Confessions (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

[7.13.19] To you there is no such thing as evil, and even in your whole creation taken as a whole, there is not; because there is nothing from beyond it that can burst in and destroy the order which you have appointed for it. But in the parts of creation, some things, because they do not harmonize with others, are considered evil. Yet those same things harmonize with others and are good, and in themselves are good. And all these things which do not harmonize with each other still harmonize with the inferior part of creation which we call the earth, having its own cloudy and windy sky of like nature with itself. Far be it from me, then, to say, “These things should not be.” For if I could see nothing but these, I should indeed desire something better—but still I ought to praise you, if only for these created things. For that you are to be praised is shown from the fact that “earth, dragons, and all deeps; fire, and hail, snow and vapors, stormy winds fulfilling your word; mountains, and all hills, fruitful trees, and all cedars; beasts and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl; things of the earth, and all people; princes, and all judges of the earth; both young men and maidens, old men and children”^cq praise your name! But seeing also that in heaven all your angels praise you, god, praise you in the heights, “and all your hosts, sun and moon, all stars and light, the heavens of heavens, and the waters that are above the heavens”^cr praise your name—seeing this, I say, I no longer desire a better world, because my thought ranged over all, and with a sounder judgment I reflected that the things above were better than those below, yet that all creation together was better than the higher things alone.

[7.14.20] There is no health in those who find fault with any part of your creation; as there was no health in me when I found fault with so many of your works. And, because my soul dared not be displeased with my god, it would not allow that the things which displeased me were from you. Hence it had wandered into the notion of two substances, and could find no rest, but talked foolishly. And turning from that error, it had then made for itself a god extended through infinite space; and it thought this was you and set it up in its heart, and it became once more the temple of its own idol, an abomination to you. But you soothed my brain, though I was unaware of it, and closed my eyes lest they should behold vanity; and thus I ceased from preoccupation with self by a little and my madness was lulled to sleep; and I awoke in you, and beheld you as the infinite, but not in the way I had thought—and this vision was not derived from the flesh.

[7.15.21] And I looked around at other things, and I saw that it was to you that all of them owed their being, and that they were all finite in you; yet they are in you not as in a space, but because you hold all things in the hand of your truth, and because all things are true in so far as they are; and because falsehood is nothing except the existence in thought of what does not exist in fact. And I saw that all things harmonize, not only in their places but also in their seasons. And I saw that you, who alone are eternal, did not begin to work after unnumbered periods of time—because all ages, both those which are past and those which shall pass, neither go nor come except through your working and abiding.

[7.16.22] And I saw and found it no marvel that bread which is distasteful to an unhealthy palate is pleasant to a healthy one; or that the light, which is painful to sore eyes, is a delight to sound ones. Your righteousness displeases the wicked, and they find even more fault with the viper and the little worm, which you have created good, fitting in as they do with the inferior parts of creation. The wicked themselves also fit in here, and proportionately more so as they become unlike you—but they harmonize with the higher creation proportionately as they become like you. And I asked what wickedness was, and I found that it was no substance, but a perversion of the will bent aside from you, god, the supreme substance, toward these lower things, casting away its inmost treasure and becoming bloated with external good.

[7.17.23] And I marveled that I now loved you, and no fantasm in your stead, and yet I was not stable enough to enjoy my god steadily. Instead I was transported to you by your beauty, and then presently torn away from you by my own weight, sinking with grief into these lower things. This weight was carnal habit. But your memory dwelt with me, and I never doubted in the least that there was one for me to cleave to; but I was not yet ready to cleave to you firmly. For the body which is corrupted presses down the soul, and the earthly dwelling weighs down the mind, which muses upon many things. My greatest certainty was that “the invisible things of yours from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even your eternal power and godhead.”^cs For when I inquired how it was that I could appreciate the beauty of bodies, both celestial and terrestrial; and what it was that supported me in making correct judgments about things mutable; and when I concluded, “This ought to be thus; this ought not”—then when I inquired how it was that I could make such judgments (since I did, in fact, make them), I realized that I had found the unchangeable and true eternity of truth above my changeable mind.

And thus by degrees I was led upward from bodies to the soul which perceives them by means of the bodily senses, and from there on to the soul’s inward faculty, to which the bodily senses report outward things—and this belongs even to the capacities of the beasts—and thence on up to the reasoning power, to whose judgment is referred the experience received from the bodily sense. And when this power of reason within me also found that it was changeable, it raised itself up to its own intellectual principle, and withdrew its thoughts from experience, abstracting itself from the contradictory throng of fantasms in order to seek for that light in which it was bathed. Then, without any doubting, it cried out that the unchangeable was better than the changeable. From this it follows that the mind somehow knew the unchangeable, for, unless it had known it in some fashion, it could have had no sure ground for preferring it to the changeable. And thus with the flash of a trembling glance, it arrived at that which is. And I saw “your invisible things understood by means of the things that are made.”^ct But I was not able to sustain my gaze. My weakness was dashed back, and I lapsed again into my accustomed ways, carrying along with me nothing but a loving memory of my vision, and an appetite for what I had, as it were, smelled the odor of, but was not yet able to eat.⁵

[7.18.24] I sought, therefore, some way to acquire the strength sufficient to enjoy you; but I did not find it until I embraced that “mediator between god and man, the man Christ Jesus,”^cu “who is over all, god blessed forever,“^cv who came calling and saying, ”I am the way, the truth, and the life,“^cw and mingling with our fleshly humanity the heavenly food I was unable to receive. For ”the word was made flesh“^cx in order that your wisdom, by which you created all things, might become milk for our infancy. And, as yet, I was not humble enough to hold the humble Jesus; nor did I understand what lesson his weakness was meant to teach us. For your word, the eternal truth, far exalted above even the higher parts of your creation, lifts his subjects up toward himself. But in this lower world, he built for himself a humble habitation of our own clay, so that he might pull down from themselves and win over to himself those whom he is to bring subject to him; lowering their pride and heightening their love, to the end that they might go on no farther in self-confidence—but rather should become weak, seeing at their feet the deity made weak by sharing our coats of skin—so that they might cast themselves, exhausted, upon him and be uplifted by his rising.

[7.19.25] But I thought otherwise. I saw in our lord Christ only a man of eminent wisdom to whom no other man could be compared—especially because he was miraculously born of a virgin—sent to set us an example of despising worldly things for the attainment of immortality, and thus exhibiting his divine care for us.⁶ It was because of this, I held, that he had merited his great authority as leader. But concerning the mystery contained in “the word was made flesh,” I could not even form a notion. From what I learned from what has been handed down to us in the books about him—that he ate, drank, slept, walked, rejoiced in spirit, was sad, and discoursed with his fellows—I realized that his flesh alone was not bound to your word, but also that there was a bond with the human soul and body. Everyone knows this who knows the unchangeableness of your word, and this I knew by now, as far as I was able, and I had no doubts at all about it. For at one time to move the limbs by an act of will, at another time not; at one time to feel some emotion, at another time not; at one time to speak intelligibly through verbal signs, at another, not—these are all properties of a soul and mind subject to change. And if these things were falsely written about him, all the rest would risk the imputation of falsehood, and there would remain in those books no saving faith for the human race.

Alypius, on the other hand, supposed the catholics to believe that god was so clothed with flesh that besides god and the flesh there was no soul in Christ, and he did not think that a human mind was ascribed to him. And because he was fully persuaded that the actions recorded of him could not have been performed except by a living rational creature, he moved the more slowly toward Christian faith. But when he later learned that this was the error of the Apollinarian heretics, he rejoiced in the catholic faith and accepted it. For myself, I must confess that it was even later that I learned how in the sentence, “the word was made flesh,” the catholic truth can be distinguished from the falsehood of Photinus. For the refutation of heretics makes the tenets of your church and sound doctrine to stand out boldly. “For there must also be heresies, so that those who are approved may be made manifest among the weak.”^cy

Of all this I was convinced, yet I was too weak to enjoy you. I chattered away as if I were an expert; but if I had not sought your way in Christ our saviour, my knowledge would have turned out to be not instruction but destruction. For now full of what was in fact my punishment, I had begun to desire to seem wise. I did not mourn my ignorance, but rather was puffed up with knowledge. For where was that love which builds upon the foundation of humility, which is Jesus Christ? Or, when would these books teach me this? I now believe that it was your pleasure that I should fall upon these books before I studied your scriptures, in order that it might be impressed on my memory how I was affected by them; and then afterward, when I was subdued by your scriptures and when my wounds were touched by your healing fingers, I might discern and distinguish what a difference there is between presumption and confession—between those who saw where they were to go even if they did not see the way, and the way which leads, not only to the observing, but also the inhabiting of the blessed country. For had I first been molded in your holy scriptures, and if you had grown sweet to me through my familiar use of them, and if then I had afterward fallen on those volumes, they might have pushed me off the solid ground of godliness—or if I had stood firm in that wholesome disposition which I had there acquired, I might have thought that wisdom could be attained by the study of those [Platonist] books alone.

[7.21.27] With great eagerness, then, I fastened upon the venerable writings of your spirit and principally upon the apostle Paul. I had thought that he sometimes contradicted himself and that the text of his teaching did not agree with the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets; but now all these doubts vanished away. And I saw that those pure words had but one face, and I learned to rejoice with trembling. So I began, and I found that whatever truth I had read [in the Platonists] was here combined with the exaltation of your grace. Thus, he who sees must not glory as if he had not received, not only the things that he sees, but the very power of sight—for “what does he have that he has not received?”^cz By this he is not only exhorted to see, but also to be cleansed, that he may grasp you, who are ever the same; and thus he who cannot see you afar off may yet enter upon the road that leads to reaching, seeing, and possessing you. For although a man may “delight in the law of god after the inward man,” what shall he do with that other “law in his members which wars against the law of his mind, and brings him into captivity under the law of sin, which is in his members”?^da You are righteous, lord; but we have sinned and committed iniquities, and have done wickedly. Your hand has grown heavy upon us, and we are justly delivered over to that ancient sinner, the lord of death. For he persuaded our wills to become like his will, by which he remained not in your truth. What shall “wretched man” do? “Who shall deliver him from the body of this death,”^db except your grace through Jesus Christ our lord; whom you have begotten, coeternal with yourself, and created in the beginning of your ways—in whom the prince of this world found nothing worthy of death, yet he killed him—and so “the handwriting which was all against us was blotted out”?^dc

The books of the Platonists tell nothing of this. Their pages do not contain the expression of this kind of godliness—the tears of confession, your sacrifice, a troubled spirit, a broken and a contrite heart,^dd the salvation of your people, the espoused city,^de the earnest of the holy spirit,^df the cup of our redemption. In them, no man sings: “Shall not my soul be subject to god, for from him comes my salvation? He is my god and my salvation, my defender; I shall no more be moved.”^dg In them, no one hears him calling, “Come to me all you who labor.”^dh They scorn to learn of him because he is meek and lowly of heart; for “you have hidden those things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes.”^di For it is one thing to see the land of peace from a wooded mountaintop and fail to find the way thither—to attempt impassable ways in vain, opposed and waylaid by fugitives and deserters under their captain, the “lion” and “dragon”;^dj but it is quite another thing to keep to the highway that leads thither, guarded by the hosts of the heavenly emperor, on which there are no deserters from the heavenly army to rob the passers-by, for they shun it as a torment. These thoughts sank wondrously into my heart, when I read that “least of your apostles”^dk and when I had considered all your works and trembled.

[8.1.1] My god, let me remember with gratitude and confess to you your mercies toward me. Let my bones be bathed in your love, and let them say: “Lord, who is like you? You have broken my bonds asunder, I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving.”^dl And how you broke them I will declare, and all who worship you shall say, when they hear these things: “Blessed be the lord in heaven and earth, great and wonderful is his name.”^dm Your words had stuck fast in my breast, and I was hedged round about by you on every side. Of your eternal life I was now certain, although I had seen it “through a glass darkly.”^dn And I had been relieved of all doubt that there is an incorruptible substance and that it is the source of every other substance. Nor did I any longer crave greater certainty about you, but rather greater steadfastness in you. But as for my temporal life, everything was uncertain, and my heart had to be purged of the old leaven. The way—the saviour himself—pleased me well, but as yet I was reluctant to pass through the strait gate. And you put it into my mind, and it seemed good in my own sight, to go to Simplicianus, who appeared to me a faithful servant of yours, and your grace shone forth in him. I had also been told that from his youth up he had lived in entire devotion to you. He was already an old man, and because of his great age, which he had passed in such a zealous disciple-ship in your way, he appeared to me likely to have gained much wisdom—and, indeed, he had. From all his experience, I desired him to tell me—setting before him all my agitations—which would be the most fitting way for one who felt as I did to walk in your way.¹

[8.1.2] For I saw the church full, and one man was going this way and another that. Still, I could not be satisfied with the life I was living in the world. Now, indeed, my passions had ceased to excite me as of old with hopes of honor and wealth, and it was a grievous burden to go on in such servitude. For, compared with your sweetness and the beauty of your house—which I loved—those things delighted me no longer. But I was still tightly bound by a woman; nor did the apostle forbid me to marry, although he exhorted me to something better, wishing earnestly that all men were as he himself was. But I was weak and chose the easier way, and for this single reason my whole life was one of inner turbulence and listless indecision, because from so many influences I was compelled—even though unwilling—to agree to a married life which bound me hand and foot. I had heard from the mouth of truth that “there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” but, said he, “He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”^do Of a certainty, all men are vain who do not have the knowledge of god, or have not been able, from the good things that are seen, to find him who is good. But I was no longer fettered in that vanity. I had surmounted it, and from the united testimony of your whole creation had found you, our creator, and your word—god with you, and together with you and the holy spirit, one god—by whom you have created all things. There is still another sort of wicked men, who “when they knew god, they glorified him not as god, neither were thankful.”^dp Into this also I had fallen, but your right hand held me up and bore me away, and you placed me where I might recover. For you have said to men, “Behold the fear of the lord, this is wisdom,”^dq and, “Be not wise in your own eyes,”^dr because “they that profess themselves to be wise become fools.”^ds But I had now found the goodly pearl; and I ought to have sold all that I had and bought it—yet I hesitated.

[8.2.3] I went, therefore, to Simplicianus, the spiritual father of Ambrose (then a bishop), whom Ambrose truly loved as a father. I recounted to him all the mazes of my wanderings, but when I mentioned to him that I had read certain books of the Platonists which Victorinus—formerly professor of rhetoric at Rome, who died a Christian, as I had been told—had translated into Latin, Simplicianus congratulated me that I had not fallen upon the writings of other philosophers, which were full of fallacies and deceit, “after the beggarly elements of this world,”^dt whereas in the Platonists, at every turn, the pathway led to belief in god and his Word. Then, to encourage me to copy the humility of Christ, which is hidden from the wise and revealed to babes, he told me about Victorinus himself, whom he had known intimately at Rome. And I cannot refrain from repeating what he told me about him. For it contains a glorious proof of your grace, which ought to be confessed to you: how that old man, most learned, most skilled in all the liberal arts; who had read, criticized, and explained so many of the writings of the philosophers; the teacher of so many noble senators; one who, as a mark of his distinguished service in office had both merited and obtained a statue in the Roman Forum—which men of this world esteem a great honor—this man who, up to an advanced age, had been a worshiper of idols, a communicant in the sacrilegious rites to which almost all the nobility of Rome were wedded; and who had inspired the people with the love of Osiris and

[8.2.4] Lord, lord, who “bowed the heavens and descended, who touched the mountains and they smoked,”^du by what means did you find your way into that breast? He used to read the holy scriptures, as Simplicianus said, and thought out and studied all the Christian writings most studiously. He said to Simplicianus—not openly but secretly as a friend—“You must know that I am a Christian.” To which Simplicianus replied, “I shall not believe it, nor shall I count you among the Christians, until I see you in the church of Christ.” Victorinus then asked, with mild mockery, “Is it then the walls that make Christians?” Thus he often would affirm that he was already a Christian, and as often Simplicianus made the same answer, and just as often his jest about the walls was repeated. He was fearful of offending his friends, proud demon worshipers, from the height of whose Babylonian dignity, as from the tops of the cedars of Lebanon which the lord had not yet broken down, he feared that a storm of enmity would descend upon him. But he steadily gained strength from reading and inquiry, and came to fear lest he should be denied by Christ before the holy angels if he now was afraid to confess him before men.^dv Thus he came to appear to himself guilty of a great fault, in being ashamed of the sacraments of the humility of your word, when he was not ashamed of the sacrilegious rites of those proud demons, whose pride he had imitated and whose rites he had shared. From this he became bold-faced against vanity and shamefaced toward the truth. Thus, suddenly and unexpectedly, he said to Simplicianus—as he himself told me—“Let us go to the church; I wish to become a Christian.” Simplicianus went with him, scarcely able to contain himself for joy. He was admitted to the first sacraments of instruction, and not long afterward gave in his name that he might receive the baptism of regeneration. At this Rome marveled and the church rejoiced. The proud saw and were enraged; they gnashed their teeth and melted away! But the lord god was your servant’s hope and he paid no attention to their vanity and lying madness.

[8.2.5] Finally, when the hour arrived for him to make a public profession of his faith—which at Rome those who are about to enter into your grace make from a platform in the full sight of the faithful people, in a set form of words learned by heart—the presbyters offered Victorinus the chance to make his profession more privately, for this was the custom for some who were likely to be nervous from embarrassment. But Victorinus chose rather to profess his salvation in the presence of the holy congregation. For there was no salvation in the rhetoric which he taught, yet he had professed that openly. Why, then, should he shrink from naming your word before the sheep of your flock, when he had not shrunk from uttering his own words before the mad multitude? So, then, when he ascended the platform to make his profession, everyone, as they recognized him, whispered his name one to the other, in tones of jubilation. Who was there among them that did not know him? And a low murmur ran through the mouths of all the rejoicing multitude: “Victorinus! Victorinus!” There was a sudden burst of exaltation at the sight of him, and suddenly they were hushed that they might hear him. He pronounced the true faith with an excellent boldness, and all desired to take him to their very heart—indeed, by their love and joy they did take him to their heart: love and joy were the hands with which they took hold of him.

[8.3.6] Good god, what happens in a man to make him rejoice more at the salvation of a soul that has been despaired of and then delivered from greater danger than over one who has never lost hope, or never been in such imminent danger? For you also, most merciful father, “rejoice more over one that repents than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance.”^dw And we listen with much delight whenever we hear how the lost sheep is brought home again on the shepherd’s shoulders while the angels rejoice; or when the piece of money is restored to its place in the treasury and the neighbors rejoice with the woman who found it. And the joy of the solemn festival of your house constrains us to tears when the story is read in your house about the younger son who “was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found.”^dx For it is you who rejoice both in us and in your angels, who are holy through holy love. For you are ever the same because you know unchangeably all things which remain neither the same nor forever. What, then, happens in the soul when it takes more delight at finding or having restored to it the things it loves than if it had always possessed them? Indeed, many other things bear witness that this is so—all things are full of witnesses, crying out, “So it is.” The commander triumphs in victory, yet he could not have conquered if he had not fought; and the greater the peril of the battle, the more the joy of the triumph. The storm tosses the voyagers, threatens shipwreck, and everyone turns pale in the presence of death. Then the sky and sea grow calm, and they rejoice as much as they had feared. A loved one is sick and his pulse indicates danger; all who desire his safety are themselves sick at heart; he recovers, though not able as yet to walk with his former strength; and there is more joy now than there was before when he walked sound and strong. Indeed, the very pleasures of human life—not only those which rush upon us unexpectedly and involuntarily, but also those which are voluntary and planned—are obtained by difficulties. There is no pleasure in caring and drinking unless the pains of hunger and thirst have preceded. Drunkards even eat certain salt meats in order to create a painful thirst—and when the drink allays this, it causes pleasure. It is also the custom that the affianced bride should not be immediately given in marriage so that the husband may not esteem her any less, whom as his betrothed he longed for.

This can be seen in the case of base and dishonorable pleasure. But it is also apparent in pleasures that are permitted and lawful: in the sincerity of honest friendship; and in him who was dead and lived again, who had been lost and was found. The greater joy is everywhere preceded by the greater pain. What does this mean, lord my god, when you are an everlasting joy to yourself, and some creatures about you are ever rejoicing in you? What does it mean that this portion of creation thus ebbs and flows, alternately in want and satiety? Is this their mode of being and is this all you have allotted to them: that, from the highest heaven to the lowest earth, from the beginning of the world to the end, from the angels to the worm, from the first movement to the last, you were assigning to all their proper places and their proper seasons—to all the kinds of good things and to all your just works? What can I say? How high you are in the highest and how deep in the deepest! You never depart from us, and yet only with difficulty do we return to you.

[8.4.9] Go on, lord, and act: stir us up and call us back; inflame us and draw us to you; stir us up and grow sweet to us; let us now love you, let us run to you. Are there not many men who, out of a deeper pit of darkness than that of Victorinus, return to you—who draw near to you and are illuminated by that light which gives those who receive it power from you to become your sons? But if they are less well-known, even those who know them rejoice less for them. For when many rejoice together the joy of each one is fuller, in that they warm one another, catch fire from each other; moreover, those who are well-known influence many toward salvation and take the lead with many to follow them. Therefore, even those who took the way before them rejoice over them greatly, because they do not rejoice over them alone. But it ought never to be that in your tabernacle the persons of the rich should be welcome before the poor, or the nobly born before the rest—since “you have rather chosen the weak things of the world to confound the strong; and have chosen the base things of the world and things that are despised, and the things that are not, in order to bring to nought the things that are.”^dy And indeed it was “the least of the apostles,” by whose tongue you sounded forth these words, who by combat made Paulus the proconsul overcome his pride and pass under the easy yoke of your Christ and became an officer of the great king, whereupon the apostle himself also desired to be called Paul instead of Saul, his former name, in testimony to such a great victory.^dz For the enemy is more overcome in one on whom he has a greater hold, and whom he has hold of more completely. But the proud he controls more readily through their concern about their rank and, through them, he controls more by means of their influence. The more, therefore, the world prized the heart of Victorinus (which the devil had held in an impregnable stronghold) and the tongue of Victorinus (that sharp, strong weapon with which the devil had slain so many), all the more exultingly did your sons rejoice because our king had bound the strong man,^ea and they saw his vessels taken from him and cleansed, and made fit for your honor and “profitable to the Lord for every good work.”^eb

[8.5.10] Now when this man of yours, Simplicianus, told me the story of Victorinus, I was eager to imitate him. Indeed, this was Simplicianus’ purpose in telling it to me. But when he went on to tell how, in the reign of the Emperor Julian, there was a law passed by which Christians were forbidden to teach literature and rhetoric;³ and how Victorinus, in ready obedience to the law, chose to abandon his school of words rather than your word, by which you make eloquent the tongues of the dumb—he appeared to me not so much brave as happy, because he had found a reason for giving his time wholly to you. For this was what I was longing to do, but as yet I was bound by the iron chain of my own will. The enemy held fast my will, and had made of it a chain, and had bound me tight with it. For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity. By these links, as it were, forged together—which is why I called it a chain—a hard bondage held me in slavery. But that new will which had begun to spring up in me freely to worship you and to enjoy you, my god, the only certain joy, was not able as yet to overcome my former willfulness, made strong by long indulgence. Thus my two wills—the old and the new, the carnal and the spiritual—were in conflict within me, and by their discord they tore my soul apart.

[8.5.11] Thus I came to understand from my own experience what I had read, how “the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.”^ec I truly lusted both ways, yet more in that which I approved in myself than in that which I disapproved in myself. For in the latter it was not now really I that was involved, because here I was rather an unwilling sufferer than a willing actor. And yet it was through me that habit had become an armed enemy against me, because I had willingly come to be what I unwillingly found myself to be. Who, then, can with any justice speak against it, when just punishment follows the sinner? I had now no longer my accustomed excuse that, as yet, I hesitated to give up the world and serve you because my perception of the truth was uncertain. For now it was certain. But, still bound to the earth, I refused to be your soldier; and was as much afraid of being freed from all entanglements as we ought to fear to be entangled.

[8.5.12] Thus with the baggage of the world I was sweetly burdened, as one in slumber, and my musings on you were like the efforts of those who desire to awake, but who are still overpowered with drowsiness and fall back into deep slumber. And as no one wishes to sleep forever (for all men rightly count waking better)—yet a man will usually defer shaking off his drowsiness when there is a heavy lethargy in his limbs, and he is glad to sleep on even when his reason disapproves, and the hour for rising has struck—so was I assured that it was much better for me to give myself up to your love than to go on yielding myself to my own lust. Your love satisfied and vanquished me, my lust pleased and fettered me. I had no answer to your calling to me, “Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.”^ed On all sides, you showed me that your words are true, and I, convicted by the truth, had nothing at all to reply but the drawling and drowsy words: “Presently; see, presently. Leave me alone a little while.” But “presently, presently,” had no present and my “leave me alone a little while” went on for a long while. In vain did I “delight in your law in the inner man” while “another law in my members warred against the law of my mind and brought me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” For the law of sin is the tyranny of habit, by which the mind is drawn and held, even against its will. Yet it deserves to be so held because it so willingly falls into the habit. “Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death” but your grace alone, through Jesus Christ our lord?^ee

[8.6.13] And now I will tell and confess to your name, lord, my helper and my redeemer, how you delivered me from the chain of sexual desire by which I was so tightly held, and from the slavery of worldly business. With increasing anxiety I was going about my usual affairs, and daily sighing to you. I attended your church as frequently as my business, under the burden of which I groaned, left me free to do so. Alypius was with me, disengaged at last from his legal post, after a third term as assessor, and now waiting for private clients to whom he might sell his legal advice as I sold the power of speaking (as if it could be supplied by teaching). But Nebridius had consented, for the sake of our friendship, to teach under Verecundus—a citizen of Milan and professor of grammar, and a very intimate friend of us all—who ardently desired, and by right of friendship demanded from us, the faithful aid he greatly needed.⁴ Nebridius was not drawn to this by any desire of gain—for he could have made much more out of his learning had he been so inclined—but as he was a most sweet and kindly friend, he was unwilling, out of respect for the duties of friendship, to slight our request. But in this he acted very discreetly, taking care not to become known to those persons who had great reputations in the world. Thus he avoided all distractions of mind, and reserved as many hours as possible to pursue or read or listen to discussions about wisdom.

[8.6.14] On a certain day, then, when Nebridius was away—for some reason I cannot remember—there came to visit Alypius and me at our house one Ponticianus, a fellow countryman of ours from Africa, who held high office in the emperor’s court. What he wanted with us I do not know; but we sat down to talk together, and it chanced that he noticed a book on a game table before us. He took it up, opened it, and, contrary to his expectation, found it to be the apostle Paul, for he imagined that it was one of my wearisome rhetoric textbooks.⁵ At this, he looked up at me with a smile and expressed his delight and wonder that he had so unexpectedly found this book and only this one, lying before my eyes; for he was indeed a Christian and a faithful one at that, and often he prostrated himself before you, our god, in the church in constant daily prayer. When I had told him that I had given much attention to these writings, a conversation followed in which he spoke of Anthony, the Egyptian monk, whose name was in high repute among your servants, although up to that time not familiar to me.⁶ When he learned this, he lingered on the topic, giving us an account of this eminent man, and marveling at our ignorance. We in turn were amazed to hear of your wonderful works so fully manifested in recent times—almost in our own—occurring in the true faith and the catholic church. We all wondered—we, that these things were so great, and he, that we had never heard of them.

[8.6.15] From this, his conversation turned to the multitudes in the monasteries and their manners so fragrant to you, and to the teeming solitudes of the wilderness, of which we knew nothing at all. There was even a monastery at Milan, outside the city’s walls, full of good brothers under the fostering care of Ambrose—and we were ignorant of it. He went on with his story, and we listened intently and in silence. He then told us how, on a certain afternoon, at Trier, when the emperor was occupied watching the gladiatorial games, he and three comrades went out for a walk in the gardens close to the city walls. There, as they chanced to walk two by two, one strolled away with him, while the other two went on by themselves. As they rambled, these first two came upon a certain cottage where lived some of your servants, some of the “poor in spirit” (of such is the kingdom of heaven^ef) where they found the book in which was written the life of Anthony! One of them began to read it, to marvel and to be inflamed by it. While reading, he meditated on embracing just such a life, giving up his worldly employment to seek you alone. These two belonged to the group of officials called “special agents.”⁷ Then, suddenly being overwhelmed with a holy love and a sober shame and as if in anger with himself, he fixed his eyes on his friend, exclaiming: “Tell me, I beg you, what goal are we seeking in all these toils of ours? What is it that we desire? What is our motive in public service? Can our hopes in the court rise higher than to be ‘friends of the emperor’? But how frail, how beset with peril, is that pride! Through what dangers must we climb to a greater danger? And when shall we succeed? But if I chose to become a friend of god, see, I can become one now.” Thus he spoke, and in the pangs of the travail of the new life he turned his eyes again onto the page and continued reading; he was inwardly changed, as you saw, and the world dropped away from his mind, as soon became plain to others. For as he read with a heart like a stormy sea, more than once he groaned. Finally he saw the better course, and resolved on it. Then, having become your servant, he said to his friend: “Now I have broken loose from those hopes we had, and I am determined to serve god; and I enter into that service from this hour in this place. If you are reluctant to imitate me, do not oppose me.” The other replied that he would continue bound in his friendship, to share in so great a service for so great a prize. So both became yours, and began to “build a tower,” counting the cost—namely, giving up all that they had and following you.^eg Shortly after, Ponticianus and his companion, who had walked with him in the other part of the garden, came in search of them to the same place, and having found them reminded them to return, as the day was declining. But the first two, making known to Ponticianus their resolution and purpose, and how a resolve had sprung up and become confirmed in them, entreated them not to take it ill if they refused to join themselves with them. But Ponticianus and his friend, although not changed from their former course, did nevertheless (as he told us) bewail themselves and congratulated their friends on their godliness, recommending themselves to their prayers. And with hearts inclining again toward earthly things, they returned to the palace. But the other two, setting their affections on heavenly things, remained in the cottage. Both of them had affianced brides who, when they heard of this, likewise dedicated their virginity to you.

[8.7.17] But now, the more ardently I loved those whose wholesome affections I heard reported—that they had given themselves up wholly to you to be cured—the more I abhorred myself when compared with them. For many of my years—perhaps twelve—had passed away since my nineteenth, when, upon the reading of Cicero’s Hortensius, I was roused to a desire for wisdom. And here I was, still postponing the abandonment of this world’s happiness to devote myself to the search. For not just the finding alone, but also the bare search for it, ought to have been preferred above the treasures and kingdoms of this world; better than all bodily pleasures, though they were to be had for the taking. But, wretched youth that I was—supremely wretched even in the very outset of my youth—I had entreated chastity of you and had prayed, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” For I was afraid that you might hear me too soon, and too soon cure me of my disease of lust which I desired to have satisfied rather than extinguished. And I had wandered through perverse ways of godless superstition—not really sure of it, either, but preferring it to the other, which I did not seek in piety, but opposed in malice.

[8.7.18] And I had thought that I delayed from day to day in rejecting those worldly hopes and following you alone because there did not appear anything certain by which I could direct my course. And now the day had arrived in which I was laid bare to myself and my conscience was to chide me: “Where are you, my tongue? You said indeed that you were not willing to cast off the baggage of vanity for uncertain truth. But see, now it is certain, and still that burden oppresses you. At the same time those who have not worn themselves out with searching for it as you have, nor spent ten years and more in thinking about it, have had their shoulders unburdened and have received wings to fly away.” Thus was I inwardly confused, and mightily confounded with a horrible shame, while Ponticianus went ahead speaking such things. And when he had finished his story and the business he came for, he went his way. And then what did I not say to myself, within myself? With what scourges of rebuke did I not lash my soul to make it follow me, as I was struggling to go after you? Yet it drew back. It refused. It would not make an effort. All its arguments were exhausted and confuted. Yet it resisted in sullen disquiet, fearing the cutting off of that habit by which it was being wasted to death, as if that were death itself.

[8.8.19] Then, as this vehement quarrel, which I waged with my soul in the chamber of my heart, was raging inside my inner dwelling, agitated both in mind and countenance, I seized upon Alypius and exclaimed: “What is the matter with us? What is this? What did you hear? The uninstructed start up and take heaven, and we—with all our learning but so little heart—see where we wallow in flesh and blood! Because others have gone before us, are we ashamed to follow, and not rather ashamed at our not following?” I scarcely knew what I said, and in my excitement I flung away from him, while he gazed at me in silent astonishment. For I did not sound like myself: my face, eyes, color, tone expressed my meaning more clearly than my words. There was a little garden belonging to our lodging, of which we had the use—as of the whole house—for the master, our landlord, did not live there. The tempest in my breast hurried me out into this garden, where no one might interrupt the fiery struggle in which I was engaged with myself, until it came to the outcome that you knew though I did not. But I was mad for health, and dying for life; knowing what evil thing I was, but not knowing what good thing I was so shortly to become.

I fled into the garden, with Alypius following step by step; for I had no secret in which he did not share, and how could he leave me in such distress ? We sat down, as far from the house as possible. I was greatly disturbed in spirit, angry at myself with a turbulent indignation because I had not entered your will and covenant, my god, while all my bones cried out to me to enter, extolling it to the skies. The way there is not by ships or chariots or feet—indeed it was not as far as I had come from the house to the place where we were seated. For to go along that road and indeed to reach the goal is nothing else but the will to go. But it must be a strong and single will, not staggering and swaying about this way and that—a changeable, twisting, fluctuating will, wrestling with itself while one part falls as another rises.

[8.8.20] Finally, in the very fever of my indecision, I made many motions with my body; like men do when they will to act but cannot, either because they do not have the limbs or because their limbs are bound or weakened by disease, or incapacitated in some other way. Thus if I tore my hair, struck my forehead, or, entwining my fingers, clasped my knee, these I did because I willed it. But I might have willed it and still not have done it, if the nerves had not obeyed my will. Many things then I did, in which the will and power to do were not the same. Yet I did not do that one thing which seemed to me infinitely more desirable, which before long I should have power to will because shortly when I willed, I would will with a single will. For in this, the power of willing is the power of doing; and as yet I could not do it. Thus my body more readily obeyed the slightest wish of the soul in moving its limbs at the order of my mind than my soul obeyed itself to accomplish in the will alone its great resolve.

[8.9.21] How can there be such a strange anomaly? And why is it? Let your mercy shine on me, so that I may inquire and find an answer, amid the dark labyrinth of human punishment and in the darkest contritions of the sons of Adam. What is the source of such an anomaly? And why should it be? The mind commands the body, and the body obeys. The mind commands itself and is resisted. The mind commands the hand to be moved and there is such readiness that the command is scarcely distinguished from the obedience in act. Yet the mind is mind, and the hand is body. The mind commands the mind to will, and yet though it be itself it does not obey itself. What is the source of this strange anomaly and why should it be? I repeat: the will commands itself to will, and could not give the command unless it wills; yet what is commanded is not done. But actually the will does not will entirely; therefore it does not command entirely. For as far as it wills, it commands. And as far as it does not will, the thing commanded is not done. For the will commands that there be an act of will—not another, but itself. But it does not command entirely. Therefore, what is commanded does not happen; for if the will were whole and entire, it would not even command it to be, because it would already be. It is, therefore, no strange anomaly partly to will and partly to be unwilling. This is actually an infirmity of mind, which cannot wholly rise, while pressed down by habit, even though it is supported by the truth. And so there are two wills, because one of them is not whole, and what is present in this one is lacking in the other.

[8.10.22] Let them perish from your presence, god, as vain talkers, and deceivers of the soul perish, who, when they observe that there are two wills in the act of deliberation, go on to affirm that there are two kinds of minds in us: one good, the other evil. They are indeed themselves evil when they hold these evil opinions—and they shall become good only when they come to hold the truth and consent to the truth that your apostle may say to them: “You were formerly in darkness, but now are you in the light in the lord.”^eh But they desired to be light, not in the lord, but in themselves. They conceived the nature of the soul to be the same as what god is, and thus have become a thicker darkness than they were; for in their dread arrogance they have gone farther away from you, from you “the true light, that lights every man that comes into the world.”^ei Mark what you say and blush for shame; draw near to him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be ashamed.^ej While I was deliberating whether I would serve the lord my god now, as I had long purposed to do, it was I who willed and it was also I who was unwilling. In either case, it was I. I neither willed with my whole will nor was I wholly unwilling. And so I was at war with myself and torn apart by myself. And this strife was against my will; yet it did not show the presence of another mind, but the punishment of my own. Thus it was no more I who did it, but the sin that dwelt in me—the punishment of a sin freely committed by Adam, and I was a son of Adam.

[8.10.23] For if there are as many opposing natures as there are opposing wills, there will not be two but many more. If any man is trying to decide whether he should go to their conventicle or to the theater, the Manicheans at once cry out, “See, here are two natures—one good, drawing this way, another bad, drawing back that way; for how else can you explain this indecision between conflicting wills?” But I reply that both impulses are bad—that which draws to them and that which draws back to the theater. But they do not believe that the will which draws to them can be anything but good. Suppose, then, that one of us should try to decide, and through the conflict of his two wills should waver whether he should go to the theater or to our church. Would not those also waver about the answer here? For either they must confess, which they are unwilling to do, that the will that leads to our church is as good as that which carries their own adherents and those captivated by their mysteries; or else they must imagine that there are two evil natures and two evil minds in one man, both at war with each other, and then it will not be true what they say, that there is one good and another bad. Else they must be converted to the truth, and no longer deny that when anyone deliberates there is one soul fluctuating between conflicting wills.

[8.10.24] Let them no longer maintain that when they perceive two wills to be contending with each other in the same man the contest is between two opposing minds, of two opposing substances, from two opposing principles, the one good and the other bad. Thus, true god, you reprove and confute and convict them. For both wills may be bad: as when a man tries to decide whether he should kill a man by poison or by the sword; whether he should take possession of this field or that one belonging to someone else, when he cannot get both; whether he should squander his money to buy pleasure or hold onto his money through the motive of covetousness ; whether he should go to the circus or to the theater, if both are open on the same day; or, whether he should take a third course, open at the same time, and rob another man’s house; or, a fourth option, whether he should commit adultery, if he has the opportunity—all these things concurring in the same space of time and all being equally longed for, although impossible to do at one time. For the mind is pulled four ways by four antagonistic wills—or even more, in view of the vast range of human desires—but even the Manicheans do not affirm that there are these many different substances. The same principle applies as in the action of good wills. For I ask them, “Is it a good thing to have delight in reading the apostle, or is it a good thing to delight in a sober psalm, or is it a good thing to discourse on the gospel?” To each of these, they will answer, “It is good.” But what, then, if all delight us equally and all at the same time? Do not different wills distract the mind when a man is trying to decide what he should choose? Yet they are all good, and are at variance with each other until one is chosen. When this is done the whole united will may go forward on a single track instead of remaining as it was before, divided in many ways. So also, when eternity attracts us from above, and the pleasure of earthly delight pulls us down from below, the soul does not will either the one or the other with all its force, but still it is the same soul that does not will this or that with a united will, and is therefore pulled apart with grievous perplexities, because for truth’s sake it prefers this, but for custom’s sake it does not lay that aside.

[8.11.25] Thus I was sick and tormented, reproaching myself more bitterly than ever, rolling and writhing in my chain till it should be utterly broken. By now I was held but slightly, but still was held. And you, lord, pressed upon me in my inmost heart with a severe mercy, redoubling the lashes of fear and shame; lest I should again give way and that same slender remaining tie not be broken off, but recover strength and enchain me yet more securely. I kept saying to myself, “See, let it be done now; let it be done now.” And as I said this I all but came to a firm decision. I all but did it-yet I did not quite. Still I did not fall back to my old condition, but stood aside for a moment and drew breath. And I tried again, and lacked only a very little of reaching the resolve—and then somewhat less, and then all but touched and grasped it. Yet I still did not quite reach or touch or grasp the goal, because I hesitated to die to death and to live to life. And the worse way, to which I was habituated, was stronger in me than the better, which I had not tried. And up to the very moment in which I was to become another man, the nearer the moment approached, the greater horror did it strike in me. But it did not strike me back, nor turn me aside, but held me in suspense.

[8.11.26] It was, in fact, my old mistresses, trifles of trifles and vanities of vanities, who still enthralled me. They tugged at my fleshly garments and softly whispered: “Are you going to part with us? And from that moment will we never be with you any more? And from that moment will not this and that be forbidden you forever?” What were they suggesting to me in those words “this or that”? What is it they suggested, my god? Let your mercy guard the soul of your servant from the vileness and the shame they suggested! And now I scarcely heard them, for they were not openly showing themselves and opposing me face to face; but muttering, as it were, behind my back; and furtively plucking at me as I was leaving, trying to make me look back at them. Still they delayed me, so that I hesitated to break loose and shake myself free of them and leap over to the place to which I was being called—for unruly habit kept saying to me, “Do you think you can live without them?”

[8.11.27] But now it said this very faintly; for in the direction I had set my face, and yet toward which I still trembled to go, the chaste dignity of Continence appeared to me—cheerful but not wanton, modestly alluring me to come and doubt nothing, extending her holy hands, full of a multitude of good examples—to receive and embrace me. There were there so many young men and maidens, a multitude of youth and every age, grave widows and ancient virgins; and Continence herself in their midst: not barren, but a fruitful mother of children—her joys—by you, lord, her husband. And she smiled on me with a challenging smile as if to say: “Can you not do what these young men and maidens can? Or can any of them do it of themselves, and not rather in the lord their god? The lord their god gave me to them. Why do you stand in your own strength, and so stand not? Cast yourself on him; fear not. He will not flinch and you will not fall. Cast yourself on him without fear, for he will receive and heal you.” And I blushed violently, for I still heard the muttering of those trifles and hung suspended. Again she seemed to speak: “Stop your ears against those unclean members of yours, so that they may be mortified. They tell you of delights, but not according to the law of the lord your god.” This struggle raging in my heart was nothing but the contest of self against self. And Alypius kept close beside me, and awaited in silence the outcome of my extraordinary agitation.

[8.12.28] Now when deep reflection had drawn up out of the secret depths of my soul all my misery and had heaped it up before the sight of my heart, there arose a mighty storm, accompanied by a mighty rain of tears. That I might give way fully to my tears and lamentations, I stole away from Alypius, for it seemed to me that solitude was more appropriate for the business of weeping. I went far enough away that I could feel that even his presence was no restraint upon me. This was the way I felt at the time, and he realized it. I suppose I had said something before I started up and he noticed that the sound of my voice was choked with weeping. And so he stayed alone, where we had been sitting together, greatly astonished. I flung myself down under a fig tree—how I know not—and gave free course to my tears.⁸ The streams of my eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to you. And, not indeed in these words, but to this effect, I cried to you: “And you, lord, how long? How long, lord? Will you be angry forever? Do not remember against us our former iniquities.” ^ek For I felt that I was still enthralled by them. I sent up these sorrowful cries: “How long, how long? Tomorrow and tomorrow? Why not now? Why not this very hour make an end to my uncleanness?”

[8.112.29] I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when suddenly I heard the voice of a boy or a girl-I know not which—coming from the neighboring house, chanting over and over again, “Pick up, read; pick up, read” [Tolle, lege; tolle, lege]. Immediately I ceased weeping and began most earnestly to think whether it was usual for children in some kind of game to sing such a song, but I could not remember ever having heard the like. So, damming the torrent of my tears, I got to my feet, for I could only think that this was a divine command to open the book and read the first passage I should light upon. For I had heard how Anthony, accidentally coming into church while the gospel was being read, received the admonition as if what was read had been addressed to him: “Go and sell what you have and give it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me.”^el By such an oracle he was immediately converted to you. So I quickly returned to the bench where Alypius was sitting, for there I had put down the apostle’s book when I had left. I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.”^† I wanted to read no further, nor did I need to. For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away.⁹

[8.12.30] Closing the book, then, and putting my finger or something else for a mark I began—now with a tranquil countenance—to tell it all to Alypius. And he in turn disclosed to me what had been going on in himself, of which I knew nothing. He asked to see what I had read. I showed him, and he looked on even further than I had read. I had not known what followed. But indeed it was this, “Him that is weak in the faith, receive.”^‡ This he applied to himself, and told me so. By these words of warning he was strengthened, and by exercising his good resolution and purpose—all very much in keeping with his character, in which, in these respects, he was always far different from and better than I—he joined me in full commitment without any restless hesitation. Then we went in to my mother, and told her what happened, to her great joy. We explained to her how it had occurred, and she leaped for joy triumphant, and she blessed you, who are “able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.”^§ For she saw that you had granted her far more than she had ever asked for in all her pitiful and doleful lamentations. For you so converted me to you that I sought neither a wife nor any other of this world’s hopes, but set my feet on that rule of faith which so many years before you had showed her in her dream about me. And so you turned her grief into gladness more plentiful than she had ventured to desire, and dearer and purer than the desire she used to cherish of having grandchildren of my flesh.

[9.1.1] “Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant and the son of your handmaid. You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving.”^em Let my heart and my tongue praise you, and let all my bones say, “Lord, who is like you?” Let them say so, and you answer me and say to my soul, “I am your salvation.”^en Who am I, and what is my nature? What evil is there not in me and my deeds; or if not in my deeds, my words; or if not in my words, my will? But you, lord, are good and merciful, and your right hand reached into the depth of my death and emptied out the abyss of corruption from the bottom of my heart. And this was the result: now I did not will to do what I willed, and began to will to do what you did will. But where was my free will during all those years and from what deep and secret retreat was it called forth in a single moment, whereby I gave my neck to your easy yoke and my shoulders to your light burden, Christ Jesus, my strength and my redeemer ? How sweet did it suddenly become to me to be without the sweetness of trifles! And it was now a joy to put away what I formerly feared to lose. For you cast them away from me, true and highest sweetness. You cast them away, and in their place you entered in yourself-sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood; brighter than all light, but more veiled than all mystery; more exalted than all honor, though not to them that are exalted in their own eyes. Now was my soul free from the gnawing cares of seeking and getting, of wallowing in the mire and scratching the itch of lust. And I prattled like a child to you, lord my god—my light, my riches, and my salvation.

[9.2.2] And it seemed right to me, in your sight, not to snatch my tongue’s service abruptly out of the speech market, but to withdraw quietly, so that the young men who were not concerned about your law or your peace, but with mendacious follies and forensic strifes, might no longer purchase from my mouth weapons for their frenzy Fortunately, there were only a few days before the vintage vacation; and I determined to endure them, so that I might resign in due form and, now bought by you, return for sale no more. My plan was known to you, but, except for my own friends, it was not known to other men. For we had agreed that it should not be made public; although, in our ascent from the valley of tears and our singing of “the song of degrees,” you had given us sharp arrows and hot burning coals to stop that deceitful tongue which opposes under the guise of good counsel, and devours what it loves as though it were food.¹

[9.2.3] You had pierced our heart with your love, and we carried your words, as it were, skewered through our inmost parts. The examples of your servants whom you had changed from black to shining white, and from death to life, crowded into the bosom of our thoughts and burned and consumed our sluggish temper, to prevent us from toppling back into the abyss. And they fired us exceedingly, so that every breath of the deceitful tongue of our detractors might fan the flame and not blow it out. Though this vow and purpose of ours should find those who would loudly praise it—for the sake of your name, which you have sanctified throughout the earth—it nevertheless looked like a self-vaunting not to wait until the vacation time now so near. For if I had left such a public office ahead of time, and had made the break in the eye of the general public, all who took notice of this act of mine and observed how near was the vintage time that I wished to anticipate would have talked about me a great deal, as if I were trying to appear a great person. And what purpose would it serve that people should consider and dispute about my conversion so that my good should be evil spoken of?

[9.2.4] Furthermore, this same summer my lungs had begun to be weak from too much lecturing in class. Breathing was difficult; the pains in my chest showed that the lungs were affected and were soon fatigued by too loud or prolonged speaking. This had at first been a trial to me, for it would have compelled me almost of necessity to lay down that burden of teaching; or, if I was to be cured and become strong again, at least to take a leave for a while. But as soon as the full desire to be still so that I might know that you are the lord arose and was confirmed in me, you know, my god, that I began to rejoice that I had this excuse ready—and not a feigned one, either—which might somewhat temper the displeasure of those who for their sons’ freedom wished me never to have any freedom of my own. Full of joy, then, I bore it until my time ran out—it was perhaps some twenty days—yet it was some strain to go through with it, for the greediness which helped to support the drudgery had gone, and I would have been overwhelmed had not its place been taken by patience. Some of your servants, my brethren, may say that I sinned in this, since having once fully and from my heart enlisted in your service, I permitted myself to sit a single hour in the chair of falsehood. I will not dispute it. But have you not, most merciful lord, pardoned and forgiven this sin in the holy water also, along with all the others, horrible and deadly as they were?

[9.3.5] Verecundus was severely disturbed by this new happiness of mine, since he was still firmly held by his bonds and saw that he would lose my companionship. For he was not yet a Christian, though his wife was; and, indeed, he was more firmly enchained by her than by anything else, and held back from that journey on which we had set out. Furthermore, he declared he did not wish to be a Christian on any terms except those that were impossible. However, he invited us most courteously to make use of his country house so long as we would stay there. Lord, you will recompense him for this “in the resurrection of the just,”^eo seeing that you have already given him “the lot of the righteous.”^ep For while we were absent at Rome, he was overtaken with bodily sickness, and during it he was made a Christian and departed this life as one of the faithful. Thus you had mercy on him, and not on him only, but on us as well; lest, remembering the exceeding kindness of our friend to us and not able to count him in your flock, we should be tortured with intolerable grief. Thanks be to you, our god; we are yours. Your exhortations, consolations, and faithful promises assure us that you will repay Verecundus for that country house at Cassiciacum—where we found rest in you from the fever of the world—with the perpetual freshness of your paradise in which you have forgiven him his earthly sins, in that mountain flowing with milk, that fruitful mountain—your own.²

[9.3.6] Thus Verecundus was full of grief; but Nebridius was joyous. For he was not yet a Christian, and had fallen into the pit of deadly error, believing that the flesh of your son, the truth, was a phantom. Yet he had come up out of that pit and now held the same belief that we did. And though he was not as yet initiated in any of the sacraments of your church, he was a most earnest inquirer after truth. Not long after our conversion and regeneration by your baptism, he also became a faithful member of the catholic church, serving you in perfect chastity and continence among his own people in Africa, and bringing his whole household with him to Christianity. Then you released him from the flesh, and now he lives in Abraham’s bosom.^eq Whatever is signified by that term “bosom,” there lives my Nebridius, my sweet friend, your son by adoption, lord, and not a freedman any longer. There he lives; for what other place could there be for such a soul? There he lives in that abode about which he used to ask me so many questions—poor ignorant one that I was. Now he does not put his ear up to my mouth, but his spiritual mouth to your fountain, and drinks wisdom as he desires and as he is able, happy without end. But I do not believe that he is so inebriated by that draught as to forget me; since you, lord, who are the draught, art mindful of us. Thus, then, we were comforting the unhappy Verecundus—our friendship touched-reconciling him to our conversion and exhorting him to a faith fit for his condition (that is, to his being married). We tarried for Nebridius to follow us, since he was so close, and this he was just about to do when at last the interim ended. The days had seemed long and many because of my eagerness for leisure and liberty in which I might sing to you from my inmost part, “My heart has said to you, I have sought your face; your face, lord, will I seek.”^er

[9.4.7] Finally the day came on which I was actually to be relieved from the professorship of rhetoric, from which I had already been released in intention. And it was done. And you delivered my tongue as you had already delivered my heart; and I blessed you for it with great joy, and retired with my friends to the villa. My books testify to what I got done there in writing, which was now hopefully devoted to your service ; though in this pause it was still as if I were panting from my exertions in the school of pride. These were the books in which I engaged in dialogue with my friends, and also those in soliloquy before you alone. And there are my letters to Nebridius, who was still absent.³ When would there be enough time to recount all your great blessings which you bestowed on us in that time, especially as I am hastening on to still greater mercies? For my memory recalls them to me and it is pleasant to confess them to you, lord: the inward goads by which you subdued me and how you brought me low, leveling the mountains and hills of my thoughts, straightening my crookedness, and smoothing my rough ways. And I remember by what means you also subdued Alypius, my heart’s brother, to the name of your only son, our lord and saviour Jesus Christ, which he at first refused to have inserted in our writings. For at first he preferred that they should smell of the cedars of the schools which the lord has now broken down, rather than of the wholesome herbs of the church, hostile to serpents.⁴

[9.4.8] My god, how I cried to you when I read the psalms of David, those hymns of faith, those paeans of devotion which leave no room for swelling pride! I was still a novice in your true love, a catechumen keeping holiday at the villa, with Alypius, a catechumen like myself. My mother was also with us—in woman’s garb, but with a man’s faith, with the peacefulness of age and the fullness of motherly love and Christian piety. What cries I used to send up to you in those songs, and how I was enkindled toward you by them! I burned to sing them if possible, throughout the whole world, against the pride of the human race. And yet, indeed, they are sung throughout the whole world, and none can hide himself from your heat. With what strong and bitter regret was I indignant at the Manicheans! Yet I also pitied them; for they were ignorant of those sacraments, those medicines, and raved insanely against the cure that might have made them sane! I wished they could have been somewhere close by, and—without my knowledge—could have seen my face and heard my words when, in that time of leisure, I pored over the Fourth Psalm. And I wish they could have seen how that psalm affected me. “When I called upon you, god of my righteousness, you heard me; you enlarged me when I was in distress. Have mercy upon me and hear my prayer.” I wish they might have heard what I said in comment on those words, without my knowing that they heard, lest they should think that I was speaking it just on their account. For, indeed, I should not have said quite the same things, nor quite in the same way, if I had known that I was heard and seen by them. And if I had so spoken, they would not have meant the same things to them as they did to me when I spoke by and for myself before you, out of the private affections of my soul.⁵

[9.4.9] By turns I trembled with fear and warmed with hope and rejoiced in your mercy, father. And all these feelings showed forth in my eyes and voice when your good spirit turned to us and said, “O sons of men, how long will you be slow of heart, how long will you love vanity, and seek after falsehood?” For I had loved vanity and sought after falsehood. And you, lord, had already magnified your holy one, raising him from the dead and setting him at your right hand, that thence he should send forth from on high his promised paraclete, the spirit of truth. Already he had sent him, and I knew it not. He had sent him because he was now magnified, rising from the dead and ascending into heaven. For till then “the holy spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”^es And the prophet cried out: “How long will you be slow of heart? How long will you love vanity, and seek after falsehood? Know this, that the lord has magnified his holy one.” He cries, “How long?” He cries, “Know this,” and I, so long loving vanity, and seeking after falsehood, heard and trembled, because these words were spoken to such a one as I remembered that I myself had been. For in those phantoms which I once held for truth there was vanity and falsehood. And I spoke many things loudly and earnestly in the contrition of my memory which I wish they had heard, who still love vanity and seek after falsehood. Perhaps they would have been troubled, and have vomited up their error, and you would have heard them when they cried to you, for by a real death in the flesh he died for us who now makes intercession for us with you.

[9.4.10] I read on further, “Be angry, and sin not.” And how deeply was I touched, my god; for I had now learned to be angry with myself for the things past, so that in the future I might not sin. Yes, to be angry with good cause, for it was not another nature out of the race of darkness that had sinned for me, as they affirm who are not angry with themselves, and who store up for themselves dire wrath against the day of wrath and the revelation of your righteous judgment. Nor were the good things I saw now outside me, nor were they to be seen with the eyes of flesh in the light of the earthly sun. For they that have their joys from without sink easily into emptiness and are spilled out on those things that are visible and temporal, and in their starving thoughts they lick their very shadows. If only they would grow weary with their hunger and would say, “Who will show us any good?” And we would answer, and they would hear, “Lord, the light of your countenance shines bright upon us.” For we are not that light that enlightens every man, but we are enlightened by you, so that we who were formerly in darkness may now be alight in you. If only they could behold the inner light eternal which, now that I had tasted it, I gnashed my teeth because I could not show it to them unless they brought me their heart in their eyes—their roving eyes—and said, “Who will show us any good?” But even there, in the inner chamber of my soul where I was angry with myself, where I was inwardly pricked, where I had offered my sacrifice, slaying the old man in me, and hoping in you with the new resolve of a new life with my trust laid in you—even there you had begun to grow sweet to me and to “put gladness in my heart.” And thus as I read all this, I cried aloud and felt its inward meaning. Nor did I wish to be increased in worldly goods which are wasted by time, for now I possessed, in your eternal simplicity, other corn and wine and oil.

[9.4.11] And with a loud cry from my heart, I read the following verse: “Oh, in peace! Oh, in the selfsame!” See how he says it: “I will lay me down and take my rest.” For who shall withstand us when the truth of this saying that is written is made manifest: “Death is swallowed up in victory”? ^et For surely you, who do not change, art the selfsame, and in you is rest and oblivion to all distress. There is none other beside you, nor are we to toil for those many things which are not you, for “only you, lord, make me to dwell in hope.” These things I read and I was enkindled, but still I could not discover what to do with those deaf and dead Manicheans to whom I myself had belonged; for I had been a bitter and blind reviler against these writings, honeyed with the honey of heaven and luminous with your light. And I was sorely grieved at these enemies of this scripture.

[9.4.12] When shall I call to mind all that happened during those holidays ? I have not forgotten them, nor will I be silent about the severity of your scourge, and the amazing quickness of your mercy. During that time you tortured me with a toothache; and when it had become so acute that I was not able to speak, it came into my heart to urge all my friends who were present to pray for me to you, the god of all health. And I wrote it down on the tablet and gave it to them to read. Presently, as we bowed our knees in supplication, the pain was gone. But what pain? How did it go? I confess that I was terrified, lord my god, because from my earliest years I had never experienced such pain. And your purposes were profoundly impressed upon me; and rejoicing in faith, I praised your name. But that faith allowed me no rest in respect of my past sins, which were not yet forgiven me through your baptism.

[9.5.13] Now that the vintage vacation was ended, I gave notice to the citizens of Milan that they might provide their scholars with another word-merchant. I gave as my reasons my determination to serve you and also my insufficiency for the task, because of the difficulty in breathing and the pain in my chest. And by letters I notified your bishop, the holy man Ambrose, of my former errors and my present resolution. And I asked his advice as to which of your books it was best for me to read so that I might be the more ready and fit for the reception of so great a grace. He recommended Isaiah the prophet; and I believe it was because Isaiah foreshows more clearly than others the gospel, and the calling of the gentiles. But because I could not understand the first part and because I imagined the rest to be like it, I laid it aside with the intention of taking it up again later, when better practiced in our lord’s words.

[9.6.I4] When the time arrived for me to give in my name, we left the country and returned to Milan. Alypius also resolved to be born again in you at the same time. He was already clothed with the humility that befits your sacraments, and was so brave a tamer of his body that he would walk the frozen Italian soil with his naked feet, which called for unusual fortitude. We took with us the boy Adeodatus, my son after the flesh, the offspring of my sin. You had made of him a noble lad. He was barely fifteen years old, but his intelligence excelled that of many grave and learned men. I confess to you your gifts, lord my god, creator of all, who have power to reform our deformities—for there was nothing of me in that boy but the sin. For it was you who inspired us to foster him in your discipline, and none other—your gifts I confess to you. There is a book of mine, entitled The Teacher. It is a dialogue between Adeodatus and me, and you know that all things there put into the mouth of my interlocutor are his, though he was then only in his sixteenth year.⁶ Many other gifts even more wonderful I found in him. His talent was a source of awe to me. And who but you could be the worker of such marvels? And you quickly removed his life from the earth, and even now I recall him to mind with a sense of security, because I fear nothing for his childhood or youth, nor for his whole career. We took him for our companion, as if he were the same age in grace with ourselves, to be trained with ourselves in your discipline. And so we were baptized and the anxiety about our past life left us. Nor did I ever have enough in those days of the wondrous sweetness of meditating on the depth of your counsels concerning the salvation of the human race. How freely I wept in your hymns and canticles; how deeply was I moved by the voices of your sweet-speaking church! The voices flowed into my ears and the truth was poured forth into my heart, where the tide of my devotion overflowed, and my tears ran down, and I was happy in all these things.

[9.7.15] The church of Milan had only recently begun to employ this mode of consolation and exaltation with all the brethren singing together with great earnestness of voice and heart. For it was only about a year, not much more, since Justina, the mother of the boy-emperor Valentinian, had persecuted your servant Ambrose on behalf of her heresy, in which she had been seduced by the Arians. The devoted people kept guard in the church, prepared to die with their bishop, your servant. Among them my mother, your handmaid, taking a leading part in those anxieties and vigils, lived there in prayer. And even though we were still not wholly melted by the heat of your spirit, we were nevertheless excited by the alarmed and disturbed city. This was the time that the custom began, after the manner of the eastern church, that hymns and psalms should be sung, so that the people would not be worn out with the tedium of lamentation. This custom, retained from then till now, has been imitated by many, indeed, by almost all your congregations throughout the rest of the world.⁷

[9.7.16] Then by a vision you made known to your renowned bishop the spot where lay the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, the martyrs, whom you had preserved uncorrupted for so many years in your secret storehouse, so that you might produce them at a fit time to check a woman’s fury-a woman indeed, but also a queen! When they were discovered and dug up and brought with due honor to the basilica of Ambrose, as they were borne along the road many who were troubled by unclean spirits—the devils confessing themselves—were healed.⁸ And there was also a certain man, a well-known citizen of the city, blind many years, who, when he had asked and learned the reason for the people’s tumultuous joy, rushed out and begged his guide to lead him to the place. When he arrived there, he begged to be permitted to touch with his handkerchief the bier of your saints, whose death is precious in your sight. When he had done this, and put it to his eyes, they were immediately opened. The fame of all this spread abroad, from this your glory shone more brightly. And also from this the mind of that angry woman, though not enlarged to the sanity of a full faith, was nevertheless restrained from the fury of persecution.

I am passing over many things, for I must hasten. Receive, my god, my confessions and thanksgiving for the unnumbered things about which I am silent. But I will not omit anything my mind has brought back concerning your handmaid who brought me forth in her flesh, so that I might be born into this world’s light, and in her heart, so that I might be born to life eternal. I will not speak of her gifts, but of your gift in her; for she neither made herself nor trained herself. You created her, and neither her father nor her mother knew what kind of being was to come forth from them. And it was the rod of your Christ, the discipline of your only son, that trained her in your fear, in the house of one of your faithful ones who was a sound member of your church. Yet my mother did not attribute this good training of hers as much to the diligence of her own mother as to that of a certain elderly maidservant who had nursed her father, carrying him around on her back, as big girls carried babies. Because of her long-time service and also because of her extreme age and excellent character, she was much respected by the heads of that Christian household. The care of her master’s daughters was also committed to her, and she performed her task with diligence. She was quite earnest in restraining them with a holy severity when necessary and instructing them with a sober sagacity. Thus, except at mealtimes at their parents’ table—when they were fed very temperately—she would not allow them to drink even water, however parched they were with thirst. In this way she took precautions against an evil custom and added the wholesome advice: “You drink water now only because you don’t control the wine; but when you are married and mistresses of pantry and cellar, you may not care for water, but the habit of drinking will be fixed.” By such a method of instruction, and her authority, she restrained the longing of their tender age, and regulated even the thirst of the girls to such a decorous control that they no longer wanted what they ought not to have.

[9.8.18] And yet, as your handmaid related to me, her son, there had stolen upon her a love of wine. For, in the ordinary course of things, when her parents sent her as a sober maiden to draw wine from the cask, she would hold a cup under the tap; and then, before she poured the wine into the bottle, she would wet the tips of her lips with a little of it, for more than this her taste refused. She did not do this out of any craving for drink, but out of the overflowing buoyancy of her time of life, which bubbles up with sportiveness and youthful spirits, but is usually borne down by the gravity of the old folks. And so, adding daily a little to that little-for “he that condemns small things shall fall by a little here and a little there”^ev—she slipped into such a habit as to drink off eagerly her little cup nearly full of wine. Where now was that wise old woman and her strict prohibition? Could anything prevail against our secret disease if your medicine, lord, did not watch over us? Though father and mother and nurturers are absent, you are present, who create, who call, and who also work some good for our salvation, through those who are set over us. What did you do at that time, my god? How did you heal her? How did you make her whole? Did you not bring forth from another woman’s soul a hard and bitter insult, like a surgeon’s knife from your secret store, and with one thrust drain off all that putrefaction? For the slave girl who used to accompany her to the cellar fell to quarreling with her little mistress, as it sometimes happened when she was alone with her, and cast in her teeth this vice of hers, along with a very bitter insult, calling her a drunkard. Stung by this taunt, my mother saw her own vileness and immediately condemned and renounced it.

As the flattery of friends corrupts, so often do the taunts of enemies instruct. Yet you repay them, not for the good you work through their means, but for the malice they intended. That angry slave girl wanted to infuriate her young mistress, not to cure her, and that is why she spoke up when they were alone. Or perhaps it was because their quarrel just happened to break out at that time and place, or perhaps she was afraid of punishment for having told of it so late. But you, lord, ruler of heaven and earth, who change to your purposes the deepest floods and control the turbulent tide of the ages, you heal one soul by the unsoundness of another ; so that no one, when he hears of such a happening, should attribute it to his own power if another person whom he wishes to reform is reformed through a word of his.

[9.9.19] Thus modestly and soberly brought up, she was made subject to her parents by you, rather more than by her parents to you. She arrived at a marriageable age, and she was given to a husband whom she served as her lord. And she busied herself to gain him to you, preaching you to him by her behavior, in which you made her fair and reverently amiable, and admirable to her husband. For she endured with patience his infidelity and never had any dissension with her husband on this account. For she waited for your mercy upon him until, by believing in you, he might become chaste. Moreover, even though he was earnest in friendship, he was also violent in anger; but she had learned that an angry husband should not be resisted, either in deed or in word. But as soon as he had grown calm and was tranquil, and she saw a fitting moment, she would give him a reason for her conduct, if he had been excited unreasonably. As a result, while many matrons whose husbands were more gentle than hers bore the marks of blows on their disfigured faces, and would in private talk blame the behavior of their husbands, she would blame their tongues, admonishing them seriously—though in a jesting manner—that from the hour they heard what are called the matrimonial tablets read to them, they should think of them as instruments by which they were made servants. So, always being mindful of their condition, they ought not to set themselves up in opposition to their lords. And, knowing what a furious, bad-tempered husband she endured, they marveled that it had never been rumored, nor was there any mark to show, that Patricius had ever beaten his wife, or that there had been any domestic strife between them, even for a day. And when they asked her confidentially the reason for this, she taught them the rule I have mentioned. Those who observed it confirmed the wisdom of it and rejoiced; those who did not observe it were bullied and vexed.

[9.9.20] Even her mother-in-law, who was at first prejudiced against her by the whisperings of malicious servants, she conquered by submission, persevering in it with patience and meekness; with the result that the mother-in-law told her son of the tales of the meddling servants which had disturbed the domestic peace between herself and her daughter-in-law and begged him to punish them for it. In conformity with his mother’s wish, and in the interest of family discipline to ensure the future harmony of its members, he had those servants beaten who were pointed out by her who had discovered them; and she promised a similar reward to anyone else who, thinking to please her, should say anything evil of her daughter-in-law. After this no one dared to do so, and they lived together with a wonderful sweetness of mutual good will.

[9.9.21] This other great gift you also bestowed, my god, my mercy, upon that good handmaid of yours, in whose womb you created me. It was that whenever she could she acted as a peacemaker between any differing and discordant spirits, and when she heard very bitter things on either side of a controversy—the kind of bloated and undigested discord which often belches forth bitter words, when crude malice is breathed out by sharp tongues to a present friend against an absent enemy—she would disclose nothing about the one to the other except what might serve toward their reconciliation. This might seem a small good to me if I did not know to my sorrow countless persons who, through the horrid and far-spreading infection of sin, not only repeat to enemies mutually enraged things said in passion against each other, but also add some things that were never said at all. It ought not to be enough in a truly humane person merely not to incite or increase the enmities of people by evil-speaking; one ought likewise to endeavor by kind words to extinguish them. Such a one was she—and you, her most intimate instructor, taught her in the school of her heart.

[9.9.22] Finally, her own husband, now toward the end of his earthly existence, she won over to you. Henceforth, she had no cause to complain of unfaithfulness in him, which she had endured before he became one of the faithful. She was also the servant of your servants. All those who knew her greatly praised, honored, and loved you in her because, through the witness of the fruits of a holy life, they recognized you present in her heart. For she had “been the wife of one man,”^ew had honored her parents, had guided her house in piety, was highly reputed for good works, and brought up her children, travailing in labor with them as often as she saw them swerving from you. Lastly, to all of us, lord—since of your favor you allow your servants to speak—to all of us who lived together in that association before her death in you she devoted such care as she might have if she had been mother of us all, while she served us as if she had been the daughter of us all.

[9.10.23] As the day now approached on which she was to depart this life—a day which you knew, but which we did not—it happened (though I believe it was by your secret ways arranged) that she and I stood alone, leaning in a certain window from which the garden of the house we occupied at Ostia could be seen. Here in this place, removed from the crowd, we were resting ourselves for the voyage after the fatigues of a long journey. We were conversing alone very pleasantly and “forgetting those things which are past, and reaching forward toward those things which are future.”^ex We were in the present, and in the presence of truth (which you are), discussing together what is the nature of the eternal life of the saints, “which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man.”^ey We opened wide the mouth of our heart, thirsting for those supernal streams of your fountain, the fountain of life which is with you, so that we might be sprinkled with its waters according to our capacity and might in some measure weigh the truth of so profound a mystery.

[9.10.24] And when our conversation had brought us to the point where the very highest of physical sense and the most intense illumination of physical light seemed, in comparison with the sweetness of that life to come, not worthy of comparison, nor even of mention, we lifted ourselves with a more ardent love toward the “selfsame,”^ez and we gradually passed through all the levels of bodily objects, and even through the heaven itself, where the sun and moon and stars shine on the earth. Indeed, we soared higher yet by an inner musing, speaking and marveling at your works. And we came at last to our own minds and went beyond them, in order that we might climb as high as that region of unfailing plenty where you feed Israel forever with the food of truth, where life is that wisdom by whom all things are made, both which have been and which are to be. Wisdom is not made, but is as it has been and forever shall be, for “to have been” and “to be hereafter” do not apply to it, but only “to be,” because it is eternal and “to have been” and “to be hereafter” are not eternal. And while we were thus speaking and straining after it, we just barely touched it with the whole effort of our hearts. Then with a sigh, leaving the first fruits of the spirit bound to that ecstasy, we returned to the sounds of our own tongue, where the spoken word had both beginning and end. But what is like to your word, our lord, which remains in itself without becoming old, and makes all things new?

[9.10.25] What we said went something like this: “If to any man the tumult of the flesh were silenced; and the phantoms of earth and waters and air were silenced; and the poles were silent as well; indeed, if the very soul grew silent to itself, and went beyond itself by not thinking of itself; if fancies and imaginary revelations were silenced; if every tongue and every sign and every transient thing—for actually if anyone could hear them, all these would say, ‘We did not create ourselves, but were created by him who abides forever’—and if, having uttered this, they too should be silent, having stirred our ears to hear him who created them; and if then he alone spoke, not through them but by himself, so that we might hear his word, not in fleshly tongue or angelic voice, nor sound of thunder, nor the obscurity of a parable, but might hear him—him for whose sake we love these things—if we could hear him without these, as we two now strained ourselves to do, we then with rapid thought might touch on that eternal wisdom which abides over all. And if this could be sustained, and other visions of a far different kind be taken away, and this one should so ravish and absorb and envelop its beholder in these inward joys that his life might be eternally like that one moment of knowledge which we now sighed after—would not this be the reality of the saying, ‘Enter into the joy of your lord’?^fa But when shall such a thing be? Shall it not be ‘when we all shall rise again,’ and shall it not be that ‘all things will be changed’?“^fb

[9.10.26] Such a thought I was expressing, and if not in this manner and in these words, still, lord, you know that on that day we were talking thus and that this world, with all its joys, seemed cheap to us even as we spoke. Then my mother said: “Son, for myself I have no longer any pleasure in anything in this life. Now that my hopes in this world are satisfied, I do not know what more I want here or why I am here. There was indeed one thing for which I wished to tarry a little in this life, and that was that I might see you a catholic Christian before I died. My god has answered this more than abundantly, so that I see you now made his servant and spurning all earthly happiness. What more am I to do here?”

[9.11.27] I do not well remember what reply I made to her about this. However, it was scarcely five days later, certainly not much more, that she was prostrated by fever. While she was sick, she fainted one day and was for a short time quite unconscious. We hurried to her, and when she soon regained her senses, she looked at me and my brother¹¹ as we stood by her, and said, in inquiry, “Where was I?” Then looking intently at us, dumb in our grief, she said, “Here in this place shall you bury your mother.” I was silent and held back my tears but my brother said something, wishing her the happier lot of dying in her own country and not abroad. When she heard this, she fixed him with her eye and an anxious countenance, because he savored of such earthly concerns, and then gazing at me she said, “See how he speaks.” Soon after, she said to us both: “Lay this body anywhere, and do not let the care of it be a trouble to you at all. Only this I ask: that you will remember me at the lord’s altar, wherever you are.” And when she had expressed her wish in such words as she could, she fell silent, in heavy pain with her increasing sickness.

[9.11.28] But as I thought about your gifts, invisible god, which you plant in the heart of your faithful ones, from which such marvelous fruits spring up, I rejoiced and gave thanks to you, remembering what I had known of how she had always been much concerned about her burial place, which she had provided and prepared for herself by the body of her husband. For as they had lived very peacefully together, her desire had always been—so little is the human mind capable of grasping things divine-that this last should be added to all that happiness, and commented on by others: that, after her travels beyond the sea, it would be granted her that the two of them, so united on earth, should lie in the same grave. When this vanity, through the bounty of your goodness, had begun to be no longer in her heart, I do not know; but I joyfully marveled at what she had thus disclosed to me-though indeed in our conversation in the window, when she said, “What is there here for me to do any more?” she appeared not to desire to die in her own country. I heard later on that, during our stay in Ostia, she had been talking in maternal confidence to some of my friends about her contempt of this life and the blessing of death. When they were amazed at the courage which was given her, a woman, and had asked her whether she did not dread having her body buried so far from her own city, she replied: “Nothing is far from god. I do not fear that, at the end of time, he should not know the place from which he is to resurrect me.” And so on the ninth day of her sickness, in the fifty-sixth year of her life and the thirty-third of mine, that religious and devout soul was set loose from the body.

[9.12.29] I closed her eyes, and there flowed in a great sadness on my heart and it was passing into tears, when at the strong behest of my mind my eyes sucked back the fountain dry, and sorrow was in me like a convulsion. As soon as she breathed her last, the boy Adeodatus burst out wailing; but he was checked by us all, and became quiet. Likewise, my own childish feeling which was, through the youthful voice of my heart, seeking escape in tears, was held back and silenced. For we did not consider it fitting to celebrate that death with tearful wails and groanings. This is the way those who die unhappy or are altogether dead are usually mourned. But she neither died unhappy nor did she altogether die. For of this we were assured by the witness of her good life, her unfeigned faith, and other manifest evidence.

[9.12.31] When the boy was restrained from weeping, Evodius took up the psalter and began to sing, with the whole household responding, the psalm, “I will sing of mercy and judgment to you, lord.”^fc And when they heard what we were doing, many of the brethren and religious women came together. And while those whose office it was to prepare for the funeral went about their task according to custom, I discoursed in another part of the house, with those who thought I should not be left alone, on what was appropriate to the occasion. By this balm of truth, I softened the anguish known to you. They were unconscious of it and listened intently and thought me free of any sense of sorrow. But in your ears, where none of them heard, I reproached myself for the mildness of my feelings, and restrained the flow of my grief which bowed a little to my will. The paroxysm returned again, and I knew what I repressed in my heart, even though it did not make me burst forth into tears or even change my countenance ; and I was greatly annoyed that these human things had such power over me, which in the due order and destiny of our natural condition must of necessity happen. And so with a new sorrow I sorrowed for my sorrow and was wasted with a twofold sadness.

[9.12.32] So, when the body was carried forth, we both went and returned without tears. For neither in those prayers which we poured forth to you, when the sacrifice of our redemption was offered up to you for her-with the body placed by the side of the grave as the custom is there, before it is lowered down into it-neither in those prayers did I weep. But I was most grievously sad in secret all the day, and with a troubled mind entreated you, as I could, to heal my sorrow; but you did not. I now believe that you were fixing in my memory, by this one lesson, the power of the bonds of all habit, even on a mind which now no longer feeds upon deception. It then occurred to me that it would be a good thing to go and bathe, for I had heard that the word for bath [balneum] derives from the Greek balaneion, because it throws grief out of the mind.¹² Now see, this also I confess to your mercy, “father of the fatherless”:^fd I bathed and felt the same as I had done before. For the bitterness of my grief was not sweated from my heart. Then I slept, and when I awoke I found my grief not a little assuaged. And as I lay there on my bed, those true verses of Ambrose came to my mind, for you are truly,

[9.12.33] And then, little by little, there came back to me my former memories of your handmaid: her devout life toward you, her holy tenderness and attentiveness toward us, which had suddenly been taken away from me—and it was a solace for me to weep in your sight, for her and for myself, about her and about myself. Thus I set free the tears which before I repressed, so that they might flow at will, spreading them out as a pillow beneath my heart. And it rested on them, for your ears were near me—not those of a man, who would have made a scornful comment about my weeping. But now in writing I confess it to you, lord! Read it those who will, and comment how they will, and if they find me to have sinned in weeping for my mother for part of an hour—that mother who was for a while dead to my eyes, who had for many years wept for me so that I might live in your eyes—let them not laugh at me; but if they are persons of generous love, let them weep for my sins against you, the father of all the brethren of your Christ.

[9.13.34] Now that my heart is healed of that wound—so far as it can be charged against me as a carnal affection—I pour out to you, our god, on behalf of your handmaid, tears of a very different sort: those which flow from a spirit broken by the thoughts of the dangers of every soul that dies in Adam. And while she had been made alive in Christ even before she was freed from the flesh, and had so lived as to praise your name both by her faith and by her life, yet I would not dare say that from the time you regenerated her by baptism no word came out of her mouth against your precepts. But it has been declared by your son, the truth, that “whosoever shall say to his brother, You fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire.”^fe And there would be doom even for the life of a praiseworthy man if you judged it with your mercy set aside. But since you do not so stringently inquire after our sins, we hope with confidence to find some place in your presence. But whoever recounts his actual and true merits to you, what is he doing but recounting to you your own gifts? If only human beings would know themselves as but human, then “he that glories would glory in the Lord”!^ff

[9.13.35] Thus now, my praise and my life, god of my heart, forgetting for a little her good deeds for which I give joyful thanks to you, I now beseech you for the sins of my mother. Hearken to me, through that medicine of our wounds, who hung upon the tree and who sits at your right hand making intercession for us. I know that she acted in mercy, and from the heart forgave her debtors their debts. I beseech you also to forgive her debts, whatever she contracted during so many years since the water of salvation. Forgive her, lord, forgive her, I beseech you; enter not into judgment with her. Let your mercy be exalted above your justice, for your words are true and you have promised mercy to the merciful, that the merciful shall obtain mercy.^fg This is your gift, who “have mercy on whom you will have mercy and who will have compassion on whom you have compassion.”^fh

[9.13.36] Indeed, I believe you have already done what I ask of you, but “accept the freewill offerings of my mouth, lord.”^fi For when the day of her dissolution was so close, she took no thought to have her body sumptuously wrapped or embalmed with spices. Nor did she covet a handsome monument, or even care to be buried in her own country.¹⁴ About these things she gave no commands at all, but only desired to have her name remembered at your altar, where she had served without the omission of a single day, and where she knew that the holy sacrifice was dispensed by which that handwriting that was against us is blotted out;^fj and that enemy vanquished who, when he summed up our offenses and searched for something to bring against us, could find nothing in him, in whom we conquer. Who will restore to him the innocent blood? Who will repay him the price with which he bought us, so as to take us from him? Thus to the sacrament of our redemption did your handmaid bind her soul by the bond of faith. Let none separate her from your protection. Let not the lion and dragon bar her way by force or fraud. For she will not reply that she owes nothing, lest she be convicted and duped by that cunning deceiver. Rather, she will answer that her sins are forgiven by him to whom no one is able to repay the price which he, who owed us nothing, laid down for us all.

[9.13.37] Therefore, let her rest in peace with her husband, before and after whom she was married to no other man, whom she obeyed with patience, bringing fruit to you that she might also win him for you. And inspire, my lord my god, inspire your servants, my brothers, your sons, my masters, who with voice and heart and writings I serve, that as many of them as shall read these confessions may also at your altar remember Monica, your handmaid, together with Patricius, once her husband, by whose flesh you did bring me into this life, in a manner I know not. May they with pious affection remember my parents in this transitory life, and remember my brothers under you our father in our catholic mother, and remember my fellow citizens in the eternal Jerusalem, for which your people sigh in their travel abroad from birth until their return. So be fulfilled what my mother desired of me, more richly in the prayers of so many gained for her through these confessions of mine than by my prayers alone.

[10.2.2] And what is there in me that could be hidden from you, lord, to whose eyes the abysses of man’s conscience are naked, even if I were unwilling to confess it to you? In doing so I would only hide you from myself, not myself from you. But now that my groaning is witness to the fact that I am dissatisfied with myself, you shine forth and satisfy. You are beloved and desired; so that I blush for myself, and renounce myself and choose you, for I can neither please you nor myself except in you. To you, then, lord, I am laid bare, whatever I am, and I have already said with what profit I may confess to you. I do not do it with words and sounds of the flesh but with the words of the soul, and with the sound of my thoughts, which your ear knows. For when I am wicked, to confess to you means nothing less than to be dissatisfied with myself, but when I am truly devout, it means nothing less than not to attribute my virtue to myself; because you, lord, bless the righteous, but first you justify him while he is yet ungodly. My confession therefore, my god, is made to you silently in your sight—and yet not silently. As far as sound is concerned, it is silent. But in strong affection it cries aloud. For neither do I give voice to something that sounds right to human beings, which you have not heard from me before, nor do you hear anything of the kind from me which you did not first say to me.

[10.3.3] What is it to me that men should hear my confessions as if it were they who were going to cure all my infirmities? People are curious to know the lives of others, but slow to correct their own. Why are they anxious to hear from me what I am, when they are unwilling to hear from you what they are? And how can they tell when they hear what I say about myself whether I speak the truth, since no man knows what is in a man “except the spirit of man which is in him”?^fm But if they were to hear from you something concerning themselves, they would not be able to say, “The lord is lying.” For what does it mean to hear from you about themselves but to know themselves? And who is he that knows himself and says, “This is false,” unless he himself is lying? But, because “love believes all things”^fn-at least among those who are bound together in love by its bonds—I confess to you, lord, so that men may also hear; for if I cannot prove to them that I confess the truth, yet those whose ears love opens to me will believe me.

[10.3.4] But will you, my inner physician, make clear to me what profit I am to gain in doing this? For the confessions of my past sins (which you have forgiven and covered so that you might make me blessed in you, transforming my soul by faith and your sacrament), when they are read and heard, may stir up the heart so that it will stop dozing along in despair, saying, “I cannot,” but will instead awake in the love of your mercy and the sweetness of your grace, by which he that is weak is strong, provided he is made conscious of his own weakness. And it will please those who are good to hear about the past errors of those who are now freed from them. And they will take delight, not because they are errors, but because they were and are so no longer. What profit, then, lord my god—to whom my conscience makes its daily confession, far more confident in the hope of your mercy than in its own innocence—what profit is there, I ask you, in confessing to human beings in your presence, through this book, both what I am now as well as what I have been? For I have seen and spoken of my harvest of things past. But what am I now, at this very moment of making my confessions ? Many different people desire to know, both those who know me and those who do not know me. Some have heard about me or from me, but their ear is not close to my heart, where I am whatever it is that I am. They have the desire to hear me confess what I am within, where they can neither extend eye nor ear nor mind. They desire as those willing to believe—but will they understand? For the love by which they are good tells them that I am not lying in my confessions, and the love in them believes me.

[10.4.5] But for what profit do they desire this? Will they wish me happiness when they learn how near I have approached you, by your gifts? And will they pray for me when they learn how much I am still kept back by my own weight? To such as these I will declare myself. For it is no small profit, lord my god, that many people should give thanks to you on my account and that many should entreat you for my sake. Let the brotherly soul love in me what you teach him should be loved, and let him lament in me what you teach him should be lamented. Let it be the soul of a brother that does this, and not a stranger—not one of those “strange children, whose mouth speaks vanity, and whose right hand is the right hand of falsehood.”^fo But let my brother do it who, when he approves of me, rejoices for me, but when he disapproves of me is sorry for me; because whether he approves or disapproves, he loves me. To such I will declare myself. Let them be refreshed by my good deeds and sigh over my evil ones. My good deeds are your acts and your gifts; my evil ones are my own faults and your judgment. Let them breathe expansively at the one and sigh over the other. And let hymns and tears ascend in your sight out of their brotherly hearts—which are your censers. And, lord, who take delight in the incense of your holy temple, have mercy upon me according to your great mercy, for your name’s sake. And do not, on any account whatever, abandon what you have begun in me. Go on, rather, to complete what is yet imperfect in me.

[10.4.6] This, then, is the fruit of my confessions (not of what I was, but of what I am), that I may not confess this before you alone, in a secret exultation with trembling and a secret sorrow with hope, but also in the ears of the believing sons of men—who are the companions of my joy and sharers of my mortality, my fellow citizens and fellow travelers—those who have gone before and those who are to follow after, as well as the comrades of my present way. These are your servants, my brothers, whom you desire to be your sons. They are my masters, whom you have commanded me to serve if I desire to live with and in you. But this your word would mean little to me if it commanded in words alone, without your prevenient action. I do this, then, both in act and word. I do this under your wings, in a danger too great to risk if it were not that under your wings my soul is subject to you, and my weakness known to you. I am insufficient, but my father lives forever, and my defender is sufficient for me. For he is the selfsame who begot me and who watches over me; you are the selfsame who are all my good. You are the omnipotent, who are with me, even before I am with you. To those, therefore, whom you command me to serve, I will declare, not what I was, but what I now am and what I will continue to be. But I do not judge myself. Thus, therefore, let me be heard.

[10.5.7] For it is you, lord, who judge me. For although no man “knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man which is in him,”^fp yet there is something of man which the spirit of the man which is in him does not know itself. But you, lord, who made him, know him completely. And even I—though in your sight I despise myself and count myself but dust and ashes—even I know something about you which I do not know about myself. And it is certain that “now we see through a glass darkly, not yet face to face.”^fq Therefore, as long as I journey away from you, I am more present with myself than with you. I know that you cannot suffer violence, but I myself do not know what temptations I can resist, and what I cannot. But there is hope, because you are faithful and you will not allow us to be tempted beyond our ability to resist, but will with the temptation also make a way of escape so that we may be able to bear it. I would therefore confess what I know about myself; I will also confess what I do not know about myself. What I do know of myself, I know from your enlightening of me; and what I do not know of myself, I will continue not to know until the time when my “darkness is as the noonday”^fr in your sight.

[10.6.8] It is not with a doubtful consciousness, but one fully certain that I love you, lord. You have smitten my heart with your word, and I have loved you. And see also the heaven, and earth, and all that is in them—on every side they tell me to love you, and they do not cease to tell this to all human beings, “so that they are without excuse.”^fs Wherefore, still more deeply will you have mercy on whom you will have mercy, and compassion on whom you will have compassion. For otherwise, both heaven and earth would tell abroad your praises to deaf ears. But what is it that I love in loving you?¹ Not physical beauty, nor the splendor of time, nor the radiance of the light—so pleasant to our eyes—nor the sweet melodies of the various kinds of songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers and ointments and spices; not manna and honey, not the limbs embraced in physical love—it is not these I love when I love my god. Yet it is true that I love a certain kind of light and sound and fragrance and food and embrace in loving my god, who is the light and sound and fragrance and food and embracement of my inner being—where that light shines into my soul which no place can contain, where time does not snatch away the lovely sound, where no breeze disperses the sweet fragrance, where no eating diminishes the food there provided, and where there is an embrace that no satiety comes to sunder. This is what I love when I love my god.

[10.6.9] And what is this god? I asked the earth, and it answered, “I am not he”; and everything in the earth made the same confession. I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping things, and they replied, “We are not your god; seek above us.” I asked the fleeting winds, and the whole air with its inhabitants answered, “Anaximenes was deceived; I am not god.”² I asked the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars; and they answered, “Neither are we the god whom you seek.” And I replied to all these things which stand around the door of my flesh: “You have told me about my god, that you are not he. Tell me something about him.” And with a loud voice they all cried out, “He made us.” My question had come from my observation of them, and their reply came from their beauty of order. And I turned my thoughts into myself and said, “Who are you?” And I answered, “A human being.” For see, there is in me both a body and a soul; the one without, the other within. In which of these should I have sought my god, whom I had already sought with my body from earth to heaven, as far as I was able to send those messengers—the beams of my eyes? But the inner part is the better part; for to it, as both ruler and judge, all these messengers of the senses report the answers of heaven and earth and all the things therein, who said, “We are not god, but he made us.” My inner being knew these things through the ministry of the outer being, and I, the inner being, knew all this—I, the soul, through the senses of my body. I asked the whole frame of earth about my god, and it answered, “I am not he, but he made me.”

[10.6.10] Is not this beauty of form visible to all whose senses are unimpaired? Why, then, does it not say the same things to all? Animals, both small and great, see it but they are unable to interrogate its meaning, because their senses are not endowed with the reason that would enable them to judge the evidence which the senses report. But a human being can interrogate it, so that “the invisible things of him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.”^ft But human beings love these created things too much; they are brought into subjection to them—and, as subjects, are not able to judge. None of these created things reply to their questioners unless they can make rational judgments. The creatures will not alter their voice—that is, their beauty of form—if one person simply sees what another both sees and questions, so that the world appears one way to this person and another to that. It appears the same way to both; but it is mute to this one and it speaks to that one. Indeed, it actually speaks to all, but only they understand it who compare the voice received from without with the truth within. For the truth says to me, “Neither heaven nor earth nor anybody is your god.” Their very nature tells this to the one who beholds them. They are a mass, less in part than the whole. Now, my soul, you are my better part, and to you I speak; since you animate the whole mass of your body, giving it life, whereas no body furnishes life to a body. But your god is the life of your life.

[10.7.11] What is it, then, that I love when I love my god? Who is he that is beyond the topmost point of my soul? Yet by this very soul will I mount up to him. I will soar beyond that power of mine by which I am united to the body, and by which the whole structure of it is filled with life. Yet it is not by that vital power that I find my god. For then “the horse and the mule, that have no understanding,”^fu also might find him, since they have the same vital power, by which their bodies also live. But there is, besides the power by which I animate my body, another by which I endow my flesh with sense—a power that the lord has provided for me; commanding that the eye is not to hear and the ear is not to see, but that I am to see by the eye and to hear by the ear; and giving to each of the other senses its own proper place and function, through the diversity of which I, the single mind, act. I will soar also beyond this power of mine, for the horse and mule have this too, for they also perceive through their bodily senses.

[10.8.12] I will soar, then, beyond this power of my nature also, still rising by degrees toward him who made me. And I enter the fields and spacious halls of memory, where are stored as treasures the countless images that have been brought into them from all manner of things by the senses. There, in the memory, is likewise stored what we cogitate, either by enlarging or reducing our perceptions, or by altering one way or another those things which the senses have made contact with; and everything else that has been entrusted to it and stored up in it, which oblivion has not yet swallowed up and buried. When I go into this storehouse, I ask that what I want should be brought forth. Some things appear immediately, but others require to be searched for longer, and then dragged out, as it were, from some hidden recess. Other things hurry forth in crowds, on the other hand, and while something else is sought and inquired for, they leap into view as if to say, “Is it not we, perhaps?” These I brush away with the hand of my heart from the face of my memory, until finally the thing I want makes its appearance out of its secret cell. Some things suggest themselves without effort, and in continuous order, just as they are called for—the things that come first give place to those that follow, and in so doing are treasured up again to be forthcoming when I want them. All of this happens when I repeat a thing from memory.

[10.8.13] All these things, each one of which came into memory in its own particular way, are stored up separately and under the general categories of understanding. For example, light and all colors and forms of bodies came in through the eyes; sounds of all kinds by the ears; all smells by the passages of the nostrils; all flavors by the gate of the mouth; by the sensation of the whole body, there is brought in what is hard or soft, hot or cold, smooth or rough, heavy or light, whether external or internal to the body. The vast cave of memory, with its numerous and mysterious recesses, receives all these things and stores them up, to be recalled and brought forth when required. Each experience enters by its own door, and is stored up in the memory. And yet the things themselves do not enter it, but only the images of the things perceived are there for thought to remember. And who can tell how these images are formed, even if it is evident which of the senses brought which perception in and stored it up? For even when I am in darkness and silence I can bring out colors in my memory if I wish, and discern between black and white and the other shades as I wish; and at the same time, sounds do not break in and disturb what is drawn in by my eyes, and which I am considering, because the sounds which are also there are stored up, as it were, apart. And these too I can summon if I please and they are immediately present in memory. And though my tongue is at rest and my throat silent, yet I can sing as I will; and those images of color, which are as truly present as before, do not interpose themselves or interrupt while another treasure which had flowed in through the ears is being thought about. Similarly all the other things that were brought in and heaped up by all the other senses, I can recall at my pleasure. And I distinguish the scent of lilies from that of violets while actually smelling nothing; and I prefer honey to mead, a smooth thing to a rough, even though I am neither tasting nor handling them, but only remembering them.

[10.8.14] All this I do within myself, in that huge hall of my memory. For in it, heaven, earth, and sea are present to me, and whatever I can cogitate about them—except what I have forgotten. There also I meet myself and recall myself—what, when, or where I did a thing, and how I felt when I did it. There are all the things that I remember, either having experienced them myself or been told about them by others. Out of the same storehouse, with these past impressions, I can construct now this, now that, image of things that I either have experienced or have believed on the basis of experience—and from these I can further construct future actions, events, and hopes; and I can meditate on all these things as if they were present.³ “I will do this or that”—I say to myself in that vast recess of my mind, with its full store of so many and such great images—“and this or that will follow upon it.” “O that this or that could happen!” “God prevent this or that.” I speak to myself in this way; and when I speak, the images of what I am speaking about are present out of the same store of memory; and if the images were absent I could say nothing at all about them.

[10.8.15] Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, my god—a large and boundless inner hall! Who has plumbed the depths of it? Yet it is a power of my mind, and it belongs to my nature. But I do not myself grasp all that I am. Thus the mind is far too narrow to contain itself. But where can that part of it be which it does not contain? Is it outside and not in itself? How can it be, then, that the mind cannot grasp itself? A great marvel rises in me; astonishment seizes me. Men go forth to marvel at the heights of mountains and the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the orbits of the stars, and yet they neglect to marvel at themselves.⁴ Nor do they wonder how it is that, when I spoke of all these things, I was not looking at them with my eyes—and yet I could not have spoken about them had it not been that I was actually seeing within, in my memory, those mountains and waves and rivers and stars which I have seen, and that ocean which I believe in—and with the same vast spaces between them as when I saw them outside me. But when I saw them outside me, I did not take them into me by seeing them; and the things themselves are not inside me, but only their images. And yet I knew through which physical sense each experience had made an impression on me.

[10.9.16] And yet this is not all that the unlimited capacity of my memory stores up. In memory, there are also all that one has learned of the liberal sciences, and has not forgotten—removed still further, so to say, into an inner place which is not a place. Of these things it is not the images that are retained, but the things themselves. For what grammar and logic are, and what I know about how many different kinds of questions there are—all these are stored in my memory as they are, so that I have not taken in the image and left the thing outside. It is not as though a sound had sounded and passed away like a voice heard by the ear which leaves a trace by which it can be called into memory again, as if it were still sounding in mind while it did so no longer outside. Nor is it the same as an odor which, even after it has passed and vanished into the wind, affects the sense of smell—which then conveys into the memory the image of the smell which is what we recall and re-create; or like food which, once in the belly, surely now has no taste and yet does have a kind of taste in the memory; or like anything that is felt by the body through the sense of touch, which still remains as an image in the memory after the external object is removed. For these things themselves are not put into the memory. Only the images of them are gathered with a marvelous quickness and stored, as it were, in the most wonderful filing system, and are thence produced in a marvelous way by the act of remembering.

[10.10.17] But now when I hear that there are three kinds of questions—“Whether a thing is? What it is? Of what kind it is?”—I do indeed retain the images of the sounds of which these words are composed and I know that those sounds pass through the air with a noise and now no longer exist. But the things themselves which were signified by those sounds I never could reach by any sense of the body nor see them at all except by my mind. And what I have stored in my memory was not their signs, but the things signified. How they got into me, let them tell who can. For I examine all the gates of my flesh, but I cannot find the door by which any of them entered. For the eyes say, “If they were colored, we reported that.” The ears say, “If they gave any sound, we gave notice of that.” The nostrils say, “If they smell, they passed in by us.” The sense of taste says, “If they have no flavor, don’t ask me about them.” The sense of touch says, “If it had no bodily mass, I did not touch it, and if I never touched it, I gave no report about it.” Whence and how did these things enter into my memory? I do not know. For when I first learned them, it was not that I believed them on the credit of another man’s mind, but I recognized them in my own; and I saw them as true, took them into my mind and laid them up, so to say, where I could get at them again whenever I willed. There they were, then, even before I learned them, but they were not in my memory. Where were they, then? How does it come about that when they were spoken of, I could acknowledge them and say, “So it is, it is true,” unless they were already in the memory, though far back and hidden, as it were, in the more secret caves, so that unless they had been drawn out by the teaching of another person, I should perhaps never have been able to think of them at all?

[10.11.18] Thus we find that learning those things whose images we do not take in by our senses, but which we intuit within ourselves without images and as they actually are, is nothing else except the gathering together of those same things which the memory already contains—but in an indiscriminate and confused manner—and putting them together by careful observation as they are at hand in the memory; so that whereas they formerly lay hidden, scattered, or neglected, they now come easily to present themselves to the mind which is now familiar with them. And how many things of this sort my memory has stored up, which have already been discovered and, as I said, laid up for ready reference! These are the things we may be said to have learned and to know. Yet, if I cease to recall them even for short intervals of time, they are again so submerged—and slide back, as it were, into the further reaches of the memory—that they must be drawn out again as if new from the same place (for there is nowhere else for them to have gone) and must be collected [cogenda] so that they can become known. In other words, they must be gathered up [colligenda] from their dispersion. This is where we get the word cogitate [cogitare]. For cogo [collect] and cogito [to go on collecting] have the same relation to each other as ago [do] and agito [do frequently], and facio [make] and factito [make frequently]. But the mind has properly laid claim to this word [cogitate] so that not everything that is gathered together anywhere, but only what is collected and gathered together in the mind, is properly said to be “cogitated.”

[10.12.19] The memory also contains the principles and the unnumbered laws of numbers and dimensions. None of these has been impressed on the memory by a physical sense, because they have neither color nor sound, nor taste, nor sense of touch. I have heard the sound of the words by which these things are signified when they are discussed: but the sounds are one thing, the things another. For the sounds are one thing in Greek, another in Latin; but the things themselves are neither Greek nor Latin nor any other language. I have seen the lines of the craftsmen, the finest of which are like a spider’s web, but mathematical lines are different. They are not the images of such things as the eye of my body has showed me. The man who knows them does so without any cogitation of physical objects whatever, but intuits them within himself. I have perceived with all the senses of my body the numbers we use in counting; but the numbers by which we count are far different from these. They are not the images of these; they simply are. Let the man who does not see these things mock me for saying them; and I will pity him while he laughs at me.

[10.13.20] All these things I hold in my memory, and I remember how I learned them. I also remember many things that I have heard quite falsely urged against them, which, even if they are false, yet it is not false that I have remembered them. And I also remember that I have distinguished between the truths and the false objections, and now I see that it is one thing to distinguish these things and another to remember that I did distinguish them when I have cogitated on them. I remember, then, both that I have often understood these things and also that I am now storing away in my memory what I distinguish and comprehend of them so that later on I may remember just as I understand them now. Therefore, I remember that I remembered, so that if afterward I call to mind that I once was able to remember these things it will be through the power of memory that I recall it.

[10.14.21] This same memory also contains the feelings of my mind; not in the manner in which the mind itself experienced them, but very differently according to a power peculiar to memory. For without being joyous now, I can remember that I once was joyous, and without being sad, I can recall my past sadness. I can remember past fears without fear, and former desires without desire. Again, the contrary happens. Sometimes when I am joyous I remember my past sadness, and when sad, remember past joy. This is not to be marveled at as far as the body is concerned; for the mind is one thing and the body another. If, therefore, when I am happy, I recall some past bodily pain, it is not so strange. But even as this memory is experienced, it is identical with the mind—as when we tell someone to remember something we say, “See that you bear this in mind”; and when we forget a thing, we say, “It did not enter my mind” or “It slipped my mind.” Thus we call memory itself mind. Since this is so, how does it happen that when I am joyful I can still remember past sorrow ? Thus the mind has joy, and the memory has sorrow; and the mind is joyful from the joy that is in it, yet the memory is not sad from the sadness that is in it. Is it possible that the memory does not belong to the mind? Who will say so? The memory doubtless is, so to say, the belly of the mind, and joy and sadness are like sweet and bitter food, which when they are committed to the memory are, so to say, passed into the belly where they can be stored but no longer tasted. It is ridiculous to consider this an analogy; yet they are not utterly unlike.

[10.14.22] But look, it is from my memory that I produce it when I say that there are four basic emotions of the mind: desire, joy, fear, sadness. Whatever kind of analysis I may be able to make of these, by dividing each into its particular species, and by defining it, I still find what to say in my memory and it is from my memory that I draw it out. Yet I am not moved by any of these emotions when I call them to mind by remembering them. Moreover, before I recalled them and thought about them, they were there in the memory; and this is how they could be brought forth in remembrance. Perhaps, therefore, just as food is brought up out of the belly by rumination, so also these things are drawn up out of the memory by recall. But why, then, does not the man who is thinking about the emotions, and is thus recalling them, feel in the mouth of his reflection the sweetness of joy or the bitterness of sadness? Is the comparison unlike in this because it is not complete at every point? For who would willingly speak on these subjects, if as often as we used the term sadness or fear, we should thereby be compelled to be sad or fearful? And yet we could never speak of them if we did not find them in our memories, not merely as the sounds of the names, as their images are impressed on it by the physical senses, but also the notions of the things themselves—which we did not receive by any gate of the flesh, but which the mind itself recognizes by the experience of its own passions, and has entrusted to the memory; or else which the memory itself has retained without their being entrusted to it.

[10.1:5.23] Now whether all this is by means of images or not, who can rightly affirm? For I name a stone, I name the sun, and those things themselves are not present to my senses, but their images are present in my memory. I name some pain of the body, yet it is not present when there is no pain; yet if there were not some such image of it in my memory, I could not even speak of it, nor should I be able to distinguish it from pleasure. I name bodily health when I am sound in body, and the thing itself is indeed present in me. At the same time, unless there were some image of it in my memory, I could not possibly call to mind what the sound of this name signified. Nor would sick people know what was meant when health was named, unless the same image were preserved by the power of memory, even though the thing itself is absent from the body. I can name the numbers we use in counting, and it is not their images but themselves that are in my memory. I name the image of the sun, and this too is in my memory. For I do not recall the image of that image, but that image itself, for the image itself is present when I remember it. I name memory and I know what I name. But where do I know it, except in the memory itself? Is it also present to itself by its image, and not by itself?

[10.16.24] When I name forgetfulness, and understand what I mean by the name, how could I understand it if I did not remember it? And if I refer not to the sound of the name, but to the thing which the term signifies, how could I know what that sound signified if I had forgotten what the name means? When, therefore, I remember memory, then memory is present to itself by itself, but when I remember forgetfulness then both memory and forgetfulness are present together-the memory by which I remember the forgetfulness which I remember. But what is forgetfulness except the privation of memory? How, then, is that present to my memory which, when it controls my mind, I cannot remember? But if what we remember we store up in our memory; and if, unless we remembered forgetfulness, we could never know the thing signified by the term when we heard it—then, forgetfulness is contained in the memory. It is present so that we do not forget it, but since it is present, we do forget. From this it is to be inferred that when we remember forgetfulness, it is not present to the memory through itself, but through its image; because if forgetfulness were present through itself, it would not lead us to remember, but only to forget. Now who will someday work this out? Who can understand how it is?

[10.16.25] Truly, lord, I toil with this and labor in myself. I have become a troublesome field that requires hard labor and heavy sweat. For we are not now searching out the tracts of heaven, or measuring the distances of the stars or inquiring about the weight of the earth. It is I myself—I, the mind—who remember. This is not much to marvel at, if what I myself am is not far from me. And what is nearer to me than myself ? For see, I am not able to comprehend the force of my own memory, though I could not even call my own name without it. But what shall I say, when it is clear to me that I remember forgetfulness? Should I affirm that what I remember is not in my memory? Or should I say that forgetfulness is in my memory to the end that I should not forget? Both of these views are most absurd. But what third view is there? How can I say that the image of forgetfulness is retained by my memory, and not forgetfulness itself, when I remember it? How can I say this, since for the image of anything to be imprinted on the memory the thing itself must necessarily have been present first by which the image could have been imprinted? Thus I remember Carthage; thus, also, I remember all the other places where I have been. And I remember the faces of men whom I have seen and things reported by the other senses. I remember the health or sickness of the body. And when these objects were present, my memory received images from them so that they remain present in order for me to see them and reflect upon them in my mind, if I choose to remember them in their absence. If, therefore, forgetfulness is retained in the memory through its image and not through itself, then this means that it itself was once present, so that its image might have been imprinted. But when it was present, how did it write its image on the memory, since forgetfulness, by its presence, blots out even what it finds already written there? And yet in some way or other, even though it is incomprehensible and inexplicable, I am still quite certain that I also remember forgetfulness, by which we remember that something is blotted out.

[10.17.26] Great is the power of memory. It is a true marvel, my god, a profound and infinite multiplicity! And this is the mind, and this I myself am. What, then, am I, my god? Of what nature am I? A life various, and manifold, and exceedingly vast. Look in the numberless halls and caves, in the innumerable fields and dens and caverns of my memory, full without measure of numberless kinds of things—present there either through images as all bodies are; or present in the things themselves as are our thoughts; or by some notion or observation as our emotions are, which the memory retains even though the mind feels them no longer, as long as whatever is in the memory is also in the mind—through all these I run and fly to and fro. I penetrate into them on this side and that as far as I can and yet there is nowhere any end.

So great is the power of memory, so great the power of life in man whose life is mortal! What, then, shall I do, my true life, my god? I will pass even beyond this power of mine that is called memory—I will pass beyond it, that I may come to you, lovely light. And what are you saying to me? See, I soar by my mind toward you, who remain above me. I will also pass beyond this power of mine that is called memory, desiring to reach you where you can be reached, and wishing to cleave to you where it is possible to cleave to you. For even beasts and birds possess memory, or else they could never find their lairs and nests again, nor display many other things they know and do by habit. Indeed, they could not even form their habits except by their memories. I will therefore pass even beyond memory so that I may reach him who has differentiated me from the four-footed beasts and the fowls of the air by making me a wiser creature. Thus I will pass beyond memory; but where shall I find you, who are the true good and the steadfast sweetness? But where shall I find you? If I find you without memory, then I shall have no memory of you; and how could I find you at all, if I do not remember you?

[10.18.27] For the woman who lost her small coin^fv and searched for it with a light would never have found it unless she had remembered it. For when it was found, how could she have known whether it was the same coin, if she had not remembered it? I remember having lost and found many things, and I have learned this from that experience: that when I was searching for any of them and was asked: “Is this it? Is that it?” I answered, “No,” until finally what I was seeking was shown to me. But if I had not remembered it—whatever it was—even though it was shown to me, I still would not have found it because I could not have recognized it. And this is the way it always is when we search for and find anything that is lost. Still, if anything is accidentally lost from sight—not from memory, as a visible body might be—its image is retained within, and the thing is searched for until it is restored to sight. And when the thing is found, it is recognized by the image of it which is within. And we do not say that we have found what we have lost unless we can recognize it, and we cannot recognize it unless we remember it. But all the while the thing lost to the sight was retained in the memory.

[110.119.28] But what happens when the memory itself loses something, as when we forget anything and try to recall it? Where, finally, do we search, but in the memory itself? And there, if by chance one thing is offered for another, we refuse it until we meet with what we are looking for; and when we do, we recognize that this is it. But we could not do this unless we recognized it, nor could we have recognized it unless we remembered it. Yet we had indeed forgotten it. Perhaps the whole of it had not slipped out of our memory; but a part was retained by which the other lost part was sought for, because the memory realized that it was not operating as smoothly as usual and was being held up by the crippling of its habitual working; hence, it demanded the restoration of what was lacking. For example, if we see or think of some man we know, and, having forgotten his name, try to recall it—if some other thing presents itself, we cannot tie it into the effort to remember, because it was not habitually thought of in association with him. It is consequently rejected, until something comes into the mind on which our knowledge can rightly rest as the familiar and sought-for object. And where does this name come back from, except from the memory itself? For even when we recognize it by another’s reminding us of it, still it is from the memory that this comes, for we do not believe it as something new; but when we recall it, we admit that what was said was correct. But if the name had been entirely blotted out of the mind, we should not be able to recollect it even when reminded of it. For we have not entirely forgotten anything if we can remember that we have forgotten it. For a lost notion, one that we have entirely forgotten, we cannot even search for.

[10.20.29] How, then, do I seek you, lord? For when I seek you, my god, I seek a happy life.⁵ I will seek you in order that my soul may live. For my body lives by my soul, and my soul lives by you. How, then, do I seek a happy life, since happiness is not mine till I can rightly say: “It is enough. This is it.” How do I seek it? Is it by remembering, as though I had forgotten it and still knew that I had forgotten it? Do I seek it in longing to learn of it as though it were something unknown, which either I had never known or had so completely forgotten as not even to remember that I had forgotten it? Is not the happy life the thing that all desire, and is there anyone who does not desire it at all? But where would they have got the knowledge of it, that they should so desire it? Where have they seen it that they should so love it? It is somehow true that we have it, but how I do not know.

There is, indeed, a sense in which when anyone has his desire he is happy. And then there are some who are happy in hope. These are happy in an inferior degree to those that are actually happy; yet they are better off than those who are happy neither in actuality nor in hope. But even these, if they had not known happiness in some degree, would not then desire to be happy. And yet it is most certain that they do so desire. How they come to know happiness, I cannot tell, but they have it by some kind of knowledge unknown to me, for I am very much in doubt as to whether it is in the memory. For if it is in there, then we have been happy once upon a time—either each of us individually or all of us in that man who first sinned and in whom also we all died and from whom we are all born in misery. How this is, I do not now ask; but I do ask whether the happy life is in the memory. For if we did not know it, we should not love it. We hear the name of it, and we all acknowledge that we desire the thing, for we are not delighted with the name only. For when a Greek hears it spoken in Latin, he does not feel delighted, for he does not know what has been spoken. But we are as delighted as he would be in turn if he heard it in Greek, because the thing itself is neither Greek nor Latin, this happiness which Greeks and Latins and people of all the other tongues long so earnestly to obtain. It is, then, known to all; and if all could with one voice be asked whether they wished to be happy, there is no doubt they would all answer that they would. And this would not be possible unless the thing itself, which we name “happiness,” were held in the memory.

[10.21-30] But is it the same kind of memory as that of one who, having seen Carthage, remembers it? No, for the happy life is not visible to the eye, since it is not a physical object. Is it the sort of memory we have for numbers? No, for the man who has these in his understanding does not keep striving to attain more. Now we know something about the happy life and therefore we love it, but still we wish to go on striving for it so that we may be happy. Is the memory of happiness, then, something like the memory of eloquence? No, for although some, when they hear the term eloquence, call the thing to mind, even if they are not themselves eloquent—and further, there are many people who would like to be eloquent, from which it follows that they must know something about it—nevertheless, these people have noticed through their senses that others are eloquent and have been delighted to observe this and long to be this way themselves. But they would not be delighted if it were not some interior knowledge; and they would not desire to be delighted unless they had been delighted. But as for a happy life, there is no physical perception by which we experience it in others.

Do we remember happiness, then, as we remember joy? It may be so, for I remember my joy even when I am sad, just as I remember a happy life when I am miserable. And I have never, through physical perception, either seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched my joy. But I have experienced it in my mind when I rejoiced; and the knowledge of it clung to my memory so that I can call it to mind, sometimes with disdain and at other times with longing, depending on the different kinds of things I now remember that I rejoiced in. For I have been bathed with a certain joy even by unclean things, which I now detest and execrate as I call them to mind. At other times, I call to mind with longing good and honest things, which are not any longer near at hand, and I am therefore saddened when I recall my former joy.

[10.211.311] Where and when did I ever experience my happy life so that I can call it to mind and love it and long for it? It is not I alone or even a few others who wish to be happy, but absolutely everybody. Unless we knew happiness by a knowledge that is certain, we should not wish for it with a will which is so certain. Take this example. If two men were asked whether they wished to serve as soldiers, one of them might reply that he would, and the other that he would not; but if they were asked whether they wished to be happy, both of them would unhesitatingly say that they would. But the first one would wish to serve as a soldier and the other would not wish to serve, both from no other motive than to be happy. Is it, perhaps, that one finds his joy in this and another in that? Thus they agree in their wish for happiness just as they would also agree, if asked, in wishing for joy. Is this joy what they call a happy life? Although one could choose his joy in this way and another in that, all have one goal which they strive to attain, namely, to have joy. This joy, then, being something that no one can say he has not experienced, is therefore found in the memory and it is recognized whenever the phrase “a happy life” is heard.

[110.23.33] Is it, then, uncertain that all men wish to be happy, since those who do not wish to find their joy in you—which is alone the happy life—do not actually desire the happy life? Or, is it rather that all desire this, but because “the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh,” so that they “prevent you from doing what you would,”^fw you fall to doing what you are able to do and are content with that. For you do not want to do what you cannot do urgently enough to make you able to do it. Now I ask all men whether they would rather rejoice in truth or in falsehood. They will no more hesitate to answer, “In truth,” than to say that they wish to be happy. For a happy life is joy in the truth. Yet this is joy in you, who are the truth, god my light, “the health of my countenance and my god.”^fx All wish for this happy life; all wish for this life which is the only happy one: joy in the truth is what all men wish.

I have had experience with many who wished to deceive, but not one who wished to be deceived. Where, then, did they ever know about this happy life, except where they knew also what the truth is? For they love it, too, since they are not willing to be deceived. And when they love the happy life, which is nothing else but joy in the truth, then certainly they also love the truth. And yet they would not love it if there were not some knowledge of it in the memory. Why, then, do they not rejoice in it? Why are they not happy? Because they are so fully preoccupied with other things which do more to make them miserable than those which would make them happy, which they remember so little about. Yet there is a little light in men. Let them walk—let them walk in it, lest the darkness overtake them.

[10.23.34] Why, then, does truth generate hatred, and why does your servant who preaches the truth come to be an enemy to them who also love the happy life, which is nothing else than joy in the truth—unless it be that truth is loved in such a way that those who love something else besides its wish that to be the truth which they do love. Since they are unwilling to be deceived, they are unwilling to be convinced that they have been deceived. Therefore, they hate the truth for the sake of whatever it is that they love in place of the truth. They love truth when it shines on them; and hate it when it rebukes them. And since they are not willing to be deceived, but do wish to deceive, they love truth when it reveals itself and hate it when it reveals them. On this account, it will so repay them that those who are unwilling to be exposed by it, it will indeed expose against their will, and yet will not disclose itself to them.

[10.25.36] But where in my memory do you abide, lord? Where do you dwell there? What sort of lodging have you made for yourself there? What kind of sanctuary have you built for yourself? You have done this honor to my memory to take up your abode in it, but I must consider further in what part of it you do abide. For in calling you to mind, I soared beyond those parts of memory which the beasts also possess, because I did not find you there among the images of corporeal things. From there I went on to those parts where I had stored the remembered affections of my mind, and I did not find you there. And I entered into the inmost seat of my mind, which is in my memory, since the mind remembers itself also—and you were not there. For just as you are not a bodily image, nor the emotion of a living creature (such as we feel when we rejoice or are grief-stricken, when we desire, or fear, or remember, or forget, or anything of that kind), so neither are you the mind itself. For you are the lord god of the mind and of all these things that are mutable; but you abide immutable over all. Yet you have elected to dwell in my memory from the time I learned of you. But why do I now inquire about the part of my memory you dwell in, as if indeed there were separate parts in it? Assuredly, you dwell in it, since I have remembered you from the time I learned of you, and I find you in my memory when I call you to mind.

[10.26.37] Where, then, did I find you so as to be able to learn of you? For you were not in my memory before I learned of you. Where, then, did I find you so as to be able to learn of you—save in yourself beyond me. Place there is none. We go “backward” and “forward” and there is no place. Everywhere and at once, truth, you guide all who consult you, and simultaneously answer all even though they consult you on quite different things. You answer clearly, though all do not hear in clarity. All take counsel of you on whatever point they wish, though they do not always hear what they wish. He is your best servant who does not look to hear from you what he himself wills, but who wills rather to will what he hears from you.

[10.28.39] When I come to be united to you with all my being, then there will be no more pain and toil for me, and my life shall be a real life, being wholly filled by you. But since he whom you fill is the one you lift up, I am still a burden to myself because I am not yet filled by you. Joys of sorrow contend with sorrows of joy, and on which side the victory lies I do not know. What a state to be in! Lord, have pity on me; my evil sorrows contend with my good joys, and on which side the victory lies I do not know. Lord, have pity on me. See, I do not hide my wounds. You are the physician, I am the sick man; you are merciful, I need mercy Is not human life on earth an ordeal? Who wishes for vexations and difficulties? You command them to be endured, not to be loved. For no one loves what he endures, though he may love to endure. Yet even if he rejoices to endure, he would prefer that there were nothing for him to endure. In adversity, I desire prosperity; in prosperity, I fear adversity. What middle place is there, then, between these two, where human life is not an ordeal? There is woe in the prosperity of this world; there is woe in the fear of misfortune; there is woe in the distortion of joy. There is woe in the adversities of this world—a second woe, and a third, from the desire of prosperity—because adversity itself is a hard thing to bear and makes shipwreck of endurance. Is not human life on earth an ordeal, and that without surcease?

[10.30.41] Obviously you command that I should be continent from “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.”^fy ⁷ You command me to abstain from fornication, and as for marriage itself, you have counseled something better than what you allow. And since you gave it, it was done—even before I became a minister of your sacrament. But there still exist in my memory—of which I have spoken so much—the images of such things as my habits had fixed there. These things rush into my thoughts with no power when I am awake; but in sleep they rush in not only so as to give pleasure, but even to obtain consent and what very closely resembles the deed itself. Indeed, the illusion of the image prevails to such an extent, in both my soul and my flesh, that the illusion persuades me when sleeping to what the reality cannot do when I am awake. Am I not myself at such a time, lord my god? And is there so much of a difference between myself awake and myself in the moment when I pass from waking to sleeping, or return from sleeping to waking?

Where, then, is the power of reason which resists such suggestions when I am awake—for even if the things themselves be forced upon it I remain unmoved? Does reason cease when the eyes close? Is it put to sleep with the bodily senses? But in that case how does it come to pass that even in slumber we often resist, and with our conscious purposes in mind, continue most chastely in them, and yield no assent to such allurements? Yet there is at least this much difference: that when it happens otherwise in dreams, when we wake up, we return to peace of conscience. And it is by this difference between sleeping and waking that we discover that it was not we who did it, while we still feel sorry that in some way it was done in us.

[10.30.42] Is not your hand, almighty god, able to heal all the diseases of my soul and, by your more and more abundant grace, to quench even the lascivious motions of my sleep? You will increase your gifts in me more and more, lord, so that my soul may follow me to you, wrenched free from the sticky glue of lust so that it is no longer in rebellion against itself, even in dreams; so that it neither commits nor consents to these debasing corruptions which come through sensual images and which result in the pollution of the flesh. For it is no great thing for the almighty, who is “able to do more than we can ask or think,”^fz to bring it about that no such influence—not even one so slight that a nod might restrain it—should afford gratification to the feelings of a chaste person even when sleeping. This could come to pass not only in this life but even at my present age. But what I am still in this way of wickedness I have confessed to my good lord, rejoicing with trembling in what you have given me and grieving in myself for that in which I am still imperfect. I am trusting that you will perfect your mercies in me, to the fullness of that peace which both my inner and outward being shall have with you when death is swallowed up in victory.^ga

[10.31.43] There is yet another “evil of the day”^gb to which I wish I were sufficient. By eating and drinking we restore the daily losses of the body until that day when you destroy both food and stomach, when you will destroy this emptiness with an amazing fullness and will clothe this corruptible thing with an eternal incorruption. But now the necessity of habit is sweet to me, and against this sweetness must I fight, lest I be enthralled by it. Thus I carry on a daily war by fasting, constantly “bringing my body into subjection,”^gc after which my pains are banished by pleasure. For hunger and thirst are actual pain. They consume and destroy like fever does, unless the medicine of food is at hand to relieve us. And since this medicine at hand comes from the comfort we receive in your gifts (by means of which land and water and air serve our infirmity), even our calamity is called pleasure.

[10.31.44] This much you have taught me: that I should learn to take food as medicine. But during that time when I pass from the pinch of emptiness to the contentment of fullness, it is in that very moment that the snare of appetite lies baited for me. For the passage itself is pleasant; there is no other way of passing thither, and necessity compels us to pass. And while health is the reason for our eating and drinking, yet a perilous delight joins itself to them as a handmaid; and indeed, it tries to take precedence in order that I may want to do for its sake what I say I want to do for health’s sake. They do not both have the same limit either. What is sufficient for health is not enough for pleasure. And it is often a matter of doubt whether it is the needful care of the body that still calls for food or whether it is the sensual snare of desire still wanting to be served. In this uncertainty my unhappy soul rejoices, and uses it to prepare an excuse as a defense. It is glad that it is not clear as to what is sufficient for the moderation of health, so that under the pretense of health it may conceal its projects for pleasure. These temptations I daily endeavor to resist and I summon your right hand to my help and cast my perplexities onto you, for I have not yet reached a firm conclusion in this matter.

[10.31.45] I hear the voice of my god commanding: “Let not your heart be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness.”^gd Drunkenness is far from me. You will have mercy so that it does not come near me. But surfeiting sometimes creeps upon your servant. You will have mercy so that it may be put far from me. For no man can be continent unless you give it. Many things that we pray for you give us, and whatever good we receive before we prayed for it, we receive it from you, so that we might afterward know that we received it from you. I never was a drunkard, but I have known drunkards made into sober men by you. It was also your doing that those who never were drunkards have not been—and likewise, it was from you that those who have been might not remain so always. And it was likewise from you that both might know from whom all this came.

I heard another voice of yours: “Do not follow your lusts and refrain yourself from your pleasures.“^ge And by your favor I have also heard this saying in which I have taken much delight: ”Neither if we eat are we the better; nor if we eat not are we the worse.“^gf This is to say that neither shall the one make me to abound, nor the other to be wretched. I heard still another voice: ”For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know how to be abased and I know how to abound. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.“^gg See here a soldier of the heavenly army; not the sort of dust we are. But remember, lord, that we are dust and that you created man out of the dust, and that he was lost, and is found. Of course, he [the apostle Paul] could not do all this by his own power. He was of the same dust—he whom I loved so much and who spoke of these things through the breath of your inspiration: “I can,” he said, “do all things through him who strengthens me.” Strengthen me, that I too may be able. Give what you command, and command what you will. This man [Paul] confesses that he received the gift of grace and that, when he glories, he glories in the Lord. I have heard yet another voice praying that he might receive. “Take from me,” he said, ”the greediness of the belly.“^gh And from this it appears, my holy god, that you do give it, when what you command to be done is done.

[10.31.47] Set down, then, in the midst of these temptations, I strive daily against my appetite for food and drink. For it is not the kind of appetite I am able to deal with by cutting it off once for all, and thereafter not touching it, as I was able to do with fornication. The bridle of the throat, therefore, must be held in the mean between slackness and tightness. And who, lord, is he who is not in some degree carried away beyond the bounds of necessity? Whoever he is, he is great; let him magnify your name. But I am not such a one, for I am a sinful man. Yet I too magnify your name, for he who has overcome the world intercedes with you for my sins, numbering me among the weak members of his body; for “your eyes saw what was imperfect in it, and in your book all shall be written down.”††

[10.32.48] I am not much troubled by the allurement of odors. When they are absent, I do not seek them; when they are present, I do not refuse them; and I am always prepared to go without them. At any rate, I appear thus to myself; it is quite possible that I am deceived. For there is a lamentable darkness in which my capabilities are concealed, so that when my mind inquires into itself concerning its own powers, it does not readily venture to believe itself, because what already is in it is largely concealed unless experience brings it to light. Thus no man ought to feel secure in this life, the whole of which is called an ordeal, ordered so that the person who could be made better from having been worse may not also from having been better become worse. Our sole hope, our sole confidence, our only assured promise, is your mercy.

[10.33-49] The delights of the ear drew and held me much more powerfully, but you unbound and liberated me. In those melodies which your words inspire when sung with a sweet and trained voice, I still find repose; yet not so as to cling to them, but always so as to be able to free myself as I wish. But it is because of the words which are their life that they gain entry into me and strive for a place of proper honor in my heart; and I can hardly assign them a fitting one. Sometimes, I seem to myself to give them more respect than is fitting, when I see that our minds are more devoutly and earnestly inflamed in piety by the holy words when they are sung than when they are not. And I recognize that all the diverse affections of our spirits have their appropriate measures in the voice and song, to which they are stimulated by I know not what secret correlation. But the pleasures of my flesh—to which the mind ought never to be surrendered nor by them enervated—often beguile me while physical sense does not attend on reason, to follow it patiently, but having once gained entry to help the reason, it strives to run on before it and be its leader. Thus in these things I sin unknowingly, but I come to know it afterward.

[10.33.50] On the other hand, when I avoid very earnestly this kind of deception, I err out of too great austerity. Sometimes I go to the point of wishing that all the melodies of the pleasant songs to which David’s psalter is adapted should be banished both from my ears and from those of the church itself. In this mood, the safer way seemed to me the one I remember was once related to me concerning Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who required the readers of the psalm to use so slight an inflection of the voice that it was more like speaking than singing.⁸ However, when I call to mind the tears I shed at the songs of your church at the outset of my recovered faith, and how even now I am moved, not by the singing but by what is sung (when they are sung with a clear and skillfully modulated voice), I then come to acknowledge the great utility of this custom. Thus I vacillate between dangerous pleasure and healthful exercise. I am inclined—though I pronounce no irrevocable opinion on the subject—to approve of the use of singing in the church, so that by the delights of the ear the weaker minds may be stimulated to a devotional mood. Yet when it happens that I am more moved by the singing than by what is sung, I confess myself to have sinned wickedly, and then I would rather not have heard the singing. See now what a condition I am in! Weep with me, and weep for me, those of you who can so control your inward feelings that good results always come forth. As for you who do not act this way at all, such things do not concern you. But you, lord, my god, give ear; look and see, and have mercy upon me; and heal me—you, in whose sight I am become an enigma to myself; this itself is my weakness.

[10.34.51] There remain the delights of these eyes of my flesh, about which I must make my confession in the hearing of the ears of your temple, brotherly and pious ears. Thus I will finish the list of the temptations of carnal appetite which still assail me—groaning and desiring as I am to be “clothed with my house from heaven.”^gp The eyes delight in fair and varied forms, and bright and pleasing colors. Let these not take possession of my soul! Rather let god possess it, he who made all these things very good indeed. He is still my good, and not these. The pleasures of sight affect me all the time I am awake. There is no rest from them given me, as there is from the voices of melody, which I can occasionally find in silence. For daylight, that queen of the colors, floods all that we look upon everywhere I go during the day. It flits about me in manifold forms and soothes me even when I am busy about other things, not noticing it. And it presents itself so forcibly that if it is suddenly withdrawn it is looked for with longing, and if it is long absent the mind is saddened.

[10.34.52] Light, which Tobit saw even with his eyes closed in blindness, when he taught his son the way of life—and went before him himself in the steps of love and never went astray;^gq or that light which Isaac saw when his fleshly eyes were dim, so that he could not see because of old age, and it was permitted him unknowingly to bless his sons, but in the blessing of them to know them;^gr or that light which Jacob saw, when he too, blind in old age yet with an enlightened heart, threw light on the nation of men yet to come—presignified in the persons of his own sons—and laid his hands mystically crossed upon his grandchildren by Joseph (not as their father, who saw them from without, but as though he were within them), and distinguished them aright:^gs this is the true light; it is one, and all are one who see and love it.

But that corporeal light, of which I was speaking, seasons the life of the world for its blind lovers with a tempting and fatal sweetness. Those who know how to praise you for it, “God, creator of all,” take it up in your hymn,⁹ and are not taken over by it in their sleep. Such a one I desire to be. I resist the seductions of my eyes, lest my feet be entangled as I go forward in your way; and I raise my invisible eyes to you, so that you would be pleased to “pluck my feet out of the net.”^gt You continually pluck them out, for they are easily ensnared. You cease not to pluck them out, but I constantly remain fast in the snares set all around me. However, you who “keep Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”^gu

[10.34.53] What numberless things there are: products of the various arts and manufactures in our clothes, shoes, vessels, and all such things, as well as pictures and images of various kinds—and all these far beyond the necessary and moderate use of them or their significance for the life of piety—which human beings have added for the delight of the eye, copying the outward forms of the things they make but inwardly forsaking him by whom they were made and destroying what they themselves have been made to be!¹⁰ And I, my god and my joy, I also raise a hymn to you for all these things, and offer a sacrifice of praise to my sanctifier, because those beautiful forms which pass through the medium of the human soul into the artist’s hands come from that beauty which is above our minds, which my soul sighs for day and night. But the craftsmen and devotees of these outward beauties discover the norm by which they judge them from that higher beauty, but not the measure of their use. Still, even if they do not see it, it is there nevertheless, to guard them from wandering astray, and to keep their strength for you, and not dissipate it in delights that pass into boredom. And for myself, though I can see and understand this, I am still entangled in my own course with such beauty, but you will rescue me, lord, you will rescue me, “for your loving-kindness is before my eyes.”^gv For I am captivated in my weakness but you in your mercy rescue me: sometimes without my knowing it, because I had only lightly fallen; at other times, the rescue is painful because I was stuck fast.

[10.35.54] Besides this there is yet another form of temptation still more complex in its peril. For in addition to the fleshly appetite which strives for the gratification of all senses and pleasures—in which its slaves perish because they separate themselves from you—there is also a certain vain and curious longing in the soul, rooted in the same bodily senses, which is cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning; not having pleasure in the flesh, but striving for new experiences through the flesh. This longing—since its origin is our appetite for learning, and since the sight is the chief of our senses in the acquisition of knowledge—is called in the divine language “the lust of the eyes.”^gw For seeing is a function of the eyes; yet we also use this word for the other senses as well, when we exercise them in the search for knowledge. We do not say, “Listen how it glows,” “Smell how it glistens,” “Taste how it shines,” or “Feel how it flashes,” since all of these are said to be seen. And we do not simply say, “See how it shines,” which only the eyes can perceive; but we also say, “See how it sounds, see how it smells, see how it tastes, see how hard it is.” Thus, as we said before, the whole round of sensory experience is called “the lust of the eyes” because the function of seeing, in which the eyes have the principal role, is applied by analogy to the other senses when they are seeking after any kind of knowledge.

[10.35.55] From this, then, one can the more clearly distinguish whether it is pleasure or curiosity that is being pursued by the senses. For pleasure pursues objects that are beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savory, soft. But curiosity, seeking new experiences, will even seek out the contrary of these, not with the purpose of experiencing the discomfort that often accompanies them, but out of a passion for experimenting and knowledge. For what pleasure is there in the sight of a lacerated corpse, which makes you shudder? And yet if there is one lying close by we flock to it, as if to be made sad and pale. People fear lest they should see such a thing even in sleep, just as they would if, when awake, someone compelled them to go and see it or if some rumor of its beauty had attracted them.

[10.35.56] In such a wilderness so vast, crammed with snares and dangers, see how many of them I have lopped off and cast from my heart, as you, god of my salvation, have enabled me to do. And yet, when would I dare to say, since so many things of this sort still buzz around our daily lives—when would I dare to say that no such motive prompts my seeing or creates a vain curiosity in me? It is true that now the theaters never attract me, nor do I now care to inquire about the courses of the stars, and my soul has never sought answers from the departed spirits. All sacrilegious oaths I abhor. And yet, lord my god, to whom I owe all humble and singlehearted service, with what subtle suggestion the enemy still influences me to require some sign from you! But by our king, and by Jerusalem, our pure and chaste homeland, I beseech you that where any consenting to such thoughts is now far from me, so may it always be farther and farther. And when I entreat you for the salvation of any man, the end I aim at is something quite different: let it be that as you do what you will, you do also give me the grace willingly to follow your lead.

[10.35.57] Now, really, in how many of the most minute and trivial things my curiosity is still daily tempted, and who can keep the tally on how often I succumb? How often, when people are telling idle tales, we begin by tolerating them lest we should give offense to the sensitive, and then gradually we come to listen willingly! I do not nowadays go to the circus to see a dog chase a rabbit, but if by chance I pass such a race in the fields, it quite easily distracts me even from some serious thought and draws me after it—not that I turn aside with my horse, but with the inclination of my mind. And unless, by showing me my weakness, you speedily warn me to rise above such a sight to you by a deliberate act of thought—or else to despise the whole thing and pass it by—then I become absorbed in the sight, vain creature that I am.

How is it that when I am sitting at home a lizard catching flies, or a spider entangling them as they fly into her webs, often arrests me? Is the feeling of curiosity not the same just because these are such tiny creatures? From them I proceed to praise you, the wonderful creator and disposer of all things; but it is not this that first attracts my attention. It is one thing to get up quickly and another thing not to fall—and of both such things my life is full and my only hope is in your exceeding great mercy. For when this heart of ours is made the depot of such things and is overrun by the throng of these abounding vanities, then our prayers are often interrupted and disturbed by them. Even while we are in your presence and direct the voice of our hearts to your ears, such a great business as this is broken off by the inroads of I know not what idle thoughts.

[10.36.58] Shall we, then, also reckon this vain curiosity among the things that are to be but lightly esteemed? Shall anything restore us to hope except your complete mercy since you have begun to change us? You know to what extent you have already changed me, for first of all you healed me of the lust for vindicating myself, so that you might then forgive all my remaining iniquities and heal all my diseases, and “redeem my life from corruption and crown me with loving-kindness and tender mercies, and satisfy my desires with good things.”^gx It was you who restrained my pride with your fear, and bowed my neck to your yoke. And now I bear the yoke and it is light to me, because you promised it to be so, and have made it to be so.^gy And so in truth it was, though I knew it not when I feared to take it up.

And yet certain offices in human society require the officeholder to be loved and feared of men, and through this the adversary of our true blessedness presses hard upon us, scattering everywhere his snares of “well done, well done”; so that while we are eagerly picking them up, we may be caught unawares and split off our joy from your truth and fix it on the deceits of men. In this way we come to take pleasure in being loved and feared, not for your sake but in your stead. By such means as this, the adversary makes men like himself, so that he may have them as his own, not in the harmony of love, but in the fellowship of punishment—the one who aspired to exalt his throne in the north,^hb so that in the darkness and the cold men might have to serve him, mimicking you in perverse and distorted ways.

But see, lord, we are your little flock. Possess us, stretch your wings above us, and let us take refuge under them. Be you our glory; let us be loved for your sake, and let your word be feared in us. Those who desire to be commended by the men whom you condemn will not be defended by men when you judge, nor will they be delivered when you condemn them. But when—not as a sinner is praised in the wicked desires of his soul nor when the unrighteous man is blessed in his unrighteousness—a man is praised for some gift that you have given him, and he is more gratified at the praise for himself than because he possesses the gift for which he is praised, such a one is praised while you condemn him. In such a case the one who praised is truly better than the one who was praised. For the gift of god in man was pleasing to the one, while the other was better pleased with the gift of man than with the gift of god.

[10.37.60] By these temptations we are daily tried, lord; we are tried unceasingly. Our daily furnace is the human tongue.^hc And also in this respect you command us to be continent. Give what you command and command what you will. In this matter, you know the groans of my heart and the rivers of my eyes, for I am not able to know for certain how far I am clean of this plague; and I stand in great fear of my secret faults, which your eyes perceive, though mine do not. For in respect of the pleasures of my flesh and of idle curiosity, I see how far I have been able to hold my mind in check when I abstain from them either by voluntary act of the will or because they simply are not at hand; for then I can inquire of myself how much more or less frustrating it is to me not to have them. This is also true about riches, which are sought for in order that they may minister to one of these three lusts, or two, or the whole complex of them. The mind is able to see clearly if, when it has them, it despises them so that they may be cast aside and it may prove itself.

[10.37.61] What is it, then, that I am confessing to you, lord, concerning this sort of temptation? What else, than that I am delighted with praise, but more with the truth itself than with praise. For if I were to have any choice whether, if I were mad or utterly in the wrong, I would prefer to be praised by all men or, if I were steadily and fully confident in the truth, would prefer to be blamed by all, I see which I should choose. Yet I wish I were unwilling that the approval of others should add anything to my joy for any good I have. Yet I admit that it does increase it; and, more than that, dispraise diminishes it. Then, when I am disturbed over this wretchedness of mine, an excuse presents itself to me, the value of which you know, god, for it renders me uncertain. For since it is not only continence that you have enjoined on us—that is, what things to hold back our love from—but righteousness as well—that is, what to bestow our love upon—and have wished us to love not only you, but also our neighbor, it often turns out that when I am gratified by intelligent praise I seem to myself to be gratified by the competence or insight of my neighbor; or, on the other hand, I am sorry for the defect in him when I hear him dispraise either what he does not understand or what is good. For I am sometimes grieved at the praise I get, either when those things that displease me in myself are praised in me, or when lesser and trifling goods are valued more highly than they should be. But, again, how do I know whether I feel this way because I am unwilling that he who praises me should differ from me concerning myself not because I am moved with any consideration for him, but because the good things that please me in myself are more pleasing to me when they also please another? For in a way, I am not praised when my judgment of myself is not praised, since either those things which are displeasing to me are praised, or those things which are less pleasing to me are more praised. Am I not, then, quite uncertain of myself in this respect?

[10.38.63] “I am needy and poor.”^he Still, I am better when in secret groanings I displease myself and seek your mercy until what is lacking in me is renewed and made complete for that peace which the eye of the proud does not know. The reports that come from the mouth and from actions known to men have in them a most perilous temptation to the love of praise. This love builds up a certain complacency in one’s own excellency, and then goes around collecting solicited compliments. It tempts me, even when I inwardly reprove myself for it, and this precisely because it is reproved. For a person may often glory vainly in the very scorn of vainglory—and in this case it is not any longer the scorn of vainglory in which he glories, for he does not truly despise it when he inwardly glories in it.

[10.39.64] Within us there is yet another evil arising from the same sort of temptation. By it they become empty who please themselves in themselves, although they do not please or displease or aim at pleasing others. But in pleasing themselves they displease you very much, not merely taking pleasure in things that are not good as if they were good, but taking pleasure in your good things as if they were their own; or even as if they were yours but still as if they had received them through their own merit; or even as if they had them through your grace, still without this grace with their friends, but as if they envied that grace to others. In all these and similar perils and labors, you perceive the agitation of my heart, and I would rather feel my wounds being cured by you than not inflicted by me on myself.

[10.40.65] Where have you not accompanied me, truth, teaching me both what to avoid and what to desire, when I have submitted to you what I could understand about matters here below, and have sought your counsel about them? With my external senses I have viewed the world as I was able and have noticed the life which my body derives from me and from these senses of mine. From that stage I advanced inwardly into the recesses of my memory—the manifold chambers of my mind, marvelously full of unmeasured wealth. And I reflected on this and was afraid, and could understand none of these things without you and found you to be none of them. Nor did I myself discover these things—I who went over them all and labored to distinguish and to value everything according to its dignity, accepting some things upon the report of my senses and questioning about others which I thought to be related to my inner self, distinguishing and numbering the reporters themselves; and in that vast storehouse of my memory, investigating some things, depositing other things, taking out still others. Neither was I myself when I did this—that is, that ability of mine by which I did it—nor was it you, for you are that never-failing light from which I took counsel about them all; whether they were what they were, and what was their real value. In all this I heard you teaching and commanding me. And this I often do—and this is a delight to me—and as far as I can get relief from my necessary duties, I resort to this kind of pleasure. But in all these things which I review when I consult you, I still do not find a secure place for my soul except in you, in whom my scattered members may be gathered together and nothing of me escape from you. And sometimes you introduce me to a most rare and inward feeling, an inexplicable sweetness. If this were to come to perfection in me I do not know to what point life might not then arrive. But still, by these wretched weights of mine, I relapse into these common things, and am sucked in by my old customs and am held. I sorrow much, yet I am still closely held. To this extent, then, the burden of habit presses us down. I can exist in this fashion but I do not wish to do so. In that other way I wish I were, but cannot be—in both ways I am wretched.

[10.42.67] Whom could I find to reconcile me to you? Should I have approached the angels? What kind of prayer? What kind of rites? Many who were striving to return to you and were not able of themselves have, I am told, tried this and have fallen into a longing for curious visions and deserved to be deceived. Being exalted, they sought you in their pride of learning, and they thrust themselves forward rather than beating their breasts. And so by a likeness of heart, they drew to themselves the princes of the air, their conspirators and companions in pride, by whom they were deceived by the power of magic. Thus they sought a mediator by whom they might be cleansed, but there was none. For the mediator they sought was the devil, disguising himself as an angel of light.^hg And he allured their proud flesh the more because he had no fleshly body.¹¹

They were mortal and sinful, but you, lord, to whom they arrogantly sought to be reconciled, are immortal and sinless. But a mediator between god and man ought to have something in him like god and something in him like man, lest in being like man he should be far from god, or if only like god he should be far from man, and so should not be a mediator. That deceitful mediator, then, by whom, by your secret judgment, human pride deserves to be deceived, had one thing in common with man, that is, his sin. In another respect, he would seem to have something in common with god, for not being clothed with the mortality of the flesh, he could boast that he was immortal. But since “the wages of sin is death,”^hh what he really has in common with men is that, together with them, he is condemned to death.

[10.43.68] But the true mediator, whom you in your secret mercy have revealed to the humble, and have sent to them so that through his example they also might learn the same humility—that “mediator between god and man, the man Christ Jesus,”^hi appeared between mortal sinners and the immortal just one. He was mortal as men are mortal; he was righteous as god is righteous; and because the reward of righteousness is life and peace, he could, through his righteousness united with god, cancel the death of justified sinners, which he was willing to have in common with them. Hence he was manifested to holy men of old, to the end that they might be saved through faith in his passion to come, even as we are through faith in his passion which is past. As man he was mediator, but as the word he was not something in between the two; because he was equal to god, and god with god, and, with the holy spirit, one god.

[10.43.69] How have you loved us, good father, who did not spare your only son, but delivered him up for us wicked ones! How have you loved us, for whom he who did not count it robbery to be equal with you “became obedient to death, even the death of the cross”!^hj He alone was free among the dead. He alone had power to lay down his life and power to take it up again, and for us he became to you both victor and victim; and victor because he was the victim. For us, he was to you both priest and sacrifice, and priest because he was the sacrifice. Out of slaves, he makes us your sons, because he was born of you and did serve us. Rightly, then, is my hope fixed strongly on him, that you will heal all my diseases through him, who sits at your right hand and makes intercession for us. Otherwise I should utterly despair. For my infirmities are many and great; indeed, they are very many and very great. But your medicine is still greater. Otherwise, we might think that your word was removed from union with man, and despair of ourselves, if it had not been that he was “made flesh and dwelt among us.”^hk

Terrified by my sins and the load of my misery, I had resolved in my heart and considered flight into the wilderness.¹² But you forbade me, and you strengthened me, saying that “since Christ died for all, they who live should not henceforth live to themselves, but to him who died for them.”^hl See, lord, how I cast all my care on you, so that I may live and “behold wondrous things out of your law.”^hm You know my incompetence and my infirmities; teach me and heal me. Your only son—he “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”^hn-has redeemed me with his blood. Let not the proud speak evil of me, because I keep my ransom before my mind, and eat and drink and share my food and drink. For, being poor, I desire to be satisfied from him, together with those who eat and are satisfied: “and they shall praise the lord that seek him.”^ho

[11.1.1] Is it possible, lord, that, since you are in eternity, you are ignorant of what I am saying to you? Or, do you see in time an event at the time it occurs? If not, then why am I recounting such a tale of things to you? Certainly not in order to acquaint you with them through me; but, instead, that through them I may stir up my own love and the love of my readers toward you, so that all may say, “Great is the lord and greatly to be praised.” I have said this before and will say it again.¹ For love of your love I do it. So also we pray—and yet truth tells us, “Your father knows what things you need before you ask him.”^hp Consequently, we lay bare our feelings before you, so that, through our confessing to you our plight and your mercies toward us, you may go on to free us altogether, as you have already begun; and so that we may cease to be wretched in ourselves and blessed in you—since you have called us to be poor in spirit, meek, mourners, hungering and athirst for righteousness, merciful and pure in heart.^hq Thus I have told you many things, as I could find ability and will to do so, since it was your will in the first place that I should confess to you, lord my god—for “you are good and your mercy endureth forever.”^hr

[11.2.2] But how long would it take for the voice of my pen to tell enough of your exhortations and of all your terrors and comforts and leadings by which you brought me to preach your word and to administer your sacraments to your people? And even if I could do this sufficiently, the drops of time are very precious to me and I have for a long time been burning with the desire to meditate on your law, and to confess in your presence my knowledge and ignorance of it—from the first streaks of your light in my mind and the remaining darkness, until my weakness shall be swallowed up in your strength. And I do not wish to see drained into anything else those hours which I can find free from the necessary care of the body, the exercise of the mind, and the service we owe to our fellow human beings—and what we give even if we do not owe it.²

[11.2.3] Lord my god, hear my prayer and let your mercy attend my longing. It does not burn for itself alone but longs as well to serve the cause of fraternal love. You see in my heart that this is so. Let me offer the service of my mind and my tongue—and give me what I may in turn offer back to you. For I am needy and poor; you are rich to all who call upon you—you who, in your freedom from care, care for us. Trim away from my lips, inwardly and outwardly, all rashness and lying. Let your scriptures be my chaste delight. Let me not be deceived in them, nor deceive others from them. Lord, hear and pity! Lord my god, light of the blind, strength of the weak—and also the light of those who see and the strength of the strong—hearken to my soul and hear it crying from the depths.^hs Unless your ears attend us even in the depths, where should we go? To whom should we cry?

“Yours is the day and the night is yours as well.”^ht At your bidding the moments fly by. Grant me in them, then, an interval for my meditations on the hidden things of your law, nor close the door of your law against us who knock. You have not willed that the deep secrets of all those pages should have been written in vain. Those forests are not without their stags which keep retired within them, ranging and walking and feeding, lying down and ruminating. Perfect me, lord, and reveal their secrets to me. Behold, your voice is my joy; your voice surpasses in abundance of delights. Give me what I love, for I do love it. And this too is your gift. Abandon not your gifts and despise not your grass which thirsts for you. Let me confess to you everything that I shall have found in your books and “let me hear the voice of your praise.”^hu Let me drink from you and “consider the wondrous things out of your law”^hv—from the very beginning, when you made heaven and earth, and thenceforward to the everlasting reign of your holy city with you.³

[11.2.4] Lord, have mercy on me and hear my petition. For my prayer is not for earthly things, neither gold nor silver and precious stones, nor gorgeous apparel, nor honors and power, nor fleshly pleasures, nor for bodily necessities in this life of our journeying: all of these things are added to those who seek your kingdom and your righteousness.^hw Observe, god, from whence comes my desire. The unrighteous have told me of delights but not such as those in your law, lord. See, this is the spring of my desire. See, father, look and see—and approve! Let it be pleasing in your mercy’s sight that I should find favor with you—that the secret things of your word may be opened to me when I knock. I beg this of you by our lord Jesus Christ, your son, the man of your right hand, the son of man; whom you made strong for your purpose as mediator between you and us; through whom you sought us when we were not seeking you, but sought us so that we might seek you; your word, through whom you made all things, and me among them; your only son, through whom you have called your faithful people to adoption, and me among them. I beseech it of you through him who sits at your right hand and makes intercession for us, “in whom are hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”^hx It is he I seek in your books. Moses wrote of him. He tells us so himself; the truth tells us so.

[11.3.5] Let me hear and understand how in the beginning you made heaven and earth. Moses wrote of this; he wrote and passed on—moving from you to you—and he is now no longer before me. If he were, I would lay hold on him and ask him and entreat him solemnly that in your name he would open out these things to me, and I would lend my bodily ears to the sounds that came forth out of his mouth. If, however, he spoke in the Hebrew language, the sounds would beat on my senses in vain, and nothing would touch my mind; but if he spoke in Latin, I would understand what he said. But how should I then know whether what he said was true? If I knew even this much, would it be that I knew it from him? Indeed, within me, deep inside the chambers of my thought, truth itself—neither Hebrew, nor Greek, nor Latin, nor barbarian, without any organs of voice and tongue, without the sound of syllables—would say, “He speaks the truth,” and I should be assured by this. Then I would confidently say to that man of yours, “You speak the truth.” However, since I cannot inquire of Moses, I beseech you, truth, from whose fullness he spoke truth; I beseech you, my god, forgive my sins, and as you gave your servant the gift to speak these things, grant me also the gift to understand them.⁴

[11.4.6] Look around; there are the heaven and the earth. They cry aloud that they were made, for they change and vary. Whatever there is that has not been made, and yet has being, has nothing in it that was not there before. This having something not already existent is what it means to be changed and varied. Heaven and earth thus speak plainly that they did not make themselves: “We are, because we have been made; we did not exist before we came to be so that we could have made ourselves!” And the voice with which they speak is simply their visible presence. It was you, lord, who made these things. You are beautiful; thus they are beautiful. You are good, thus they are good. You are; thus they are. But they are not as beautiful, nor as good, nor as truly real as you their creator are. Compared with you, they are neither beautiful nor good, nor do they even exist. These things we know, thanks be to you. Yet our knowledge is ignorance when it is compared with your knowledge. ⁵

[11.5.7] But how did you make the heaven and the earth, and what was the tool of such a mighty work as yours? For it was not like a human worker fashioning body from body, according to the fancy of his mind, able somehow or other to impose on it a form which the mind perceived in itself by its inner eye (yet how should even he be able to do this, if you had not made that mind?). He imposes the form on something already existing and having some sort of being, such as clay, or stone or wood or gold or such like (and where would these things come from if you had not furnished them?). For you made his body for the artisan, and you made the mind which directs the limbs; you made the matter from which he makes anything; you created the capacity by which he understands his art and sees within his mind what he may do with the things before him; you gave him his bodily sense by which, as if he had an interpreter, he may communicate from mind to matter what he proposes to do and report back to his mind what has been done, so that the mind may consult with the truth which presideth over it as to whether what is done is well done.

All these things praise you, the creator of them all. But how did you make them? How, god, did you make the heaven and earth? For truly, neither in heaven nor on earth did you make heaven and earth—nor in the air nor in the waters, since all of these also belong to the heaven and the earth. Nowhere in the whole world did you make the whole world, because there was no place where it could be made before it was made. And you did not hold anything in your hand from which to fashion the heaven and the earth, for where could you have got what you had not made in order to make something with it? Is there, indeed, anything at all except because you are? Thus you spoke and they were made, and by your word you made them all.

[11.6.8] But how did you speak? Was it in the same manner in which the voice came from the cloud saying, “This is my beloved son”?^hy For that voice sounded forth and died away; it began and ended. The syllables sounded and passed away, the second after the first, the third after the second, and thence in order, till the very last after all the rest; and silence after the last. From this it is clear and plain that it was the action of a creature, itself in time, which sounded that voice, obeying your eternal will. And what these words were which were formed at that time the outer ear conveyed to the conscious mind, whose inner ear lay attentively open to your eternal word. But it compared those words which sounded in time with your eternal word sounding in silence and said: “This is different; quite different! These words are far below me; they are not even real, for they fly away and pass, but the word of my god remains above me forever.” If, then, in words that sound and fade away you said that heaven and earth should be made, and thus made heaven and earth, then there was already some kind of corporeal creature before heaven and earth by whose motions in time that voice might have had its occurrence in time. But there was nothing corporeal before the heaven and the earth; or if there was, then it is certain that already, without a time-bound voice, you had created whatever it was out of which you made the time-bound voice by which you said, “Let the heaven and the earth be made!” For whatever it was out of which such a voice was made simply did not exist at all until it was made by you. Was it decreed by your word that a body might be made from which such words might come?

[11.7.9] You call us, then, to understand the word—the god who is god with you—which is spoken eternally and by which all things are spoken eternally. For what was first spoken was not finished, and then something else spoken until the whole series was spoken; but all things, at the same time and forever. For, otherwise, we should have time and change and not a true eternity, nor a true immortality. This I know, my god, and I give thanks. I know, I confess to you, lord, and whoever is not ungrateful for certain truths knows and blesses you along with me. We know, lord, this much we know: that in the same proportion as anything is not what it was, and is what it was not, in that very same proportion it passes away or comes to be. But there is nothing in your word that passes away or returns to its place; for it is truly immortal and eternal. And, therefore, to the word coeternal with you, at the same time and always you say all that you say. And whatever you say shall be made is made, and you make nothing otherwise than by speaking. Still, not all the things that you make by speaking are made at the same time and always.

[11.8.10] Why is this, I ask of you, lord my god? I see it after a fashion, but I do not know how to express it, unless I say that everything that begins to be and then ceases to be begins and ceases when it is known in your eternal reason that it ought to begin or cease—in your eternal reason where nothing begins or ceases. And this is your word, which is also “the beginning,” because it also speaks to us.^hz Thus, in the gospel, he spoke through the flesh; and this sounded in the outward ears of men so that it might be believed and sought for within, and so that it might be found in the eternal truth, in which the good and only master teacheth all his disciples. There, lord, I hear your voice, the voice of one speaking to me, since he who teaches us speaks to us. But he who does not teach us does not really speak to us even when he speaks. Yet who is it that teaches us unless it be the truth immutable? For even when we are instructed by means of the mutable creation, we are thereby led to the truth immutable. There we learn truly as we stand and hear him, and we rejoice greatly “because of the bridegroom’s voice,”^ia restoring us to the source whence our being comes. And therefore, unless the beginning remained immutable, there would then not be a place to which we might return when we had wandered away. But when we return from error, it is through our gaining knowledge that we return. In order for us to gain knowledge he teaches us, since he is the beginning, and speaks to us.

[11.9.11] In this beginning, god, you have made heaven and earth—through your word, your son, your power, your wisdom, your truth: all wondrously speaking and wondrously creating. Who shall comprehend such things and who shall tell of it? What is it that shines through me and strikes my heart without injury, so that I both shudder and burn? I shudder because I am unlike it; I burn because I am like it. It is wisdom itself that shines through me, clearing away my fog, which so readily overwhelms me so that I faint in it, in the darkness and burden of my punishment. For my strength is brought down in neediness, so that I cannot endure even my blessings until you, lord, who have been gracious to all my iniquities, also heal all my infirmities—for it is you who “shall redeem my life from corruption, and crown me with loving-kindness and tender mercy, and shall satisfy my desire with good things so that my youth shall be renewed like the eagle’s.“^ib For by this hope we are saved, and through patience we await your promises. Let him that is able hear you speaking to his inner mind. I will cry out with confidence because of your own oracle, ”How wonderful are your works, lord; in wisdom you have made them all.“^ic And this wisdom is the beginning, and in that beginning you have made heaven and earth.

[11.10.12] Now, are not those still full of their old carnal nature who ask us: “What was god doing before he made heaven and earth? For if he was idle,” they say, “and doing nothing, then why did he not continue in that state forever—doing nothing, as he had always done? If any new motion has arisen in god, and a new will to form a creature, which he had never before formed, how can that be a true eternity in which an act of will occurs that was not there before? For the will of god is not a created thing, but comes before the creation—and this is true because nothing could be created unless the will of the creator came before it. The will of god, therefore, pertains to his very essence. Yet if anything has arisen in the essence of god that was not there before, then that essence cannot truly be called eternal. But if it was the eternal will of god that the creation should come to be, why, then, is not the creation itself also from eternity?”⁶

[11.11.13] Those who say these things do not yet understand you, wisdom of god, light of souls. They do not yet understand how the things are made that are made by and in you. They endeavor to comprehend eternal things, but their heart still flies about in the past and future motions of created things, and is still unstable. Who shall hold and fix such a heart so that it may come to rest for a little; and then, by degrees, glimpse the glory of that eternity which abides forever; and then, comparing eternity with the temporal process in which nothing abides, may see that they are incommensurable? It would see that a long time does not become long, except from the many separate events that occur in its passage, which cannot be simultaneous. In the eternal, on the other hand, nothing passes away, but the whole is simultaneously present. But no temporal process is wholly simultaneous. Therefore, let the heart see that all time past is forced to move on by the incoming future; that all the future follows from the past; and that all, past and future, is created and issues out of that which is forever present. Who will hold the heart of man that it may stand still and see how the eternity which always stands still is itself neither future nor past but expresses itself in the times that are future and past? Can my hand do this, or can the hand of my mouth bring about so difficult a thing even by persuasion?

[11.12.14] How, then, shall I respond to the person who asks, “What was god doing before he made heaven and earth?” I do not answer, as a certain one is reported to have done facetiously, shrugging off the force of the question. “He was preparing hell,” he said, “for those who pry too deep.” It is one thing to see the answer; it is another to laugh at the questioner—and for myself I do not answer these things thus. More willingly would I have answered, “I do not know what I do not know,” than cause one who asked a deep question to be ridiculed—and by such tactics gain praise for a worthless answer. Rather, I say that you, our god, are the creator of every creature. And if in the term “heaven and earth” every creature is included, I make bold to say further: before god made heaven and earth, he did not make anything at all. For if he did, what did he make unless it were a creature? I do indeed wish that I knew all that I desire to know to my profit as surely as I know that no creature was made before any creature was made.

[11.13.15] But if the roving thought of someone should wander over the images of past time, and wonder that you, the almighty god, the all-creating and all-sustaining, the architect of heaven and earth, did for ages unnumbered abstain from so great a work before you actually did it, let him awake and consider that he wonders at illusions. For in what temporal medium could the unnumbered ages that you did not make pass by, since you are the author and creator of all the ages? Or what periods of time would those be that were not made by you? Or how could they have already passed away if they had not already been? Since, therefore, you are the creator of all times, if there was any time before you made heaven and earth, why is it said that you were abstaining from working? For you made that very time itself, and periods could not pass by before you made the whole temporal procession. But if there was no time before heaven and earth, how, then, can it be asked, “What were you doing then?” For there was no “then” when there was no time.

[11.13.16] Nor do you precede any given period of time by another period of time. Else you would not precede all periods of time. In the eminence of your ever-present eternity, you precede all times past, and extend beyond all future times, for they are still to come—and when they have come, they will be past. But “you are always the selfsame and your years shall have no end.”^id Your years neither go nor come; but ours both go and come in order that all separate moments may come to pass. All your years stand together as one, since they are abiding. Nor do your years past exclude the years to come because your years do not pass away. All these years of ours shall be with you, when all of them shall have ceased to be. Your years are but a day, and your day is not recurrent, but always today. Your today yields not to tomorrow and does not follow yesterday. Your today is eternity. Therefore, you generated the coeternal one, to whom you said, “This day I have begotten you.”^ie You made all time and before all times you are, and there was never a time when there was no time.

[11.14.17] There was no time, therefore, when you had not made anything, because you had made time itself. And there are no times that are coeternal with you, because you abide forever; but if times should abide, they would not be times. For what is time?⁷ Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who can even comprehend it in thought or put the answer into words? Yet is it not true that in conversation we refer to nothing more familiarly or knowingly than time? And surely we understand it when we speak of it; we understand it also when we hear another speak of it. What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to one who asks me, I do not know. Yet I say with confidence that I know that if nothing passed away, there would be no past time; and if nothing were still coming, there would be no future time; and if there were nothing at all, there would be no present time. But, then, how is it that there are the two times, past and future, when even the past is now no longer and the future is now not yet? But if the present were always present, and did not pass into past time, it obviously would not be time but eternity. If, then, time present—if it be time—comes into existence only because it passes into time past, how can we say that even this is, since the cause of its being is that it will cease to be? Thus, can we not truly say that time is only as it tends toward nonbeing?

[11.15.18] And yet we speak of a long time and a short time, but never speak this way except of time past and future. We call a hundred years ago, for example, a long time past. In like manner, we should call a hundred years hence a long time to come. But we call ten days ago a short time past; and ten days hence a short time to come. But in what sense is something long or short that is nonexistent? For the past is not now, and the future is not yet. Therefore, let us not say, “It is long”; instead, let us say of the past, “It was long,” and of the future, “It will be long.” And yet, lord, my light, shall not your truth make mockery of man even here? For that long time past: was it long when it was already past, or when it was still present? For it might have been long when there was a period that could be long, but when it was past, it no longer was. In that case, that which was not at all could not be long. Let us not, therefore, say, “Time past was long,” for we shall not discover what it was that was long because, since it is past, it no longer exists. Rather, let us say that “time present was long, because when it was present it was long.” For then it had not yet passed on so as not to be, and therefore it still was in a state that could be called long. But after it passed, it ceased to be long simply because it ceased to be.

[11.15.19] Let us, therefore, human soul, see whether present time can be long, for it has been given you to feel and measure the periods of time. How, then, will you answer me? Is a hundred years when present a long time? But, first, see whether a hundred years can be present at once. For if the first year in the century is current, then it is present time, and the other ninety and nine are still future. Therefore, they are not yet. But, then, if the second year is current, one year is already past, the second present, and all the rest are future. And thus, if we fix on any middle year of this century as present, those before it are past, those after it are future. Therefore, a hundred years cannot be present all at once. Let us see, then, whether the year that is now current can be present. For if its first month is current, then the rest are future; if the second, the first is already past, and the remainder are not yet. Therefore, the current year is not present all at once. And if it is not present as a whole, then the year is not present. For it takes twelve months to make the year, from which each individual month which is current is itself present one at a time, but the rest are either past or future.

[11.15.20] Thus it comes out that time present, which we found was the only time that could be called long, has been cut down to the space of scarcely a single day. But let us examine even that, for one day is never present as a whole. For it is made up of twenty-four hours, divided between night and day. The first of these hours has the rest of them as future, and the last of them has the rest as past; but any of those between has those that preceded it as past and those that succeed it as future. And that one hour itself passes away in fleeting fractions. The part of it that has fled is past; what remains is still future. If any fraction of time be conceived that cannot now be divided even into the most minute momentary point, this alone is what we may call time present. But this flies so rapidly from future to past that it cannot be extended by any delay. For if it is extended, it is then divided into past and future. But the present has no extension whatever.

[11.16.21] And yet, lord, we do perceive intervals of time, and we compare them with each other, and we say that some are longer and others are shorter. We even measure how much longer or shorter this time may be than that time. And we say that this time is twice as long, or three times as long, while this other time is only just as long as that other. But we measure the passage of time when we measure the intervals of perception. But who can measure times past which now are no longer, or times future which are not yet—unless perhaps someone will dare to say that what does not exist can be measured? Therefore, while time is passing, it can be perceived and measured; but when it is past, it cannot, since it is not.

[11.17.22] I am seeking the truth, father; I am not affirming it. My god, direct and rule me. Who is there who will tell me that there are not three times—as we learned when boys and as we have also taught boys—time past, time present, and time future? Who can say that there is only time present because the other two do not exist? Or do they also exist; but when, from the future, time becomes present, it proceeds from some secret place; and when, from times present, it becomes past, it recedes into some secret place? For where have those men who have foretold the future seen the things foretold, if then they were not yet existing? For what does not exist cannot be seen. And those who tell of things past could not speak of them as if they were true, if they did not see them in their minds. These things could in no way be discerned if they did not exist. There are therefore times present and times past.

[11.18.23] Give me leave, lord, to seek still further. My hope, let not my purpose be confounded. For if there are times past and future, I wish to know where they are. But if I have not yet succeeded in this, I still know that wherever they are, they are not there as future or past, but as present. For if they are there as future, they are there as “not yet”; if they are there as past, they are there as “no longer.” Wherever they are and whatever they are they exist therefore only as present. Although we tell of past things as true, they are drawn out of the memory—not the things themselves, which have already passed, but words constructed from the images of the perceptions which were formed in the mind, like footprints in their passage through the senses. My childhood, for instance, which is no longer, still exists in time past, which does not now exist. But when I call to mind its image and speak of it, I see it in the present because it is still in my memory.⁸ Whether there is a similar explanation for the foretelling of future events—that is, of the images of things which are not yet seen as if they were already existing—I confess, my god, I do not know. But this I certainly do know: that we generally think ahead about our future actions, and this premeditation is in time present; but that the action which we premeditate is not yet, because it is still future. When we shall have started the action and have begun to do what we were premeditating, then that action will be in time present, because then it is no longer in time future.

Let me take an example from the vast multitude and variety of such things. I see the dawn; I predict that the sun is about to rise. What I see is in time present, what I predict is in time future—not that the sun is future, for it already exists; but its rising is future, because it is not yet. Yet I could not predict even its rising, unless I had an image of it in my mind; as, indeed, I do even now as I speak. But that dawn which I see in the sky is not the rising of the sun (though it does precede it), nor is it a conception in my mind. These two are seen in time present, in order that the event which is in time future may be predicted. Future events, therefore, are not yet. And if they are not yet, they do not exist. And if they do not exist, they cannot be seen at all, but they can be predicted from things present, which now are and are seen.

[11.20.26] But even now it is manifest and clear that there are neither times future nor times past. Thus it is not properly said that there are three times, past, present, and future. Perhaps it might be said rightly that there are three times: a time present of things past; a time present of things present; and a time present of things future. For these three do coexist somehow in the soul, for otherwise I could not see them. The time present of things past is memory; the time present of things present is direct experience; the time present of things future is expectation. If we are allowed to speak of these things so, I see three times, and I grant that there are three. Let it still be said, then, as our misapplied custom has it: “There are three times, past, present, and future.” I shall not be troubled by it, nor argue, nor object—always provided that what is said is understood, so that neither the future nor the past is said to exist now. There are but few things about which we speak properly—and many more about which we speak improperly—though we understand one another’s meaning.

[11.21.27] I have said, then, that we measure periods of time as they pass so that we can say that this time is twice as long as that one or that this is just as long as that, and so on for the other fractions of time which we can count by measuring. So, then, as I was saying, we measure periods of time as they pass. And if anyone asks me, “How do you know this?”, I can answer: “I know because we measure. We could not measure things that do not exist, and things past and future do not exist.” But how do we measure present time since it has no extension? It is measured while it passes, but when it has passed it is not measured; for then there is nothing that could be measured. But whence, and how, and whither does it pass while it is being measured? Whence, but from the future? Which way, save through the present? Whither, but into the past? Therefore, from what is not yet, through what has no length, it passes into what is now no longer. But what do we measure, unless it is a time of some length? For we cannot speak of single, and double, and triple, and equal, and all the other ways in which we speak of time, except in terms of the length of the periods of time. But in what “length,” then, do we measure passing time? Is it in the future, from which it passes over? But what does not yet exist cannot be measured. Or, is it in the present, through which it passes? But what has no length we cannot measure. Or is it in the past into which it passes? But what is no longer we cannot measure.

[11.22.28] My soul burns ardently to understand this most intricate enigma. Lord my god, good father, I beseech you through Christ, do not close off these things, both the familiar and the obscure, from my desire. Do not bar it from entering into them, but let their light dawn by your enlightening mercy, lord. Of whom shall I inquire about these things? And to whom shall I confess my ignorance of them with greater profit than to you, to whom these studies of mine (ardently longing to understand your scriptures) are not a bore? Give me what I love, for I do love it; and this you have given me. Father, who truly know how to give good gifts to your children, give this to me. Grant it, since I have undertaken to understand it, and hard labor is my lot until you open it. I beseech you, through Christ and in his name, the holy of holies, let no man interrupt me. “For I have believed, and therefore do I speak.”^if This is my hope; for this I live: in order that I may contemplate the joys of my lord. See, you have made my days grow old, and they pass away—and how I do not know.

[11.23.29] I once heard a learned man say that the motions of the sun, moon, and stars constituted time; and I did not agree. For why should not the motions of all bodies constitute time? What if the lights of heaven should cease, and a potter’s wheel still turn round: would there be no time by which we might measure those rotations and say either that it turned at equal intervals, or, if it moved now more slowly and now more quickly, that some rotations were longer and others shorter? And while we were saying this, would we not also be speaking in time? Or would there not be in our words some syllables that were long and others short, because the first took a longer time to sound, and the others a shorter time? God, grant men to see in a small thing the notions that are common to all things, both great and small. Both the stars and the lights of heaven are “for signs and seasons, and for days and years.”^ig This is doubtless the case, but just as I should not say that the circuit of that wooden wheel was a day, neither would that learned man say that there was, therefore, no time.

[11.23.30] I thirst to know the power and the nature of time, by which we measure the motions of bodies, and say, for example, that this motion is twice as long as that. For I ask, since the word “day” refers not only to the length of time that the sun is above the earth (which separates day from night), but also refers to the sun’s entire circuit from east all the way around to east—on account of which we can say, “So many days have passed” (the nights being included when we say, “So many days,” and their lengths not counted separately)—since, then, the day is ended by the motion of the sun and by his passage from east to east, I ask whether the motion itself is the day, or whether the day is the period in which that motion is completed, or both? For if the sun’s passage is the day, then there would be a day even if the sun should finish its course in as short a period as an hour. If the motion itself is the day, then it would not be a day if from one sunrise to another there were a period no longer than an hour. But the sun would have to go round twenty-four times to make just one day. If it is both, then that could not be called a day if the sun ran its entire course in the period of an hour; nor would it be a day if, while the sun stood still, as much time passed as the sun usually covered during its whole course, from morning to morning. I shall, therefore, not ask any more what it is that is called a day, but rather what time is, for it is by time that we measure the circuit of the sun, and would be able to say that it was finished in half the period of time that it customarily takes if it were completed in a period of only twelve hours. If, then, we compare these periods, we could call one of them a single and the other a double period, as if the sun might run its course from east to east sometimes in a single period and sometimes in a double period.

[11.24.31] Do you command that I should agree if anyone says that time is the motion of a body? You do not so command. For I hear that no body is moved but in time; this you tell me. But that the motion of a body itself is time I do not hear; you do not say so. For when a body is moved, I measure by time how long it was moving from the time when it began to be moved until it stopped. And if I did not see when it began to be moved, and if it continued to move so that I could not see when it stopped, I could not measure the movement, except from the time when I began to see it until I stopped. But if I look at it for a long time, I can affirm only that the time is long but not how long it may be. This is because when we say, “How long?”, we are speaking comparatively as: “This is as long as that,” or, “This is twice as long as that”; or other such similar ratios. But if we were able to observe the point in space where and from which the body, which is moved, comes and the point to which it is moved; or if we can observe its parts moving as in a wheel, we can say how long the movement of the body took or the movement of its parts from this place to that. Since, therefore, the motion of a body is one thing, and the norm by which we measure how long it takes is another thing, we cannot see which of these two is to be called time. For, although a body is sometimes moved and sometimes stands still, we measure not only its motion but also its rest as well—and both by time! Thus we say, “It stood still as long as it moved,” or, “It stood still twice or three times as long as it moved,” or any other ratio which our measuring has either determined or imagined, either roughly or precisely, according to our custom. Therefore, time is not the motion of a body.

BOOK 8

BOOK 9

BOOK 10

BOOK II