seems to him a great event, not because it concerns himself, bishop and
Father of the Church, but because it is a soul which at this imperceptible
point of time comes into the world.

Let us clearly understand Augustin's thought. Souls have been ransomed by a
Victim of infinite value. They have themselves an infinite value. Nothing
which goes on in them can be ignored. Their most trifling sins, their
feeblest stirrings towards virtue, are vital for the eternity of their lot.
All shall be attributed to them by the just Judge. The theft of an apple
will weigh perhaps as heavily in the scales as the seizure of a province
or a kingdom. The evil of sin is in the evil intention. Now the fate
of a soul, created by God, on Him depends. Hence everything in a human
life assumes an extreme seriousness and importance. In the history of a
creature, all is worthy of being examined, weighed, studied, and perhaps
also, for the edification of others, told.

Here is an altogether new way of regarding life, and, proceeding from that,
of understanding art. Even as the slaves, thanks to Christianity, came into
the spiritual city, so the most minute realities by this outlook are to be
included in literature. The _Confessions_ will be the first model of the
art of the new era. A deep and magnificent realism, because it goes even
to the very depths of the divine--utterly distinct, at any rate, from
our surface realism of mere amusement--is about to arise from this new
conception. Without doubt, in Augustin's eyes, beauty dwells in all things,
in so far forth as beauty is a reflection of the order and the thought
of the Word. But it has also a more essential character--it has a moral
signification and value. Everything, in a word, can be the instrument of
the loss or the redemption of a soul. The most insignificant of our actions
reverberates to infinitude on our fate. Regarded from this point, both
things and beings commence to live a life more closely leagued together and