it stood still as long as it moved, or twice as long, as the case may be.

So we come to his own analysis. He takes as his starting-point the indisputable fact that in some way or other we do measure time. We mean something when we speak of a long time or a short time. How then do we measure it? We cannot measure it when it is future, because it is not yet here to measure; we cannot measure it when it is past, for then it is gone; and we cannot measure it when it is present, because, on reflexion, the present is found to narrow down to a single indivisible instant, a point without parts and without magnitude, and therefore incapable of being measured. So we seem to have reached an impasse. But now he takes a concrete example, and the matter begins to clear itself. He selects his illustration from a department with which he is thoroughly familiar, that of metre. It is a line from a well-known hymn by his friend Ambrose-a line of the simplest character, consisting of four iambic feet.

Deus Creator omnium.

I repeat it," says Augustine, "and my trained ear pronounces that each of the long syllables is double the length of a short syllable. But how do I compare them? For while I am pronouncing one of them, the other is not present. More

over, not one syllable is wholly present at a time, for the whole of it is not sounded until you come to the end of it; and when you have come to the end of it, it is gone. Therefore," he says, "I cannot measure the sounds until they are gone; so it is not the sounds themselves that I measure, but my memory of them. Therefore it is in my mind that I measure time. . . . The impression which passing events make on the mind, and which remains after they have passed, that is what I measure when I measure time, not the events themselves which are only complete in the moment of passing away" (Conf. xi. 12-36). That does not, of course, solve all the difficulties about time, but so far as it goes it is perfectly sound. The Histories of Philosophy note it as a real advance in clearness of thought. It is attained, as we have seen, wholly by psychological methods.

A question which lies on the border - land between philosophy and theology is that of relative priority as between faith and reason in dealing with religious matters. The principle that faith precedes understanding is often treated as characteristic of Augustine's teaching; and it is true that he often uses language to this effect. But he is too good an observer not to know that there is a sense in which reason must precede faith.

In the De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, written quite at the end of his life, he writes: For who does not see that thought precedes belief? For no one would ever believe anything unless he had first thought that it ought to be believed. For by however brief a moment some kind of thought precedes the will to believe, and however rapidly the latter follows, so as to seem most closely joined with it, yet it is necessarily the case that everything which is believed, is believed after thought has preceded. Though indeed belief itself is nothing else than thinking with assent ('cum assensione cogitare'). Not every one who thinks, believes, but every one who believes, thinks. He both believes in thinking and thinks in believing" (§ 5).

To a correspondent, Consentius, who had remarked that we must not so much ask for reason, as follow the authority of the saints, and had at the same time requested an explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity, Augustine replied (Ep. 120. 2): "If you are not unreasonable in asking me, or any other teacher, to help you to understand what you already believe, you must correct your statement, not in such a way as to repudiate faith, but so that those things which you hold by the strength of faith you may also perceive by the light of reason. It cannot be that God should disapprove in us that very thing

in which He has made us more excellent than other animate beings. Far be it from us, I say, to believe in order to avoid receiving or seeking reason; for we could not even believe unless we had rational minds." He goes on to explain that even the acceptance of the principle that in some matters faith precedes reason, itself involves reason. For, if it is reasonable to accept it, the modicum of reason which persuades us of this itself precedes faith.

It ought perhaps to be pointed out that for Augustine this preliminary exercise of reason does not in any sense lie outside the religious sphere. The passage quoted above from De Praedestinatione Sanctorum arises in the following way. Augustine quotes 2 Cor. iii. 5 in the form, "For we are not able to think of anything of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God." The argument is a fortiori. If we cannot believe without understanding, and we cannot understand without God's aid, how much less can we believe without that aid?

Turn now to his theology. When in his important work the De Trinitate-his most ambitious theological work-he endeavours to make the doctrine of the Trinity in some measure intelligible, the method which he employs is almost wholly psychological. In De Trinitate, ix. 17, indeed, he describes his method

thus: "And this question we are endeavouring in some way to investigate in the human mind, in order that from a lower image, in which our nature itself, as it were, answers, on being questioned, in a way more familiar to ourselves, we may be able to direct a more practised mental vision from the illumined creature to the unchangeable light." He begins with simple combinations of three factors and is careful to say that here there is not the faintest analogy in any strict sense; all that is illustrated is the combination of three somethings in some kind of union. For instance, when we look at any visible object, three things are closely associated -the external object, the mind's perception of the image in the sense - organ, and the act of attention, or will, which keeps the sense fixed upon the object (De Trin. xi. 2).

Here, as he freely recognises, the three are in no sense in pari materia, the object being corporeal and the other two factors spiritual. From this he passes on to various more subtle combinations of three factors, till at length, at the close of the work, he comes to an illustration which he seems to feel affords some real analogy. It is drawn, to put it briefly and in modern language, from the nature of thought itself. The form in which Augustine himself puts it is rather curious, and we shall have to study his