1. 1. Evodius: Since I see that you have time on your hands, I beg you to answer me about some matters that trouble me—not unseasonably or out of place, I think. For often, when I had asked you many questions, you supposed that I should be put off by that Greek saying which forbids us to inquire into things above us; but now I do not think that we ourselves are above us. So when I ask about the soul, I am not one who deserves to hear, What is above us is nothing to us—but perhaps I do deserve to hear what we ourselves are.

Augustine: List briefly the things you wish to hear about the soul.

Evodius: I will, for I have these ready from long reflection. I ask, then, where the soul comes from, what sort of thing it is, how great it is, why it was given to the body, what it becomes when it comes to the body, and what it becomes when it departs.

1. 2. Augustine: When you ask where the soul comes from, I find myself bound to understand two distinct things. For we speak in one way of where a man comes from when we wish to know his native country, and in another way of where he comes from when we ask what he is composed of—that is, out of what elements and materials he is made. Which of these do you wish to know when you ask where the soul comes from? Do you desire to know, as it were, its region and homeland, the place it has come here from; or do you ask rather what its substance is?

Evodius: I should indeed like to know both, but which ought to be known first I would rather leave to your judgment.

Augustine: I believe the soul's own dwelling place and homeland is God himself, by whom it was created. But its substance I cannot name, for I do not think it is one of those familiar and well-known natures that we touch with these bodily senses. For I do not think the soul is composed of earth, or water, or air, or fire, or of all of these, or of any combination of them. But just as, if you were to ask me what that tree is composed of, I would name those four well-known elements out of which we must believe all such things are composed—yet if you went on to ask what earth itself, or water, or air, or fire is composed of, I would have nothing more to say—so when one asks what man is composed of, I can answer: of soul and body; and if you ask again about the body, I will fall back on those four elements; but when you ask me about the soul, since it seems to be something simple and to have a substance of its own, I am as much at a loss as if you were to ask, as I said, where earth comes from.

Evodius: I do not understand how you would have it possess a substance of its own when you have said it was made by God.

Augustine: I cannot deny that earth itself too was made by God; and yet I cannot say out of what other corporeal things, as it were, earth is composed. For earth is a simple body by the very fact that it is earth, and for that reason it is called an element of all those bodies that are made out of the four elements. So there is no contradiction in our saying both that the soul was made by God and that it has a nature of its own. For this nature proper and peculiar to it God himself made, just as he made that of fire, of air, of water, and of earth, out of which all other things are composed.

2. 3. Evodius: For now I accept where the soul comes from—that is, from God—which I will turn over carefully with myself, and if anything troubles me I will ask about it later. Now, I beg you, explain what sort of thing it is.

Augustine: It seems to me to be like God. For unless I am mistaken, you are asking about the human soul.

Evodius: That is the very thing I should like you to explain—how the soul is like God, since we believe that God was made by no one, while you said above that the soul was made by God himself.

Augustine: What of it? Do you think it was difficult for God to make something like himself, when you see that this has been granted even to us, in so great a variety of images?

Evodius: But we seem to make mortal things, whereas God made the soul immortal—so I think, unless perhaps it seems otherwise to you.

Augustine: So you would want men to make such things as God made?

Evodius: I would not say that. But just as he, being immortal, made something immortal in his likeness, so too what we, made immortal by God, make in our likeness ought to be immortal.

Augustine: You would be right to say so if you were painting on a panel, in his image, what you believe to be immortal in yourself; but as it is, you express on it the likeness of a body, which is of course mortal.

Evodius: How, then, am I like God, if I can make nothing immortal as he can?

Augustine: Just as the image of your body cannot have the power that your body has, so it is no wonder if the soul does not have power as great as his to whose likeness it was made.

3. 4. Evodius: For now this too is enough. Tell me now how great the soul is.

Augustine: How do you mean, how great it is? For I do not understand whether you are asking about something like its extent of breadth or length or strength, or all of these together; or whether you wish to know how much it can do. For we are accustomed to ask how great Hercules was—that is, to how many feet his stature reached. And likewise how great a man someone was—that is, of how great power and excellence.

Evodius: I desire to know both about the soul.

Augustine: But the former cannot be spoken of, nor even understood at all, with respect to the soul. For the soul is in no way to be supposed long, or wide, or, as it were, strong: these are corporeal qualities, as it seems to me, and it is from our habit of dealing with bodies that we ask such things about the soul. And so it is well prescribed, even in the mysteries, that whoever desires to be made such as God made him—that is, like God—should despise all corporeal things and renounce this whole world, which, as we see, is corporeal; for there is no other salvation for the soul, no other renewal or reconciliation to its author. Therefore I cannot answer you how great the soul is according to this kind of inquiry; but I can affirm that it is neither long, nor wide, nor strong, nor anything of those qualities that are usually sought in the measurements of bodies. And why I think this, I will give you my reasoning, if you please.

Evodius: I am pleased indeed, and I eagerly await it; for it seems to me that the soul is as good as nothing if it is none of these things.

Augustine: First, then, if you please, I will show you that there are many things which you cannot call nothing, and yet in which you cannot find any such dimensions as you look for in the soul—so that not only will the soul not seem to you to be nothing because you do not find length, or anything of the kind, in it, but it should be reckoned the more precious and the more highly valued precisely because it has none of these. Then we will see whether it truly has none of them.

Evodius: Use whatever order and method you wish; I am ready to listen and learn.

4. 5. Augustine: You do well. But I want you to answer my questions, for perhaps you already know the things I am trying to teach you. I believe you do not doubt that this tree is not altogether nothing.

Evodius: Who could doubt it?

Augustine: What of this—do you doubt that justice is much better than this tree?

Evodius: That is ridiculous, as if there were any comparison.

Augustine: You deal generously with me. But attend now to this: since it is agreed that this tree is so much inferior to justice that it does not even seem to you comparable, and you have confessed that this wood is not nothing—does it please you that we should believe justice itself to be nothing?

Evodius: What madman would believe that?

Augustine: Quite rightly. But perhaps this tree seems to you to be something because it is long after its own fashion, and wide, and strong; and if you took these away, it would be nothing.

Evodius: So it seems.

Augustine: What then? Does justice, which you have confessed is not nothing—indeed, something far more divine than this tree and far surpassing it—seem to you to be long?

Evodius: In no way can justice present itself to me, when I think of it, as long, or wide, or anything of the sort.

Augustine: If, then, justice is none of these things, and yet is itself not nothing, why does the soul seem to you to be nothing unless it has some length?

Evodius: Come now—it no longer seems to me that the soul is nothing on the ground that it is neither long, nor wide, nor strong; but you know that you have not yet said whether it really is so. For it may be that there are many things to be highly valued which lack these dimensions, yet I do not think we must straightway believe that the soul is of this kind.

4. 6. Augustine: I know that this remains for us to untangle, and I had promised that I would explain it next. But because the matter is most subtle and calls for very different eyes of the mind than human habit is accustomed to use in the actions of daily life, I urge you to proceed willingly through the things by which I think you should be led, and not, wearied by a certain necessary roundabout of ours, to take it ill that you reach what you desire somewhat more slowly. For first I ask you whether you think there is any body that does not, after its own measure, have some length, and breadth, and depth.

Evodius: I do not understand what you mean by depth.

Augustine: I mean that by which it comes about that the interior of a body can be thought of, or even seen, if it is transparent like glass; though if you take this away from bodies, in my opinion, they can neither be perceived nor rightly reckoned to be bodies at all. On this point I want you to tell me what you think.

Evodius: I have no doubt at all that no bodies can lack these.

Augustine: What of this—can you conceive that these three exist anywhere but in bodies?

Evodius: I do not understand how they could be elsewhere.

Augustine: Then do you think the soul is nothing other than a body?

Evodius: If we admit that even wind is a body, I cannot deny that the soul seems to me a body; for I conceive it to be something of that sort.

Augustine: I grant that wind is a body, just as I would if you asked me about a wave. For we perceive that wind is nothing other than this air set in motion and stirred up—which can be demonstrated, in a place utterly calm and at rest from all winds, even by a small fan, with which, in driving off flies, we stir the air and feel the breeze. When this happens through some more hidden motion of the heavenly or earthly bodies over the great expanse of the world, it is called wind, and from the different regions of the sky it even receives different names. Or do you think otherwise?

Evodius: Not at all; I accept what you say as probable. But I said that the soul is not wind itself, but something of that sort.

Augustine: First tell me whether you perceive that this very wind you mentioned has some length, breadth, and depth. Then we will see whether the soul is something of that sort, so that in this way too we may investigate how great it is.

Evodius: What can more easily be found longer, and wider, and deeper than this air, which, when set in motion, you have now persuaded me is wind?

5. 7. Augustine: You are right. But surely you do not think your soul is anywhere but in your body?

Evodius: I think so.

Augustine: Only on the inside, so that it fills it like a wineskin; or only on the outside, like a coat of plaster; or do you judge that it is both inside and outside?

Evodius: I hold the last of these you asked. For unless it were inside, there would be nothing alive in our inward parts; and unless it were outside, the skin could not feel even a slight prick.

Augustine: Why, then, do you ask any further how great the soul is, when you see that it is as great as the body's own dimensions allow?

Evodius: If reason teaches this, I ask nothing further.

Augustine: You do well to ask nothing further than reason teaches. But does this reasoning seem to you most secure?

Evodius: Since I find no other, it does seem so. For in its own place I will ask what troubles me much—whether this shape remains the same when it has left the body; for I remember that I set this last among the things to be discussed. But since to ask about the number of souls seems to me to belong to the question of the soul's size, I think it should not be passed over here.

Augustine: You do not think wrongly; but first let us explain, if you please, about its extent, which still troubles me, so that I too may learn something, if you are now satisfied.

Evodius: Ask as you wish; for that feigned doubt of yours makes me doubt most truly about this very thing that I had presumed was already settled.

5. 8. Augustine: Tell me, I beg you, whether what is called memory seems to you an empty name.

Evodius: To whom could it seem so?

Augustine: Do you judge that it belongs to the soul or to the body?

Evodius: It is ridiculous to doubt this too. For what—can a lifeless body be believed or understood to remember anything?

Augustine: Do you, after all, remember the city of Milan?

Evodius: I remember it very well.

Augustine: Now then, since it has been mentioned, do you recall how great it is and what it is like?

Evodius: I recall it indeed, and nothing more freshly or completely.

Augustine: So now, although you do not see it with your eyes, you see it with your mind.

Evodius: So it is.

Augustine: I believe you also remember how far away it now is from us—a fourth part of the world's expanse.

Evodius: Yes, I remember this too.

Augustine: So you also see with your mind the very distance of the places.

Evodius: I see it.

Augustine: Since, then, your soul is here where your body is, and is not stretched out beyond its dimensions, as the earlier reasoning showed, how does it come about that it sees all those things?

Evodius: I think this comes about through memory, not because it is present in those places.

Augustine: So images of those places are contained in the memory.

Evodius: So I judge; for I do not even know what is now being done there—which I certainly would not fail to know if my mind were stretched out as far as those places and perceived them as present.

Augustine: You seem to me to speak truly. But surely these are images of bodies.

Evodius: It must be so; for cities and lands are nothing other than bodies.

5. 9. Augustine: Have you never looked into small mirrors, or never seen your own face in the pupil of another's eye?

Evodius: Indeed, often.

Augustine: Why does it appear much smaller than it is?

Evodius: What else would you have, but that it should appear according to the size of the mirror?

Augustine: It is necessary, then, that images of bodies appear small if the bodies in which they appear are small.

Evodius: Quite necessary.

Augustine: Why then, since the soul occupies as small a space as its body is, can images so great be expressed in it—cities, and the breadth of lands, and whatever other huge things it can picture within itself? For I want you to consider a little more carefully how much, and how many things, our memory contains, which surely are contained by the soul. What depth, then, what recess, what immensity is there that could take these in, when the earlier reasoning seemed to teach that the soul is only as great as the body?

Evodius: I find nothing to answer, nor can I sufficiently express how much these things trouble me. And I laugh heartily at myself for having consented so quickly to the earlier reasoning, so as to limit the soul's size by this measure of the body.

Augustine: So it no longer seems to you to be something like wind?

Evodius: In no way. For even if this air, whose movement we probably believe to be wind, could fill this whole world, the soul can picture to itself innumerable worlds as great as it and even greater—and in what space it contains these images I cannot suppose.

Augustine: See, then, whether it is not better to believe, as I said above, that it is neither long, nor wide, nor high—as you granted me concerning justice.

Evodius: I would readily agree, were I not the more disturbed as to how, in turn, it can take in innumerable images of such great spaces with no length, breadth, or height of its own.

6. 10. Augustine: We shall perhaps find this out, so far as is permitted, if we first carefully examine these three—that is, length, breadth, and depth. So strive to conceive a length that has not yet taken on any breadth.

Evodius: I can conceive no such thing. For if I set in my mind a spider's thread, than which we are accustomed to see nothing finer, even in it there occurs to me a length of its own, and a breadth, and a depth; and however small these may be, I cannot deny that they exist.

Augustine: Your answer is not altogether absurd. But surely, when you understand that these three are in a spider's thread, you distinguish them and know how they differ from one another?

Evodius: Why should I not know how they differ? Or how else could I have seen that none of them is lacking in this thread?

Augustine: By the same understanding, then, with which you distinguished them, you can also—having separated them—conceive length alone, provided you do not turn over any body in your mind; for whatever it is, it will not lack all these. For what I now want you to understand is something incorporeal: length alone can only be understood by the mind, and cannot be found in a body.

Evodius: Now I understand.

Augustine: So if you wish to cut this length, as it were, lengthwise in thought, you see clearly that you cannot; for if you can, breadth too is present.

Evodius: That is plain.

Augustine: Let us call this pure and simple length, if you please, a line; for this is the name by which it is commonly called by many learned men.

Evodius: Call it whatever you wish; I need not trouble myself about names when the thing is clear.

6. 11. Augustine: You do well, and I not only approve but also urge you always to take more delight in giving care to things than to words. But this line, which now, I think, you understand well—if it be drawn out, whether from one end or from both, as far as it can be drawn lengthwise, you see that there is no end to it. Or is the keenness of your mind too weak to contemplate this?

Evodius: I contemplate it perfectly, and nothing is easier.

Augustine: You see, then, that no figure can be made either, if nothing else is done than that the line be drawn out.

Evodius: I do not yet understand what you mean by a figure.

7. 11. Augustine: For the present I call it a figure when some space is enclosed by a line or by lines—as if you were to make a circle, or to join four lines at their ends to one another in such a way that no end of any of them was free from being joined to another.

Evodius: I think I now see what you mean by a figure; but I wish I could likewise see where these things are heading, or what you will make of them, so that I may come to know what I am asking about the soul.

8. 12. Augustine: At the outset I warned you of this and asked that you patiently endure our roundabout course, which again I beg you to do. The thing we are seeking is not slight, nor easy to know; for we wish to know and grasp this plainly, if it can be done. For it is one thing when we believe on authority, another when we believe on reason. To believe on authority is a great shortcut, and no labor: if that pleases you, you will be able to read many things which great and divine men, judging them necessary, have said for the salvation of the less skilled, speaking, as it were, by a kind of accommodation, and have wished to be believed by those whose minds, whether too slow or too entangled, could have no other salvation. For such men—of whom there is certainly a very great multitude—if they wish to comprehend the truth by reason, are very easily deceived by the appearance of reasonings, and so slide into various and harmful opinions that they can scarcely or never emerge from them and be set free. For these, then, it is most useful to believe the most excellent authority and to order their life accordingly. If you think this safer, not only do I not resist at all, but I even greatly approve. But if you cannot rein in that eager desire by which you have persuaded yourself that you can arrive at the truth by reason, you must endure many long roundabouts, so that nothing leads you but the reason which alone deserves to be called reason—that is, true reason; and not only true, but so certain, and so free from all semblance of falsehood (if indeed this can in any way be found by a human being), that no false or verisimilar arguments can lead you away from it.

Evodius: I will no longer desire anything too hastily; let reason act and lead where it will, provided it leads me through.

8. 13. Augustine: God will bring this about, who is to be entreated either about such things alone, or at least about these above all. But let us return to the matter I had begun. For if you now know what a line is and what a figure is, tell me what I ask of you: do you think any figure can be made if a line is drawn out to infinity, either from both ends or from one?

Evodius: I affirm that this can in no way be done.

Augustine: What, then, must be done for us to make a figure?

Evodius: What, except that the line should not be infinite, and should be drawn around in a circle so that it touches itself at the other end? For I do not see how else any space can be enclosed by a single line; and unless this is done, by your description, there will be no figure.

Augustine: What if I wished to make a figure with straight lines? Can it be done with one line, or not?

Evodius: In no way.

Augustine: What of two?

Evodius: Not even with these.

Augustine: What of three?

Evodius: I see it can be done.

Augustine: You know well, then, and hold firmly, that when a figure is to be made with straight lines, it cannot be done with fewer than three. Or, if any reasoning should oppose you, would it call you away from this opinion?

Evodius: Plainly, if anyone should show me that this is false, there would be nothing I could trust myself able to know.

Augustine: Now then, answer this: how have you made a figure with three lines?

Evodius: By joining them at their ends.

Augustine: What—where they join, does it not seem to you that an angle is made?

Evodius: So it is.

Augustine: Of how many angles, then, does this figure consist?

Evodius: Of as many as there are lines.

Augustine: What—do you make the lines themselves equal, or unequal?

Evodius: Equal.

Augustine: What—do all the angles open to the same degree, or is one more closed or more open than another?

Evodius: I see that these too are equal.

Augustine: Can it come about that, in a figure made with three equal straight lines, the angles are unequal—or can it not?

Evodius: In no way whatever.

Augustine: What—if a figure consists of three straight but unequal lines, can the angles in it too be equal, or do you understand otherwise?

Evodius: They cannot at all.

Augustine: You are right. But tell me, I beg you, which figure seems to you better and more beautiful—the one that consists of equal lines, or the one of unequal lines?

Evodius: Who could doubt that the one in which equality prevails is better?

9. 14. Augustine: So you set equality before inequality?

Evodius: I do not know whether anyone would not set it before.

Augustine: See now, in the figure completed with three equal angles, what in it is opposite to an angle—that is, set over against it from the other side: whether a line or an angle.

Evodius: I see a line.

Augustine: What then? If both angle were opposite to angle and line to line, would you not confess that equality is more fully present in that figure in which this happens?

Evodius: I confess it indeed, but how this comes about with three lines I do not see at all.

Augustine: What—can it be done with four lines?

Evodius: It can indeed.

Augustine: So a figure that consists of four equal straight lines is better than one that consists of three.

Evodius: Better, certainly, since equality holds more force in it.

Augustine: What then? Do you judge that this figure, which is made of four equal straight lines, can also be made in such a way that not all its angles are equal—or do you not think so?

Evodius: I see that it can.

Augustine: In what way?

Evodius: If two are more closed and two more open.

Augustine: Do you also see how the two more closed angles, and the two more open ones, are opposite to each other?

Evodius: Yes, most truly and most plainly.

Augustine: So here too you see equality preserved, as far as it could be preserved; for you certainly see that it cannot come about, when a figure is completed with four equal lines, that not either all, or at least two of the angles, be equal—and that those which are equal answer to one another from opposite sides.

Evodius: I see it, and hold it most firmly.

9. 15. Augustine: Does it not move you that even in these matters there is so great and so unshaken a kind of justice?

Evodius: In what way?

Augustine: Because we call nothing justice, I think, except equity; and equity seems to take its name from a certain equality. But what is equity in this virtue except that to each is rendered what is his own? And what is one's own cannot be rendered except by some distinction. Or do you think otherwise?

Evodius: It is plain, and I fully agree.

Augustine: What—do you judge that there can be any distinction if all things are equal, so that they differ in nothing at all among themselves?

Evodius: In no way.

Augustine: So justice cannot be preserved unless, in the things in which it is preserved, there is, so to speak, a certain inequality and unlikeness.

Evodius: I understand.

Augustine: Since, then, we confess that these figures we are discussing are unlike one another—the one that consists of three angles and the one that consists of four, though both are made of equal lines—does it not seem to you that a certain justice is maintained, so that the one which cannot have an equality of opposites should keep an unshaken equality of its angles, while in the other, because there is so great a correspondence of opposites, that law of the angles should admit some inequality? Since this much moved me, it seemed right to ask you in what way you delighted in this truth, equity, and equality.

Evodius: Now I see what you mean, and I admire it not a little.

Augustine: Come now, since you rightly set equality before inequality, and there is, I think, no one at all endowed with human sense to whom this does not seem so, let us seek, if you please, the figure in which the highest equality can be found; for whatever it shall be, it will without doubt be preferred to the others.

Evodius: I am pleased indeed, and I desire to know what it is.

10. 16. Augustine: First, then, answer this: of those figures of which enough mention has now, I think, been made, does the one that consists of four equal lines and as many equal angles seem to you to excel? For, as you see, in this there is an equality both of lines and of angles; and what we did not find in the one enclosed by three equal lines is present here—a balance of opposites: for, as you see, line is opposite to line, and angle to angle.

Evodius: It is indeed as you say.

Augustine: Does it have the highest equality, or does it seem otherwise to you? For if it does, we are seeking another in vain, as we had proposed; but if it does not, I want this very thing to be demonstrated to me by you.

Evodius: It seems to me to have it; for where the angles are equal and the lines equal, I do not see where I could detect inequality.

Augustine: I judge otherwise. For a straight line, until it comes to the angles, is endowed with the highest equality; but when another line is joined to it from a different side and makes an angle, do you not think this very thing is unequal? Or does the part of the figure enclosed by a line seem to you to agree, in equality or likeness, with the part enclosed by an angle?

Evodius: In no way; and I am ashamed of my rashness. For I was led to it because I saw the angles in it equal to one another, and the sides too; but who would not see the great difference of those sides from the angles?

Augustine: Take another, most plain indication of inequality. For surely you see that either that triangular figure made of equal lines, or this square one, has some center.

Evodius: I see it plainly.

Augustine: What—when we draw lines from that same center to all the parts of the figure, do the lines drawn seem to you equal, or unequal?

Evodius: Quite unequal; for those we draw to the angles must necessarily be longer.

Augustine: How many of these are there in the square, and how many in the triangle?

Evodius: Four here, three there.

Augustine: What—the shortest of all, again, which and how many are there in each figure?

Evodius: Just as many—namely those drawn to the middles of the sides.

Augustine: You seem to me to speak most truly, and there is no need to linger here longer; for it is enough for what we want. For you see, I think, that great equality is preserved here, and yet not perfect on every side.

Evodius: I see it entirely, and I eagerly await knowing what that figure is which has the highest equality.

11. 17. Augustine: What do you suppose it is, except the one whose outer edge is everywhere in concord with itself, with no angle disturbing its equality, and from whose center equal lines can be drawn to all parts of the edge?

Evodius: Now, I think, I understand; for you seem to me to be describing that figure which is bounded by a single line drawn around into a circle.

Augustine: You understand rightly. Now then consider this: since the earlier reasoning taught that a line is understood as length alone, and lays claim to no breadth, and therefore cannot be divided lengthwise along the way it is drawn—does it seem to you that any figure whatever can be found without breadth?

Evodius: In no way.

Augustine: What—can breadth itself fail to have length, even though it be breadth alone, just as above we understood length without breadth; or can it not?

Evodius: I see that it cannot.

Augustine: You also see, unless I am mistaken, that breadth can be divided on every side, but a line cannot be divided lengthwise.

Evodius: That is plain.

Augustine: Which, then, do you think should be reckoned of greater worth—what can be divided, or what cannot?

Evodius: Surely what cannot.

Augustine: So you set the line before breadth. For if what cannot be divided is to be set before, we must necessarily also set before it what can be less divided: breadth is divided on every side, but length only crosswise, for it does not admit of division lengthwise; so it is more excellent than breadth. Or do you judge otherwise?

Evodius: Reason quite compels me to confess it as you say.

11. 18. Augustine: Now let us seek, if you please, whether there is anything in this reasoning that cannot be divided at all; for this will be much better even than that line. For you see that a line can be cut crosswise innumerable times, and so I leave it to you yourself to find this out.

Evodius: I think that what cannot be divided is what we set as the center in the figure, from which lines are drawn to the edges. For if it is divided, it cannot lack either length or breadth. But if it has length alone, it is no longer that from which lines are drawn, but is itself a line. And if it is also broad, it requires another center from which lines may be drawn to the edges of its breadth. But reason rejects both of these. This, then, will be what cannot be divided.

Augustine: You are right. But does not that too seem to you to be something of the kind—the point from which a line is drawn, even though there is not yet a figure whose center we might understand? For I mean that beginning of a line from which length starts, which I want you to understand without any length. For if you understand a length, you certainly do not understand at all that from which length itself begins.

Evodius: Entirely such.

Augustine: This, then, which I now see you understand, is the most powerful of all the things that have been demonstrated. For it is the very thing that admits of no division; and it is called a "point" (punctum) when it holds the center of a figure; but if it is the beginning of a line or of lines, or even their end, or whenever it marks anything that is to be understood as without parts but does not hold the center of a figure, it is called a "sign" (signum). So a sign is a mark without parts; while a point is a mark holding the center of a figure. Thus it comes about that every point is also a sign, but not every sign appears to be a point. For I want us to agree between ourselves about these names, so that we may use fewer roundabout phrases in discussing them—though most people call "point" not what holds the center of any figure, but only that of a circle or a sphere; and yet we need not trouble ourselves much about terms.

Evodius: I agree.

12. 19. Augustine: You certainly see, too, how much power it has. For from it a line begins, and by it a line is bounded; we see that no figure can be made with straight lines unless an angle is closed by it; then, wherever a line can be cut, it is cut at a point, while the point itself admits no cutting whatever in itself; no line is joined to a line except through it. Finally, since reason has shown that among the other plane figures (for of depth we have as yet said nothing) the one enclosed by a circle is to be preferred, on account of its highest equality, what other regulator of that very equality is there than the point set at the center? Many things can be said about its power, but I set a limit, and leave the more to you yourself to consider.

Evodius: As you wish; for it will not irk me to ask if anything is too obscure. But I do see, moderately well, I think, that this sign has great power.

12. 20. Augustine: Now then attend to this, since you have perceived what a sign is, and what length is, and what breadth is: which of these seems to you to need another, and which it cannot exist without.

Evodius: I see that breadth needs length, without which it cannot be understood at all. Again, I see that length does not need breadth in order to be, but cannot be without that sign. But that sign, I see plainly, exists by itself and needs none of these.

Augustine: It is as you say. But consider more carefully whether breadth can truly be cut on every side, or whether somewhere it cannot admit cutting, even though it admits more than a line.

Evodius: I do not know at all where it could not.

Augustine: I believe you do not remember; for in no way could you fail to know this. So I will remind you in this way. Surely you understand breadth in such a way that in your thought you take nothing of depth.

Evodius: Entirely so.

Augustine: Let depth, then, be added to this breadth, and now answer whether anything has also been added by which it can be cut more on every side.

Evodius: You have reminded me wonderfully. For now I see that cutting can be admitted not only from above or from below, but from the sides too, and that nothing at all remains where division could not penetrate. So it is plain that breadth cannot be cut along those parts where depth is to rise up.

12. 21. Augustine: Since, then, length, breadth, and depth are known to you, if I am not mistaken, I ask whether the two former can be lacking where depth is present.

Evodius: I see that depth cannot exist without length, but it can without breadth.

Augustine: Return, then, to the thought of breadth; and if you have pictured it in your mind as lying flat, let it be raised up onto any side—as if you wished to draw it through the thinnest crack where a closed door's leaves meet. Or do you not yet understand what I mean?

Evodius: I understand what you say, but perhaps not yet what you intend.

Augustine: This, namely: that you answer whether breadth so raised seems to you to have passed over into depth, and to have already lost the name and description of breadth; or whether it remains breadth still, although it is so placed.

Evodius: It seems to me to have become depth.

Augustine: Do you remember, I beg you, how we defined depth?

Evodius: I remember plainly, and I am now ashamed to have answered so. For even in this way breadth, as it were raised up, does not admit cutting lengthwise downward; so nothing interior can be conceived in it, although a middle and edges can be conceived. But according to the earlier demonstration of depth, which you made me recall, there is no depth at all where nothing within can be conceived.

Augustine: You are right, and I wanted you to remember it just so. Therefore I now want you to answer this: whether you set the false before the true.

Evodius: To doubt this from now on would be incredible madness.

Augustine: Tell me then, I beg you: is that a true line which can be cut lengthwise; or a true sign which can in any way be cut; or a true breadth which, when it is raised up, as we said, admits cutting lengthwise downward?

Evodius: By no means.

13. 22. Augustine: Have you ever, then, seen with these bodily eyes either such a point, or such a line, or such a breadth?

Evodius: Never at all; for these are not corporeal.

Augustine: But if corporeal things are seen by corporeal eyes through some wondrous kinship of things, then the mind by which we see those incorporeal things must not be corporeal or a body. Or do you judge otherwise?

Evodius: Come, I now grant that the mind is not a body or anything corporeal. What, in the end, is it? Tell me.

Augustine: See for the moment whether it has been established that it lacks all that quantity which is now in question; for I am surprised you have forgotten what the mind is, which was discussed earlier between us. For you remember that you first asked where it comes from—which, I recall, we treated in two ways: in one, as it were, asking about its region; in the other, whether it came from earth, or fire, or some other of those elements, or from all, or from some of them. On which question it was settled between us that this is no more to be asked than where earth comes from, or any other of the single elements. For it must be understood that, although God made the mind, it has a definite substance which is neither earthen, nor fiery, nor airy, nor watery—unless perhaps we are to suppose that God gave to earth that it should be nothing other than earth, and did not give to the mind that it should be nothing other than mind. But if you wish the mind to be defined for you, and therefore ask what the mind is, I answer easily. For it seems to me to be a certain substance, sharing in reason, fitted for ruling a body.

14. 23. So attend rather to what is now in dispute: whether the mind has any quantity and, so to speak, local extent. For surely, since it is not a body—for otherwise it could not perceive any incorporeal things, as the earlier reasoning showed—it is without doubt free of the space by which bodies are measured; and for this reason such a quantity of it cannot rightly be believed, or conceived, or understood. But if it troubles you why it contains in memory such great spaces of sky, earth, and sea, while it is itself of no quantity, this is a certain wondrous power, which nevertheless you can perceive, from the things we have found out, as far as there is light in your understanding. For if there is no body—as reason has now shown—that lacks length, breadth, and depth, and none of these can be in a body except along with the other two; and yet to the mind it has been granted to see even a line alone with a certain inner eye, that is, with the understanding; I think we agree that the mind is not a body in such a way that it is better than a body. And granting this, I do not think we should doubt that it is even better than a line: for it is ridiculous that one who is better than a body should not be better than all those three which are in a body so that it may be a body. But that very line, by which the mind is shown to be better, surpasses the other two for this reason, that it can be cut less than those two. And those two are cut the more than a line, the more they extend into space: but a line has no space except of length, and if this is taken away, no space whatever remains. Therefore whatever is better than a line must necessarily be of no space, and cannot be divided or cut at all. So it is in vain, I think, that we labor to find the quantity of the mind, which is none, since we grant that it is better than a line. And if, of all plane figures, the best is the one formed by a circle, in which reason has taught that nothing is better or more powerful than the point, which beyond all doubt lacks parts—what wonder is it if the soul is neither corporeal, nor stretched out in any length, nor spread out in any breadth, nor made solid in any depth, and yet has such power in the body that the rule of all the members rests with it, and it is, as it were, a kind of hinge in acting for all the body's motions?

14. 24. Since, moreover, the center of the eye, called the pupil, is nothing other than a kind of point of the eye, and yet there is in it such power that by it half the sky, whose extent is unspeakable, can be seen and surveyed from some lofty place—it is not contrary to truth that the mind lacks all corporeal magnitude, which is completed by those three dimensions, although it can picture corporeal magnitudes of any size whatever. But it is given to few to see the mind by the mind itself—that is, for the mind to see itself; and it sees through the understanding. For to this alone is it given to see that there is nothing in things more powerful and more magnificent than those natures which are understood to be, so to speak, without swellings; for the magnitude of a body is not absurdly called a swelling, since, if it were to be highly valued, elephants would surely be wiser than we. And if anyone akin to them should say that elephants are wise—for I have perceived, though with wonder, that men often dispute even about this—he will at least grant, I suppose, that a little bee is wiser than an ass; and to compare their magnitudes is surely more than asinine. Or, as we were saying about the eye, to whom is it not clear that the eagle's eye is much smaller than ours? And yet, soaring so high that it can scarcely be seen by us in so great a light, it has been found to see a little hare hiding under a bush and a fish under the waves. But if in the senses themselves, by which we are given to perceive only corporeal things, the magnitude of the body has no bearing on the matter—that is, on the power of perceiving—is it to be feared, I ask, that the human mind, whose more excellent and almost sole sight is the very reason by which it strives even to find itself, should be nothing, if that same reason—that is, it itself—should prove that it lacks all magnitude by which a place is occupied? Something great, believe me, something great, but without any bulk, is to be conceived of the mind. This comes more easily to those who either come to these matters well taught, kindled not by desire for empty glory but by a divine love of truth; or who are already engaged in seeking these things, though they came less well taught to investigate them, if they patiently show themselves teachable to good men, and turn themselves away from all habit of bodily things, as much as is permitted in this life. And it cannot come about, by a certain divine providence, that to religious minds seeking themselves and their God—that is, the truth—piously, chastely, and diligently, the power of finding should be lacking.

15. 25. But let us now withdraw from this question, if nothing further troubles you, if you please, and pass to other matters. And whatever we have perhaps discussed about those figures more wordily than you wished, you will see how much it will avail for other things, if you grant that this discussion has been somewhat helped by it. For this kind of study trains the mind to perceive subtler things, so that it does not, struck back by their light and unable to bear it, gladly flee back into the same darkness it had desired to escape; and it furnishes, unless I am mistaken, most certain arguments by which whatever has been found and established may have no shameless doubt cast on it, so far as a human being is permitted to track such things. [A shameless doubt is recognized as arising in two ways: either when a man who can use reason becomes so dull and slow to seek the truth that he prefers to remain in the darkness of vanity rather than to labor at that for which he was fashioned by his Creator—to find and investigate, by true reasoning, himself and his God once and for all; or when, with such wicked obstinacy, he doubts that the things others have found and established, by labor and devout seeking, can be found and established—and he does so for no other reason than that they were not found by himself; which kind of envy reason proves to be most shameless.] For I doubt about these matters less than about the things we see with these eyes that wage perpetual war with rheum. For what is less to be borne or heard than to confess that we surpass beasts by reason, and to confess that the thing we perceive by bodily light, which even some beasts see better, is something—but to contend that what we behold by reason is nothing? And if it were said to be such as that which the eyes see, surely nothing more unworthy could be said.

15. 26. Evodius: I accept these things most gladly and I agree. But this troubles me: although it is so clear to me that the soul is not of corporeal quantity, I am wholly at a loss as to how I can resist those arguments, and which of them I should not grant. First, why does the soul, as the body does with age, either grow or seem to grow? For who would deny that little infant children are not to be compared even to the cunning of some beasts? And who would doubt that, as they grow, reason itself in some way grows in them? Then, if the soul is stretched out through the extent of its body, how is it of no quantity? And if it is not stretched out, how does it feel one pricking it everywhere?

Augustine: You ask exactly the things that have often troubled me too; and so I am not unprepared to answer you, as I am wont to do for myself. But whether I do so well, the reason that guides you will judge; whatever it may be, I certainly can do no more—unless perhaps, while we discuss, something better should come to mind by God's gift. But let us proceed, if you please, in our usual way, so that, with reason as guide, you may answer yourself. And first let us ask whether it is a sure proof of the mind's growing with the body that, with the advance of age, a man becomes fitter for human intercourse and more and more skilled in it.

Evodius: Proceed as you please; for I too greatly approve this kind of teaching and learning. For somehow, when I myself answer what I was unknowingly asking, the very discovery becomes sweeter, not only in itself, but also through wonder.

16. 27. Augustine: Tell me, then, whether "greater" and "better" seem to you two distinct things, or one and the same thing called by two names.

Evodius: I know that what we call greater is one thing, and what we call better is another.

Augustine: Which of these two do you think has quantity?

Evodius: That, clearly, which we call greater.

Augustine: What, when we confess that of two figures the round is better than the square—does quantity make it so, or something else?

Evodius: In no way quantity, but that equality of which we treated above is the cause of this excellence.

Augustine: Now then attend to this: whether virtue seems to you to be a certain equality of life everywhere in agreement with reason. For if one thing in life is at variance with another, we are more offended, unless I am mistaken, than if some part of a circle stood at a greater or lesser distance from the point than the other parts. Or do you judge otherwise?

Evodius: On the contrary, I agree, and I approve that this which you have described is virtue. For reason is not to be called or reckoned reason unless it is true; and he whose life agrees in all things with truth is surely the one—either alone, or at least most of all—who lives well and honorably; and he who is so disposed is to be judged alone to have virtue and to live by it.

Augustine: You speak rightly. But surely you see this too, I think: that the circle is more like virtue than any other plane figure. For this is why we are accustomed to extol with great praise that verse in Horace, where he says, speaking of the wise man, Brave and, in himself, whole, smooth, and round. And rightly: for neither among the goods of the mind do you find anything that agrees more with itself on every side than virtue, nor among plane figures anything that does so more than the circle. Therefore, if the circle surpasses the others not by magnitude of space but by a certain conformity, how much more is this to be judged of virtue—that it surpasses the other dispositions of the mind not by occupying a greater place, but by a certain divine harmony and concord of reasons?

16. 28. Evodius: That is plain.

Augustine: So the mind ought not to seem to you to make progress with age by growing, as the body does. For by making progress it arrives at virtue, which we confess is beautiful and perfect not by any magnitude of space, but by the great force of constancy; and if "greater" is one thing and "better" another, as you have already granted, then whatever the soul gains with age, becoming possessed of reason, does not seem to me to become greater, but better. For if magnitude of members did this, each man would be the more prudent the taller or stronger he was—which you will not, I think, deny is otherwise.

Evodius: Who would deny it? But still, since you too grant that the soul makes progress through age, I wonder how it comes about that, though devoid of all quantity, it is helped—if not by extent of members, at least certainly by time.

17. 29. Cease to wonder; for here too I answer you by a like reasoning. For just as magnitude of members brings no argument why it should help the soul, since many are found more prudent with slighter and shorter members than certain men endowed with great bulk of body; so, since we see some younger people more industrious and vigorous than most older ones, I do not see why spaces of time in the ages should be thought to give increases to souls, as to bodies—since even bodies themselves, to which it is granted to grow through time and to take up larger spaces, are often, the older they are, the shorter; not only in old men, who are contracted and diminished by length of time, but even among children, whom we notice to be shorter in body than those who are older in age. If, then, times stretched out to the utmost bring no cause of magnitude even to bodies themselves—but all that is the power of the seed, and of the nature of certain numbers, surely hidden and hard to discern—how much less is it to be supposed that the soul becomes longer through long time, because we see that it has learned much through use of things and through constant practice?

17. 30. But if it troubles you that we are accustomed to render what the Greeks call makrothymia as "longanimity" [long-suffering], one may notice that many words are transferred from the body to the mind, just as from the mind to the body. For if Virgil spoke of a "wicked mountain" and "most just earth," which words you see transferred from the mind to bodies, what wonder is it if, by a reciprocal exchange, we say "longanimity," since only bodies can be long? But that virtue which is called magnanimity [greatness of mind] is rightly understood as referring to no space, but to a certain force—that is, to the power and might of the mind; a virtue to be valued the more, the more things it despises. But of this we will speak later, when we ask how great the soul is—just as one is wont to ask how great Hercules was, by the excellence of his deeds, not by the bulk of his members; for so we divided the question above. But now you must recall what we have already treated sufficiently about the point: for reason taught that it is most powerful and rules above all in figures. But do not power and dominion display a certain greatness? And yet in the point we found no space. So when we hear or speak of a great or vast mind, we must conceive not how much place it occupies, but how much it can do. Therefore, if your first argument—by which the mind seemed to you to grow with the body through age—has now been sufficiently discussed, let us pass to another.

18. 31. Evodius: I do not know whether we have pursued all the things that are wont, not without cause, to trouble me; and it may be that some escape my memory. But let us see what sort of thing this is, which now comes to mind: that an infant child does not speak, and acquires this as he grows.

Augustine: That is easy; for I believe it seems to you that each one speaks the language spoken by the men among whom he is born and raised.

Evodius: No one is ignorant of that.

Augustine: Suppose, then, that someone was born and raised where men did not speak, but signified their thoughts to one another by nods and movements of the limbs; do you not think that he would do such things, and would not speak, since he had heard no one speaking?

Evodius: Do not ask me this, which cannot happen. For where could I imagine such men, among whom anyone could be born?

Augustine: Have you, then, not seen at Milan a young man of most handsome body and most refined manners, yet mute and so deaf that he understood others only by movement of the body, and could himself signify what he wished in no other way? For he is very well known. And I have known a certain countryman who could speak, with a wife who could speak, who begot sons, all of them—males and females, about four or more (I do not now recall well enough)—mute and deaf. For they were judged mute from the fact that they could not speak, and deaf because they gathered no signs except by their eyes.

Evodius: I know that man well, and about those others, whoever they are, I believe you; but to what end is this?

Augustine: Because you said you could not conceive of anyone being born among such men.

Evodius: Nor do I say anything else now; for these men, unless I am mistaken, you grant were born among people who could speak.

Augustine: I would not indeed deny it; but since it is now agreed between us that some such men can exist, I beg you to consider: if a male and female of this kind were joined, and, carried by some chance into some solitude where they could nevertheless live, they begot a son who was not deaf, in what way would he speak with his parents?

Evodius: How do you suppose, except that he would render signs by gesture, as his parents gave them to him? But even so a small child could not do even this; so that reasoning of mine remains intact. For what does it matter whether he acquires speaking or gesturing as he grows, since both belong to the soul, which we are unwilling to confess grows?

18. 32. Augustine: Now you seem to me to believe, when someone walks on a rope, that this man has a larger soul than those who cannot do so.

Evodius: This is another matter; for who does not see that this belongs to skill?

Augustine: Why, I beg you, to skill? Is it because he learned it?

Evodius: Yes, indeed.

Augustine: Why, then, does it not seem to you to belong to skill if someone learns something else as well?

Evodius: Plainly, I do not deny that whatever is learned belongs to skill.

Augustine: So did not that man learn to gesture from his parents?

Evodius: He learned it indeed.

Augustine: You must grant, then, that this too belongs not to a soul made larger by growing, but to a certain imitative skill.

Evodius: I cannot grant this.

Augustine: So not everything that is learned belongs to skill—which you had just now granted.

Evodius: It does belong to skill entirely.

Augustine: So that man did not learn to gesture—which again you had no less granted.

Evodius: He did learn it, but this does not belong to skill.

Augustine: But you said a little before that what is learned belongs to skill.

Evodius: Come, I now grant that both speaking and gesturing, because we learned them, belong to skill. Yet some skills are those we learn while attending to others; others are those instilled in us by teachers.

Augustine: Which, then, of these do you think the soul acquires from becoming larger? Or all of them?

Evodius: Not all, I think, but those former ones.

Augustine: Does not rope-walking seem to you to be of this kind? For this too, I think, those who do it acquire by watching.

Evodius: So I believe; but still not all who watch these things and observe them with great zeal can acquire them, but only those who submit to teachers of this art.

Augustine: You speak well indeed; for this too I would answer you regarding speech. For many Greeks hear us speaking another kind of language more often than they watch a rope-walker; and yet, in order to learn our tongue—as we wish to know theirs—they are often handed over to teachers. Since this is so, I wonder why you would attribute to the soul's increase the fact that men speak, but not that they walk on a rope.

Evodius: Somehow you confuse these things. For one who is handed over to a teacher to learn our tongue knows another, his own, which I think he learned because his soul grew; but when he learns a foreign tongue, I attribute that not to a larger soul, but to skill.

Augustine: What if that man who was born and raised among the deaf, late and already a young man, falling in among other people, had learned to speak, when he knew no other language—would you think that at the time he learned to speak, his soul had grown?

Evodius: I would never dare to say that; and now I yield to reason, and I do not think that the fact that we speak is a proof of a larger soul—lest I be forced to confess that the soul acquired all the other skills too by growing. And if I say this, that absurd consequence will follow: that the soul shrinks whenever it forgets anything.

19. 33. Augustine: You understand well; and, to hear the truth, the soul is rightly said, as it were, to grow by learning, and conversely to be diminished by unlearning, but in a transferred sense, as we showed above. Yet this must be guarded against: that it should not seem to occupy a greater extent of place when it is said to grow; but rather that the more skilled has a certain greater force for acting than the less skilled. Yet it matters greatly what those very things are which it learns, by which in some way it seems to be increased. For just as in the body there are three kinds of increase—one necessary, by which the natural fitness in the members is fulfilled; another superfluous, by which something departs from the rest of the members while growing in good health (whereby it sometimes happens that men are born with six fingers, and many other such things, which, when they are excessive beyond custom, are called monstrous); a third harmful, which, when it occurs, is called a swelling (tumor): for in this way too the members are said to grow, and really do occupy a greater place, but with good health overcome—so in the mind there are, as it were, certain natural increases, when it is said to be increased by honorable studies fitted for living well and happily. But when we learn things that are more wonderful than useful—although often suited to certain matters—they are nevertheless superfluous, and to be counted among that second kind. For if a certain flute-player, as Varro records, so delighted the people that he was made king, we ought not on that account to think our mind should be increased by that art—just as we would not wish to have larger teeth than human, if we heard from someone that a man who had such had killed an enemy with a bite. But that kind of arts is harmful by which the health of the mind is wounded: for to distinguish dishes marvelously by smell and taste, and to be able to say from what lake a fish was caught, or how old a wine is, is a kind of pitiable expertise; and when the soul seems, as it were, to have grown by these arts—the soul which, with the mind neglected, has slipped down into the senses—it is to be judged to have done nothing but swell, or even to have wasted away.

20. 34. Evodius: I accept these things and agree; yet I am not a little troubled by the fact that the soul is unskilled in all things and brutish, as we observe, so far as is permitted, in a newborn child. For why has it brought no skill with it, if it is eternal?

Augustine: You raise a great question—great indeed, and one than which I do not know whether any is greater—in which our opinions are so opposed to each other that to you the soul seems to have brought no skills with it, while to me, on the contrary, it seems to have brought all of them; and that what is called learning is nothing other than remembering and recollecting. But do you not see how this is not the time to inquire whether these things are so? For now we are at work to make it appear, if it can be done, that the soul is not called small or great according to spaces of place; but its eternity, if there is any, we shall examine at the proper time, when we begin to treat, so far as is lawful, that fourth point you proposed—why it was given to the body. For what does it matter to such a quantity of it whether it always was, or not, or will be, or whether it is now unskilled and now skilled—since we have proved above that long time brings no cause of magnitude even to bodies, and it is most well known that no skill can be present in the growing and is often suited to the aged; and many other things have been said, enough, I think, to demonstrate that the soul does not become larger together with the magnitude of body that age brings.

21. 35. Evodius: I would now let us pass to that point, were I not of the opinion that something must be said about strength. For what is this, that bodies enlarged through age furnish the soul greater strength, if the soul does not become larger along with them? For although the soul's power is wont to be reckoned virtue, and strength the body's, I would never deny strength to the soul, since I see there is none in lifeless bodies. It must indeed be granted that the soul uses strength, as it uses the senses, through the body; yet since these are the offices of a living thing, who could doubt that they belong rather to the soul? Since, then, we see greater strength in older boys than in infants, and afterward see adolescents and young men daily excel in strength, until again, as the body grows old, it is diminished—this is no slight indication, as it seems to me, of a soul growing with the body and then growing old.

21. 36. Augustine: What you say is not altogether absurd; but I am wont to think that strength lies not so much in the size of the body and the increases of age as in a certain exercise and firming of the members. To prove this to you, I ask you whether you judge that to walk more persistently than another and to be less wearied is a mark of greater strength.

Evodius: So I think.

Augustine: Why, then, as a boy, did I cover much more of a journey without fainting, when I was exercised in walking through my zeal for fowling, than as an adolescent, when I had given myself to other studies that compelled me rather to sit—if greater strength is to be attributed to advancing age, and through it to a growing soul? Then, in the very bodies of wrestlers, trainers most expertly examine not the bulk and size, but certain knots of the muscles, and well-defined sinews, and the whole shape of the body in harmony with itself; and from these rather they gather their proofs of strength. And yet all these avail little unless the force of skill and exercise is added. It has often been seen, too, that men of huge body are overcome by small and short ones, whether in moving or in carrying weights, or even in wrestling itself. For who does not know that any Olympic champion would tire on a journey sooner than some traveling peddler, who could be crushed by one of his fingers? So if even the kinds of strength are not all called great alike, but some are more suited to one thing, some to another; and if the lineaments and shapes of bodies count for more than their sizes; and if exercises bring so much—as it is very commonly believed that a man, by daily lifting a small calf, brought it about that he could lift and bear it even as a bull, without sense of greater burden, because it was added little by little—then the strength of greater age by no means signifies that the soul has grown with the body.

22. 37. But if some of the larger animals have, by the very fact that they are larger, more strength, the cause is this: that by the law of nature lesser weights yield to greater—not only when they are borne to their proper place by their own inclination, as moist and earthen bodies to the middle place of the world itself, which is lowest, and again airy and fiery ones upward; but also when, by some engine or throw or thrust or repulse, they are forced by an outside force to go where they would not be borne of their own accord. For if from a height you let fall two stones of unequal size, though at the same moment, the larger reaches the ground sooner; but if the smaller is placed beneath it, and is unavoidably overtaken by it, it yields and is carried down to the ground with it. Likewise, if the larger is thrown down from above, while the smaller is thrown upward against it, when they meet, the rebound and retreat of the smaller necessarily follows. And lest you think this happens because the smaller was forced against nature to go upward, while the other sought its place with greater impetus, make the larger be hurled upward and meet the smaller thrown down to the earth: you will see the smaller no less driven back and forced into the sky, but by the very rebound to fall in another direction, so that, where it is free, it is carried downward. Likewise, if both, not by natural motion but thrown against each other by two men, as it were fighting in a field, strike together in the middle space, who would doubt that the smaller would yield to the larger, in that direction toward which the larger was being carried and from which the smaller came? Since this is so—that is, since lesser weights, as has been said, yield to greater—yet it matters much with how great an impetus they are driven against one another. For if the smaller, driven with greater impetus, as though shot from some powerful engine, strikes the larger that was hurled more loosely or is already slackening, then, although it rebounds from it, it nevertheless slows it or even drives it backward, in proportion to the blows and the weights.

22. 38. These things being premised and understood, so far as the present business requires, see now whether what are called the strengths in animals agree with this reasoning: for who denies that the bodies of all animals are endowed with their own weight? This weight, moved by the soul's inclination, in whatever direction it leans, avails much by its own magnitude. But the soul's inclination, in moving the body's weight, uses the sinews as engines; and dryness and moderate heat enliven the sinews and make them more mobile, while a moist stiffness loosens and weakens them. And so in sleep, because physicians call it cold and moist and prove it so, the limbs grow languid; and the very effort of those who have wakened is much feebler, and therefore nothing is more broken and nerveless than the lethargic. But it is plain that certain frenzied men, in whom wakefulness and the force of wine and sharp fevers—that is, so much heat in excess—stretch and harden the sinews, struggle and do many things with greater strength than in full health, though their body is thinner and slighter from illness. If, then, these things called strengths are produced by the soul's inclination, and by a certain mechanism of the sinews, and by the body's weight: the will provides the inclination, which is made readier by hope or boldness, but is blunted by fear, and much more by despair (for in fear, when some hope underlies it, stronger powers are wont to appear); a certain configuration of the body fits the mechanism together, the balance of health regulates it, the diligence of exercise confirms it; the bulk of the members gives weight, which age and nourishment provide, while nourishment alone restores it. Whoever prevails equally in all these is to be admired for strength, and each man is the more feeble than another the more these things fail him. And it often happens that, by a persistent inclination and a better mechanism, one man, though he sets in motion a small weight of body, overcomes another endowed with greater bulk. And again sometimes the bulk is so great that, even if it is moved with a feebler effort, it nevertheless overwhelms a small adversary striving much more vehemently. But when not the body's weight, nor the moderation of the sinews, but the inclination itself—that is, the mind—gives way, so that the altogether stronger is overcome by one in every way weaker, but more timid by one bolder, I do not know whether this is to be attributed to strength. Unless one should say that the soul has certain strengths of its own, by which greater boldness or confidence is produced in it: which, when present in one and absent in another, then it is understood how much the mind excels its body, even in what is done through the body.

22. 39. Therefore, since in an infant boy only the inclination to draw or push something is intact, while the sinews are both unfit because of their recent and less perfect firming, and slack because of the moisture that abounds at that age, and languid because of no exercise; and the weight, moreover, is so slight that, even when driven against another, it does not press heavily, and is fitter to receive than to inflict trouble—who is there who, having seen that the years have brought all these things that were lacking, and having recognized the strength given through them, would rightly and prudently judge that the soul has grown, which daily uses these greater aids? For such a man could, if he saw small light reeds shot as far as possible from a slack bow by some young man whom he did not see behind an interposed screen, go a short way and soon fall back; and then, a little after, arrows now heavy with iron, lively with feathers, shot from a most taut string, seek the most distant sky; and if he were assured that both were done by the man's equal effort—he could judge that in so short a time the man had grown and increased in strength. And what can be said more perverse than this?

22. 40. Evodius: I am sufficiently persuaded that greater strength does not come from the soul's having grown; for—to omit other things subtly said by you—not even the frenzied man himself, whose strength, as everyone knows, is wont to be much greater than the healthy, would say that the soul grows by madness and disease of the body, when the body itself is diminished. So it seems to me especially that all that we wonder at, when strength beyond hope is found in someone, lies in the sinews. Therefore, I beg, take up now that point to which I am wholly intent: why the soul, if it does not have a magnitude of as great a space as the body is, nevertheless feels everywhere on it when it is touched.

23. 41. Augustine: Come now, let us take up what you wish; but I need you much more attentive than perhaps you think you ought to be. So see that you are present to the utmost, and answer me what this sense seems to you to be, by which the soul uses the body—for it is itself now called by the proper name "sense."

Evodius: I am accustomed to hear that there are five senses: of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. What more I should answer, I do not know.

Augustine: This division is most ancient, and is commonly rehearsed in the schools. But I should like you to define for me what the sense itself is, so that by the same definition all those would be included, and nothing that was not a sense would be understood in it; but if that cannot be done, I do not press it. For what is enough you certainly can do—either refute or approve my definition.

Evodius: In this way perhaps I will not fail you, so far as I am able; for even this is not always easy.

Augustine: Attend, then: for I think a sense is that the soul is not unaware of what the body undergoes.

Evodius: This definition pleases me.

Augustine: Stand by it, then, as your own, and defend it while I refute it a little.

Evodius: I will defend it indeed, if you help me; but if not, then it already displeases me—for not without cause did it seem to you fit to be refuted.

Augustine: Do not depend too much on authority, especially mine, which is none; and, as Horace says, Dare to be wise—lest fear subdue you before reason does.

Evodius: I fear nothing at all, however the matter turns out; for you will not let me err. But begin now, if you have anything, lest I be wearied by your delaying rather than by your opposing.

23. 42. Augustine: Tell me, then, what your body undergoes when you see me.

Evodius: It undergoes something, certainly; for the parts of my eyes, unless I am mistaken, are parts of my body, and if they underwent nothing, how would I see you?

Augustine: But it is not enough for you to persuade me that your eyes undergo something, unless you also show what they undergo.

Evodius: What, in the end, except sight itself? For they see. For if you asked me what a sick man undergoes, I would answer: sickness; what a man desiring undergoes: desire; what one fearing: fear; what one rejoicing: joy. Why, then, when you ask what one seeing undergoes, should I not rightly answer: sight itself?

Augustine: But one rejoicing feels joy. Or will you deny it?

Evodius: On the contrary, I agree.

Augustine: I would say the same of the other emotions.

Evodius: So I hold.

Augustine: But whatever the eyes feel, this they see.

Evodius: I would in no way grant that; for who sees pain, which the eyes nevertheless often feel?

Augustine: It is plain that you are dealing with the eyes; you are well awake. So see whether, just as one rejoicing feels joy by rejoicing, so too one seeing feels sight by seeing.

Evodius: Can it be otherwise?

Augustine: But whatever one seeing feels by seeing, that he must also necessarily see.

Evodius: It is not necessary; for what? If he feels love by seeing, does he also see love?

Augustine: Most cautiously and shrewdly; I am glad that you are hard to deceive. But now attend: since it is agreed between us that not everything the eyes feel, nor everything that is felt by seeing, is seen, do you think at least this is true—that everything that is seen is felt?

Evodius: Indeed, unless I grant this, how could what we see be called a sense?

Augustine: What—everything we feel, do we not also undergo?

Evodius: So it is.

Augustine: So if everything we see we feel, and everything we feel we undergo, we undergo everything we see.

Evodius: I make no resistance.

Augustine: So you undergo me, and I in turn you, when we see each other.

Evodius: So I judge, and reason insistently compels me to this.

23. 43. Augustine: Take the rest: for I believe it would seem most absurd and foolish to you if anyone affirmed that you undergo some body there where the very body you undergo is not.

Evodius: It seems absurd, and I think it is as you say.

Augustine: What of this? Is it not plain that my body is in one place and yours in another?

Evodius: It is plain.

Augustine: But your eyes feel my body; and if they feel it, they certainly undergo it; nor can they undergo there where what they undergo is not; and yet they are not there where my body is: so they undergo there where they are not.

Evodius: I have granted all those things which it seemed absurd not to grant; but this last conclusion drawn from them is so much more absurd that I would rather agree that I have granted one of the others rashly than that this is true; for I would not dare to say, even in dreams, that my eyes feel where they are not.

Augustine: See, then, where you have fallen asleep; for what, in the end, might have slipped from you less cautiously, if you had been awake a little before?

Evodius: Indeed, I am earnestly turning this over and over with myself; yet nothing shines out clearly enough that I should regret having granted it—unless perhaps this, that our eyes feel when we see; for the sight itself perhaps feels.

Augustine: Indeed it is so; for sight stretches itself outward, and through the eyes flashes out as far as it can to survey what we behold. From this it comes about that it sees rather there where the thing it sees is, not where it bursts forth in order to see. Do you not, then, see, when you see me?

Evodius: What madman would say this? I certainly do see, but I see by sight sent out through the eyes.

Augustine: But if you see, you feel; if you feel, you undergo; nor can you undergo anything there where you are not. But there you see me, where I am; there, then, you undergo, where I am. But if you are not there where I am, by what means you would dare to say that I am seen by you, I am wholly at a loss.

Evodius: By my sight, I say, stretched out into the place where you are, I see you where you are; but I confess that I am not there. But just as, if I were to touch you with a rod, I would certainly be touching, and would feel this, and yet I would not be there where I touch you—so, when I say that I see by sight, although I am not there, I am not on that account forced to confess that it is not I who see.

23. 44. Augustine: So you have granted nothing rashly; for your eyes too can be defended in this way, whose sight is, as it were, a rod, as you say; nor is that conclusion absurd, that your eyes see there where they are not. Or does it seem otherwise to you?

Evodius: It is indeed as you say; for I have now noticed this too: that if the eyes saw there where they are, they would also see themselves.

Augustine: You would say more rightly, not "would also see themselves," but "would see only themselves." For where they are—that is, the place they hold—they alone hold; nor is the nose there where they are, nor anything near them; otherwise you too would be there where I am, since we are next to each other. Since this is so, if the eyes saw only there where they are, they would see nothing more than themselves. But since they do not see themselves, we are not only compelled to agree that they can see where they are not, but that they cannot see at all except where they are not.

Evodius: There is nothing that makes me doubt this.

Augustine: So you do not doubt that they undergo there where they are not. For where they see, there they feel; for to see itself is to feel; but to feel is to undergo; so where they feel, there they undergo. But they see elsewhere than where they are: so they undergo there where they are not.

Evodius: It is wonderful how true I judge these things.

24. 45. Augustine: Rightly, perhaps, you judge so. But answer, I beg you, whether we see everything that we come to know by sight.

Evodius: So I believe.

Augustine: Do you also believe that everything we come to know by seeing, we come to know through sight?

Evodius: This too I believe.

Augustine: Why, then, do we often, by seeing smoke alone, come to know that fire lies hidden beneath, which we do not see?

Evodius: You speak truly; and now I do not think that we see whatever we come to know by sight; for we can, as you have taught, come to know by seeing one thing another thing that sight has not touched.

Augustine: What—can we fail to see what we feel through sight?

Evodius: In no way.

Augustine: So to feel is one thing, to come to know another.

Evodius: Entirely another; for we feel the smoke, which we see; and from it we come to know that fire, which we do not see, lies beneath.

Augustine: You understand well. But you surely see that, when this happens, our body—that is, the eyes—undergoes nothing from the fire, but from the smoke, which alone they see. For that to see is to feel, and to feel is to undergo, we have already agreed above.

Evodius: I hold it and agree.

Augustine: When, then, through a passion of the body something is not hidden from the soul, it is not straightway called one of the five senses mentioned; but it is so called when the passion itself is not hidden. For that fire, neither seen, nor heard, nor smelled, nor tasted, nor touched by us, is nevertheless not hidden from the soul, the smoke having been seen. And although this not-being-hidden is not called a sense, because the body underwent nothing from the fire, yet it is called knowledge through a sense, because, from a passion of the body—though another, that is, from the seeing of another thing—it was conjectured and ascertained.

Evodius: I understand, and I see very well that this agrees with and favors that definition of yours which you gave me to defend as my own; for I remember that the sense was defined by you thus: when the soul is not unaware of what the body undergoes. And so what we call the seeing of the smoke we call a sense; for the eyes, which are parts of the body and are bodies, underwent it by seeing. But the fire, from which the body underwent nothing, we do not call a sense, although it came to be known.

24. 46. Augustine: I approve your memory indeed, and your ready understanding; but that fortification of the definition is shaky.

Evodius: Why, I beg?

Augustine: Because you do not deny, I think, that the body undergoes something when we grow or grow old; and it is plain that we feel this by no sense; nor yet is it hidden from the soul. So something the body undergoes is not hidden from it, and yet it cannot be called a sense. For by seeing larger those things we had once seen smaller, and by seeing old those whom we know to have been young men and boys, we conjecture that our bodies, even now while we speak, undergo some such change. Nor are we deceived in this, I think; for it is more likely that I should say I am deceived in what I see than that I should be deceived in understanding that my hair is now growing or that my body is changing by moments. But if this change is a passion of the body, which no one denies, and is now neither felt by us nor hidden from the soul (because it is not hidden from us), then the body, as I said, undergoes what is not hidden from the soul, and yet it is not a sense. Therefore that definition, which ought to have included nothing that was not a sense, since it has included this, is certainly faulty.

Evodius: I see nothing left for me but to ask you either to define otherwise, or to cure this one, if you can; for I cannot deny that, by that reasoning which I strongly approve, it is faulty.

Augustine: It is easy to correct it, which I want you to dare to do; for you will, believe me, if you have understood well where it errs.

Evodius: Is it anywhere except where it takes in things foreign to it?

Augustine: In what way, then?

Evodius: Because the body that grows old, even in a young man, cannot be denied to undergo something; and when we know this, it is not hidden from the soul that the body undergoes something, and yet it cannot be perceived by any sense: for I neither see myself now growing old, nor do I feel it by hearing, or smell, or taste, or touch.

Augustine: Whence, then, do you know it?

Evodius: I gather it by reason.

Augustine: On what arguments does your reason rest?

Evodius: On the fact that I see others as old men who were once young, as I now am.

Augustine: Is it not by a sense, one of the five, that you see them?

Evodius: Who denies it? But from the fact that I see them, I conjecture that I too am growing old, though I do not see it.

Augustine: What words, then, do you think must be added to that definition to perfect it, since it is not a sense unless a passion of the body is not hidden from the soul—and yet not in such a way that the soul understands it through another passion, or through anything else whatever?

Evodius: Tell me, I beg, that a little more plainly.

25. 47. Augustine: I will indulge you, and much more gladly one who holds back than one who hurries; but see that you are wholly present, for what I say will avail for many things. A definition contains nothing less, nothing more, than the thing taken up to be explained; otherwise it is altogether faulty. And whether it is free of faults of this kind is tested by conversion—which will be made clearer to you by these examples. For if you asked me what a man is, and I defined it thus: A man is a mortal animal; you ought not straightway, because what was said is true, to approve the definition too, but, placing before it the particle "every," you should convert it and see whether, when converted, it too is true: that is, whether, just as it is true that every man is a mortal animal, so it would be true that every mortal animal is a man. Finding it otherwise, you should disapprove the definition on account of that fault by which it takes in foreign things; for not man alone is a mortal animal, but also any beast. This definition of man, then, is usually perfected when "rational" is added to "mortal": for a man is a rational mortal animal; and just as every man is a rational mortal animal, so every rational mortal animal is a man. By containing more, then, the earlier definition was faulty, for it contained the beast along with the man: this one is perfect, for it holds every man and nothing more than man. But by holding less it is faulty in this way, if you add "grammarian"; for although every rational mortal grammarian animal is a man, yet many men who are not grammarians are not contained by this definition. And for this reason it is false by the first proposition, but true when converted. For it is false that every man is a rational mortal grammarian animal; but it is true that every rational mortal grammarian animal is a man. But when it is true neither by the first proposition nor by conversion, it is surely more faulty than these single cases—as are these two: A man is a white animal; or, A man is a four-footed animal. For if you say, Every man is a white animal, or a four-footed animal, you say what is false; and so too if you convert it. But these differ from each other in this: that the first falls on some men—for most men are white; this other on none, for no man is four-footed. These things you have learned for the present, to test definitions, how they are judged by proposition and conversion. There are many other things of this kind that are taught, full of words and of darkness, which little by little, when it seems opportune, I will try to have you learn.

25. 48. Evodius: I judge so indeed, but what can be added I do not know.

Augustine: A sense is certainly every passion of the body that is not hidden from the soul; but this statement cannot be converted, on account of that passion of the body by which we grow or shrink while we know it—that is, in such a way that it is not hidden from the soul.

Evodius: So it is.

Augustine: What—is this passion not hidden from the soul through itself, or through something else?

Evodius: Through something else, plainly; for it is one thing to see the nails larger, another to know that they are growing.

Augustine: Since, then, the growing itself is a passion which we touch by no sense, but that magnitude which we feel was made by the same passion, though it is not the passion itself—it is plain that we know such a passion not through itself, but through something else. So if it were not hidden from the soul otherwise than through something else, would it not rather be felt than conjectured?

Evodius: I understand.

Augustine: Why, then, do you doubt what must be added to that definition?

Evodius: Now I see it must be defined thus: that a sense is a passion of the body that, through itself, is not hidden from the soul. For every sense is this, and everything of this kind, I think, is a sense.

25. 49. Augustine: If this is so, I confess the definition is perfect. But let us test it, if you please, whether it wavers by that second fault, the one by which the definition of man, to which "grammarian" was added, was faulty. For you must remember that it was said that a man is a rational mortal grammarian animal, and that this definition errs because it is true by conversion, while by the first statement it is false. For it is false that every man is a rational mortal grammarian animal, although it is true that every rational mortal grammarian animal is a man. So this definition is faulty because it holds nothing beyond man, but does not hold every man: and perhaps ours, of which we boast as perfect, is of this kind. For although every passion of the body that through itself is not hidden from the soul is a sense, yet not every sense is this. You may understand it thus: beasts of course feel, and almost all are vigorous in those five senses, so far as each has been granted by nature. Or will you deny this?

Evodius: By no means.

26. 49. Augustine: What—do you not grant this: that there is no knowledge except when something has been perceived and come to be known by firm reason?

Evodius: I grant it.

Augustine: But a beast does not use reason.

Evodius: This too I grant.

Augustine: So knowledge does not fall to a beast. But when something is not hidden, it is certainly known; so beasts do not feel, if every sense is when a passion of the body, through itself, is not hidden from the soul. But they do feel, as was granted a little before; why, then, do we hesitate to disapprove that definition, which could in no way embrace every sense, since the sense of beasts is excluded?

26. 50. Evodius: I confess that I was deceived when I granted you that knowledge exists when something is perceived by firm reason. For I was looking only at men when you asked this; for I can neither say that beasts use reason, nor can I deny them knowledge. For the dog, I think, knew his master, whom he is reported to have recognized after twenty years—to say nothing of the countless other cases.

Augustine: Tell me, I pray you, if two things were set before you, one to which you must arrive, the other through which you can arrive, which of these would you value more, and which would you set before the other?

Evodius: Who doubts that the one to which we must arrive is the better?

Augustine: So, since there are two things, knowledge and reason, do we arrive at reason through knowledge, or at knowledge through reason?

Evodius: Each thing, I think, is so bound to the other that we can arrive at either through the other. For we would not arrive at reason itself unless we knew that we must arrive at it. So knowledge went before, that we might arrive at reason through it.

Augustine: What—is that knowledge which you say goes before arrived at without reason?

Evodius: I would never say that; for it is the height of rashness.

Augustine: Through reason, then?

Evodius: It is not so.

Augustine: So through rashness?

Evodius: Who would say that?

Augustine: Through what, then?

Evodius: Through nothing, because knowledge is implanted in us.

26. 51. Augustine: You seem to me to have forgotten what we agreed on above, when I asked whether you thought that there was knowledge when something is perceived by firm reason. For you answered, I think, that this seemed to you human knowledge: but now you say that a man can have some knowledge when he has perceived a thing by no reason. But who does not see that nothing is more contrary to itself than these two: that there is no knowledge except when something is perceived by firm reason, and that there is knowledge of some thing perceived by no reason? So I want to know which of these you choose; for both cannot in any way be true.

Evodius: I choose this, which I said a little before; for that earlier one I confess I granted rashly. For since by reason we seek the truth between us, and this is done by asking and answering, how could one arrive at the conclusion in which the reasoning ends, unless something were first granted? But how could that be rightly granted which was not known? So unless this reasoning found in me something known, leaning on which it might lead me to the unknown, I would learn nothing at all through it, nor would I call it reasoning at all. Therefore it is in vain that you do not agree with me that, before reasoning, there must necessarily be in us some knowledge from which reasoning itself takes its start.

Augustine: I will indulge you, and indeed, as I have undertaken, I will allow you to amend whenever you regret something granted; but do not, I beg, abuse this license, and attend carelessly when I ask—lest things wrongly granted continually compel you to doubt even those that are rightly granted.

Evodius: Go on, rather, to the rest; for although I add whatever vigilance I can (since I am also ashamed to fall from my opinion so often), yet I will never be deterred from striving against this shame, and from correcting my slip, especially with you lending a hand. For obstinacy is not to be taken up merely because constancy is to be desired.

27. 52. Augustine: May that constancy come to you as quickly as possible; you have set forth a view so pleasing to me. But now be as present as can be to these things I wish. For I ask you what seems to you the difference between reason and reasoning.

Evodius: I am not able enough to distinguish these.

Augustine: Consider this, then: whether you judge that reason is present without interruption in a man already grown, or in an adult, or (to remove all ambiguity) in a wise man, while he is sound of mind—as good health is in the body while it is free of plague and wounds; or whether, like walking, sitting, speaking, it is now present, now absent.

Evodius: I think reason is always present to a sound mind.

Augustine: What of this? When, through the things that are granted and manifest, whether by asking another or by connecting other things, we lead ourselves to the knowledge of some matter, does it seem to you that we, or any wise man, always do this?

Evodius: Not always; for not always, I think, does any man or wise man seek something by discoursing, either with himself or with another. For he who seeks has not yet found; so if he always seeks, he never finds. But the wise man has already found—to say no more—wisdom itself, which, when he was foolish, he was seeking, perhaps by discoursing, or in whatever other way he could.

Augustine: You speak rightly; so I want you to understand that this is not reason—when, through the things that are granted and known, we are led to something unknown: for this is not always present to a sound mind, as we have already agreed; but reason is always present.

27. 53. Evodius: I understand; but to what end is this?

Augustine: Because a little before you said that I therefore ought to agree with you that we have knowledge before reason, because reason rests on something known when it leads us to the unknown: but now we have found that it is not to be called reason while this is being done; for a sound mind does not always do this, though it always has reason; but this is perhaps rightly named reasoning. So that reason is a certain gaze of the mind, while reasoning is the searching of reason—that is, the motion of that gaze through the things to be gazed upon. So the latter is needed for seeking, the former for seeing. And so when that gaze of the mind which we call reason, cast upon some thing, sees it, it is called knowledge; but when the mind does not see, though it directs its gaze, it is called inexperience or ignorance. For not everyone who looks with these bodily eyes sees, which we most easily notice in the dark. From this it is clear, I think, that the gaze is one thing, vision another—which two, in the mind, we name reason and knowledge. Unless something moves you against these things, or you judge them distinguished too little clearly.

Evodius: This distinction pleases me greatly, and I gladly agree.

Augustine: See now, then, whether you think we gaze in order to see, or see in order to gaze.

Evodius: On this not even a blind man would doubt: that the gaze is for the sake of vision, not vision for the sake of the gaze.

Augustine: It must be confessed, then, that vision is to be valued more than the gaze.

Evodius: It must be confessed entirely.

Augustine: So knowledge too more than reason.

Evodius: I see this follows.

Augustine: Does it please you that beasts are better or happier than men?

Evodius: God avert so monstrous a madness.

Augustine: You have rightly shuddered; but your opinion drives us to it. For you said that they have knowledge and do not have reason. But man has reason, through which knowledge is scarcely arrived at. But to grant that it is easily arrived at—how will reason help us to think we should be set above beasts, when they have knowledge, and this has been found to be valued more than reason?

28. 54. Evodius: I am altogether compelled either not to grant knowledge to beasts, or to refuse nothing against their being deservedly set before me. But explain, I beg, what that case of the dog of Ulysses, which I mentioned, may be; for, moved by wonder at it, I barked so emptily.

Augustine: What do you think this is, except a certain power of feeling, not of knowing? For many beasts surpass us in feeling, the cause of which it is not the place here to ask; but in mind, reason, and knowledge God has set us above them. But that feeling can, with the addition of habit—whose force is great—distinguish the things in which such souls delight; and the more easily because the soul of brutes is more fixed to the body, whose senses are those it uses for the food and pleasure it takes from that same body. But the human soul, through reason and knowledge, of which we are treating—because these are far more excellent than the senses—suspends itself from the body as much as it can, and more gladly enjoys the pleasure that is within; and the more it inclines toward the senses, the more it makes a man like a beast. Hence it is that even crying infants, the more estranged they are from reason, the more easily distinguish by feeling even the touch and embrace of their nurses, and cannot bear the smell of other women with whom they have had no acquaintance.

28. 55. Therefore, although one thing has fallen out of another, I gladly linger in this discourse, by which the soul is admonished not to pour itself back into the senses further than necessity compels, but rather to gather itself from them to itself, and to become a child again for God: which is to become a new man, the old being put off; from which, because of the neglected law of God, there is a certain necessity of beginning—than which nothing more true or more secret is contained in the divine Scriptures. I would wish to say more here, and to bind myself, while, as it were, I instruct you, to do nothing else than to be restored to myself, to whom I most owe myself; and so to become God's, as Horace says, a slave dear to his master. And this can in no way come about unless we are reformed to his image, which he gave us to keep as something most precious and most dear, when he gave us our very selves to ourselves, than which nothing can be set before us but himself. But than this action nothing seems to me more laborious, and yet nothing is more like to rest; nor yet can the mind take it up or fulfill it unless he himself helps, to whom it is restored. From which it comes about that man is to be reformed by the mercy of him by whose goodness and power he was formed.

28. 56. Evodius: This is well proved; and if anything about it must be sought more diligently, I will watch for another time. Now I desire to know what you conclude from this.

29. 56. Augustine: What else do you think, except that that definition of sense, just as before it included something more than sense, I know not what, so now wavers by the contrary fault, in that it could not include every sense? For wild beasts have sense, and do not have knowledge: but whatever is not hidden is known; and everything that is known surely belongs to knowledge. On all of which I now agree with you. Either, then, it is not true that a sense is a passion of the body not hidden from the soul; or beasts lack it, because they lack knowledge: but we grant sense to beasts; so that definition is faulty.

Evodius: I confess I find nothing by which to resist.

29. 57. Augustine: Take another, by which we may be more ashamed of this definition. For you remember, I think, that third fault of a definition was shown to you, than which nothing is more disgraceful: when it is true on neither side, like that of man, A man is a four-footed animal: for whether one says, Every man is a four-footed animal, or, Every four-footed animal is a man, whoever says and affirms it is surely mad, if he is not joking.

Evodius: You speak truly.

Augustine: What—if this definition of ours is caught in this fault too, do you think there is anything more to be hissed off and banished from the soul?

Evodius: Who would refuse it? But I would not wish, if it can be done, to be held here too so long, and to be harried by little questions.

Augustine: There is nothing for you to fear, for the business is now finished. Or are you not yet persuaded that, when we treated of the difference between beasts and men, to feel is one thing and to know another?

Evodius: On the contrary, most fully.

Augustine: So sense is one thing, knowledge another.

Evodius: It is so.

Augustine: But we do not feel by reason, but either by sight, or hearing, or smell, or taste, or touch.

Evodius: I agree.

Augustine: And everything we know, we know by reason: so no sense is knowledge. But whatever is not hidden belongs to knowledge: so not-being-hidden belongs to no sense, just as no man can rightly be called four-footed. Therefore this definition of ours, taken up by you, is convicted not only of having invaded foreign territory, nor of having left nothing of its own right, but of having had nothing at all proper to it, and of having occupied wholly what was foreign.

Evodius: What, then, shall we do? Will you allow it to leave the court so? For although I provided it such defense as I could, you yourself drew up the very form of suit that deceived us. And I indeed, though I could not win, was present in good faith, which is enough for me; but you—if you should be charged with collusion, what would you do, by whom it was both brought forward to plead boldly and attacked so as to give way disgracefully?

Augustine: Is there any judge here, by whom this definition or I should have anything to fear? I, as it were called in privately as a legal counsel, wished to refute you for the sake of instruction, so that when it comes to judgment you may stand ready.

29. 58. Evodius: Is there, then, anything you might bring forward on behalf of this definition, which you commend to me—most weak as I am—to defend and protect so rashly?

Augustine: There is certainly.

30. 58. Evodius: What is it, I beg?

Augustine: That although sense is one thing and knowledge another, yet that not-being-hidden is common to both; just as to man himself and to the beast, though they differ greatly, yet to be an animal is common. For whatever appears to the soul is not hidden, whether through the disposition of the body or through the purity of the understanding; and the first of these sense has claimed for itself, the second knowledge.

Evodius: So that definition remains safe and approved?

Augustine: It remains indeed.

Evodius: Where, then, was I deceived?

Augustine: Where I asked whether everything that is not hidden is known: for you rashly assented to this question.

Evodius: What would you have me say?

Augustine: That there is not straightway knowledge if something is not hidden, but if it is not hidden through reason; but when it is not hidden through the body, it is called a sense, if a passion of the body is not hidden through itself. Or do you not know that to certain philosophers, and very sharp ones, it has seemed that not even what is grasped by the mind may aspire to the name of knowledge, unless the grasp is so firm that the mind can by no reasoning be moved from it?

30. 59. Evodius: I accept these things most gratefully; but I beg, since what a sense is has been explained, I think, most subtly, let us return to that question for whose sake we undertook to explain this. For I had brought forward an argument by which I would prove the soul to be as great as its body is, on the ground that it feels one touching it from the head to the very tip of the toe, wherever you touch it; and thence we were carried—necessarily, perhaps—to the definition of sense, most full of delays. So now show, if you please, the very fruit of so great a labor.

Augustine: There is fruit indeed, and most abundant; for the whole of what we were seeking has been accomplished. For if a sense is a passion of the body that, through itself, is not hidden from the soul—which, that we might hold it most firmly, we discoursed longer than you wished—do you at last remember that we found that the eyes feel there where they are not, or rather undergo there?

Evodius: I remember.

Augustine: You also granted, unless I am mistaken, nor do you now doubt that it had to be granted, that the soul is much better and more powerful than the whole body is.

Evodius: From this, indeed, I think it wicked to doubt.

Augustine: Come now, if the body can undergo something there where it is not, on account of a certain blending with the soul—which has been found to happen to the eyes in seeing—do we think the soul so gross and sluggish (the soul through which the eyes themselves have so much power) that a passion of the body should be hidden from it, if it does not lie there where the passion itself takes place?

30. 60. Evodius: This conclusion moves me much, and so much that I am altogether dumbfounded, and find not only what to answer, but plainly not even where I am. For what should I say? That there is no sense, when a passion of the body is not, through itself, hidden from the soul? What else will there be, if this is not it? That the eyes undergo nothing when we see? That is most absurd. That they undergo there where they are? But they do not see themselves, and where they are there is nothing besides themselves. That the soul is not more powerful than the eyes, since the power of these is the same? Nothing is more mad. Or is this to be said—that it is more powerful to undergo there where each thing is, than where it is not? But if this were true, sight would not be more excellent than the other senses.

Augustine: What of the fact that, when the eyes undergo some blow, or something falling in, or a disturbance of the humor, there where they are—neither is this hidden from the soul, nor is that passion of sight, but it is called touch: and yet the eye could undergo such things even in a lifeless body, though the soul, from which the passion was not hidden, were lacking; whereas that which the eye cannot undergo unless the soul is present—that is, what it undergoes by seeing—this alone it undergoes there where it is not? From which, to whom does it not seem that the soul is contained in no place? Since the eye, which is a body, undergoes out of its own place only that which it would never undergo without the soul.

30. 61. Evodius: What, then, shall I do, I beg you? Cannot it be concluded from these reasonings that our souls are not in our bodies? And if this is so, do I not fail to know where I am? For who takes from me that I myself am a soul?

Augustine: Do not be disturbed, and rather take heart and be of good cheer. For this thought and consideration invites us to ourselves, and draws us, as much as is allowed, away from the body. As for what seemed to you—that the soul is not in the body of a living creature—although it seems absurd, yet most learned men, to whom it has seemed so, have not been lacking, nor, I think, are they lacking now; but, as you yourself understand, the matter is most subtle, and one for the perceiving of which the keenness of the mind must be sufficiently purified. Now attend rather to what else you might bring forward to prove that the soul is either long, or wide, or anything of the kind; for that argument of yours from the sense of touch you perceive does not reach the truth, nor avail anything to prove that the soul is diffused through the whole body like blood; or, if you now have nothing to bring forward, let us see what remains.

31. 62. Evodius: I would perhaps have nothing, did I not recall how, as boys, we used to wonder at the twitching tails of lizards cut off from the rest of the body; which motion I can in no way persuade myself happens without a soul: nor do I understand how it can come about that there is no extent of soul, when it can be cut even along with the body.

Augustine: I could answer that air and fire—the two which, through the presence of the soul, are held in the earthen and moist body, so that a blending of all four is made—when, after the same soul's departure, they escape to the upper regions and free themselves, set those little bodies moving the more violently, the fresher the wound from which they suddenly burst forth; and then that the motion grows languid, and at last ceases, as less and less of what escapes remains, until at last it all flies away. But I am called back from this by something I drank in with these eyes almost more recently than can be believed—but certainly not more recently than I ought. For when we were lately in the countryside of Liguria, those young men of mine who were then with me for the sake of their studies noticed, lying on the ground in a shady place, a little many-footed creature crawling—I mean a certain long worm: it is commonly known, but what I am about to tell I had never tested in it. For with the pen which one of them happened to have, turned around, he struck the creature in the middle: then both parts of the body went apart from that wound in opposite directions, with such speed of their feet, and with no feebler effort, than if there were two such creatures. Terrified by this marvel, and curious about the cause, they eagerly brought those living fragments to us, where I and Alypius were sitting together. Not a little moved, we watched them run in every direction they could on a board; and one of them, touched by the pen, twisted itself toward the place of pain, the other feeling nothing and carrying on its motions elsewhere. What more? We tried how far this would go, and cut the worm—indeed by now the worms—into many parts; and they all moved so, that, had it not been done by us and had the fresh wounds not appeared, we would have believed that just so many were born separately and that each had lived for itself.

31. 63. But what I then said to those young men, when they were intently watching me, I now fear to say to you: for we have now advanced so far that, unless I answer you otherwise something that holds probably for my case, our whole intent, fortified through so long a discourse, will seem, pierced by one little worm, to have given way. To them, however, I had given the charge that they should hold their course in their studies, as they had begun; so they would more opportunely come at some time to seek and learn these things, if the matter prompted it. But what I discussed with Alypius after they had gone—when each of us, after his own small measure, recalled and conjectured and inquired—if I should wish to set it forth, far more would have to be said than has been said from the very beginning through such great roundabouts and windings. Yet I will not be silent with you about what I think. Unless many things had then been known to me about the body, about the form that is in the body, about place, about time, about motion—which are discussed most subtly and most abstrusely on account of this very question—I would incline to give the palm to those who say the soul is a body. Therefore I warn you, as I can, again and again, not to plunge rashly either into the books or into the disputations of most talkative men, who trust too much to these bodily senses, until you correct and steady the steps that lead the soul up to God himself—lest you be turned away from that most secret and most tranquil dwelling place of the mind (from which, while it inhabits these things, it is now a stranger) more easily by studies and labors than by sloth and idleness.

31. 64. Evodius: Tell me, I beg you, as quickly as you can.

Augustine: First I say this: even if the cause should be quite hidden why these things happen in the cutting of certain bodies, we ought not straightway to be so disturbed by this one thing that we judge so many things, which seemed to you clearer than light above, to be false. For it can be that the cause of this matter is hidden from us—whether it is concealed from human nature, or is known to some man who cannot be questioned by us, or even that we ourselves are of such a wit that, though questioned, he could not satisfy us. Does it follow from this that whatever we have most firmly learned from the contrary side, and confess to be most true, should slip from us and be wrested away? But if those things remain intact which, when questioned, you answered to be sure and beyond doubt, there is no reason for us to fear this little worm childishly, although we cannot supply the cause of its liveliness and multiplicity. For if it were fixed and unmoved in your mind concerning some man that he was a good man, and you caught him at a banquet of robbers whom you were pursuing, and by some chance he died before he could be questioned by you—you would suppose some cause for his joining and feasting with those criminals, even if it always escaped you, rather than crime and fellowship. Why, then, when, by so many arguments set forth above and most firmly proved by you, it has been made plain to you that the soul is not contained in a place, and therefore is of no such quantity as we see in bodies, do you not suspect that there is some cause why a certain creature, cut up, lives in all its parts—yet not the cause that the soul could be cut up along with the body? And if we cannot find it, ought not the truth rather to be sought than the false to be believed?

32. 65. Evodius: I think both are the same.

Augustine: Tell me, then, from where the sound itself proceeds when you speak.

Evodius: Who doubts that it proceeds from me?

Augustine: So the sun proceeds from you when you name the sun?

Evodius: You asked me about the sound, not about the thing itself.

Augustine: So the sound is one thing, the thing the sound signifies another: yet you had said both were the same.

Evodius: Come, I now grant that the signifying sound is one thing, the thing signified another.

Augustine: Tell me, then, whether you, skilled in the Latin tongue, could name the sun in speaking, if the understanding of the sun did not precede the sound.

Evodius: In no way could I.

Augustine: What—before the name itself proceeds from the mouth, if, wishing to utter it, you hold yourself for a while in silence, does not that remain in your thought which another is going to hear by your expressed voice?

Evodius: It is plain.

Augustine: What—since the sun itself is of such great magnitude, can that notion of it, which you hold in thought before the voice, seem either long, or wide, or anything of the kind?

Evodius: In no way.

32. 66. Augustine: Come, tell me now: when the name itself bursts from your mouth, and I, hearing it, think of the sun—which you thought of before the voice and along with the voice, and which now perhaps we both think of—does it not seem to you that the name itself, as it were, received from you the meaning which it carried to me through the ears?

Evodius: It does.

Augustine: Since, then, the name itself consists of sound and meaning, while the sound belongs to the ears and the meaning to the mind, do you not judge that in a name, as in a certain living thing, the sound is the body, but the meaning is, as it were, the soul of the sound?

Evodius: Nothing seems to me more apt.

Augustine: Attend now whether the sound of a name can be divided by letters, while its soul—that is, its meaning—cannot. For it is the very thing which a little before you answered seemed to you neither wide nor long in our thought.

Evodius: I fully agree.

Augustine: What—when that sound is divided into single letters, does it seem to you to retain that meaning?

Evodius: How can single letters signify what the name composed of them signifies?

Augustine: But when, the meaning lost, the sound is torn apart into letters, do you think anything else has been done than that, the body being mangled, the soul has departed, and a kind of death, as it were, has befallen the name?

Evodius: Not only do I agree, but so gladly that nothing in this discourse has delighted me more.

32. 67. Augustine: If, then, you have sufficiently perceived in this likeness how, the body being cut, the soul cannot be cut, hear now how the very fragments of the body, though the soul is not cut, can live. For you have already granted, and rightly, I think, that the meaning which is, as it were, the soul of the sound, while a name is uttered, can in no way be divided through itself, though the sound itself, which is, as it were, its body, can. But in the name of the sun the division of the sound was made in such a way that no part of it retained any meaning. And so we considered those letters, the body of the name being mangled, as, so to speak, lifeless members—that is, lacking meaning. Therefore, if we find some name which, divided, can in its single parts also signify something, you must grant that no such utter death, as it were, was made by such cutting, since the members, considered separately, will seem to you to signify something and, as it were, to breathe.

Evodius: I will grant it entirely, and I demand that you now sound out that very thing.

Augustine: Hear, then: for while I attend to the neighborhood of the sun, of whose name we treated above, "Lucifer" occurs to me; which, cut between the second and third syllable, signifies something in its former part, when we say "Luci" [light], and therefore lives in this more-than-half body of the name. The last part too has a soul: for when you are bidden to bear something, you hear this "fer" [bear]. For how could you obey if someone said to you, "Bear the book," if "fer" signified nothing? And when this is added to "Luci," it sounds "Lucifer" and signifies the morning star; but when it is taken away, it signifies something, and on this account, as it were, retains life.

32. 68. Since, moreover, there are place and time, by which all things that are perceived are occupied—or rather which they occupy—what we perceive by the eyes is divided through place, what by the ears through time. For just as that little worm, whole, occupied more place than its part, so it holds a longer span of time when "Lucifer" is said than if only "Luci" were said. So if this lives by its meaning in that diminution of time which was made by dividing the sound, while the same meaning is not divided (for it was not stretched out through time, but the sound was)—so it is to be judged that, when the worm's body is cut, although in a lesser place the part lives by the very fact that it was a part, the soul is not at all cut, nor made smaller by a lesser place, even though it possessed at once all the members of the whole creature stretched out through a greater place. For it occupied not place itself, but the body which was moved by it: just as that meaning, not stretched out through time, had nevertheless, as it were, animated and filled all the letters of the name as they held their own spans and times. Be content for the present, I beg, with this likeness, by which I perceive you are delighted. But what can be most subtly disputed about this—so that satisfaction is given not by likenesses, which often deceive, but by the things themselves—do not at present expect. For so long a discourse must be brought to a close, and the mind must first be schooled in many other things you lack, to behold and discern these matters, so that you may be able to understand most clearly whether what is said by certain most learned men holds true: that the soul can in no way be divided through itself, but can be divided through the body.

32. 69. Evodius: I yield entirely, and I await your setting forth what, as seems to you we can fittingly treat together, the soul is capable of.

33. 70. Augustine: Oh, that we could both question about this some most learned man—and not only that, but most eloquent, and altogether most wise and perfect! How he would explain, by speaking and disputing, what the soul is capable of in the body, what in itself, what with God, to whom, when most pure, it is nearest, and in whom it has its highest and whole good! But now, since for this matter another fails me, I dare nevertheless not to fail you: but the reward of this is that, while unlearned I expound what the soul is capable of, I myself unworriedly test what I am capable of. First, however, let me cut off from you a certain very broad and boundless expectation, lest you think I am going to speak of every soul; but only of the human soul, which alone we ought to care for, if we are a care to ourselves. This soul, then, first—as anyone can easily notice—vivifies this earthly and mortal body by its presence; gathers it into one, and holds it in one; does not let it flow apart and waste away; causes nourishment to be distributed equally through the members, each part receiving its own; preserves its proportion and measure, not only in beauty, but also in growing and in begetting. But these things may seem common to man with shrubs: for these too we say live, and we see and confess that each of them in its own kind is preserved, nourished, grows, and begets.

33. 71. Ascend, then, to the second level, and see what the soul is capable of in the senses, where a more evident and manifest life is understood. For we must not heed some rustic impiety—plainly more wooden than the very trees for which it pleads—which believes that the vine feels pain when the grape is plucked, and that such things not only feel when they are cut, but even see and hear: of which sacrilegious error there is another place for discoursing. Now attend to what I had set out: consider what the soul's power is in the senses, and in the very motion of a more manifest living thing—powers we can have nothing in common with the things fixed by roots. The soul stretches itself into touch, and by it feels and distinguishes hot, cold, rough, smooth, hard, soft, light, heavy. Then by tasting, smelling, hearing, and seeing it judges the innumerable differences of flavors, odors, sounds, and shapes. And in all these it takes to itself and seeks the things that are according to the nature of its body; and it rejects and flees the contrary. It withdraws itself from these senses at a fixed interval of time, and, restoring their motions as though by a kind of holiday, it turns over within itself, in throngs and in manifold ways, the images of the things it has drunk in through them—and this whole is sleep and dreams. Often too, in frolicking and roaming, it delights in ease of motion, and without labor orders the harmony of the members; for the coupling of the sexes it does what it can, and in a twofold nature, by fellowship and love, it strives toward one. It works together not only for begetting offspring, but also for cherishing, guarding, and nourishing them. To the things among which the body acts, and by which it sustains the body, it binds itself by habit, and is parted from them, as from members, with difficulty: which force of habit, not severed even by the separation of the things themselves and the interval of time, is called memory. But again, no one denies that the soul can do all these things even in beasts.

33. 72. Raise yourself, then, to the third level, which is now proper to man, and think of memory—not of things grown in by habit, but of things innumerable, commended and retained by noticing and by signs: so many arts of craftsmen, the cultivation of fields, the building of cities, the manifold marvels of various buildings and undertakings; the inventions of so many signs in letters, in words, in gesture, in sound of every kind, in paintings and figures; the languages of so many peoples, so many institutions, so many things new, so many restored; so great a number of books, and of monuments of every kind for guarding memory, and so great a care for posterity; the ranks of offices, powers, honors, and dignities, whether in households, or at home and in war in the commonwealth, whether in profane or in sacred ceremonies; the power of reasoning and devising, the rivers of eloquence, the varieties of songs, the thousand-formed pretenses for the sake of play and jesting, the skill of measuring music, the subtlety of measuring, the discipline of numbering, the conjecture of things past and future from things present. These are great things, and altogether human. But this is still a wealth shared partly by the learned and the unlearned, partly by good and bad souls.

33. 73. Look up, then, and leap to the fourth level, from which goodness begins, and all true praiseworthiness. For from here the soul dares to set itself before not only its own body, if it directs some part of the universe, but even the whole bodily universe; and not to count its goods its own, but, compared with its own power and beauty, to distinguish them and despise them: and thence, the more it delights itself, the more it draws itself away from filth, and wholly cleanses itself and makes itself most pure and most adorned; it strengthens itself against all things that strive to move it from its purpose and resolve; it sets great store by human fellowship, and wishes nothing for another that it would not wish to happen to itself; it follows the authority and precepts of the wise, and believes that through these God speaks to it. In this so noble an act of the soul there is still labor, and against the troubles and allurements of this world a great and most bitter conflict. For in the very business of purification there underlies a fear of death, often not great, but often most vehement: not great when it is most firmly believed (for whether this is true, only a fully purified soul is permitted to see) that all things are governed by so great a providence and justice of God that death can come unjustly to no one, even if perhaps an unjust man inflicts it. But death is vehemently dreaded at this level, when that belief is the weaker the more anxiously it is sought, and seems the less the more there is, because of fear, that tranquility which is most necessary for investigating the most obscure matters. Then, the more and more the soul perceives—by the very fact of its progress—how great the difference is between the pure and the contaminated, the more it fears lest, when this body is laid down, God should be less able to bear it polluted than it can bear itself. But nothing is harder than both to fear death and to refrain from the enticements of this world, as the dangers themselves demand. Yet so great is the soul that it can do even this, with the help indeed of the justice of the highest and true God, by which this whole is sustained and ruled; by which it has also come about that all things not only are, but are so that they could not possibly be better. To him, in the so difficult work of its cleansing, it most devoutly and most safely commits itself to be helped and perfected.

33. 74. When this has been accomplished—that is, when the soul has been freed from all corruption and washed clean of its stains—then at last it holds itself in itself most joyfully, and fears nothing at all for itself, nor is troubled by anything on its own account. This, then, is the fifth level: for it is one thing to achieve purity, another to keep it; and the action by which it restores itself when defiled is altogether different from that by which it does not let itself be defiled again. On this level it conceives, in every way, how great it is: and when it has conceived this, then indeed, with a certain vast and incredible confidence, it proceeds toward God—that is, toward the very contemplation of truth, and that highest and most secret reward for which so much labor was spent.

33. 75. But this action—that is, the longing to understand the things that truly and supremely are—is the highest gaze of the soul, than which it has none more perfect, better, or more right. So this will be the sixth level of action: for it is one thing to cleanse the very eye of the soul, lest it gaze in vain and rashly and see crookedly; another to keep and strengthen its health; another to direct an already serene and right gaze upon what is to be seen. Those who wish to do this before they have been cleansed and healed are so struck back by that light of truth that they think there is in it not only no good, but even very much evil, and they refuse it the name of truth, and with a certain pitiable lust and pleasure flee back, cursing the medicine, into their own darkness, which their disease can bear. Whence, by divine inspiration and altogether most fittingly, that is said by the Prophet: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me (Ps 51:10 (50:12)). For a right spirit is, I believe, that by which it comes about that the soul cannot deviate and err in seeking the truth. And this is surely not restored in it unless the heart has first been made clean—that is, unless the very thought has first held itself back from all desire and dregs of mortal things, and strained itself clear.

33. 76. Now, in the very vision and contemplation of truth, which is the seventh and last level of the soul—and now no longer a level, but a certain dwelling place, to which one arrives through those levels—what the joys are, what the full enjoyment of the highest and true good, what breath of serenity and eternity, what shall I say? These things great and incomparable souls have said, so far as they judged they were to be said—souls which we believe also to have seen and to see these things. This much I now dare to say to you: that if we hold most constantly the course which God commands us, and which we have undertaken to keep, we shall come, through the Power and Wisdom of God, to that highest cause, or highest author, or highest principle of all things, or whatever else so great a thing can more fittingly be called: and when this is understood, we shall truly see how all things under the sun are vanity of those who are vain (See Eccl 1:2, 14). For vanity is deceit, and the vain are understood as either those deceived, or those deceiving, or both. Yet it is given to discern how great a distance there is between these and the things that truly are; and how nevertheless even all these were created with God as their author, and in comparison with those are nothing—but, considered in themselves, are wondrous and beautiful. Then we shall recognize how true are the things we have been commanded to believe, and how excellently and wholesomely we were nourished at the breast of Mother Church, and what the usefulness is of that milk which the apostle Paul declared he gave to the little ones to drink (See 1 Cor 3:1–2): to take which nourishment, when one is nursed by the mother, is most useful; when one is already grown, shameful; to spit it out when there is need, pitiable; to find fault with it at times, or to hate it, the mark of crime and impiety; but to handle and dispense it suitably is most full of praise and love. We shall see also so great changes and vicissitudes of this corporeal nature, while it serves the divine laws, that we shall hold even the resurrection of the flesh itself—which is partly believed too slowly, partly not at all—as certain, more certain to us than that the sun, when it has set, will rise. And those who mock at the man taken up, for the example and first-fruits of our salvation, by the Son of God, most powerful, eternal, unchangeable—the same born of a virgin—and at the other marvels of this history, we shall despise as we would those children who, when they have seen a painter painting with panels set before him to look at, do not think a man can be painted unless the one who paints has looked at another painting. But so great is the pleasure in contemplating truth, in whatever part anyone can contemplate it, so great the purity, so great the sincerity, so undoubting the trust in things, that one thinks he had at no time known anything before, when he seemed to himself to know; and, so that the soul may be less hindered from cleaving wholly with its whole self to truth, death—which before was feared, that is, the utter flight and escape from this body—is desired as the highest gift.

34. 77. You have heard how great the force and power of the soul is; and to gather it briefly: just as it must be confessed that the human soul is not what God is, so it must be presumed that, among all the things he created, nothing is nearer to God. And therefore it is taught, in a divine and singular way, in the Catholic Church, that no creature is to be worshiped by the soul (for I more gladly speak in those words by which these things were instilled in me), but only the Creator himself of all things that are—from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things (See Rom 11:36): that is, the unchangeable principle, unchangeable wisdom, unchangeable love, the one true and perfect God, who never was not, never will not be, never was otherwise, never will be otherwise; than whom nothing is more secret, nothing more present; who is found with difficulty where he is, with more difficulty where he is not; with whom not all can be, and without whom no one can be. And if anything more incredible can be said of him, yet men are able to say it more fittingly and more aptly. This God alone, then, is to be worshiped by the soul, neither separately nor confusedly. For whatever the soul worships as God, it must necessarily think better than itself. But the nature of the soul is not to be believed to be inferior to earth, or seas, or stars, or moon, or sun, or anything at all that can be touched or seen with these eyes—nor, finally, to that sky which cannot be seen by us; on the contrary, sure reason convinces us that all these are far inferior to any soul whatever, if only the lovers of truth dare to follow it most constantly and most heedfully as it leads them through certain unaccustomed and, on that account, steep places.

34. 78. But if there is anything else in the nature of things besides those known to the senses, and altogether those that occupy some space of place—to all of which we have said the human soul is more excellent—if, then, there is anything else among the things God created, something is inferior, something equal: inferior, like the soul of a beast; equal, like the angels; but better, nothing. And if at any time one of these is better, this comes about by its own sin, not by nature. Yet it is not made so far inferior thereby that the soul of a beast is to be preferred or compared to it. God alone, then, is to be worshiped by it, who alone is its author. But any other man whatever, however most wise and most perfect, or indeed any soul whatever possessed of reason and most blessed, is only to be loved and imitated, and to it, according to its merit and rank, is to be given what befits it. For: You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve (Deut 6:13; Matt 4:10). And let us know that help is to be brought, as much as is permitted and commanded, to kindred souls erring and laboring, in such a way that, when this is done well, we understand God to be acting through us. And let us claim nothing as our own, deceived by desire for empty glory, by which one evil alone we are plunged from the highest to the lowest. Let us hate not those oppressed by vices, but the vices themselves; not those who sin, but the sins themselves. For we ought to wish help to all, even to those who have harmed us, or wish to harm us, or wish at all to be harmful. This is the true, this the perfect, this the only religion, through which to be reconciled to God belongs to the greatness of the soul we are inquiring about—the greatness by which it makes itself worthy of freedom: for he frees from all things, to serve whom is most useful to all, and in whose service to please him is the perfect and only freedom. But I see that I have almost overstepped the bounds of my purpose, and that, without any questioning, I have said much to you for so long: nor do I regret it. For although these things are scattered through so many scriptures of the Church, yet, although we seem to have gathered them not inconveniently, they cannot be fully understood unless each one, acting bravely at that fourth of the seven levels, and keeping piety, and gaining health and strength to grasp them, inquires into everything one by one, most diligently and most shrewdly: for in all those levels there is a distinct and proper beauty—levels which we better call acts.

35. 79. For we are inquiring about the power of the soul; and it may be that it does all these things at once, but seems to itself to do that alone which it does with difficulty, or at least with fear. For it does this much more attentively than the rest. Therefore, for those ascending upward, let the first act, for the sake of teaching, be called animation; the second, sense; the third, art; the fourth, virtue; the fifth, tranquility; the sixth, approach; the seventh, contemplation. They can also be named in this way: from the body; through the body; about the body; toward itself; in itself; toward God; with God. They can also be named thus: beautifully from another; beautifully through another; beautifully about another; beautifully toward the beautiful; beautifully in the beautiful; beautifully toward beauty; beautifully with beauty. Of all these you will inquire afterward, if anything seems to need opening up: for the reason I wished to mark these things with so many sets of words is that it should not trouble you when others call the same things by other names, or even divide them differently; and on this account disapprove either these or those. For in countless ways the same things can be both named and divided, most rightly and most subtly; but in so great an abundance of ways, each one uses the way he judges he is using fittingly.

36. 80. The highest and true God, then, by an inviolable and incorrupt law, by which he governs all that he has founded, subjects the body to the soul, the soul to himself, and so all things to himself: nor does he desert it in any act, whether of punishment or of reward. For he judged this to be most beautiful: that there should be whatever is, in the way it is; and that things should be ordered by levels of nature, so that, to those considering the whole, no deformity from any part should give offense; and that every punishment and every reward of the soul should always contribute something, in proportion, to the just beauty and arrangement of all things. For free choice has been given to the soul; and those who try to undermine it by trifling reasonings are so blind that they do not understand that they say even these very vain and sacrilegious things by their own will. Yet free choice has not been given to the soul in such a way that, contriving anything whatever by it, it should disturb any part of the divine order and law. For it was given by the most wise and most invincible Lord of all creation. But to see these things as they are to be seen belongs to few; nor does anyone become fit for this except by true religion. For there is a true religion, by which the soul binds itself again, by reconciliation, to the one God, from whom, as it were, it had broken itself off by sin. It binds the soul, then, in that third act, and begins to lead it; it purges it in the fourth; it reforms it in the fifth; it brings it in at the sixth; it feeds it at the seventh. And this comes about sometimes more quickly, sometimes more slowly, as each one prevails by love and merits: yet God does all things most justly, most measuredly, most beautifully, in whatever way they wished to be for whom he does them. And indeed, even how much the consecrations of infant children avail is a most obscure question; yet it must be believed that they avail something. Reason will find this out, when it must be inquired into: although I have set forth many other things, too, as rather to be sought by you at some time than to be known. And this will be done most usefully, if they are inquired into with piety as guide.

36. 81. Evodius: I, for my part, have been so affected by this discourse that I have thought it wrong to interrupt it: and if this manner of speaking pleases you, and those three remaining questions seemed for the present to be touched on so briefly, I will yield to your judgment, and henceforth, for investigating matters so great, I will watch for both a time—because of your occupations—and a more suitable disposition in myself.