in his boyhood choosing , as he did , to take peaches one time from a neighbors yard in the categorical pleasure , the thrill of uninhibited arrogation as one wishes , a restive and a more vile act with none of the neediness or covetousness of thievery , st. augustine says that in this instance he rejected the rational principle89 ; but as there was a rational principle to reject , the reader is led to believe that boyhood , in his perspective , is better than infancy even if it is sometimes more deliberate in its recalcitrance .