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Is it not the happy life that which all all desire, which indeed no one fails to desire? But how have they known about it so as to want it? Where did they see it to love it? . . . Even they would not wish to be happy unless they had some idea of happiness. . . . My question is whether the happy life is in the memory. For we would not love it if we did not know what it is. We have heard the term and all of us acknowledge that we are looking for a thing. . . . Therefore it is known to everyone. If they could be asked it they want to be happy, without hesitation they would answer with one voice that they so wish. (196-7)

Thus, Augustine reasons that through seeking joy, the soul seeks that which brings the highest happiness, ultimately it seeks God and then will find Him who is everywhere present for the one who has eyes to see.

Unfortunately, Augustine’s explanation leaves the ultimate question yet unexplained. How do I search for that which I have, and how do I know to seek that which I have not known? Be it an absent happiness longed for, or consciously the presence of God Himself, our epistemological relation to these things remains enigmatic. Augustine’s simplification from seeking to know God from seeking happiness may disclose the key to understanding the problem of the Meno and human existential knowledge. Augustine accepts the premise that all humans seek happiness, yet he makes a logical mistake at this point as revealed by his psychological analysis of the human heart. Even after stating the ‘certain’ desire of all people for true joy, Augustine writes, For there are those deplorable blind spots where the capacity that lies in me is concealed from me.” (207) Why does Augustine say that he is certain all people posses a real idea and desire for happiness? Because “if they could be asked if they want to be happy, without hesitation they would answer with one voice that they so wish.” Here Augustine commits the fallacy of popular opinion. Basic logic courses first teach that something is not at all necessarily true just because the majority says that it is, for even the simpleton knows that people possess false ideas and are easily deceived. In book III, Augustine writes, “The blindness of humanity is so great that people are actually proud of their blindness.” (38) Just because we think that we understand happiness and think that we desire it does not really mean that we have an accurate idea of happiness or that it is the truth of our desire. Further, as Augustine states “All these ideas I hold in my memory, and the way I hold them in the memory is the way that I learn them.” (190) If I experience a pleasure of power, and some one labels it for me as joy, henceforth I am deceived and bring others into my deception that the pleasure of power is what people speak of as joy. Yet in truth, the satisfaction of power and true eternal joy prove light years apart.

Who remembers a moment of true, pure joy. Was it not so indescribably new and breathtaking that the soul gasped, “Surely, I did not before know that such a joy as this was actually possible! I had not yet fathomed!” The joy experienced was not the thing known and desired, for it was altogether new and inspiring when actually encountered. The reception of happiness is not an “oh yes, I remember that I love this. Oh yes, this is it,” but the “Oh my God!” of an utter astonishment that brings the soul to its knees as if the birth of a star had burst open in the center of our heart. Joy by its very nature of exhilarating newness cannot be remembered. CS Lewis explained further in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, that the very desire for joy itself destroys and prevents joy from being found. The second of movement from the reception of joy to the return to desiring and seeking something obliterates joy in an instant. The two energies of joy and desire are as immiscible as oil and water, as far as the east is from the west. Joy overflows with abundance while desire craves from emptiness. Will the vacuum ever spring forth with unending substance? With the substrate of want can contentment be constructed?

What then is remembered when we desire, and say that we desire joy? For what does the soul desperately seek? Another difficulty in Augustine’s thought lies in his careless employment of the word ‘love’. Given the selfish, deceptive heart of man can Augustine actually say that the unrepentant soul, turned from God actually loves anything? On page 151 he refers to the desires of an unrepentant heart as ‘loves,’ yet after his conversion he calls them “biting cares” (155). Rather perhaps, Augustine might have gained more clarity into how one may seek God had he more precisely differentiated between love and lust. Love gives and adores and is selfless, without care of possession, even the possession of intellectualization. Truly, intellectual knowledge is a type of possession where the contents of the memory are gathered, sorted and ordered into a construct of my mental self! Lust, however, seeks and wants and grasps, desperately reaching for possession and control.