Augustine in His Own Words
(Ps 104:4)? Or is He perhaps still to be searched for, even when found? That is how incomprehensible things have to be searched for. Otherwise, we may not value it as worth the effort once we are able to find out how incomprehensible what we are searching for is. So why search for something when you have comprehended the incomprehensibility of what you are searching for? Only this: because you should not give up the search as long as you are making progress in the search itself for things incomprehensible, and because you are becoming better and better by searching for so great a good, which is both searched for in order to be found and is found in order to be searched for. For it is both searched for in order that it may be found sweeter and is found in order that it may be searched for all the more eagerly.54
54. Trin. 15.2.2 (CCL 50A:460–61); my trans.