Augustine in his book begins it with a prayer in praise of God. We do read that book one
has a very extensive invocation where its talking about how one can seek God without know
what he even is. We read later that Augustine is considering to what extent and at a specific
age he was sinning in his early infant age.
Later, Augustine begins to remember more of his infancy which involves his service of
learning to communicate with language which was Latin. Augustine did not like how language
was taught in school because he felt that he was taught to speak as well as to write for corrupt
purposes and those purposes were for gaining future honor as well as wealth.
He does give his boyhood teacher some credit because he was taught the basic reading
and as well as writing which he said was his “primary education”. He claimed that the rest of
school was simply a matter of learning perverted human customs rather than learning the truth
or even morality.
When Augustine moved from the early years of his life he speaks more about the lurid
and sinful times in his life. Augustine even though he was acting in sinful and erotic desires he
did give himself some credit where he said, “the single desire that dominated my search for
delight was simply to love and to be loved.” (Love and lust pg. 24)
We see that book 2 ends with a consideration of the peer pressure, but Augustine will
end up partly giving the blame to what he called the theft of the pears. He is telling us that
friendship can be a very dangerous enemy and as he called it a seduction of the mind. He talks
about his early life in this specific way because he wants his readers to know the lustful desires
meaning sexual but as well as the beauty that can lead humanity into the sinful side of things.
Augustine’s comes to the realization of self in the way of how it relates to God. His
recognition of God’s love as well as his response to it is where he has achieved self-preservation
which then leads to his self-realizations. Augustine truly has come to understanding that no one
can achieve inner peace if they cannot see how much God loves His creation and just in general
how much God loves.