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The Confessions Of Saint Augustine by St. Augustine

Chapter X But now when I hear that there be three kinds of questionsà

But now when I hear that there be three kinds of questions, |Whether the thing be? what it is? of what kind it is? I do indeed hold the images of the sounds of which those words be composed, and that those sounds, with a noise passed through the air, and now are not. But the things themselves which are signified by those sounds, I never reached with any sense of my body, nor ever discerned them otherwise than in my mind; yet in my memory have I laid up not their images, but themselves. Which how they entered into me, let them say if they can; for I have gone over all the avenues of my flesh, but cannot find by which they entered. For the eyes say, |If those images were coloured, we reported of them.| The ears say, |If they sound, we gave knowledge of them.| The nostrils say, |If they smell, they passed by us.| The taste says, |Unless they have a savour, ask me not.| The touch says, |If it have not size, I handled it not; if I handled it not, I gave no notice of it.| Whence and how entered these things into my memory? I know not how. For when I learned them, I gave not credit to another man's mind, but recognised them in mine; and approving them for true, I commended them to it, laying them up as it were, whence I might bring them forth when I willed. In my heart then they were, even before I learned them, but in my memory they were not. Where then? or wherefore, when they were spoken, did I acknowledge them, and said, |So is it, it is true,| unless that they were already in the memory, but so thrown back and buried as it were in deeper recesses, that had not the suggestion of another drawn them forth I had perchance been unable to conceive of them?
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