St Augustine's pear theft

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 In the second book of his Confessions, St Augustine recounts a boyhood incident: he and his fellows did steal some pears from the neighbourhood. A modern reader probably sneers at the moral pangs Augustine describes in the following chapters. Really, how does one feel guilty on such an occasion? He and other lads wanted to taste some pears from some other's garden. Augustine admits that he was not deeply fond of the pears themselves but rather liked the idea of doing something forbidden: "I joyed in the theft and sin itself." Clearly, it was a heedless act: some teenagers took fruits and threw them away, after hardly tasting them. It happens. Does it yet qualify for an object of serious remorse? Some regard this episode as a proof of the absurdity of Christian ethics, concerned on the minute naughty thoughts. There are true problems in the world, real viciousness takes place, other than folly of the adolescent. 

On the other hand, St Augustine's thoughts on human behaviour initiated by the memory of this seemingly harmless prank are not insignificant. He arrives at deep ponderings on what motivates our actions. Everything we do, we do for something good. A murderer kills another man because he loves the latter's wife or property. There is nothing ludicrous in these thoughts but their occasion: a pear theft by youngsters.

The aesthetic dimension involved in Augustine's memoirs is that the moments of our daily life bear a greater significance. The beauty and greatness of our lives does not manifest itself through conspicuous and heroic spectacles, but in the various minor choices we make every day and which we esteem to be of no account. Hence the greatness of a bagatelle. Kierkegaard once stated that there are two reasons why people fail to do the right thing. The first is to think that I am such an unimportant person that my choices do not matter. The second is to think that I am such a great personage that I can afford a minor mistake. Ultimately, there is no one to do the right thing than myself, here and now.

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