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The Fifteen Books of Aurelius Augustinus, Bishop of Hippo, on the Trinity

Chapter 10.--How a Trinity is Produced by the Mind Remembering, Understanding, and Loving Itself.

13. In the knowledge of all these temporal things which we have mentioned, there are some knowable things which precede the acquisition of the knowledge of them by an interval of time, as in the case of those sensible objects which were already real before they were known, or of all those things that are learned through history; but some things begin to be at the same time with the knowing of them,--just as, if any visible object, which did not exist before at all, were to rise up before our eyes, certainly it does not precede our knowing it; or if there be any sound made where there is some one to hear, no doubt the sound and the hearing that sound begin and end simultaneously. Yet none the less, whether preceding in time or beginning to exist simultaneously, knowable things generate knowledge, and are not generated by knowledge. But when knowledge has come to pass, whenever the things known and laid up in memory are reviewed by recollection, who does not see that the retaining them in the memory is prior in time to the sight of them in recollection, and to the uniting of the two things by will as a third? In the mind, howver, it is not so. For the mind is not adventitious to itself, as though there came to itself already existing, that same self not already existing, from somewhere else, or did not indeed come from somewhere else, but that in the mind itself already existing, there was born that same mind not already existing; just as faith, which before was not, arises in the mind which already was. Nor does the mind see itself, as it were, set up in its own memory by recollection subsequently to the knowing of itself, as though it was not there before it knew itself; whereas, doubtless, from the time when it began to be, it has never ceased to remember, to understand, and to love itself, as we have already shown. And hence, when it is turned to itself by thought, there arises a trinity, in which now at length we can discern also a word; since it is formed from thought itself, will uniting both. Here, then, we may recognize, more than we have hitherto done, the image of which we are in search.

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De Trinitate

X.

[X 13] In omnium istarum quas commemoravimus temporalium rerum scientia quaedam cognoscibilia cognitionem interpositione temporis antecedunt sicut sunt ea sensibilia quae iam erant in rebus antequam cognoscerentur vel ea omnia quae per historiam cognoscuntur; quaedam vero simul esse incipiunt velut si aliquid visibile quod omnino non erat ante nostros oculos oriatur, cognitionem nostram utique non praecedit, aut si aliquid sonet ubi adest auditor, simul profecto incipiunt esse simulque desinunt et sonus et eius auditus. Verumtamen sive tempore praecedentia sive simul esse incipientia cognoscibilia cognitionem gignunt, non cognitione gignuntur. Cognitione vero facta cum ea quae cognovimus posita in memoria recordatione revisuntur, quis non videat priorem esse tempore in memoria retentionem quam in recordatione visionem et huius utriusque tertia voluntate iunctionem? Porro autem in mente non sic est; neque enim adventicia sibi ipsa est quasi ad se ipsam quae iam erat venerit aliunde eadem ipsa quae non erat, aut non aliunde venerit sed in se ipsa quae iam erat nata sit ea ipsa quae non erat sicut in mente quae iam erat oritur fides quae non erat, aut post cognitionem sui recordando se ipsam velut in memoria sua constitutam videt quasi non ibi fuerit antequam se ipsam cognosceret, cum profecto ex quo esse coepit, numquam sui meminisse, numquam se intellegere, numquam se amare destiterit sicut iam ostendimus. Ac per hoc quando ad se ipsam cogitatione convertitur fit trinitas in qua iam et verbum possit intellegi. Formatur quippe ex ipsa cogitatione, voluntate utrumque iungente. Ibi ergo magis agnoscenda est imago quam quaerimus.