Augustine on time and eternity

In the Eleventh book of his Confessions Augustine tries to place his personal history within a larger and general framework, which at the same time concerns the fate of everyone. This chapter is concerned with Creation. It is about the first line of the Holy Scripture: What does mean: In the beginning God created heaven and earth ? And with this first Bible verse he has in fact already connected time and eternity.

When Augustine begins his Eleventh book, he addresses God with the words Lord, yours is eternity. He Himself, aware that He stands within time, recognizes that his Creator is eternal . This means that God as perfect Being is not bound to the category of time. In the future he will always talk about time before the Eternal. He does not have to tell his story to the Eternal, as if He did not know this. But nevertheless he tells his story to his readers to praise God's greatness.

What does mean creation for Augustine?

Nowadays we approach the question of how the world came into being from a scientific perspective. From this point of view, the Biblical creation story is quickly questioned. Augustine however approaches this issue from a completely different angle. His belief that God is the creator of heaven and earth stems from inner philosophical considerations. When he looks at heaven and earth he sees that everything is characterized by change. Behold: the heavens and the earth cry aloud that they have been made, for they are subject to variety and change. He notes: All things cry out that they have been made. They say: “ Our mode of existence shows that we are made, because before we existed we were not there and therefore unable to make ourselves. ” And the voice with which they shout this is their evidence (Confessions XI, 6).

This view is based on a Platonic worldview, in which everything in this world has its own existence, but is at the same time a sign of a spiritual reality. All things in heaven and earth exist in themselves. They are good and beautiful, but at the same time they point to an absolute Goodness and Beauty, that is to say to the one from whom they derive their existence.

In the Tenth Book of his Confessions, which precedes this book, Augustine wonders why not everyone sees a relationship in things to their maker. I quote that passage:

Isn't the beauty of the universe visible to anyone with good senses? Why doesn't she speak the same language to everyone? The animals, from small to large, see her, but cannot ask questions about it. They have no reason to judge what their senses report. But man can ask questions. Their minds can see God's invisible essence in the things that are created (Rom.1:20). But because of their desire for the visible, they become dependent on it and are therefore no longer able to judge it. Created things only answer those who question and judge them. Of course, they always speak the same language: that of their beauty. When one person only sees that beauty and the other also asks questions while seeing it, they appear not different to one person than to another. But though they have the same appearance, their beauty is mute to the one and speaks to the other. Or rather, she speaks to all, but only they understand her, who test her voice that comes from without by the truth that is within them. And that truth tells me: Your God is not the heavens, nor the earth, nor any other bodily being. Their nature makes that clear. To anyone who sees, all that is matter is less in its parts than in its whole. (Confessions X. 10)

Augustine refers here to a property of everything that is matter, namely their extension. All material things occupy space and therefore they are divided into different parts. And while they are one in some respect, they are not totally one, because they are spatially divided. To that extent you cannot attribute the quality of being to things . They are not wholly insofar as they are many and not wholly one.

Above, Augustine already established that material things constantly change and vary. This also shows that they are not complete but are in a process of coming into being . They are in a constant flow of developing and disappearing. And with that we touch on the phenomenon of time. The material world is shows temporality and therefore also transience. All this shows that heaven and earth did not make themselves, but that there must be some spiritual principle that created them and continues to maintain them.

Creation through the Word

In the Eleventh Book, Augustine tries to discover a spiritual meaning of the words In the beginning God created heaven and earth. It becomes problematic when you take that in the beginning literally and understand the act of creation materially, as taking place in time and space. God is eternal and therefore does not work at certain points in time. He is outside of time, because he also created time itself as part of the material world. For that reason, creation did not take place at a specific point in time.

But how should we understand In the beginning? Augustine points out that heaven and earth were not created from any matter, but were created from nothing by God's Word. It is clear that we should not represent that Word physically either. It is the expression of God's spiritual creative Power that exist with Him outside of time for all time. When you speak of In the Beginning, this Word is without beginning, because it has always been there. And as a creative principle it is at the same time the Beginning of the entire universe.

We must understand In the beginning more as it is expressed in the Prologue of the Gospel of John: When all things began there was already the Word. The Word dwelt with God and what God was was also the Word. So the Word was with God in the beginning, and through Him all things came into being. And without Him, none of what came into existence came into being. And of everything that came into life He was the light. (John 1:1).

When we speak of the incarnation of God's Word, it becomes clear that God has incarnated Himself in His creation through His Word from the beginning. In this context, creation appears not to be a one-time divine act, but a continuous process that does not end. The divine Word therefore not only brought everything into existence, but also continuously maintains everything.

Augustine uses for the divine Word the Latin term Verbum, a term which is the equivalent for Logos in the original Greek. So in the beginning there was the divine Logos . In Greek this means not only word , but also reason . This term therefore contains more than our concept of spoken or written word. Augustine speaks in this eleventh book also of the divine Reason (Ratio ) ( Confessions XI,8)

The Logos is therefore the divine creative power that is active in all that exists. It is therefore not so much, as in the current concept of reason or ratio, a cold measuring instrument, but a dynamic force that carries everything created to its completion. This ultimately means that everything is returned to its divine origin. Augustine puts it this way:

We come back to where we came from. Yes, the Word is the Beginning, for if He were not abiding when we wander, we would have nothing to return to. He teaches us, for He is the Beginning and speaks to us. (Confessions XI,10)

The Logos spermatikos

If the Logos is a living force operating in all creation, then He is pre-eminently present in the consciousness of every human being. In the spiritual tradition this is called the Logos spermatikos, the divine presence planted like a seed deep in human consciousness . Although to my knowledge Augustine does not use the image of the seed, it does express well what was particularly important to him. God is interior intimo meo , more inner than my deepest inner self. It is a hidden presence that people must become aware of and develop further in life. 

As this consciousness grows it becomes clear that this life has an eternal, timeless dimension. But then, as Augustine mentioned earlier, we must leave the world of the senses and turn inward. However, we are so used to thinking in space and time that even the word eternal literally suggests endless time and that is something that frightens. It is better to approach eternity from a negative perspective and realize that it is about what is timeless .

What is time?

Now that Augustine has established that God also in creating the world also created time, he seeks to define what time is. We know the famous statement from him: When no one asks me, I know, when I have to explain it to someone who asks me, I don't know . ( Confessions XI,17). On the one hand, we are so familiar with time, that we think we know it, but in the sequel, Augustine, rhetor as he is, manages to raise so many questions that it makes your head spin. Because just when you think you have a handle on time, it turns out to slip through your hands again.

Starting from the familiar division of time into three parts: past tense, present tense and future tense, Augustine asks himself, in short, the following questions: How can we speak of the past tense as a reality, while it has passed away and no more exists? And how can we speak of the future tense as if it were a reality, when it does not yet exist? And what about the present tense? Is that a reality to which we can cling, even though the moment it exists has already passed and is no more? He puts it as follows:

“If the present tense were always present and did not pass into the past, there would no longer be time, but eternity. But if it is the case that the present becomes time, wich passes into the past, how can we say that it realy ís ? For it derives its existence from the fact that it ceases to be . Can we then really say that time is when it only strives not to be ?“(Confessions XI,17)

These questions about the nature of time are clearly intended to gradually convince the reader that time does not exist as a physical reality, but must be approached from a different angle. It will not be surprising that Augustine sees time as a reality of the mind.

It has now become clear that future and past things do not really exist. So one cannot actually say that there are three tenses, the past, the present and the future. It is better to say that there are three tenses, by which we mean: the presence of things past, the presence of things present, and the presence of things to come. Those three aspects of time are in the soul and I do not see them elsewhere. The presence of things past is memory, the presence of things present is immediate sensation, and the presence of things to come is expectation. (Confessions XI,26)

There are three processes present in the mind: the expectation of what will come, the attention to what is present and the memory of what is passed away. These three coincide in one movement, which passes like a stream from the future via the present to the past. Augustine illustrates this by singing a song. In the beginning, the anticipation is focused on the entire song that has to be sung. But once begun, each of the parts to be sung passes into the past and then becomes part of the memory, so that at the end of the song there is no expectation left and everything has become past. Based on this image of the continuous flow in time from what is not yet to what is no longer, Augustine concludes:

What is true of the entire song is also true of each individual part of the song and each of its syllables. It also applies to a longer action of which this song may be only a part. It also applies to the entire life of man, of which every action is a part. This also applies to the entire human race, of which all people are a part. (Confessions XI,38)

So time is a reality of the human mind. It is man who has expectations and memories. But this also means he is constantly divided about what is yet to come and what has already passed. This condition led Augustine to the conviction that time is a distentio animi , which means that the human mind is, as it were, stretched out and divided between future and past and therefore subject to the temporality of existence. (Confessions XI,33)

The distentio animi

I return briefly to Augustine's statement above about the division of everything that is matter: For everyone who sees, everything that is matter is less in its parts than in its whole. (Confessions​. X.10) ​Therefore he argued that they lack unity . Their essence consists in extension and therefore they are divided into multiplicity .

If you follow Augustine's view, you could also attribute the same kind of imperfection to time, since it was created with the material world. Also time as a part of this world lies apart. And that means that the human mind, which essentially strives for unity, is divided and, as it were, torn apart in time.

This view of distentio animi is strongly inspired by the philosophy of Plotinus, who calls existence a diastasis, a  lying apart. His view is that man comes from the One , but in this life is spread over many and will have to try to return to his origin, the One . Augustine adopts this image, but interprets it according to his Christian philosophy. It is the philosophy of the divine Logos who operates throughout the cosmos and who has descended in time to return men to the One . And thus He has sanctified the temporal by making it a passage to eternity.

This philosophy appears not to be a casual reflection on the nature of creation. It is about the existence of man within this whole. What is his fate, what his destiny? Augustine leaves no doubt that this temporary life is not his final destination, but a passage to the real Being, which he was able to experience in his life. His philosophy is not a theory, but is based on something he has personally experienced, the taste of the eternal, of complete being, which only can fully fulfill his desire.  After these experiences there is always a setback in time. In that respect, you could say that Augustine suffered from time, knowing that there was more to come. From this tension between time and eternity testifies the penultimate chapter of the Eleventh Book:

Your mercy is better than all lives. See how my life is stretched out on many sides. But Your right hand has received me to my Lord, the Son of Man, the mediator between You, the One, and us who are many, who live in a multitude of dispersions. Therefore I grasp Him by Whom I am also seized. Thus I leave my old days behind and am gathered to follow the One. And I forget the past and leave behind me the things to come that are passing away and I reach forward to what is before me, not divided, but with full concentration. So I pursue the palm branch of Him who calls above, where I will hear your song of praise and behold your glory, which has no coming or passing away.

But now my years pass away in sighs. You are my comfort, my Lord and Father, You are eternal, but I am scattered in the times whose order I do not know. The storm of incoherent events tears apart my thoughts and the deepest bowels of my soul, until, melted and purified in the fire of your love, I merge into You. (Confessions XI,39)

Good times or bad times?

From the foregoing you could perhaps deduce that Augustine regards this temporary existence as something bad that should be left behind as soon as possible. In light of the timeless life he expects, this existence appears to be far from perfect indeed. It is full of suffering and trial and ultimately transient and impermanent. However, that does not mean it has no value. He sees this life as a passage, a journey to the homeland. The road matters. In the flow of time, the traveler can become aware of what is important and what can hinder him from completing the journey. Time is a creation of God. Here too, creation is good and beautiful. But the good and beautiful that this existence offers points to a timeless goodness and beauty. I quote from the Seventh Book of the Confessions

So I saw and it became clear to me that You have made all things good and that there is absolutely nothing that You have not made. And since You have not made all things equal, all things are good in their indiduality, and all things together are very good, for our God has made all things very good. (Confessions VII,18)

and further:

I no longer just longed for things that are better, because I looked at the whole. Of course I saw that the things of higher value are better than those of lower value. But a sounder judgment led me to believe that the whole of creation is better than the higher alone. (Confessions VII, 19)

It is therefore important to embrace this entire divine system of creation and agree that it is very good. That is what Augustine wants to tell us about time and eternity.

 

Confessions X 1-40 Text + commentary

 

Aurelius Augustinus

Confessions Book X chapter 1-40

Traduction and commentary

 

Chapter 1

Lord, you know me fully. May I know you, like you know me. May I know you as I am known¹.

You are the power of my soul. Enter in it and make her to your own home, without spot or wrinkle ².

That is my hope and therefore do I speak. And that hope is my real joy.

As to the other pleasures in this life, we regret the most what we not should regret, and the least what we really should regret.

See, you love the truth and he who does the truth comes to the light³. This I like to do by my confession to you in my heart and in my book before many witnesses.

¹ Cor. 13:12; ²Ef. 3 5: 27; ³Joh 3: 21

Commentary

In this book, written in the form of a prayer, Augustine directs himself to God, whom he calls his Lord. God is here not an abstract presence. Augustine addresses him as a person, as a You. This image of God has something paradoxical. God is both the Lord, the transcendent, who thrones far above man, and at the same time he is a very intimate presence. He is called the power, the inspiration of the soul. According to the famous statement in Conf, III, vi (11), is he: interior intimo meo et superior summo meo, more intimate to our inner self than we are ourselves, while at the same he thrones far above the human consciousness. He is the one who is both immanent in man and transcendent to him.

 Who is the God of Augustine?

The question that raises rather soon is: Who is this God to whom Augustine addresses himself? It is, given the context and the many citations from the Bible, probable to see in him the God of the Bible and the God of the Christians.  But with this we shift the question. For the question remains how saw Augustine this biblical and Christian God?

Pascal once created the distinction between the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the God of philosophers and scholars, as if it were two separate entities. Is he merely the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or the God of the philosophers too?  Is he the God of Christians or also the God of non-Christians? Is he the exclusive God of a defined religion and creed or the universal God, to whom everyone has access and can address himself?

The following text has to show in what extent there is a reason for this distinction. Let us first assume that God is the universal God, the God of humanity, that is of Christians and non-Christians unless it turns out otherwise

May I know you…

Augustine desires to know God fully, like God knows him. It is good to know the context of the Epistle to the Corinthians, that is cited in the beginning of this book. It is a hymn to love. Although our actual knowledge is poor, we strive for a mature and fully knowledge. Now we see as in a hazy mirror and in riddles, but then we see from face to face. Now I know only partly but then I shall fully know as I am known myself. 

Knowing someone has here his broader meaning. It implies also loving someone. It aims at a full union with the person you desire to know.

The desire to know God fully is asking for a state of complete and absolute unity. It is not clear whether this is achievable in this life. Still, Augustine is asking for this, because the desire is the hope and the hope gives  already the joy of completion.

In fact, the quotation above implies two states. The imperfect state of the soul at present as in a hazy mirror and the perfect state that is desired. The latter condition is nothing else but the mystical union of God and the soul to see face to face. This quotation from the Epistle to the Ephesians gives it a particular dimension. This talks about the love between man and woman, which is an image of the mystical love between Christ and his church. The latter frees the soul from an too individual desire. It refers to the union of Christ with his church, that suggests the union of the divine Logos with all humanity.

What Augustine desires is not a little thing. It is finding satisfaction in this life with nothing less than the absolute. That means, to be completely fulfilled by the light and truth of the divine Being.

You are the power of my soul ..

When you assume that God is the power of the soul , then the desire to know God is directly related to the wish to know yourself and vice versa.

The task to know yourself is also the goal of classical philosophy and of every pursuit of wisdom. Hence the classic adage Know Thyself. For Augustine is this task, as he formulates in his Soliloquia  two-fold: to know God and to know the soul. But this goal is only apparently twofold, because it is in fact one single reality: to know God in the soul. Whoever wants to know himself should know God. And who wants to know God must enter into himself, to relate to the divine dimension of the soul.

To do the truth..

This biblical view that knowing the truth must be taken in this broader sense of doing the truth, is also evident in another way. Augustine was an early convert to philosophy, in which the quest for the truth is a search for wisdom. Philosophy in this sense is especially a practical matter. It is about living truthfully and find true happiness.

This kind of practical philosophy requires choices. For Augustine it demands a total turnabout. What we worry about it is mostly futile, once we have come to realize that the only important thing in this life is to know God, that is: to love him as the Being itself and to try to admit this divine power within ourselves.

If God is truth, then every other truth found in this life is only partly true and only insofar as it related to this ultimate truth.

Chapter 2

Before your eyes, Lord, the abyss of human consciousness is open.⁴ How could I hide something in my confession before you. I would hide me for myself, but myself not for you.

And now my groaning is witness that I find no peace in myself, you are my radiant light, my peace, my love and my desire. I'm ashamed of myself, and reject myself, and choose you. And I can find only peace with myself and with you in you.

To you, Lord, all what I am is manifest. I have already mentioned what the benefit is of my confession. I do this not with the words of my voice, but with the words of my soul and the crying of my mind, which is well known to your ears.

When I am evil, I confess to you that I am displeased with myself. When I am good, I confess that I do not ascribe it to myself. For you, Lord, give your blessing to the righteous⁵, but only after that you made him from an unjust to a just man.⁶

Therefore I do my confession to you both in silence and not in silence: my voice is silent, but my heart cries.

And I say here nothing right, or you have it already heard of me. And you will hear from me nothing right, or you have it already told to me.

⁴Heb.4: 13; ⁵ Ps.5:13; ⁶ Rom.4:5

 Commentary

Before your eyes, Lord, the abyss of human consciousness lies open ...

The first lines of this chapter, reveal already the tension that exists between God and the soul. God knows the soul, but the soul does not know God or only partially. To God nothing needs to be confessed, but the soul needs to confess something to herself. She cannot hide herself to God, but only hide herself to herself.

Augustine's confession is therefore also directed to himself. Late I have loved you, beauty so old and so new, late I have loved you. And see, you were in me, and I was in the world outside and sought you there. (X, 38) That aspect too is present in this book of the Confessions. Besides a conversation with God in himself is it also a conversation with himself, with a deeper unconscious part (literally the abyss of consciousness). And at the same time it is a conversation with his readers.

In order to know God Augustine wants to know the soul entirely. He speaks of the depth, the abyss of human consciousness. This must be understood in the broadest sense. In Latin conscientia indicates both consciousness and conscience. His purpose is therefore to know the depths of the soul which the superficial mind prefers to hide to itself, but which has to be revealed in the light of the truth.

And now my groaning is witness ...

What emerges from the depth is the groaning and sighing of the soul. It is a deep felt missing, the desire in all its aspects. It is literally the physical dissatisfaction with himself, since the soul is herself not enough and cannot find in herself the ultimate truth and happiness.

But this groaning also reveals an ineradicable longing for an ultimate fulfillment. The sighing of discontent can turn into sighing of love and longing, as the soul chooses to live with God. Here is briefly expressed the conversion that took place in the life of Augustine. The diversion of himself as objective and the turn to God as the source of life and happiness.

In this view there is in a way a conflict between the soul and God. As long as God is not accepted as the power of the soul, she has a miserable existence. She lives in darkness and dissatisfaction, which is perceived as a disease. That is one side of what Augustine expresses in his confession.

But there is also question of a certain unity between God and the soul. As far as she tries to live out of God, she is overwhelmed by light and peace. The joy of this experience is the other side of Augustine's confession.

Yet, God and the soul are not identical nor is God the possession of the soul. The relationship to God is characterized by desire, by a longing that is not completely fulfilled. Augustine's confession is a cry of the mind and a cry of the heart in the knowledge that God is at the origin of this cry and therefore hears understands it.

For you, Lord, give your blessing to the righteous ...

From the observation in Chapter 1 that God is the power of the soul follows that whoever lives by this power lives rightly and whoever ignores this power does not fully participate in the truth and is therefore not living rightly. This principle of one living rightly must be the original meaning of what the Bible calls the righteous.

On the other hand, no one can claim the truth and therefore also to be righteous, but one can only aspire to be it. Augustine claims for himself in this respect no merit. It is God who takes the initiative and leads the godless (which is not always synonymous with the wicked) to the right existence.

And you will hear from me nothing right...

As for himself, Augustine is convinced that he by himself does not have access to the truth and in this respect cannot preach anything to others. It is God in him, which is, like in every man, his magister interior, his inner teacher, who teaches him what is right.

Chapter 3

What have I to do with man? What is the benefit that they hear my confession, as if they could heal all my sicknesses? It is a race, eager to know the lives of others, but reluctant to improve their own.

Why do they want to hear from me who I am, when they refuse to hear from you who they are? And when they hear me talking about myself, how can they know that I am talking the truth? Because nobody knows what's going on in man except the spirit of man which is in him^.1

But if they hear from you about themselves, they cannot say: ‘The Lord is lying’. To hear you speaking about oneself is nothing else than to know oneself. Therefore anyone who knows himself and says: ‘That is not true’, is a liar to himself.

But because love believes all things², at least among those who are bonded and unified by love, I want to make my confession to you in such a way, Lord, that these people may hear it. I cannot prove that my confession is true, but they will believe me, if love opens their ears to me.

¹ 1 Cor. ²:11; ² 1 Cor. 13:7

Commentary

As already mentioned the Tenth Book is written in the form of a personal prayer. Augustine directs himself from the beginning to God, whom he calls his Lord. God is no abstract presence. Augustine addressed to him as a person, a you.

Although this book is written in the form of a personal prayer, this prayer is not private because it is explicitly expressed in the presence of many witnesses. In this respect it is a public testimony or confession for all men who read this book about the truth he found. Who undertakes such a work assumes that this truth is not only an individual but a universal one that concerns everyone and can be known by everyone.
Therefore there is in this book question of a triangular relation. Besides Augustine who directs himself in his writing directly to God, the readers who read his confession are involved in this relationship too. They also have the Word, the Logos, as their inner teacher. And from this position they are witnesses of this search for God. It supposes that the reader will take part in this search.
In what follows Augustine points out in detail what he expects from his readers. The following chapters must bring them in the disposition that they understand the scope of his words and are willing to listen.

What have I to do with men? ...

Augustine uses as an orator all his rhetorical means to make that his audience, or in this case his readers, may properly understand the content of his confession. Hence that he departs from the negative. What is the point of writing this book and revealing himself to others? He cannot expect any help from the side of his readers to resolve his discontent.

When they refuse to hear from you who they are ...

Moreover, he begins to consider as unsuitable that kind of readers, which only wants to read his confessions out of external interest and curiosity. That kind of readers do not question their own life and will therefore never penetrate to the truth, nor in that of Augustine, nor in that of themselves.

But he hopes to reach a different kind of readers, who are more internally involved. in him and God. Readers who want to know themselves and therefore are prepared to listen to God who is speaking in them as the truth.

This chapter too is based on the vision that at the end of chapter 2 was expressed, that the truth about man comes not from Augustine, but from God. It is the divine Logos who as an inner teacher instructs man about his life. This implies that every man can only come to the truth about himself by listening to that inner voice, like Augustine tries to do. Therefore he does not impute himself a superior role, but he places himself next to the reader in the same relationship to God who is the truth. Both are united by the desire to know the truth about themselves and God.

How can they know that I am talking the truth ?....

Here the question is posed to what extent Augustine’s words are verifiable. The content of his book would be meaningless if the reader cannot verify it in any way.

His words have no reference to an objective norm outside. Therefore you have to admit that all is subjective, as far as it expresses an inner truth. Hence the quotation from 1 Cor. 2:11 : No one knows what's going on in man except the spirit of man which is in him.

Yet you can verify what is said, as far as in every man lives an universal conception of what is true. You may call it an inter subjective norm by which in principle everyone recognizes and understands the truth in others. This is in Augustine’s vision because everyman participates in the universal presence of the Word, the Logos.

Condition for this understanding is that the reader is willing to open himself to read this confession from the inside, which is not the same as reading uncritically. On the contrary, whoever reads this confession tests its relentlessly by the Logos, the sense of truth that is in him. Important here is the moment of recognition of what already is known internally. This applies indeed to all literature.

Chapter 4

You are the physician of my inner self. Make me see clearly with what benefit I do this confession. You have forgiven and covered up my past mistakes, and so you let me find happiness in you by transforming my soul by faith and your sacrament. It will stir up the hearts of others who hear or read these confession, so that they don’t sleep in despair, saying: ‘I cannot do this’. And the love of your mercy and the sweetness of your grace. will encourage them. For your grace gives force to any weak person who is conscious of his weakness.

It is a dellight for good people to hear the past evils of those who are now free of them. They are not delighted in these evils, but that they were in the past and do not exist any more.

My Lord, I open my conscience to you every day, relying more on your mercy than on my own innocence. What benefit is it, I ask you, what benefit, that I confess in this book before your eyes and all the people not who I was but who I now am?

I have seen and mentioned the benefit of my confession of the past. But many people too want to know who I am now, at this moment when I am writing my confessions. Some people know me, others do not. Sometimes they have heard something from me or about me. But their ear is not at my heart, where I am who I am

So they want to learn from my confessions who I am in my inner self, where they cannot penetrate with their eyes or ears or mind They want to do that by believing me, because how else could they know me? The love that makes them good people, tells them that I am not lying in my confessions. And that it is love in them that believes me.

Commentary

You are the physician of my inner self ...

Besides the inner teacher God is also the inner physician. By his power Augustine experienced that He made right what was unrighteous. He covers the mistakes from the past and transforms people from inside. Most of the past errors can be attributed to a wrong orientation. All the former mistakes are annihilated by the turn in the right direction.

 Make me see clearly with what benefit I do this confession ..

This chapter continues with the benefits and the significance of Augustine's confessions to his readers. The opening phrase is somewhat rhetorically as if he should convince himself of the benefit of his confession. But although he puts himself on an equal line with his readers, he still finds his spiritual development worthwhile to be considered by others.

From a life of restless search for truth, Augustine finally found happiness in God, who is the Truth. He does not want to present this development as something unique, but stresses that this development is meant for everyone

For your grace gives force to every weak person…

That Augustine does not attribute his spiritual development to his own merits, but to God's work in him, is more or less the main theme of his confession. More than the emphasis on his own weaknesses and faults, his confession is a praise to God, who is the power of the soul and the fulfillment of her deepest desire.

The constant antithesis Augustine creates between human weakness and divine grace requires some explanation. Because it cannot be that God's greatness can only be proclaimed by portraying man as poor as possible. This opposition is in a sense rhetorical, because it is still based on the assumption that the soul finds herself opposite to God. But from Augustine’s point of view, that God is the inner power of man, this contrast is no longer valid. That is the positive side too of what Augustine calls his confession.

The antithesis between personal merit and divine grace has also a polemical side. It reacts to an opinion, which was popular too in the philosophy of that time, according to which man would possess all the means to achieve his happiness and thus was self-supporting at the point of his own salvation.

This polemic aims in fact at an attitude of human hubris which is not open to what man exceeds. But when you accept that God is the inner strength of the soul, everyone has all the means in himself to achieve his salvation, by which the above antithesis is eliminated.

Augustine's position is one of modesty, by which he creates a connection with his readers. After all everyone is weak by nature and dependent on God's grace. And when Augustine in his confession would somehow rely on his own merit and effort, it could form a barrier for the reader and discourage him to follow that same path.

In this matter recognizing your own weakness appears to be an advantage, because it opens the soul to God's power. As far as soul misses or does not recognize God's power, she is sick and God is the doctor who has to cure her. As far as the soul experiences God's power, she experiences it as grace.

By transforming my soul through faith and your sacrament …

The operation of this grace is seen here as a transformation of the soul by faith and God's sacrament. Here we meet two terms which need some explanation. It is not absolutely obvious that the current conceptions of faith, sacraments and church are identical with these terms of Augustine's days. To believe means for him at least not to accept and affirm blindly a creed. There is no question that the mind has to be switched off when believing begins. In Augustine’s view you must believe to understand, but equally understand to believe. Hence his adage: Believe to understand (Crede ut intelligas), and understand to believe (intellige ut credas).

On the other hand, believing involves more than adhering to certain intellectual insights. The inner sense that God is the strength and the fulfillment of the soul, influences the whole person and demands to submit to that power. It is this religious devotion, which is experienced as happiness.

The divine sacrament is the baptism Augustine received. It is the symbol of a new birth of the soul and a seal of this change that had taken place in his inner self.

But many people too want to know who I am now, at this moment when I write my confessions…

In Book X Augustine's confession has a turn. He tells no longer about his past, but about who he is, the moment he writes his Confessions. He now leaves the historic events to give the reader more insight into his mind and in what are his inner motives at that time.

This book is compared with the previous books more philosophical and focused more inwardly It is the way of introspection, a quest for God's presence in his consciousness. The fact that he wants to involve readers in this quest, means that he is not only preoccupied with his individual consciousness, but with human consciousness in general.

It is clear that Augustine’s Confessions are not a simple autobiography. He may be in a sense at the beginning of the confession literature, his objective is not to give very personal story of his mental condition. His confession has a to his person transcendent purpose. First by praising God for his work in him, but then to incite the people (his brothers) to understand and love God. So he summarizes himself the purpose of the Confessions in his Reviews (Retractationes) at the end of his life.

Chapter 5

But what good do they expect of this?  Will they share my joy when they hear how close I have come to you by your grace? Will they pray for me, when they hear how I am held back by my own weight?

To such people I want to reveal myself. For it is a great good, O Lord my God, that many give thanks to you because of us and many pray you for us.  Let a brotherly mind love in me what you teach us to love and regret in me what you teach us to regret.
Let it be the heart of a brother, not of an outsider, not one of those aliens, whose mouth speaks idle speech while their right hand does evil¹. 

Let it be the heart of a brother, who rejoices, if he approves something in me and grieves, if he disapproves something in me. And, whether he approves or disapproves , he is loving me.

To such people I want to reveal myself. They will be relieved by what is good and sigh by what is bad. The good is your work and your grace, the bad is my fault and your judgments. They will be relieved by the first and grieved by the last. And from their brotherly hearts this will rise up as incense for you.

But you, O Lord, who takes delight in this smell of your holy temple, have mercy on me in your great mercy.² You who not ever abandons what you have started, perfect what is imperfect in me.

¹Ps. 143:7; ² Ps. 50:3.

 Commentary

It must be a brother, not an outsider ..

From the previous chapter it became clear that Augustine writes initially for an audience that knows him closely or from hearsay. But basically, he sets no limit to his readers on condition that they read his confessions with the right attitude. He seeks a fraternal, sympathetic bond. Readers should not be strangers and outsiders, but sympathize with him in his quest for God's presence.

It is therefore not obvious that Augustine only writes for insiders  in the sense that they belong to the church or confess themselves as Christians. It is more likely that he aims at all the people who have a certain openness for what him moves, recognize something of it in themselves and try to follow it.

Chapter 6

So, when I go on to confess, no longer about what I was, but what I am now, the benefit is this: that I pronounce it not only in my heart before you with quiet joy full of trembling and silent grief full of hope, but also before the ears of all believers, who share my joy and my mortality. They are my fellow citizens and fellow travelers on this pilgrimage, whether they go before me or after me or accompany me on my way. They are your servants, my brothers, who you have chosen to your children. They are my masters, who you commanded me to serve, as I want to live with you and out of you.

This Word of you would have little meaning for me, as it was only spoken in words and was not shown before in deeds. That's why I want to do your service with words and deeds, but under the protection of your wings. For the peril would be too great if my soul is not submitted to you under your wings. You know my weakness.

I am a little child, but my father ever lives and he is the protector I need. For he who gave birth to me and he who protects me are one and the same. You are all the good I have. You are the almighty, who are with me even before I am with you.

To those people who you command me to serve I will reveal not who I was, but who I am and still am. But I speak no judgment about myself.¹

May they listen to me in this spirit.

¹1 Cor. 4:3

Commentary

That's why I want to do your service with words and deeds

The relation of Augustine to his readers is further elaboreted. It's not a brotherly relationship, but he considers the writing of his book as a service. In that respect all his readers are his equals. He tries to give direction to all fellow humans, who are like him pilgrims on their way to God

Augustine reers here to the lif of Christ as a service to men. He mentions him as the divine Word, the Logos, who is according to the Gospel of John is from the beginning with God and is God, by whom everything is made. It is this Word that works in creation and is the ligt of men.

Within the framework of his creative Word, that enlightens men, he places his confessions, as a service in words. These words, however, can only work if God is at their origin. God is the source of all knowledge. Hence he does not want to judge himself and also ask his readers to leave it to God

 Chapter 7

It is you, Lord, who judge me. Even though nobody can know what's going on in man except the spirit of man that is within him¹, yet there is something in man which is not known even by the spirit of man that is within him. But you, O Lord, know all about him, because you made him.

Although I despise myself in front of you and consider myself as dust and ashes, still there is one thing I know of you which I do not know about myself. It is true, we now see as in a hazy mirror full of mystery, but not yet face to face.² And therefore, as long as I travel far away from you, I am more aware of myself than of you.

Yet I know that you cannot be affected by any force, while I do not know which temptations I can resist or not. And my hope is in the knowledge that you are faithful and do not allow us to be tempted more than we can bear. But with the temptation you give us also the way to withstand.³

I shall therefore confess what I know of myself and what I do not know. For even what I know of myself, I know by your light. And what I do not know of myself, I do not know until the time that my darkness is as noonday⁴ , when I behold you.

¹1Cor.2:11 ; ²1Cor.13:12 ;³ 1Cor.10:13 ; ⁴Isa.58:10

Commentary

It is true, we now see as in a hazy mirror...

After the introductory chapters, Augustine gradually passes to his real subject: to know God. This is primarily to know oneself. He will confess what he knows about himself and what he does not know. Prior to that he has to admit that in the human mind the knowledge of oneself and of god is surrounded by darkness.

This is partly because of the situation in which man finds himself. He has not made himself, and he is not at the position of the maker who oversees everything. His knowledge of him is partially, unclear, as in a hazy mirror. He is more aware of himself than of God .He is alienated from its roots, away from his homeland. That means: he wanders away from God, his origin.

This situation which can be illustrated with biblical texts corresponds with platonic notions. It is the situation of the cave dwellers who, with their backs turned towards the light, can only see the shadows of the true reality. It reminds Plotinus, who argues that the soul has wandered away from its origin, the One, and finds herself in a land of multiplicity and confusion.

Yet I know that you cannot be affected by any force…

Within this state of darkness and ignorance Augustine testifies that he nevertheless has some knowledge and notion of God. The knowledge that God is an reality that cannot be affected by any force. That means that God is a supreme form of being, which by no external cause can be influenced or changed. He does not explain in what way he came to this central conviction.  Was it by philosophical evidence or by mystical experience? Or by both?

The following chapters have to explain that.

Chapter 8

Without a doubt and with a great conviction, I love You, Lord. Your word pierced my heart and from that moment I got in love with you.But also heaven and earth and all that they contain tell me from all sides to love you. And they don’t stop to tell it to all mankind, so there is no excuse for anyone not to love you.1

But more powerful you will have mercy on whom you are merciful and show pity on whom you have pity.² Otherwise heaven and earth would proclaim your praises to deaf ears.

But what do I love when I love you?

Not the beauty of a body,

not the charm of a moment,

not the brilliance of the light so pleasant to my eyes,

not the sweet sounds of songs in various tones,

not the gentle smell of flowers, balms and perfumes,

not manna and honey,

not the embrace of attractive limbs.

All this I do not love when I love my God

And yet there is a light, a sound, a smell,

a food, an embrace, I love,

when I love my God.

But a light, a sound, a smell,

a food, an embrace of my inner man,

where in my soul  shines a light that cannot contain any space,

where sounds a tone that does not fade away in time,

where is a gentle smell that is never blown away,

where I taste a food that never diminishes the appetite,

where I know an embrace that exceeds every satisfaction.

That I love when I love my God.

¹ Rom. 1:20

Commentary

Your word pierced my heart…
In this chapter is clear in what sense Augustine has some knowledge of God. He is struck in his heart by the inviolable divine reality and got in fire with love. The human desire is here struck by the arrow of the divine Eros.

There is a large emphasis on the great conviction that Augustine loves God. God is here not so much the conclusion of a purely logical evidence or the product of a blind faith. God is an existential experience. Because: Your Word pierced my heart and from that moment I fell in love with you.

In explaining the action of the Word you can think of reading the Scripture or the preaching of the Word, but parallel and preceding to it is the inner divine Word, the Logos, who speaks in his inner man and touches him. It is this inner experience of divine reality that led him to the love of God. Parallel to this there is the recognition of the Word, the Logos in all creation, that confirms God's presence and encourages him to love.

In the Seventh Book of the Confessions, (VII, 16) Augustine describes the initial experience that he is suddenly touched by the Word. By reading some books, among others the Neo-Platonists Plotinus and Porphyry, he turns in his inner self and discovers with the eye of his soul, the unchangeable light, higher than his mind. And in love, he recognizes it as the divine truth and eternity:

Eternal truth and true love and beloved eternity, you are my God. To you I sigh day and night. When I first came to know you, you have raised me up to show me that what I saw is Being and that I who saw was not yet Being. And you did blind the weakness of my sight by your intense radiation, and I trembled with love and awe (...) And I said: Is truth then nothing, if it is not diffused in space either finite or infinite? And you answered me from far away: Certainly, I am the One who IS. I heard with my heart and there was absolutely no doubt in me. I would sooner doubt my own existence than the Truth that can be understood by the things that are created.

The parallel with our text is clear. Besides the great certainty of this inner experience it is also clear that this experience of the absolute Being is not a result of a purely intellectual reasoning. God is here not an abstract idea, but is experienced with the heart. Hence that his knowledge of the divine truth incites him to the love of God. The heart knows and desires at the same time. And love of God means to long for him.(To you I sigh day and night). But it is not the empty desire of a restless seeker, but of someone who has found the source of his desire.

That love of God is here indicated as Amor. It is the equivalent of the Greek Eros, which also means desire. This love of God has the character of Eros in the broadest sense. In his Confessions it is clear how strong Augustine's life is dominated by this initial impulse of the heart, the physical desire for sexual intercourse, but at the same time the spiritual desire for truth and happiness. His development is not so much denying this initial impulse of Eros as well redirecting it to a more spiritual purpose and destiny. It would be a mistake as one would think that with the love of God Eros would be eliminated.

But also heaven and earth…

Not only the inner divine Word, but also the consideration of heaven and earth could men bring to discover God's creative Word in all things and to love him. All creation makes clear to the mind the richness and ingenuity of its creator, but not everyone is as sensitive for that. In chapter 10 Augustine will return to this subject.

And yet there is a light, a sound, a smell…

Augustine expresses his love of God in physical and sensory images, while he at the same time denies that it concerns something physical and temporary. He speaks of the inner man (Rom. 7:22, Eph. 3:16-17), who is distinct from the outer man, but in a sense is analogous and parallel with him. The inner man has as the outer man senses, eyes, ears, a mouth, a heart. The whole body is here a metaphor for inner experiences. Opposite to the temporary and limited nature of sensory experience is the permanence and the fullness of spiritual experience. We can speak of mystical love, because Eros is here the central impulse.

Despite the opposition between the five senses of the body and of the soul, between the temporal and eternal experience, it must be admitted that they both are inspired by a similar desire. Although they don’t work in the same area, they draw basically from the same source, Eros, who is of divine origin.

In classical tradition, Eros is the child of Poros (Prosperity) and Penia (Poverty). That involves that human desire is from the beginning characterized by the consciousness of fundamental loss and at the same time of total fulfillment.

In the following chapters there is often question of a negation and of an affirmation that immediately results from it. That is because in Augustine’s view the outer physical world does not stand alone. She is in all respects also reference and image of a spiritual reality. That does not mean that in this view the sensory reality is denied, but is placed in a broader and more meaningful perspective.

The spiritual, the divine side of the world is not directly manifest. The indescribable should always be indicated by images and metaphors. It is obvious to search for these metaphors in the immediate physical and sensory reality. Many of these images could be called archetypal. But the image is affirmation and both negation, and should not be taken literally. Always must be denied that it coincides with what it refers to. Therefore the images as projections of the inner desire have to be broken down and denied and formulated once more.It becomes more and more clear that Augustine is aware that in the spiritual domain it is better to say what something is not than what it is. This kind of denial suggests more and does more appeal to human intuition. It also applies to what he has to say about his God.

Chapter 9

But what is the God I love?I asked the earth. And it said I am not. And everything on this earth gave me the same answer.

I asked the sea and its depths and the creatures that lived in it. And they answered: We are not your God. Seek what is above us.

I asked the winds that blow. And all the skies with all its inhabitants told me: Anaximenes is wrong. We are not God.

I asked the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars. They said: We too are not the God you seek.

And I said to all the beings that surround my senses: Tell me about my God, who you are not. Tell me something about him. And with a loud voice they cried: He made us.

My questioning was my attention to them. And their answer was their beauty

Then I turned to myself and asked: Who are you? And I replied: a man. I have a body and a soul. The one is the outer, the other the inner part. 

Which of these two should I question to find my God? With my body I had already searched him, as far as the rays of my eyes went as messengers through heaven and earth. But of those two the inner part is superior. For it was the inner part of me, to which all the messengers of my body reported. It had the direction and judged the answers of heaven and earth and everything in it, when they declared: We are not God and, He made us. 

The inner part of man knows this through the outer part. I, the inner man, my mind, knows this by the senses of my body.

I asked the whole mass of the universe about my God and the answer was: I am not God. He has made me.

 Commentary

We are not God …

In the search for God, this chapter is characterized by denial, because in the ascent to the highest good any incomplete answer must be denied and passed by.

At the question who God is, the earth and all the cosmic elements witness that they are not God. God is superior and above all that exists. He is transcendent to all this, for he is their creator. The human soul can come to this conclusion by sensory perception

My questioning was my attention to them…

Augustine's question who and what God is has a particular character. In chapter 10 he goes further into it. The mind is not a tabula rasa. Attention of the mind is a condition for the information you get by your senses. Therefore the beauty of

heaven and earth is not only the external sensory beauty, but reveals also to the attentive viewer order and coherence of everything.

But of those two the inner part is superior…
This observation briefly summarizes the theme of this book: to draw attention to the inner life of man, who is too much inclined to search outside. God is a reality, which mainly should be approached in the inner world.

But also the outside world speaks of God. That is the subject of next chapter. 

 Chapter 10

This beauty of the universe should be evident for all those who have good senses. Why does it not speak for everyone the same language?

The animals, from small to large, see it, but cannot question about it. They have no reason to judge what their senses report.

But men can put questions, so that they by all what is made can see and understand God’s invisible Being¹. But their love for the material things make them dependent and therefore they are unable to judge.

Moreover, created things only give answers to those who interrogate and evaluate them. They speak always the same language, that of their beauty. When the one only sees their beauty and the other, by seeing it, also put questions, it appears not different to the one than to the other. But although they have the same appearance, their beauty is silent for the one and speaks to the other. Or rather, it speaks to all, but only they understand it, who compare its voice, coming from the outside, with the truth within themselves.And the truth tells me: Your God is neither heaven nor earth, nor any other physical being. Their nature tells us this. For to anyone who sees it all material nature is less in the parts than in the whole.

But you, my soul, are, if I may say so, of a higher order. For you animate the matter of my body and gives it life. No single body can do this to another body. YourGod is fo r you the life of your life.

¹Rom.1: 20

Commentary
Why does it not speak everyone the same language?...

We find here, as in Chapter 8, a reference to the text of Romans 1:20. It refers to the human ability to understand God's invisible nature by considering the beauty of the universe. Basically every person is endowed with this ability, because one has to conclude to it is by human reason itself. Hence the sentence that there is no excuse.

Yet this ability is not fully used by everyone. As a reason is mentioned that many people have become so attached to earthly and material things that they have no sensitivity for the language that speaks the beauty of all things.

But only they understand it, who compare its voice…

The condition is that one has to turn in his inner self and tests the beauty of visible things to an inner mental standard and insight. This standard is nothing more than human reason itself, the inner Logos.

When Augustine seeks the God whom he loves, he seeks him first of all as Beauty, for love is in a special way focused on beauty. And because of this standard, the beauty of everything refers to an beauty which is spiritual and absolute.

Beauty means not only that something is well-formed, but also that it shows an inner order and harmony. In this respect every man endowed with reason should understand that all that radiates beauty does not stand alone, but is also a reference to an absolute spiritual beauty, source of all order and harmony.

When Augustine in his search for God lets all material things of heaven and earth behind him, he appeals to the understanding of human reason, that all matter is less in its parts than in the whole, and therefore cannot be entirely perfect.

But you, my soul, are, if I may say so, of a higher order…

Here at the end reappears the the interest of the soul and the inner self as the immaterial character of man. The soul is in this view the center in the hierarchy of human life. The soul gives life to the body, but at the other hand receives life from God. 

The question remains open how God as the life of the soul can be experienced.

Chapter 11

What do I love when I love my God?
Who is he that rises above the top of my soul?
Through the soul I will ascend to him.
I will go beyond the power by which I am bonded with my body and fill its frame with life. It is not by that power that I find my God. Otherwise the horse and the mule, which have no understanding, could find him too¹, because their bodies have life by the same power.

But there is another power, by which I not only give live to my body, but also can perceive with my senses. My Lord gave me this faculty, when he ordered my eyes to see and not to hear and my ears to hear and not to see. Likewise to each of the other senses he gave their own place and function. And while I am one mind, I feed my senses with these different functions. 

But I have to go beyond this power as well, because I have this in common with the horse and mule. They also perceive by their body.

¹Ps.32, 9

 Commentary

Through the soul I will ascend to him…
The search for God is a way up. God is a reality of the soul and there he must be sought. But even there he is the transcendent. He is beyond the top of the soul.

The soul is not only the center of the hierarchical order between God and the body, it also has layers itself, who are subordinate to each other. Hence Augustine ignores step by step layers of such faculties which the soul has in common with the animals in order to reach finally a level where God may be found.

Chapter 12

I will go beyond this natural ability of mine and rise step by step to him who made me. And so I come the fields and spacious palaces of memory, where are the treasures of countless images which have been conveyed by the perception of many things.

There are also stored the images which are formed by our thinking, by which we increase or diminish or in some way change what our senses have perceived. And it also contains everything that is stored and maintained, as far as they not have not been sunk and buried in oblivion.

When I am in this storehouse of memory, I ask to produce the images which I want. Some come forth immediately, others take longer time, as if they have to be pulled up from more hidden places. Some emerge in swarms, especially when I am looking for something quite different. They crowd in front of me as if to say: Surely we are what you want? And with my inner hand I wipe them away from the face of my memory, until which I want becomes clear and emerges out of its dark hiding place

Others finally appear, when I call them, smoothly and in perfect order. They come and give place for those memories which follow. And when they leave, they return to their place, ready to emerge again when I want them. That is exactly what happens when I recite something by heart.

Commentary

And so I come the fields and spacious palaces of memory…

In this first part of Book Ten we come to the main subject. If Augustine wants to know God, he has to search in the soul. And within the human soul he has to investigate memory. For memory is the human ability that distinguishes us from animals in a substantial way. Therefore, the term memory has not to be understood too restricted. It means here not only the passive faculty by which we remember things from the past.  The animals have this too. But it is also an active power, by which we are thinking and acting. The Latin word memoria, which Augustine uses, means both memory as the place where our memories are stored as also the act of remembering.

On the one hand, this text refers to memory as a storage of images formed in the past. Augustine uses the spatial images of fields, palaces, treasuries to show the immensity of the memory. On the other hand, he refers also tot the activity of remembering here and now, the recalling of what is present in this storage. In short: the ability to recall, select and use at will images of our memory.

This points to memory as a form of thinking. So is mentioned that the images in memory are not purely sensory images but also images that are formed by our thinking.

Therefore the term memory refers in this text not the past. It has here not more the function to tell what has happened in his early life This is finished in the previous nine books.

This Tenth Book is about the present. It treats memory as a source of consciousness here and now. In this regard memory has a timeless function, because its content is here detached from the past and describes his present state of mind.

The following chapters continue the search for God in memory. And it follows a certain order, because memory has its layers. Here too plays the process of the ascent from the lower to the higher a role. 

 Chapter 13

In this memory all the perceptions are preserved separately and by category, according to their way of entry. So the light and all colors and shapes are entered by the eyes, sounds by the ears, all the smells by the nose, by the mouth every taste. Finally all what is hard or soft, hot or cold, rough or smooth, heavy or light, whether inside or outside our body enters by the sense of touch.

All this sensations are saved in memory to be remembered when needed and to get it back from that vast storehouse with its secret and indescribable cavities. Each enters the memory by its own gateway and is put on his own place. But the things we sense do not enter themselves, but their images are there available, so that our mind can recall them, when we think.

Who can say how these images are formed, even though we know by which senses this images are recorded and stored within? For even in darkness and in silence I can, if I wish, reproduce colors from my memory and distinguish between white and black or any other color. And no sound invades to disturb my visual images.

Yet the sounds are also present in my memory, although they are stored separately. For I can call them too when I wish and they are immediately available. And even if my tongue does not move and my throat gives no sound, can I sing as much as I wish. And when I recall this other treasury of sounds, the images of the colors, who are in my memory too, do not intervene and not disturb.

In the same way I can recall at will what other senses have brought in my memory and stored there. I distinguish between the scent of lilies and violets without smelling, between honey and sweet wine, between smooth things and rough ones without tasting or touching, simply by using my memory.

 Commentary

In this memory all the perceptions are preserved separately and by category…
First Augustine explores the layer of sensory images. It's about everything which is received by our senses from the outside .

Here begins already the wonder about the working of memory. It is not only the vast storage space of the innumerable impressions that surprises, but also their perfect order. All images have their own place according to their category and do not interfere each other.

Another surprising feature of the memory is that the images are detached from their original environment. Sounds can be recalled without having to sound, smells without having to smell etc. That shows the creative power of the mind to re-use images from memory at will and combine them.This is elaborated in the next chapter.

Chapter 14

All this I do inside me, in the vast hall of my memory. There are the sky, the earth and the sea with everything I have perceived with my senses, except those things I have forgotten.

There I meet myself as well. I remember who I am, what I did and when and where, and in what mood I was when I did it. There are also all the events I remember, whether I experienced them myself or heard it from others. From the same resource too I can compare images of events with others I have experienced, or found acceptable on basis of my experience. I combine them with images of the past and from there I think about what I will do in the future and have to expect. And  I think all this again as if they are present.

When I say to myself in this vast recess of my mind, full of those many images: I will do this and that, the image of what I will do is immediately present. I can say to myself: Let this or that happen, May God prevent this or that, and at the moment I say this, the images of all I say spring forward from the same treasury of my memory. And I could not mention them if their images were not there.

Commentary

There I meet myself as well…

Besides the finding that memory is so immeasurably vast that it even can represent heaven, earth and sea, there is the key sentence of this chapter: There I meet myself as well. Here the focus shifts from the outside world to the inner world, from the sensory level to an more inner psychological level.

These two levels are explicitly delimited, when in the next chapter is established that many people marvel at the wonders of heaven, earth and sea, but have no attention to the wonder of themselves. Without disregarding the outside world (see his digression on the beauty of creation in chapter 9 and 10), Augustine is trying to provoke amazement for this world inside.

From the same source too I can compare images of events with others I have experienced …

This underlines that memory is a creative power. It also includes the imagination. This imagination is not pure fantasy, but based on past experience. It is a form of thinking and reflecting, because it can compare and combine several images of past events to new ones.

I will do this and that ..

Here memory produces also material for acting. It contains not only the images of what has been done in the past, but also of what has to be done in the future.

And I think all this  again as if they are present...

Here too appears the wonderful power of memory. It has the ability to represent past and future, and with this it transcends what is fixed in time. Through this power memory or rather consciousness, has the character of timelessness

The wonder about memory is actually wonder about the human mind in its whole. How can it create images and how can it deal with those images by thinking? This wonder will be discussed more explicitly in the next chapter.

 Chapter 15

This power of memory is great, my God, extremely great. It is an vast and endless sanctuary. Who has plumbed its bottom?

This faculty I possess. It belongs to my nature, and yet I cannot grasp the totality of what I am. When the mind is too narrow to contain itself entirely, what is that part of it which it cannot grasp? Could it be outside and not inside itself? Why can the mind not grasp it? This question fills me with great wonder. It bewilders me.

Yet men are going out to gaze in wonder the high mountain peaks, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad courses of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the circuits of the stars. But they leave themselves. They are even not amazed at the thought that I could talk about all these things without seeing them with my eyes. But I could not even speak of the mountains, the waves, the rivers, the stars, (which I have seen), or the ocean, (which I know only by hearsay), unless I could see them in my memory with the same large size as if I saw them outside me. And yet I have not absorbed them in me by seeing them with my eyes. They are not bodily in me, but their images. And I know by which bodily sense each of them is imprinted in my mind.

 Commentary

It is an vast and endless sanctuary…

The repeated affirmation of the immensity of memory indicates its importance in the argument. This spatial infinity leads into two directions. The note It is an vast and endless sanctuary. Who has plumbed its bottom? refers from one side to the bottom of human consciousness, where knowledge is at its end. It resumes what in the beginning of chapter 2 is called the abyss of human consciousness.

On the other hand it refers to the emphasis on the fact that there is also no limit to memory at the top of the mind, to what cannot be determined by our senses any more, but only can be known intuitively. In arguing this it opens a transcendent layer in the memory, where eventually God can be found.

This faculty I possess. It belongs to my nature, and yet I cannot grasp the totality of what I am…

To understand your memory is here equivalent to understanding yourself. It means: This memory is my identity. The ego wonders about the scope of his own self. The conclusion has to be: if the memory has no limit, there is also no limit to the self.

The inability to understand anything of oneself is not a rhetorical phrase, but a significant finding. The classical ideal of know thyself meets here a problem You cannot fully know yourself unless you involve in your knowledge also those dimensions that go beyond the usual comprehension, it has to involve those areas that are above and underneath the common awareness.

Yet men are going out to gaze in wonder…

It underlines the general tendency to look outside oneself rather than have attention to one’s inner self. This is in a sense understandable, because what is outside is easier perceptible. To look within oneself one needs other, more spiritual, senses, for the inner realities are not in the same way perceptible as realities in the outside world. Augustine notes that this movement to the interior world is neglected by an obvious outward orientation, while God is a reality just of the inner world.

This orientation outward may be so dominant that it leads to a chronic centrifugal tendency. In that case, one does not know or forget the depth of the soul. For Augustine the return to one’s inner self is essential for the relationship with God. It is called his interior-ism. In this respect he is a psychologist avant la lettre. For it assumes that religion has to be understood and interpreted from the psyche. These are psychic, inner experiences, not the observation of physical facts. The tendency is often to project religious experiences as physical facts in the outside world and to forget their origin. That is why Augustine considers this outside tendency as a moral qualification. It is a form of alienation.

Later in this Tenth Book he puts it thus:

See, you were in me,
but I sought you out of me.
And in all my formlessness
I fell upon the well formed things
you have created.
You were with me,
but I was not with you.

(Confessions X,38)

Chapter 16

But these are not the only treasures in the vast space of my memory.
It also contains everything I have learned of the liberal sciences and not has been forgotten. This knowledge is stored much more inward, at a place which is not really a place. And it are not the images, but this capacities themselves, which I carry in me.
For what literature is, how to debate, how many different questions there are- all my knowledge about these matters is stored in my memory. But this capacities are there not as images, which I hold in my memory while I leave the thing itself outside.

They are not like a voice which leaves a impression in our ears, so that you can recall the sound, even when it is no longer there.

They are not like a fragrance that passes by the wind and evaporates, and in passing by stimulates our sense of smell, so we can remember it later on.

They are not like food, which keeps its taste in our memory, although it has already lost its taste in our stomach.

They are not like something we feel with our sense of touch, which our memory can still recall, even when the contact is over.

In all these cases, none of those things themselves are in the memory. But only their images are here recorded with amazing speed and stored in a wonderful kind of compartments, where memory can recall them in a amazing way.

 Commentary

But this capacities are there not as images, which I hold in my memory while I leave the thing itself outside…

The way to find God is a way inside, deeper into memory and soul. This chapter prepares the further journey by finding in memory not only the images which are received from outside through our senses. In memory are also a variety of skills and ideas, which have a more inner origin. In the following chapters will be searched for capacities and notions which have somehow their origin in our mind.

Chapter 17

On the other hand, when I am told that there are three kinds of questions: Whether a thing is, What it is, and of What sort it is, I retain the images of the sounds of which these words are composed. I know that the sounds themselves are gone in the air and exist no more. But the ideas, indicated by these sounds have not reached me by any of my senses and I did not see them anywhere else than in my mind. Not their images are in my memory, but the ideas themselves.

How did they get in? Let them tell me, if they can.

For, I run along all the entries of my body, but do not find any by which they have entered. My eyes tell me: If they have color, we should have reported them. My ears say: If they make sound, we should have noticed them. My nose says: If they have any smell, they should have passed by us. The sense of taste says: If they have no taste, you should not ask me. Touch also says: If they have no physical body, I have not touched them, and if I did not touch them, I have nothing to report.

How did these concepts enter into my memory? I really do not know. For when I learned these things, I relied not on the mind of another. In my own mind I have recognized them and confirmed them as true. I entrusted them to my mind as a place of storage from which I could produce them if I wanted.

So they were already there, even before I had learnt them, but not in my memory. Where were they? Why I instantly recognized them, when they were mentioned, by saying: Yes, that is true? It must have been, that they were already in my memory, but so hidden and buried in remote cavities, that I might not have been able to think of them, if someone not incited me to dug them out.

 Commentary

when I am told that there are three kinds of questions…

Augustine appeals to an inner logic, which is universal and always valid. Essentially there are only three kinds of questions about anything. This points to an innate human ability, an insight which comes not from outside.

Let them tell me, if they can…

Augustine has a group of cynic people in mind, who don’t believe in innate ideas.

So they were already there, even before I had learnt them…

It is a platonic conviction that many of our ideas and conceptions have not their origin from outside, but are slumbering in our mind and must be awakened. Therefore they are, as Augustine noted earlier, much more inward and hidden.

In many cases, remembering happens by a kind of learning. But in this view the role of the teacher to find the truth is special. He is not the authority who dictates the truth and so transfers knowledge, but rather one that incites the student to be aware of his own hidden insights.

I relied not on the mind of another…

This form of insight is autonomous and personal. It is the own mind (and heart) where truth is found. In this matter of logic thinking learning is recognition of rules which are already present in the mind. This confirms the presence of insights, which hitherto have remained unconscious and slumbering.

if someone not incited me to dug them out…

This refers to the role which the teacher plays to awaken in the student a truth which is still hidden, but basically there.

 Chapter 18

We came to the conclusion that in learning such concepts we do not receive them in our mind as images by sensory experience, but that we see them in our mind as they really are without the help of images.

Thinking is nothing else than gather together concepts which are in our memory in a dispersed and disordered way.

By giving them our attention, we make sure that these concepts, which lay hidden, scattered and neglected in the memory, are placed so to say ready to hand. So that, once we are familiar with them, they become easily accessible to our mind,.

My memory contains a large number of these concepts, things I have already discovered and, as I mentioned, are ready to hand. Things of which is said that we have learned them and know them.

If I would stop to pay attention to them for a certain time, they sink and slip away in more remote hiding places of my memory. Then I have to think them out again as if they were new and draw them out the same place as before, for in another place they cannot be. Once again they have to be brought together so that they can be known. This means that they should be collected from their scattered state.

Hence the relationship between the Latin word for collecting (cogo) and thinking (cogito), as it is the case with ago and agito, and facio and factito. But the word cogito is entirely claimed for the human mind, so it is only used for what is thought i.e. collected in the mind, but not what is collected elsewhere.

 Commentary

Thinking is presented here as collecting insights which did not come to us through external sensory images, but are, hidden or not, present in our minds. It supposes an innate logic ability, which can combine all sorts of concepts and can judge whether some combination is true or false.

 By giving them our attention…

The role of attention is here important. Because without this attention many insights, which are in principle in the mind, get in oblivion. This shows that consciousness is not fixed, but fluctuates according to our attention.

Once again they have to be brought together…

Thinking is a constant activity in order to unify insights which are here and there present in our mind. On the basis of this lies the search for unity

Chapter 19

The memory also contains the innumerable principles and laws of numbers and dimensions. None of them has been impressed in our minds by our sensory experience. They have no color, no sound and no smell. You cannot taste or touch them.

When they are discussed, I hear the sound of the words which signify them, but the sound of the words and these concepts are two different things. The sound of the words vary in Greek and in Latin, but these concepts are neither Greek nor Latin.

I've seen lines that were drawn by craftsmen, as thin as the threads of a spider web. But the principle of the line is different. It is not the image of the lines I have seen. We recognize them inside ourselves, without reference to any material object.

I have also experience with the numbers we use for counting things by all my bodily senses, but the principle of these numbers is different. It is not the image of the things we count, but something which has definitely its own existence. Who does not see that, may laugh at what I am saying. But let me pity him who laughs at me.

 Commentary

The memory also contains the innumerable principles…

Gradually we are introduced to concepts that precede all sensual realization. So our concept of the line is not derived from the lines we observe, but on the contrary we call something line because it corresponds to our concept of what a line is.

In the same way our concept of the number is not derived from our numerical counting, but to our counting underlies an inner concept of what counting is.

Who does not see that, may laugh at what I am saying…

In Augustine's days the existence of numbers in the mind was a controversial subject. At the basis lies here his platonic vision that there are ideas in the human mind, which are not derived from the outside world, but have an autonomous existence.

The fact that these ideas are imperceptible gives reason to be skeptic about them. The way Augustine goes is that that of introspection and intuition, by which one has to conclude to the existence of inner ideas. This way is needed to continue the search for God

Chapter 20

All these ideas I hold in my memory. I remember also the way I have learned them.

And my memory holds also the many false objections put forward to these ideas. Even if these objections are false, yet my memory of them is not false. I also remember that I distinguish between the true and false objections against them.

But the memory of this distinction which I make now, is different from memories of this distinction which I made in the past, every time I thought about this matter. 

I remember also that I did understand this questions more often. And I store in my memory what I distinguish and understand at this moment, so that I later on shall remember that I did understand this question now.

So I remember that I remembered. And when I later on shall remember what I remembered today, it is by the power of memory.

Commentary
So I remember that I remembered …

Gradually the argument gets a more abstract character. The reader is taken along to functions in memory which are hard to imagine. A slight dizziness comes over him. That is exactly the purpose of the rhetorician who is Augustine. It has to demonstrate how ingenious and complex our mind works.

Chapter 21

My memory also contains my feelings. They are not in the same way in the mind as when I have experienced them, but in a very different way that is in correspondence with the process of memory. For when I remember a happy moment, I don’t need to be happy and I don’t need to be sad, when I remember a sad moment from the past. I can recall moments of fear without any fear, and think of my former desires without any desire. Sometimes, on the contrary, I remember my past sadness with a happy feeling and my happiness with a sad feeling.

This is not surprising when it concerns the feelings of the body. Body and mind are different. And it would not be strange that I remember with joy a bodily pain that is gone away. But in the present case, memory and mind are one and the same. We even call the memory the mind, for when we tell another to remember something, we say: See that you keep this in mind. And when we forget something, we say: It was not in my mind, it slipped out of my mind.

When this is the case, how can it be that, when I remember my past sadness with joy, there is joy in my mind and sadness in my memory? And how can it be that my mind is happy because of that joy and my memory not sad when it remembers that sadness? Does memory not be a part of the mind? Who would dare to say that?

Without doubt memory is something like the stomach of the mind and joy and sadness are like sweet and bitter food. When this food is committed to memory, it is as it were transferred to the stomach, where it can remain, but has no taste anymore. This comparison is rather ridiculous, but any resemblance is there anyway.

 Commentary

For when I remember a happy moment, I don’t need to be happy…
There is a discrepancy between the emotion itself and its memory. The actual fChaeelings of the mind need not be identical with the feelings one remembers. Hence Augustine's assumption that the memory of past emotions have a special place in the human mind. He uses as an image the working of memory like that of the stomach. In both cases their content does not match with what was tasted. In the next chapter he develops this image.

Chapter 22

But when I say that there are four kinds of emotion: desire, joy, fear and sadness, I call them in my mind from my memory. All I can discuss about them, whether it is their classification, their species or their definition, I get it from that source. And yet I am not touched by those emotions when I call them from my memory. Before I recalled them to discuss them, they were already there. Otherwise I would not be able to remember them.

Perhaps these emotions are brought forward from the memory by the act of recollecting like food is brought from the stomach in the process of rumination. But why then in the mouth of my thinking, when I discuss, that is remember them, is not the sweet taste of joy or the bitterness of sorrow? Maybe the comparison does not fit here, because surely the two are not wholly alike.

Who would even want to talk about such feelings, when every time we mention sadness or fear, we were forced to be sad or anxious? Yet we could not speak of them at all unless we found in our memory not only the sound of their names but also the notions of those feelings themselves. For we have not received these notions through any gateway of our body. Our mind has experienced those feelings within itself and entrusted them to memory. Or possibly the memory retained them itself without any act of the mind.

 Commentary

And yet I am not touched by those emotions…

The fact that memories of emotions have lost their real sensation points towards a special mechanism of memory. In this last case the emotions are abstractions , independent from their primary experience. They are notions of moods. And in this form there are limited. Augustine mentions the main four.

For we have not received these notions through any gateway of our body...

I think that Augustine wants to show in the course of his argument that even in this respect the human spirit plays a central role and not the sensory experience. The emotions do not come from outside, but are certain innate abilities of the mind. They have in memory their own existence. Hence: Our mind has experienced those feelings within itself.

 Chapter 23

 Whether these processes takes place by images or not is difficult to say.

I can mention a stone or the sun when these things themselves are not present to my senses, but their images are available in my memory.

I can mention physical pain, but as long as I do not feel it, the pain itself is not present to me. Yet if an image of pain were not present in my memory, I should not know what I was talking about. And in a discussion I should not be able to distinguish pain from pleasure.

I can mention physical health, when I'm in good condition. This shape is present in me. But if no picture of it is in my memory, I could not remember what the sound of this word meant. And sick people could not know what was meant, when the word health was mentioned, unless its image had not been retained in their memory, even when that condition no longer exists.

I can mention the numbers, by which we count things. And see, in my memory are not their images present but the numbers themselves. I can mention the image of the sun . Then this image too is in my memory. But I recall not the image of the image, but the image itself.

I can mention memory and I recognize where I speak about. Where else will I recognize it except in my memory itself? Surely we cannot in fairness assume that the memory is present to itself by means of its image and not directly to itself?

 Commentary

Whether these processes takes place by images or not is difficult to say…

Augustine mentions a number of examples, where we remember something through an image in memory: stone, sun, health. But he also mentions examples, where there is no question of an image, but where the notion self is present in the mind, as in the concept of number.

He then poses the more or less rhetorical question of whether memory, especially remembering, can remember itself or whether this happens through an image. The question seems sophisticated, but in the argument it serves to show that in the mind there are not only images of reality outside us, but also the concepts, feelings and ideas themselves. If that is not the case, God cannot be found there.

 Chapter 24

What then, if I mention forgetfulness? I recognize here too the meaning of the word. But how would I recognize it without remembering it? I'm not talking about the sound of the word, but the reality to which the word refers. If I had forgotten this, that sound had no meaning and I was unable to recognize what it implied.

When I remember my remembering, my memory is present to itself. But when I remember my forgetfulness, there are two things present: my memory by which I remember and my forgetfulness which I remember.

Yet what is forgetting more than loss of memory? How can it be present in my memory, while, when forgetting is present I am unable to remember? Everything we remember must be present in memory, because when we hear the word forgetfulness, we can never know what it means, if we are unable to remember it. So forgetfulness must be present in our memory. Therefore, it is there so that we will not forget, but when it is there, we forget.

Should we then conclude that, when we remember forgetfulness, it is not itself present in our memory, but only through its image? Because if forgetfulness itself is in our memory, would not be the result that we forget rather than remember? Who will resolve this problem? 
Who can understand how this works?

 Commentary

What then, if I mention forgetfulness?...

Forgetfulness is a new and special element, that is introduced in the argument. Remembering refers to knowing, but forgetting refers to not knowing any more. It is something negative, the negation of remembering. The question is whether this is a absolute negation or a negation of knowledge which previously existed and is missed. Hence not knowing anymore.

When I remember my remembering…

As a reader you become a little dizzy, when there is question of remembering remembering. You wonder where Augustine wants to go in his argument. He relies in any case on the ability of the human mind to consider itself and make itself an object of contemplation. It results from the ability of the mind to take distance of itself and then enter into dialogue with itself.

When forgetting is present I am unable to remember…

Augustine introduces here a contradiction, a apparent paradox. On the one hand it is clear that forgetting is present in memory. On the other hand, there is the understanding that, where there is forgetting there cannot be remembering. It is a form of reasoning from the absurd to create a better insight in how memory works. This reasoning would also be called a form of sophism, a sophisticated argument, of which the conclusion proves ultimately to be false. At first glance the reasoning is consequent: where is forgetting, there is no memory. A closer examination shows that this argumentation implies two unequal items The form in which forgetting is in our memory is of totally different, more abstract, nature than the act of forgetting itself.

Should we then conclude that...

This is a rhetorical question, the answer is still not clear, either positive or negative. The following chapter has to answer about this question.

Who can comprehend how this works?...

Augustine uses here the means of the aporia, the inability to bring a philosophical issue to a solution. It is also a rescue to open the blocked argument on another level.

Chapter 25

I am laboring hard on this subject, my Lord, and the field of my labour is my own self. I have become for myself a soil that costs many dificulties and much sweat¹. For I am not examining the spaces of heaven, nor am I measuring the distance of the stars or seeking the balance of the earth. I am examining myself, my memory, my mind.

It is not surprising that whatever I am not is distant from me. But what is nearer to me than myself? And yet I do not understand the power of my memory, when without it I could not even speak about myself. What should I say, now I am sure that I remember my forgetting? Should I say that what I remember is not in my memory? Or say that forgetting is in my memory to prevent me from forgetting? Both assumptions are equally absurd.

What about a third possibility? To say that my memory holds the image of my forgetting and not my forgetting itself. But how can I say this, because, if the image of something is imprinted in the memory, the thing itself must first necessarily have been present to imprint its image?

For that is de way I remember Carthage and all the places where I have been. In the same way I remember all the faces that I have seen and everything that the senses have reported to me. That is also how I remember my health or the sickness of my body. When they were present, my memory took all the images of these things. And those images remained so that I could see them and remember them, even when these things were absent.

Therefore, if my memory contains the image of my forgetting and not my forgetting itself, then it must have been present at some time, so that memory could capture its image. But when it was present, how dit it inscribe its image in my memory, as it deletes by its presence everything that there already was recorded? And yet I am in some way, how incomprehensible and inexplicable it is, sure thatI remember my forgetting, even though forgetting erases everything we remember.

¹ Gen.3: 17)

Commentary

I am laboring hard on this subject…

Augustine admits that the subject is very difficult for him too. In the same time it serves as a rhetorical turn in which he sympathizes with the reader, who can hardly follow him in this abstract reasoning.

The field of my labour is my own self…

The study of one’s own consciousness turns out to be heavy. Here we find something paradoxical: The study of the universe places us before mysteries. The research of our own mind should be easier, but in fact turns out to be an even greater mystery.

Here again sounds what in chapter 15 was said: People may wonder about the universe, but they ignore their own minds.

What about a third possibility?..

The third possibility, that forgetting is only present in the memory as an image, proves to be invalid, because an image of forgetting cannot be created if forgetting itself was not first present in our mind. But in that case forgetting erases all the memory of itself.

Here is question of a deadlock: None of the possibilities is sufficient and the reader is confronted with a circular argument.

Augustine passes, aware or not aware, a fourth possibility. In that case forgetting is present in memory as an abstract notion which is derived from experience, not as the actual act of forgetting itself.

And yet I am in some way, how incomprehensible and inexplicable it is,..

The effect of the impasse which Augustine describes is, that the presence of forgetting in the memory is retraced to an inexplicable mystery. That underlines in the argument the fact that the process of the memory is amazing.

 Chapter 26

The power of memory is great, my God, awe-inspiring and unfathomable in its endless multiplicity. And this is my mind, this is myself.

Who am I, my God? What is my nature? A life that is varying, of many forms and beyond measure.
See the countless fields, caves and caverns of my memory. They are in innumerable ways full with innumerable things. Some are there by their images, like all material objects. Some like sciences and arts are there by themselves. Others, like our emotions, in the form of certain ideas or impressions, which are are still present, even though our mind does not feel them. For whatever is in the memory must also be in the mind. I run through all this things and fly from one to another. And I penetrate between them as far as I can, and I find no end. So great is the power of memory. So great is the power of life in man, mortal though he is.

My God, you are my true life, what shall I do?

I shall go beyond this power in me, which we call memory, so that I reach you, my sweet Light. What do you say to me? You are always above me and I will rise in my mind upwards to you. I will pass this power in me, which we call memory, in my desire to touch you where you can be touched and embrace you where you can be embraced.

For beasts and birds also have memory. Otherwise they could not find their their lairs and their nests or the many other things that are part of their habitual life. In fact they could not have habits at all without their memory.
So I will rise above memory to touch him who set me apart from the four-footed animals and has given me more wisdom than the birds of the sky.

As I rise above my memory, where can I find you, my true and safe Sweetness, where can I find you? If I find you outside my memory, I have no memory of you.  And how can I find you without a memory of you.

 Commentary

And this is my mind, this is myself ..

Augustine underlines more and more the mysterious nature of memory. Here we see a certain identification when memory is mentioned as centre of the mind and the mind as the identity of man himself.

So great is the power of life in man, mortal though he is...

This is the great paradox: Although man is mortal and therefore finite, he has mental faculties that are unfathomable and therefore unlimited.

My God, you are my true life, what shall I do?..

Although the memory is a wonderful, unfathomable and boundless power, Augustine still considers for a moment to continue his quest for God. He wants to pass beyond memory and try to touch God at the place where he can be touched. But at the same time he wonders whether God can be found outside memory, because he would have no memory of him.

So we turn back to memory as the place where God can be found.

Chapter 27

The woman who had lost her drachma, searched for it with a lamp¹. She would never have found it without some memory of it. Otherwise, when it was found, how would she know it was the one she had lost?
I remember that I have searched many lost things and have found them. Therefore I know that, when I was looking for something and people asked me: Is this it? or Is that it?, I would always answer No, until they showed me the thing I wanted.

I could not find something that I had lost without any memory of it, even when it was showed to me, because I could not recognize it. That is always what happens, when we look for something what is lost and find it.

If anything vanishes from sight but not from the memory, such as a visible object, its image is retained in us and we look for it until we see it again.  And when it is found, we recognize it by the image that we have in us.

We do not say that we have found what was lost unless we recognize it and we cannot recognize it unless we remember it. It was only lost from our sight, but not from our memory.

¹ Luke. 15.8

 Commentary

The woman who had lost her drachma…

Augustine quotes an well-known example: the biblical parable of the woman who had lost her drachma. This concerns not so much the content of the parable, but the proposition that in every search there is a remembering of what one is looking for. Therefore in the search for God there must be also some notion of what one is searching.

 Chapter 28

What if the memory itself loses something? This happens for example when we have forgotten something and try to remember it. Where else can we find it than in the memory itself? And if something else presents itself, we reject it, until the thing we are looking for appears. And when it appears, we say: That's it. But we could not say that without recognizing, and we could not recognize it without remembering. But that we had forgotten is a fact.

Or could it be that it not entirely disappeared from memory, but a part of it remained and helped to find the other part? And may be that memory realized that it could not function as usual because something was cut off. And feeling crippled by the loss of the part to which it was accustomed, kept demanding that this missing part should come back?

This happens, when we see or think of a person we know and whose name has escaped us. We try to remember his name, but every name that comes to our mind does not suit him, because we are not accustomed to connect it with him. Thus we reject all names, until the good one comes up, which fully corresponds with the familiar image of that person.

Where else does that name come from than from memory itself? Because, even when someone else prompts us, it comes from our memory. Because we do not accept it as a new piece of knowledge, but we confirm by our memory that it is the right name.

If that name was completely erased from our mind, we could not remember it, even with the help of another. For we have not completely forgotten, when we think we have something forgotten. If we had it completely forgotten, we should no longer be able to search for what has been lost.

 Commentary

And may be that memory realized that it could not function as usual because something was cut off…

This concerns a form of forgetting which is only partial. The memory is missing something that was familiar and tries to recall it. Forgetting is here not a form of knowledge that is completely lost, but of knowledge that is lost, but has left some traces in our mind. In this context forgetting supposes a felt loss, which searches for what is missing.

If that name was completely erased from our mind, we could not remember it…

Besides the form of forgetting from above there is the absolute form of loss. There is nothing in memory that remembers of what is missing. Then each search is useless.

At this stage of the argument the question occurs why Augustine engages himself so long in the analysis of what is forgetting. Slowly the reader has to be convinced that the search for God is based on some notion of God in memory. There must be something in memory, though is it a felt lack, that enables the search and therefore cannot be regarded as meaningless.

 Chapter 29

How then do I look for you, O Lord? When I look for You, my God, I am looking for the happy life. I want to look for You, so that my soul may live. For it is my soul that gives life to my body and it is You who give life to my soul.

How then do I seek this happy life? For I do not possess it, until I can say: I am satisfied; this it is. But then I have to say which way my quest proceeds. Am I looking for it in memory,as though I had forgotten, but still remember that I had forgotten? Or am I looking by the need of learning a life that is quite unknown, whether I have never known it or had it so forgotten that I do not remember that I forgot it?

Is the happy life not what all desire and nobody does not desire? Where did they learn about it, if this desire is so common? Where did they see it, that they love it so much? Certainly, we have it in us, but how I do not know. Some people are happy because they actually possess it, others are happy in the hope for it. Their happiness is of a lesser degree than the happiness of those who actually possess it, but their happiness is of an higher degree than of those who do not possess it, nor hope for it.

Yet even those people must possess happiness in in some way, otherwise they would not long for it. And that they long for it is without any doubt. In some way they have learnt what it is and therefore they have a certain notion of it. And my problem is to discover whether this notion is in the memory or not, because if it is there, then we were once happy. It may be that we were all happy individually or that we were all happy in the man Adam, who was the first to sin, in whom we all died,¹ and from whom we we all descend in misery.  But I will not go into this question now.

My question is whether happiness is in the memory. For we would not love, it if we did not know what it is. We hear the word and we all admit that it is where we are looking for. And it's not just the sound of the word by which we are attracted. When a Greek will hear this word in Latin, it does not appeal to him because he does not know what has been said. But he is attracted to it, as soon as he hears the word in Greek. So happiness is neither Greek nor Latin, because all people yearn to obtain it, whether they speak Greek or Latin or any other language.

Therefore everyone knows it. And if they were asked whether they wish to be happy, without any doubt all would answer that they do. But that is only the case if happiness itself, to which this word refers is found in their memory.

¹Kor.15, 22

 Commentary

The search for God is here connected with the search for complete happiness. And coversely the search for complete happiness must result in the search for God. Complete happiness is here equal to enjoy God. The word happiness can have several meanings and several interpretations according to several levels of perception. It is evident that the happy life for Augustine has this absolute meaning of enjoying God. All degrees of happiness are in fact seen in that perspective.

Augustine speaks of the soul as the central element in man. It is the centre of spiritual and physical life. The emphasis lies therefore on an inner happiness which is dependent on finding God

For I do not possess it, until I can say: I am satisfied; this it is…

This identification of happiness with enjoying God finds is origin in human desire. This desire has in fact a transcendent aspect, because it finds no satisfaction in any partial goal. It is aiming at an complete fullfillment.

But then I have to say which way my quest proceeds…

In the question what is at the origin of human desire for happiness, two options are presented  Either it is based on a certain notion of something we forgot, or this happy life has no notion at all in our memory and we are searching for something entirely unknown. The second option does not explain adequately the presence in our minds of this universal desire for happiness. This will be further worked out.

And that they long for it is without any doubt…

It seems important to me that Augustine bases the religious desire on a general human quality: the desire to be happy. That does exclude the tendency to consider the religious sense as something exclusive. In this perspective everyone has basically this quality in himself.

Yet even they must possess happiness in in some way…
Everyone wants to be happy. In this respect all people are equal, whether they claim to possess happiness, or merely expect it or possess and expect it not at all. This last category is explicitly not excluded.

if it is there, then we were once happy…

If there is a notion of complete happiness in our memory, the conclusion should be that we were once happy. In what way we were happy once is a side-question, which Augustine does not want to work out in this argument. Yet he suggests shortly two possibilities. We lost that happiness personaly or as a member of mankind personified in our mythical ancestor Adam. In both cases we lost a state of complete happiness and got into a state of misery and mortality. Augustine connects this loss of happiness with human guilt by quoting Paul 1Kor.15,22.

Adam represents here whole humanity. This leads to think of an original sin, by which humanity moved away from its original state of happiness.

Then the way to happiness is the way mankind tries to find back to that original state from which it emerged. This reminds the vision of Plotinus, who argues that we did emanate from the One and are searching to return to that oneness. Guilt is that we gradually have lost ourselves in the multitude of an material life and have forgotten to focus on the one thing that is necessary.

Chapter 30

But in what way is happiness present in our memory? Is it in the same way as Carthage, when we have seen that city? No, for happiness cannot be seen with the eyes , it is not a physical object.

Is it in our memory like we remember numbers? No, for when you know the numbers, you do not seek to obtain them further. We know what happiness is and love it. But we also seek to possess it, because we want to be happy.

Is happiness in our memory as the art of eloquence? No, for many people know what is meant by the word eloquence without being themselves eloquent. And many also desire to be eloquent too. That proves that they have some knowledge of it. However, it is by their senses that they have noticed that others were eloquent and therefore they get pleasure in it and desire to be eloquent themselves. Of course they would have no pleasure in it without any inner knowledge, and they would not want to be eloquent without any pleasure. But there is a difference with the happy life. We have no physical perception of the happy life in others

Is hapiness then present in our memory in the same way as when we remember joy? Yes, perhaps it is. Even when I am sad I can remember joy, just as I can remember happiness, when I am unhappy. Yet never I have seen my joy with my physical senses, or heard, smelled, tasted or touched it. But it was something I experienced in my mind., when I was joyful. And the notion of it stuck in my memory, so that I can always recall it, sometimes with aversion, sometimes with longing, depending on the different things of which I remember that they gave me joy. For I was sometimes overwhelmed with joy in shameful acts and when I remember them now I feel disgust and detest it.

But other times I had joy in good and honourable things and I remember them with longing, even though they are now no more within the bounds of possibility. And therefore I am sad when I remember joy of long ago.

 Commentary

Yet never I have seen my joy with my physical senses, or heard, smelled, tasted or touched it…

The memory of happiness is in the memory in the same way as the memory of joy. That is that both are present not by sensory experience but by an inner experience, which remains in memory in a neutral way. Therefore you do not need to be happy or joyful, when you remember happiness and joy of the past. It is sufficient that you ever have experienced joy or happiness to speak about it.

Chapter 31

Where and when have I experienced my happy life, so that I can remember it and love it and long for it?

Not just I alone, or a small group, but we all want to be happy. If we did not know so surely what it was, we should not desire it so certainly.

But what does this mean? If two men were asked whether they want to join the army, it is quite possible that one says yes and another no. But if you ask them whether they want to be happy, they will both immediately and without any hesitation answer that they want it. When one wants to join the army and the other not, they have the same intention that is to be happy. Is it then the case that everyone finds his joy in different ways? Even so, they all agree that they want to be happy, just as they would all agree, if asked, that they desire joy. And this joy they call happiness. Even though they search it in different ways, they all have the same goal, that is joy. No one can say that he has no experience of joy. And this is why he finds the happy life in the memory and recognizes it as soon as he hears these words.

 Commentary

And this joy they call happiness ...

Earlier in chapter 30 we saw that the experience of happiness is similar to that of joy. Here we find some identification, when the universal experience of happiness is associated with the universal experience of joy. The emphasis lies on the fact that in this case everyone seeks the same experience, regardless of how they actualize it

Chapter 32

O Lord, far be it from the heart of your servant who confesses to you, far be it from me to think that I am happy with any joy whatever. For there is a joy that is not given to those do not love you, but only to those who love you for your own sake. You yourself are their joy.
And this is the true happy life: to find joy in you, for you and because of you. This is the true happiness and there is no other. Those who believe that happiness is found elsewhere, pursue a different kind of joy and not the true one. Yet their pursuit is aimed at some image of that true joy.

Commentary

O Lord, far be it from the heart of our servant...

From the prior identification between happiness and joy one might mistakenly conclude that any joy can make happy. Augustine anticipates this conclusion and wants to avoid it. There are all kinds of joy and there are many layers and intensity of happiness, dependent on the object one enjoys.

There is only one kind of joying that can make totally happy and that is to rejoy in God, the ultimate truth of human existence. Any other attempt to be happy pursues only a partial goal, and therefore this joy can only be partial.

Yet their pursuit is aimed at some image of that true joy....

The pursuit of those who seek their joy and happiness elsewhere has a certain affinity with the search for God as well. Augustine uses here the word image. The target may be different, but in the effort and desire is a certain affinity. With this he maintains the universal aspirations of mankind to complete happiness and thus implicitly to God.

 Chapter 33

Should we then conclude that it is uncertain that all men want to be happy, when there are some who do not find in you their source of joy. Because, if enjoying you is the true happy life, they do not desire the happy life?

Or should we rather say that all men desire it, but, because the desires of the flesh compete with the desires of the spirit¹, they do not do what they wish and fall back to what they are able to do and are content with it, since their will is not sufficient enough to enable them to do it?

For if I ask them whether they prefer to find joy in truth or in falsehood, they do not hesitate to say that they prefer the truth, just as they prefer happiness. True happiness is indeed joy in the truth. This means joy in you, my God, who are the Truth, my true Light, to whom I look for my salvation. This is the happiness that all desire. This happy life everyone wants. Joy in the truth everyone wants.

I have known many people who wished to deceive, but none that wished to be deceived. Where did they find the notion of happiness unless it was where they found the truth? For they love the truth, since they do not want to be deceived. And when they love happiness, which is the same as joy in the truth,  they must also love the truth. But they could not love it, if there was not any notion of it in their memory.

Why then do they have no joy in this? Why are they not happy? It is because they are more concerned with other matters. And this gives them more misery than this weak awareness of the truth brings them happiness.

There is still a faint glow of light among men. Let them walk, let them walk, for fear that darkness comes over them ²

¹ Gal. 5:17; ² John.12:35

 Commentary

Is it therefore uncertain that all men want to be happy…?

Here there is a distinction between the desire for perfect happiness and the will to pursue actually this happiness. The will often proves to be weak and the temptation to settle for a partial fulfillment is great. So all have in principle the desire for perfect happiness, but not always the will to achieve it.

Joy in the truth everyone wants...

Here truth is introduced as a new concept. Who wants complete happiness, wants also complete truth. Truth has here a larger meaning. It involves not only the sense that a certain knowledge is right, but the experience that our total existence is right. In that way complete happiness and truth are on the same level.

But they could not love it, if there was not any notion of it in their memory...

Seeking for truth and finding truth is based on a kind of inner knowing what truth should be and what not.

Because they are more concerned with other matters…

Here, Augustine comes back to the weakness of will to pursue the truth. Occupation with material matters must compensate the desire for happiness. But that gives not the experience of being in the truth. Hence the existential misery, apart from material worries, that it brings with it.

There is still a faint glow of light among men...

In this appeal sounds hope. The light of truth is not wholly extinguished in this world and in mankind. It is a appeal to conversion, to change direction and walk the way toward the goal for which every human being is destined.

 Chapter 34

Why does truth engender hatred? Why does your man who proclaims the truth becomes an enemy to them, although they love happiness, which is simply joy based on the truth?

The reason can only be that man’s love for truth is such, that those who love anything else than the truth, pretend that it is the truth. And because they do not want to be mistaken, they do not want to admit that they are wrong. And that is why they hate the truth for the sake of what they regard as their truth.

Men love the truth if it gives them shine, but they hate it as it puts them wrong². And because they don’t want to be deceived themselves, they want to deceive others. They love the truth, when it reveals itself, but hate it as it reveals their faults. Therefore the truth gives them the retribution they deserve, by revealing their truth against their will, while truth itself remains hidden from them.

Thus, even thus, is the human mind. So blind, languid, shameful and dishonorable, that it wishes to be hidden, but does not wish that anything is hidden from it. It achieves just the opposite: it does not remain hidden from the truth, but the truth remains hidden from it.

Yet even in this miserable state it would rather find joy in true than in false things. One day it shall be happy if it, not distracted by any trouble, will rejoice in the truth, the sole Truth, by which all things are true.

² John. 3:20

 Commentary

Why does truth engender hatred?..

In this chapter it is made clear that many people take their own truth for the only truth and exclude thereby other possibilities. But what about Augustine himself? He too proclaims his truth as the absolute truth. The difference is that the truth which many proclaim is at its best a partial truth, as Augustine is concerned with a transcendent truth, which he not wholly possesses, but corresponds with an universal idea and includes in this way everything that is true. The proclaimer of transcendent Truth meets hostility, because he reveals accordingly the inadequacy of any partial truth.

Men love the truth if it gives them shine...

The truth gives shine to people who claim to possess it, but the confrontation with a higher truth works confusing. The reaction may be two-fold: either the own truth is questioned and man opens himself to the higher truth, or he does not admit he is wrong and refuses the higher truth and hate it. In the latter case he is deceiving himself.

Therefore the truth gives them the retribution they deserve...

People who deny the transcendent truth shut themselves away from it. And in that denial their self-deception is manifest. The truth they deny does escape them, while their own truth is unmasked as insufficient.

Yet even in this miserable state it would rather find joy in true than in false things...

Augustine’s judgment about men is hard. But here he turns it into a hopeful perspective. Everyone is in principle focused on the truth. It is an inner drive which is universal. Matter is only that this orientation finds its goal in the transcendent truth itself.

 Chapter 35

See how I explored the vast spaces of my memory in search for you, my Lord. And I have not found you outside it. For I have nothing found about you except what I remember, since the time I learned of you. And never since then I have forgotten you.

And where I found the truth, I found my God who is Truth itself. And since I did know this truth, I have never forgotten it. From the time I learned of you, you stay in my memory. And it is there that I find you, when I think of you and enjoy you. These are my holy delights which you have given me in your mercy, having regard to my poverty.

 Commentary

And I have not found you outside it...
This confirms that every religious experience is an inner one. It concerns psychological facts, not physical. Attempts to find God outside of human consciousness prove to be vain. Also the attempt to seek God in the beauty of creation presupposes an appeal to an inner truth. There is no physical evidence.
 

These are my holy delights you have given me in your mercy...

To be touched by God, of which Augustine testifies in this book, is the moment when he really learned to know God. In chapter 8 it is called: Your word has pierced my heart and I got to love you. This concerns a mystical meeting with God, that puts in the shade all other feelings.

Chapter 36

But where in my memory are you staying, my Lord? Where do you stay there? What kind of resting place have you made for yourself? What kind of sanctuary have you built for yourself?

You have granted my memory the favor to stay there, but I ask myself in what part you stay.

When I tried to think of you, I went beyond those parts of the memory which I have in common with the animals, because I did not find you between the images of material things.

So I came to that part of my memory where my emotions are stored, but I did not find you. And I entered into the seat of my mind itself, which is too in my memory -because the mind can remember itself- , but you were not there .For you are not the image of a material thing, nor an emotion of a living being, like happiness or sadness, desire or fear, remembering or forgetting, or any other feeling.

Likewise, you are not the mind itself, for you are the Lord and God of the mind. All these things are subject to change, but you remain immutable above all things. And yet, you have deigned to live in my memory since the time I got to know you.

Why do I ask in what place of my memory you stay, as if there really are separate places? You certainly live there, because I remember you ever since I got to know you, and I find you there when I think of you.

 Commentary

but you remain immutable above all things …

Above is not a place, but an indication that God is transcendent and transcends the human mind.

You certainly live there ...

On the other hand you find here the affirmation that God is immanent and present in the inner consciousness of the human being. That reminds the earlier statement of Augustine that God is more inward than our inner self and higher than the top of our mind.

Here more inward and higher are not indications of a location, but both images of God's transcendence. They are images of a psychic experience. God is not only the distant majesty but also an intimate presence, more with our selves than we are. It is noteworthy that Augustine mentions both relations. There is a tension between the two, but at the same time they complement each other.

Chapter 37

Where then did I find you so that I could know you? For you were not in my memory, before I got to know you.

Where then did I find you, so that I could know you, if not in you above me? Yet there is no place, whether we come to you or go back from you, there is no place.

O Truth, you watches everywhere for all who counsel you. And you reply at the same time to all who ask counsel of you, even if they are consulting you on different things.

The answer you give is clear, but not all hear it clearly. .All ask you for what they want, but the answer they hear is not always what they want.

Your best servant is he who not so much expects to hear from you what he wants as to want what he shall hear from you.

 Commentary

O Truth, you watches everywhere for all who counsel you...

Augustine calls God besides Beauty also Truth. This designation implies not only the satisfaction of intellectual knowledge, but of every human aspiration. It is the opposite of everything what in life turns out to be false and idle.

God gives counsel to anyone who seeks the truth. That truth can have a different content for everyone, but it is not always in accordance with what one wants. Here means to counsel God in fact to search for God's order.

 Chapter 38

Late have I loved you,
Beauty so ancient and so new,
late have I loved you.

See, you were within me and I was in the world outside,
and I sought you there.
And in my de-formed state,
I threw myself on the well-formed things,
which you have made.

You were with me, but I was not with you.

And these beautiful things. kept me far from you
and yet, if they had not their existence in you,
they had no existence at all.

You called me and cried loud to me,
and broke my deafness.
You did shine over me your radiant light
and dispelled my blindness.

You have tempted me with your fragrance;
I inhaled it and sigh for you.
I have tasted you,
and now I hunger and thirst for you.

You have touched me,
and I burn with longing for your peace.

Commentary

Late have I loved you...

Late in his life, Augustine really got to know and love God. This passage is often translated with too late. But apart from the fact that this translation is not a literal one, it adds too much drama. In this case, it is never too late. In fact he regrets that he had God never seen before as the perfect Beauty, while he was so close.

and yet, if they had not their existence in you, they had no existence at all…
The beauty of all things would be nothing if they not existed in God as the pure Being and Beauty. To be able to see this, you need a new way of seeing and Augustine regrets that he has experienced this so late.

You called me and cried loud to me…

It reflects the insight that all his search for long time would have been vain if God not at a certain moment had sought him and tempted him with his Beauty.

Here again sensory images are used to express a spiritual experience. It reminds the passage in chapter 8, in which Augustine describes how he experiences his God, when he talks about a light, a sound, a smell, a food, an embrace of my inner man. It is a new spiritual perception, which exposes the old way of seeing and hearing as blindness and deafness.

Another question is whether this form of spiritual sensibility which Augustine has discovered does influence inversely the ordinary way you use your senses. I think of chapter 10, where the question is posed why the beauty of the universe, does not speak to everyone the same language. The answer is that only they can fully understand that language, if they check it to their inner truth. This suggests that a spiritual insight immediately affects the way one perceives the world outside.

And I burn with longing for your peace ...

As mentioned earlier, God is here identified with peace. It is the peace for which elsewhere in the Confessions, the restless heart is searching: to rest in God. Illustrative is the passage from Chapter 2, where Augustinus is confessing:

And now my groaning is witness that I find no peace in myself, you are my radiant light, my peace, my love and my desire. I'm ashamed of myself, and reject myself, and choose you. And I can find only peace with myself and with you in you .

Unrest, discontent, displeasure form in Augustine’s experience the background of his desire and aspiration. This dissatisfaction is a common human experience. The remarkable point is that Augustine interprets it as an desire for God. Because he is feeling that this deficiency concerns his whole existence, he opts totally for God who is at the origin of his existence.

On the other hand, it is not given that this peace in God is complete. God is for him a certainty.Therefore he finds rest in God. But this peace is an partial and incomplete one. The next two chapters explain this.

 Chapter 39

When  at last I will be joined with you with all my being, there will be for me no more hardship and pain. And my life will be the true life, entirely full of you. You lift up all those who are full of you. But because I am still not entirely full of you, I am a burden to myself.

The joys in my life, over which I should have sorrow, struggle with the sorrows, over which I should have joy. And which side will gain the victory, I do not know.

Have mercy on me, Lord, in my misery.

My sorrows that are evil struggle with joys that are good. And which side will gain the victory, I do not know.

Have mercy on me, Lord, in my misery.

See, I do not hide my wounds from you. You are the physician I am sick. You are merciful, I need your mercy. Is not human life on earth a trial?¹

For who longs for misery and trouble? You command us to endure them, not to love them. No man loves what he must endure, even though he likes that he is able to endure. And though he is happy that he can endure, yet he would prefer that he had nothing to endure.

In adversity I desire prosperity and when I live in prosperity, I fear adversity. Is there any middle between both states, where the human life is not a trial?

Miserable is the prosperity of this world, not once but twice: because of fear of adversity and the fear that happiness will not last.

Miserable is the adversity of this world, not once or twice, but three times, because of the constant desire for prosperity, the harshness of the adversity and the threat that our endurance may break.

Is the human life on earth not one long, unbroken period of trial?

¹ Job. 7:1

 Commentary

But because I am still not entirely full of you...

This chapter announces already the turn to the second part of the Tenth Book. There Augustine describes in more detail how far he is advanced in his aspiration to live with God. In this second part he discusses to what extent he made progress in restraining his sensual desires. And although it is clear that he has found God, that does not mean that he is entirely full of God. On the contrary, he depicts himself as wretched, wounded, subject to doubts and inner struggles.

He starts by referring to a ideal heavenly situation, in which he will be wholly united with God. It is a mystical union, of which he occasionally in his life had the experience by the ascent which he has described in the previous chapters. To touch God where he can be touched.

 But after this temporary ascent comes the fall back into ordinary life. In this chapter he comes back to his actual situation. The way he portrays life after the overwhelming light he has experienced is darkly colored. Here too, a certain rhetorical contrast plays a role. Opposed to the experience of perfect happiness, all earthly experience is relative and colored by transiency.

Is the human life on earth not one long, unbroken period of trial? …

This reference to the book of Job is a rhetorical question to which the reader cannot do otherwise than agree, especially when so many arguments support the proposition. Yet we are not used to speak of life in that negative sense, because it appears to us as a very pessimistic world view. Rather we would stress that there is much to enjoy in this life so that you can hardly call it a trial.

Yet, from a philosophical point of view, you can have little objection to this negative description of human existence. Life in itself has no clear meaning nor direction. It is transient and doomed to death. The conclusion is as pessimistic as we find in Augustine’s description. The difference is that Augustine sees this life in another perspective. Death is not the end. Life is seen as a passage, a journey to a timeless union with God. This destination gives meaning and direction to a life which is senseless in itself.

I try to explain why Augustine put such an emphasis on life as a trial. Perhaps because it is the only and final meaning of what we endure in life. When life is a journey, adversities have to be endured to reach the homeland, the union with God Augustine mentions in the beginning of this chapter. This gives a moral sense to the word trial. We are in an certain way tested if we are ready for this final destination.

 Chapter 40

There is no hope for me except in your great mercy. Give me what you command and command me what you will.
You ask us to control our sensory desires. A certain writer has said: When I knew that nobody can control himself except by God’s gift, it was wisdom to recognize whence this gift came.¹
It is indeed by continence, that we are gathered and brought back to the unity, from which we floated away by losing ourselves in multiplicity.

He loves you less, who besides you loves something else that he does not love for your sake.

Love who always burns and never dies
Love, my God, set me on fire.
You command me to be continent.
Give me what you command
And command me what you will.
¹ Wisd. 8,21

Commentary

You ask us to control our bodily desires…

Augustine asks God for continentia. I interpret it as self-control. It concerns the ability to master the bodily pleasures in favor of the spiritual pleasures that are found in God. You could also interpret it as moderation or temperance. This corresponds to the classical ideal of being moderate and keeping the right balance. It is also the wisdom of never too much.

Continentia has here not necessarily the meaning of abstinence. That should be the case, if any physical pleasure should be considered as evil and undesirable. The devotion to God asks therefore no total abstinence from every bodily pleasure, but moderation.

Still, Augustine meant to abstain entirely in one aspect It concerns sexual intercourse, even within marriage.

In the next chapter, he formulates it as follows:

You asked me not to commit fornication, and though you did not permit me to marry, you suggested me something better. And thanks to your grace, I have chosen this way of life even before I became a minister of your sacrament.

This implies that Augustine did not come to his decision to abstain from any sexual contact, because of his function as a bishop and priest. His decision was already made and had a different reason.

This decision took place during the period which we call his conversion. In this Book, Chapter 8 we find it expressed in his declaration of love: Your word pierced my heart and from that moment I got in love with you. This dedication turns out to be so radical that a relationship with a woman is no longer an option.

Elsewhere in the Confessions Augustine confesses that he is attracted to this ideal of total dedication which in many Christian communities was pursued. And although addicted to sexual pleasure, he is more and more tempted by the ideal of sexual continence. In this inner conflict appears to him Lady Continence:

From the direction I had turned my face, but was trembling to go, appeared the chaste beauty of Continence ., in her serene and modest joy, and she allured me decently to come closer and hesitate no longer. She stretched out her gentle hands to welcome and embrace me. And she showed countless examples for me to follow. Among them were many boys and girls, many young adults and people of all ages, honorable widows and elderly women who were still virgins. And between them all was Continence herself, not barren, but a fruitful mother of children, born in joy of You, Lord, her husband. (VIII,27)

You could say that the best cure for an addiction is a total abstinence. But this is more. It is the turn to a new ideal. When Augustine mentions that God suggested him something better than marriage, it must have been the choice of another marriage.

and though you did not permit me to marry, you suggested me something better…

What is to Augustine better than marriage? It can be nothing else than another marriage, a mystical marriage, an immediate union with God, which in this chapters is sought and found. From the beginning it is clear that this is the union of God with the soul, the anima, which is imagined as an embrace that will never end. (Chapter 8) .

 

Conclusion

The circle is complete. The end turns back to thr first chapter of this book. The whole of this chapters confirm that Augustine's desire to know God is in fact the desire to love him totally. To know God appears to be to confess God. That means that the soul wants God as a partner, ready for Him without spot or wrinkle. (Chapter1)

Hence this knowing of God is not so much a matter of the brain, but more of the heart. It is the desire to be totally fulfilled by the divine Being.

In order to know God you have to love him and in order to love him you have to know him. Both movements are here present.

The separation that Pascal has created between the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the God of philosophers and scholars turns out to be not applicable.

You can call this distinction an anachronism, since it dates from a time when philosophy was already detached from theology. It is from the time that theology had such a limited conception of the divine revelation that philosophy and other forms of human knowledge and experience became second handed. But this was not the case in Augustine’s days.

Augustine integrates here the Christian faith in the Neo-Platonist philosophy of his time. For him, philosophy and theology, natural and supernatural knowledge, were not distinct areas, so this disastrous distinction should be ever made. For without this basic human knowledge and experience any faith would float in the air.

God is not only the God of the Bible, but also the God of the philosophers, who, like the neo-Platonic philosophers, seek Truth and Beauty. Hence Augustine calls God preferably Beauty. Beauty is even more than Truth a reality that affects the heart.

Although Augustine in this book directs his goal for knowing God inwards, he excludes in any way the knowledge of God we can experience from the outside world. There is an interaction. The whole universe speaks of God as the creator. Even here the world is seen under the aspect of beauty. The things speak the language of their beauty (Chapter10).

When not everyone sees it, it is because they lost this attention by their occupation with material matters. This attention should come from within, from the human capacity to judge. The material world can never be the supreme good. All matter is ephemeral and partial. Therefore, God is a reality of the soul which is spiritual.

Augustine seeks God in that part of the soul that transcends the animal level. Therefore, the concept of memory (memoria) has to be understand here more broadly. It's not just the memory of what happened in the past, but it includes the entire human consciousness.

In that context, he finds in memory the universal notion of happiness that is innate in every man. Although not everyone has the same notion of what happiness is, this happiness must ultimately be the total fulfillment in the Divine Being.

This notion of the total Being is an knowledge from the negative, from the permanent feeling of something missing, while one finds in nothing totally satisfaction. This awareness of what is missing gives a certain intuition of his total fulfillment.

For Augustine, this is not a purely rational proof, but an inner certainty: Without any doubt and with great certainty, do I know that I love you, Lord. With your word you pierced my heart and I love you since. (Chapter8)

This complete knowledge of the divine being is a goal, not a reality. Repeatedly is stated that this divine reality can only be seen in images and puzzles as in a blurry mirror. To see God face to face is not what this world can offer. The human reality is for Augustine an obscure in which one walks groping. He speaks of a night that will be light like noon in the contemplation of God. (Chapter7)

After Augustine has ascended to the highest peaks of the human soul in the previous chapters, he ends up in a lower key. In chapter 39 he describes the miserable condition of earthly existence. Life on earth is a continuous trial. Not only in adversity, but also in prosperity. In both are always many reasons to worry.

Yet it is wrong to assume that according to Augustine, God cannot be known in this transitory existence. He has always in his life tried to know him. That is to say it in his own words to touch him where he can be touched. The ascent to God as described in the Tenth Book is not standing alone. It was for him a daily habit: This I frequently do. It gives me delight, and I take refuge in this pleasure from necessary business, so far as I am able to take relief. But in all those investigations which I pursue while consulting you, I can find no safe place except in you.(X, chapter 65)

But this are short moments. Soon there is the fall back in the earthly reality, like he tells in the same chapter 65:

Sometimes you lead me in a extraordinary sensation of utter sweetness, which as it would take totally hold of me, would be an experience that cannot be compared with anything in this life. But then I fall back into the things of here below with their empty self-importance. I am again absorbed by my habits and held in their grip. (X, 65)

It turns out that Augustine’s desire of knowing God is a mystical one. It is a mysticism in a philosophical way.

 

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