44. Soliloquia 2.7.14 (BA 5:112); trans. Gilligan, FOTC 5:397. (continued)
R. Is it so sharp that it retains everything you've been thinking out? A. That would be hard—in fact, impossible.
R. It must be written down then. But what are you going to do now that your poor health shirks the task of writing? These things should not be dictated, for they demand real solitude. . . . (2.7) Now what do you want to know? . . .
A. I desire to know God and the soul.
R. Nothing more? A. Absolutely nothing else.
R. Begin, then, to search for them. But first explain how, if God is demonstrated to you, you will be able to say: "That is enough."
A. I do not know how God would have to be demonstrated to me so that I could say, "That is enough," for I do not think I know anything the way I want to know God.
R. So what are we to do? Don't you think you ought to know, first, how you can have sufficient knowledge of God so that when you arrive at it you will not have to search further?
A. I believe so, but I do not see how this can be done. For what thing can I ever know to be like God so that I might say that I wish to know God as I know such-and-such?
R. How do you, who do not yet know God, know that you know nothing like God?
A. Because, if I knew something like God, I would, without a doubt, love it. But so far, I love nothing except God and the soul—and I know neither.45
The Philosopher's Prayer
Soliloquies may be read as a sort of rough draft for Confessions. Both works are sustained inner meditations that concern God and the soul. In the middle of the passage quoted above, I skipped over a long-winded prayer that, at Reason's encouragement, "Augustine" (the character in the dialogue) prays. Let us look at that prayer now. It is indebted to Plotinian language and sentiments. Beautiful in some ways, it is also wordy. Its florid repetitiveness highlights how the prayers in Confessions are, by contrast, more skillfully crafted, more economical, more able to advance an ongoing philosophical
45. Soliloquia 1.1.1–2.7 ( BA 5:24–36); my trans., based on Gilligan, FOTC 5:343–51. Cf. De ordine 2.18.47: "As for philosophy, it has a two-sided question: one concerns the soul; the other, God. The first works so that we may know ourselves; the second, that we know our origin" (my trans.).