I will move on, then, beyond this power of my nature, rising by degrees to him who made me. And I come to the fields and spacious palaces of my memory, where the treasures of innumerable images are stored, brought there from all sorts of things perceived by the senses. Further, there is stored up in memory whatever thoughts we think, either by enlarging or diminishing, or changing in any other way those things which the senses have brought in; and whatever else has been committed and stored up, which forgetfulness has not yet swallowed up and buried.
When I enter there, I ask what I want brought forth, and some things appear instantly; others must be sought after longer, and are brought, as it were, out of some inner storage place. Still others rush out in crowds, and while only one thing is desired and asked for, they leap into view as if to say, "Do you perhaps want me?" I drive this away from the face of my remembrance with the hand of my heart until what I wanted is unveiled and appears in sight out of its secret place. Other things come up readily, in unbroken order, as they are called for - those in front giving way to those that follow; and as they make way, they are hidden from sight, ready to come back at my will. All of this takes place when I repeat something by heart.
And all these things are preserved distinctly and under general heads, each having entered my memory by its own particular avenue: light and colors and forms of bodies, by the eyes; all sorts of sounds by the ears; all smells by the avenue of the nostrils; all tastes by the mouth; and by the sensation of the whole body, what is hard or soft, hot or cold, smooth or rugged, heavy or light - either external or internal to the body. All these things the great recesses, the hidden and unknown caverns of memory receive and store, to be retrieved and brought forth when needed, each entering by its own gate. Yet the things themselves do not enter, but only the images of things perceived are there, ready to be recalled in thought.
But how these images are formed, who can tell? It is plain, however, which sense brought each one in and stored it up. For even while I dwell in darkness and silence, I can produce colors in my memory if I choose, and I can discern between black and white. Sounds do not break in and alter the image brought in by my eyes which I am reviewing, though they also are there, lying dormant and stored, as it were, separately. I can call for these, too, and they immediately appear. And though my voice is still and my throat silent, I can sing as much as I will. Those images of colors do not intrude, even though they are there, when another memory is called for which came in by way of the ears. So it is with other things brought in and stored up by the other senses - I can recall them at my pleasure. Yes, I can tell the fragrance of lilies from violets, though I smell nothing; I prefer honey to sweet wine, smooth surfaces to rough ones - at the time neither tasting nor handling, but only remembering.
These things I do inside myself, in that vast hall of my memory. For present there with me are heaven, earth, sea, and whatever I could think on them, in addition to what I have forgotten. There also I meet with myself, and recall myself - what, when and where I did a thing, and what my feelings were when I did it. All that I remember is there, either personal experiences or what I was told by others. Out of the same store I continually combine with the past, fresh images of things experienced, or what I have believed from what I have experienced. From these I can project future actions, events and hopes, and I can reflect on all these again in the present. I say to myself, in that great storehouse of my mind, filled with the images of so many and such great things, "I will do this or that, and this or that will follow." "Oh, would that this or that might be!" "May God prevent this or that!" This is the way I talk to myself, and when I speak, the images of all I speak about are present, out of the same treasury of memory. I could not say anything at all about them if their images were not there.
Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, O my God: a large and boundless chamber! Who has ever sounded the depths of it? Yet this is a power of mine, and belongs to my nature. But I do not myself comprehend all that i am. Therefore, the mind is too narrow to contain itself. But where can that part be which it does not itself contain? Is it outside it and not inside? How then does it not comprehend itself? A great wonder arises in me; I am stunned with amazement at this. And men go outside themselves to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the width of the ocean and the circuits of the stars, passing by themselves.
They do not wonder at the fact that when I spoke of all these things, I did not see them with my eyes, yet I could not have spoken of them unless I the inwardly saw with my memory the mountains, waves, rivers and stars which I have seen, and that ocean which I believe to exist, and with the same vast spaces between them as if I saw them outside myself. Yet I did not actually draw them into myself by seeing them, when I beheld them with my eyes, but only their images. And I know which sense of the body impressed each of them on me.
Yet these are not all that the immeasurable capacity of my memory retains. Here also is all that I have learned of the liberal sciences and have not yet forgotten - removed as it were to some inner place, which is yet no place. In this case it is not the images which are retained, but rather, the things themselves. For whatever literature, whatever art of debating, however many kind of questions I know, they exist in my memory as they are - I have not taken in their image and left out the thing itself. It is not as though it had sounded and passed away like a voice retained in the ear, which can be recalled as if it still sounded when it no longer sounded.
Nor is it like an odour that evaporates into the air as it passed, affecting the sense of smell, and from it carries an image of itself into the memory which we renew when we recall it. Nor is it like food, which verily has no taste in the belly, but yet is still tasted in some way in the memory; nor as anything which the body feels by touch and which the memory still conceives when removed from us. For those things themselves are not transmitted into the memory, but their images are caught up and stored, with an admirable swiftness, as it were, in wonderful cabinets, and from there wonderfully brought forth by the act of remembering.
But now when I hear that there are three kinds of questions - whether a thing is, what it is, - I do indeed hold the images of the sounds which make up those words, and I know that those sounds passed through the air with a noise and then ceased to be. But the questions themselves which are conveyed by these sounds, I never reached with any sense of my body, nor do I ever see them at all except by my mind. Yet I have not laid up their images in my memory, but these very questions themselves. How they entered into me, let them say if they can; for I have gone over all the avenues of my flesh, and cannot find how they entered. For the eyes say, "If those images were colored, we reported about them." The ears say, "If they made a sound, we gave you knowledge of them." The nostrils say, "If they have any smell, they passed by us." The taste say, "Unless they have a flavour, do not ask me." The touch says, "If it has size, I did not handle it, and if I did not handle it, I have no account of it."
Whence and how did these things enter my memory? I do not know. For when I learned them, I gave no credit to another man's mind, but recognized them in mine; and approving them as true, I commended them to my mind, laying them up as it were, where I could get at them again whenever I wished. There they were then [in my mind] before I stored them in my memory. Where then, or why, when they were spoken, did I acknowledge them and say, "So it is! It is true," unless they were already in the memory, but so thrown back and buried as it were in deeper recesses, that if the suggestion of another had not drawn them forth, I may have been unable to conceive of them? (Augustine here is very near the Platonic teaching, that learning is remembering. In his Retractions (1, 8:2) he gave up this opinion, saying rather the mind has a natural affinity for the things of the intelligible world.)
Thus, we find that to learn those things whose images do not come to us by the way of the senses, but which we know by themselves as they are, without images, is nothing more than taking the things the memory already has - scattered and unarranged. By marking and careful attention we gather them, as it were in that same memory where they lay unknown before scattered and ignored, so that they can readily occur to the mind now familiarized with them. And how many things of this kinds does my memory hold which have already been discovered and, as I said, placed as it were handily, which we are said to have learned and come to know? And if I for some short space should cease to call them back to mind, they would again be so buried, and glide back, as it were, into the deeper recesses, that they would have to be drawn out again as if new from the same place.
For there is nowhere else for them to go, but they must be drawn together again that they may be known. That is to say, they must be collected together from their scattering. From this word to cogitate comes. For cogo [I collect] and cogito [I recollect] have the same relation to each other as ago [I do] and agito [I do frequently facio [I make] and facito [I make frequently] But the mind has appropriated to itself this word, cogito, so that, not what is collected anywhere, but only what is recollected, that is, brought together in the mind, is properly said to be cogitated or thought upon.
The memory also contains innumerable principles and laws of numbers and dimensions, none of which have been impressed upon it by any bodily sense, since they have neither colors, sound, taste, smell nor touch. I have heard the sound of the words by which they are signified, but the sounds are other than the things themselves. Fir the sounds are different in Greek than in Latin, but the things are neither Greek nor Latin, nor any other language. I have seen the lines of architects, the very finest, like a spider's thread; but the truths they express are not the images of those lines. which my physical eye saw. The architect knows them without any use whatsoever of a body, by recognizing them within himself. I have perceived, also, with all the senses of my body the number of the things which we count, but those numbers themselves by which we count are different. They are not the images of the things we count, and therefore, they simply are. Let him who does not see these truth laugh at me for saying them. While he derides me, I will pity him.
I hold all these things in my memory, and I remember how I learned them. I remembered, too, having heard many things erroneously offered against the truth of them, and though they are false, yet it is not false to have remembered them. I perceive that it is one thing to distinguish them when I thought upon them. I remember both that I have often understood these things in the past, and I am storing up in my memory what I now discern and understand. Therefore, I remember that I have remembered, so that if later on I should call to mind that I was once able to remember these things, it will be by the power of memory that I shall recall it.
The same memory contains the feelings of my mind - not in the same way that my mind contains them when it feels them, but in quite a different way, according to a power peculiar to memory. For without rejoicing, I remember that I have rejoiced. Without sorrow, I recollect my past sorrow. And what I once feared, I review without fear; without desire, I call to mind past desire. Sometimes, on the other hand, I remember my past sorrow with joy, and my past joy with sorrow.This is not to be wondered at as regards the body, for the mind is one thing, the body another. If I therefore remember some past pain of the body with joy, it is not so strange. But this very memory itself is mind - for when we want something remembered, we say, "See that you keep this is mind." And when we forget, we say, "It did not come to my mind." or "It slipped my mind." calling the memory itself the mind.
Since this is so, how is it, that when I remember my past sorrow with joy, the mind has joy while the memory has sorrow? The mind rejoices over the joyfulness which is in it, while the memory is not sad while retaining the sadness in it. Does the memory perchance not belong to the mind? Who will say so? The memory then is, as it were, the belly of the mind, and joy and sadness are like sweet and bitter food. When these are committed to the memory, they are, as it were, passed into the belly, where they may be stowed but not tasted. It is ridiculous to consider this comparison, but yet they are not totally unalike.
But, consider this. It is out of my memory that I say there are four basic emotions of the mind - desire, joy, fear and sorrow. Whatever I may discuss about them, by dividing each into its own particular kind, and by defining what it is, it is from my memory that I find what to say and bring it out from there. Yet I am not disturbed by these emotions when I call them to mind and remember them. Yes, and before I recalled and brought them back, they were there, and so could be brought forth by recollection. Perhaps, as meat is brought up out of the stomach by chewing the cud, these things are brought out of the memory by recollection.
Why, then, does the man who is thinking of them not taste in his mouth the sweetness of joy or the bitterness of sorrow? Does the comparison fail in this because it is not alike in all respects? For who would ever willingly speak of it, if every time we named grief or fear we should be compelled to feel sad or fearful? And yet we could not speak of them if we did not find in our memory, not only the sounds of their names according to images impressed on it by our bodily senses, but also the notions of the things themselves, which we never received by any avenue of the flesh. But the mind itself recognized them through the experience of its own passions, committed them to the memory; or else the memory itself retained them without having them actually assigned to it. [by the conscious mind]
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Saturday, March 29, 2014
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