|
ACT OF REMEMBERING.
16. And yet are not these all that the illimitable capacity of my
memory retains. Here also is all that is apprehended of the liberal
sciences, and not yet forgotten removed as it were into an inner
place, which is not a place; nor are they the images which am
retained, but the things themselves. For what is literature, what
skill in disputation, whatsoever I know of all the many kinds of
questions there are, is so m my memory, as that I have not taken in
the image and left the thing without, or that it should have sounded
and passed away like a voice imprinted on the ear by that trace,
whereby it might be recorded, as though it sounded when it no longer
did so; or as an odour while 'it passes away, and vanishes into
wind, affects the sense of smell, whence it conveys the image of
itself into the memory, which we realize in recollecting; or like
food, which assuredly in the belly hath now no taste, and yet hath a
kind of taste in the memory, or like anything that is by touching felt
by the body, and which even when removed from us is imagined by the
memory. For these things themselves are not put into it, but the
images of them only are caught up, with a marvellous quickness, and
laid up, as it were, in most wonderful garners, and wonderfully
brought forth when we remember.
|
|