Soliloquies

⁸ R. I allow so much: but yet if any one should say to you, I will give you to know God as well as you know Alypius, would you not give thanks, and say, It is enough? A. I should give thanks indeed: but I should not say, It is enough. R. Why, I pray? A. Because I do not even know God so well as I know Alypius, and yet I do not know Alypius well enough. R. Beware then lest shamelessly you would fain be satisfied in the knowledge of God, who hast not even such a knowledge of Alypius as satisfies. A. Non sequitur.

For, comparing it with the stars, what is of lower account than my supper? And yet what I shall sup on tomorrow I know not: but in what sign the moon will be, I need take no shame to profess that I know. R. Is it then enough for you to know God as well as you do know in what sign the moon will hold her course tomorrow? A. It is not enough, for this I test by the senses. But I do not know whether or not either God, or some hidden cause of nature may suddenly change the moon's ordinary course, which if it came to pass, would render false all that I had presumed. R.

And do you believe that this may happen? A. I do not believe. But I at least am seeking what I may know, not what I may believe. Now everything that we know, we may with reason perhaps be said to believe, but not to know everything which we believe. R. In this matter therefore you reject all testimony of the senses? A. I utterly reject it. R. That friend of yours then, whom you say you do not yet know, is it by sense that you wish to know him or by intellectual perception? A. Whatever in him I know by sense, if indeed anything is known by sense, is both mean and sufficiently known.

But that part which bears affection to me, that is, the mind itself, I desire to know intellectually. R. Can it, indeed, be known otherwise? A. By no means. R. Do you venture then to call your friend, your inmost friend, unknown to you? A. Why not venture? For I account most equitable that law of friendship, by which it is prescribed, that as one is to bear no less, so he is to bear no more affection to his friend than to himself. Since then I know not myself, what injury does he suffer, whom I declare to be unknown to me, above all since (as I believe) he does not even know himself? R. If then these things which you would fain know, are of such a sort as are to be intellectually attained, when I said it was shameless in you to crave to know God, when you know not even Alypius, you ought not to have urged to me the similitude of your supper and the moon, if these things, as you have said, appertain to sense.