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

Chapter 6.--The Opinion Which the Mind Has of Itself is Deceitful.

8. But the mind errs, when it so lovingly and intimately connects itself with these images, as even to consider itself to be something of the same kind. For so it is conformed to them to some extent, not by being this, but by thinking it is so: not that it thinks itself to be an image, but outright that very thing itself of which it entertains the image. For there still lives in it the power of distinguishing the corporeal thing which it leaves without, from the image of that corporeal thing which it contains therefrom within itself: except when these images are so projected as if felt without and not thought within, as in the case of people who are asleep, or mad, or in a trance.

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De Trinitate

VI.

[VI 8] Errat autem mens cum se istis imaginibus tanto amore coniungit ut etiam se esse aliquid huiusmodi existimet. Ita enim conformatur eis quodam modo non id exsistendo sed putando, non quo se imaginem putet sed omnino illud ipsum cuius imaginem secum habet. Viget quippe in ea iudicium discernendi corpus quod foris relinquit ab imagine quam de illo secum gerit nisi cum ita exprimuntur eaedem imagines tamquam foris sentiantur non intus cogitentur sicut dormientibus aut furentibus aut in aliqua extasi accidere solet.