When Augustine writes in the Confessions that 'if he is not asked what time is, he knows; if he is asked, he knows not,' we recognize something more searching than a design for paradox and broader than a reflection simply about time. It is as though Augustine would inform us that the more closely we approach the center of distinctively human phenomena-the organ of vision or understanding itself-the less clearly can we resolve the elements of that center as objects. The converse of this may not always be true-that where analysis becomes opaque, we can infer that we are looking at the human face, mainly our own-but I suggest that the two sides of this prospect have been true, are true, for the attempt to grasp what style is: the sense of both presence and elusiveness which Augustine finds for time, and a source for that complementarity in the relation between style and the defining features of the self.