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VI] BEAUTY AND LOVE 126 beauties were but human fashionings of the beauty whence they come, for which his soul now yearns day and night.* Of all philosophies, Platonism seemed to Augustine nearest to Christian truth.^ But Platonism as he understood it was largely Neo-platonism. Gregory of Nyssa, however, is an interesting example of a Chris- tian Father taking thoughts of beauty directly from Plato, and endeavoring to give them Christian hue. In his treatise on " Virginity " he argues that the only way to escape the bondage of low desire is to turn one's life to the contemplation of the Father of all beauty, and so beautify the lines of one's own character from imitation of the source of beauty ; herein is virginity a helper. What words can express the greatness of the loss in falling away from real goodness ? If a man has kept the eye of his heart so clear that he can in a way behold the promise of our Lord's beatitudes realized, he will condemn all human utterance as powerless to express what he has apprehended. But when passion like a film has spread over the clear vision of the soul, expression is wasted on that man ; 1 Confessiorm^ X, Sec. 63. From his rhetorical occupations Augustine evolves an extraordinary argument as to the ways of God : Gk)d would have made no man or angel whom He foreknew would be evil had He not known that that being would be of use for good. Thus would God embellish the succession of the ages as a beautiful poem {carmen), by antithesis, as it were: Antitheta enim quae appellantur in omamentis elocutionis sunt decentissima, quae latine appellantur opposita. . . . Sicut ergo ista contraria contrariis opposita sermonis pulchritudinem rcddunt ; ita quadam, non verborum, sed rerum eloquentia contrariorum oppositione saeculi pulchritndo componitur. Civ. Dei, XI, 18. » See, e.g., Civ. Dei, VIU, 5.