, which seemed directly sent to his address, and
laid the inner storm to rest forever.[91] Augustine's
psychological genius has given an account of the trouble of
having a divided self which has never been surpassed.
[91] Louis Gourdon (Essai sur la Conversion de Saint Augustine,
Paris, Fischbacher, 1900) has shown by an analysis of Augustine's
writings immediately after the date of his conversion (A. D. 386)
that the account he gives in the Confessions is premature. The
crisis in the garden marked a definitive conversion from his
former life, but it was to the neo-platonic spiritualism and only
a halfway stage toward Christianity. The latter he appears not
fully and radically to have embraced until four years more had
passed.
"The new will which I began to have was not yet strong enough to
overcome that other will, strengthened by long indulgence. So
these two wills, one old, one new, one carnal, the other
spiritual, contended with each other and disturbed my soul. I
understood by my own experience what I had read, 'flesh lusteth
against spirit, and spirit against flesh.
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