On the Trinity, Book 10

Let us now turn to a fuller explanation of these matters in order, with closer attention. First, since no one can love something completely unknown, we must carefully consider the love of students: people who do not yet know a subject but want to learn it. Even in matters not usually called study, love often arises from hearing about something. Reports of beauty kindle the mind’s desire to see and enjoy it; having seen many beautiful bodies, the mind knows bodily beauty in general, and has within itself the means of approving what it longs for outside itself. The love aroused in this way is not for something completely unknown, since its general kind is known. When we love a good man whose face we have never seen, we love him through our knowledge of virtues, which we know [abstractly] in truth itself. In learning, the authority of those who praise and recommend a subject usually kindles our love for it; yet we could have no burning desire to study it without at least a brief notion of that subject already imprinted on our mind. Who, for example, would devote care and effort to learning rhetoric without first knowing that it is the science of speaking? Sometimes we admire the results of a subject that we have heard about or experienced, and burn to acquire through study the ability to achieve them. Suppose an illiterate person is told of a skill that enables someone to send words silently made by hand to a person far away, who receives them with his eyes rather than his ears; and suppose he sees this done. In wanting to learn how to do it, is not all his eagerness directed toward the result he already knows? This is how students’ eagerness is kindled. No one can possibly love what is completely unknown. Likewise, someone who hears an unfamiliar sign, such as a word whose meaning he does not know, wants to discover what it is; he wants to know what that sound has been established to bring to mind. For example, he might hear the word temetum and ask what it means. He must already know that it is a sign: not an empty sound, but a word signifying something. Otherwise, the three-syllable word is already known to him, its articulated form having been imprinted on his mind through hearing. All its letters and the duration of each sound are already known. What more could he seek to learn unless he also knew it was a sign and therefore wanted to know what it signified? Because it is known to this greater extent, yet not fully known, the mind wants to learn what remains unknown. If he knew it only as a sound, without knowing it signified something, he would seek nothing further: he would already have perceived the sensible thing as fully as his senses could. But knowing it is both a sound and a sign, he wants to know it completely. No sign is fully known until its meaning is known. Can someone who seeks this knowledge with intense care and eagerly persists in the search be said to lack love? What, then, does he love? Certainly nothing unknown can be loved. He is not loving the three syllables he already knows. If he loves them because he knows they signify something, that is not our present question, since he is not seeking to learn that. We are asking what he loves in what he wants to know but certainly does not yet know; we wonder why he loves it, since we know with complete certainty that nothing unknown can be loved. What does he love? He knows and sees in the rational order of things the beauty of the learning that embraces knowledge of all signs, and the usefulness of the skill by which people in society communicate their thoughts. Without sharing thoughts through conversation, human gatherings would be worse than complete solitude. The soul sees, knows, and loves this beautiful and useful form; anyone who investigates unfamiliar words tries to perfect this form in himself as far as possible. Seeing it in the light of truth is one thing; wanting it among one’s own abilities is another. In truth’s light he sees how great and good it would be to understand and speak every nation’s language, to hear no language as foreign and be heard by no one as a foreigner. The beauty of this knowledge is already seen in thought and loved as something known; this vision kindles students’ eagerness. They strive toward it and long for it in all their efforts to acquire this ability, so that they may possess in practice what reason has already shown them. The nearer someone’s hope brings him to that ability, the more fervently he loves it; people study more eagerly what they have not despaired of mastering. When someone has no hope of reaching his goal, he loves it only faintly or not at all, however clearly he sees its beauty. Since almost everyone despairs of knowing all languages, each concentrates on learning his own nation’s language; even if he feels unable to master that fully, no one is so indifferent to this knowledge that an unfamiliar word does not make him want to know its meaning and, if possible, investigate and learn it. As he investigates, he is certainly eager to learn and seems to love something unknown. But the reality is different. The mind is moved by a form it knows and contemplates: the evident beauty of minds joining together through hearing and answering in familiar words. This form kindles eagerness in the seeker, who investigates something unknown while contemplating and loving the known form to which it belongs. Suppose, for example, someone asks, “What is temetum?” (the word I used earlier), and someone replies, “Why does it matter to you?” He will answer, “So that I do not hear someone speak without understanding him, or read the word somewhere without knowing what the writer meant.” Who would tell such a seeker, “Do not bother understanding what you hear or knowing what you read”? Almost every rational soul readily sees the beauty of the skill by which people make their thoughts known to each other through meaningful words; this beauty is known and therefore loved, and that is why the unfamiliar word is eagerly investigated. When he learns that the ancients called wine “temetum,” a word now obsolete in our speech, he may consider it necessary for reading certain ancient books. If he also considers those books unnecessary, he may judge the word unworthy of remembering, since it contributes nothing to the form of learning he knows, contemplates, and loves in his mind. A studious mind, one that wants to know what it does not know, therefore always loves something known for whose sake it seeks the unknown, rather than loving the unknown itself. Or suppose it is so curious that it is carried away simply by the love of knowing unknown things, without any other known purpose; this curious person should be distinguished from a serious student, but neither loves things he does not know. It would be more accurate to say that he hates unknown things: by wanting to know everything, he wants there to be nothing unknown. Someone might raise a harder question, arguing that hating the unknown is just as impossible as loving it. We will not oppose the truth; but we must distinguish loving to know unknown things from loving unknown things. Someone can love to know unknown things, but cannot love unknown things themselves. The words “to know” matter: someone who loves to know unknown things loves knowing them, rather than the unknown things themselves. Without knowing what knowing means, no one could confidently say either “I know” or “I do not know.” Someone who truthfully says “I know” must know what knowing is. But someone who confidently and truthfully says “I do not know,” and knows he speaks truly, also certainly knows what knowing is; in looking within and truthfully saying “I do not know,” he distinguishes the person who does not know from the one who does. How could he know that this statement is true without knowing what knowing is?

Neither a serious student nor a curious person loves unknown things, even when driven by an intense desire to know what he does not know. He may already know the general kind of what he loves and want to know it in particular instances, perhaps ones he has heard praised but has not yet encountered; he then pictures an imaginary form in his mind to stir his love. What supplies this picture except things he already knows? Yet he may not love the thing praised if he finds it unlike the form he imagined and knows so well in thought. If he does love it, that love begins when he learns what it is. A little earlier he loved something different, the form his mind had been picturing to itself. If he finds it like the form he imagined from reports, so that he can truly say, “I already loved you,” even then he did not love an unknown form: he knew it in that likeness. Or we see and love something in the form of eternal reason; when we believe people who have experienced and praise its expression in a temporal image, and love it there, we are not loving something unknown. We have already discussed this sufficiently. Or we love something known and seek something unknown for its sake; we are moved by love for the known thing, not the unknown. We know that learning what is still unknown contributes to what we already love, as I explained with the unfamiliar word. Or someone loves knowing itself, which cannot be unknown to anyone who wants to know something. For these reasons, people who want to learn what they do not know seem to love unknown things. Their intense desire to investigate means they cannot be described as lacking love. But I think I have persuaded those who carefully examine the truth that the reality is different: nothing unknown can be loved. Our examples, however, concern people who want to know something other than themselves. We must consider whether a new kind of case arises when the mind wants to know itself.

What does the mind love when it ardently seeks self-knowledge while still unknown to itself? The mind seeks to know itself, burning with eagerness. So it loves; but what does it love? Itself? How can that be, when it does not yet know itself and no one can love the unknown? Has it heard reports of its own form, as we commonly hear about absent people? Perhaps it loves its imagined picture of itself, which may be very different from what it really is, rather than itself. Or suppose its imagined picture resembles itself, so that in loving this image it loves itself before knowing itself, because it contemplates its own likeness; then it must know other minds from which it forms this picture, and thus know itself by its general kind. Why, then, does it know other minds but not itself, when nothing could be more present to it than itself? If it is like bodily eyes, which know other eyes better than themselves, it should stop seeking itself: it will never find itself. Eyes can see themselves only in mirrors; we must not suppose that anything like this applies to contemplating incorporeal things, as though the mind knew itself in a mirror. Or does it see in the rational order of eternal truth how beautiful self-knowledge is, love what it sees, and strive to realize it in itself? Though unknown to itself, it knows how good it would be to know itself. This is remarkable: it does not yet know itself, but already knows how beautiful self-knowledge is. Or does a hidden memory, which has not abandoned it even on its distant wanderings, show it a supremely good goal, its own security and blessedness? Does it believe it cannot reach that goal without knowing itself? Then it seeks self-knowledge because it loves that goal: it loves something known for whose sake it seeks something unknown. But why could the memory of its blessedness endure without the memory of itself enduring too? It would then know itself, which wants to reach the goal, as well as it knows the goal it wants to reach. Or, in loving to know itself, does it love the act of knowing rather than its still unknown self, and resent all the more its own absence from the knowledge by which it wants to embrace everything? It knows what knowing is and, loving this known thing, wants to know itself too. Where, then, does it know its own knowing if it does not know itself? It knows that it knows other things but does not know itself; that is how it also knows what knowing is. How can what does not know itself know itself as knowing anything? It knows that it itself knows, not that another mind knows. Therefore it knows itself. Moreover, when it seeks self-knowledge, it already knows itself as seeking. Again, therefore, it knows itself. It cannot be completely unknown to itself when it knows itself at least as not knowing itself. If it did not know that it lacked self-knowledge, it would not seek to know itself. Its very search therefore proves that it is more known to itself than unknown. In seeking self-knowledge, it knows itself as seeking and as not knowing itself.

What, then, should we say? Does the mind partly know itself and partly not know itself? But it is absurd to say that the whole mind does not know what it knows. I do not say, “It knows everything,” but, “Whatever it knows, its whole self knows.” So when it knows something about itself, which only its whole self can do, it knows its whole self. It knows that it knows something, and only its whole self can know anything. Therefore it knows its whole self. Moreover, what about itself does it know better than that it lives? It cannot be a mind without living, since it also does something more: it understands. Animal souls live, too, but do not understand. Just as the whole mind is mind, the whole mind lives. It knows that it lives, and therefore knows its whole self. Finally, when the mind seeks self-knowledge, it already knows it is a mind; otherwise it would not know whether it was seeking itself and might mistake one thing for another in its search. It might not itself be a mind, so that in seeking to know a mind it would not be seeking itself. Since the mind knows it is seeking itself when it asks what mind is, it certainly knows it is a mind. If it knows itself as mind, and the whole of it is mind, it knows its whole self. But suppose it does not know it is a mind. When it seeks itself, let it know only that it is seeking itself. Even then it could mistake one thing for another if it did not know this. To avoid that mistake, it must certainly know what it seeks. If it knows what it seeks and seeks itself, it certainly knows itself. What more, then, does it seek? If it partly knows itself and still seeks itself in part, it is seeking a part of itself rather than itself. When we speak of the mind itself, we mean the whole mind. Moreover, in knowing that it has not yet found its whole self, it knows how much the whole comprises. It therefore seeks what is missing, as we try to recall something that has slipped from mind without being completely forgotten; when it returns, we can recognize it as what we were seeking. But how can mind come into mind, as though mind could be absent from mind? Moreover, even if, after finding a part, it does not seek its whole self, its whole self nevertheless does the seeking. Its whole self is therefore present, and nothing remains to be sought. What is sought is missing, not the mind that seeks. Since its whole self seeks itself, none of it is missing. Or suppose the whole mind does not seek itself, but the part already found seeks the part not yet found. Then the mind does not seek itself, since none of its parts seeks itself. The part already found does not seek itself; nor does the part not yet found seek itself, since the part already found seeks it. Thus, if neither the whole mind nor any of its parts seeks itself, the mind does not seek itself at all.

Why, then, is the mind commanded to know itself? I believe it is so that it may think of itself and live according to its nature; that is, seek its proper natural order, beneath Him to whom it should submit and above the things it should surpass; beneath Him who should rule it, above the things it should rule. Corrupt desire makes it do many things as though it had forgotten itself. It sees inwardly certain beautiful things in the superior nature that is God. It should remain steadfast to enjoy them. Instead, it turns away from Him, wanting to claim them for itself: to be what He is by its own power, rather than resemble Him through His gift. It moves and slips into less and less, imagining it to be more and more; neither it nor anything else can satisfy it once it withdraws from Him who alone suffices. Need and distress make it excessively absorbed in its own activities and the restless pleasures it gathers through them. It longs to acquire knowledge from external things whose general kind it knows and loves, fearing they may be lost unless anxiously guarded. It thus loses its security, and thinks of itself less the more certain it is that it cannot lose itself. Not knowing oneself differs from not thinking of oneself (we do not call a learned person ignorant of grammar merely because he is thinking about medicine rather than grammar) — again, not knowing oneself differs from not thinking of oneself. Love is so powerful that even when the mind returns, in a sense, to thinking of itself, it brings along the things it has long thought of with love and clung to with the glue of attention. The external things it loved through bodily senses are bodies; long familiarity has entangled it with them. Yet it cannot bring the bodies themselves inward into the region, as it were, of incorporeal nature. So it gathers and carries their images, made within itself from itself. It gives something of its own substance to form them, yet preserves something by which it can freely judge their form; this is more properly mind: the rational understanding preserved for judgment. We recognize that we share with animals those parts of the soul shaped by likenesses of bodies.

The mind errs when it joins itself to these images with such love that it imagines itself to be something of their kind. It thus becomes like them in a sense, through belief rather than reality: it imagines itself to be not an image, but the very thing whose image it holds. It retains the power to distinguish the body it leaves outside from the image it carries within: except when these images are projected so vividly that they seem externally perceived rather than inwardly thought, as happens in sleep, madness, or a trance.

When the mind thinks itself something of this kind, it thinks itself a body. Since it is well aware of the authority by which it rules the body, some have asked which bodily component has the greatest power in the body; they have identified this with the mind, or even with the entire soul. Some therefore think it is blood, others the brain, others the heart; not as the Scripture says, “I will praise You, O Lord, with my whole heart;” and, “You will love the Lord your God with all your heart;” here the word is transferred from body to soul by an extended use or metaphor. Instead, they think it is the actual bodily organ we see when the internal organs are cut open. Others believe the soul consists of tiny indivisible particles, called atoms, that come together and adhere to one another. Others identify its substance as air, and others as fire. Others consider it no substance at all. They can conceive no substance except a body, yet cannot find that the soul is a body; instead, they think it is the balance of our body or the arrangement of basic elements by which the flesh is held together. All these thinkers regard the soul as mortal: whether a body or a bodily arrangement, it could not endure immortally. But those who regard its substance as an incorporeal life, having discovered that life animates and gives life to every living body, have each tried as best they could to prove it immortal as well, since life cannot lack life. As for that obscure fifth kind of body which some add to the world’s four familiar elements and identify as the soul’s material, I do not think we need discuss it at length here. Either they mean by “body” what we mean, something whose part occupies less space than its whole, and belong among those who believe the mind bodily; or they call every substance, or every changeable substance, a body, while knowing that not every substance occupies space with length, width, and height. Then we need not quarrel over terminology. Among all these opinions, anyone who sees that the mind’s nature is a substance, yet incorporeal — its smaller part does not occupy less space and its larger part more — must also see why those who think it bodily are mistaken. They do not lack knowledge of mind; they add features without which they cannot conceive any nature at all. Ask them to think of anything without bodily images, and they suppose it is nothing. The mind should therefore not seek itself as though absent from itself. What is more present to knowledge than what is present to the mind? And what is more present to the mind than the mind itself? Consider the origin of “invention”: what does it suggest except that finding is “coming into” what is sought? Things that come to mind spontaneously, as it were, are therefore not usually called discoveries, although they can be called known; we were not searching in order to come into them, that is, to discover or find them. The mind itself seeks what the eyes or any other bodily sense seeks (it directs even bodily sense, and discovers or finds when that sense comes upon the things sought). Likewise, it discovers other things it must know through itself rather than through bodily sense when it “comes into” them; whether in the higher substance, that is, God, or in other parts of the soul. Thus, when it judges bodily images, it finds them within the soul, imprinted through the body.

It is therefore a remarkable question how the mind seeks and finds itself: where does it direct its search, or arrive in order to find itself? What is more fully in the mind than the mind itself? But the mind is in the things it thinks of with love. Accustomed to loving sensible, that is, bodily things, it cannot be within itself without their images. Hence the disgrace of error arises: it cannot separate sensible images from itself to see itself alone. Love’s glue has bound them to it in a remarkable way. This is its uncleanness: in trying to think of itself alone, it identifies itself with what it cannot stop including in its thought of itself. When commanded to know itself, it should not seek itself as though taken away from itself, but take away what it has added to itself. It lies deeper within than both sensible things, which are plainly outside, and their images; these images occupy a part of the soul shared with animals, although animals lack understanding, which belongs specifically to mind. Since the mind lies deeper within, it goes out from itself, in a sense, when it extends its love toward these footprints, as it were, of many acts of attention. These footprints are imprinted on memory when external bodies are perceived, so that even in their absence their images remain available to thought. The mind should therefore know itself rather than seek itself as though absent; let it fix on itself the [voluntary] attention that had wandered among other things, and think of itself. It will then see that it has never ceased to love or know itself; rather, by loving something else along with itself, it has confused itself with that thing and, in a sense, grown together with it. Embracing distinct things as though they were one, it has come to think them one.

The mind should not seek to discern itself as though absent, but take care to discern itself as present. It should not try to learn itself as though unknown, but distinguish itself from what it knows to be something else. How could it try to obey the command “Know yourself” without knowing what “know” or “yourself” means? If it knows both, it also knows itself. “Know yourself” does not address the mind in the same way as “Know the cherubim and seraphim”; they are absent, and we believe reports about them that describe them as certain heavenly powers. Nor is it like “Know that man’s will”: we cannot perceive his will at all, through sense or understanding, without bodily signs being expressed. Even then we believe rather than understand. Nor is it like telling someone, “Look at your own face,” which he can do only in a mirror. Even our own face is beyond our direct sight, because it is not where our gaze can reach. But when the mind is told “Know yourself,” it knows itself by the very act of understanding “yourself”; this is simply because it is present to itself. If it does not understand what is said, it certainly does not obey the command. It is therefore commanded to do what it already does when it understands the command itself.

When commanded to know itself, the mind should add nothing to what it knows itself to be. It certainly knows that the command is addressed to itself: the self that exists, lives, and understands. A corpse also exists, and cattle live; but neither a corpse nor cattle understand. It therefore knows that it exists and lives as an understanding nature exists and lives. If, for example, the mind thinks itself air, it thinks that air understands; yet it knows that it understands, while it only supposes, rather than knows, that it is air. Let it set aside what it supposes itself to be and discern what it knows. Let it retain what even those who identified mind with one body or another never doubted. Not every mind thinks itself air; some think themselves fire, others brain, and others various bodies, as I mentioned earlier. Yet all know that they understand, exist, and live; they speak of understanding in relation to its object, but of existing and living in relation to themselves. No one doubts that understanding requires life, and life requires existence; whatever understands therefore both exists and lives. It does so neither like a lifeless corpse nor like a soul without understanding, but in its own superior way. They also know that they will, and that willing requires existence and life; they relate will itself to something they will through it. They also know that they remember, and that no one could remember without existing and living; but we also relate memory itself to the things we remember through it. Knowledge and learning about many things are therefore contained in two of these three, memory and understanding; will is present so that we may enjoy or use them. We enjoy known things when the will delights in them for their own sake and rests in them; we use things when we direct them toward something else to be enjoyed. Human life becomes vicious and blameworthy only through wrong use and wrong enjoyment. But this is not the place to discuss that. Since we are discussing the mind’s nature, let us set aside all knowledge received from outside through bodily senses; let us examine more closely what we have established: all minds know and are certain about themselves. People have doubted whether the powers of living, remembering, understanding, willing, thinking, knowing, and judging belong to air, fire, brain, blood, atoms, or some obscure fifth body beyond the usual four elements; or whether the arrangement or balance of our flesh can accomplish them. Different people have tried to establish different answers. Yet who doubts that he himself lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges? Even if he doubts, he lives; if he doubts, he remembers why he doubts; if he doubts, he understands that he doubts; if he doubts, he wishes to be certain; if he doubts, he thinks; if he doubts, he knows that he does not know; if he doubts, he judges that he ought not to assent rashly. Whoever doubts anything else should not doubt any of these things: without them, he could not doubt anything. Those who think the mind is a body, or a bodily arrangement or balance, want all these powers to appear to exist in a subject, with air, fire, or whatever body they identify as mind constituting the substance; understanding (intelligentia) would be a quality in that body. The body would be the subject, and understanding would exist in the subject: the mind, which they consider bodily, would be the subject, while understanding [intelligence], or any of the other powers we have identified as certain, would exist in it. Those who deny that the mind is a body, but consider it a bodily arrangement or balance, hold almost the same opinion; the difference is that the former make the mind itself the substance in which understanding [intelligence] exists as in a subject; the latter place the mind itself in a subject, namely, the body whose arrangement or balance it is. What else, then, can they conclude except that understanding also exists in that same body as in a subject? All these thinkers fail to recognize that the mind knows itself even while seeking itself, as we have already shown. Nothing can rightly be called known while its substance remains unknown. When the mind knows itself, it therefore knows its substance; when certain about itself, it is certain about its substance. Our earlier arguments establish its certainty about itself; yet it is not at all certain whether it is air, fire, a body, or something belonging to a body. Therefore it is none of these. The entire command to know itself means this: the mind should be certain that it is none of the things about which it is uncertain, and certain that it is only what it is certain of being. It thinks of fire, air, and all other bodily things in the same way. It could never think of what it is in the same way as it thinks of what it is not. It thinks of all these through imaginary pictures: fire, air, this or that body, a bodily part, or a bodily arrangement or balance. No one claims that it is all these things, only one of them. If it were one of them, it would think of that one differently from the rest: not through an imaginary picture, as we think of absent things encountered through bodily sense, either those very things or others of their kind; but through a true inward presence rather than a fiction (for nothing is more present to it than itself), just as it thinks of itself as living, remembering, understanding, and willing. It knows these things within itself, rather than imagining them as though it had encountered them outside through sense, as bodies are encountered. If it adds nothing from its thoughts of bodily things to itself, imagining itself to be something of their kind, then whatever remains to it from itself is all that it is.

Let us briefly set aside the other things the mind certainly knows about itself and focus on three: memory, understanding, and will. These three commonly reveal even young children’s natural abilities; the more firmly and easily a boy remembers, the more sharply he understands, and the more eagerly he studies, the more his ability deserves praise. But when assessing someone’s learning, we ask what he remembers and understands, rather than how firmly and easily he remembers or how sharply he understands. Since a mind deserves praise for goodness as well as learning, we consider what someone wills (velit), besides what he remembers and understands; first what he wills, and then how strongly he wills it, rather than merely how ardent his willing is. Ardent love deserves praise when its object ought to be ardently loved. Thus, of these three — ability, knowledge, and use — the first is assessed through a person’s capacities in memory, understanding, and will. The second is assessed through what he possesses in memory and understanding, acquired through an eager will. The third, use, lies in the will as it handles the contents of memory and understanding, either directing them toward something further or resting content in them as its goal. To use is to bring something under the will’s control; to enjoy is to use with joy in actual possession, rather than merely in hope. Everyone who enjoys therefore uses: he brings something under the will’s control and rests satisfied in it as his goal. But not everyone who uses enjoys, if he sought what he brings under the will’s control for something else’s sake rather than its own. Memory, understanding, and will are one life, not three, and one mind, not three. It follows that they are one substance, not three. When memory is called life, mind, or substance, these terms describe it in itself; “memory” describes its relation to something. The same applies to understanding and will: these names express a relation to something, while each in itself is life, mind, and essence. These three are therefore one insofar as they are one life, one mind, one essence; whatever else each is called in itself also applies to them together in the singular, rather than the plural. They are three insofar as they are related to one another; unless they were equal, each to each and each to all, they could not contain one another. Each contains not only each of the others but all of them. I remember that I have memory, understanding, and will; I understand that I understand, will, and remember; I will to will, remember, and understand; and I remember my entire memory, understanding, and will together. What I do not remember of my memory is not in my memory; nothing is more fully in memory than memory itself. Therefore I remember all of memory. Whatever I understand, I know that I understand; whatever I will, I know that I will. And whatever I know, I remember. Therefore I remember all of my understanding and all of my will. Likewise, when I understand these three, I understand them all completely and together. Of intelligible things, I fail to understand only what I do not know; what I do not know, I neither remember nor will. It follows that I neither remember nor will any intelligible thing I do not understand. Conversely, whatever intelligible things I remember and will, I understand. My will also encompasses all my understanding and memory when I use everything I understand and remember. Since each contains all the others completely, each whole equals each other whole, and each whole also equals all the wholes together; these three are one: one life, one mind, one essence.

Should we now ascend, with whatever strength of attention we can muster, to the supreme and highest essence, whose image the human mind is, inadequate though it may be? Or should we make these same three clearer in the soul through what we receive from outside through bodily sense, as knowledge of bodies is imprinted on us in time? We found the mind’s own memory, understanding, and will to be such that, since it always knows and wills itself, it also always remembers, understands, and loves itself, although it does not always think of itself as distinct from things other than itself. Its memory and understanding of itself are therefore difficult to distinguish within it. These two are so closely joined, with neither preceding the other at all in time, that they seem to be one thing with two names rather than two things; love itself is also less clearly felt when no sense of need reveals it, because what is loved is always present. These matters may therefore become clearer even to slower minds if we examine what comes to the mind and happens within it in time; when it remembers something not previously remembered, sees something not previously seen, and loves something not previously loved. But the length of this book now requires a fresh beginning for that discussion.