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- 28 The Confessions of S. Augustine.
When, then, we ask why a crime was done, we believe it not, unless it appear that there might have been some desire of obtaining some of those which we called lower goods, or a fear of losing them. For they are beautiful and comely; although in comparison with those higher and more blessed goods, they be abject and low. A man hath done murder. Why? he loved his victim’s wife or his estate; or would rob for his own livelihood; or feared to lose some such things by him; or, wronged, burned to revenge himself. Would any commit murder upon no cause, delighted in murder itself? who would believe it? for as for that mad and savage man, of whom it is said that he was “gratuitously evil and cruel,” yet is the cause assigned; “lest” (saith he) “through idleness hand or mind should grow inactive” (Sallust. Catil. 16). And to what end? that through that practice of crimes, he might, having taken the city, attain to honours, empire, riches, and be freed from fear of the laws, and the embarrassment of his affairs, through narrow means and consciousness of villanies. So then, not even Catiline himself loved his own villanies, but rather that for the sake of which he did them.
## CHAPTER VI.
*What it was that he loved in his theft; since all things that prompt to sin by an appearance of goodness can be only true and perfect in God alone.*
**W**HAT then did wretched I so love in thee, thou theft of mine, thou deed of night, in that sixteenth year of my age? Fair thou wert not, for thou wert theft. But art thou any thing, that thus I speak to thee? Fair were the pears we stole, because they were Thy creation, Thou fairest of all, Creator of all, Thou good God; God, the sovereign good and my true good. Fair were those pears, but not them did my wretched soul desire; for I had store of better, and those I plucked only that I might steal. For, when plucked, I flung them away, and feasted only on my sin, which I was pleased to enjoy. For if aught of those pears came within my mouth, the sin was the seasoning. And now, O Lord my God, I ask what in that theft delighted me; and behold it hath no beauty; I mean not such
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