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| We Should Not Seek for God and the Happy Life Unless We Had Known It.
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Chapter XX.—We Should Not Seek
for God and the Happy Life Unless We Had Known It.
29. How, then, do I seek Thee, O Lord? For
when I seek Thee, my God, I seek a happy life.855
| 855 See note, p. 75, above. | I will seek Thee, that my soul may
live.856
For my body
liveth by my soul, and my soul liveth by Thee. How, then, do I seek
a happy life, seeing that it is not mine till I can say, “It is
enough!” in that place where I ought to say it? How do I seek it?
Is it by remembrance, as though I had forgotten it, knowing too
that I had forgotten it? or, longing to learn it as a thing
unknown, which either I had never known, or had so forgotten it as
not even to remember that I had forgotten it? Is not a happy life
the thing that all desire, and is there any one who altogether
desires it not? But where did they acquire the knowledge of it,
that they so desire it? Where have they seen it, that they so love
it? Truly we have it, but how I know not. Yea, there is another way
in which, when any one hath it, he is happy; and some there be that
are happy in hope. These have it in an inferior kind to those that
are happy in fact; and yet are they better off than they who are
happy neither in fact nor in hope. And even these, had they it not
in some way, would not so much desire to be happy, which that they
do desire is most certain. How they come to know it, I cannot tell,
but they have it by some kind of knowledge unknown to me, who am in
much doubt as to whether it be in the memory; for if it be there,
then have we been happy once; whether all individually, or as in
that man who first sinned, in whom also we all died,857
and from
whom we are all born with misery, I do not now ask; but I ask
whether the happy life be in the memory? For did we not know it, we
should not love it. We hear the name, and we all acknowledge that
we desire the thing; for we are not delighted with the sound only.
For when a Greek hears it spoken in Latin, he does not feel
delighted, for he knows not what is spoken; but we are delighted,858
| 858 That is, as knowing Latin. | as he too
would be if he heard it in Greek; because the thing itself is
neither Greek nor Latin, which Greeks and Latins, and men of all
other tongues, long so earnestly to obtain. It is then known unto
all, and could they with one voice be asked whether they wished to
be happy, without doubt they would all answer that they would. And
this could not be unless the thing itself, of which it is the name,
were retained in their memory.
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