COSMIC QUESTIONS ABOUT MEMORY DEPEND ON EXACT DEFINITION OF WHAT MEMORY IS.
25. Memory raises the following questions. Does memory generally remain with the bodies that have issued from here below? Does it subsist only in some of them? In this case is memory general or special, durable or transitory? These questions cannot be answered until we define that interior principle in us to which memory belongs. That is, we shall have to determine, not what is memory, but in what kind of beings it must exist by virtue of its nature, for elsewhere we have often defined and treated of memory itself. We must therefore exactly define that principle within us to which memory is natural.
MEMORY INAPPLICABLE EXCEPT TO BEINGS SUBJECT TO LIMITATIONS OF TIME.
As memory presupposes a knowledge or casual experience, memory cannot be attributed to beings that are impassible, and outside of the limitations of time. Memory is therefore inapplicable to the Divinity, to Essence, and to Intelligence, all of whom exist outside of time, as eternal and immutable, without a conception of priority or subsequentness, who ever abide in the same condition, without ever experiencing any change. How could that which is identical and immutable make use of memory, since it could neither acquire nor keep a disposition differing from the preceding one, nor have successive thoughts of which the one would be present, while the other had passed into the condition of being remembered?
THERE IS A TIMELESS MEMORY CONSISTING OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.
It (may be objected) that nothing hinders Intelligence from knowing the changes of other beings, such as, for instance, the periodical revolutions of the world, without itself undergoing any change. But then it would have to follow the changes of the moving object, as it would think first of one thing, and then of another. Besides, thought is something else than memory, and we must not apply to self-consciousness the name of memory. Indeed, intelligence does not busy itself with retaining its thoughts, and with hindering them from escaping; otherwise it might also fear lest it lose its own nature (“Being”). For the soul herself, remembering is not the same as recalling innate notions. When the soul has descended here below, she may possess these notions without thinking of them, especially if it be only recently that she entered into the body. The ancient philosophers seem to have applied the terms memory and reminiscence to the actualization by which the soul thinks of the entities she possesses; that (however) is a quite special kind of memory, entirely independent of time.
DEFINITION OF MEMORY DEPENDS ON WHETHER IT BELONGS TO THE SOUL OR ORGANISM.
But perhaps our solution seems superficial, and appears to rest on an insufficient analysis. It might indeed be asked whether memory and reminiscence, instead of belonging to the rational soul, might not characterize the lower soul, or the composite of soul and body that we call the organism? If indeed they belong to the lower soul, from where does the latter derive them, and how does she possess them? The same question may further be asked in the case of the organism. To answer all this, we shall, as said above, have to study our own interior principle to which memory belongs. If it be the soul that possesses memory, we shall have to ask what faculty or part thereof is constituted by memory. If, as has been urged by some, it be the organism to which memory belongs, and considering the organism as the sentient principle, how could this faculty operate within it? Besides, what is it that we should call the organism ? Further, is it the same power that perceives sense-objects, and intelligible entities, or are there two distinct powers ?