Augustine in His Own Words
Learning to Speak
In early adulthood Augustine pursued a career as a professional orator. He was therefore very conscious of words, how we learn them and make them our own. In a famous passage, he meditates on how children acquire language. In the early twentieth century, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein quoted this passage at the outset of his Philosophical Investigations, challenging it as an accurate account of language acquisition.7 From Confessions, Book 1:
(8.13) Is it not true that, advancing from infancy toward the present, I came to boyhood? Or did it come into me, succeeding infancy? The latter did not go away. Where, indeed, could it go? Nevertheless, it did not now exist. For I was not an infant, one who could not speak, but was now a boy able to talk. This I do remember, and I observed afterwards how I learned to speak. The older people did not teach me by suggesting the words to me according to any definite method of instruction, as was the case a little later with the alphabet; rather, with my own mind which You gave me, O Lord, I wished to make known with diverse grunts and sounds and with diverse gestures the meanings within my heart so that my will would be obeyed. But I did not succeed with all things which I desired nor with all the people from whom I desired them. I would fasten it in memory when these people called something by name and when, at this sound, they made a bodily movement toward it. I would observe and keep in mind that this thing was named by this sound which they uttered when they wanted to indicate the thing. Their desires became evident from their bodily gestures (the natural speech of all humankind), which reveal the disposition of the mind in regard to things sought, possessed, rejected, or avoided, by a facial expression, by a nod, by a movement of the eyes or some other part of the body, and by the tone of voice. As to these words that were used in their own place in different sentences and which I frequently heard, I gradually learned what things they were the signs of, and when my lips became accustomed to these expressions, I now expressed my desires by means of them. In this way I exchanged with the people among whom I lived the signs which were the expressions of my wishes.8
7. On this, see Christopher Kirwan, "Augustine's Philosophy of Language," in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 186–204. 8. Conf. 1.8.13 (CCL 27:7–8); trans. Bourke, FOTC 21:14–15 (modified).