"Therefore, I think that time is nothing but an expansion: what thing? I do not know, but I wonder if it was not the spirit itself. I beseech Thee, my God, what then I measure when I say we loosely 'this time is longer than that'; or when I say precisely, 'this is the double of that'? Mido time, I know. But do not measure the future, because it is not yet, and I measure this, because it includes any temporary space, I measure not last, because it is not anymore. What I measure then? Do they spend time, not the past? So what I said before. "

The Confessions of Augustine of Hippo (354-430) are organized around the process of self-knowledge that begs the question of man's relationship with God, which transcends and determines one's own subjectivity. Meditation on the contrast between human time and divine eternity, undertaken in this book XI, leads to recognition of the paradox of being time. Augustine concludes that time is the expansion of the spirit through the joint activity of memory, attention and expectation.

Augustine of Hippo has been published in this Editorial The teacher or On Language (2003).