his first words Augustine is concerned not with himself, but with God. Augustine narrates his life here as a series of false steps in self-assertion—the desire to make a place for himself in a world that respects only power, self-amusement, wealth, and family status. He makes no mean effort toward accumulation of those things, and precisely so drifts farther away from the God in whose presence life is most fully lived. His is no life at all then—only after the fact of his conversion can he narrate