What has given the Confessions their place in the devotional literature of the world is the fact that they touch the heights and depths of a true religious experience. Their writer, sensitive as he was to the various intellectual influences of his time, yet set before himself, as the dominant aim of his life, the knowledge of God. The book may be of service to us, in our Endeavour to probe the roots of that prevalent unrest and dissatisfaction which partly hinder, the task of reconstruction. Under Augustine's guidance we may learn to take into account more seriously the reality of evil; the presence of sin, and its pervasive power, in human, in human life; the barrenness of any system of thought, political or intellectual , which ignores man's need of God in every sphere of his may perhaps be expressed in aphorisms taken from two writers.