On the Trinity, Book 9

We certainly seek a trinity — not any trinity, but the Trinity who is God, the true, supreme, and only God. Let my listeners be patient, for we are still seeking. No one can fairly criticize this search, provided the person seeking something so difficult to know or express remains steadfast in faith. But anyone with clearer insight or better teaching can readily and rightly criticize someone who makes confident assertions about it. “Seek God,” he says, “and your heart will live;” and to prevent anyone from rashly celebrating as though he had grasped it, “Seek,” he says, “His face always.” And the apostle says: “If anyone thinks he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, that person is known by Him.” He did not say, “has known Him,” which would be dangerous presumption, but “is known by Him.” Similarly, elsewhere, after saying, “But now that you have known God,” he immediately corrects himself: “or rather are known by God.” Above all, in another passage, “Brothers,” he says, “I do not consider myself to have grasped it. But I do this one thing: forgetting what lies behind and reaching toward what lies ahead, I press on with determination toward the goal, for the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus. Let all of us who are perfect think this way.” Perfection in this life, he tells us, consists in forgetting what lies behind and reaching and pressing on with determination toward what lies ahead. The safest resolve belongs to the seeker, [who seeks] until we grasp the goal toward which we are moving and reaching. The right resolve begins with faith. For assured faith is, in a sense, the starting point of knowledge; but assured knowledge will become perfect only after this life, when we will see face to face. Let us therefore recognize that seeking the truth is safer than presuming to know what we do not know. Let us seek as people who expect to find, and find as people who intend to keep seeking. For “when someone finishes, then he begins.” Let us question matters of faith without unbelief, and affirm matters of understanding without rashness. In the former we must hold firmly to authority; in the latter we must seek the truth. On this question, then, let us believe that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God, the Creator and Ruler of all creation; and that the Father is not the Son, and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but that there is a trinity of persons related to one another, and a unity of equal essence. Let us seek to understand this, asking for help from the One we wish to understand. As far as He grants, let us try to explain our understanding with such devout care and concern that, even if we sometimes attribute something to the wrong person, we at least say nothing unworthy. For example, we might say something about the Father that is not properly His but belongs to the Son, the Holy Spirit, or the Trinity itself; or something about the Son that is not properly His but at least belongs to the Father, the Holy Spirit, or the Trinity; or something about the Holy Spirit that is not properly His but is still appropriate to the Father, the Son, or the one God, the Trinity itself. For instance, we now wish to see whether that most excellent love belongs specifically to the Holy Spirit. If it does not, then either the Father is love, or the Son, or the Trinity itself; for we cannot oppose the utterly certain faith and weighty authority of Scripture, which says, “God is love.” Yet we must not stray into irreverent error by saying anything about the Trinity that belongs to a creature rather than the Creator, or that is simply invented by empty imagination.

With this in mind, let us turn to the three things we think we have found. We are not yet speaking of heavenly things, or of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but of the inadequate image that is nevertheless an image: the human being. Our weak mind may find this a more familiar and easier object to contemplate. When I, the person making this inquiry, love something, three things are involved: myself, what I love, and love itself. I cannot love love unless I love someone who loves; for there is no love where nothing is loved. So there are three things: the one who loves, what is loved, and love. But what if I love only myself? Would there then be only two things: what I love, and love? When someone loves himself, the one who loves and what is loved are the same. Similarly, in self-love, loving and being loved are the very same thing. “He loves himself” and “he is loved by himself” say the same thing. In this case loving and being loved are not two different things, just as the one who loves and the one who is loved are not two different people. Even so, love and what is loved are still two things. For someone who loves himself is not therefore love itself, unless love itself is what is loved. But loving oneself is one thing; loving one’s own love is another. Love can be loved only as already loving something, since there is no love where nothing is loved. So when someone loves himself there are two things: love, and what is loved. The one who loves and what is loved are then one. It therefore seems that we cannot assume three things wherever love exists. Let us set aside all the other elements of a human being and consider the mind alone, so that we may discover what we seek as clearly as this subject permits. The mind, then, when it loves itself, reveals two things: mind and love. But what is loving oneself except wanting to be available to oneself for the enjoyment of oneself? When someone desires himself in exactly the measure of what he is, his will matches his mind, and his love equals the one who loves. If love is a substance, it is certainly spirit, not a body; and the mind, too, is spirit, not a body. Yet love and mind are one spirit, not two, and one essence, not two. Here, nevertheless, are two things that are one: the one who loves and love, or, if you prefer, what is loved and love. These two are spoken of in relation to each other. The one who loves is related to love, and love to the one who loves. For a lover loves with some love, and love belongs to someone who loves. But “mind” and “spirit” express essence rather than relationship. Their existence does not depend on their being called the mind and spirit of a particular person. If we take the body away from the human being, whose designation includes union with a body, mind and spirit remain. But take away the one who loves and there is no love; take away love and there is no one who loves. Thus, considered in relation to one another, they are two. Considered in themselves, each is spirit and together they are one spirit; each is mind and together they are one mind. Where, then, is the trinity? Let us pay close attention and call on the eternal light to illuminate our darkness, so that we may see God’s image in ourselves as far as we are permitted.

The mind cannot love itself unless it also knows itself; for how can it love what it does not know? Anyone who says that the mind loves itself because, through knowledge of a genus or species, it believes itself to resemble other minds it has encountered is speaking very foolishly. For how does a mind know another mind, if it does not know itself? The mind does not know other minds while failing to know itself, in the way the bodily eye sees other eyes but does not see itself; for we see bodies through the eyes of the body, because, unless we look into a mirror, we cannot bend back and reflect onto themselves the rays that shine out through our eyes and touch whatever we see. This is a very intricate and obscure subject until it is clearly established whether things happen this way or not. Whatever the power by which we see through our eyes may be, whether rays or something else, we cannot see that power itself with our eyes. We investigate it with the mind and, if possible, understand even this through the mind. The mind acquires knowledge of bodily things through the bodily senses, and knowledge of incorporeal things through itself. Since it is incorporeal, it also knows itself through itself; if it does not know itself, it does not love itself.

Just as self-love reveals two things (duo quædam), the mind and its love, self-knowledge reveals two things, the mind and its knowledge. The mind itself, its love, and its knowledge are therefore three things (tria quædam). These three are one, and when perfect they are equal. If someone loves himself less than his worth, his love is faulty and imperfect. For example, a human mind might love itself only as much as a human body ought to be loved, although the mind is greater than the body. Again, if the mind loves itself beyond its worth, its fault is also very great and its self-love imperfect. It might, for instance, love itself as much as God ought to be loved, although it is incomparably less than God. Its fault is still more perverse and unjust when it loves the body as much as God ought to be loved. Likewise, knowledge that falls short of something knowable in full is imperfect. But if knowledge is greater than its object, the knowing nature is superior to what it knows. Thus knowledge of a body is greater than the body it knows. Knowledge is a kind of life in the knower’s reason, whereas a body is not life. Any life is greater than any body in power, though not in size. But when the mind knows itself, its knowledge does not surpass itself: it is both the knower and what is known. When it knows itself completely, and nothing else along with itself, its knowledge equals itself. Since it knows itself, this knowledge does not come from another nature. When it perceives itself completely and nothing more, its knowledge is neither less nor greater. We were therefore right to say that these three things, [mind, love, and knowledge], are consequently equal when perfect. This also suggests, if we can grasp it at all, that these things [i.e. love and knowledge] exist in the soul. As though enfolded within it, they unfold so that we can perceive and count them as substances, or, so to speak, essences. They do not exist merely in a subject, as color, shape, or any other quality or quantity exists in a body. Anything of this [material] kind cannot extend beyond its subject: this body’s color or shape cannot also belong to another body. But the mind can love something besides itself with the same love by which it loves itself. It also knows many things besides itself. Love and knowledge therefore do not exist in the mind merely as in a subject. They, too, exist substantially, like the mind itself. Although spoken of in relation to one another, each exists in its own substance. Their relationship differs from that of color and its colored subject. Color exists in the colored subject without a substance of its own: the colored body is a substance, but color exists in a substance. Instead, they resemble two friends who are also two human beings, and thus substances. “Human beings” describes what they are in themselves; “friends” describes their relationship. The one who loves or knows is a substance, and knowledge and love are substances. The lover and love, or the knower and knowledge, are spoken of in relation to each other, like friends; “mind” and “spirit,” like “human beings,” are not relative terms. Nevertheless, unlike human friends, the lover and love, or the knower and knowledge, cannot exist separately. Friends, too, can apparently be separated in body but not in mind insofar as they remain friends. Yet one friend can begin to hate the other and thus cease to be a friend, while the other remains unaware and still loves him. But if the love by which the mind loves itself ceases to exist, the mind simultaneously ceases to love. Likewise, if its self-knowledge ceases to exist, the mind simultaneously ceases to know itself. Similarly, a head is certainly the head of something that has a head. They are spoken of in relation to each other, although both are substances: both the head and what has a head are bodies, and without a body there can be nothing that has a head. But these can be separated by cutting; mind, love, and knowledge cannot. Even bodies that cannot be cut apart or divided would not be bodies unless they consisted of their own parts. A part is spoken of in relation to a whole: every part belongs to some whole, and a whole is complete through all its parts. But since both part and whole are bodies, they also exist as substances, besides being described relationally. Perhaps, then, the mind is a whole consisting of two parts, as it were: the love by which it loves itself and the knowledge by which it knows itself? Or do three equal parts make up one whole? But no part encompasses the whole to which it belongs. When the mind knows itself completely, that is, perfectly, its knowledge extends throughout itself. When it loves itself perfectly, it loves its whole self, and its love extends throughout itself. Should we think of mind, love, and knowledge together as we think of a drink made from wine, water, and honey? Each ingredient extends throughout the drink, yet there are three ingredients. Every part of the drink contains all three; unlike water and oil, they are completely mixed. All are substances, and the entire liquid made from them is one substance. Is the union of these three like that? But water, wine, and honey are not of one substance, although their mixture produces a drink that is one substance. I cannot see how mind, love, and knowledge could fail to be of the same essence. The mind itself loves and knows itself; these three exist in such a way that the mind is not loved or known by anything else at all. These three must therefore be of one and the same essence. If they were confused together in a mixture, they could no longer be three or stand in relation to one another. Suppose you made three similar rings from the same gold. Even if connected, they would stand in relation to each other because they are similar. Everything similar is similar to something: there are three rings and one gold. But if the rings are blended and each is mixed with the others throughout its entire mass, that trinity disappears completely. There will still be one gold, as with the three rings, but there will no longer be three golden things.

But when the mind knows and loves itself, the trinity of mind, love, and knowledge remains. No mixture confuses them, although each exists in itself and each is wholly in the others: each in the other two, and each pair in the remaining one. Thus all are in all. The mind certainly exists in itself, since “mind” names what it is in itself. Yet as knowing, known, or knowable it is related to its own knowledge, and as loving, loved, or lovable it is related to the love by which it loves itself. Although knowledge is related to the mind that knows or is known, knowledge itself is also described as known and knowing. For the knowledge by which the mind knows itself is not unknown to itself. Although love is related to the loving mind to which it belongs, it is also love in itself and thus exists in itself. Love, too, is loved, and can be loved only by love, that is, by itself. Thus each exists in itself. They also exist in each other: the loving mind is in love, love is in the lover’s knowledge, and knowledge is in the knowing mind. Similarly, each exists in the other two. The mind that knows and loves itself is in its own love and knowledge; the love of the mind that loves and knows itself is in the mind and its knowledge; and the knowledge of the mind that knows and loves itself is in the mind and its love, because it loves itself as knowing and knows itself as loving. Thus each pair also exists in the remaining one. The mind that knows and loves itself is, together with its knowledge, in love, and together with its love, in knowledge. Love and knowledge are also together in the mind that loves and knows itself. We have already shown how all are in all. When these three are perfect in themselves, the mind loves and knows its whole self, knows its own love completely, and loves its own knowledge completely. These three are therefore wonderfully inseparable. Yet each is individually a substance, and together they are one substance or essence, while spoken of in relation to one another. [Editor’s note by W.G.T. Shedd: "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? I pray that they may all be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You." Athanasius (Oratio, 3, 21) observes that Christ here prays that the disciples "may imitate the trinitarian unity of essence, in their unity of affection." If the disciples could have existed in the Father’s essence as the Son does, He would have prayed that they might all be "one in You," instead of "one in Us." The Platonists also used this image of circular movement to explain how the human mind reflects on and communes with itself. "It is not possible for us to know what our souls are, but only by their κινήσεις κυκλικαὶ, their circular and reflex motions and converse with themselves, which only can steal from them their own secrets." J. Smith: Immortality of the Soul, Ch. ii. Augustine’s illustration, however, is imperfect because "the three things" which circulate are not "each of them severally a substance." Only one of them, namely, the mind, is a substance.—W.G.T.S.]

When the human mind knows and loves itself, its object is not something unchangeable. Each person speaks in one way when describing his own particular mind and observing what happens within himself, and in another when defining the human mind through knowledge of its species or genus. When he tells me about his own mind, whether he understands or fails to understand something, or wants or does not want something, I believe him. But when he speaks truly about the human mind in general or as a species, I recognize and approve the truth. Clearly, then, a person sees one thing in himself that another can believe him about without seeing it, and another [sees a thing] in truth itself that someone else can also contemplate. The former changes over time; the latter stands in unchanging eternity. We do not acquire knowledge of the human mind’s genus or species by observing similarities among many minds with bodily eyes. We contemplate inviolable truth, by which we define as perfectly as we can what the mind ought to be according to eternal principles, rather than what any particular person’s mind happens to be. Bodily images are taken in through the bodily senses and somehow poured into memory. From them we construct imaginary pictures even of things we have never seen, either unlike their reality or, by chance, like it. Whenever we rightly approve or reject such images within ourselves, we evidently do so by other rules that remain entirely unchangeable above our mind. I recall the walls of Carthage, which I have seen, or imagine those of Alexandria, which I have not. When I rationally prefer one of these mental images to another, the judgment of truth remains powerful and clear above them, firmly established in its own utterly incorruptible rules. Even if bodily images lie beneath it like a cloud, it is not enveloped or confused in them. But it matters whether I am shut off from the clear sky, as it were, beneath or within that darkness, or whether, as often happens on high mountains, I enjoy the open air between them, looking up at the clearest light and down at the densest clouds. What kindles the warmth of brotherly love in me when I hear that someone has endured severe torture for the beauty and steadfastness of faith? If someone points him out to me, I am eager to approach him, get to know him, and bind him to myself in friendship. If I have the opportunity, I approach, greet him, and talk with him. I express my affection in whatever words I can and want him to feel and express the same affection for me; I seek a spiritual embrace through belief, since I cannot so quickly search out and fully discern his innermost heart. Thus I love the faithful, courageous man with a pure and genuine love. But suppose he confesses during our conversation, or carelessly reveals, that he holds unworthy beliefs about God and desires something bodily in Him, and that he endured those tortures for this error, or for hoped-for money, or from an empty craving for human praise. Immediately my love is offended and, as though repelled, withdrawn from this unworthy man. It remains attached to the form according to which I loved him, believing him to be that kind of person. Or perhaps, having discovered that he is not, I now love him so that he may become such a person. Nothing has changed in the man himself, although he can change and become what I had already believed him to be. Something has certainly changed in my mind: my assessment of him is now different. At the command of unchangeable righteousness above me, the same love has turned from enjoying him to caring for his good. But the form of unshaken, stable truth remains. By it I would have enjoyed the man, believing him good; by it I now care for him so that he may become good. In undisturbed eternity it pours the same light of incorruptible, utterly sound reason on my mind’s vision and on the cloud of images I view from above when I think of the man I have seen. Again, suppose I recall a beautifully curved and symmetrical arch I saw at Carthage. A reality reported to my mind through my eyes and transferred to memory produces this mental picture. But in my mind I see something else by which that work of art pleases me, and by which I would correct it if it displeased me. We judge particular things by that [form of eternal truth], which we discern through the rational mind’s vision. As for the things themselves, when present we perceive them through bodily senses; when absent we recall their images fixed in memory. Or, in their likeness, we imagine things we could ourselves construct if we wanted and were able: forming bodily images in the mind or seeing bodies through the body is one activity; grasping by simple understanding what lies above the mind’s eye is another: the principles and inexpressibly beautiful art of such forms.

In the eternal truth from which all temporal things are made, the mind’s vision sees the form according to which we exist and act with true and right reason, within ourselves or in bodily things. From this we conceive true knowledge of things as a word within us. Inwardly speaking, we give birth to it, and its birth does not take it away from us. When we speak to others, our voice or another bodily sign serves the word that remains within us. Through a reminder perceived by the senses, something similar may be produced in the listener’s mind: similar, I mean, to what remains in the speaker’s mind. Every word or deed performed through the body for which human conduct is praised or blamed is preceded by a word spoken within us. No one willingly does anything without first saying it in his heart. This word is conceived through love, whether of the creature or the Creator: of changeable nature or unchangeable truth.

It is [conceived], then, either through desire or through love. This does not mean that creatures should not be loved. If that love [of the creature] is directed toward the Creator, it will be love (charitas), rather than desire (cupiditas). Desire loves the creature for its own sake. Then the creature corrupts a person through enjoyment instead of helping him through its use. Since a creature is either equal or inferior to us, we must use what is inferior with reference to God and rightly enjoy what is equal in God. As you ought to enjoy yourself in Him who made you, rather than in yourself, so you should also enjoy the person you love as yourself. Let us therefore enjoy ourselves and our brothers in the Lord. Let us not dare to give ourselves over to ourselves, slackening, as it were, and falling downward. A word is born when, after being thought out, it pleases us as a means either of sinning or of acting rightly. Love acts as a bond between our word and the mind from which it is conceived. Without confusing them, it joins itself to them as a third in an incorporeal embrace.

The word conceived and the word born are one and the same when the will rests in knowledge itself, as happens in the love of spiritual things. Someone who perfectly knows and loves righteousness, for example, is already righteous, even if there is no need to act on it outwardly through the body. But in the love of bodily and temporal things, as with animal offspring, the word’s conception and its birth are different. Here, what is conceived through desire is born through attainment. Greed is not satisfied by knowing and loving gold without possessing it; nor is knowing and loving eating or sexual intercourse enough without doing them; nor is knowing and loving honors and power enough without obtaining them. Even obtaining all these things does not satisfy. “Whoever drinks this water,” He says, “will thirst again.” And so also the Psalmist, “He has conceived pain and given birth to wickedness.” He speaks of conceiving pain or labor when we conceive things that we are not satisfied simply to know and want. The mind burns and sickens with need until it attains them and, as it were, gives birth to them. Thus Latin elegantly uses “parta” [things brought forth] as well as “reperta” [things found] and “comperta” [things ascertained]; these words sound as though derived from giving birth. For “desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin.” Therefore the Lord proclaims, “Come to Me, all of you who labor and are heavily burdened;” and in another place “Woe to pregnant women and nursing mothers in those days!” When He therefore connected all right actions and sins with the birth of the word, “By your mouth,” He says, “you will be justified, and by your mouth you will be condemned,” He meant the invisible, inward mouth of thought and heart, rather than the visible mouth.

We may rightly ask whether all knowledge is a word, or only knowledge that is loved. We also know things we hate, but we cannot say that the mind conceives or gives birth to what displeases it. The mind does not conceive everything that touches it in any way. Some things merely become known without being spoken as words, such as the things we are now discussing. In one sense, words are syllables that occupy intervals of time, whether spoken aloud or only thought; in another, everything known is called a word imprinted on the mind, provided it can be recalled from memory and defined, even if the thing itself displeases us; in still another, it is a word when what the mind conceives pleases us. The apostle’s statement must be understood in this last sense: “No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit;” for others also say this, in another sense of “word,” about whom the Lord Himself says, “Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven.” Even when we rightly dislike and condemn things we hate, we approve and take pleasure in their condemnation, and it becomes a word. It is the vices themselves that displease us, rather than knowledge of them. I am pleased to know and define intemperance; this is its word. Likewise, faults in an art can be known. Knowledge of them is rightly approved when an expert discerns excellence or its absence, affirming its presence or denying it. Yet lacking excellence and falling into error deserve condemnation. Defining intemperance and speaking its word belong to the art of morals; being intemperate belongs to what that art condemns. Similarly, knowing and defining a solecism belongs to the art of speaking; committing one is a fault that this same art condemns. The word we are now trying to discern and explain is knowledge joined with love. Whenever the mind knows and loves itself, love joins its word to it. Since it loves knowledge and knows love, the word is in love and love is in the word, and both are in the one who loves and speaks.

All knowledge of a thing’s form resembles what it knows. There is another kind of knowledge, concerning privation, by which we speak a word only in condemnation. Condemning a privation amounts to praising the form, and is therefore approved. The mind therefore contains a likeness of the form it knows, whether it approves that form or disapproves its absence. Thus, insofar as we know God, we resemble Him, though not as equals, since we do not know Him as fully as He knows Himself. When we come to know bodies through bodily sense, a likeness of them arises in our mind as an image in memory; when we think of them, only their likenesses are in the mind, never the bodies themselves. If we mistake the likenesses for the bodies, we err, since taking one thing for another is an error. Yet the body’s image in the mind is better than the body’s own form, because it exists in a better nature: a living substance, as the mind is. Likewise, when we know God, we become better than before we knew Him, especially when that knowledge pleases us and is worthily loved, becoming a word and thus a likeness of God. Yet this knowledge is inferior to God because it exists in an inferior nature: the mind is a creature, but God is the Creator. It follows that when the mind knows and approves itself, this knowledge is its word in such a way that it entirely matches and equals the mind and is the same in essence. It is knowledge neither of a lower essence, like a body, nor of a higher one, like God. Since knowledge resembles what it knows, that is, its object, the likeness here is perfect and equal: the mind that knows is itself known. It is therefore both image and word, spoken about the mind that it equals in knowing. What is begotten equals its begetter.

What, then, is love? Is it not an image, a word, something begotten? Why does the mind beget knowledge when it knows itself, but not love when it loves itself? If, by being knowable, it causes its own knowledge, then by being lovable it also causes its own love. It is therefore difficult to explain why it does not beget both. A further question about the supreme Trinity itself, the almighty God and Creator in whose image humanity is made, troubles those whom God’s truth invites to faith through human speech: why should the Holy Spirit not also be believed or understood to be begotten by God the Father, and thus also be called a Son? We are trying to investigate this question in the human mind. In this inferior image, our own nature answers our questions, as it were, in a more familiar way. From this illuminated creature, our mind’s vision may gain the practice needed to turn toward the unchangeable light; provided, however, that truth itself has persuaded us that the Holy Spirit is love, just as no Christian doubts that God’s Word is the Son. Let us return, then, to a more careful examination of this created image, the rational mind. Within it, knowledge arises in time that did not exist before, and love arises for things not previously loved. This makes our explanation clearer: since speech itself must unfold in time, it more easily explains what can be understood in a temporal sequence. First, something may clearly be knowable, that is, capable of being known, yet remain unknown. But nothing unknowable can be known. We must therefore hold firmly that everything we know simultaneously begets knowledge of itself in us. Knowledge is born from both the knower and the thing known. When the mind knows itself, it alone is the parent of its knowledge, since it is both the thing known and its knower. It was knowable to itself even before it knew itself, but its self-knowledge did not exist within it while it remained unknown to itself. In knowing itself, the mind begets self-knowledge equal to itself. It neither knows itself as less than it is nor knows another’s essence: not only does it know, but it knows itself, as we said above. What should we say about love? Why should the mind not also seem to have begotten self-love when it loves itself? It was lovable to itself even before it loved itself, because it could love itself, just as it was knowable to itself before it knew itself, because it could know itself. Had it not been knowable to itself, it could never have known itself; had it not been lovable to itself, it could never have loved itself. Why, then, can we not say that in loving itself it begets its love, just as in knowing itself it begets its knowledge? Does this clearly show that the mind is the source from which love proceeds? Love proceeds from the mind, which is lovable to itself before it loves itself and is therefore the source of its self-love. But perhaps this love is not rightly called begotten by the mind, as its self-knowledge is, because knowledge involves something already found, which we call brought forth or discovered. This is usually preceded by a search that rests when its goal is attained. Inquiry is the desire to find, or, equivalently, to discover. Things discovered are, as it were, brought forth and thus resemble offspring. But where, except in knowledge itself? There they are, as it were, expressed and formed. Although the things we find through searching already existed, our knowledge of them did not. We regard this knowledge as offspring being born. The desire (appetitus) involved in searching proceeds from the seeker and remains, in a sense, suspended. It rests in its goal only when what is sought is found and joined to the seeker. This desire, or inquiry, does not seem to be the love by which something known is loved, since we are still striving to know. Yet it is something of the same kind. It can be called will (voluntas), since every seeker wills (vult) to find; if the search concerns knowledge, every seeker wills to know. When someone wills ardently and earnestly, he is said to study (studere), a word most often used for pursuing and acquiring branches of learning. Thus the mind’s act of giving birth is preceded by a desire through which, by seeking and finding what we wish to know, its offspring, knowledge itself, is born. For this reason, the desire through which knowledge is conceived and born cannot rightly be called the birth or the offspring. The same desire that made us long to know something becomes love for it once known. It holds and embraces the offspring it has received, knowledge, and joins it to its begetter. Thus a kind of image of the Trinity exists in the mind itself, its self-knowledge, which is its offspring and its word about itself, and love as a third. These three are one and are one substance. The offspring is no less than the mind, since the mind knows itself to the full measure of its being. Nor is love less, since the mind loves itself to the full measure of its knowledge and its being.