Augustine’s own turning point dramatizes the union of clarity and resolve. In the Milan garden, wracked with ambivalence, he heard a child’s voice chanting, “tolle lege”—“take and read.” Opening Romans 13:13–14, he found piercing clarity about the life he must leave and the life he must begin (Confessions 8). And then, crucially, he acted: resigning his post, seeking baptism, altering his habits and companions. The episode shows that insight ripens into wisdom only when it commands the will. The moment of understanding was brief; the firmness that followed made it enduring. [...]
