Saint Augustine’s Confessions, Book 4

Chapter 16

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And what did it profit me, that I—at that time a most wretched slave to evil desires—read and understood by myself all the books of the Liberal ArtsIn the classical and medieval world, the "artes liberales" were the branches of knowledge suitabe for a free person, comprising the Trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy)., as many as I was able to read? And I took joy in them, yet I did not know the source of whatever was true and certain within them.

original Latin: "Et quid mihi proderat... quicquid ibi verum & certum esset." This passage from Augustine’s autobiography reflects on his period of intellectual pride before his conversion to Christianity. He suggests that secular knowledge is meaningless if one does not recognize God as the source of all truth.

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