Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four PeriodsPlotinus
Philosophy
Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
Plotinus
Plotinus
Is the power of perception common to the reasonable soul and to the
irrational soul, and will we grant that it possesses the memory of
sense-objects and of intelligible things? To recognize that it is one
and the same power which equally perceives both kinds of things, is
already to take one step towards the solution of the problem. But if we
divide this power into two, there will nevertheless still be two kinds
of memory; further, if we allow two kinds of memory to each of the two
souls (the rational and the irrational), there will be four kinds of
memory.
MEMORY IS NOT IDENTICAL WITH FEELING OR REASONING.
Are we compelled to remember sensations by sensibility, whether it be
the same power which feels sensation, and which remembers sensation,
or is it also discursive reason which conceives and remembers
conceptions. But the men who reason the best are not those who also
remember the best; and those who have equally delicate senses, do not
all, on that account, have an equally good memory. On the contrary,
some have delicate senses, while others have a good memory, without
however being capable of perceiving equally well. On the other hand, if
feeling and remembering be mutually independent, there will be (outside
of sensibility) another power which will remember things formerly
perceived by sensation, and this power will have to feel what it is to
remember.[148]
MEMORY BELONGS TO IMAGINATION.
(To solve all these difficulties) it may be stated that nothing
hinders the admission that the actualization of the sensation produces
in memory an image, and that the imagination, which differs (from
sensation), possesses the power of preserving and recalling these
images. It is indeed imagination in which sensation culminates; and
when sensation ceases, imagination preserves its representation.
If then this power preserve the image of the absent object, it
constitutes memory.[149] According as the image remains for a longer
or shorter time, memory is or is not faithful; and our memories
last, or are effaced. Memory of sense-objects therefore belongs to
the imagination. If this faculty of memory be possessed by different
persons in unequal degrees, this difference depends either on the
difference of forces, or on practice (or exercise), or on the absence
or presence of certain bodily dispositions which may or may not
influence memory, or disturb it.[150] But elsewhere we shall study the
question further.
INTELLECTUAL CONCEPTIONS ARE NOT ENTIRELY PRESERVED BY IMAGINATION.
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