12. sol. 2.9.17; Paffenroth, Soliloquies, 72–73; cf. c. Acad. 3.17.39.
40 Made to be Godly tionship here emerge: (1) an image not only comes from a paradigmatic model but (2) it also remains in some sort of union with that model as it shows forth participatory characteristics proper to its model and (3) will find completion only in perfect union with this model.
An image for Augustine therefore not only comes from and resembles its model, but possesses an innate tendency to "become" that other. This assimilative feature of an image came to Augustine very early on. In the Soliloquia (386–87), he uses this insight to show how created images must dwell between being and non-being [omnino esse tendit, et non est], but all the while possess an inherent longing to return to their more perfect paradigm. In the following section, Augustine [A] dialogues with Reason-personified [R] and we hear: R: Does it not seem to you that your image in a mirror [imago tua in speculo] wants, in a way, to be you and is false because it is not?
A: That certainly seems so.
R: Do not all pictures and replicas of that kind and all artists' works of that type strive to be that in whose likeness they are made?
A: I am completely convinced that they do.12 It belongs to the nature of an image to strive to become the perfection upon which it is modeled. Furthermore, because a created image is not its own exemplar, it is always inferior. As it reaches likeness with its exemplar, the derived image is more complete, growing in equality with its model; as it fails to reach likeness with its exemplar it is "false." Its inherent longing to become that model is explained in terms of the image's desiring the perfection of the copy from whence it came. An image strives to become that from which it has been brought about.
This relationship is clearly unilateral: an image strives to become the model but in a way that does not directly affect
12. sol. 2.9.17; Paffenroth, Soliloquies, 72–73; cf. c. Acad. 3.17.39.