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6. But were I, O Lord, by my mouth and by my pen to confess unto
Thee the whole, whatever Thou hast taught me concerning that matter,
the name of which hearing beforehand, and not understanding (they who
could not understand it telling me of it), I conceive. it as having
innumerable and varied forms. And therefore did I not conceive it;
my mind revolved in disturbed order foul and horrible "forms," but
yet "forms;" and I called it formless, not that it lacked form,
but because it had such as, did it appear, my mind would turn from,
as unwonted and incongruous, and at which human weakness would be
disturbed. But even that which I did conceive was formless, not by
the privation of all form, but in comparison of more beautiful forms;
and true reason persuaded me that I ought altogether to remove from it
all remnants of any form whatever, if I wished to conceive matter
wholly without form; and I could not. For sooner could I imagine
that that which should be deprived of all form was not at all, than
conceive anything between form and nothing, neither formed, nor
nothing, formless, nearly nothing. And my mind hence ceased to
question my spirit, filled (as it was) with the images of formed
bodies, and changing and varying them according to its will; and I
applied myself to the bodies themselves, and looked more deeply into
their mutability, by which the. y cease to be what they had. been,
and begin to be what they were not; and. this same transit from form
unto form I have looked upon to be through some formless condition,
not through a very nothing; but I desired to know, not to guess.
And if my voice and my pen should confess the whole unto Thee,
whatsoever knots Thou hast untied for me,concerning this question,
who of my readers would endure to take in the whole? Nor yet,
therefore, shall my heart cease to give Thee honour, and a song of
praise, for those things which it is not able to express. For the
mutability of mutable things is itself capable of all those forms into
which mutable things are changed. And this mutability, what is it?
Is it soul? Is it body? Is it the outer appearance of soul or
body? Could it be said, "Nothing were something," and "That
which is, is not," I would say that this were it; and yet in some
manner was it already, since it could receive these visible and
compound shapes.
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