The Confessions of St. Augustine
cannot judge. Nor yet do the creatures answer such as ask, unless they
can judge; nor yet do they change their voice (i.e., their appearance),
if one man only sees, another seeing asks, so as to appear one way to
this man, another way to that, but appearing the same way to both, it is
dumb to this, speaks to that; yea rather it speaks to all; but they only
understand, who compare its voice received from without, with the truth
within. For truth saith unto me, "Neither heaven, nor earth, nor any
other body is thy God." This, their very nature saith to him that seeth
them: "They are a mass; a mass is less in a part thereof than in the
whole." Now to thee I speak, O my soul, thou art my better part: for
thou quickenest the mass of my body, giving it life, which no body can
give to a body: but thy God is even unto thee the Life of thy life.
What then do I love, when I love my God? who is He above the head of
my soul? By my very soul will I ascend to Him. I will pass beyond that
power whereby I am united to my body, and fill its whole frame with
life. Nor can I by that power find my God; for so horse and mule that
have no understanding might find Him; seeing it is the same power,
whereby even their bodies live. But another power there is, not that
only whereby I animate, but that too whereby I imbue with sense my
flesh, which the Lord hath framed for me: commanding the eye not to
hear, and the ear not to see; but the eye, that through it I should
see, and the ear, that through it I should hear; and to the other senses
severally, what is to each their own peculiar seats and offices; which,
being divers, I the one mind, do through them enact. I will pass beyond
this power of mine also; for this also have the horse, and mule, for
they also perceive through the body.
I will pass then beyond this power of my nature also, rising by degrees
unto Him Who made me. And I come to the fields and spacious palaces of
my memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images, brought into
it from things of all sorts perceived by the senses. There is stored up,
whatsoever besides we think, either by enlarging or diminishing, or
any other way varying those things which the sense hath come to; and
whatever else hath been committed and laid up, which forgetfulness hath
not yet swallowed up and buried. When I enter there, I require what I
will to be brought forth, and something instantly comes; others must be
longer sought after, which are fetched, as it were, out of some inner
receptacle; others rush out in troops, and while one thing is desired
and required, they start forth, as who should say, "Is it perchance
I?" These I drive away with the hand of my heart, from the face of my
remembrance; until what I wish for be unveiled, and appear in sight, out
of its secret place. Other things come up readily, in unbroken order, as
they are called for; those in front making way for the following; and
as they make way, they are hidden from sight, ready to come when I will.
All which takes place when I repeat a thing by heart.
There are all things preserved distinctly and under general heads, each
having entered by its own avenue: as light, and all colours and forms of
bodies by the eyes; by the ears all sorts of sounds; all smells by the
avenue of the nostrils; all tastes by the mouth; and by the sensation of
the whole body, what is hard or soft; hot or cold; or rugged; heavy or
light; either outwardly or inwardly to the body. All these doth that
great harbour of the memory receive in her numberless secret and
inexpressible windings, to be forthcoming, and brought out at need; each
entering in by his own gate, and there laid up. Nor yet do the things
themselves enter in; only the images of the things perceived are there
in readiness, for thought to recall. Which images, how they are formed,
who can tell, though it doth plainly appear by which sense each hath
been brought in and stored up? For even while I dwell in darkness and
silence, in my memory I can produce colours, if I will, and discern
betwixt black and white, and what others I will: nor yet do sounds break
in and disturb the image drawn in by my eyes, which I am reviewing,
though they also are there, lying dormant, and laid up, as it were,
apart. For these too I call for, and forthwith they appear. And though
my tongue be still, and my throat mute, so can I sing as much as I will;
nor do those images of colours, which notwithstanding be there, intrude
themselves and interrupt, when another store is called for, which
flowed in by the ears. So the other things, piled in and up by the other
senses, I recall at my pleasure. Yea, I discern the breath of lilies
from violets, though smelling nothing; and I prefer honey to sweet wine,
smooth before rugged, at the time neither tasting nor handling, but
remembering only.
These things do I within, in that vast court of my memory. For there
are present with me, heaven, earth, sea, and whatever I could think on
therein, besides what I have forgotten. There also meet I with myself,
and recall myself, and when, where, and what I have done, and under what
feelings. There be all which I remember, either on my own experience,
or other's credit. Out of the same store do I myself with the past
continually combine fresh and fresh likenesses of things which I have
experienced, or, from what I have experienced, have believed: and thence
again infer future actions, events and hopes, and all these again I
reflect on, as present. "I will do this or that," say I to myself, in
that great receptacle of my mind, stored with the images of things so
many and so great, "and this or that will follow." "O that this or that
might be!" "God avert this or that!" So speak I to myself: and when
I speak, the images of all I speak of are present, out of the same
treasury of memory; nor would I speak of any thereof, were the images
wanting.
Great is this force of memory, excessive great, O my God; a large and
boundless chamber! who ever sounded the bottom thereof? yet is this a
power of mine, and belongs unto my nature; nor do I myself comprehend
all that I am. Therefore is the mind too strait to contain itself. And
where should that be, which it containeth not of itself? Is it without
it, and not within? how then doth it not comprehend itself? A wonderful
admiration surprises me, amazement seizes me upon this. And men go
abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the
sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the
circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by; nor wonder that when I
spake of all these things, I did not see them with mine eyes, yet could
not have spoken of them, unless I then actually saw the mountains,
billows, rivers, stars which I had seen, and that ocean which I believe
to be, inwardly in my memory, and that, with the same vast spaces
between, as if I saw them abroad. Yet did not I by seeing draw them into
myself, when with mine eyes I beheld them; nor are they themselves with
me, but their images only. And I know by what sense of the body each was
impressed upon me.
Yet not these alone does the unmeasurable capacity of my memory retain.
Here also is all, learnt of the liberal sciences and as yet unforgotten;
removed as it were to some inner place, which is yet no place: nor
are they the images thereof, but the things themselves. For, what is
literature, what the art of disputing, how many kinds of questions there
be, whatsoever of these I know, in such manner exists in my memory, as
that I have not taken in the image, and left out the thing, or that it
should have sounded and passed away like a voice fixed on the ear by
that impress, whereby it might be recalled, as if it sounded, when it
no longer sounded; or as a smell while it passes and evaporates into air
affects the sense of smell, whence it conveys into the memory an image
of itself, which remembering, we renew, or as meat, which verily in
the belly hath now no taste, and yet in the memory still in a manner
tasteth; or as any thing which the body by touch perceiveth, and which
when removed from us, the memory still conceives. For those things
are not transmitted into the memory, but their images only are with
an admirable swiftness caught up, and stored as it were in wondrous
cabinets, and thence wonderfully by the act of remembering, brought
forth.
But now when I hear that there be three kinds of questions, "Whether the
thing be? what it is? of what kind it is?" I do indeed hold the images
of the sounds of which those words be composed, and that those sounds,
with a noise passed through the air, and now are not. But the things
themselves which are signified by those sounds, I never reached with any
sense of my body, nor ever discerned them otherwise than in my mind; yet
in my memory have I laid up not their images, but themselves. Which how
they entered into me, let them say if they can; for I have gone over all
the avenues of my flesh, but cannot find by which they entered. For the
eyes say, "If those images were coloured, we reported of them." The ears
say, "If they sound, we gave knowledge of them." The nostrils say, "If
they smell, they passed by us." The taste says, "Unless they have a
savour, ask me not." The touch says, "If it have not size, I handled
it not; if I handled it not, I gave no notice of it." Whence and how
entered these things into my memory? I know not how. For when I learned
them, I gave not credit to another man's mind, but recognised them in
mine; and approving them for true, I commended them to it, laying them
up as it were, whence I might bring them forth when I willed. In my
heart then they were, even before I learned them, but in my memory
they were not. Where then? or wherefore, when they were spoken, did I
acknowledge them, and said, "So is it, it is true," unless that they
were already in the memory, but so thrown back and buried as it were in
deeper recesses, that had not the suggestion of another drawn them forth
I had perchance been unable to conceive of them?
Wherefore we find, that to learn these things whereof we imbibe not the
images by our senses, but perceive within by themselves, without images,
as they are, is nothing else, but by conception, to receive, and by
marking to take heed that those things which the memory did before
contain at random and unarranged, be laid up at hand as it were in that
same memory where before they lay unknown, scattered and neglected, and
so readily occur to the mind familiarised to them. And how many things
of this kind does my memory bear which have been already found out, and
as I said, placed as it were at hand, which we are said to have learned
and come to know which were I for some short space of time to cease to
call to mind, they are again so buried, and glide back, as it were, into
the deeper recesses, that they must again, as if new, be thought out
thence, for other abode they have none: but they must be drawn together
again, that they may be known; that is to say, they must as it were be
collected together from their dispersion: whence the word "cogitation"
is derived. For cogo (collect) and cogito (re-collect) have the same
relation to each other as ago and agito, facio and factito. But the mind
hath appropriated to itself this word (cogitation), so that, not what is
"collected" any how, but what is "recollected," i.e., brought together,
in the mind, is properly said to be cogitated, or thought upon.
The memory containeth also reasons and laws innumerable of numbers and
dimensions, none of which hath any bodily sense impressed; seeing they
have neither colour, nor sound, nor taste, nor smell, nor touch. I have
heard the sound of the words whereby when discussed they are denoted:
but the sounds are other than the things. For the sounds are other in