5. Similar reasoning suggests to us, if indeed we can any way understand the matter, that these things exist in the soul, and that, being as it were involved in it, they are so evolved from it as to be perceived and reckoned up substantially, or, so to say, essentially. Not as though in a subject, as colour, or shape, or any other quality or quantity, are in the body. For anything of this kind does not go beyond the subject in which it is; for that colour or shape of this particular body cannot be also those of another body. But the mind can also love something besides itself, with that love with which it loves itself. And further, the mind does not know itself only, but also many other things. Wherefore love and knowledge are not contained in the mind as in a subject, but these also exist substantially, as the mind itself does; because, even if they are mutually predicated relatively, yet they exist each seve- rally in their own substance. Nor are they so mutually predicated relatively as colour and the coloured subject are; so that colour is in the coloured subject, but has not any proper substance in itself, since coloured body is a substance, but colour is in a substance; but as two friends are also two men, which are substances, while they are said to be men not relatively, but friends relatively.
6. But, further, although one who loves or one who knows is a substance, and knowledge is a substance, and love is a 228 ON THE TRINITY. [BOOK IX.
substance; but he that loves and love, or he that knows and knowledge, are spoken of relatively to each other, as are friends: but mind or spirit are not relatives, as neither are men relatives; yet he that loves and love, or he that knows and knowledge, cannot exist separately from each other, as men can that are friends. Although it would seem that friends, too, can be separated in body, not in mind, in as far as they are friends: nay, it can even happen that a friend may even also begin to hate a friend, and on this account cease to be a friend, while the other does not know it, and still loves him. But if the love with which the mind loves itself ceases to be, then the mind also will at the same time cease to love. Likewise, if the knowledge by which the mind knows itself ceases to be, then the mind will also at the same time cease to know itself. Just as the head of anything that has a head is cer- tainly a head, and they are predicated relatively to each other, although they are also substances: for both a head is a body, and so is that which has a head; and if there be no head, then neither will there be that which has a head. Only these things can be separated from each other by cutting off, those cannot.
7. And even if there are some bodies which cannot be wholly separated and divided, yet they would not be bodies unless they consisted of their own proper parts. A part then is predicated relatively to a whole, since every part is a part of some, whole, and a whole is a whole by having all its parts. But since both part and whole are bodies, these things are not only predicated relatively, but exist also substantially. Per- haps, then, the mind is a whole, and the love with which it loves itself, and the knowledge with which it knows itself, are as if its parts, of which two parts that whole consists. Or are there three equal parts which make up the one whole? But no part embraces the whole, of which it is a part; whereas, when the mind knows itself as a whole, that is, knows itself perfectly, then the knowledge of it extends through the whole of it; and when it loves itself perfectly, then it loves itself as a whole, and the love of it extends through the whole of it. Is it, then, as one drink is made from wine and water and honey, and each single part extends through the whole, and yet they are three things (for there is no part of the drink CHAP, v.] THEY EXIST SEVERALLY, YET ALL IN ALL. 229 which does not contain these three things; for they are not joined as if they were water and oil, but are entirely com- mingled: and they are all substances, and the whole of that liquor which is composed of the three is one substance), — is it, I say, in some such way as this we are to think these three to be together, mind, love, and knowledge? But water, wine, and honey are not of one substance, although one sub- stance results in the drink made from the commingling of them. And I cannot see how those other three are not of the same substance, since the mind itself loves itself, and itself knows itself; and these three so exist, as that the mind is neither loved nor known by any other thing at all. These three, therefore, must needs be of one and the same essence; and for that reason, if they were confounded together as it were by a commingling, they could not be in any way three, neither could they be mutually referred to each other. Just as if you were to make from one and the same gold three similar rings, although connected with each other, they are mutually referred to each other, because they are similar. For everything similar is similar to something, and there is a trinity of rings, and one gold. But if they are blended with each other, and each mingled with the other through the whole of their own bulk, then that trinity will fall through, and it will not exist at all; and not only will it be called one gold, as it was called in the case of those three rings, but now it will not be called three things of gold at all.
Chap. v. — That these three are several in themselves^ and mutually all in all.
8. But in these three, when the mind knows itself and loves itself, there remains a trinity, mind, love, knowledge; and this is not confounded together by any commingling: although they are both each severally in themselves and mutually all in all, or whether each severally in each two, or each two in each. Therefore all are in all. For certainly the mind is in itself, since it is called mind in respect to itseK: although it is said to be knowing, or known, or knowable, relatively to its own knowledge; and although also as loving, and loved, or lovable, it is referred to love, by which it loves itself. And know- ledge, although it is referred to the mind that knows or is 230 ON THE TRINITY. [BOOK IX.
known, nevertheless is also predicated both as known and knowing in respect to itself: for the knowledge by which the mind knows itself, is not unknown to itself. And although love is referred to the mind that loves, whose love it is; never- theless it is also love in respect to itself, so as to exist also in itself: since love too is loved, yet cannot be loved with any- thing except with love, that is with itself. So these things are severally in themselves. But so are they in each other, because both the mind that loves is in love, and love is in the knowledge of him that loves, and knowledge is in the mind that knows. And each severally is in like manner in each two, because the mind which knows and loves itself, is in its own love and knowledge: and the love of the mind that loves and knows itself, is in the mind and in its know- ledge: and the knowledge of the mind that knows and loves itself is in the mind and in its love, because it loves itself that knows, and knows itself that loves. And hence also each two is in each severally, since the mind which knows and loves itself, is together with its own knowledge in love, and together Avith its own love in knowledge; and love too itself and knowledge are together in the mind, which loves and knows itseK. But in what way all are in all, we have already shown above; since the mind loves itself as a whole, and knows itself as a whole, and knows its own love wholly, and loves its own knowledge wholly, when these three things are perfect in respect to them- selves. Therefore these three things are marvellously insepar- able from each other, and yet each of them is severally a substance, and all together are one substance or essence, whilst they are mutually predicated relatively.
Chap. vi. — One Jcnowledge of the thing in the thing itself, and another in eternal truth itself. That corporeal things, too, are to he judged by the rides of eternal truth.
9. But when the human mind knows itself and loves itself, it does not know and love anything unchangeable: and each individual man declares his own mind by one manner of speech, when he considers what takes place in himself; but defines the human mind in another by special or general knowledge. And so, when he speaks to me of his own indi- vidual mind, as to whether he understands this or that, or CHAP. VL] sources AND KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE. 231 does not understand it, or whether he wishes or does not wish this or that, I believe; hut when he speaks the truth of the mind of man generally or specially, I recognise and approve. Whence it is manifest,- that each sees one thing in himself, such that another person may believe what he says of it, yet may not see it; but another in the truth itself, such that another person also can gaze upon it; of which the former undergoes changes at successive times, the latter consists in an unchange- able eternity. Por we do not gather a generic or specific knowledge of the human mind by means of resemblance, by seeing many minds with the eyes of the body: but we gaze upon indestructible truth, from which to define perfectly, as far as we can, not of what sort is the mind of any one man, but of what sort it ought to be upon the eternal x^lan.
10. Whence also, even in the case of the images of things corporeal which are drawn in through the bodily sense, and in some way infused into the memory, from which also those things which have not been seen are thought under a fancied image, whether otherwise than they really are, or even by chance as they are; — even here too, we are proved either to accept or reject, within ourselves, by other rules which remain altogether unchangeable above our mind, when we approve or reject anything rightly. For both when I recall the walls of Carthage 'which I have seen, and imagine to myself the walls of Alexandria which I have not seen, and, in preferring this to that among forms which in both cases are imaginary, make that preference upon grounds of reason; the judgment of truth from above is still strong and clear, and rests firmly upon the utterly indestructible rules of its owii right; and if it is covered as it were by cloudiness of corporeal images, yet is not wrapt up and confounded in them.
11. But it makes a difference, whether, under that or in that darkness, I am shut off as it were from the clear heaven; or whether (as usually happens on lofty mountains), enjoying the free air between both, I at once look up above to the calmest light, and down below upon the densest clouds. For whence is the ardour of brotherly love kindled in me, when I hear that some man has borne bitter torments for the ex- cellence and stedfastness of faith? And if that man is 232 ON THE TRINITY. [BOOK IX.
shown to me with the finger, I am eager to join myself to him, to become acquainted with him, to bind him to myself in friendship. And accordingly, if opportunity offers, I draw near, I address him, I converse with him, I express my goodwill towards him in what words I can, and wish that in him too in turn should be brought to pass and expressed goodwill to- wards me; and I endeavour after a spiritual embrace in the way of belief, since I cannot search out so quickly and discern altogether his innermost heart. I love therefore the faithful and courageous man with a pure and genuine love. But if he were to confess to me in the course of conversation, or were through unguardedness to reveal about himself in any way, that either he believes anything unseemly of God, and desires too somewhat carnal in Him, and that he bore these torments on behalf of such an error, or from the desire of money for which he hoped, or from empty greediness of human praise: imme- diately it follows that the love with which I was borne to- wards him, displeased, and as it were repelled, and taken away from an unworthy man, remains in that form, after which, believ- ing him such as I did, I had loved him; unless perhaps I have come to love him to this end, that he may become such, while I have found him not to be such in fact. And in that man, too, nothing is changed: although it can be changed, so that he may become that which I had believed him to be already. But in my mind there certainly is something changed, viz. the estimate I had formed of him, which was before of one sort, and now is of another: and the same love, at the bidding from above of unchangeable righteousness, is turned aside from the purpose of enjoying, to the purpose of taking counsel. But the form itself of unshaken and stable truth, wherein I should have enjoyed the fruition of the man, believing him to be good, and wherein likewise I take counsel that he may be good, sheds in an immoveable eternity the same light of in- corruptible and most sound reason, both upon the sight of my mind, and upon that cloud of images, which I discern from above, when I think of the same man whom I had seen, y Again, when I call back to my mind some arch, turned beautifully and symmetrically, which, let us say, I saw at Carthage; a certain reality that had been made known to the mind through CHAP. VII.] ETERNAL TRUTH AND THE WORD WITHIN US. 233 the eyes, and transferred to the memory, causes the imaginary view. But I behold in my mind yet another thing, according to which that work of art pleases me; and whence also, if it displeased me, I should correct it. We judge therefore of those particular things according to that [form of eternal truth], and discern that form by the intuition of the rational mind. But those things themselves we either touch if present by the bodily sense, or if absent remember their images as fixed in our memory, or picture, in the way of likeness to them, such tilings as we ourselves also, if we wished and were able, would laboriously build up: figuring in the mind after one fashion the images of bodies, or seeing bodies through the body; but after another, grasping by simple intelligence what is above the eye of the mind, viz. the reasons and the unspeakably beautiful skill of such forms.
Chap. vii. — We conceive and beget the word within, from the things we have beheld in the eternal truth. The toord, rvhether of the creature or of the Creator, is conceived by love.
12. We behold, then, by the sight of the mind, in that eter- nal truth from which all things temporal are made, the form according to which we are, and according to which we do any- thing by true and right reason, either in ourselves, or in things corporeal; and we have the true knowledge of things, thence conceived, as it were as a word within us, and by speaking we beget it from within; nor by being born does it depart from us. And when we speak to others, we apply to the word, remaining within us, the ministry of the voice or of some bodily sign, that by some kind of sensible remembrance some similar thing may be wrought also in the mind of him that hears, — similar, I say, to that which does not depart from the mind of him that speaks. We do nothing, therefore, through the members of the body in our words and actions, by which the behaviour of men is either approved or blamed, which we do not anticipate by a word uttered within ourselves. For no one willins^lv does anything, which he has not first said in his lieart.
13. And this word is conceived by love, either of the crea- ture or of the Creator, that is, either of changeable nature or of unchano-eable truth.
234 ON THE TrJNITY. [EOOK IX.
Chap. viii. — In what desire and love differ.
-^ Therefore, either by desire or by love: not that the creature ought not to be loved; but if that love is referred to the Creator, then it will not be desire, but love. For it is then desire when the creature is loved for itself. And then it does not help a man through making use of it, but corrupts him in the enjoying it. When, therefore, the creature is either equal to us or inferior, we must use the inferior in order to God, but we must enjoy the equal only in God. For as thou oughtest to enjoy thyself, not in thyself, but in Him who made thee, so also him whom thou lovest as thyself. Let us enjoy, there- fore, both ourselves and our brethren in the Lord; and hence let us not dare to yield, and as it were to relax, ourselves to ourselves in the direction downwards,!N"ow a word is born, when, being thought out, it pleases us either to the effect of sinning, or to that of doing right. Therefore love, as it were a mean, conjoins our word and the mind from which it is conceived, and without any confusion binds itself as a third with them, in an incorporeal embrace.
Chap. ix. — In the love of spiritual things the word horn is the same as the word conceived. It is otherwise in the love of carnal things.
14. But the word conceived and the word born are the very same when the will finds rest in knowledge itself, as is the case in the love of spiritual things. For instance, he who knows righteousness perfectly, and loves it perfectly, is already righteous; even if no necessity exist of working according to it outwardly through the members of the body. But in the love of carnal and temporal things, a;s in the offspring itself of animals, the conception of the word is one thing, the bringing forth another. For here what is conceived by desiring is born by attaining. Since it does not suffice to avarice to Imow and to love gold, except it also have it; nor to know and love to eat, or to lie with any one, unless also one does it; nor to know and love honours and power, unless they actually come to pass. Nay, all these things, even if obtained, do not suffice. " Whosoever drinketh of this water," He says, " shall thirst again." ^ And so also the Psalmist, " He that hath conceived pain and brought forth iniquity." ^ And he speaks of pain CHAP. X.] THE mind's WORD IS KNOWLEDGE THAT IS LOVED. 235 or labour as conceived, when those things are conceived which it is not sufficient to know and will, and when the mind burns and grows sick with want, until it arrives at those things, and, as it were, brings them forth. Whence in the Latin language we have the word " parta " used elegantly for both ''' reperta " and " comperta," which words sound as if de- rived from bringing forth.^ Since ''lust, when it hath con- ceived, bringeth forth sin."^ Wherefore the Lord proclaims, " Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden; " ^ and in another place, " Woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! " ^ And when therefore He referred all either right actions or sins to the bringing forth of the word, " By thy mouth," ^ He says, " thou shalt be justified, and by thy mouth *^ thou shalt be con- demned," ^ intending thereby not the visible mouth, but that which is within and invisible, of the thought and of the heart.
Chap. x. — Whether only hiowledge that is loved is the tuord of the mind.
15. It is rightly asked then, whether all knowledge is a word, or only knowledge that is loved. For we also know the things which we hate; but what we do not like, cannot be said to be either conceived or brought forth by the mind. For not all things which in any way touch it, are conceived by it; but some only reach the point of being known, but yet are not spoken as words, as for instance those of which we speak now. For those are called words in one way which occupy spaces of time by their syllables, whether they are pronounced or only thought; and in another way all that is known is called a word imprinted on the mind, as long as it can be brought forth from the memory and defined, even though we dislike the thing itself; and in another way still, when we like that which is conceived in the mind. And that which the apostle says, must be taken according to this last kind of word, " ISTo man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost;"^ since those also say this, but according to another meaning of the term " word," of whom the Lord Him- self says, " Not every one that saith unto me. Lord, Lord, shall 236 ON THE TRINITY. [BOOK IX.
enter into the kingdom of heaven." ^ Nay, even in the case of things which we hate, when we rightly dislike and rightly censure them, we approve and like the censure bestowed upon them, and it becomes a word. Nor is it the knowledge of vices that displeases us, but the vices themselves. For I like to know and define what intemperance is; and this is its word. Just as there are known faults in art, and the knowledge of them is rightly approved, when a connoisseur discerns the species or the privation of excellence, as to affirm and deny that it is or that it is not; yet to be without excellence and to fall away into fault, is worthy of condemnation. And to define intem- perance, and to say its word, belongs to the art of morals; but to be intemperate belongs to that which that art censures. Just as to know and define what a solecism is, belongs to the art of speaking; but to be guilty of one, is a fault which the same art reprehends. A word, then, which is the point we wish now to discern and intimate, is knowledge together with love. Whenever, then, the mind knows and loves itself, its word is joined to it by love. And since it loves knowledge and knows love, both the word is in love and love is in the word, and both are in him who loves and speaks.
Chap. xi. — That the image or begotten word oj the mind that knows itself is equal to the mind itself.
16. But all knowledge according to species is like the thing which it knows. For there is another knowledge accord- ing to privation, according to which we speak a word only when we condemn. And tliis condemnation of a privation is equivalent to praise of the species, and so is approved. The mind, then, contains some likeness to a known species, whether when liking that species or when disliking its privation. And hence, in so far as we know God, we are like Him, but not like to the point of equality, since we do not know Him to the extent of His own being. And as, when we speak of bodies by means of the bodily sense, there arises in our mind some likeness of them, which is a phantasm of the memory; for the bodies themselves are not at all in the mind, when we think them, but only the likenesses of those bodies; therefore, when we approve the latter for the former, we err, for the CHAP. XIL] why love IS NOT THE OFFSPRING OF THE MIND. 237 approving of one thing for another is an error; yet the image of the body in the mind is ' a thing of a better sort than the species of the body itself, inasmuch as the former is in a better nature, viz. in a living substance, as the mind is: so when we know God, although we are made better than we were before we knew Him, and above all when the same knowledge being also liked and worthily loved becomes a word, and so that knowledge becomes a kind of likeness of God; yet that knowledge is of a lower kind, since it is in a lower nature; for the mind is creature, but God is Creator. And from this it may be inferred, that when the mind knows and approves itself, this same knowledge is in such way its word, as that it is altogether on a par and equal with it, and the same; because it is neither the knowledge of a lower essence, as of the body, nor of a higher, as of God. And whereas knowledge bears a likeness to that which it knows, that is, of which it is the knowledge; in this case it has per- fect and equal likeness, when the mind itself, which knows, is known. And so it is both image and word; because it is uttered concerning that mind to which it is equalled in knowing, and that which is begotten is equal to the begetter.