Confessions

⁶⁵ Where have You not accompanied me, O Truth, teaching me both what to avoid and what to desire, when I submitted to You what I could perceive of sublunary things, and asked Your counsel? With my external senses, as I could, I viewed the world, and noted the life which my body derives from me, and these my senses. Thence I advanced inwardly into the recesses of my memory,— the manifold rooms, wondrously full of multitudinous wealth; and I considered and was afraid, and could discern none of these things without You, and found none of them to be You.

Nor was I myself the discoverer of these things—I, who went over them all, and laboured to distinguish and to value everything according to its dignity, accepting some things upon the report of my senses, and questioning about others which I felt to be mixed up with myself, distinguishing and numbering the reporters themselves, and in the vast storehouse of my memory investigating some things, laying up others, taking out others. Neither was I myself when I did this (that is, that ability of mine whereby I did it), nor was it Thou, for You are that never-failing light which I took counsel of as to them all, whether they were what they were, and what was their worth; and I heard You teaching and commanding me.

And this I do often; this is a delight to me, and, as far as I can get relief from necessary duties, to this gratification do I resort. Nor in all these which I review when consulting You, find I a secure place for my soul, save in You, into whom my scattered members may be gathered together, and nothing of me depart from You. And sometimes Thou dost introduce me to a most rare affection, inwardly, to an inexplicable sweetness, which, if it should be perfected in me, I know not to what point that life might not arrive.

But by these wretched weights of mine do I relapse into these things, and am sucked in by my old customs, and am held, and sorrow much, yet am much held. To such an extent does the burden of habit press us down. In this way I can be, but will not; in that I will, but cannot—on both ways miserable.