Confessions

by Augustine of Hippo

25.36 But where do you abide in my memory, Lord? Where do you abide there? What sort of dwelling place have you fashioned for yourself? What kind of sanctuary have you built for yourself? You have conferred upon my memory the dignity of abiding in it, but in what part of it do you abide? That is what I am seeking to understand. For in remembering you I have passed beyond the parts of memory that even the beasts have, because I did not find you there, among images of bodily things. Then I went to the parts of memory to which I have entrusted the affections of my mind, and neither did I find you there. Then I entered the residence of the mind itself, where the mind dwells in my memory—for the mind also remembers itself—and you were not there, because just as you are not an image of something bodily or an affection of something living, as when we rejoice, grieve, desire, fear, remember, forget, and so on, so also you are not the mind itself, because you are the Lord and God of the mind. And all these things undergo change, but you abide unchangeably above them; and from {183} the time that I first learned about you, you have seen fit to dwell in my memory. And what do I mean by asking in what place you dwell, as though there were really places in memory? Certainly you dwell in my memory, because from the time I first learned about you I have remembered you; and when I recall you, I find you in my memory.