Memory, self-examination, and time › Reading the primary text

Start with Book X, chapters 8-19, for the inquiry into memory, including learned matters, emotions, forgetting, and recognition. Then read Book XI, chapters 13-15 and 20-29, for creation, the temporal present, measurement, and the psalm example. Books II and VIII supply the narrative discussions of theft and divided willing developed here.

• Augustine, Confessions, Book X, translated by J. G. Pilkington, for memory and self-examination.
• Augustine, Confessions, Book XI, in the same translation, for the analysis of time.
• Augustine, Confessions, Book II, for the pear theft and the attraction of companionship in wrongdoing.
• Augustine, Confessions, Book VIII, for the divided will and the account of conversion.