The Essential Augustine
MAN'S SOUL 79 by its own gateway, and are there stored away. The things themselves do not go in, of course, but the images of sensipe things are ready there for the cogitation which recalls em.
Just how these are fashioned who can say, though it is evident by which senses they are caught up and stored away within? For, even while I dwell in darkness and silence, I can, if I wish, produce colors in my memory, and distinguish between white and black and between any others as I wish. Nor do sounds rush in and disturb the object drawn in through the eyes, when I am considering it; yet, they are there, also, and lie hidden in separation, as it were. I can summon these, too, if it pleases me, and they are present at once; with tongue at rest and silent throat, I can sing as much as I wish. The images of colors, despite the fact that they are present, do not intervene or break in when another store, which has flowed in through the ears, is reviewed. Thus, I can remember at will the other things which have been taken in and piled up through the other senses. I can distinguish the fragrance of lilies from that of violets, while smelling nothing, and I can prefer honey to a decoction of musk, smooth to rough, and not by tasting or touching anything at the time, but by recollecting.
I do this inside, in the immense palace of my mem14. ory. In it, sky, earth, and sea are present before me, together with all the things I could perceive in them, except for those which I have forgotten. In it, I even encounter myself and I bring myself to mind: what, when and where I did something, and how I felt when I did it. In it are all the things which I remember, either those personally experienced or those taken on faith. Out of the same supply, even, I can take now these, now those likenesses of things (whether those experienced or those derived from experience) and combine them with things of the past, and from these I can even think over future actions, happenings, and hopes—and all these, again, as if in the present. "I shall do this or that," I say within myself in this huge recess of my mind, filled with the images of things so many and so great, and this or that follows in consequence. "Oh, if this or that could happen!" "May God prevent this or that!"—I say these things to myself, and, while I say them, the images of all the things I am saying are present from the same storehouse of memory. I could not say anything at all about them, if they were lacking.