Confessions 10.13–10.33

There all things are kept distinct and according to their kinds, each brought in by its own entrance: light and all colors and shapes of bodies through the eyes; through the ears all kinds of sounds; all smells through the entrance of the nostrils; all tastes through the entrance of the mouth; and from the sense of the whole body, what is hard, what is soft, what is hot or cold, smooth or rough, heavy or light, whether outside or inside the body. All these the great recess of memory receives, to be recalled when needed and reconsidered, together with its secret and indescribable folds, I know not which; all these enter it, each by its own door, and are stored in it. Yet the things themselves do not enter, but the images of the things perceived are there, ready for the thought that recalls them. Who can say how these images were formed, although it is plain by which senses they were seized and stored within? For even while I dwell in darkness and silence, I bring out colors in my memory, if I wish, and I distinguish between white and black and between any others I wish; and sounds do not rush in and disturb what I am considering, drawn in through the eyes, although they too are there, lying hidden as if stored apart. For I call for them too, if I like, and they are there at once; and with tongue at rest and throat silent I sing as much as I want, and those images of colors, which are there nonetheless, do not interpose themselves or interrupt when the other treasure, which flowed in from the ears, is being handled. So too the other things brought in and heaped up by the other senses I recall as I please; I distinguish the scent of lilies from violets while smelling nothing, and I prefer honey to boiled wine, smooth to rough, not tasting or touching anything then, but remembering.

I do these things within, in the vast hall of my memory. For there heaven and earth and sea are present to me, with everything I have been able to perceive in them, except what I have forgotten. There I also meet myself and recall myself, what I did, when and where, and how I was affected when I did it. There is everything I remember, whether experienced by me or believed. From the same store I also weave together, one after another, likenesses of things either experienced or believed on the basis of what I have experienced, and join them to past things; and from them I also ponder future actions and events and hopes, and all these again as if present. "I will do this and that," I say to myself in that huge bosom of my mind, full of images of so many and such great things, and this or that follows. "Oh, if only this or that would happen!" "May God prevent this or that!" I say these things to myself, and when I say them, the images of all that I say are present from the same treasury of memory, and I would not say any of them at all if they were absent.

Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, my God, a vast and boundless inner chamber. Who has reached its bottom? And this is a power of my mind and belongs to my nature, and yet I myself do not grasp all that I am. So the mind is too narrow to contain itself; where, then, is that part of itself which it does not contain? Is it outside itself and not in itself? How, then, does it not contain it? Great wonder rises in me at this; amazement seizes me. And men go out to wonder at the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad courses of rivers, the circuit of the Ocean, and the revolutions of the stars, and they pass themselves by, and do not wonder that when I spoke of all these things I was not seeing them with my eyes; and yet I could not speak of them unless I saw within, in my memory, the mountains and waves and rivers and stars which I have seen, and the Ocean which I have believed in, in spaces as vast as if I saw them outside. Yet I did not swallow them up by seeing them when I saw them with my eyes; nor are the things themselves with me, but their images, and I know by which bodily sense each was impressed on me.

But this immense capacity of my memory does not hold these things alone. Here are also all the things learned from the liberal disciplines which have not yet slipped away, set apart, as it were, in an inner place that is not a place; and of these I carry not the images but the things themselves. For what literature is, what skill in argument is, how many kinds of questions there are, whatever of these I know is in my memory in such a way that I have not kept an image and left the thing outside. It is not as if it had sounded and passed away, like a voice impressed through the ears, leaving a trace by which it can be recalled as if it were sounding when it no longer sounds; or like a smell, which while it passes and vanishes into the winds affects the sense of smell, from which it sends an image of itself into the memory for us to recall by remembering; or like food, which certainly has no taste once in the stomach and yet in memory still has a kind of taste; or like something perceived by the body's touch, which memory imagines even when it is separated from us. For these things are not let into memory; only their images are caught with wonderful speed, stored away in wonderful cells, as it were, and wonderfully brought out by remembering.

But when I hear that there are three kinds of questions, whether a thing is, what it is, and of what sort it is, I hold images of the sounds of which these words are made, and I know that they passed through the air with a noise and are no longer. But the things themselves which are signified by those sounds I never reached with any bodily sense, nor did I see them anywhere except in my mind; and I stored in my memory not their images but the things themselves. Let them say, if they can, from where they came into me. For I go through all the doors of my flesh and do not find by which of them they entered. The eyes say, "If they are colored, we reported them"; the ears say, "If they made a sound, they were announced by us"; the nostrils say, "If they had a smell, they passed through us"; the sense of taste also says, "If there is no flavor, do not ask me"; touch says, "If it has no body, I did not handle it; if I did not handle it, I did not report it." From where and by what way did these things enter my memory? I do not know how. For when I learned them, I did not take them on trust from another's heart, but I recognized them in my own, and approved them as true, and entrusted them to it as if storing them away, to be brought out when I wished. So they were there even before I learned them, but they were not in the memory. Where, then, or why, when they were spoken, did I recognize them and say, "It is so, it is true," unless they were already in the memory, but so far off and pushed back, as if in the more hidden caves, that unless someone reminded me and they were dug out, I might perhaps not have been able to think of them?

So we find that to learn these things, whose images we do not draw in through the senses, but which we perceive within, as they are in themselves, without images, is nothing other than this: by thinking, as it were, to gather together things which the memory held scattered and unordered, and by attending to them to see that, as if placed at hand in the memory itself, where before they lay hidden, scattered and neglected, they now readily come to meet our familiar attention. And how many things of this kind my memory carries, which have already been found and, as I said, placed as it were at hand, which we are said to have learned and to know! If I stop recalling them for even short intervals of time, they sink again and slip away into more remote recesses, so that they must be thought out afresh as if new, from the same place (for they have no other dwelling), and must be gathered together again so that they can be known; that is, they must be collected, as it were, from a kind of scattering; hence the word cogitare, "to think." For cogo and cogito are related as ago and agito, facio and factito. Yet the mind has claimed this word as properly its own, so that what is gathered together, that is, "collected" (cogitur), not anywhere else but in the mind, is now properly said to be "thought" (cogitari).

Memory also contains the principles and countless laws of numbers and measures, none of which any bodily sense impressed, since they have no color, sound, smell, taste, or touch. I have heard the sounds of the words by which they are signified when they are discussed, but the sounds are one thing and the principles another. For the sounds are different in Greek and in Latin, but the principles are neither Greek nor Latin nor any other kind of language. I have seen lines drawn by craftsmen, even very fine ones, like a spider's thread; but those lines are something else; they are not images of the lines my eye of flesh reported to me. Whoever recognizes them within, without any thought of a body of any kind, knows them. I have also perceived with all the bodily senses the numbers we count; but the numbers by which we count are different; they are not images of the others, and therefore they truly are. Let whoever does not see them laugh at me for saying this; and I will grieve for him who laughs at me.

All these things I hold in memory, and how I learned them I hold in memory. I have also heard and hold in memory many things argued most falsely against them; and though these are false, yet it is not false that I remember them. And I remember that I distinguished between those true things and these false things that are brought against them; and I see that it is one thing to distinguish them now, and another to remember that I often distinguished them when I often thought about them. So I remember that I have often understood these things, and what I now distinguish and understand I store away in memory, so that afterward I may remember that I understood it now. And I remember that I have remembered; just as afterward, if I recall that I was able to remember these things now, I shall certainly recall it by the power of memory.

The same memory also contains the feelings of my mind, not in the way the mind itself has them when it experiences them, but in another way, very different, as the power of memory has itself. For I remember that I was glad without being glad, I recall my past sadness without being sad, I recollect that I was once afraid without fear, and I remember former desire without desire. Sometimes, on the contrary, I remember my past sadness with gladness, and gladness with sadness. This is not surprising in the case of the body, for the mind is one thing and the body another. So if I remember past bodily pain with joy, it is not so strange. But here, since the memory is itself the mind (for when we tell someone to keep something in memory, we say, "See that you keep it in mind," and when we forget, we say, "It was not in my mind" and "It slipped my mind," calling memory itself the mind), since this is so, what is it that when I remember my past sadness with gladness, the mind has gladness and the memory sadness, and the mind is glad because gladness is in it, while the memory is not sad, although sadness is in it? Does memory perhaps not belong to the mind? Who would say that? Surely, then, memory is like the stomach of the mind, and gladness and sadness are like sweet and bitter food: when they are committed to memory, they can be stored there, as if passed into the stomach, but they cannot be tasted. It is ridiculous to think these things are like those, and yet they are not wholly unlike.

But see, I bring it out of memory when I say that there are four disturbances of the mind: desire, gladness, fear, and sadness; and whatever I can argue about them, by dividing each into the species of its own kind and by defining, I find there what to say, and bring it out from there; and yet I am not disturbed by any of these disturbances when I call them to mind by remembering. And before I recalled and reconsidered them, they were there; that is why they could be brought out from there by remembering. Perhaps, then, as food is brought up from the stomach by chewing the cud, so these things are brought up from the memory by recalling. Why, then, does the one who discusses them, that is, the one who remembers, not feel in the mouth of thought the sweetness of gladness or the bitterness of grief? Or is the comparison unlike in this, that it is not alike in every respect? For who would willingly speak of such things if every time we named sadness or fear we were forced to grieve or be afraid? And yet we would not speak of them unless we found in our memory not only the sounds of the names, according to images impressed by the bodily senses, but also notions of the things themselves, which we did not receive through any door of the flesh; but the mind itself, perceiving them through the experience of its own passions, entrusted them to memory, or the memory itself retained them even when they were not entrusted to it. But whether this is through images or not, who could easily say?

For I name a stone, I name the sun, when the things themselves are not present to my senses; but in my memory their images are certainly present. I name bodily pain, and it is not present to me when nothing hurts; yet unless its image were present in my memory, I would not know what I was saying, nor would I distinguish it from pleasure in discussion. I name bodily health when I am healthy in body; the thing itself is present to me; yet unless its image also were in my memory, I would in no way recall what the sound of this name signified; nor would sick people recognize what was meant when health was named, unless the same image were held by the power of memory, although the thing itself was absent from the body. I name the numbers by which we count: see, they are present in my memory, not their images, but themselves. I name the image of the sun, and it is present in my memory; for I recall not the image of its image, but the image itself: it is present to me when I remember. I name memory, and I recognize what I name. And where do I recognize it but in memory itself? Is memory too present to itself through its image and not through itself?

What, when I name forgetfulness and likewise recognize what I name? From where do I recognize the thing, unless I remembered it? I do not mean the sound of the name, but the thing it signifies; if I had forgotten that, I would certainly not be able to recognize what the sound meant. When I remember memory, memory itself is present to itself through itself; but when I remember forgetfulness, both memory and forgetfulness are present: memory by which I remember, forgetfulness which I remember. But what is forgetfulness but the absence of memory? How, then, is it present so that I remember it, when, if it is present, I cannot remember? But if what we remember we hold by memory, and unless we remembered forgetfulness we could in no way recognize the thing signified by that name when we heard it, then forgetfulness is held by memory. So that is present, so that we may not forget, which, when it is present, makes us forget. Is it to be understood from this that forgetfulness is not in memory through itself when we remember it, but through its image? Because, if forgetfulness were present through itself, it would make us not remember but forget. And who will ever search this out? Who will grasp how it is?

I certainly, Lord, labor over this, and labor in myself: I have become to myself a land of hardship and of too much sweat. For we are not now searching the regions of the sky or measuring the distances of the stars or seeking how the earth is balanced: it is I who remember, I, the mind. It is not so strange if whatever I am not is far from me; but what is nearer to me than myself? And see, the power of my own memory is not grasped by me, though without it I could not even say "I myself." For what am I to say, when I am certain that I remember forgetfulness? Am I to say that what I remember is not in my memory? Or am I to say that forgetfulness is in my memory so that I may not forget? Both are utterly absurd. What of the third possibility? How can I say that the image of forgetfulness is held by my memory, not forgetfulness itself, when I remember it? How can I say this either, since when the image of anything is impressed on the memory, the thing itself must first be present, from which the image can be impressed? For so I remember Carthage, so all the places where I have been, so the faces of the people I have seen and the reports of the other senses, so the health or pain of the body itself: when these were present, memory took images from them, which I could look at as present and reconsider in my mind when I remembered them in their absence. If, then, forgetfulness is held in memory through its image and not through itself, then it was itself present, so that its image might be taken. But when it was present, how did it write its image in the memory, when forgetfulness by its presence deletes even what it finds already noted there? And yet, in whatever way, though that way is incomprehensible and inexplicable, I am certain that I remember forgetfulness itself, by which what we remember is buried.

Great is the power of memory, something awe-inspiring, my God, a deep and boundless manifoldness; and this is the mind, and this I am myself. What, then, am I, my God? What is my nature? A life varied, manifold, and exceedingly immense. See, in the fields and caves and caverns of my memory, countless and countlessly full of countless kinds of things, present either through images, as with all bodies, or in themselves, as with the arts, or through some notions or marks, as with the feelings of the mind (which memory holds even when the mind is not experiencing them, since whatever is in memory is in the mind), through all these I run and fly this way and that; I penetrate as far as I can, and there is no end anywhere: so great is the power of memory, so great the power of life in a man living mortally! What, then, shall I do, you my true life, my God? I will pass beyond this power of mine too, which is called memory; I will pass beyond it, so as to reach you, sweet light. What do you say to me? Ascending through my mind to you, who abide above me, I will pass beyond this power of mine too, which is called memory, wanting to reach you where you can be reached, and to cling to you where one can cling to you. For cattle and birds also have memory; otherwise they would not find their dens and nests again, nor many other things they grow used to; for they could not grow used to anything except through memory. So I will pass beyond memory too, so as to reach him who "separated me from the four-footed beasts and made me wiser than the birds of the air." I will pass beyond memory too, so as to find you (where?), you truly good and secure sweetness, so as to find you where? If I find you beyond my memory, I am forgetful of you. And how shall I find you if I do not remember you?

For the woman had lost her coin and searched for it with a lamp, and unless she had remembered it, she would not have found it. For when it was found, how would she know whether it was the same one, if she did not remember it? I remember that I have looked for and found many lost things. That is how I know this: when I was looking for one of them and someone said to me, "Is it this, perhaps?" "Is it that?" I kept saying, "It is not," until the thing I was looking for was offered. Unless I had remembered it, whatever it was, I would not have found it even if it were offered to me, because I would not have recognized it. And it always happens so when we look for and find something lost. Yet if something is lost from the eyes but not from the memory, some visible body for instance, its image is held within and it is sought until it is restored to sight. When it has been found, it is recognized from the image that is within. Nor do we say that we have found what was lost if we do not recognize it, nor can we recognize it if we do not remember it; this was lost to the eyes, but held by the memory.

What, then, when memory itself loses something, as happens when we forget and search in order to remember? Where do we search in the end, but in memory itself? And there, if one thing is perhaps offered in place of another, we reject it until the thing we are looking for turns up. And when it turns up, we say, "This is it"; which we would not say unless we recognized it, and we would not recognize it unless we remembered it. Certainly we had forgotten it. Or had it not slipped away entirely, but from the part that was still held, the other part was being sought, because memory felt that it was not turning over together what it used to turn over together, and, limping as if its habit had been cut short, demanded that what was missing be given back? It is as when a known man is seen with our eyes or thought of and we try to recall his name, having forgotten it: whatever else occurs to us is not connected, because it has not been usual to think of it together with him, and so it is rejected until that name is present on which our accustomed knowledge rests evenly, as on its match. And from where is it present, if not from memory itself? For even when we recognize it on being reminded by someone else, it is from there that it comes. For we do not believe it as something new, but, remembering, we approve that what has been said is right. But if it were wholly erased from the mind, we would not remember it even when reminded. For we have not yet wholly forgotten what we at least remember that we have forgotten. So what we have entirely forgotten we shall not even be able to seek as lost.

How, then, do I seek you, Lord? For when I seek you, my God, I seek a happy life. Let me seek you, so that my soul may live. For my body lives from my soul, and my soul lives from you. How, then, do I seek a happy life? For it is not mine until I say, "Enough; it is there." Here I must say how I seek it: whether by remembering, as though I had forgotten it and still held that I had forgotten it; or by a desire to learn it as something unknown, either never known or so forgotten that I do not even remember having forgotten it. Is not the happy life the very thing that all want, and there is absolutely no one who does not want it? Where did they come to know it, that they want it so? Where did they see it, that they love it? Surely we have it, I do not know how. And there is one way in which a person, when he has it, is then happy; and there are those who are happy in hope. These have it in a lower way than those who are already happy in reality, but yet better than those who are happy neither in reality nor in hope. Yet even these, unless they had it in some way, would not so want to be happy; and it is most certain that they want it. I do not know how they have come to know it, and so they have it by some knowledge or other; and I am concerned whether this is in the memory, because if it is there, we were already happy once, whether each of us individually, or in that man who first sinned, in whom we all died and from whom we have all been born with misery. That I do not ask now; but I ask whether the happy life is in the memory. For we would not love it unless we knew it. We have heard this name, and all of us confess that we desire the thing; for we are not delighted merely by the sound. For when a Greek hears it in Latin, he is not delighted, because he does not know what has been said; but we are delighted, as he too would be if he heard it in Greek, since the thing itself is neither Greek nor Latin, and Greeks and Latins and men of other languages long to gain it. So it is known to all, and if they could be asked with one voice whether they wanted to be happy, they would answer without any hesitation that they did. That would not happen unless the thing itself, whose name this is, were held in their memory.

Is it the way I remember Carthage, which I have seen? No; for the happy life is not seen with the eyes, because it is not a body. Is it as we remember numbers? No; for whoever has these in his knowledge no longer seeks to gain them, but we have the happy life in our knowledge and so love it, and yet we still want to gain it so as to be happy. Is it as we remember eloquence? No; although when they hear this name, even those who are not yet eloquent recall the thing itself, and many want to be eloquent (from which it is clear that it is in their knowledge), yet they have noticed others being eloquent through the bodily senses and have been delighted and want to be so themselves (though they would not be delighted except from an inner knowledge, nor would they want to be so unless they were delighted); but the happy life we do not experience in others by any bodily sense. Is it as we remember joy? Perhaps so. For I remember my joy even when I am sad, as I remember the happy life when I am miserable; and I have never seen or heard or smelled or tasted or touched my joy with a bodily sense, but I experienced it in my mind when I rejoiced, and the knowledge of it stuck to my memory, so that I can recall it, sometimes with disgust, sometimes with longing, according to the different things in which I remember having rejoiced. For I have been flooded with a kind of joy even over shameful things, which I now recall with loathing and detestation; sometimes over good and honorable things, which I recall with longing, even though perhaps they are not present, and so I recall my former joy with sadness.

Where, then, and when did I experience my happy life, so as to remember it and love it and long for it? And not I alone, or with a few, but absolutely all of us want to be happy. Unless we knew it with certain knowledge, we would not want it with so certain a will. But what is this? If two people are asked whether they want to be soldiers, it may happen that one answers that he does, the other that he does not; but if they are asked whether they want to be happy, each will at once say without hesitation that he wishes it; and the one wants to serve and the other does not want to for no other reason than to be happy. Is it perhaps because one finds joy in one thing and another in another? So all agree that they want to be happy, just as they would agree, if they were asked, that they want to rejoice; and they call joy itself the happy life. Although one reaches it by this way and another by that, yet there is one thing that all strive to reach, that they may rejoice. And since this is something no one can say he has not experienced, it is found in the memory and recognized when the name "happy life" is heard.

Far be it, Lord, far be it from the heart of your servant who confesses to you, far be it that I should think myself happy with any joy whatever. For there is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who worship you freely, whose joy you yourself are. And this is the happy life: to rejoice in you, toward you, because of you; this is it, and there is no other. But those who think there is another pursue another joy, and it is not the true one. Yet their will is not turned away from some image of joy.

So it is not certain that all want to be happy, since those who do not want to rejoice in you, which alone is the happy life, do not really want the happy life. Or do all want this, but because "the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that they do not do what they want," they fall back on what they are able to do and are content with that, because what they are not able to do they do not want as much as would be enough to make them able? For I ask all of them whether they would rather rejoice in truth or in falsehood; and they do not hesitate to say that they prefer truth any more than they hesitate to say that they want to be happy. For the happy life is joy in the truth. For this is joy in you, who are the Truth, God, "my light, the salvation of my face, my God." This happy life all want; this life, which alone is happy, all want; joy in the truth all want. I have known many who wanted to deceive, but none who wanted to be deceived. Where, then, did they come to know this happy life, if not where they came to know the truth as well? For they love truth too, since they do not want to be deceived; and when they love the happy life, which is nothing other than joy in the truth, they certainly love truth as well; and they would not love it unless there were some knowledge of it in their memory. Why, then, do they not rejoice in it? Why are they not happy? Because they are more strongly occupied with other things, which make them miserable rather than that which they faintly remember makes them happy. For "there is yet a little light" in men; "let them walk, let them walk, lest darkness overtake them."