Augustine and Monoch - A Great Gardener of the Human Heart

Augustine left his mother behind in North Africa to join a non-Catholic sect called the Manikis. He thought that sounded more respectable than what he was reading, and it didn't go well. Augustine had received this fantastic education in eloquence, in great linguistic style, and things like that. But there's a terrible irony here, why was Augustine so addicted to respectability, to prestige, to sophistication?