Introduction to the Philosophy of Saint Augustine
trees it takes under its wing and which believes that the vine suffers pain when a grape is plucked and that such things not only feel it when they are cut but even that they see and hear. Of this impious error this is not the place to speak. Now, then, following the scheme
I proposed, look at what power the soul has in the senses and in the entire nobility of the higher living organism, by reason of which we cannot possibly belong in the same category with things which are held down by roots.
'The soul directs itself to the sense of touch and through it feels and distinguishes hot and cold, rough and smooth, hard and soft, light and heavy. Then again, it distinguishes countless varieties of savors, odors, sounds, and shapes, by tasting, smelling, hearing, and seeing. And in all these the soul seeks and selects whatever suits the nature of its own body; it rejects and shuns what is unsuited. At certain intervals it withdraws itself from the senses and, by giving them time off, so to say, gives their activities an opportunity to recuperate their strength, the while it lumps together in manifold combinations, and mulls over, the images of realities it has taken in through the senses; and all this constitutes sleep and dreams. Frequently, too, it takes advantage of the mobility present to delight in making gestures and unusual motions, and without effort it sets the parts of the body in harmony. For sexual union it does what it can, and by companionship and love it strives to forge two natures into one. It cooperates not merely to beget offspring but also to foster it, to protect and nourish it. It attaches itself by | habit to things among which the body acts and by which it sustains the body, and from these, as if they were of its own constitution, it is reluctant to be separated; and this force of habit which is not terminated even by separation from the realities themselves and by the passing of time is called memory. But again, no one denies that the soul can produce all these effects even in brute animals.
The Third Level of the Soul
72. Advance, then, to the third level, which belongs to man exclusively. Think of memory, not of things that have become habituated by repeated acts, but of the countless things that have been attained and retained by observation and illustration—all the arts of craftsmen, the tilling of the soil, the building of cities, the thousand-and-one marvels of various buildings and undertakings, the invention of so many symbols in letters, in words, in gesture, in sound of various kinds, in paintings and statues; the languages of so many peoples, their many institutions, some new and some re-