Key Arguments

• He distinguishes this temptation from the ‘lust of the flesh’: ‘Beside the lust of the flesh which inheres in the delight given by all pleasures of the senses … there exists in the soul, through the medium of the same bodily senses, a cupidity which does not take delight in carnal pleasure but in perceptions acquired through the flesh. It is a vain inquisitiveness dignified with the title of knowledge and science.’
• He explains the biblical phrase ‘the lust of the eyes’ (1 John 2: 16) by noting that ‘seeing is the property of our eyes’ and that we extend ‘see’ analogically to all sense‑based knowing: ‘So the general experience of the senses is the lust, as scripture says, of the eyes.’
• He then contrasts sensory pleasure with curiosity: ‘Pleasure pursues beautiful objects … But curiosity pursues the contraries of these delights with the motive of seeing what the experiences are like, not with a wish to undergo discomfort, but out of a lust for experimenting and knowing.’
• As an example, he asks, ‘What pleasure is to be found in looking at a mangled corpse, an experience which evokes revulsion? Yet wherever one is lying, people crowd around to be made sad and to turn pale.’ This reveals a desire to ‘see what the experiences are like’ even when the content is repellent.
• He notes that people even fear such sights in dreams, ‘as if some report about the beauty of the sight had persuaded them to see it’, emphasizing the irrational compulsion.
• He generalizes the same motive to public entertainments: ‘To satisfy this diseased craving, outrageous sights are staged in public shows.’
• He extends the critique to apparently serious inquiry into nature: ‘The same motive is at work when people study the operations of nature which lie beyond our grasp, when there is no advantage in knowing and the investigators simply desire knowledge for its own sake.’
• He also includes magical arts and spectacular religion: ‘This motive is again at work if, using a perverted science for the same end, people try to achieve things by magical arts. Even in religion itself the motive is seen when God is “tempted” by demands for “signs and wonders” (John 4: 48) desired not for any salvific end but only for the thrill.’
• He describes this whole realm as ‘this immense jungle full of traps and dangers’ and admits that, by God’s grace, he has ‘cut out and expelled’ many such curiosities from his heart, yet daily life still surrounds him ‘on every side with a buzz of distraction’.
• He notes that theatres, astrology, necromancy, and ‘sacrilegious rites’ no longer attract him, but he still feels ‘machinations … used by the Enemy to suggest to me that I should seek from you some sign’, and he prays that consent to such suggestions may remain ‘distant and even more remote.’

Source Quotes

I am pitifully captured by them, and in your pity you rescue me, sometimes without me realizing it because I had suffered only a light fall, and sometimes with a painful wrench because I became deeply involved. xxxv (54) To this I may add another form of temptation, manifold in its dangers. Beside the lust of the flesh which inheres in the delight given by all pleasures of the senses (those who are enslaved to it perish by putting themselves far from you), there exists in the soul, through the medium of the same bodily senses, a cupidity which does not take delight in carnal pleasure but in perceptions acquired through the flesh. It is a vain inquisitiveness dignified with the title of knowledge and science. As this is rooted in the appetite for knowing, and as among the senses the eyes play a leading role in acquiring knowledge, the divine word calls it ‘the lust of the eyes’ (1 John 2: 16).

It is a vain inquisitiveness dignified with the title of knowledge and science. As this is rooted in the appetite for knowing, and as among the senses the eyes play a leading role in acquiring knowledge, the divine word calls it ‘the lust of the eyes’ (1 John 2: 16). Seeing is the property of our eyes.

But we say not only ‘See how that light shines’, which only the eyes can perceive, but also ‘See how that sounds, see what smells, see what tastes, see how hard that is’. So the general experience of the senses is the lust, as scripture says, of the eyes, because seeing is a function in which eyes hold the first place but other senses claim the word for themselves by analogy when they are exploring any department of knowledge.37 (55) From this observation it becomes easier to distinguish the activity of the senses in relation to pleasure from their activity in relation to curiosity. Pleasure pursues beautiful objects—what is agreeable to look at, to hear, to smell, to taste, to touch. But curiosity pursues the contraries of these delights with the motive of seeing what the experiences are like, not with a wish to undergo discomfort, but out of a lust for experimenting and knowing. What pleasure is to be found in looking at a mangled corpse, an experience which evokes revulsion?38 Yet wherever one is lying, people crowd around to be made sad and to turn pale.

But curiosity pursues the contraries of these delights with the motive of seeing what the experiences are like, not with a wish to undergo discomfort, but out of a lust for experimenting and knowing. What pleasure is to be found in looking at a mangled corpse, an experience which evokes revulsion?38 Yet wherever one is lying, people crowd around to be made sad and to turn pale. They even dread seeing this in their dreams, as if someone had compelled them to look at it when awake or as if some report about the beauty of the sight had persuaded them to see it.

The same is true of the other senses, but it would be too long to follow the theme through. To satisfy this diseased craving, outrageous sights are staged in public shows. The same motive is at work when people study the operations of nature which lie beyond our grasp, when there is no advantage in knowing and the investigators simply desire knowledge for its own sake.39 This motive is again at work if, using a perverted science for the same end, people try to achieve things by magical arts.

To satisfy this diseased craving, outrageous sights are staged in public shows. The same motive is at work when people study the operations of nature which lie beyond our grasp, when there is no advantage in knowing and the investigators simply desire knowledge for its own sake.39 This motive is again at work if, using a perverted science for the same end, people try to achieve things by magical arts. Even in religion itself the motive is seen when God is ‘tempted’ by demands for ‘signs and wonders’ (John 4: 48) desired not for any salvific end but only for the thrill.40 (56) In this immense jungle full of traps and dangers, see how many I have cut out and expelled from my heart, as you have granted me to do, ‘God of my salvation’ (Ps.

The same motive is at work when people study the operations of nature which lie beyond our grasp, when there is no advantage in knowing and the investigators simply desire knowledge for its own sake.39 This motive is again at work if, using a perverted science for the same end, people try to achieve things by magical arts. Even in religion itself the motive is seen when God is ‘tempted’ by demands for ‘signs and wonders’ (John 4: 48) desired not for any salvific end but only for the thrill.40 (56) In this immense jungle full of traps and dangers, see how many I have cut out and expelled from my heart, as you have granted me to do, ‘God of my salvation’ (Ps. 17: 47; 37: 23).

The same motive is at work when people study the operations of nature which lie beyond our grasp, when there is no advantage in knowing and the investigators simply desire knowledge for its own sake.39 This motive is again at work if, using a perverted science for the same end, people try to achieve things by magical arts. Even in religion itself the motive is seen when God is ‘tempted’ by demands for ‘signs and wonders’ (John 4: 48) desired not for any salvific end but only for the thrill.40 (56) In this immense jungle full of traps and dangers, see how many I have cut out and expelled from my heart, as you have granted me to do, ‘God of my salvation’ (Ps. 17: 47; 37: 23). Nevertheless, when so many things of this kind surround our daily life on every side with a buzz of distraction, when may I be so bold as to say, when can I venture the claim, that nothing of the sort tugs at my attention to go and look at it and that I am not caught by any vain concern?

I detest all sacrilegious rites. Lord my God, to whom I owe humble and simple service, how many machinations are used by the Enemy to suggest to me that I should seek from you some sign! But I beseech you by our King and by Jerusalem our simple and pure home, that as consent to these suggestions is far from me, so it may always remain distant and even more remote.

Key Concepts

• Beside the lust of the flesh which inheres in the delight given by all pleasures of the senses (those who are enslaved to it perish by putting themselves far from you), there exists in the soul, through the medium of the same bodily senses, a cupidity which does not take delight in carnal pleasure but in perceptions acquired through the flesh. It is a vain inquisitiveness dignified with the title of knowledge and science.
• as among the senses the eyes play a leading role in acquiring knowledge, the divine word calls it ‘the lust of the eyes’ (1 John 2: 16).
• From this observation it becomes easier to distinguish the activity of the senses in relation to pleasure from their activity in relation to curiosity. Pleasure pursues beautiful objects—what is agreeable to look at, to hear, to smell, to taste, to touch. But curiosity pursues the contraries of these delights with the motive of seeing what the experiences are like, not with a wish to undergo discomfort, but out of a lust for experimenting and knowing.
• What pleasure is to be found in looking at a mangled corpse, an experience which evokes revulsion?38 Yet wherever one is lying, people crowd around to be made sad and to turn pale.
• To satisfy this diseased craving, outrageous sights are staged in public shows.
• The same motive is at work when people study the operations of nature which lie beyond our grasp, when there is no advantage in knowing and the investigators simply desire knowledge for its own sake.39
• This motive is again at work if, using a perverted science for the same end, people try to achieve things by magical arts.
• Even in religion itself the motive is seen when God is ‘tempted’ by demands for ‘signs and wonders’ (John 4: 48) desired not for any salvific end but only for the thrill.40
• In this immense jungle full of traps and dangers, see how many I have cut out and expelled from my heart, as you have granted me to do, ‘God of my salvation’ (Ps. 17: 47; 37: 23).
• how many machinations are used by the Enemy to suggest to me that I should seek from you some sign!

Context

Book X, xxxv (54–56): After cataloguing temptations of bodily pleasure and sight, Augustine isolates the more subtle ‘lust of the eyes’ as curiosity, giving concrete examples from morbid spectacle, science, magic, and religion, and acknowledges both his progress and his continuing vulnerability in this area.