I presented the first version of this paper at the annual Cambridge-Lille ancient philosophy seminar convened in Lille in May 2002. I owe thanks to the participants for helpful discussion, and to Nick Denyer and an anonymous referee for Philosophie antique for comments and criticisms on earlier drafts of this article, and to Kelli Rudolph for help with the English. Many thanks also to St. John’s College and Magdalene College, Cambridge, for generously supporting my doctoral and post-doctoral research, including the present article, over the last five years.
1Of the various kinds of ‘treasures’ (thesauri) stored in human memory which Augustine identifies and catalogues in Confessions X, it is our memories of the liberal arts (liberales disciplinae, artes or doctrinae) that pose the most challenging questions. These questions are tightly intertwined with some renowned Augustinian insights on teaching, learning and the acquisition of knowledge, and can be understood and addressed properly only in this broader context. This is not to claim that in book X of his Confessions Augustine is merely ‘recycling’ some central piece of ‘hard-core Augustinism’ when reflecting on the nature of our memoria of the liberal arts: some distinctive features of this treatment of the topic are not to be found elsewhere in the corpus, and the most reasonable explanation for this is – I shall submit – that no full-blown and well-established Augustinian theory ever existed on this issue.
- 1 Cf. e.g. X, vi, 9: ego interior… ego, ego animus.
- 2 For discussion of the mechanism of sensation and of the role which memory itself plays in it, cf. (...)
- 3 On this problem cf., however, De Trinitate, X, v, 7, which suggests that the imagines of corporeal (...)
- 4 Cf. X, viii, 12 : imaginum… invectarum ; xiv, 22 : imagines impressas ; xvi, 25 : imprimitur… ima (...)
- 5 Cf. X, viii, 13: ‘who could be able to say how they have been formed (fabricatae)?’
2But let us proceed orderly. Augustine has just described the first fundamental class of memory contents, the images of what we (i.e. our souls)1 perceive or experience through our senses (X, viii, 12-14).2 He has been extremely careful in stressing the point that it is not the perceived things (properties, objects and events) themselves that are preserved in our memory, but imagines of them. What exactly these rerum sensarum imagines are is a problem Augustine has left, and will leave, completely unexplored in the Confessions:3 how they come to be formed (or impressed)4 in our memory is a thorny question he has discarded as beyond the limits of our cognitive capabilities.5 The ‘great power’ (magna vis) displayed by memory, a ‘large and boundless sanctuary’ (penetrale amplum et infinitum), in retaining a huge number of these images is already sufficient to inspire admiratio and stupor well beyond anything in the natural world (X, viii, 15). But, Augustine goes on,
- 6 For the comparative sense of interior cf. Madec 1994, p. 154-156.
- 7 I adopted the Latin edition of Confessions X printed in Chiarini 1996. The other Augustinian texts (...)
T1 it is not only these things that this immense capacity of my memory retains. Here are also all those things which have been learnt (percepta) about the liberal arts and have not been forgotten yet, put away, as it were, in some more inner6 place, which is actually no place (quasi remota interiore loco, non loco) ; and it is not the images of them that I bear, but those things themselves (res ipsas). (X, ix, 16.)7
3At least three points worth examining emerge from this passage which introduces Augustine’s discussion of our memory of the contents of the liberal arts:
- the way in which those contents are first acquired;
- the place in which they are preserved in our memory;
- the form in which they are stored.
4As for the first point, to express the idea that we learnt those truths which now lie in our memory Augustine recurs to the verb percipio: literally, one’s memory retains all those contents of the liberales disciplinae which one perceived (and, of course, has not completely forgotten later). The use of percipere, both in classical and later Latin, is by no means confined to sense perception: nevertheless, I shall suggest later that it is not mere chance that Augustine chooses this verb here, rather than, for example, disco. Consider also the following related passage:
T2 here [scil. in the huge hall of my memory] there are all the things which I remember, either having experienced (experta) them myself or having taken them on trust (credita). (X, viii, 14.)
5Doubtless, percipere is a kind of experire: within the broad framework provided by Augustine’s dichotomy of our memory contents according to their origin (first-hand acquisition [experta], on the one hand, second-hand belief grounded on sheer authority and trust [credita], on the other), the doctrines of the liberal arts should definitely feature among the experta. The full import of this crucial dichotomy will also become apparent soon.
- 8 Cf. e.g. De quantitate animae, v, 8-9.
- 9 Cf. supra n. .
6The second remarkable point in T1’s analysis of our memories of the liberal arts is that they are said to be quasi remota interiore loco. Augustine does not give us any explanation for assigning them this particular position: a reasonable, albeit provisional, guess is that the liberal doctrines are thus located because they are, generally speaking, more difficult to recall than, let us say, our memories of everyday perceptual qualities, objects or events (cf. X, viii, 12 for an explicit connection between spatial remoteness and difficulty in recollecting). More arduous to evaluate is the significance of Augustine’s immediate self-correction: the innermost place in which our memories of the liberal arts are stored is not, actually, a real place, but a mysterious locus non locus. For Augustine the human animus is an incorporeal and non-spatial substance, and memory, a vis of the human animus, cannot but be itself incorporeal and non-spatial.8 We know from some remarks scattered throughout Augustine’s corpus that not even the imagines of perceptibles, either presently perceived or subsequently remembered, are to be interpreted as physical imprints on a physical receptacle.9 Nevertheless, in Confessions X Augustine shows no qualms about employing a striking variety of spatial metaphors to depict memory and its amazing capacity: e.g. ‘fields’ (campi) (viii, 12), ‘vast palaces’ (lata praetoria) (viii, 12), ‘better concealed shelters’ (abstrusiora receptacula) (viii, 12), ‘big recess’ (grandis recessus) (viii, 13), ‘secret and ineffable bosoms’ (secreti atque ineffabiles sinus) (viii, 13), ‘huge hall’ (aula ingens) (viii, 14), ‘huge bosom of the soul’ (ingens sinus animi) (viii, 14), ‘large and boundless sanctuary’ (penetrale amplum et infinitum) (viii, 15), ‘wonderful cells’ (mirae cellae) (ix, 16), ‘more secret caves’ (cavae abditiores) (x, 17), ‘more remote sanctuaries’ (remotiora penetralia) (xi, 18), ‘stomach, so to speak, of the soul’ (quasi venter animi) (xiv, 21), ‘countless fields, dens and caves’ (campi et antri et cavernae innumerabiles) (xvii, 26), ‘deep and boundless multiplicity’ (profunda et infinita multiplicitas) (xvii, 26), ‘manifold vastnesses’ (multiplices amplitudines) (xl, 65).
- 10 For the same tension between the non-spatial nature of memory and the spatial metaphors used to de (...)
- 11 Cf. infra p. 18.
7Is the amendment (non loco) in T1 to be understood as a general reminder of the forgivable sloppiness of having used, and being about to use time and again, spatial jargon to describe the phenomenon of memory?10 Or does it concern specifically our memories of the objects of the liberal arts? Granted that in the present context any spatial metaphor for memory should be taken cum grano salis, however difficult this might be, is there anything peculiar about this class of memory contents that makes the use of such metaphors particularly improper or dangerous, pressing for self-correction? The answer will have to be postponed, once again, to a more advanced stage of our reading.11
8The third crucial idea conveyed by T1 is condensed in the final sentence nec eorum imagines, sed res ipsas gero. Unlike what we perceive through the senses, memory does not retain images of what we learn de doctrinis liberalibus, but the things learnt themselves. This difference is stressed further in the second part of chapter ix:
T3 For what literature is, what the art of discussing, how many kinds of questions exist, whatever of these things I know is in my memory in such a way that I have not left outside the thing and retained the image… (X, ix, 16.)
- 12 Cf., however, Chiarini 1996, p. 194-195. On the basis of Retractationes, I, 6 we can conjecture th (...)
9The three examples above are probably to be taken as pertaining to the three disciplinae of the trivium (respectively, to grammar, dialectic and rhetoric).12 But they are not prima facie particularly helpful in elucidating what retaining res ipsae in one’s memory, as opposed to retaining mere images, should amount to; actually, it is not even clear what the ‘things themselves’ are supposed to be here (abstract objects? concepts? definitions?).
10The beginning of x, 17 develops the third example, giving us some additional clues as to what kind of distinction Augustine could have had in mind here:
T4 But now, when I hear that there are three kinds of questions, whether a thing is (an sit), what it is (quid sit), of what kind it is (quale sit), certainly I retain the images of the sounds of which these words are composed, and I know that they passed through the air with a noise and no longer exist. But the things themselves (res ipsas) which are signified by those sounds I have not reached with any sense of my body, nor ever seen (vidi) anywhere else than in my soul (animum), and in my memory I have stored away not their images, but those things themselves.
11The three questions mentioned here are exactly the first three quaestiones rationales (or logicae) listed in chapters ix-x of the (possibly spurious) De rhetorica, and rhetoric did feature among the liberales disciplinae. When you hear your rhetoric teacher introduce his lecture by announcing that
tria sunt genera quaestionum, an sit, quid sit, quale sit
- 13 In the light of what I have explained about their incorporeal nature, imagines should not be inter (...)
- 14 For some refinement on this answer cf. infra p. 7-117.
12you can memorise the sounds which constitute the Latin words tria, sunt, genera, etc. by retaining their imagines in your memoria (I leave aside the thorny question of what the image of a sound could look like).13 But the things themselves signified by those Latin words (and by the English ‘three’, ‘are’, ‘genuses’) cannot be heard, or otherwise grasped by means of any bodily sense; unlike external physical objects, they cannot be seen through the eyes, but Augustine suggests that somehow he did see (vidi) them, in his animus, and claims that he was then able to store away them in his memoria. We are now in a better position to try to identify the objects of the liberal arts contained in our memory: they appear to be those intelligible entities signified by words such as tria (the number three) and genera (kinds), or by phrases like an sit (existence), quid sit (essence), quale sit (quality).14 Some clarification will not be superfluous here. I am not ascribing to Augustine the rather peculiar idea that to understand (in an ordinary, mundane sense of ‘understanding’) the meaning of the Latin words tria and genera, or of the Latin phrases an sit, quid sit, quale sit, one needs specialistic instruction in the liberal arts (let us say, in mathematics to understand tria and in dialectic to understand genera): anyone who has taken introductory Latin can do that. Augustine’s point must be different: I acquire full-blown understanding of what the number three or a genus are (and thus, in some sense, I fully understand the meaning of the Latin tria and genera) only by studying mathematics and dialectic.
- 15 Cf. e.g. De libero arbitrio, II, viii, 20-24.
13It is easy to see why such res ipsae could not have crossed the threshold of our souls through sensory channels: as Augustine points out, we do not see, hear, smell, taste or touch numbers, kinds, or essences, simply because numbers, kinds and essences have no colour, sound, odour, flavour or body. I can see and smell (three) flowers (precisely, their shapes, colours and odours), but I cannot see or smell the number three.15
14Once established that the objects of study in the liberal arts cannot enter our minds (and memories) through bodily gates (not directly, at least), Augustine cannot help asking himself an embarrassing question:
T5 From where (unde) and which way (qua) did these things enter (intraverunt) my memory ? (X, x, 17.)
15Augustine’s immediate reaction is a frank disavowal of knowledge: ‘I do not know how’ (nescio quomodo). It is worth noticing that the way in which the question itself is cast seems to presuppose acceptance of the spatial model for memory: things have entered memory, as if it were some kind of container, edifice or place, they must have passed through some medium or gate, and before entering they must have been somewhere else outside. We have seen above that for Augustine memory is not, properly speaking, a locus, but the force of metaphor seems in this case too strong to be resisted. Also Augustine’s tentative solution remains completely within the boundaries of the spatial model presupposed by his question:
T6 For when I learnt them I did not take someone else’s mind on trust (non credidi alieno cordi), but in my own I recognised (recognovi) them and I approved (approbavi) them as true, and I commended them to it, as if laying them up whence I might bring them forth whenever I wished. They were there, then (ergo), also before I learnt them, but they were not in memory. Where, then, and why, when they were said, did I acknowledge (agnovi) them and said ‘It is so, it is true’, if not because they were already in memory, but so remote and buried, as it were, in more secret caves (cavis abditioribus) that, if they had not been unearthed (eruerentur) thanks to the suggestion of someone (admonente aliquo), perhaps I would have been unable to think (cogitare) of them ? (X, x, 17.)
16We encounter here the kernel of a renowned Augustinian paradox: in spite of what we tend to believe, we never learn what we learn from our teachers; we always discover the truth in ourselves. The authoritative teachings and instructions of our everyday magistri are nothing more than helpful reminders or ‘admonitions’, perhaps even indispensable in certain cases, for us to seek the truth which already lies, somehow, within us. Here is how this idea had been presented in the De Magistro:
T7 But regarding everything we understand, we do not consult the speaker who talks aloud outside (foris), but the truth which commands the mind itself within (intus), although perhaps we get the suggestion (admoniti) to consult in this way through words. (Mag. xi, 38.)
- 16 On partial forgetfulness and retrieval of memory contents triggered by external admonitio cf. X, x (...)
17The problem of how the contents of the liberal arts have first entered our minds is dissolved in the Confessions by explaining that, in fact, they never entered, but were already there even before what we would ordinarily describe as ‘learning’ them. The words of our teachers serve to suggest us to direct our search to those ‘more secret caves’ in which the things themselves signified by those words hide buried.16 We already know that these cavae abditiores must not be interpreted literally as physical places within memory (or as areas of its physical seat), and our initial conjecture about the significance of this piece of spatial imagery can be confirmed here: the particularly remote location of the contents of the liberal arts is the metaphorical explanans of the undeniable datum that it can be very difficult to get access to those contents, and often even impossible in the absence of appropriate external reminders in the form of what we ordinarily call ‘teaching’.
- 17 For the meaning of approbare, cf. Solignac 1962, ad loc. : ‘Approbare a un sens très précis dans l (...)
- 18 The use of recognovi and agnovi in T6 might also suggest that intelligible objects or concepts are (...)
18This sketchy description of Augustine’s account of the origin of our memories of the disciplinae liberales shelters a number of problems which begin emerging as soon as one attempts to extract a more fine-grained picture of its philosophical thrust. I had suggested above that the contents of the liberal arts might be best interpreted as intelligible items, like those signified by the words ‘three’ and ‘kinds’. Now we find Augustine calling these contents ‘true’ (vera esse approbavi),17 which seems to require that the things learnt (i.e., ultimately, found within) are more complex and structured items, like the proposition that there are three kinds of questions. Since true propositions, like simpler abstract entities (e.g. numbers), cannot be perceived through the senses, Augustine’s question remains relevant: I cannot taste that there are three kinds of questions just as I cannot taste the number three. One could protest that T4 did suggest something quite different (for example, by the use of the plural res ipsas, which cannot refer to the single propositional content of the sentence tria sunt genera quaestionum, an sit, quid sit, quale sit), but Augustine would be guilty, at worst, of infelicitous wording.18 Things, however, are not so simple. At the beginning of xii, 19, where Augustine is still dealing with our memories of doctrinae liberales, we read:
T8 In the same way memory contains innumerable reasons (rationes) and laws (leges) of numbers and dimensions, none of which were impressed by any bodily sense, because they are not coloured, they do not sound, they do not smell, and they have not been tasted or touched.
- 19 Augustine did not even think that such objects are the result of a process of abstraction upon im (...)
19The reference here is to the laws and theorems of arithmetic and geometry, and thus, again, to propositional items in the camp of the liberal arts. But in the second part of the same chapter, which I do not quote here, Augustine immediately slides back to the geometrical and arithmetical objects par excellence, lines and numbers, saying of them too that they are never perceived through the senses, and are not images of perceptibles.19 In the light of this whole passage, one might be tempted to suppose that some of the contents of the disciplinae liberales retained in our memories are propositional, others non-propositional: but, again, while it is sensible to say that we recognise and approve the truth of the theorem of Pythagoras in ourselves, without the aid of our senses (whatever exactly these ‘recognising’ and ‘approving’ may amount to), the idea that we can approbare lines or numbers as true when learning them sounds problematic. Augustine would seem liable to the charge of blurring together two distinct kinds of items and, consequently, two quite different questions about them: (1) how is it possible that we conceive objects like numbers, lines, or kinds, which we have never experienced through our senses? (2) How is it possible that we come to know that Pythagoras’ theorem is true, or that it is true that there are three fundamental kinds of questions, when we have never accessed these truths through bodily channels?
- 20 For an analogous analysis in the related context of the ‘theory of divine illumination’ (cf. infra (...)
20I believe such a charge does not survive careful scrutiny: it does not require a lethal overdose of charity to accept that knowing lines, or – as Augustine puts it – having lines in one’s memory, cannot but mean knowing, or remembering, certain essential truths about lines, e.g., at least, the definition of line and its corollaries.20 Since definitions are themselves propositional, the real distinction to be made here is not, after all, between non-propositional items and propositional ones, but between simpler, fundamental propositions (those defining the essential characters and properties of the basic objects of the liberal arts) and more complex, derivative propositions, or systems of propositions, like Pythagoras’ theorem (perhaps one could try to project this distinction into Augustine’s own between, respectively, rationes and leges in T8).
- 21 Augustine has indeed been charged by some commentators (e.g. Matthews 1965) with being committed t (...)
21There was another perplexing question the discussion of which I have postponed until now: what is the rationale of emphasising that our memory holds the contents of the liberal arts themselves, and not by proxy, through their images? Could the whole point of underscoring, for example, that numbers and lines themselves are in our memory be, trivially, that we remember what numbers and lines are? This is unlikely; since we do not have colours and mountains in our memoria, but only images of them, we could be forced into admitting, implausibly, that we do not remember colours and mountains, but only the images we have preserved of them.21 And it is not only perceptual objects that, according to Augustine, cannot be retained in our memory by themselves; the following passage offers a clear résumé of the different modes in which the three main classes of memory contents are stored:
T9 Behold, in the countless fields, and dens, and caves of my memory, immeasurably full of kinds of countless things, either by images (per imagines), as all bodies, or by presence (per praesentiam), as the arts, or by I cannot say what notions or impressions (per nescio quas notiones vel notationes), as the affections of the soul… (X, xvii, 26.)
22Not even the affections of the soul (e.g. joy, sadness, desire, fear) are in our memory per praesentiam; as Augustine explains at xiv, 21-xv, 23, they lie there in the form of not better specified notiones or notationes. What is it then that differentiates our memories of the liberal arts from all the rest, justifying the idea that these alone can be stored away without any need for representatives? As far as the memory of perceptual qualities, objects and events is concerned, one main factor leading Augustine to this differentiation is the lingering influence of spatial metaphors in his account of memoria. If remembering something is described as having something in one’s memory, and memory is constantly depicted as a kind of inner storehouse, or system of dens and caves, then of course we cannot remember what we have perceived by itself, otherwise this would no longer be available publicly, ‘out there’, to be experienced.22 As Augustine himself remarks with some wonder, when I see something I can commit it to my memory without literally ‘absorbing’ or ‘swallowing’ it through my eyes:
T10 However, when I saw them [scil. mountains, rivers, stars, the ocean] through my eyes, by seeing them I did not swallow (absorbui) them, and it is not them, by themselves, that are inside me, but their images. (X, viii, 15.)
- 23 Furthermore, perceptibles can be remembered even when they no longer exist: if remembering somethi (...)
23Moreover, how on earth could something physical and spatial be contained in a non-physical and non-spatial receptacle (our soul)?23
- 24 cum animus sit etiam ipsa memoria. Cf. X, xvi, 25 (ego sum qui memini, ego animus) and xvii, 26. O (...)
- 25 Cf. X, xiv, 21: ‘memory is, so to speak, the stomach of the soul (venter animi), whereas joy and s (...)
24As for our memory of the perturbationes animi, I suggest that it is again the expression ‘having something in memory’, interchangeably used with ‘remembering something’, that plays the crucial role. If I could remember joy, by itself, I would have joy in my memory; but since memoria and animus are almost identified at xiv, 21 (at least the former seems to be treated as a part or aspect of the latter),24 I would thereby have joy in my animus, and having joy in one’s animus is, on the most straightforward and natural reading, being joyful. But, as a matter of fact, I can remember a past joy (or what joy is, and the meaning of the word ‘joy’: Augustine does conflate here two distinct items, personal episodic memory of past mental states and semantic memory) without feeling any joy, and at times even with sadness, and thus it cannot be joy itself that is retained in my memory, but only a notio or notatio of it, deprived of its original emotional flavour.25 Just as in the case of perceptual imagines, Augustine remains cautiously silent on the nature of these notiones or notationes. This time, however, it is clear that there is nothing which he could have said but which he decided to hide from his reader: the phrase per nescio quas notiones vel notationes is eloquent enough on the level of Augustine’s confidence and clarity on this issue (notio does not seem to have exactly the same import here as the English ‘notion’, which I adopted non-committally in my translation of T9).
- 26 Someone more refined might suggest that what is in my mind is only a token of the definition of sq (...)
25Now equipped with some slightly less opaque idea of why both external perceptibles and inner affections cannot be memorised by themselves, it becomes possible to conjecture why the contents of the liberal arts, by contrast, do not need representatives and can dwell in our memories per praesentiam. First, nothing speaks loudly against this presence: the definition of square and Pythagoras’ theorem, for example, are not physical individuals for which a problem like bi-location could be posed. Second, whereas my notitia of joy cannot be joy itself, but only a copy somehow partial and pale of it, the definition of square in my memory can be complete, and indeed must be complete, if correct, and perfectly match the definition of square tout court: it would be misleading also to say that the former is an extremely accurate copy of the latter.26
- 27 Augustine had defended the same idea in Epistula VII (ad Nebridium), i, 1-2.
- 28 Notice, however, that this does not mean that for Aristotle our memory contains images of the inte (...)
- 29 Cf. supra T4.
- 30 Nonetheless, Plotinus (especially Enn. IV, 3, 25-32 and 4, 1-17) was certainly a major source of i (...)
26With the idea that the intelligible objects of the disciplinae liberales lie in our memory per praesentiam27 Augustine is departing from the position of two eminent forerunners in the philosophical exploration of memory. In his De memoria, Aristotle had written that ‘memory, even the memory of objects of thought, is not without an image’ (οὐκ ἄνευ φαντάσματος, 450a 12-13), a corollary of his broader thesis that all human thinking requires images (449b30-450a12),28 while Plotinus had maintained that we can only remember the verbal expressions which accompany our acts of intelligence (νοήματα),29 but not those acts or the intelligibles themselves (Enneads, IV, 3, 30).30
27What is more striking, however, is that elsewhere Augustine himself seems to endorse the thesis that the intelligibles cannot be retained in our memories by themselves:
- 31 For this use of ratio, cf. supra T8.
T11 However, if thought (cogitatio) should not return to memory and find there what had been committed to it, then it would have to be brought to this thing [scil. the intelligible] just as if it were ignorant, as it had already once been brought, and would find it where it had found it the first time, i.e. in that incorporeal truth from which a sort of representation (descriptum) would again be fixed in memory. For a man’s thought does not abide in the incorporeal and unchangeable reason (ratio)31 of a square body, for example, in the same way as this incorporeal and unchangeable reason itself abides ; if, in fact, it could in the first place reach it without the impression of local space. (Trin. XII, xiv, 23.)
- 32 The whole Trin. XII, xiv, 23, which I could not quote in full, is relevant to our present discussi (...)
28Whatever exactly it may be (once again, Augustine proves himself stingy with fine details), a sort of descriptum of a non-temporal and non-spatial intelligible which comes to be fixed in memory does not appear to be the intelligible thing itself, but looks much more like a ‘temporalised’ and ‘spatialised’ copy, or image, of it: the accounts of our memory of the intelligibles in the Confessions and in the De Trinitate seem to diverge profoundly in this respect.32
29Let us return now to the final part of T6. We have seen that Augustine purports to solve the problem of the non-perceptual acquisition of the contents of the liberal arts by saying that they were already in us (more precisely, in our memory), but ‘remote and buried, as it were, in more secret caves’. Augustine is not trying to sell us this bold idea without justifications; he offers the following argument:
(1) When I learnt the contents of the liberal arts, I did not repose trust in someone else’s mind (non credidi alieno cordi), but in my own I approved them as true (vera esse approbavi in meo);
(2) Therefore, those contents must have been there (ibi), i.e. in my mind, even before I learnt them;
(3) But, if they were in my mind, they were in my memory;
(4) Therefore, the contents of the liberal arts were already (somehow hidden) in my memory, even before I learnt them.
- 33 Cf. Retr. I, xiv, 3: ‘What we know, therefore, we owe to reason, what we believe, to authority (qu (...)
- 34 Cf. Burnyeat 1987, but also the still excellent Gilson 1943, p. 89-103. In the De magistro the Tru (...)
- 35 Of course one might object that bolder ‘content innatism’ is what is meant to account for the othe (...)
30Premiss (1), which might appear prima facie quite surprising, becomes much more palatable (although by no means indisputable) as soon as one spells it out: to be entitled to say that we have learnt, and thus we know, something, we must have understood what we claim to have learnt, that is we must have seen and judged by ourselves that (and why) what we have learnt is true (approbavi). Strictly speaking, I can learn (and thus know) Pythagoras’ theorem only if I fully understand it with my intelligence: if I simply believe it is true on the grounds of the authority of my teachers, and learn its formulation by heart, without recognising its truth by myself, I cannot say that I have really learnt it;33 at best, I can parrot it (we owe to Myles Burnyeat the merit of having masterfully clarified this philosophical core of the De Magistro idea that there cannot be external teachers, and the real teacher is in us, in interiore homine).34 But the subsequent inference in T6, from vera esse approbavi in meo <corde> to ibi [scil. in meo corde] erant et antequam ea didicissem, remains disputable, being based on a possibly amphibological use of the phrase in meo corde: that I decide that Pythagoras’ theorem is true in my mind simply means, on the most straightforward reading, that it is with my mind, i.e. thanks to its cognitive capacity alone, that I can understand it and assess its truth. But then, in (2), with the use of the adverb ibi, we have a surreptitious shift in the understanding of in meo <corde>: the conclusion drawn is that Pythagoras’ theorem was already in my mind, where mind (cor) is now understood, once again, as a kind of inner place. We have then a further inference, from cor to memoria, backed up by means of the rhetorical question ‘where… did I acknowledge them… if not… in memory…?’ (we have already seen that Augustine comes very close to identifying mind and memory when convenient), and the conclusion is reached that the contents of the disciplinae liberales were in our memory even before we learnt them. The plausible idea that we must have a sense-independent capacity to evaluate the truth of what we are taught in the liberal arts, and thus to understand (by ourselves) and learn, in the full sense of the word, the contents of those disciplinae, has transformed at the end of T6 into the different and bolder idea that all those contents are already present, although in somewhat latent form, in our memory, whereby they must only be retrieved.35
31The latter idea is taken for granted, as something sufficiently proved, and developed in greater detail in the first half of xi, 18:
T12 Therefore we have found that to learn these things of which we do not imbibe the images through our senses, but which without images we see within (intus cernimus) by themselves, as they are, is nothing else than by thinking (cogitando) binding together (conligere), as it were, those things which memory contained in a scattered way (passim) and without order (indisposite), and by observing (animadvertendo) taking care that they may readily occur to the attention now familiar with them, having being placed at hand, so to speak, in that very memory where they previously used to hide dispersed (sparsa) and neglected. And how many things of this kind my memory bears, which have already been found out and, as I have said, placed, as it were, at hand, which we are said to have learnt (didicisse) and to know (nosse) !
32Learning the liberal arts consists in finding (invenire) things buried deep in one’s memory and unearthing them, making them easily available to our reflection. But this is not all: along with this ‘vertical’ movement, from the cavae abditiores of memory to some other inner place more ad manum (a movement described in T6 by the verb eruo), Augustine depicts also a ‘horizontal’ movement: the various contents of the liberal arts are originally contained in our memory passim atque indisposite, and learning them requires not only digging them out (they are neglecta), but also collecting and binding (conligere) them together (they are sparsa). Only when this twofold process on memory contents is completed we can say that we have learnt, and thus we know, the objects of the disciplinae liberales involved. What was only latent in our memoria has gained the fresh status of explicit knowledge, to which we have now easier access: any subsequent act of recalling this knowledge will be very different from, and much less complex than, that first peculiar process of recollection which we ordinarily describe as ‘learning’.
- 36 Cf. also Phaedrus, 249c.
- 37 For a brilliant discussion of this question cf. Scott 1995, sect. I.
- 38 Cf. Cic. Tusc. I, xxiv, 57-58. On Augustine’s philosophical sources cf. Courcelle 1943, ch. 4.
- 39 It remains a controversial and hotly debated issue whether Augustine endorsed, in some form or ano (...)
- 40 The verbs recordari and reminisci had been used by Augustine’s main source on Platonic recollectio (...)
- 41 We shall see (infra p. 126-127) that Augustine had been less careful in other works.
- 42 Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 73c1-2: ‘We surely agree that if anyone recollects anything, he must have known (...)
- 43 For an analysis of the significance of Aristotle’s contention that memory is of the past cf. Casta (...)
33When reading passages like T6 and T12 one cannot help being reminded of the renowned ideas expressed in some Platonic dialogues to the effect that ‘searching and learning are in fact, as a whole, recollection (ἀνάμνησις)’ (Meno, 81d4-5), or that ‘those we speak of as “learning” are simply recollecting (ἀναμιμνήσκονται), and learning would be recollection (ἀνάμνησις)’ (Phaedo, 76a6-7).36 There is no agreement upon the precise domain of the objects of recollection in these passages,37 but certainly there must be at least some partial overlap with Augustine’s doctrinae liberales. It is also unquestionable that Augustine was acquainted with Plato’s brainchild (as we shall see shortly), although most probably only indirectly and partially (in particular, through Cicero’s Tusculanae disputationes).38 But Plato’s ‘theory of recollection’, albeit obviously a fundamental source of inspiration for Augustine’s own theory (in both cases the term ‘theory’ should be taken cum grano salis), was not something Augustine could endorse fully. A crucial ingredient of Platonic recollection is the idea of the soul’s pre-existence and incarnations cycle: learning is actually recollecting ‘things’ we have learnt in previous lives (earthly or otherworldly), and then forgotten at birth (this is, at best, a rather impressionistic account of what emerges from Plato’s texts, which differ among themselves in important respects; however, this is probably not much less than what Augustine himself was likely to know about Platonic recollection, so I hope it will suffice for our present purposes). This ingredient does not emerge explicitly in Augustine’s Confessions, and there are various clues, both in the work we are examining and in other related texts, indicating that Augustine did reject this aspect of Plato’s own version(s) of recollection.39 Let us begin with the internal evidence. If we read the text with attention, we discover that Augustine never says that discere is recollecting what we have forgotten, which would imply that there was a time in our past in which we knew (explicitly) the things we are now said to be learning. Interestingly, in the Confessions Augustine never claims that discere is recordari (remembering) or reminisci (recollecting) either40 (we shall discover soon that according to him cogitare is – and means, indeed – recollecting, but in a quite different and literal understanding of ‘recollecting’). What Augustine does say is that learning (or, more exactly, an essential component of it) is finding (invenire) things hidden in one’s memory. One might gloss that ‘finding things in one’s memory’ is nothing else than ‘recollecting’: my suggestion is that by using the former instead of the latter Augustine is trying to prevent his reader from inferring that there must have been a time in one’s past, either prenatal or postnatal, in which the things now ‘found’ were first present to one’s awareness and then entered one’s memory.41 If at time t1 I say that I remember that p, this seems to imply that there has been a previous time t0 in which I experienced (saw, learnt, discovered…) that p, and thus in which I knew (or at least believed or had the impression) that p;42 in this sense the ancient intuition that memory ‘is of the past’ (cf. e.g. Aristotle, De Memoria, 449b10-23)43 sounds basically correct. By saying that we can find the contents of the disciplinae liberales in the deepest recesses of our memory, and not that we can recollect them, and by remaining completely silent on whether, when and how they entered those recesses in the first place, I suggest that Augustine is attempting to escape, however unsuccessfully, this implication.
34My conjecture finds explicit corroboration in some later texts. To begin with, let us examine this passage from the De Trinitate:
T13 Therefore, that noble philosopher, Plato, tried to persuade us that the souls of men had lived here even before they bore these bodies ; and hence those things which are learnt are recollected, being known (reminiscuntur… cognita), rather than known as new (cognoscuntur nova). For he relates how a certain boy, when asked I do not know what about geometry, replied as if he were most proficient in that discipline… But we ought rather to believe that the nature of the intellectual mind is so created as to see (videat) what, according to the disposition of the Creator, is subjoined to intelligible things in the natural order, in a sort of incorporeal light of its own kind, just as the eye of the flesh sees (videt) the things that lie about in this corporeal light, of which light it was created to be receptive and to which it is adapted. (Trin. XII, xv, 24.)
- 44 In the central lines, which I have not quoted, Augustine criticises recollection as a suitable exp (...)
- 45 Cf. also viii, 12 (once successfully retrieved, memory images come in conspectum); xii, 19 (one ca (...)
35In the first part Augustine rehearses his Plato on recollection and the pre-existence of the soul: in the second part, the phenomenon which Plato had brought as supporting evidence for his contention that learning is in fact recollecting, and thus indirectly for the pre-existence of the soul (Meno’s slave boy’s unexpected proficiency in geometry when interrogated by Socrates), is explained by Augustine differently, through a sketch of what is known in the literature as his ‘theory of (divine) illumination’:44 very roughly, as our eyes have been created by God with the capacity to see the physical objects in the physical light, so our minds have been given by God the capacity to see the intelligible truths in some sort of incorporeal, intellectual light which God himself casts upon them. One could object that this De Trinitate passage cannot teach us anything about the way in which Augustine’s views on recollection must be interpreted in the Confessions, because it was written later and – even more important – seems to reject not only pre-existence, but recollection tout court, replacing it with the different theory of illumination. My reply will start from noticing that some distinctive jargon associated with the theory of illumination was already scattered in the discussion of memory in the pages of Confessions X (the same disclaimer concerning the appropriateness of the term ‘theory’ applies here as above). We have found Augustine recurring often to the vocabulary of vision in his treatment of our memory of the disciplinae liberales: at ix, 16 (T1) we had been told that we perceive the objects of those disciplines (percepta), and this perception had narrowed at x, 17 (T6) and xi, 18 (T12) into some form of inner sight (neque uspiam vidi praeter animum meum; intus cernimus); perhaps also the occurrence of animadvertendo at xi, 18 (T12) could be read in this light.45 In Confessions X the adoption of such jargon coexists with, and does not stand in any obvious opposition to, the preponderant use of the memory jargon, unlike what happens, prima facie, in the De Trinitate: quite the contrary, at the beginning of T12 Augustine seems to be suggesting that seeing certain truths within, i.e. learning, is nothing else than finding (and somehow gathering together and arranging) truths which lied hidden in the recesses of our memory. The metaphor itself of the cavae abditiores does not serve the sole purpose of conveying the idea of epistemic remoteness: caves are dark places, and bringing something out of a cave to surface obviously also amounts to bringing it out of darkness into the light.
36In fact, a more accurate reading of the whole chapter xxv of book XII of the De Trinitate (which unfortunately it is not possible to undertake here) will reveal that even in that work Augustine’s attack is not so much against recollection itself, as against the more specific idea that learning is recollecting something known in previous lives, and its corollaries, pre-existence and reincarnation of human souls. The following two passages from the Retractationes will help to clarify the link existing between recollection and illumination:
T14 In a certain place I said that ‘without a doubt, those expert in the liberal arts unearth (eruunt), in learning, those things buried (obrutas) in forgetfulness (oblivione) within themselves and, in a certain sense, dig them out’ [Solil. II, xx, 35]. But I disapprove of this too. For it is more credible that even those who are ignorant of them when properly questioned give true answers concerning certain arts because the light of eternal reason in which they contemplate (conspiciunt) those unchangeable truths is present in them, as far as they are able to grasp it ; but this is not because they knew these things at some time and have forgotten them, as it seemed to Plato or those like him. (Retr. I, iv, 4.)
T15 What I said in this book, that ‘it seems to me that the soul has brought all the arts with itself and that what is called learning is nothing else than recollecting (reminisci) and remembering (recordari)’ [Quant. anim. xx, 34], should not be interpreted as if, according to this, I agree that the soul, at some time, lived either here, in another body, or elsewhere, in a body or outside a body, and that previously, in another life, it learnt the answers it gives when questioned, since it has not learnt them here. For, as we have already said above in this work [scil. in T14], it can happen that the soul has this capacity since it has the nature of the intelligible and is connected not only to the intelligibles, but also to immutable things, and is so made and ordered that, when it moves towards those things to which it is connected or towards itself, it can give true answers concerning these things to the degree that it sees (videt) them. To be sure, it has not brought with itself and does not possess all the arts in this manner ; for it can only speak about what it has learnt here regarding the arts that pertain to the senses of the body, such as much of medicine, and all that falls under astrology. But when it has been questioned and reminded (recordata) in the correct way, either by itself or by another, concerning those things which intelligence alone grasps, it answers for the reason I have said. (Retr. I, viii, 2.)
- 46 It is noteworthy that in his Retractationes Augustine did not feel any need to retract the claims (...)
- 47 Certainly we would have expected admonita instead of recordata (cf. supra T6 and T7).
- 48 On recollection and illumination cf. Gilson 1943, ch. 5; O’Daly 1987, p. 199-207.
- 49 But illumination is already prominent in the De magistro (especially at xi, 38–xii, 40), where, on (...)
- 50 Cf. e.g. Plato, Republic, 507c-509b, 518a-d for a most renowned antecedent to Augustine’s illumina (...)
- 51 Cf. supra n. 38. For the ‘books of the Platonists’ and Plotinus as inspirations for the theory of (...)
- 52 The shared kernel of the two ideas is that the human mind does not create the truth, but finds or (...)
37Augustine is retracting or clarifying some claims he had made in two early works, in which, unlike the later Confessions, he had not been cautious enough to refrain from terms such as oblivio (in the Soliloquia), reminisci and recordari (in the De animae quantitate). He had written, or at least he could be easily taken to have meant, that in the liberal arts to learn is not simply to dig treasures out of that region of one’s soul called memoria, as the Confessions propose cautiously,46 but to recollect things once known and subsequently forgotten. In those works, thus, Augustine could appear to have subscribed to a full-blown Platonic stance on recollection plus pre-existence. In T14 that stance is criticised and replaced with a brief but clear sketch of the theory of illumination; but T15 is more interesting for us, because its gist is not that all talk of recollection is in itself hopelessly incorrect, but only that it should not be misinterpreted à la Plato. Here Augustine comes very close to the surprising idea that ‘what is called learning is nothing else than recollecting and remembering’ (the kind of Platonic formula he had been comfortable to borrow in his De animae quantitate) can (and must indeed) be interpreted as equivalent to ‘our soul is made in such a way that it has the power to grasp (see) the intelligible truths’ (learning thus becoming equivalent to coming to see them). While there is certainly an important self-apologetic component in this move (‘Perhaps I did not express my idea in the best way, but what I was really thinking, even then, is… ’), some substantial view must be involved here: we have already found the compatibility of recollection and illumination emerging from the pages of book X of the Confessions, and even some sort of equivalence envisaged at the beginning of T12, and implied again at the end of T15, where having outlined the fundamentals of illumination Augustine slides back, with telling nonchalance, to the verb recordor.47 The conclusion which I suggest we are entitled to draw is that recollection and illumination were not, in Augustine’s mind, two rival and incompatible theories to account for certain problematic facts regarding our capacity to acquire sense-independent knowledge of intelligibles: rather, they are best understood as two different sets of metaphors meant to express and illustrate the very same theory (or, once again, not to use the term ‘theory’, which is not wholly appropriate here, the same family of ideas and intuitions).48 The recollection metaphor appears to have been preferred by Augustine at the early stages of his career,49 and then progressively replaced by the metaphor of sight and mental illuminatio. Both metaphors, and not only recollection, are glaring Platonic reminiscences50 (again, most probably, only indirect ones):51 but the recollection metaphor is for this very reason dangerous, because in Plato it was indissolubly linked with pre-existence and reincarnation of the soul. Take recollection and subtract pre-existence, and you remain with the idea that to learn something is to exercise one’s capacity to find in one’s mind innate and latent contents which have not been accumulated from any previous, antenatal experience (taking ‘experience’ in the broadest possible sense) and have never been present to our awareness, and to bring them before one’s attention; the illumination metaphor conveys the not so different insight that to learn something is tantamount to exercising our innate capacity to ‘see’ within ourselves (with the ‘eye of the mind’) intelligible objects and recognising intelligible truths.52 I was wondering above whether the special emphasis on the non-spatial character of memory in the case of the contents of the liberal arts could have some deep significance; if those contents are stored in a locus non locus, then, in a sense, they both are and are not in our mind, present, we might say, only potentially, without being there in actuality, which would make recollection even closer to illumination.
- 53 This is not to suggest that memory does not play a very important role in the De Trinitate: in the (...)
- 54 Cf. e.g. Mag. viii, 21. Trin. XV, xxi, 40 is particularly interesting, being a late attempt to acc (...)
- 55 Shoemaker 1967, p. 265. Cf. supra n. 42 for Plato’s ancient formulation of the same point.
- 56 Cf. Trin. XIV, xi, 14 (the memory by which the mind is present to itself). For an earlier defence (...)
- 57 Gilson (1943, p. 137-138), followed by many scholars, maintained that with the doctrine of divine (...)
38It is easy to realise why in book X of the Confessions, where memory plays such a central role, the recollection metaphor (or, more precisely, the memory metaphor) turns out to be predominant, albeit – I have argued – not exclusive. In other works, both earlier (e.g. in the De Magistro) and later (e.g. in the De Trinitate), divine illumination replaces that metaphor53 (here again, with a few exceptions, which are however very telling about Augustine’s perception of the consistency of the two metaphors):54 it is worth asking why. Recollection is more liable to misunderstandings, for the reasons I have explained in connection to its Platonic lineage, but one might think that some brief caveat like the one offered (albeit too late) in T15 should have been sufficient to avoid any risk. However, if we consider more carefully what recollection minus pre-existence amounts to, we discover a good reason for abandoning also such a revised notion of recollection. If Pythagoras’ theorem is an innate content of my mind, born together with it and latent in its depths, how sensible is to say that when I learn Pythagoras’ theorem I am in fact recollecting it, or, alternatively, that I am unearthing it from some hidden recess of my memory? How can I be said to recollect (or have in my memory) something of which I have never been aware and which I have never known before (and which, a fortiori, I have never forgotten)? Whereas the idea of innate concepts, or innate capacities, is quite familiar to us, the idea itself of innate memories sounds hopelessly oxymoronic in the absence of its germane idea of antenatal lives. Here again the platitude that memory is of the past, in the minimal sense that ‘it is true in general that remembering involves having previously learned or acquired knowledge of what one remembers’,55 seems to be at odds with Augustine’s Christian variant of Platonic recollection. And although Augustine is ready to deny elsewhere, in a quite different context and with very different purposes, that memory is only of the past,56 it is not difficult to understand why, at the end of the day, the illumination metaphor should have struck him as preferable.57
39Something remains to be said on T12’s second kind of process involved in learning, consisting in cogitando quasi conligere dispersed memory contents. The second half of conf. X, xi, 18 will offer us some more clues as to its nature:
T16 And if for quite short periods of time I neglect to recall them (recolere), then again they sink and split apart into more remote recesses, as it were, so that they have to be found out (excogitanda) again, as if they were quite new, from the same place – for they have no other region <to retire into> – and they must be collected together (cogenda) again, so that they may be known, i.e. they must be bound together (conligenda) as if from a sort of dispersion, whence comes the word cogitare. For cogo and cogito are related as ago and agito or facio and factito. However, the soul has laid claim into this word for its own use, so that now it is what is bound together (conligitur), i.e. collected (cogitur), in the mind, and not elsewhere, that is said to be, properly speaking, thought about, i.e. re-collected (cogitari).
40The two movements which characterise the process of forgetting, opposite to those of learning, are depicted: if not continuously refreshed by exercise, the contents of the liberal arts sink (demerguntur) again in deeper regions (a sort of vertical movement, from surface, where they were at hand, and in daylight, to depth, and darkness), and split apart (dilabuntur) (a sort of horizontal movement, from unity to dispersion). Once forgotten, these contents can be recovered, and thus learnt and known again, with a reverse mechanism now familiar: they need to be found out (excogitanda) again from those remote locations (another piece of spatial imagery) and to be bound together (conligenda) anew from their state of dispersion.
- 58 For some early uses of cogitare in the sense of ‘to (re)call to mind’, ‘to recollect’ cf. e.g. Cic (...)
- 59 However, as O’Connell observes, ‘how did these things become “scattered” in the first place? Does (...)
41Here the link between cogitare and conligere becomes stronger, almost etymological: cogito is said to derive from cogo, clearly as its frequentative or intensive form, and cogo and conligo are treated as quasi-synonyms. Augustine explains the rationale of this etymology by revealing that cogitare is, in fact, re-collecting and re-binding together things in one’s mind, as the common use of the word has established. One might say that a fundamental aspect of learning is, therefore, recollecting, where ‘recollecting’ must not be understood, however, as a synonym of ‘remembering’,58 but, quite literally, as indicating primarily, if not exclusively, the mental activity of gathering together isolated (passim, indisposite, sparsa) contents dug out of the deepest caves of our mind.59
- 60 Vide ut illud in animo habeas (‘Try to remember this!’); non fuit in animo, elapsum est animo (‘I (...)
- 61 According to Ernout & Meillet 1951 and Glare 1982, cogito derives from con+agito. Lewis & Short 18 (...)
42This idea deserves further comment. T16 is not the only passage in Confessions X in which Augustine appeals to alleged linguistic evidence to support a philosophical point: at xiv, 21 the quasi-identification of animus and memoria is backed up by reference to some ordinary Latin idioms for remembering and forgetting,60 and at xxxv, 54 the epistemic primacy of sight over the other senses is substantiated by noting the large use ordinarily made of the verb video in connection to knowledge and understanding, also when senses other than sight are actually involved (cf. the English idiom ‘I see’). In our passage the deep meaning of the verb cogito is highlighted by reminding us of its alleged etymology,61 which, as scholars have suggested, Augustine probably borrowed from Varro’s De lingua latina:
T17 Cogitare comes from cogendo : the mind collects (cogit) many things together, from which it can choose (eligere). (Varr. LL VI, 43.)
- 62 In LL VI, 42 Varro associates cogitare and in mente agitare: ‘but also when we think about (cogita (...)
- 63 For similar models in Augustine cf. Conf. X, viii, 12 and xix, 28. For Varro’s own link between co (...)
43What, in my opinion, has not been noticed properly, however, is that, if Augustine is drawing on Varro – which seems, indeed, quite plausible –, he is creatively adapting Varro’s own etymology. According to T17, thinking is collecting things in one’s mind so as to be able to choose one of them: the underlying model must be that of someone who seeks the correct answer to a question, or solution to a problem, by collecting, examining and assessing in one’s mind all the relevant answers and solutions,62 and finally selects the one he deems to be correct.63 The point of Augustine’s T16 appears to me importantly different; the collection and assemblage of scattered memory contents already amount to learning and coming to know something: all those contents are essential ingredients of the answer or solution one is seeking, of the new structured piece of knowledge one is discovering (or rediscovering).
- 64 Cf. Trin. XII, xiv, 23 for an analogous idea in a different setting and Plato’s Meno for the idea (...)
44But what are these contents, and what is the result of gathering and connecting them together? Of course, our answer will depend on the one we give to the initial question concerning the exact nature of the contents of the liberales disciplinae deposited in our memoria. If those contents are the basic objects of inquiry of those disciplines (or the definitions of such objects), then learning becomes recovering them from the recesses of our memory and, by combining them together, constructing (or, we could perhaps dare say, deducing) whatever else pertains to those disciplines. For example, once you have recalled what lines, sides, triangles, squares, etc. are, and their essential properties, you can collect and link all this information together, that is exercise your capacity to think, and demonstrate Pythagoras’ theorem. You could not have achieved such a result unless those basic ingredients had been in your memory from the very beginning, since they could not have entered your mind from outside, through your senses; however, this does not mean that Pythagoras’ theorem and all the theorems of geometry must be stored in our memories from birth as actual (albeit latent) contents (they are there only potentially). A different, less economical model for the kind of conligere Augustine has in mind in T12 and T16 could be the following: all the contents of the liberal arts, from the definitions of their elementa to the most advanced and complex doctrines and theorems, are actually present in our memory, although latently, and to learn them consists in accessing them, making them familiar, and finally collecting and binding them together into a coherent unified system, i.e. the liberal art itself.64
- 65 I fully subscribe to Gilson’s remark that ‘quelque effort que l’on fasse, il reste des indétermina (...)
- 66 Cf. Conf. X, xvi, 24-25. Augustine had presented the confession of his own ignorance as a main the (...)
- 67 Cf. Plato’s own tentativeness in Socrates’ presentation and assessment of the theory of recollecti (...)
- 68 And hinted at, again, at viii, 13.
- 69 For Augustine’s similar approach to the verb scire cf. Burnyeat 1987, p. 6.
45I suggest that any attempt to press further the question of which model (if any) was meant in T16 would be fruitless, the answer being underdetermined by Augustine’s words. And this is not a consequence of some regrettable lack of clarity in exposition: the answer was also underdetermined, so to speak, in Augustine’s mind, as was the answer to the related question concerning the nature of the contents of the liberal arts deposited in our memories.65 In a sense neither model can be considered the correct reconstruction of Augustine’s idea, in another both of them could (and, of course, some hybrid or slightly different model could be easily proposed). We owe to Augustine a number of original and thought-provoking insights on some perennial philosophical puzzles concerning learning, understanding and memory; however, as I have already had the opportunity to remark, as far as memory is concerned Augustine does not seem to endorse any theory, at least if by ‘theory’ we intend a systematic, consistent and stable body of explicit and clear-cut doctrines deemed to provide definite and satisfactory solutions to all the problems raised or envisaged in a certain area of inquiry. Often he shows no qualms about confessing his inability to provide any convincing answer to some thorny question, e.g. that concerning our memory of forgetfulness (oblivio);66 more generally, his whole investigation of memory, especially in the Confessions, appears tentative, and the particular sections we have examined in this article offer no exception.67 Augustine approaches and uses his philosophical sources in a refreshingly creative way, as magistri who trigger and inspire a genuine and personal research of truth within, and not as authorities to follow slavishly or criticise polemically. He does not feel any need to cast his discussion in technical jargon borrowed from the previous tradition (we have seen how much he relies on metaphors, and how cautious he is in handling terms like notio), nor does he seem interested in moulding his own terminology. It is noteworthy, for example, that he does not feel any obligation to consistency in the use of cogitare and its cognates with that specific nuance of ‘re-collecting’ he himself introduces and explains in T16: already at xii, 19, cogitatio sounds like the kind of operation upon memory images previously described at viii, 12 (‘we think [cogitamus] either by increasing [augendo] or by diminishing [minuendo] or by modifying [variando] one way or another what the senses have made contact with’),68 and not like a process of collecting, linking and systematising fragmentary memory contents. No doubt Augustine recognises that his narrow conception of literal ‘re-collection’ cannot cover the whole semantic range of the Latin cogitare, and he shows no ambition of reform of ordinary parlance.69
46Rather than attempting to indoctrinate us, Augustine seems to be striving to teach himself in the first place; by doing so, however, he hopes he can also offer us some valuable admonitio as to the way and importance of teaching ourselves too.