The two chief—or even the sole—objects of interest to philosophy are God and the human soul. This was Augustine's view in his earliest works; and, ironically, the furthest departure from this view, that which owes most to philosophical inspiration, occurs in his long commentary on the book of Genesis, written some fifteen or twenty years later. It is here that he gives freest rein to the discussion of questions concerning nature other than human or divine. Nevertheless, physical nature never assumed the central place in Augustine's interests which the world of man and God held in them. The problems which interested Augustine most in this field were those which were forced upon his attention by the scriptural teaching. We shall confine our attention to three of them : the order of nature as related to God, natural function and development in the physical world, and time, all arising for Augustine from the doctrine of creation.

Two related thoughts form the kernel of Augustine's reflection on the physical world. These are that God created the world of nature and has ordered it, in the words of the Book of Wisdom often quoted by Augustine, ‘by measure and number and weight’ (xi. 20); and that this order in the world allows man to see the world as God's handiwork. The orderliness in which God created the world was universal and all-pervasive, except for such disturbances as were set up in it by sin or its effects. But this universal order, Augustine thought, was only apparent to men partially.