Aristotle ON MEMORY AND REMINISCENCE Complete

Translated by J. Beare.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

13 pages - You are on Page 5

We can now understand why it is that sometimes, when we have such processes, based on some former act of perception, occurring in the soul, we do not know whether this really implies our having had perceptions corresponding to them, and we doubt whether the case is or is not one of memory. But occasionally it happens that (while thus doubting) we get a sudden idea and recollect that we heard or saw something formerly. This (occurrence of the 'sudden idea') happens whenever, from contemplating a mental object as absolute, one changes his point of view, and regards it as relative to something else.

The opposite (sc. to the case of those who at first do not recognize their phantasms as mnemonic) also occurs, as happened in the cases of Antipheron of Oreus and others suffering from mental derangement; for they were accustomed to speak of their mere phantasms as facts of their past experience, and as if remembering them. This takes place whenever one contemplates what is not a likeness as if it were a likeness.

Mnemonic exercises aim at preserving one's memory of something by repeatedly reminding him of it; which implies nothing else (on the learner's part) than the frequent contemplation of something (viz. the 'mnemonic', whatever it may be) as a likeness, and not as out of relation.

As regards the question, therefore, what memory or remembering is, it has now been shown that it is the state of a presentation, related as a likeness to that of which it is a presentation; and as to the question of which of the faculties within us memory is a function, (it has been shown) that it is a function of the primary faculty of sense-perception, i.e. of that faculty whereby we perceive time.

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