1. 1. 1. Reason: Look now—suppose you have discovered something. To whom will you entrust it, so that you may go on to other things?

Augustine: To memory, of course.

Reason: Is memory so great that it keeps everything you have thought out safely?

Augustine: That is hard—indeed, it cannot.

Reason: Then it must be written down. But what are you to do, since your health refuses the labor of writing? And these things ought not to be dictated, for they call for complete solitude.

Augustine: You speak the truth. And so I have no idea at all what to do.

Reason: Pray for health and for the help by which you may reach what you long for, and commit this very prayer to writing, so that you may grow more courageous through your own offspring. Then gather what you find briefly into a few short conclusions. And do not now trouble yourself to invite a crowd of readers; these things will be enough for a few of your fellow citizens.

Augustine: I will do so.

1. 1. 2. God, founder of the universe, grant me first that I may pray to you well, then that I may make myself worthy to be heard by you, and finally that you may set me free. God, through whom all things, which of themselves would not be, strive to be. God, who do not permit even that which destroys itself to perish utterly. God, who from nothing created this world, which the eyes of all perceive to be most beautiful. God, who do not make evil, and who make it so that it does not become the worst. God, who to the few who take refuge in that which truly is, show that evil is nothing. God, through whom the universe is perfect even with its baser part. God, from whom there is no discord even to the uttermost, since the worse things are in concord with the better. God, whom everything that can love loves, whether knowingly or unknowingly. God, in whom are all things, and to whom nevertheless the disgrace of no creature is disgraceful, nor does its malice harm you, nor its error lead you astray. God, who have willed that none but the pure should know the truth. God, father of truth, father of wisdom, father of true and supreme life, father of blessedness, father of the good and the beautiful, father of the light that is grasped by the mind, father of our awakening and enlightenment, father of the pledge by which we are reminded to return to you.

1. 1. 3. I call upon you, God the Truth, in whom and from whom and through whom all things are true that are true. God the Wisdom, in whom and from whom and through whom all things are wise that are wise. God, the true and supreme Life, in whom and from whom and through whom all things live that truly and supremely live. God the Blessedness, in whom and from whom and through whom all things are blessed that are blessed. God the Good and the Beautiful, in whom and from whom and through whom all things are good and beautiful that are good and beautiful. God, the light grasped by the mind, in whom and from whom and through whom all things shine intelligibly that shine intelligibly. God, whose kingdom is the whole world, which the senses do not know. God, from whose kingdom a law is copied down even into these earthly kingdoms. God, from whom to turn away is to fall, to whom to turn back is to rise again, in whom to remain is to stand firm. God, from whom to depart is to die, to whom to return is to come back to life, in whom to dwell is to live. God, whom no one loses unless deceived, whom no one seeks unless admonished, whom no one finds unless purified. God, whom to abandon is to perish, to attend to is to love, to see is to possess. God, to whom faith rouses us, hope lifts us up, charity joins us. God, through whom we conquer the enemy, I beseech you. God, whom we received that we might not perish utterly. God, by whom we are admonished to keep watch. God, through whom we distinguish good things from evil. God, through whom we flee evils and follow goods. God, through whom we do not yield to adversities. God, through whom we serve well and rule well. God, through whom we learn that things are foreign which we once thought our own, and that things are our own which we once thought foreign. God, through whom we do not cling to the baits and enticements of evils. God, through whom small things do not diminish us. God, through whom our better part is not made subject to the worse. God, through whom death is swallowed up in victory. God, who turn us back to yourself. God, who strip from us what is not, and clothe us in what is. God, who make us able to be heard. God, who unite us. God, who lead us into all truth. God, who speak to us all good things, who neither make us mad nor allow us to be made so by anyone. God, who call us back to the way. God, who lead us to the door. God, who bring it about that the door is opened to those who knock. God, who give us the bread of life. God, through whom we thirst for the drink which, once drunk, will let us thirst no more. God, who convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. God, through whom we are not moved by those who do not believe. God, through whom we condemn the error of those who think the souls of men have no merits before you. God, through whom we do not serve the weak and beggarly elements. God, who purify us and prepare us for divine rewards, come to me in your favor.

1. 1. 4. Whatever I have said, you, the one God, come to my aid—one eternal true substance, where there is no discrepancy, no confusion, no passing away, no want, no death; where there is the highest concord, the highest clarity, the highest constancy, the highest fullness, the highest life; where nothing is lacking and nothing overflows; where the one who begets and the one whom he begets are one. God, whom all things serve that serve; whom every good soul obeys; by whose laws the heavens revolve, the stars run their courses, the sun governs the day, the moon tempers the night; and by whose laws the whole world, through days by the alternation of light and night, through months by the waxing and waning of the moon, through years by the succession of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, through cycles of years by the completion of the sun's course, through the great cosmic periods by the return of the stars to their risings—keeps the great constancy of things, so far as sensible matter allows, by the orderings and recurrences of the seasons. God, by whose laws, standing fast through the ages, the unsteady motion of changeable things is not allowed to be thrown into disorder, but is always called back to a likeness of stability by the reins of the circling ages; by whose laws the soul's choice is free, and rewards to the good and punishments to the evil are apportioned by necessities fixed throughout all things. God, from whom all good things flow even down to us, by whom all evils are kept away from us. God, above whom is nothing, beyond whom is nothing, without whom is nothing. God, beneath whom is the whole, in whom is the whole, with whom is the whole. You who made man to your own image and likeness, as anyone who knows himself recognizes. Hear, hear, hear me, my God, my Lord, my king, my father, my cause, my hope, my possession, my honor, my home, my homeland, my salvation, my light, my life. Hear, hear, hear me in that way of yours known to so few.

1. 1. 5. Now you alone I love, you alone I follow, you alone I seek, you alone I am ready to serve, for you alone rule justly; I long to be under your authority. Command, I beg, and order whatever you will, but heal and open my ears, that I may hear your voice. Heal and open my eyes, that I may see your bidding. Drive madness from me, that I may recognize you. Tell me where to look, that I may behold you; and I hope to do all that you command. Receive, I pray, your fugitive, Lord, most merciful Father; by now I have surely paid penalty enough, long enough have I served your enemies, whom you hold beneath your feet, long enough have I been the plaything of deceits. Receive me, your servant, fleeing from these things, for these same things received me as a stranger when I was fleeing from you. I feel that I must return to you: let your door lie open to me as I knock; teach me how one comes to you. I have nothing but will; I know nothing except that fleeting and perishable things are to be despised, and certain and eternal things sought. This I do, Father, because this alone I know; but from where one comes to you, I do not know. Suggest it to me, show it to me, supply me provisions for the road. If those who take refuge in you find you by faith, give me faith; if by virtue, virtue; if by knowledge, knowledge. Increase in me faith, increase hope, increase charity. O wonderful and singular goodness of yours!

1. 1. 6. Toward you I make my way, and from you again I ask the means by which one makes his way to you. For if you forsake us, one perishes; but you do not forsake us, for you are the highest good, whom no one has sought rightly and failed to find. And everyone has sought you rightly whom you have made to seek rightly. Make me, Father, seek you; deliver me from error; as I seek you, let nothing else meet me in your place. If I desire nothing else but you, let me find you now, I beg, Father. But if there is in me the craving for anything superfluous, cleanse me yourself, and make me fit to see you. As for the rest, concerning the health of this mortal body of mine, so long as I do not know what use it may be to me, or to those I love, I commit it to you, most wise and best Father, and I will pray for it according to what you advise for the time being. This only I ask of your most excellent mercy: that you turn me wholly to yourself, and let nothing resist me as I strive toward you, and that you command me, while I act and carry this very body, to be pure, magnanimous, just, and prudent, a perfect lover and receiver of your wisdom, and worthy of a dwelling place, and a dweller in your most blessed kingdom. Amen, amen.

1. 2. 7. Augustine: There, I have prayed to God.

Reason: What, then, do you wish to know?

Augustine: All these very things for which I have prayed.

Reason: Sum them up briefly.

Augustine: I desire to know God and the soul.

Reason: Nothing more?

Augustine: Nothing at all.

Reason: Then begin to seek. But first explain how, if God were shown to you, you could say: This is enough.

Augustine: I do not know how he must be shown to me, that I might say: This is enough. For I do not believe I know anything in the way I desire to know God.

Reason: What, then, are we to do? Do you not think you must first know how it would be enough for you to know God—so that, once you have arrived there, you seek no further?

Augustine: I do think so; but how it can be done, I do not see. For what have I ever understood that is like God, so that I could say: As I understand this, so I wish to understand God?

Reason: Since you do not yet know God, how do you know that you know nothing like God?

Augustine: Because if I knew something like God, I would surely love it; but as it is, I love nothing other than God and the soul, and I know neither of them.

Reason: Then you do not love your friends?

Augustine: How can I, loving the soul, not love them?

Reason: In that way, then, do you also love fleas and bedbugs?

Augustine: I said I love the soul, not animals.

Reason: Then either men are not your friends, or you do not love them; for every man is an animal, and you said you do not love animals.

Augustine: They are men, and I love them—not because they are animals, but because they are men; that is, because they have rational souls, which I love even in robbers. For I may love reason in anyone, while I justly hate the one who misuses what I love. And so I love my friends all the more, the more they make good use of their rational soul, or at least the more they desire to use it well.

1. 3. 8. Reason: I accept that. But still, if someone said to you, I will make you know God as you know Alypius, would you not give thanks and say, This is enough?

Augustine: I would indeed give thanks, but I would not say it is enough.

Reason: Why, may I ask?

Augustine: Because I do not know God even as I know Alypius, and yet I do not know Alypius well enough.

Reason: See, then, that you do not impudently wish to know God well enough, when you do not know Alypius well enough.

Augustine: That does not follow. For compared with the stars, what is cheaper than my dinner? And yet I do not know what I shall dine on tomorrow; but I profess, without impudence, to know under what sign the moon will be.

Reason: So it is enough for you to know God as you know under what sign the moon will run tomorrow?

Augustine: It is not enough; for this I confirm by the senses. But I do not know whether God, or some hidden cause of nature, may suddenly change the order and course of the moon; and if that happened, all that I had presumed would be false.

Reason: And do you believe this can happen?

Augustine: I do not believe it. But I am asking what I know, not what I believe. Now everything we know we may perhaps rightly be said also to believe; but not everything we believe do we also know.

Reason: In this matter, then, you reject all testimony of the senses?

Augustine: I reject it utterly.

Reason: Well? That friend of yours whom you said you still do not know—do you wish to know him by the senses, or by the understanding?

Augustine: What I know of him by the senses—if indeed anything is known by the senses—is both cheap and sufficient; but that part by which he is my friend, that is, his very mind, I desire to grasp by the understanding.

Reason: Can it be known otherwise?

Augustine: In no way.

Reason: Then do you dare to say that your friend, and a very close one, is unknown to you?

Augustine: Why should I not dare? For I judge that law of friendship most just which prescribes that one love a friend neither less nor more than oneself. And so, since I do not know myself, what insult can be felt by the one whom I have called unknown to me—especially since, as I believe, he does not even know himself?

Reason: If, then, the things you wish to know are of the kind that the understanding grasps, when I said that you wished impudently to know God while not knowing Alypius, you ought not to have offered me your dinner and the moon as a parallel, if these, as you said, pertain to the senses.

1. 4. 9. Augustine: It does not follow that, if what they said is true, they must also have known it. For many speak copiously of what they do not know—just as I myself said I desire to know all that I prayed for, which I would not desire if I already knew it. So could I therefore not speak those things? For I spoke not what I grasped by understanding, but what, gathered from here and there, I committed to memory, and to which I gave as much trust as I could; but to know is something else.

Reason: Tell me, please—do you at least know, in the discipline of geometry, what a line is? Augustine: That I plainly know.

Reason: And in making this claim you do not fear the Academics?

Augustine: Not at all. For they did not want the wise man to err; but I am not wise. And so I do not yet fear to profess knowledge of the things I know. And if, as I desire, I reach wisdom, I will do what it advises.

Reason: I do not object. But, as I had begun to ask: just as you know a line, do you also know the ball they call a sphere?

Augustine: I do.

Reason: Do you know both equally, or one more or less than the other?

Augustine: Equally indeed. For in neither am I deceived.

Reason: These things—did you perceive them by the senses, or by the understanding?

Augustine: Indeed, in this matter I have used the senses as one uses a ship. For once they carried me to the place I was making for, and I dismissed them, and standing as if on solid ground I began to turn these things over in thought, my footsteps wavered for a long time. So it seems to me that one could sail on dry land sooner than perceive geometry by the senses—although at first they seem to help learners somewhat.

Reason: Then you do not hesitate to call the knowledge of these things, if you have any, a science?

Augustine: I do not—unless the Stoics forbid it, who grant science to none but the wise man. I do not deny that I have a perception of these things, which they concede even to folly; but I do not greatly fear these men either. I hold for certain as science the things you have asked about. Go on now; let me see where you are aiming with these questions.

Reason: Do not hurry; we are at leisure. Only attend closely, lest you concede anything rashly. I am eager to make you rejoice over things in which you fear no mishap—and do you bid me rush, as though it were a trifling matter?

Augustine: May God so grant, as you say. So question by your own judgment, and rebuke me more severely if I do anything of the sort again.

1. 4. 10. Reason: Is it clear to you, then, that a line can in no way be split lengthwise into two lines?

Augustine: It is clear.

Reason: What about crosswise?

Augustine: How else, except that it can be cut infinitely?

Reason: And is it equally clear to you that a sphere, cut from the middle on any one side, cannot have even two equal circles?

Augustine: Equally clear in every way.

Reason: What about a line and a sphere? Do they seem to you to be some one thing, or do they differ from each other in any way?

Augustine: Who would not see that they differ greatly?

Reason: But if you know the one as well as the other, and yet, as you admit, they differ greatly from each other, then is there a single, undifferentiated knowledge of differing things?

Augustine: Who has denied it?

Reason: You did, a little while ago. For when I asked you how you wished to know God, so that you could say, This is enough, you answered that you could not explain it, because you had grasped nothing in the way you desire to grasp God—for you knew nothing like God. So what now? Are a line and a sphere alike?

Augustine: Who would say that?

Reason: But I had asked not what you know that is like God, but what you know in the way you desire to know God. For you know a line as you know a sphere, though a line is not as a sphere is. Therefore answer: is it enough for you to know God as you know that geometric ball—that is, to have no doubt about God, as you have none about it?

1. 5. 11. Augustine: I beg you—however vehemently you press and convict me, I still do not dare to say that I wish to know God as I know these things. For not only the things, but the very knowledge of them, seems to me dissimilar. First, because a line and a ball do not differ so much that one discipline does not contain the knowledge of them both; but no geometer has professed to teach God. Next, if the knowledge of God and of these things were equal, I would rejoice as much that I know them as I presume I shall rejoice when God is known. But as it is, I despise these things very much in comparison with him, so that sometimes it seems to me that, if I understand him, and see him in the only way he can be seen, all these things will perish from my notice—since now, for love of him, they scarcely come to mind.

Reason: Granted that you will rejoice more, and much more, when God is known than over these things—still, not because of a dissimilarity in the understanding of them. Unless perhaps you behold the earth with one kind of sight and the clear sky with another, although the sight of the latter delights you much more than that of the former. But if the eyes are not deceived, I believe that, if you were asked whether it is as certain to you that you see the earth as that you see the sky, you would have to answer that it is just as certain—even though you take joy not so much in the beauty and splendor of the earth as in that of the sky.

Augustine: This comparison moves me, I confess, and I am led to agree that the true and certain objects of the disciplines differ from the intelligible majesty of God as much as the earth, in its own kind, differs from the sky.

1. 6. 12. Reason: You are rightly moved. For the reason that speaks with you promises to show God to your mind as the sun is shown to the eyes. For the senses of the soul are, as it were, the mind's own eyes; and whatever is most certain in the disciplines is like those things which are lit up by the sun so that they can be seen—such as the earth and all earthly things. But God himself is the one who gives the light. And I, reason, am in minds as sight is in the eyes. For to have eyes is not the same as to look, nor is to look the same as to see. So the soul needs three things: to have eyes it can now use well, to look, and to see. The eye of the soul is the mind purified of every stain of the body—that is, already withdrawn and cleansed from desires for mortal things—which nothing else affords it first but faith. For what cannot yet be shown to it while it is stained with vices and sick—since it cannot see unless it is healthy—if it does not believe that otherwise it will not see, it takes no pains for its own health. But what if it does believe that the matter is as it is said, and that it will see if it can see, yet despairs of being able to be healed? Does it not utterly cast itself down and despise itself, and refuse to obey the physician's instructions?

Augustine: It is altogether so, especially because the disease must feel those instructions to be harsh.

Reason: Therefore hope must be added to faith.

Augustine: So I believe.

Reason: What if it both believes that all is as it is said, and hopes that it can be healed, yet does not love the very light that is promised, does not desire it, and judges that it ought meanwhile to be content with its own darkness, which by habit has become pleasant? Does it not reject that physician nonetheless?

Augustine: It is altogether so.

Reason: Therefore a third thing, charity, is necessary.

Augustine: Nothing at all is so necessary.

Reason: Without these three, then, no soul is healed so as to be able to see its God—that is, to understand him.

1. 6. 13. Augustine: So as to look at him.

Reason: The soul's looking is reason; but since it does not follow that everyone who looks sees, a right and perfect looking—that is, one which seeing follows—is called virtue; for virtue is reason either right or perfect. But this looking itself, even with eyes now healthy, cannot turn toward the light unless those three remain: faith, by which it believes that the matter is such that, once seen, it makes one blessed; hope, by which, having looked well, it presumes that it will see; charity, by which it desires to see and to enjoy fully. Then upon the looking follows the vision of God itself, which is the end of the looking—not that the looking no longer exists, but that it has nothing further to direct itself toward. And this is truly perfect virtue: reason reaching its end, which the blessed life accompanies. The vision itself is that understanding which is in the soul, made up of one who understands and that which is understood; just as, in the eyes, what is called seeing consists of the sense itself and what is sensed, and if either is taken away, nothing can be seen.

1. 7. 14. Therefore, when it has fallen to the soul to see God—that is, to understand God—let us see whether those three are still necessary to it. Why should faith be necessary, when it already sees? Hope likewise, since it already holds. But to charity not only will nothing be taken away; very much will even be added. For when the soul has seen that singular and true beauty, it will love it more; and unless it fixes its eye on it with immense love, and never anywhere turns from looking, it will not be able to remain in that most blessed vision. But while the soul is in this body, even if it sees—that is, understands—God most fully, nevertheless, because the senses of the body also do their own work, which, though of no avail to deceive, is yet not idle, there can still be said to be a faith by which they are resisted and that other thing is believed to be true instead. Likewise, because in this life, though the soul is already blessed in understanding God, it nevertheless endures many troubles of the body, it must hope that after death all these discomforts will be no more. So neither does hope, while it is in this life, forsake the soul. But when, after this life, the soul has gathered itself wholly into God, charity remains, by which it is held there. For it cannot be said to have faith that those things are true, when it is troubled by no interruption of falsehoods; nor does anything remain for it to hope, since it possesses the whole in security. Three things, then, pertain to the soul: that it be healthy, that it look, that it see. But the other three—faith, hope, and charity—are always necessary for the first and second of those; for the third, all three are necessary in this life, but after this life, charity alone.

1. 8. 15. Augustine: Probable indeed; and I have risen to greater hope, which I must confess. For apart from those two things about the line and the ball, you have said nothing that I would dare to say I know.

Reason: That is no wonder; for nothing has yet been so set out that perception of it should be demanded of you.

1. 9. 16. Augustine: You must see to that, if you can look a little into yourself or into me; I will answer the questioner, if I have any sense of the matter.

Reason: Do you love anything besides the knowledge of yourself and of God?

Augustine: I could answer that I love nothing more, judging by the feeling I now have; but I answer more safely that I do not know. For it has often happened to me that, when I believed I was moved by nothing else, something would nevertheless come to mind that stung me quite differently than I had presumed. Likewise, often something falling into my thought has not pricked me, yet when it actually came, it disturbed me more than I had thought. But just now it seems to me that I can be moved by only three things: the fear of losing those I love, the fear of pain, the fear of death.

Reason: So you love both the life of your dearest ones with you, and your own good health, and your own life in this body; for otherwise you would not fear the loss of them.

Augustine: I confess it is so.

Reason: Then the fact that not all your friends are with you now, and that your health is less than whole, causes some distress in your mind; for I see that this too follows.

Augustine: You see rightly; I cannot deny it.

Reason: What if you suddenly felt and confirmed that you were sound in body, and saw all whom you love enjoying ample leisure together with you in harmony—would you not be moved to some exultation of joy?

Augustine: Truly, to some; indeed, if these things especially came about suddenly, as you say, how could I contain myself? How would I even be permitted to disguise that kind of joy?

Reason: Then you are still shaken by all the diseases and disturbances of the mind. So what impudence is it in such eyes to wish to see that sun?

Augustine: You have drawn your conclusion as though I had no sense at all of how far my health has advanced, or what plagues have withdrawn, and how much remains. Grant me that much.

1. 10. 17. Reason: Do you not see that these bodily eyes, even when healthy, are often struck back by the light of that sun and turned away, and flee to their own darkness? You think about how far you have advanced; you do not think about what you wish to see. And yet I will sift this very thing with you: what do you think we have cast off? Do you desire no riches?

Augustine: This indeed is not new to me now. For though I am in my thirty-third year, it is nearly fourteen years since I ceased to desire such things, nor have I thought of anything in them, if by chance they were offered, beyond necessary sustenance and a liberal use. A single book of Cicero's readily persuaded me that riches are by no means to be sought, but, if they come, are to be administered most wisely and carefully.

Reason: What of honors?

Augustine: I confess, I ceased to desire them only just now, almost in these very days.

Reason: What of a wife? Does it not sometimes delight you—a beautiful, chaste, compliant, educated woman, or one you could easily educate yourself, bringing too (since you despise riches) only so much dowry as would make her in no way burdensome to your leisure—especially if you could hope, and be certain, that you would suffer no trouble from her?

Augustine: However much you wish to paint her and heap her with all good things, I have resolved that there is nothing I must flee so much as the marriage bed. I feel there is nothing that casts down a manly mind from its citadel more than feminine charms and that contact of bodies without which a wife cannot be had. And so, if it pertains to the duty of the wise man (which I have not yet ascertained) to give care to children, then whoever has intercourse only for this reason may seem to me admirable, but by no means to be imitated; for to attempt this is more dangerous than to succeed at it is fortunate. Therefore, justly and usefully enough, I believe, for the freedom of my soul, I have commanded myself not to desire, not to seek, not to take a wife.

Reason: I am not now asking what you have resolved, but whether you still struggle, or have already conquered lust itself. For it is the health of your eyes that is at issue.

Augustine: I seek nothing of this kind at all, I desire nothing; I even recall such things with horror and disdain. What more do you want? And this good grows in me day by day; for the more the hope grows of seeing that beauty for which I ardently burn, the more all my love and pleasure are turned toward it.

Reason: What of the pleasantness of food? How much care does it cost you?

Augustine: The things I have resolved not to eat do not move me at all. As for those I have not cut off, I confess I am delighted by them when present, yet in such a way that they may be taken away, seen or tasted, without any disturbance of mind. And when they are altogether absent, this appetite does not dare to insert itself as a hindrance to my thoughts. But about food and drink, or baths, and the other pleasures of the body, do not question me at all; I ask of them only so much as can be of service to my health.

1. 11. 18. Reason: You have made much progress; yet the things that remain hinder very greatly your seeing that light. But I am working at something that seems to me easy to show: either that nothing remains for us to subdue, or that we have made no progress at all, and that the rot of all those things we believe pruned away still remains. For I ask you: if you were persuaded that you could not live in the pursuit of wisdom together with many dear ones unless some ample family estate could support your needs, would you not desire and wish for riches?

Augustine: I agree.

Reason: What if this also appeared: that you would persuade many of wisdom if authority accrued to you from honor, and that these same friends of yours could not set a limit to their desires and turn themselves wholly to seeking God unless they too were honored, and that this could not happen except through your honors and rank? Would not these things too have to be desired, and great effort made for them to come about?

Augustine: It is as you say.

Reason: I will not dispute about a wife now; for perhaps no such necessity for marrying can arise—although, if it were certain that all whom you desire to live with at leisure in one place could be supported by her ample patrimony, she herself harmoniously allowing it, especially if she were of such noble birth that through her you could easily attain those honors you have already granted to be necessary, I do not know whether it would pertain to your duty to despise these things.

Augustine: When would I dare to hope for such a thing?

1. 11. 19. Reason: You say this as though I were now asking what you hope for. I do not ask what does not delight you when refused, but what delights you when offered. For it is one thing for a plague to be drained out, another for it to be lulled to sleep. To this purpose applies what was said by certain learned men: that all fools are mad in the same way that all mire stinks—which you do not always perceive, but only when you stir it. It makes a great difference whether desire is overwhelmed by the mind's despair or driven out by health.

Augustine: Although I cannot answer you, you will nevertheless never persuade me to judge that, in this disposition of mind in which I now feel myself to be, I have made no progress.

Reason: I believe it seems so to you because, although you could wish for these things, they would nevertheless seem worth seeking not for their own sake but for the sake of something else.

Augustine: That is what I was wishing to say. For when I desired riches, I desired them in order to be rich; and those very honors, whose desire I just answered I had subdued, I wanted because I was delighted by some sheen of theirs; and in a wife I always looked to nothing else, when I looked, but what pleasure she would bring me along with good repute. Then there was in me a true desire for these things; now I utterly disdain them all. But if there is no passage given me to the things I desire except through these, I do not seek them as things to be embraced, but accept them as things to be endured.

Reason: Excellent altogether; for I too judge that nothing should be called a desire for things which are sought for the sake of something else.

1. 12. 20. Augustine: My wish is that we may seek our souls and God together in harmony. For thus, whoever first attains discovery easily leads the rest to it without labor.

Reason: What if they are unwilling to seek these things?

Augustine: I will persuade them to be willing.

Reason: What if you cannot—because they think they have already found, or that these things cannot be found, or because they are hindered by cares and desire for other things?

Augustine: I will keep them, and they me, as best we can.

Reason: What if their very presence hinders you from your inquiry? Will you not labor and wish, if they cannot be otherwise, that they not be with you rather than be so?

Augustine: I confess it is as you say.

Reason: So you desire their life or presence not for its own sake, but for the sake of finding wisdom?

Augustine: I agree completely.

Reason: Well? Your own life—if it were certain to you that it was a hindrance to grasping wisdom, would you wish it to remain?

Augustine: I would flee it altogether.

Reason: Well? If you were taught that you could reach wisdom as well after leaving this body as while set within it, would you care whether you enjoyed what you love here or in another life?

Augustine: If I understood that I would meet nothing worse to drive me back from where I have advanced, I would not care.

Reason: So now you fear to die for this reason: lest you be entangled in some worse evil by which divine knowledge would be taken from you.

Augustine: I fear not only lest it be taken away, if perhaps I have grasped something, but also lest the access be closed off to me to those things I gape to grasp—though I think that what I already hold will remain with me.

Reason: So you wish this life too to remain not for its own sake, but for the sake of wisdom.

Augustine: It is so.

1. 12. 21. Reason: There remains bodily pain, which perhaps moves you by its own force.

Augustine: And this too I dread vehemently for no other reason than that it hinders me from seeking. For although these days I have been tortured by a most acute toothache, I was not indeed prevented from turning over in mind the things I had perhaps already learned; but I was utterly hindered from learning, for which I need the whole attention of my mind. Still, it seemed to me that if that brilliance of truth opened itself to my mind, I would either not feel that pain, or surely endure it as nothing. But since, even though I have sometimes borne nothing greater, yet often, thinking how much heavier pains could befall, I am driven at times to agree with Cornelius Celsus, who says that the highest good is wisdom and the highest evil bodily pain. Nor does his reasoning seem to me absurd. For since, he says, we are composed of two parts, namely mind and body, of which the former, the mind, is the better part, while the body is the worse, the highest good is the best of the better part, and the highest evil the worst of the worse; and the best in the mind is wisdom, while the worst in the body is pain. Therefore that man's highest good is to be wise, and his highest evil to feel pain—which is concluded, I think, without any falsity.

Reason: We will look at these things later. For perhaps the very wisdom we are striving to reach will persuade us otherwise. But if it shows this to be true, we will hold this opinion about the highest good and the highest evil without doubt.

1. 13. 22. Augustine: Why, then, am I still held in suspense, wretch that I am, and put off by a pitiable torment? I have surely already shown that I love nothing else, since what is not loved for its own sake is not loved. But I love wisdom alone for its own sake; the rest—life, rest, friends—I wish present to me, or fear absent, for its sake. What limit can there be to love of that beauty, in which I not only do not envy others, but even seek very many to long for it with me, to gape for it with me, to hold it with me, and to enjoy it fully with me—the more my friends, the more the beloved will be shared among us?

1. 13. 23. Reason: Such, indeed, the lovers of wisdom ought to be. Such does she seek, whose union is truly chaste and without any defilement. But one does not reach her by a single road. Each one grasps that singular and most true good according to his own health and strength. It is a certain light, ineffable and incomprehensible, of minds. Let this common light teach us, as far as it can, how that one stands. For there are some eyes so healthy and vigorous that, as soon as they are opened, they turn to the sun itself without any trembling. To these, in a way, the light itself is health, and they need no teacher, but perhaps only an admonition. For these, to believe, to hope, to love is enough. But others are struck by the very brilliance they vehemently desire to see, and, not seeing it, often return to darkness with delight. To these it is dangerous—though they may now rightly be called healthy—to wish to show what they are not yet strong enough to see. So these must first be exercised, and their love usefully deferred and nourished. First, certain things must be shown them that do not shine of themselves but can be seen by light, such as a garment, or a wall, or some such thing. Then something that shines more beautifully, not indeed of itself but by that light, such as gold, silver, and the like, yet not so radiant as to hurt the eyes. Then perhaps this earthly fire must be shown modestly, then the stars, then the moon, then the glow of dawn, and the brightness of the whitening sky. Amid these, whether sooner or later, whether through the whole order or with some steps passed over, each one, growing accustomed according to his own health, will without trembling and with great pleasure see the sun. Something like this the best teachers do for those most zealous for wisdom who see it now, though not yet sharply. For to reach it by a certain order is the office of good instruction, but to reach it without order is a matter of scarcely credible good fortune. But for today we have written enough, I think; we must spare your health.

1. 14. 24. Augustine: Give me, I beg, now if you can, that order. Lead me, go where you will, through what you will, how you will. Command anything hard, anything arduous, provided it be in my power, by which I do not doubt I shall reach where I desire.

Reason: There is one thing I can charge you with; I know nothing more. These sensible things are to be utterly fled, and great care must be taken, while we act this body, that our wings be not entangled by any of their birdlime—wings that we need whole and perfect to fly up from this darkness to that light, which does not deign even to show itself to those shut in this cage, unless they are such that, with the cage broken or dissolved, they can escape into their own native air. And so, when you are such that nothing earthly delights you at all, then—believe me—at that very moment, at that very point of time, you will see what you desire.

Augustine: When will that be, I beg you? For I do not think these things can come into utter contempt for me unless I have seen that in comparison with which they grow base.

1. 14. 25. Reason: In this way this bodily eye too could say: I will not love darkness once I have seen the sun. For this also seems somehow to pertain to the order, though it is far otherwise. The eye loves darkness because it is not healthy; but it cannot see the sun unless it is healthy. And in this the mind is often deceived, so that it thinks itself healthy and boasts of it; and because it does not yet see, it complains as if rightly. But that beauty knows when to show itself. For it performs the office of physician, and understands better who are healthy than do those very ones who are being healed. As for us, we seem to ourselves to see as far as we have emerged; but how deeply we were sunk, and how far we had advanced, we are permitted neither to think nor to feel, and in comparison with a graver disease we believe ourselves healthy. Do you not see how, as if free of care, we declared yesterday that no plague now held us, and that we love nothing but wisdom, and seek or wish the rest only for its sake? How filthy, how foul, how detestable, how horrible the embrace of a woman seemed to you when we inquired among ourselves about the desire for a wife! Surely this very night, lying awake, when we again took up the same matters with ourselves, you felt how differently than you had presumed those imagined caresses and that bitter sweetness titillated you—far, far less than is usual, yet again far otherwise than you had thought; so that thus that most secret physician showed you both things: from what your cure has freed you, and what remains to be cured.

1. 14. 26. Augustine: Be silent, I beseech you, be silent. Why do you torture me? Why do you dig so deep and descend so far? Now I cannot keep from weeping; now I promise nothing, presume nothing—do not question me about these things. Surely you say that he himself, whom I burn to see, knows when I am healthy; let him do what pleases him. When it pleases him, let him show himself; now I commit myself wholly to his mercy and care. Once for all I have believed of him that he does not cease to lift up those so disposed toward him. I will declare nothing about my own health until I have seen that beauty.

Reason: Do nothing else at all. But now restrain yourself from tears, and gird up your mind. You have wept very much, and this chest of yours takes it gravely.

Augustine: You wish to set a limit to my tears, when I see no limit to my misery? Or do you bid me consider the health of my body, when I myself am wasted away with consumption? But I beg you, if you have any power over me, to try to lead me by some shortcuts, so that at least by some nearness of that light—which, if I have made any progress, I can now bear—my eyes may be loath to turn back to those shadows I have left; if indeed they should be called left, which still dare to flatter my blindness.

1. 15. 27. Reason: Let us conclude this first volume, if you please, so that in the second we may take up some path that proves convenient. For this disposition of yours must not cease from moderate exercise. Augustine: I will not allow this little book to be concluded at all unless you open to me some little nearness of the light, to which I may be intent.

Reason: That physician indulges you. For some brilliance—I know not what—invites and touches me as to where I should lead you. So receive it attentively.

Augustine: Lead, I beg you, and carry me off where you will.

Reason: You say, surely, that you wish to know the soul and God?

Augustine: This is my whole business.

Reason: Nothing more?

Augustine: Nothing at all.

Reason: What? Do you not wish to grasp the truth?

Augustine: As if I could know these things except through it.

Reason: Then that very thing must first be known, through which those things can be known.

Augustine: I refuse nothing.

Reason: First, then, let us see this: since "truth" and "the true" are two words, whether two things also seem to you to be signified by these words, or one.

Augustine: They seem two things. For just as chastity is one thing and the chaste another, and many things of this kind, so I believe truth is one thing, and what is called true another.

Reason: Which of these two do you think is the more excellent?

Augustine: Truth, I think. For the chaste does not make chastity, but chastity makes the chaste; so too, if anything is true, it is true by truth.

1. 15. 28. Reason: What? When some chaste person dies, do you think chastity also dies?

Augustine: In no way.

Reason: Then, when something that is true perishes, truth does not perish.

Augustine: But how does something true perish? For I do not see it.

Reason: I am amazed that you ask this. Do we not see thousands of things perish before our eyes? Unless perhaps you think this tree is either a tree but not a true one, or surely cannot perish. For although you do not trust the senses, and could answer that you do not know at all whether it is a tree, yet you will not deny, I think, that it is a true tree, if it is a tree; for this is judged not by the senses but by the understanding. For if it is a false tree, it is not a tree; but if it is a tree, it must be true.

Augustine: I concede that.

Reason: What of the other point? Do you not concede that a tree is the kind of thing that is born and perishes?

Augustine: I cannot deny it.

Reason: It is concluded, then, that something which is true perishes.

Augustine: I do not object.

Reason: What of this? Does it not seem to you that, when true things perish, truth does not perish—just as chastity does not die when a chaste person dies?

Augustine: Now I concede this too, and I eagerly await what you are working toward.

Reason: Then attend.

Augustine: I am here.

1. 15. 29. Reason: Does this proposition seem true to you: Whatever is, is compelled to be somewhere?

Augustine: Nothing draws me so to assent.

Reason: And you confess that truth exists?

Augustine: I confess it.

Reason: Then we must ask where it is; for it is not in a place, unless perhaps you think that something other than body can be in a place, or that truth is a body.

Augustine: I think neither of these.

Reason: Where, then, do you believe it to be? For it is not nowhere, since we have granted that it is.

Augustine: If I knew where it was, perhaps I would seek nothing further.

Reason: At least where it is not, can you know?

Augustine: If you remind me, perhaps I can.

Reason: It is surely not in mortal things. For whatever is cannot remain in something if that in which it is does not remain; but that truth remains, even when true things perish, was granted a little while ago. Therefore truth is not in mortal things. But truth is, and is not nowhere. Therefore immortal things exist. Now nothing is true in which truth is not. It follows, then, that nothing is true except what is immortal. And every false tree is not a tree, and false wood is not wood, and false silver is not silver, and in general whatever is false, is not. Now everything that is not true is false. Therefore nothing is rightly said to be, except immortal things. Consider this little argument with yourself carefully, lest anything in it seem not to be conceded. For if it holds, we have nearly finished the whole business, which will perhaps appear better in another book.

1. 15. 30. Augustine: I am grateful, and these things I will handle carefully and cautiously with myself, and indeed with you, when we are in silence—if no shadows steal in upon me, and, what I greatly fear, make me delight in them.

Reason: Believe in God constantly, and commit yourself wholly to him as far as you can. Do not wish to be, as it were, your own and in your own power, but profess yourself the servant of that most merciful and most helpful Lord. For so he will not cease to lift you up to himself, and will permit nothing to happen to you except what profits you, even if you do not know it.

Augustine: I hear, I believe, and as far as I can I obey; and I most earnestly pray to him that I may be most able—unless perhaps you desire something more of me.

Reason: It is well for now; afterward you will do whatever the vision itself prescribes.

2. 1. 1. Augustine: Our work has been interrupted long enough, and love is impatient, nor is there any limit to tears unless what is loved be given to love; therefore let us take up the second book.

Reason: Let us take it up.

Augustine: Let us believe that God will be present.

Reason: Let us believe it indeed, if even this is in our power.

Augustine: He himself is our power.

Reason: So pray as briefly and as perfectly as you can.

Augustine: God, ever the same, may I know myself, may I know you. The prayer is made.

Reason: You who wish to know yourself, do you know that you exist?

Augustine: I know it.

Reason: How do you know it?

Augustine: I do not know.

Reason: Do you feel yourself to be simple or manifold?

Augustine: I do not know.

Reason: Do you know that you move?

Augustine: I do not know.

Reason: Do you know that you think?

Augustine: I know it.

Reason: Then it is true that you think.

Augustine: True.

Reason: Do you know that you are immortal?

Augustine: I do not know.

Reason: Of all these things you said you do not know, which do you prefer to know first?

Augustine: Whether I am immortal.

Reason: Then you love to live?

Augustine: I confess it.

Reason: What, when you have learned that you are immortal? Will that be enough?

Augustine: That will indeed be great, but to me too little.

Reason: Yet this which is too little—how much will you rejoice in it?

Augustine: Very much.

Reason: You will weep no more, then?

Augustine: Not at all.

Reason: What if life itself were found to be such that in it you were permitted to know nothing more than you know? Would you hold back from tears?

Augustine: On the contrary, I would weep so much that there would be no life at all.

Reason: Then you love to live not for the sake of living itself, but for the sake of knowing.

Augustine: I yield to the conclusion.

Reason: What if that very knowledge of things made you wretched?

Augustine: I do not believe that can happen in any way. But if it is so, no one can be blessed; for now I am wretched from no other source than ignorance of things. And if knowledge of things also makes one wretched, then misery is everlasting.

Reason: Now I see all that you desire. For since you believe that no one is made wretched by knowledge, from which it is probable that understanding makes one blessed; and since no one is blessed unless living, and no one lives who does not exist: you wish to exist, to live, and to understand—but to exist in order to live, and to live in order to understand. Therefore you know that you exist, you know that you live, you know that you understand. But whether these things will be forever, or none of them will be, or whether something remains forever and something perishes, or whether these can be diminished and increased while all remain—this you wish to know.

Augustine: It is so.

Reason: If, then, we prove that we shall always live, it will also follow that we shall always exist.

Augustine: It will follow.

Reason: It will remain to inquire about understanding.

2. 2. 2. Augustine: I see a most evident order, and a most brief one.

Reason: Be here now, then, so as to answer the questioner cautiously and firmly.

Augustine: I am here.

Reason: If this world will remain forever, is it true that the world will remain forever?

Augustine: Who would doubt it?

Reason: What if it will not remain? Is it not then true that the world will not remain?

Augustine: I do not resist.

Reason: What, when it has perished, if it is going to perish? Will it not then be true that the world has perished? For so long as it is not true that the world has fallen, it has not fallen; therefore it is contradictory that the world has fallen and that it is not true that the world has fallen.

Augustine: I concede this too.

Reason: What of this? Does it seem to you that anything can be true without truth being?

Augustine: In no way.

Reason: Then truth will be, even if the world perishes.

Augustine: I cannot deny it.

Reason: What if truth itself should fall? Will it not be true that truth has fallen?

Augustine: And who denies that?

Reason: But there cannot be anything true if truth is not.

Augustine: I already conceded this a little while ago.

Reason: In no way, then, will truth fall.

Augustine: Go on as you have begun, for nothing is truer than this inference.

2. 3. 3. Reason: Now I would have you answer me: does it seem to you that the soul senses, or the body?

Augustine: The soul seems to.

Reason: What? Does the understanding seem to you to pertain to the soul?

Augustine: It plainly does.

Reason: To the soul alone, or to something else?

Augustine: I see nothing besides the soul, except God, in which I would believe understanding to be.

Reason: Now let us look at this. If someone told you that this wall is not a wall but a tree, what would you think?

Augustine: Either that his sense, or mine, is deceived, or that by this name he calls a wall.

Reason: What if the appearance of a tree appears to him in it, and that of a wall to you? Could not both be true?

Augustine: In no way; because one and the same thing cannot be both a tree and a wall. For although different things may appear to each of us, it is necessary that one of us undergo a false imagining.

Reason: What if it is neither a wall nor a tree, and you are both deceived?

Augustine: That indeed can happen.

Reason: This one case, then, you had passed over above.

Augustine: I confess it.

Reason: What if you recognize that something appears to you other than it is? Are you then deceived?

Augustine: No.

Reason: It can happen, then, that what appears is false, and yet the one to whom it appears is not deceived.

Augustine: It can.

Reason: We must confess, then, that it is not the one who sees false things who is deceived, but the one who assents to false things.

Augustine: We must plainly confess it.

Reason: What about the false itself? Why is it false?

Augustine: Because it is otherwise than it appears.

Reason: If, then, there are none to whom it may appear, there is nothing false.

Augustine: It follows.

Reason: Then falsity is not in things, but in the sense; and the one who does not assent to false things is not deceived. It is concluded that we are one thing and the sense another; since, when it is deceived, we can not be deceived.

Augustine: I have nothing to gainsay.

Reason: But when the soul is deceived, do you dare to say there is nothing false?

Augustine: How could I dare that?

Reason: But there is no sense without soul, no falsity without sense. Either the soul, then, works falsity, or it cooperates with it.

Augustine: The preceding points drag me to consent.

2. 3. 4. Reason: Now answer this: does it seem possible that there could ever be a time when falsity does not exist?

Augustine: How can this seem so to me, when the difficulty of finding truth is so great that it would be more absurd to say falsity cannot exist than to say truth cannot?

Reason: Do you think that one who does not live can sense?

Augustine: It cannot be.

Reason: It is concluded that the soul lives forever.

Augustine: You drive me too quickly into joy; step by step, I beg.

Reason: And yet, if those things were rightly conceded, I see no room for doubt in this matter.

Augustine: It is too quick, I say. So I am more easily led to think that I conceded something rashly than that I should now grow secure about the immortality of the soul. Nevertheless, unfold this conclusion, and show how it has been brought about.

Reason: You said that falsity cannot be without sense, and that it cannot not be. Therefore there is always sense. But there is no sense without soul; therefore the soul is everlasting. Nor has it the power to sense unless it lives. Therefore the soul always lives.

2. 4. 5. Augustine: O dagger of lead! For you could conclude that man is immortal, if I had granted you that this world could never be without man, and that this world is everlasting.

Reason: You are watching well. But still it is no small thing that we have brought about—that the nature of things cannot be without soul—unless perhaps there will at some time be no falsity in the nature of things.

Augustine: I confess that this is indeed a consequence. But now I think we must deliberate further, whether the points conceded above do not wobble. For I see that no small step has been made toward the immortality of the soul.

Reason: Have you considered well enough that you have given nothing rashly?

Augustine: Well enough indeed, but I see nothing for which to charge myself with rashness.

Reason: Then it is concluded that the nature of things cannot be without a living soul.

Augustine: Concluded so far as this: that some souls can be born in turn, and others die.

Reason: What if falsity were taken away from the nature of things? Would it not come about that all things are true?

Augustine: I see it follows.

Reason: Answer: from what does it seem to you that this wall is true?

Augustine: Because I am not deceived by its appearance.

Reason: That is, because it is as it appears.

Augustine: Yes.

Reason: If, then, a thing is false from being otherwise than it appears, and true from being as it appears, then, the one to whom it appears being taken away, there is nothing either false or true. But if there is no falsity in the nature of things, all things are true. Nor can anything appear except to a living soul. Therefore the soul remains in the nature of things, if falsity cannot be taken away; it remains, if it can.

Augustine: I see that what had already been concluded has been made more robust; but by this addition we have advanced nothing. For there still remains that which moves me most: that souls are born and perish, and that, so that they are not lacking to the world, this comes about not by their immortality but by succession.

2. 4. 6. Reason: Do corporeal things—that is, sensible things—seem to you able to be grasped by the understanding?

Augustine: They do not.

Reason: What of this? Does it seem to you that God uses the senses to know things?

Augustine: I dare affirm nothing rashly on this matter; but so far as one may conjecture, God in no way uses the senses.

Reason: Then we conclude that only the soul can sense.

Augustine: Conclude it for now, as far as is probably permitted.

Reason: What of this? Do you grant that this wall, if it is not a true wall, is not a wall?

Augustine: I would grant nothing more readily.

Reason: And that nothing, if it is not a true body, is a body?

Augustine: This too is so.

Reason: Then if nothing is true unless it is as it appears, and nothing corporeal can appear except to the senses, and nothing can sense except the soul, and if a thing is not a body unless it is a true body, it follows that a body cannot exist unless soul has existed.

Augustine: You press too hard, and I have no way to resist.

2. 5. 7. Reason: Attend more carefully to this.

Augustine: See, I am here.

Reason: Surely this is a stone, and it is true if it is not otherwise than it appears; and it is not a stone if it is not true; and it can appear only to the senses.

Augustine: Yes.

Reason: Then there are no stones in the most hidden bosom of the earth, nor anywhere at all where there are none who sense; nor would this stone exist, unless we saw it; nor will it be a stone when we have departed and no one else is present to see it. And if you close your money-boxes well, however many things you have shut up in them, they will hold nothing. Nor indeed is wood, on the inside, wood. For whatever is in the depth of a body that scarcely lets light through escapes all the senses, and so is compelled not to exist at all. For if it existed, it would be true; and nothing is true except what is as it appears; but that does not appear; therefore it is not true—unless you have something to answer to this.

Augustine: I see that this is born from the things I conceded; but it is so absurd that I would more readily deny whichever of those you please than concede that this is true.

Reason: I do not object. So see which you wish to say: that corporeal things can appear only to the senses, or that only the soul can sense, or that a stone or anything else exists but is not true, or that the true itself must be defined otherwise.

Augustine: Let us look, I beg you, at this last one.

2. 5. 8. Reason: Define the true, then.

Augustine: The true is what is as it appears to a knower, if he is willing and able to know.

Reason: Then what no one can know will not be true? Moreover, if the false is what appears otherwise than it is—what if this stone appears to one as a stone, to another as wood? Will the same thing be both false and true?

Augustine: That earlier point moves me more—how, if something cannot be known, it thereby comes about that it is not true. For that one thing is at once both true and false, I do not much care about. For I see that one thing, compared with different things, is at once both greater and smaller. But that comes about from the fact that nothing is greater or smaller in itself. For these are names of comparison.

Reason: But if you say that nothing is true in itself, do you not fear it will follow that nothing is in itself? For from the same source that this is wood, it is also true wood. Nor can it come about that, by itself—that is, without a knower—it is wood, and not true wood.

Augustine: Then I say this, and so define it, nor do I fear that my definition will be rejected for being too brief: the true seems to me to be that which is.

Reason: Then nothing will be false, because whatever is, is true.

Augustine: You have cast me into great straits, and I find nothing at all to answer. So it comes about that, though I wish to be taught in no other way than by these questions, I now dread to be questioned.

2. 6. 9. Reason: God, to whom we have committed ourselves, will without doubt bring help and free us from these straits, if only we believe and beseech him most devoutly.

Augustine: Nothing would I do more gladly at this point; for nowhere have I borne such darkness. God, our Father, who exhort us to pray, and who grant what you are asked—since, when we pray to you, we live better and are better—hear me as I struggle in this darkness, and stretch out your right hand to me. Hold out your light before me, call me back from my errors; with you as my guide, let me return into myself and into you. Amen.

Reason: Be here as fully as you can, and attend most watchfully.

Augustine: Tell me, I beg, if anything has been suggested to you, lest we perish.

Reason: Be here.

Augustine: See, you have me doing nothing else.

2. 6. 10. Reason: Let us first sift, again and again, what the false is.

Augustine: I would be amazed if it were anything other than what is not as it appears.

Reason: Rather attend, and let us first question the senses themselves. For surely what the eyes see is not called false unless it has some likeness to the true. For example, a man we see in dreams is not, of course, a true man, but a false one, by the very fact that he has a likeness to the true. For who, seeing a dog, would rightly say he had dreamed of a man? Therefore that dog too is false, from the fact that it is like a true one.

Augustine: It is as you say.

Reason: What if someone awake, seeing a horse, thinks he sees a man? Is he not deceived because some likeness of a man appears to him? For if nothing appeared to him but the appearance of a horse, he could not suppose he saw a man.

Augustine: I yield entirely.

Reason: Likewise we call a painted tree false, and a face false that is returned from a mirror, and the motion of towers false to those sailing, and the bending of an oar false, for no other reason than that they are like the true.

Augustine: I confess it.

Reason: So too we are deceived in twins, in eggs, in several seals stamped by one ring, and in other such things.

Augustine: I follow entirely and concede.

Reason: The likeness of things, then, which pertains to the eyes, is the mother of falsity.

Augustine: I cannot deny it.

2. 6. 11. Reason: But all this forest, unless I am mistaken, can be divided into two kinds. For it lies partly in equal things, partly in inferior ones. Things are equal when we say that this is as like that as that is like this, as was said of twins or of the impressions of a ring. They are inferior when we say that what is inferior is like the better. For who looks into a mirror and rightly says that he is like that image, and not rather that it is like him? Now this kind lies partly in what the soul undergoes, partly in the things that are seen. But what the soul undergoes it undergoes either in the sense, as the motion of a tower, which is none; or within itself, from what it has received from the senses, such as are the visions of dreamers, and perhaps also of the deranged. Further, those things that appear in the very things we see are some produced by nature, others fashioned and feigned by living beings. Nature makes inferior likenesses by begetting or by reflecting. By begetting, when children are born like their parents; by reflecting, as with mirrors of every sort. For although men make most mirrors, they do not themselves fashion the images that are returned. Now the works of living beings are in pictures and figments of this sort; among which can also be included those things—if indeed they happen—which demons make. But shadows of bodies, since it is not far from the mark to call them like bodies and, as it were, false bodies, and since they cannot be denied to pertain to the judgment of the eyes, may fittingly be placed in that kind which nature makes by reflecting. For every body set against light reflects, and casts a shadow on the opposite side. Does anything seem to you to need contradicting?

Augustine: To me, nothing. But I eagerly await where these things are tending.

2. 6. 12. Reason: Well, we must bear it patiently until the other senses report to us that falsity dwells in the likeness of the true. For in hearing too there come about almost as many kinds of likeness: as when, hearing the voice of someone speaking whom we do not see, we think it some other person to whom he is like in voice; and among inferior cases there is the witness of the echo, or that ringing of the ears themselves, or in water-clocks a certain imitation of the blackbird or crow, or what dreamers or the deranged seem to themselves to hear. Now those little false notes, as the musicians call them, it is incredible how much they attest to the truth, as will appear later; yet even they—which is enough for now—are not far from a likeness of those they call true. Do you follow this?

Augustine: Most gladly. For I labor in no way to understand.

Reason: Then, not to delay—does it seem to you that one lily can be easily distinguished from another by smell, or thyme-honey from thyme-honey of different hives by taste, or the softness of a swan's feathers from a goose's by touch?

Augustine: It does not seem so.

Reason: What, when we dream that we smell, or taste, or touch such things? Are we not deceived by a likeness of images that is the more inferior the more empty it is?

Augustine: You speak the truth.

Reason: It appears, then, that in all the senses, whether in equal or in inferior things, we are either deceived by an enticing likeness, or, even if we are not deceived—suspending our assent or distinguishing the difference—we nevertheless call those things false which we detect to be like the true.

Augustine: I cannot doubt it.

2. 7. 13. Reason: Now attend, while we run over the same things again, so that what we are trying to show may become clearer.

Augustine: Here I am; say what you will. For I have resolved to bear this going-around once and for all, nor will I grow weary in it, with such great hope of reaching where I feel we are tending.

Reason: You do well. But attend: when we see like eggs, does it seem to you that we can rightly say any one of them is false?

Augustine: In no way does it seem so. For if they are all eggs, they are all true eggs.

Reason: What, when we see an image returned from a mirror? By what signs do we grasp that it is false?

Augustine: By the fact that it is not held, makes no sound, does not move of itself, does not live, and by countless other signs which it would be long to pursue.

Reason: I see you do not wish to linger, and your haste must be indulged. So, not to repeat each thing: if those men too whom we see in dreams could live, speak, be touched by the waking, and there were no difference between them and those whom, awake and sound, we address and see, would we then call them false?

Augustine: How could that rightly be said?

Reason: Then if they were true insofar as they appeared most like the true, and there were no difference at all between them and true men, while they were false insofar as they were proved unlike by those or other differences—must we not confess that likeness is the mother of truth, and unlikeness of falsity?

Augustine: I have nothing to say, and I am ashamed of my too-rash assent earlier.

2. 7. 14. Reason: It is ridiculous that you should be ashamed, as if it were not for this very purpose that we chose conversations of this kind. Since these, because we hold them when speaking only with ourselves, I wish to be called and titled "Soliloquies"—a new word indeed, and perhaps a harsh one, but apt enough for showing the matter. For since truth cannot be sought better than by questioning and answering, and since scarcely anyone is found who is not ashamed to be refuted in debate, and since for that reason it almost always happens that a matter well brought forward for discussion is shouted down by an unruly clamor of obstinacy, even with a laceration of minds, often disguised, sometimes open—it pleased me, most peaceably, I think, and most conveniently, to seek the truth, with God's help, by questioning myself and answering myself. So there is no reason for you to fear, if anywhere you have rashly bound yourself, to go back and untie it; for there is no escape from here otherwise.

2. 8. 15. Augustine: You speak rightly; but what I conceded wrongly I do not plainly see—unless perhaps that the false is rightly said to be what has some likeness to the true, since nothing else at all worthy of the name of the false occurs to me; and yet, again, I am forced to confess that things are called false from the fact that they differ from the true. From which it is concluded that this very unlikeness is the cause of falsity. And so I am confounded; for nothing easily comes to my mind that is begotten by contrary causes.

Reason: What if this is the one kind of its sort in the nature of things, the only one so constituted? Or do you not know that, though you run through innumerable kinds of animals, only the crocodile is found to move the upper part of its jaw in chewing—especially since scarcely anything can be found so like anything else that it is not in some respect also unlike?

Augustine: I see these things indeed; but when I consider that what we call false has both something like the true and something unlike, I cannot discern from which part rather it has deserved the name of the false. For if I say from the part that is unlike, there will be nothing that cannot be called false; for there is nothing that is not unlike something else which we grant to be true. Likewise, if I say it must be called false from the part that is like, not only will those eggs cry out against it, which are true by the very fact that they are most alike, but I shall not even so escape the one who would force me to confess that all things are false, since I cannot deny that all things are in some respect like one another. But suppose I do not fear to answer that likeness and unlikeness together bring it about that something is rightly called false—what way of escape will you give me? For I shall be pressed nonetheless to report that all things are false; since all things, as was said above, are found both like one another in some part and unlike. It would remain for me to say that nothing else is false except what is otherwise than it appears, were I not afraid of all those monsters which I thought I had long since sailed past. For I am driven back there by an unexpected dizziness, to say that the true is what is as it appears. From which it follows that nothing can be true without a knower; where I must dread a shipwreck on most hidden reefs, which are true even if they are not known. Or, if I say that the true is what is, it will be concluded, anyone gainsaying it, that the false is nowhere. And so those tides return, nor do I see that I have advanced anything for all the patience of your delays.

2. 9. 16. Reason: Rather attend; for I will by no means bring myself to think that we have implored the divine help in vain. For I see that, having tried everything as far as we could, nothing remains that may justly be called false except either what feigns itself to be what it is not, or what altogether strives to be and is not. But that former kind of the false is either deceptive or lying. For a thing is rightly called deceptive which has a certain appetite for deceiving; and this cannot be understood without a soul. But it comes about partly by reason, partly by nature: by reason, in rational animals, as in man; by nature, in beasts, as in the little fox. Now what I call lying is done by those who lie. They differ from the deceptive in this: that every deceptive thing seeks to deceive, but not everyone who lies wishes to deceive; for mimes and comedies and many poems are full of lies, with the will rather to please than to deceive, and nearly all who jest are lying. But he is rightly called deceptive or deceiving whose business it is that someone be deceived. Those, however, who do not act so as to mislead, but nevertheless feign something, no one doubts are to be called either liars merely, or, if not even that, at least lying. Unless you have something to say against this.

2. 9. 17. Augustine: Go on, I beg; for now perhaps you have begun to teach things not false about false things. But now I await what that kind is which you said strives to be and is not.

Reason: Why should you not await it? They are the very same things, many of which we recalled above. Or does it not seem to you that your image in the mirror wants, as it were, to be you yourself, but is false for this reason, that it is not?

Augustine: This very much seems so.

Reason: What of every painting, or likeness of any kind, and all such works of craftsmen? Do they not strive to be that to whose likeness each is made?

Augustine: I am altogether led to agree.

Reason: Now those things by which the sleeping or the deranged are deceived, you grant, I think, belong to this kind.

Augustine: None more so; for nothing more strives to be such as the waking or the sound discern; and yet they are false in this, that they cannot be what they strive to be.

Reason: Why should I now say more about the motion of towers, or the immersed oar, or the shadows of bodies? It is plain, I think, that they must be measured by this rule.

Augustine: Most plain.

Reason: I say nothing of the other senses; for no one who considers will fail to find that what is called false in the very things we sense is what strives to be something and is not.

2. 10. 18. Augustine: You speak rightly; but I wonder why those poems and jests, and the other deceptions, seemed to you to be set apart from this kind.

Reason: Because, of course, it is one thing to wish to be false, another to be unable to be true. And so we can join the very works of men—comedies, or tragedies, or mimes, and other such things—to the works of painters and sculptors. For a painted man can no more be a true man, though he strives toward the appearance of a man, than can those things written in the books of the comic poets. For they do not wish to be false, nor are they false by any appetite of their own, but by a certain necessity, so far as they could follow the will of their maker. But on the stage Roscius was by his will a false Hecuba, by nature a true man; but by that same will also a true tragic actor, in that, namely, he fulfilled what was set for him; yet a false Priam, in that he was made to resemble Priam, but was not Priam himself. From this now arises something marvelous, which nevertheless no one doubts to be so.

Augustine: What is it?

Reason: What do you think, except that all these things are true in some respect from the very source from which they are false in another, and that the only thing of advantage to their own truth is that they are false with respect to something else? From which they in no way reach what they either wish or ought to be, if they shun being false. For how could the one I mentioned be a true tragic actor, if he were unwilling to be a false Hector, a false Andromache, a false Hercules, and countless others? Or how would a painting be true, if the horse were not false? How would there be a true image of a man in a mirror, if not a false man? Therefore, if it is of advantage to certain things, in order that they be something true, that they be something false, why do we so greatly dread falsities, and seek truth as a great good?

Augustine: I do not know, and I wonder much—unless it be that in those examples I see nothing worthy of imitation. For we ought not to be true as actors are, or as the things reflected from mirrors, or as Myron's heifers cast in bronze, namely true in some manner of our own while sketched out and likened to another's manner, and false for that reason; but rather to seek that true which is not, as it were, two-faced, set against itself, so that in one part it is true and in another false.

Reason: You seek something great and divine. Yet if we find it, shall we not confess that by these very things truth is brought about and, as it were, forged—from which is named everything that is in any way called true?

Augustine: I assent not unwillingly.

2. 11. 19. Reason: What, then, seems to you? Is the discipline of disputation true or false?

Augustine: Who would doubt it is true? But grammar too is true.

Reason: As true as that other?

Augustine: I do not see what could be truer than the true.

Reason: That, surely, which has nothing false in it; and in gazing on it you stumbled a little while ago over those things which, I know not how, could not be true unless they were false. Or do you not know that all those fabulous and openly false things belong to grammar?

Augustine: I do not fail to know that; but, I think, they are not false through grammar, but rather, whatever they are, they are exhibited through it. For a fable is a falsehood composed for usefulness or delight. But grammar is the discipline that guards and governs articulate speech; by the necessity of its profession it is compelled to gather even all the figments of human language which have been committed to memory and letters—not making them false, but teaching and asserting a certain true account about them.

Reason: Rightly indeed; I care nothing now whether these things have been well defined and distinguished by you, but I ask this: whether grammar itself shows this to be so, or rather that discipline of disputation.

Augustine: I do not deny that the power and skill of defining, by which I have just tried to separate these things, is to be attributed to the art of disputation.

2. 11. 20. Reason: What of grammar itself? If it is true, is it not true insofar as it is a discipline? For "discipline" is named from "learning"; but no one can be said not to know what he has learned and holds; and no one knows false things. Therefore every discipline is true.

Augustine: I do not see what is rashly conceded in this little argument. Yet it moves me, lest by it grammar should seem to anyone to make even those fables true; for these too we learn and hold.

Reason: Did our teacher not want us to believe and to know what he taught?

Augustine: On the contrary, he urged vehemently that we should know.

Reason: Did he ever urge that we believe Daedalus flew?

Augustine: That, indeed, never. But certainly, unless we held the fable, he made it so that we could scarcely hold anything in hand.

Reason: Do you deny, then, that it is true that this is a fable, and that Daedalus was thus reported?

Augustine: I do not deny that this is true.

Reason: Then you do not deny that you learned something true when you learned these things. For if it were true that Daedalus flew, and boys took this as a feigned fable and repeated it, they would by that very fact retain false things, insofar as what they repeated was true. For from this arose what we wondered at above: that the fable about Daedalus's flight could not be a true fable unless it were false that Daedalus flew.

Augustine: Now I hold this; but what we gain from it I await.

Reason: What, except that the argument is not false by which we gathered that a discipline cannot be a discipline unless it teaches true things?

Augustine: And what does this have to do with the matter?

Reason: Because I want you to tell me from what grammar is a discipline; for from that source it is true, from which it is a discipline.

Augustine: I do not know what to answer you.

Reason: Does it not seem to you that, if nothing in it were defined, and nothing distributed and distinguished into genera and parts, it could in no way have been a discipline?

Augustine: Now I understand what you say; nor does any face of any discipline occur to me in which definitions and divisions and reasonings have not done this very thing by which it is called a discipline—while it is declared what each thing is, while to each is rendered its own without confusion of parts, while nothing proper is omitted, nothing foreign is reckoned in.

Reason: Then also that very thing by which it is called true.

Augustine: I see it follows.

2. 11. 21. Reason: Now answer: what discipline contains the principles of definitions, divisions, and partitions?

Augustine: It was already said above that these are contained in the rules of disputation.

Reason: Then grammar was created by the same art, so as to be a discipline, and so as to be true—which earlier you defended from falsity. And I may conclude this not of grammar alone, but plainly of all the disciplines. For you said, and said truly, that no discipline occurred to you in which the right of defining and distributing had not done this very thing, so that it might be a discipline. But if they are true insofar as they are disciplines, will anyone deny that truth itself is that through which all disciplines are true?

Augustine: I am nearly altogether ready to assent; but this moves me, that we also number the rules of disputation themselves among these same disciplines. Therefore I rather judge that to be truth by which this very argument too is true.

Reason: Excellent altogether, and most watchful; but you do not deny, I think, that it is true insofar as it is a discipline.

Augustine: On the contrary, that is the very thing that moves me. For I have noticed that it too is a discipline, and is for that reason called true.

Reason: What then? Do you think it could have been a discipline in any other way, unless all things in it were defined and distributed?

Augustine: I have nothing else to say.

Reason: But if this office belongs to it, then through itself it is a true discipline. Will anyone, then, think it strange if that by which all things are true is itself true from itself, if it is also truth?

Augustine: Nothing stands in the way of my proceeding straight to this opinion.

2. 12. 22. Reason: Then attend to the few things that remain.

Augustine: Bring out whatever you have, provided it be such that I may understand it and gladly concede it.

Reason: It does not escape us that "to be in something" is said in two ways. In one way, such that it can also be separated and be elsewhere, as this wood in this place, or the sun in the east; in the other, such that something is in a subject in such a way that it cannot be separated from it, as in this wood the form and appearance we see, as in the sun the light, as in fire heat, as in the mind a discipline, and any others there are like these. Or does it seem otherwise to you?

Augustine: These things are most familiar to us, and were most zealously taken in and learned from early youth; so that I cannot, when questioned about them, fail to concede them without any deliberation.

Reason: What of this? Do you not concede that what is in a subject inseparably cannot remain if the subject itself does not remain?

Augustine: This too I see is necessary; for whoever attends carefully to things understands that, the subject remaining, what is in the subject can fail to remain. Since the color of this body can be changed either by reason of health or by age, while the body itself has not yet perished. And this does not hold equally in all things, but in those in which the things that are in the subjects coexist not in order that the subjects themselves may exist. For it is not in order that this wall may exist that it comes to have the color we see in it; since, even if by some chance it grows black or white, or changes to some other color, the wall nonetheless remains and is called a wall. But fire, if it lacked heat, would not even be fire; nor can we call anything snow unless it is white.

2. 13. 23. Reason: Then what we were seeking has been found.

Augustine: What are you saying?

Reason: What you hear.

Augustine: Is it now clearly settled, then, that the mind is immortal?

Reason: If the things you have conceded are true, most clearly—unless perhaps you say that the mind, even if it dies, is still a mind.

Augustine: I would never say that; but I say that by the very fact that it perishes, it comes about that it is not a mind. Nor does it call me back from this opinion that it was said by great philosophers that the thing which, wherever it comes, furnishes life, cannot admit death into itself. For although light, wherever it can enter, makes that thing shine, and cannot admit darkness into itself because of that memorable force of contraries, nevertheless it is extinguished, and that place, the light being extinguished, is darkened. So that which resisted the darkness, and in no way admitted darkness into itself, yet by perishing made room for it, just as it could also by departing. And so I fear that death may befall the body as darkness befalls a place—the soul sometimes departing like light, but sometimes being extinguished in the very place—so that there is not security against every death of the body, but some kind of death is to be desired, by which the soul is led out of the body unharmed and brought to a place, if there is any such place, where it cannot be extinguished. Or, if not even this is possible, and the soul is kindled in the body itself like a light, and cannot last elsewhere, and every death is a certain extinction of the soul in the body, or of life, then some kind must be chosen, so far as a man is permitted, by which the very life that is lived may be lived with security and tranquility—though I do not know how this can come about if the soul dies. O most blessed are they to whom it has been made certain, whether by themselves or by anyone else, that death is not to be feared, even if the soul perishes! But to me, wretched, no reasonings, no books, have yet been able to make this certain.

2. 13. 24. Reason: Do not groan; the human mind is immortal.

Augustine: From what do you prove this?

Reason: From those things which, with great caution, I think, you conceded above.

Augustine: I do not recall giving anything to you, who questioned me, with less than full watchfulness; but gather now the sum itself, I beg you. Let us see where we have arrived by such great windings, and do not, I pray, question me further. For if you are going to enumerate briefly the things I conceded, why is my answer needed again? Or is it to bring delays upon my joys in vain, if we have perhaps accomplished some good?

Reason: I will do what I see you wish, but attend most carefully.

Augustine: Speak now; here I am. Why do you slay me with delay?

Reason: Everything that is in a subject, if it always remains, the subject itself must necessarily also always remain. And every discipline is in the mind as in a subject. Therefore it is necessary that the mind always remain, if a discipline always remains. But a discipline is truth, and, as reason persuaded at the beginning of this book, truth always remains. Therefore the mind always remains, nor is the mind said to be dead. Therefore only he can, not absurdly, deny the mind to be immortal who proves that something of the foregoing was not rightly conceded.

2. 14. 25. Augustine: Now I want to give myself over to joy, but I am held back somewhat by two causes. For first it moves me that we have used so great a circuit, following I know not what chain of reasonings, when the whole of what was at issue could have been shown as briefly as it has now been shown. So it makes me anxious that for so long our discourse went about as if to lay an ambush. Then I do not see how a discipline—especially that of disputation—is always in the mind, since so few are versed in it, and whoever knows it was for so long, from infancy, untaught. For we cannot say either that the minds of the unskilled are not minds, or that there is in the mind a discipline they do not know. But if this is exceedingly absurd, it remains that either truth is not always in the mind, or that discipline is not truth.

2. 14. 26. Reason: You see that our reasoning has not made such great circuits in vain. For we were asking what truth is, which not even now, in this forest of things, with nearly all the paths wandered over, do I see we have been able to track down. But what are we to do? Shall we give up what we began, and wait to see whether any books of others fall into our hands that may satisfy this question? For I think many were written before our age which we have not read; and now, that we may not form opinions about what we do not know, we have it plain that on this matter there have been writings both in verse and in loosened prose—and by those men whose writings cannot lie hidden from us, and whose talents we know to be such that we cannot despair of finding in their letters what we wish; especially since here before our eyes is that man in whom we have come to know eloquence itself, which we grieved to be dead, revived perfect. Will he, who by his writings has taught us the manner of living, let us be ignorant of the nature of living?

Augustine: I do not think so, and I hope much from that source; but I grieve at one thing: that we are not able, as we wish, to open to him our zeal either toward himself or toward wisdom. For surely he would pity our thirst, and would pour himself out much sooner than now. For he is secure, since he has already persuaded himself fully of the immortality of the soul, and does not know that there are perhaps some who have come to know well enough the misery of this ignorance, and to whom, especially when they ask, it would be cruel not to bring help. But that other man indeed knows, by reason of our friendship, our ardor; yet he is so far away, and we are now so situated, that there is scarcely even the means of sending a letter to him. I believe that by now, in his Transalpine leisure, he has finished the poem by which the fear of death, charmed away, may flee, and the numbness and chill of the soul, hardened with ancient ice, may be driven off. But meanwhile, until these things come about which are not in our power, is it not most shameful that our leisure should be wasted, and the whole mind itself hang bound upon an uncertain decision?

2. 15. 27. Reason: It is wholly foreign to him to forsake those who desire such things; from which it ought also to be foreign to us to forsake so great a leader. So, if you please, let us briefly take up again from what those two points were established: either that truth always remains, or that truth is the method of disputation. For you said these wobble, so as to make us less secure about the sum of the whole matter. Or shall we rather ask this: how a discipline can be in an unskilled mind, which we cannot but call a mind? For from this you seemed disturbed, so that it became necessary for you to doubt again about the things you had conceded.

Augustine: Rather let us first thrash out those points, then we will see what this latter is. For so, I think, no controversy will remain.

Reason: Let it be so; but be wholly present and most cautious. For I know what happens to you when you attend: while you hang too eagerly upon the conclusion, and expect it to be drawn at any moment, you concede the things asked without examining them carefully.

Augustine: Perhaps you speak the truth; but I will strive against this kind of disease as much as I can. Only begin now to ask, that we may not linger over superfluous things.

2. 15. 28. Reason: From this, so far as I remember, we concluded that truth cannot perish: that not only if the whole world perishes, but even if truth itself perishes, it will be true that both the world and truth have perished. But nothing is true without truth; in no way, then, does truth perish.

Augustine: I recognize these things, and I wonder much if they are false.

Reason: Then let us look at the other point.

Augustine: Let me consider a little, I beg you, lest I shamefully come back here again.

Reason: Will it then not be true that truth has perished? If it will not be true, then truth does not perish. If it will be true, from what source will it be true after the fall of truth, when there is now no truth?

Augustine: I have nothing more to think over and consider; go on to something else. We will surely do, as far as we can, what we can, so that learned and prudent men may read these things and correct our rashness, if there is any; for I think that neither now nor ever shall I be able to find anything to say against this.

2. 15. 29. Reason: Is truth called anything, then, except that by which whatever is true is true?

Augustine: In no way.

Reason: Is anything rightly called true except what is not false?

Augustine: To doubt this is madness.

Reason: Is not the false that which is adapted to the likeness of something, and yet is not that to which it appears like?

Augustine: I see nothing else, indeed, that I would more gladly call false. But still, even what is far from a likeness of the true is wont to be called false.

Reason: Who denies it? But still, something that has some imitation of the true.

Augustine: How so? For when it is said that Medea flew with winged serpents yoked together, that matter in no part imitates the true; since it is nothing, and a thing that does not exist at all can imitate nothing.

Reason: You speak rightly; but you do not notice that a thing which is altogether nothing cannot even be called false. For if it is false, it exists; if it does not exist, it is not false.

Augustine: Shall we not, then, call that about Medea—I know not what monstrous thing—false?

Reason: Not at all; for if it is false, how is it a monstrous thing?

Augustine: I see a strange thing: so then, when I hear, Huge winged serpents yoked to the yoke, I do not call it false?

Reason: You do, plainly; for there is something you may call false.

Augustine: What, I beg?

Reason: That proposition, of course, which is enunciated in the verse itself.

Augustine: And what imitation of the true does it have, then?

Reason: Because it would be enunciated in the same way even if Medea had truly done that. So a false proposition, by its very enunciation, imitates true propositions. If it is not believed, it imitates the true ones only in this, that it is so stated, and is merely false, not also deceiving. But if it gains belief, it imitates also true things that are believed. Augustine: Now I understand that there is a great difference between the things we say and the things about which we say something; and so I now assent. For this alone was calling me back: that whatever we call false is not rightly so called unless it has an imitation of something true. For who would not justly be laughed at for saying that a stone is false silver? Yet if anyone says that a stone is silver, we say that he speaks falsely—that is, that he utters a false proposition. But tin or lead, I think, we not absurdly call false silver, because the thing itself, as it were, imitates it; nor is our proposition thereby false, but the very thing about which it is enunciated.

2. 16. 30. Reason: You understand well. But see whether we can fittingly call silver too by the name of false lead.

Augustine: It does not please me.

Reason: Why so?

Augustine: I do not know; except that I see it is said very much against my will.

Reason: Is it perhaps because silver is better, and the term is said as if in reproach of it; whereas it is a kind of honor, as it were, to lead, if it is called false silver?

Augustine: You have plainly explained what I meant. And therefore I believe those are rightly held infamous and not to be trusted who flaunt themselves in womanly dress—whom I do not know whether I should better call false women or false men. True actors, however, and truly infamous men, we can without doubt call them; or, if they lie hidden, and nothing is called infamous except from base repute, we call them truly worthless, not without truth, I think.

Reason: We will have another place for discussing these matters. For many things are done which seem, as it were, base to the popular eye, yet are shown to be honorable by some praiseworthy end. And it is a great question whether, for the sake of freeing his homeland, a man clothed in a womanly tunic ought to deceive the enemy—being by this very thing a false woman, but perhaps thereby a truer man; and whether a wise man who has somehow ascertained that his life will be necessary to human affairs would rather die of cold than, if there were no other way, clothe himself in feminine garments. But about this, as has been said, we will see elsewhere. For surely you discern how much inquiry it requires—how far these things ought to go, lest one fall into certain inexcusable basenesses. But now, what is enough for the present question, I think it already appears, and cannot be doubted, that nothing is false except by some imitation of the true.

2. 17. 31. Augustine: Proceed to the rest; for of this I am well persuaded.

Reason: Then I ask this: whether, apart from the disciplines by which we are educated—among which the very pursuit of wisdom should be reckoned—we can find anything so true that it is not, like the theatrical Achilles, false in some part, so that it can be true in another.

Augustine: Many things, it seems to me, can be found. For the disciplines do not have this stone; and yet, in order that it be a true stone, it does not imitate anything in respect of which it is called false. And once this one example is mentioned, you see that we may now pass over countless others, which occur of their own accord to those who think.

Reason: I see it plainly. But do they not seem to you to be included under the one name of body?

Augustine: They would seem so, if I either held for certain that the void is nothing, or thought that the mind itself is to be numbered among bodies, or even believed God to be some body. If all these things exist, I do not see that they are false and true by imitation of anything.

Reason: You send us far afield; but I will use a shortcut as far as I can. For surely what you call the void is one thing, and what you call truth another.

Augustine: Far other. For what is more void than I, if I think truth to be something void, or so greatly desire something void? For what else do I desire than to find truth?

Reason: Then perhaps you also concede this: that nothing is true that is not made true by truth.

Augustine: This was already plain some time ago.

Reason: Do you doubt that there is nothing void except the void itself, or surely body?

Augustine: I do not doubt it at all.

Reason: Then, I suppose, you believe truth to be some body.

Augustine: In no way.

Reason: What is in the body?

Augustine: I do not know; it is nothing to the matter. For I think you know this too: that, if there is a void, it is rather where no body is.

Reason: This indeed is plain.

Augustine: Why, then, do we delay?

Reason: Does it seem to you either that truth made the void, or that anything is true where truth is not?

Augustine: It does not seem so.

Reason: Then the void is not true, since neither can it be made void by that which is not void; and it is manifest that what lacks truth is not true; and in general, what is called void is so called from the fact that it is nothing. How, then, can that be true which is not? Or how can that be which is utterly nothing?

Augustine: Come now, let us leave the void aside as void.

2. 18. 32. Reason: What do you say of the rest?

Augustine: What?

Reason: That which you see supports me most. For there remain the mind and God; and if these two are true because truth is in them, no one doubts the immortality of God. The mind, however, is believed immortal if truth, which cannot perish, is proved to be in it also. So let us now look at this last point: whether body is not truly true—that is, whether truth is not in it, but only, as it were, a certain image of truth. For if even in a body, which is certain enough to admit of perishing, we find such a true thing as is in the disciplines, then the discipline of disputation will not straightway be the truth by which all disciplines are true. For body too is true, which does not seem to be formed by the method of disputation. But if body too is true by some imitation, and for that reason not truly true, perhaps there will be nothing to hinder the method of disputation from being taught to be truth itself.

Augustine: Meanwhile let us inquire about body; for not even when this is settled do I see this controversy ended.

Reason: How do you know what God wills? So attend: for I think a body is held together by some form and appearance, which if it did not have, it would not be a body; if it had a true one, it would be a mind. Or is it to be thought otherwise?

Augustine: I assent in part, but about the rest I doubt; for unless some figure is held, I concede that it is not a body. But how, if it had a true one, it would be a mind, I do not sufficiently understand.

Reason: Do you remember nothing at all of the beginning of the first book, and of that geometry of yours?

Augustine: You have reminded me well; I remember it plainly, and most gladly.

Reason: Are such figures found in bodies as that discipline shows?

Augustine: On the contrary, it is incredible how much more inferior they are proved to be.

Reason: Which of these, then, do you think true?

Augustine: Do not, I beg, think that even this needs to be asked of me. For who is so blind in mind that he does not see that those figures taught in geometry dwell in truth itself, or that truth is in them; whereas those bodily figures, since they seem, as it were, to tend toward the geometric ones, have some imitation of truth—I know not what—and are therefore false? For now I understand the whole of what you were working to show.

2. 19. 33. Reason: What need, then, is there now to inquire about the discipline of disputation? For whether the geometric figures are in truth, or truth is in them, no one doubts that they are contained in our soul—that is, in our understanding—and through this, truth too is compelled to be in our mind. But if any discipline whatever is so in the mind, as in a subject, inseparably, and truth cannot perish, why, I ask, do we doubt the perpetual life of the mind because of some intimacy, I know not what, with death? Or do that line, or square, or circle have other things they imitate in order to be true?

Augustine: I cannot believe that in any way—unless perhaps a line is something other than length without breadth, and a circle something other than a line drawn round on every side, verging equally toward the middle.

Reason: Why, then, do we hesitate? Or where these things are, is truth not?

Augustine: May God avert such madness.

Reason: Or is a discipline not in the mind?

Augustine: Who would say that?

Reason: But can it perhaps be that, the subject perishing, what is in the subject remains?

Augustine: When will this be persuaded to me?

Reason: It remains, then, that truth should perish.

Augustine: How can that come about?

Reason: Then the soul is immortal. Now at last believe your own reasonings, believe truth; it cries out both that it dwells in you, and that it is immortal, and that its seat cannot be taken from it by any death of the body. Turn away from your shadow, return into yourself; there is no perishing for you, except that you have forgotten that you cannot perish.

Augustine: I hear, I come to my senses, I begin to recollect. But unfold, I beg, the things that remain: how in an unskilled mind—for we cannot call it mortal—a discipline and truth are to be understood to be.

Reason: That question calls for another volume, if you wish it treated carefully; and at the same time I see that the things which, as best we could, have been investigated, must be reviewed by you. For if nothing of what has been conceded is doubtful, I think we have accomplished much, and with no small security may inquire into the rest.

2. 20. 34. Augustine: It is as you say, and I willingly obey your instructions. But let me obtain at least this, before you set a term to the volume: that you briefly explain what difference there is between the true figure, which is contained in the understanding, and the one which thought fashions for itself, which in Greek is called either phantasia or phantasm.

Reason: You ask what only the purest can see, and for the vision of which you are too little exercised; nor do we now work at anything through these circuits except your exercising, so that you may be fit to see it. Yet perhaps I can briefly make plain how great the difference is, so that it can be taught. Suppose you have forgotten something, and others wish, as it were, to recall it to your memory. They say, then: Is it this, or that?—offering different things as if they were alike. You, however, neither see the thing you wish to recall, and yet you see that it is not what is named. When this happens to you, does it seem like forgetfulness in every way? For that very discernment, by which you do not admit what you are falsely reminded of, is a certain part of recollection.

Augustine: It seems so.

Reason: Such, then, do not yet see the true; yet they cannot be deceived and misled, and they know well enough what they are seeking. But if someone says to you that a few days after you were born you laughed, you do not dare to say it is false; and if he is an author worthy of trust, you will not recollect it but believe it; for all that time is buried from you in deepest forgetfulness. Or do you think otherwise?

Augustine: I agree entirely.

Reason: This, then, differs very much from that forgetfulness; but that is a middle case. For there is another, nearer and closer to recollection and to the seeing again of truth; like it is when we see something and recognize for certain that we once saw it, and affirm that we know it; but where, or when, or how, or in whose presence it came into our knowledge, we busy ourselves to recover and recollect. As, if this happens to us concerning a man, we even ask where we knew him; and when he has reminded us, suddenly the whole matter is poured into the memory as if a light, and no further labor is needed to remember. Or is this kind unknown or obscure to you?

Augustine: What is plainer than this? Or what happens to me more often?

2. 20. 35. Reason: Such are those who are well educated in the liberal disciplines; since without doubt they unearth those things, buried in forgetfulness within themselves, by learning, and in a way dig them up again; yet they are not content, nor do they hold back, until they gaze most widely and most fully on the whole face of truth, of which a certain splendor already gleams reddening in those arts. But from these, certain false colors and forms pour themselves, as it were, into the mirror of thought, and often deceive and mislead inquirers who think that the whole is what they know, or what they are seeking. These are those imaginations to be avoided with great caution; they are caught out as deceptive when they vary as the mirror of thought, as it were, is varied, while that face of truth remains one and unchangeable. For then thought paints for itself a square of one size and another, and sets it, as it were, before the eyes; but the inner mind, which wishes to see the true, should rather turn itself, if it can, to that according to which it judges all those to be squares.

Augustine: What if someone tells us that it judges according to what it is accustomed to see with the eyes?

Reason: Why, then, does it judge—if at least it is well educated—that any true ball is touched by a true plane at a point? What such thing did the eye ever see, or can it see, when nothing of the kind can be fashioned by the very imagination of thought? Or do we not prove this when we describe even the smallest circle in imagination by the mind, and draw lines from it to the center? For when we have drawn two, between which scarcely a needle could be inserted, we cannot then by imaginary thought draw others in the middle, so as to reach the center without any commingling; whereas reason cries out that countless lines can be drawn, and that they cannot touch one another in those incredible straits except at the center, so that in every interval of them a circle too could be drawn. Since that phantasy cannot accomplish this, and fails more than the eyes themselves—since it is impressed upon the mind through them—it is manifest both that it differs much from truth, and that, while truth is seen, the phantasy is not seen.

2. 20. 36. Augustine: It cannot be said enough how greatly this evil is to be feared. For what will that eternal life be, or what death is not to be preferred to it, if the soul lives as we see it live in a child just born?—to say nothing of that life which is lived in the womb; for I do not think it is none.

Reason: Be of good courage; God will be present, as we already feel, to us who seek—God who promises something most blessed after this body, and most full of truth, without any falsehood.

Augustine: May it be as we hope.