in her life, had a thought about these subjects with which the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed from the bottom of her heart in the metamorphosis of Vishnu, and provided she could get some of the sacred water of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions, she thought herself the happiest of women.

Struck with the happiness of this poor creature, the philosopher  was asked:

“Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty yards from you, there is an old automation who thinks of nothing and lives contented?”

“You are right,” he replied. “I have said to myself a thousand times that I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor; and yet it is a happiness which I do not desire.”

Voltaire also stoutly denied miracles and the supernatural efficiency of prayer. Here’s another of his stories:

“I was at the gate the convent when Sister Fessue said to Sister Confite: “Providence takes a visible care of me; you know how I love my sparrow; he would have been dead if I had not said nine Ave-Marias to obtain his cure.”

 … A metaphysician said to her: “Sister, there is nothing so good as Ave-Marias, especially when a girl pronounces them in Latin in the suburbs of Paris; but I cannot believe that God has occupied himself so much with your sparrow, pretty as it is; I pray you to believe that he has other things to attend to…”

Sister Fessue: “Sir, this discourse savors of heresy. My confessor… will infer that you do not believe in Providence.”

Metaphysician: “I believe in a general Providence, dear Sister, which has laid down from all eternity the law which governs all things, like light from the sun; but I believe not that a particular Providence changes the economy of the world for your sparrow.”

It was left to Kant, once again to bring about some moderation.

Kant said that any attempt, by either science or religion, to say just what the ultimate reality is, will fall back into mere hypothesis.

So such queries like:

Is the world finite or infinite?

Was there a beginning of time?

Was there a first cause? etc cannot be answered as ‘ time and space’ and ‘the law of causality’ are our modes of our perception and conception.

The answers to these require us to go beyond these modes of perception and conception. That is not possible and hence answers to these queries are unknowable.

These queries cannot be answered as we can never have any experience which we cannot interpret in terms of space and time and cause.

Thus even religion cannot be proved by theoretical reason. Religion cannot be based on science and theology. It is a matter of faith.

Hence all religions should be based, not on science and theology , but on faith and morals.

Logic and God

“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful(as a Babel fish) could have evolved purely by chance, that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God.

“The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’

            “ ‘But.’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it?  It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED’

            “ ‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

            “ ‘Oh that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

 -Douglas Adams,Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

It was Nietzsche(1844–1900) who bought a fresh perspective on the speculations on God and the immortal soul.

Nietzsche’s questioned as to why all ideals, whether explicitly religious or not, presumes an afterlife that is better than the ‘here and now’.

In Nietzsche’s eyes, such a fabrication negates us from seeing the beauty of  life on Earth.

He condemned attempts to deny actual truth in the name of false realities, instead of accepting the real as it is.

While Kant strove to find a coherence, an order in the world, by attempting to inject it with rationality, for Nietzsche such an enterprise was an utter waste of time and effort.

Nietzsche accuses all the grand scientific, metaphysical and religious systems, of having systematically ‘despised’ the body and the senses in the interests of reason and rationality.

Hence Nietzsche says:  “I entreat you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of extraterrestrial hopes.”

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?- Douglas Adams

Nietzsche's  formula for greatness in a human being was  ‘Amor fati’.

That is “ to want nothing to be other than as it is, neither in the future, nor in the past, nor in all eternity. Not merely to endure what happens of necessity, still less to hide it from oneself – but to love it…“

Sartre (1905–1980) also talked of the futility of trying to discover what God or human nature is.

He veered towards existentialism. He said:  “Existence takes priority over essence.”

Man has no soul or any ‘innate nature.’

Man must therefore create himself. He must create his own nature or “essence,” because it is not fixed in advance.

Santayana, (1863 -1952) even though a skeptic when it came to belief in God was wise enough to understand that a world quite divested of deity is a cold and uncomfortable home.

Santayana however says bluntly: “I believe there is nothing immortal…. No doubt the spirit and energy of the world is what is acting in us, as the sea is what rises in every little wave; but it passes through us; and, cry out as we may, it will move on. Our privilege is to have perceived it as it moved.”

“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.”         -Saint Augustine