Key Arguments

• He vividly describes student misconduct in Carthage: "By contrast at Carthage the licence of the students is foul and uncontrolled. They impudendy break in and with almost mad behaviour disrupt the order which each teacher has established for his pupils’ benefit. They commit many acts of vandalism with an astonishing mindlessness, which would be punished under the law were it not that custom protects them."
• He interprets this as self‑delusion, contrasting human custom with divine law: "Thereby their wretched self-delusion is shown up. They act as if they were allowed to do what would never be permitted by your eternal law."
• He insists that their supposed freedom is already a form of punishment: "They think they are free to act with impunity when by the very blindness of their behaviour they are being punished, and inflict on themselves incomparably worse damage than on others."
• He notes that, while as a student he refused to join such customs, as a professor he had to tolerate them from outsiders, which motivates his desire to leave: "When I was a student, I refused to have anything to do with these customs; as a professor I was forced to tolerate them in outsiders who were not my own pupils. So I decided to go where all informed people declared that such troubles did not occur."

Source Quotes

They did not rush all at once and in a mob into the class of a teacher with whom they were not enrolled, nor were pupils admitted at all unless the teacher gave them leave. By contrast at Carthage the licence of the students is foul and uncontrolled. They impudendy break in and with almost mad behaviour disrupt the order which each teacher has established for his pupils’ benefit.

By contrast at Carthage the licence of the students is foul and uncontrolled. They impudendy break in and with almost mad behaviour disrupt the order which each teacher has established for his pupils’ benefit. They commit many acts of vandalism with an astonishing mindlessness, which would be punished under the law were it not that custom protects them.

They impudendy break in and with almost mad behaviour disrupt the order which each teacher has established for his pupils’ benefit. They commit many acts of vandalism with an astonishing mindlessness, which would be punished under the law were it not that custom protects them. Thereby their wretched self-delusion is shown up.

They act as if they were allowed to do what would never be permitted by your eternal law. They think they are free to act with impunity when by the very blindness of their behaviour they are being punished, and inflict on themselves incomparably worse damage than on others.10 When I was a student, I refused to have anything to do with these customs; as a professor I was forced to tolerate them in outsiders who were not my own pupils. So I decided to go where all informed people declared that such troubles did not occur.

Key Concepts

• at Carthage the licence of the students is foul and uncontrolled.
• They impudendy break in and with almost mad behaviour disrupt the order which each teacher has established for his pupils’ benefit.
• They commit many acts of vandalism with an astonishing mindlessness, which would be punished under the law were it not that custom protects them.
• They think they are free to act with impunity when by the very blindness of their behaviour they are being punished, and inflict on themselves incomparably worse damage than on others.

Context

Book V, section viii (14): Explaining his motive for going to Rome, Augustine offers a moral and theological diagnosis of student disorder in Carthage as a self‑inflicted punishment under God’s eternal law.