The Essential Augustine (continued)
Great is this power of memory, exceeding great, O 15. my God, a vast and unlimited inner chamber. Who has plumbed its depths? Yet, this is a power of my mind and it belongs to my nature; I myself do not grasp all that I am. Is, then, the mind too narrow to hold itself, so that the questions arise: Where is this thing which belongs to it and it cannot grasp? Would it be outside it and not in it? How, then, does it not grasp it? A mighty wonder rises before me, and on this point astonishment seizes me.
Yet, men go to admire the mountains' peaks, giant waves in the sea, the broad courses of rivers, the vast sweep of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars—and they leave themselves behind! They feel no wonder that I did not see with my eyes all these things when I was talking about them. Yet, I could not have talked of them unless I could see within, in my memory, in their vast expanses, as if I were seeing them externally, the mountains, waves, rivers and stars which I have seen, and the ocean which I take on faith. Yet, I did not by vision take these things into me, when I saw them with my eyes. They are not themselves with me but just their images. And I know for each what was impressed on me by each sense of the body.
These are not the only things which the vast capacity 9.16. of my memory bears. Here, also, are all those things which have been grasped from the liberal disciplines and which have not yet been forgotten—put aside, as it were, in an inner place which is not a place. Nor do I carry the images of these, but the things themselves. For, what literature is, what skill in discussion is, how many kinds of questions there are, whatever things like this I know, are present in my memory in a special way. I have not left the thing outside and just retained the image—nor has it existed as a sound and then passed away, like a spoken word impressed through the ears, through a vestigial image, by which in recollection it again sounds, as it were, when it is not actually sounding—nor, as an odor, while passing and disappearing on the breezes, affects the sense of smell, from which it sends in its image to the memory, for us to recall when remembering —nor as food, which of course causes no taste when already in the stomach, yet is tasted, in a way, in memory—nor as some object perceived by touching it with the body, which the memory pictures even when it is separated from us. In fact, these things are not introduced into the memory, but their images alone are grasped with marvelous speed, and
MAN'S SOUL 81 are put away in wonderful compartments, and come forth in a wondrous way through remembering.
However, when I hear that there are three kinds of 10.17. questions—Whether a thing is? What it is? What kind it is?—I keep the images of the sounds by which these words are constituted, of course, and I know that they have passed away through the air, accompanied by noise, and now do not exist. But the things themselves which are signified by these sounds I did not attain by any sense of the body, nor did I see them anywhere else than in my mind; yet I have stored up in memory, not their image but the things themselves.
If they can, let them tell me whence these things have come into me. For I have gone over all the entrances of my flesh and have not found out by which one they came in. Of course, the eyes say: "If they are colored, we have reported them"; the ears say: "If they emitted sound, they have been made known by us"; the nostrils say: "If they were odorous, they passed through us"; so also the sense of taste says: "If it is not a matter of taste, do not ask me"; touch says: "If it bas no bodily bulk, I did not touch it; if I did not touch it, I did not make it known."
From what source, and by what route, did these things enter into my memory? I do not know how. When I learned these things, I did not believe in another man's heart; rather, I recognized them in my own and I approved them as true. I committed them to it as to a repository, from which I could take them out when I desired. Therefore, they were there even before I learned them, but they were not in the memory. Where, then, and why did I know them when they were spoken, saying: "It is so, it is true," unless because they were already in memory, but so far removed, buried in its deeper enclosures, that, unless they had been dug out by something that suggested them, I should perhaps have been unable to think them.
Therefore we find that to learn things of this kind 11.18. —whose images we do not acquire through sensation, but which we discern in themselves within us, without images and as they are—is nothing else than, by cogitation, to make a kind of collation of the haphazard and unarranged contents of memory and, through one's act of awareness, to command that they be placed close at hand, as it were, in this same memory, where they formerly lay scattered about and unnoticed, that they may eventually come easily to the attention of a mind already familiar with them. — How many things of this kind my memory holds which are already found out and, as I say, placed ready at hand, as it were—things which we are said to have learned and to know! If I cease to recall them to mind for even a short period of time, they are again submerged and slip off, as it were, into the more removed recesses, so that they must again be excogitated, as if new, from the same place as before—there is no other place for them——and they must be drawn together [cogenda] again, so that they may be known. That is, they must be collected as if from a condition of being dispersed; hence one speaks of cogitating. For, cogo
[draw together] and cogito [cogitate] are related as are ago [do] and agito [do constantly] and as facio [make] and factito [make frequently]. But the mind has made this word its own property, so that what is collated, that is, drawn together, in the mind, but not in another place, is now properly said to be cogitated.
Again, memory contains the reasons and innumerable 12.19. laws of numbers and dimensions, none of which any bodily sense impresses; for these are neither colored nor resonant nor odorous nor tasty nor tangible. I have heard the sounds of words by which they are signified when there is a discussion about them, but these sounds are one thing and the objects are another. For the sounds are different in Greek from what they are in Latin, but the things are neither Greek nor Latin, nor do they belong to any kind of language. I have seen the lines of craftsmen—éeven the thinnest ones, like a strand from a spider's web; but these [mathematical lines] are quite different. They are not the images of those lines which my fleshly eye has reported to me. They are known by whoever recognizes them interiorly, without cogitation about any body whatever. I have perceived, also, the numbers which we reckon in all the bodily © senses, but the ones by which we do the counting are quite different. They are not images of these, and so they really exist. Let him laugh at my saying this, the man who does not see them. I shall pity him for laughing at me.
I hold all these things in memory, and I also remem13.20. ber the way I learned them. I have heard and keep in memory the many things most falsely said against them in arguments. Now, even though they are false, the fact that I remember them is not false. I remember, too, that