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8. Wonder
- The Catholic University of America Press
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124 8 Wonder magna ista vis est memoriae, magna nimis, deus meus, penetrale amplum et infinitum. Quis ad fundum eius pervenit? Et vis est haec animi mei atque ad meam naturam pertinet, nec ego ipse capio totum quod sum. Ergo animus ad habendum se ipsum angustus est, ut ubi sit quod sui non capit? Numquid extra ipsum ac non in ipso? Quomodo ergo non capit? Multa mihi super hoc oboritur admiratio, stupor apprehendit me. Et eunt homines mirari alta montium et ingentes fluctus maris et latissimos lapsus fluminum et oceani ambitum et gyros siderum, et relinquunt se ipsos , nec mirantur quod haec omnia, cum dicerem, non ea videbam oculis, nec tamen dicerem, nisi montes et fluctus et flumina et sidera quae vidi et oceanum quem credidi intus in memoria mea viderem, spatiis tam ingentibus quasi foris viderem. Nec ea tamen videndo absorbui quando vidi oculis , nec ipsa sunt apud me sed imagines eorum, et novi quid ex quo sensu corporis impressum sit mihi. This power of memory is great, very great, my God, of vast and endless depth. Who gets to the bottom of it? And although this power belongs to my soul and is proper to my nature, even I myself do not grasp all that I am. Is it then that the soul is too constricted to possess itself? Where then is the part of itself it does not grasp? Is it outside rather than within itself? How then does it not grasp itself? This moves me to great wonder—astonishment takes me. And people go to marvel at high mountains, at huge sea surges, at the vast spread of rivers, at the ocean’s range and at the movements of the stars— while neglecting themselves! Neither do they wonder that when I was w onder S 125 speaking of all these things they were not before my eyes, and that I could not have spoken of them—not mountains or surges or rivers or stars, which I have seen; nor the ocean, which I take on trust— unless I had seen them in my memory in spaces as vast as if I were seeing them externally. And yet in seeing these things I did not take them into myself when I saw them with my eyes; it is not these things that are inside me, but rather their images; and I know which was impressed upon me by which bodily sense. Augustine here, in the tenth book of the Confessions (10.8.15) expresses wonder (admiratio) at himself. No one, he says, has arrived at the true depth of his or her own memory, and he cannot himself grasp totum quod sum, all that he is. But this is paradoxical: how can the mind be such that it cannot grasp part of what it itself is? Wonder and astonishment (stupor) overcome him at this; and then he is puzzled as to why so many wonder at the glories of the sensible creation outside themselves, but do not wonder at their own capacity to hold the images of such things in their own minds, and to wonder at them. Augustine here encourages a kind of meta-wonder, which is to say a wonder or amazement at our own capacity to wonder. This capacity, he thinks, is the most wonderful thing there is, and, though it is not said in this passage, that is because it participates more fully in God than anything in the sensible creation. w Appetite is rooted in wonder and has intimacy with some creature or ensemble of creatures as its end. Knowledge, in turn, on its Christian construal, is a particular kind of intimacy between one creature and another. Wonder responds to something present, something before your face, and it does so with a blend of surprise and delight. It is not yet desire, which is typically for an absence, something whose presence is sought but is not yet present. You wonder at and delight in your lovw [44.202.90.91] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 12:12 GMT) 126 S w onder er when she is in your arms; you desire her presence when she is not. As Odysseus comes home to Ithaca and Penelope, he sheds the exile’s longing, which is a form of desire, and replaces it with delight in the place to which he belongs. And when you enter the presence of God, purified of all that separates you from him, you will delightedly wonder at knowing as...