In Book IV, Augustine laments the wild years of his young adult life, regretting the value he placed in the sensual world as determined by “the flesh.” Although one may be tempted to attack Augustine as an anti-material grouch, the entirety of Book IV shows a different line of thought. “The flesh” guides Augustine to things of a transient nature—and herein resides their sinfulness. What are these transient things? Augustine mentions the typical sensual pleasures, but even proffers something as beautiful as friendship. Really, anything that isn’t God is transient. Creation is transient. Only the Creator is eternal. Augustine is here propounding the medieval developments of the Creator-creation gap and the (originally Greek) problem of movement in the universe. More importantly, he puts it into practical terms for the inner struggle of his own soul.

With this philosophy, Augustine becomes quite sensual. All of creation is transient, but all of creation is more fully and properly enjoyed when grounded in the permanence of the Creator. When this is done:

You will lose nothing. The decayed parts of you will receive a new flowering, and all your sicknesses will be healed. All that is ebbing away from you will be given fresh form and renewed, boundly tight to you. (IV. xi [16])

Enough with all of this context. Where is this language analogy?

First off, Augustine uses language as an analogy for the totality of creation. When he attacks the problem of movement (inherited from the Greeks), as things pass in and out of existence, they form the whole of creation:

That is the way our speech is constructed by sounds which are significant. What we say would not be complete if one word did not cease to exist when it has sounded its constituent parts, so that it can be succeeded by another. (IV. x [15])

Secondly, Augustine uses language as an analogy for man’s innate desire to perceive the whole (creation grounded in Creator) rather than the parts of creation:

All that you experience through it is only partial; you are ignorant of the whole to which the parts belong. Yet they delight you. But if your physical perception were capable of comprehending the whole and that not, for your punishment, been justly restrained to a part of the universe, you would wish everything at present in being to pass away, so that the totality of things could provide you with greater pleasure. The words we speak you hear by the same physical perception, and you have no wish that the speaker stop at each syllable. You want him to hurry on so that other syllables may come, and you may hear the whole. (IV. [17])

Such sensual vibrations tickle the ear—they are delights! In part, the vowels are the most beautiful. The consonants, a blissful rhythm. They are lost, however, unless they come and go, weaving together from existence to nonexistence into that greater poetry.