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need, each entering it by its own door, and each laid up within it. Nor yet do the things themselves enter; but only the images of the things perceived, are there in readiness for thought to recall them. Which, how they are formed, who can tell, though it is plain enough by which of the senses each particular image is taken in and laid up? For even when I am in the dark and in silence, I can, if I will, in my memory produce colours; and I discern between white and black, and between what other colours I will; nor do sounds break in, and disturb my reflections upon what I have seen, though they also are there, as it were dormant, in their separate repository. For these also are there, ready to be called for. And though my tongue be still, and my throat silent, yet can I sing as I will; and those images of colours which are nevertheless there, do not obtrude themselves and interrupt me, when I am drawing from another treasure, of which the ear was the channel. So of the rest, what has been brought in and gathered together by the different senses, I recall as I please: and I distinguish the sweet odour of the lily from that of the violet, when I am smelling nothing; and I prefer honey to must, smooth to rough, though neither tasting nor touching, but simply remembering.

All this I transact within the vast hall of my memory. For there heaven, and earth, and sea, are present to me, with all things which I could think upon therein, besides what I have forgotten. There also do I meet with myself and reflect upon myself— what, when, and where I have acted, and how I felt when I did a thing. There, are all things which I remember, whether acquired by personal experience,

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MEMORY, A WONDERFUL FACULTY

or from belief in others. Out of the same store also do I myself with the past put together, then this way, then that, likenesses of the things which I have experienced, or which from my experiences I have believed; and from them also, future actions, wants, and hopes have drawn, and these all again as present, I muse upon. "I will do this or that," I say to myself, in that vast gulf of my mind, which is full of the images of things, so many and so great; "and this or that will be the result." "O that this or that might be!" "God avert this or that!" Thus I speak with myself; and when I speak, the images of all I say are before me, out of the same treasure-house of the memory; nor should I speak of any of them, if the images were absent.

Great is this power of memory, great indeed, my God; it is a deep recess, spacious and boundless! who has ever fathomed it? And this is a power of my mind, and a part of my very nature; nor do I myself comprehend all I am. The mind, then, is too narrow to contain itself? And where should that be, which it does not contain of itself? How can it go beyond itself, and not be in itself? How, then, does it not contain itself? I am filled with wonder when I think of it; amazement lays hold of me. And men travel to admire the heights of mountains, and the vast waves of the sea, and the broad streams of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the orbits of stars, and pass over themselves; nor do they wonder, that when I spoke of all these things, I had them not before my eyes, and yet I could not speak of them, did I not see mountains, and waves, and rivers, and stars, and that ocean which I believed to be, inwardly in my memory, and with the same

HOW LEARNING IS Stored up.

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vast distances between them, as if I saw them from without. Yet did I not by seeing them, so to speak, absorb them with my eyes, for they themselves did not remain with me, only their images. And I knew with what sense of the body each had been impressed

on me.

BUT

CHAPTER IX.

The Memory of the Liberal Sciences.

OUT this immense capacity of my memory not only retained such things as these. Here also, as yet unforgotten, are all those lessons on the liberal sciences, in a sort of inner place, which is yet not a place; of these I possess not the images, but the things themselves. For, what is literature, what is skill in disputing, how many sorts of questions there are, all that I know of these is so lodged in my memory, that I have not retained the image and let go the thing itself, as if it should have sounded and passed away, as a voice which has made an impression on the ears may be recalled by a trace, so as to sound again when it is sounded no longer; or as an odour, while it passes away and vanishes into the air, affects the sense of smell, by which it conveys into the memory an image of itself, may be renewed by the remembrance; or as food, which certainly has no taste in the stomach, and yet in the memory is in a manner tasted; or as anything which is felt by bodily touch, which even when we are no longer in contact with it, is imagined by the memory still. Such things, indeed, as these are not introduced into the memory, but their images only are taken with a wonderful quickness, and are laid up

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as it were in wonderful cells, and are wonderfully brought out by the act of remembrance.

CHAPTER X.

Literature is not brought into the Memory by means of the Senses, but is drawn out from its deeper recess.

BUT

UT when I hear that there are three kinds of questions, "whether a thing is," "what it is,” "of what quality it is," I retain, indeed, the images of the sounds by which these words are formed, and I know that those sounds passed with a noise through the air and now have ceased. But the things themselves which are signified by those sounds I did not arrive at by any bodily sense, nor did I ever see them except in my mind; and in my memory I stored up not the images of the things, but the things themselves, which, how they entered into me, let them say who can. For I run through all the gateways of my flesh; nor can I discover by which of them they gained admission. For the eyes say, "If they had any colours, we reported them.” The ears say, 66 If they had any sound, we gave tidings of them." The nostrils say, " If they had any smell, it found a passage through us." The sense of taste says, "If they have no flavour, it is useless to ask me." Touch says, "If they have no body, I could not handle it, and what I cannot handle, I cannot give tidings of." Whence, then, and by what means did these things enter into my memory? I know not how. For when I learned them, I did not take them simply from another's convictions; but I

SOME TRUTHS INNATE

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recognised and affirmed their truth in my own mind, and committing them to it, laid them up whence I might produce them when I pleased. There they were, then, even before I had learned them, but they were not in my memory. Where were they then, or why, when they were spoken, did I recognise them, and say, "So it is, it is true;" unless because they were already in my memory, but in so remote and retired a part, as it were, in its more hidden caverns, that unless they had been elicited by the suggestion of another, I might possibly have never thought of them?

CHAPTER XI.

what it is to learn.

TE find, then, to learn such things as these things of which we do not draw in images through the senses, but which we inwardly perceive without images, as they are by themselves—is nothing else, but by thinking, as it were, to collect those things which the memory before contained on all sides and in disorder; and by application of mind to take care that they, being, as it were, ready at hand in the memory, where before they lay concealed, scattered, and unused, might easily occur to the mind now familiarised with them. And how many of such things does my memory carry about which have been already discovered, and, as I said, placed ready at hand, which we are said to have learned and to have known; which, if for a little time I should cease to recall, they would be again buried, and glide back, as it were, into some more distant recesses, so that they must again, as if new, be sought

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