Confessions of St. Augustine · of Hippo Augustine
BOOK XI
(“Augustine breaks off the history of the mode whereby God led him to holy Orders, in order to ‘confess’ God’s mercies in opening to him the Scripture. Moses is not to be understood, but in Christ, not even the first words _In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth_. Answer to cavillers who asked, what did God before He created the heaven and the earth, and whence willed He at length to make them, whereas He did not make them before. Inquiry into the nature of Time.”) (It is in considering the question of God’s actions before the Creation, and of his delay in not bringing about the Creation sooner, that Augustine comes to consider the nature of Time.)
38. I am about to repeat a Psalm that I know. Before I begin, my expectation is extended over the whole; but when I have begun, how much soever of it I shall separate off into the past, is extended along my memory; thus the life of this action of mine is divided between my memory as to what I have repeated, and expectation as to what I am about to repeat; but “consideration” is present with me, that through it what was future may be conveyed over, so as to become past. Which the more it is done again and again, so much the more the expectation being shortened, is the memory enlarged; till the whole expectation be at length exhausted, when the whole action being ended, shall have passed into memory. And this which takes place in the whole Psalm, the same takes place in each several portion of it, and each several syllable; the same holds in that longer action, whereof this Psalm may be a part; the same holds in the whole life of man, whereof all the actions of man are parts; the same holds through the whole age of the sons of men, whereof all the lives of men are parts.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.