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Confessiones (CSEL)

Caput 13

Haec tunc non noveram, et amabam pulchra inferiora, et ibam in profundum et dicebam amicis meis: num amamus aliquid nisi pulchrum? quid est ergo pulchrum? et quid est pulchritudo? quid est quod nos allicit et concilliat rebus, quas amamus? nisi enim esset in eis decus et species, nullo modo nos ad se moverent. et animadvertebam, et videbam in ipsis corporibus aliud esse quasi totum et ideo pulchrum, aliud autem, quod ideo deceret, quoniam apte accomodaretur alicui, sicut pars corporis ad universum suum aut calciamentum ad pedem et similia. et ista consideratio scaturrit in animo meo ex intimo corde meo, et scripsi libros de pulchro et apto, puto, duos aut tres; tu scis, deus: nam excidit mihi. non enim habemus eos, sed aberraverunt a nobis nescio quomodo.

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The Confessions of St. Augustin In Thirteen Books

Chapter XIII.--Love Originates from Grace and Beauty Enticing Us.

20. These things I knew not at that time, and I loved these lower beauties, and I was sinking to the very depths; and I said to my friends, "Do we love anything but the beautiful? What, then, is the beautiful? And what is beauty? What is it that allures and unites us to the things we love; for unless there were a grace and beauty in them, they could by no means attract us to them?" And I marked and perceived that in bodies themselves there was a beauty from their forming a kind of whole, and another from mutual fitness, as one part of the body with its whole, or a shoe with a foot, and so on. And this consideration sprang up in my mind out of the recesses of my heart, and I wrote books (two or three, I think) "on the fair and fit." Thou knowest, O Lord, for it has escaped me; for I have them not, but they have strayed from me, I know not how.