PATIENT
The Confessions
COMPOSED
c. 397–400 CE
FORM
Autobiography addressed to God
SETTING
Hippo, a bishop looking back
CHIEF COMPLAINT
Why is the heart restless, and what is it looking for?
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS
Augustine (354–430 CE), a bishop in his forties, tells God the story of his life: the boy who stole pears for no reason, the professor who prayed “not yet,” the man in a garden who heard a child say “take up and read.” Then, having told the story, he turns to ask what memory is, what time is, and what it means that anything exists at all. It is the first great autobiography in the West, and the most honest.
REVIEW OF SYSTEMS
RESTLESS HEART
The heart made for God and unsettled until it rests in him. The book's first sentence and its thesis.
TAKE UP AND READ
The child's voice in the Milan garden, and the open book that ended the long division of his will.
MEMORY
The spacious palaces of the mind, where the past is kept and where he goes looking for God.
TIME
What it is when no one asks. A present of things past, present and future, held in the soul.
THE DIVIDED WILL
Knowing what to do and not doing it. “Give me chastity, only not yet.”
PHYSICAL EXAM — STYLE & STRUCTURE
- —Addressed to God from the first line, not to a reader. The whole book is a prayer.
- —The story comes first: childhood, the pear theft, years of searching, the garden at Milan.
- —Then the book changes. In the last books he stops telling the story and asks what memory, time and creation are.
- —Honest about himself, from the pears to the divided will. The full guide also notes where that honesty has limits.
- —Lyrical passages sit between the arguments, such as “Too late have I loved You.”
ASSESSMENT & PLAN
The Christian answer to the questions the Plato and Boethius guides ask. Augustine takes the Platonic ascent of the soul, which he says he learned from the Platonists, and sets it inside a story of grace, a mother's prayers and one garden in Milan. It also sits beside Aristotle's Ethics as a study of the divided will: Aristotle describes weakness of will from outside, and Augustine describes it from inside. Three good places to start are the opening sentence in Book I, the garden in Book VIII, and the question of time in Book XI. For a first read, try Henry Chadwick (Oxford), Maria Boulding (New City Press) or Sarah Ruden (Modern Library); the full guide quotes E. B. Pusey's public-domain translation.