Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
(10.14) But since we are investigating the nature of the mind, let us not take into consideration any knowledge that is obtained from the outside, through the senses of the body, but consider more attentively the principle which we have laid down: that every mind knows and is certain concerning itself. For people have doubted whether the powers to live, to remember, to understand, to will, to think, to know, and to judge are due to air or to fire or to the brain or to the blood or to atoms or to a fifth body (I do not know what it is, but it differs from the four customary elements); or whether the combination or the orderly arrangement of the flesh is capable of producing these effects. Some try to maintain this opinion; others, that opinion. On the other hand, who could doubt that one lives and remembers and understands and wills and thinks and judges? For even if one doubts, one lives; if one doubts, one remembers why one doubts, for one wishes to be certain; if one doubts, one thinks; if one doubts, one knows that one does not know; if one doubts, one judges that one ought not to comment rashly. Whoever then doubts about anything else ought never to doubt about all of these; for if they were not, one would be unable to doubt about anything at all.40
Trinitarian Analogy of Memory,
Understanding, and Will
At the end of Book 10, Augustine shifts rather abruptly from his previous triad to a new one: memory (memoria), understanding (intelligentia), and will (voluntas). Here Augustine plays on his experience as an educator. He knows how the young eagerly search for knowledge and delight in discovery. He also notes that education in the best sense involves not only learning new things but also shaping students' morals and character. That seems to Augustine an apt paradigm for believers who, as God's "little ones," search for God. This new analogy is one that he will take up again at the end of On the Trinity. It is also one that medieval thinkers like Bonaventure would appeal to.41 Note that Augustine does not see these three as "faculties" (as some medievals would), but as distinguishable dynamisms within the united mind: that is, the whole mind remembering; the whole mind understanding; the whole mind willing. From On the Trinity, Book 10:
40. Trin. 10.10.14 (CCL 50:327–28); trans. McKenna, FOTC 45:308. Here doubt becomes a proof of existence. Augustine argues in a similar way, "If I am mistaken, I exist" (si fallor, sum) in civ. Dei 11.26 (CCL 48:345–46); see also Trin. 15.12.21. On this, see Rist, Augustine, 63–67; Gareth B. Matthews, Thought's Ego in Augustine and Descartes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).
41. For example, Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis ad Deum 3.5. On this, see William Harmless, "Mystic as Cartographer: Bonaventure," Mystics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 79–105.
On the Trinity 301
(11.17) Let us, therefore, put aside for the time being the rest of the things which the mind is certain of concerning itself and discuss three that demand special consideration: memory, understanding, will.42 For it is from these three that we are also wont to gain an insight into the talents and the character of the young. For the more tenaciously and the more easily a boy remembers, the more acutely he understands; and the more eagerly he studies, the more praiseworthy is his talent. But when we inquire into a person's learning, we do not ask about the sureness or the facility of his memory, or the keenness of his understanding, but what he remembers and what he understands. And because a mind (animus) is considered worthy of praise not only for its learning but also for its goodness, we have to consider not only what it remembers and understands but also what it wills—not how passionately it wills, but first what it wills and then how much it wills it. For a mind that loves enthusiastically is only to be praised when that which it loves deserves to be enthusiastically loved. When we speak, therefore, of these three—talent, learning, use—our judgment upon the first of these three depends upon what a person can do in his memory and understanding and will. In the second, we consider what each one has in his memory and understanding and at what point he has arrived by his studious will. But the third one, use, lies in the will which disposes of those things that are contained in the memory and the understanding, whether it refers them to something else or rests satisfied in them as an end. For to use is to take up something into the power of the will, but to enjoy is to use with the joy, not of hope, but of the actual thing. Therefore, everyone who enjoys, uses, for everyone takes up something into the power of the will and finds pleasure in it as an end. But not everyone who uses, enjoys, if they have sought after what they take up into the power of the will, not on account of the thing itself, but on account of something else.
(11.18) Since these three—memory, understanding, will—are, therefore, not three lives, but one life, not three minds, but one mind, it follows that they are certainly not three substances, but one substance. For when we speak of memory as life, mind, and substance, we speak of it in respect to itself. But when we speak of it simply as memory, we speak of it in relation to something else. We may also say the same of the understanding and the will, for they are called "understanding" and "will" in relation to something else, yet each in respect to itself is life, mind, and essence. Therefore, these three are one in that they are one life, one mind, and one essence. And whatever else they are
42. "Memory, understanding, will": Augustine's triad modifies that found in Cicero: "Prudence is the knowledge of things, good, evil, and indifferent. The parts of prudence are memory, understanding, and foresight" (De inventione 2.53.160). Augustine quotes Cicero's passage at length in his early De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus 31 (BA 10:88–94; trans. Mosher, FOTC 70:58–61).