any other source from which being and life could flow into us, 
save this, that thou, O Lord, hast made us -- thou with whom being 
and life are one, since thou thyself art supreme being and supreme 
life both together.  For thou art infinite and in thee there is no 
change, nor an end to this present day -- although there is a 
sense in which it ends in thee since all things are in thee and 
there would be no such thing as days passing away unless thou 
didst sustain them.  And since "thy years shall have no end,"[20] 
thy years are an ever-present day.  And how many of ours and our 
fathers' days have passed through this thy day and have received 
from it what measure and fashion of being they had?  And all the 
days to come shall so receive and so pass away.  "But thou art the 
same"![21]  And all the things of tomorrow and the days yet to 
come, and all of yesterday and the days that are past, thou wilt 
gather into this thy day.  What is it to me if someone does not 
understand this?  Let him still rejoice and continue to ask, "What 
is this?"  Let him also rejoice and prefer to seek thee, even if 
he fails to find an answer, rather than to seek an answer and not 
find thee!

                         CHAPTER VII

     11.  "Hear me, O God!  Woe to the sins of men!"  When a man 
cries thus, thou showest him mercy, for thou didst create the man 
but not the sin in him.  Who brings to remembrance the sins of my 
infancy?  For in thy sight there is none free from sin, not even 
the infant who has lived but a day upon this earth.  Who brings 
this to my remembrance?  Does not each little one, in whom I now 
observe what I no longer remember of myself?  In what ways, in 
that time, did I sin?  Was it that I cried for the breast?  If I 
should now so cry -- not indeed for the breast, but for food 
suitable to my condition -- I should be most justly laughed at and 
rebuked.  What I did then deserved rebuke but, since I could not 
understand those who rebuked me, neither custom nor common sense 
permitted me to be rebuked.  As we grow we root out and cast away 
from us such childish habits.  Yet I have not seen anyone who is 
wise who cast away the good when trying to purge the bad.  Nor was 
it good, even in that time, to strive to get by crying what, if it 
had been given me, would have been hurtful; or to be bitterly 
indignant at those who, because they were older -- not slaves, 
either, but free -- and wiser than I, would not indulge my 
capricious desires.  Was it a good thing for me to try, by 
struggling as hard as I could, to harm them for not obeying me, 
even when it would have done me harm to have been obeyed?  Thus, 
the infant's innocence lies in the weakness of his body and not in 
the infant mind.  I have myself observed a baby to be jealous, 
though it could not speak; it was livid as it watched another 
infant at the breast.

     Who is ignorant of this?  Mothers and nurses tell us that 
they cure these things by I know not what remedies.  But is this 
innocence, when the fountain of milk is flowing fresh and 
abundant, that another who needs it should not be allowed to share 
it, even though he requires such nourishment to sustain his life?  
Yet we look leniently on such things, not because they are not 
faults, or even small faults, but because they will vanish as the 
years pass.  For, although we allow for such things in an infant, 
the same things could not be tolerated patiently in an adult.

     12.  Therefore, O Lord my God, thou who gavest life to the 
infant, and a body which, as we see, thou hast furnished with 
senses, shaped with limbs, beautified with form, and endowed with 
all vital energies for its well-being and health -- thou dost 
command me to praise thee for these things, to give thanks unto 
the Lord, and to sing praise unto his name, O Most High.[22]  For 
thou art God, omnipotent and good, even if thou hadst done no more 
than these things, which no other but thou canst do -- thou alone 
who madest all things fair and didst order everything according to 
thy law.

     I am loath to dwell on this part of my life of which, O Lord, 
I have no remembrance, about which I must trust the word of others 
and what I can surmise from observing other infants, even if such 
guesses are trustworthy.  For it lies in the deep murk of my 
forgetfulness and thus is like the period which I passed in my 
mother's womb.  But if "I was conceived in iniquity, and in sin my 
mother nourished me in her womb,"[23] where, I pray thee, O my 
God, where, O Lord, or when was I, thy servant, ever innocent?  
But see now, I pass over that period, for what have I to do with a 
time from which I can recall no memories? 

                         CHAPTER VIII

     13.  Did I not, then, as I grew out of infancy, come next to 
boyhood, or rather did it not come to me and succeed my infancy?  
My infancy did not go away (for where would it go?).  It was 
simply no longer present; and I was no longer an infant who could 
not speak, but now a chattering boy.  I remember this, and I have 
since observed how I learned to speak.  My elders did not teach me 
words by rote, as they taught me my letters afterward.  But I 
myself, when I was unable to communicate all I wished to say to 
whomever I wished by means of whimperings and grunts and various 
gestures of my limbs (which I used to reinforce my demands), I 
myself repeated the sounds already stored in my memory by the mind 
which thou, O my God, hadst given me.  When they called some thing 
by name and pointed it out while they spoke, I saw it and realized 
that the thing they wished to indicate was called by the name they 
then uttered.  And what they meant was made plain by the gestures 
of their bodies, by a kind of natural language, common to all 
nations, which expresses itself through changes of countenance,