Tratado 28 (IV, 4, 6) – MEMORY IS LIMITED TO SOULS THAT CHANGE THEIR CONDITION (Guthrie)

MEMORY IS LIMITED TO SOULS THAT CHANGE THEIR CONDITION.

6. It may therefore be fearlessly affirmed that the souls which exercise their discursive reason, and which change condition, remember; for memory is the characteristic of things that were, but no more are.

DO THE WORLD-SOUL AND THE STAR-SOULS EXERCISE MEMORY?

But evidently the souls which dwell in the same state could not exercise memory; for what would they have to remember? If (ignoring our arguments above) human reason should wish to attribute memory to the souls of all the stars, especially to that of the moon and the sun, there is nothing to hinder it from doing the same with regard to the universal Soul, and it would dare to attribute even to Jupiter memories which would occupy him with a thousand different things. As soon as it will have entered into this order of ideas, reason would proceed to speculate about the conceptions and ratiocinations of the star-souls — that is, granting that they reason at all. (But that is a gratuitous assumption); for if these souls have nothing to discover, if they do not doubt, if they have no need of anything, if they do not learn things that they have ignored before, what use would they make of reasoning, of arguments, or of the conceptions of discursive reason ? They have no need of seeking mechanical means of governing human affairs and events; for they enforce order in the universe in a totally different manner.