Reflection Confession of St. Augustine.

Essay by ladeeiaUniversity, Master'sA+, November 2005

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Augustine starts his analysis of memory in a description of a house. The storehouse is a place where objects are retrieved, deposited, and re-stored; just like the memory where images are kept, and in need recovered. Augustine gives a characterization of memory as if it was materialistic; it is reliable, everything has its own place in it, and it can contain unlimited information.

The memory exists in all things in the past, present and no one can take it away from us.

St. Augustine believed that the ideas in someones memory must have been in his mind before he learned it, waiting to be recognized. Augustine suggests, "It must have been that they were already in my memory, hidden away in its deeper recesses, in so remote a part of it that I might not have been able to think of them at all, if some other person had not brought them to the fore by teaching me about them" (X: chapter 10, 218). In recognizing an idea the inclusive memory he has in his mind. In addition memories that are neglected slip back into remote places of the memory and these memories evolve becoming new ones again.

Augustine then started to focus on the search...