For I had my back
toward the light, and my face toward the things on which the light
falls, so that my face, which looked toward the illuminated
things, was not itself illuminated. Whatever was written in any
of the fields of rhetoric or logic, geometry, music, or
arithmetic, I could understand without any great difficulty and
without the instruction of another man. All this thou knowest, O
Lord my God, because both quickness in understanding and acuteness
in insight are thy gifts. Yet for such gifts I made no thank
offering to thee. Therefore, my abilities served not my profit
but rather my loss, since I went about trying to bring so large a
part of my substance into my own power. And I did not store up my
strength for thee, but went away from thee into the far country to
prostitute my gifts in disordered appetite.[118] And what did
these abilities profit me, if I did not put them to good use? I
did not realize that those arts were understood with great
difficulty, even by the studious and the intelligent, until I
tried to explain them to others and discovered that even the most
proficient in them followed my explanations all too slowly.
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