William Henry Burnham

“ The effects of sensations are not like impressions made by a seal, nor are they reactions (ἀντερείσεις) , or configurations (τυπώσεις) , but in sense-perception as in thought the soul is active. In memory, too, the soul is active, not passive. The influence of the body proves nothing against this. The changeable nature of the body may cause us to forget, but it cannot condition positive recollection. The body is the river of Lethe, but memory belongs to the soul. The part of the soul to which memory belongs is the image-forming faculty. ”

“ Plato carries out the same figure to explain different degrees of memory. “When the wax in one’s soul is deep, abundant, smooth, and of the right quality, the impressions are lasting. Such minds can easily retain and are not liable to confusion. But, on the other hand, when the wax is very soft, one learns 8easily and forgets as easily; if the wax is hard, the reverse is true; again, if the wax is hard or impure, the impressions are indistinct; and still more indistinct are they when jostled together in a little soul.” ”

“ With Aristotle 36the higher functions of the soul are based upon the lower. “Without nutrition, there is no sense; without sense there is no phantasy; without phantasy there is no cogitation or intelligence.” [23] The place of memory among the soul’s functions is, with the phantasy or imagination, mediate between sensation and intelligence.
In connection with Aristotle’s doctrine of recollection, one passage in his Psychology is interesting, although its importance has, perhaps, been exaggerated. ”

“ Sense perception, then, is an act of the soul by means of a physiological process. In the words of Aristotle it is “a movement of the soul through the body.” [11] Now this movement sometimes continues after the stimulus, which was the occasion of it, has ceased to act. The extreme case is the well known phenomenon of a visual after-image. The images of the imagination are such after-sensations. Imagination is weak sensation, or in the words of Hobbes, “decaying sense”. So too, 17dreaming is the result of a movement in our bodily organs, caused either from without or from within. ”

“ The place of memory in the Aristotelian psychology in relation to the lower 35psychic activities is plain from what has been said. The relation of memory, as voluntary recollection, to the higher activity of the Nous is indicated by Aristotle when he says that recollection is a syllogistic process. Thus it is that, while many animals have the lower kind of memory, man alone has the higher form. “The reason is”, says Aristotle, “that Reminiscence is, as it were, a kind of syllogism, or mental discourse. ”

“ If the sensorium is too hard, no impression is made. If it is greatly agitated, the new movement is ineffectual: on somewhat the 21same principle, one may suppose, as one say in modern psychology, that a weak stimulus is washed out by a strong one. Hence the very young and the very old have poor memories; for the former are in the movement of growth, the latter in that of decay. Again, the question arises: How is it that in recollection we recognize the memory image as a picture of the absent object? ”

“ Memory with St. Augustine, as in the psychology of Plotinus, is a function of the soul, not of the body. But with Aristotle he refers it to the central sense. [34]
What is memory? It is thinking of what one knows. All the various modifications of the soul cannot all be present to us at once. There is a difference between knowing a thing and 52thinking of it. The musician, says Augustine, knows music, but he does not think of it when he is talking about Geometry. [35] The ideas relating to music are in the mind in a latent state. ”

“ Aristotle makes a special study of memory in a less transcendental way. With him it is no longer a function of the eternal Nous; but it has its seat in the passive Reason, is dependent upon a physiological 13process, and perishes with the body.
Aristotle seems to have been the first of ancient philosophers to write a systematic treatise on psychology. But, rather curiously, in this work on psychology there is no special treatment of memory. ”

“ And occasionally one of the early Greek philosophers tries to explain some phenomenon of memory. But we find no scientific study of the subject before Aristotle.
The psychology of the Ionian school of philosophers, as far as they can be said to have had any at all, was sensationalism. Their views of memory must be conjectured from the fundamental principles of their philosophy.
3The doctrine of transmigration as held in the Pythagoreans is an anticipation of Plato’s doctrine of reminiscence, but there is little psychology in it. ”

“ If perception has offered a true picture of the external object, this presenting activity of the mind becomes so intensive that the understanding is brought into action. The understanding or judgment approves or disapproves the presentations. ”

“ Memory does not belong to God nor to the divine immutable intelligence in man, which knows by direct intellectual perception. It is a function of the soul and first appears when the world soul is individualized in bodies. Memory, however, has no basis in the physical organism, 48nor does the soul impress the sensations upon the body. ”

“ Hamilton, however, argues forcibly that Aristotle taught the universality of the law of association. It seems natural enough to suppose that one who saw so clearly that in the voluntary train of thought the sequence conforms to the law of association, would have seen that the same laws apply to the spontaneous activity of the mind. ”

“ This is the medium by which the movements arising in the sense organs are transmitted to the heart, and in this pneuma the movements persist long after the external stimuli have ceased to act. Incidentally, it is interesting to note, that according to Aristotle’s psychology, the brain has very little to do with mental activity. To borrow a phrase from Wallace, it serves simply as “a cooling apparatus to counteract the excessive warmth of the heart.” When the movement occasioned in the sense organ by an external stimulus is propagated to the heart, [10] it 16becomes a perception of the soul. ”

“ This 49holds sense impressions as well as thought. Two souls, the higher and the lower, are concerned in memory. When the soul leaves the body, the recollections of the lower soul are soon forgotten in proportion as the higher soul rises toward the intelligible world. [33]
St. Augustine developed the views of the Neo-Platonists in regard to memory. With him memory is a faculty of animals, men, and angels. God, whose immutable essence is above the sphere of movement and change, does not remember. ”

“ But it may be conjectured that these were untrue recollections, such as we commonly experience in sleep, when we fancy we remember, as though we had done or seen it, when we never did or saw at all; 67and that the minds of these persons, even though awake, were affected in this way at the suggestion of malicious and deceitful spirits, whose care it is to confirm, or to sow some false belief concerning the changes of souls, in order to deceive men.” [44] If they truly remembered such things, he argues, such phenomena would not be as rare; but many persons would experience the same. ”

“ H; if not, we shall at any rate find the 34desired idea by running over the series backward from D to A. Not much stress, however, should be put upon this last illustration; for the text is so obscure that many different interpretations have been given by commentators. Perhaps Aristotle meant to illustrate something more profound than the mere linkings of presentations in a series, and the process of recollecting the mental train. But the illustration of such a simple matter as this was not unimportant in the first scientific study of memory. ”

“ For reference see Siebeck’s Geschichte der Psychologie, p. 209. See also Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, Vol. I. p. 193.
29. Cf. Stein; Die Erkenntnisstheorie der Stoa: Zeller; Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics: and Ueberweg; Hist. of Philos. loc. cit. ”