Citing divine intimacy as motivation and discounting “life’s experiences,” Augustine commits to “do[ing] truth […] in my heart by confession in your presence, and with my pen before many witnesses” (181). Augustine then goes over the reasons why he is confessing: to condemn sin, to glorify God, to bring joy to loving, charitable readers, and to let them know his heart. He hopes that wayward readers will not read his words and judge him, “For it is you, Lord, who judge me” (184).

Augustine wonders what he is loving when he loves God. He experiences and appreciates the beauty of the world and all its creatures through his senses, but he knows this is only evidence of God, not God himself, though he asserts that he has corresponding spiritual senses within that allow him to know God.

He begins to explore memory, marveling at its enormous capacity and concluding that, while material things exist as sensory images in his mind, skills and ideas exist as themselves, suggesting they are already in our minds but are unremembered and that thinking is in fact a process of collecting forgotten memories. Emotions he views similarly in that they have no sensory correlate, and yet Augustine is amazed that an emotion can be recalled without being experienced.