Augustine: Earlier Writings
The Soliloquies
St, Augustine*s Review of the Soliloquies. Retractations 7, IV
I. Meantime I wrote two other books on matters touching my earnest quest for truth concerning problems whose solution was my chief desire. They were written as a dialogue between myself and Reason, as if there were two of us present, though actually I was alone. To this work I gave the name Soliloquies.
It remained unfinished. In the First Book the question was: What kind of man he ought to be who wishes to lay hold on wisdom, which is grasped by the mind and not by bodily sense; and the answer was in a measure made clear. At the end of the book it was concluded as the result of a logical proof that things which truly are, are immortal. In the Second Book there is a long argument about the immortality of the soul, but the subject was not fully dealt with.
2. In these Books there are some things of which I do not approve. I do not approve of what I said in my prayer: "God who wiliest not that any should know the truth but those that are pure." It could be replied to this that many who are not pure know many true things. It was not defined what was the truth that none but the pure could know, nor indeed what knowing is. And there is the sentence: "God whose kingdom is this whole world which sense knows not." If the relative clause is to be taken as referring to God, sotne words ought to have been added, for example, "whom the sense of a mortal body knows not." If it was meant that the world was not known by sense, the world must be understood to be the future world in which there will be a new heaven and a new earth. Even so, I should have added the words "of the mortal body." But at that time I was still using the word, "sense," to express what is properly to be called "bodily sense." I need not repeat continually what I have just said, but A.E.W.— 17