memory

The born lover, to whose degree the musician also may attain – and then either come to a stand or pass beyond – has a certain MEMORY of beauty but, severed from it now, he no longer comprehends it: spellbound by visible loveliness he clings amazed about that. His lesson must be to fall down no longer in bewildered delight before some, one embodied form; he must be led, under a system of mental discipline, to beauty everywhere and made to discern the One<One Principle underlying all, a Principle apart from the material forms, springing from another source, and elsewhere more truly present. The beauty, for example, in a noble course of life and in an admirably organized social system may be pointed out to him – a first training this in the loveliness of the immaterial – he must learn to recognise the beauty in the arts, sciences, virtues; then these severed and particular forms must be brought under the one<one principle by the explanation of their origin. From the virtues he is to be led to the Intellectual-Principle, to the Authentic-Existent; thence onward, he treads the upward way. Enneads I,3,

Is it possible to think that Happiness increases with Time, Happiness which is always taken as a present thing? The MEMORY of former felicity may surely be ruled out of count, for Happiness is not a thing of words, but a definite condition which must be actually present like the very fact and act of life. Enneads I,5,

But, Memory of what sort of experiences? Memory either of formerly attained wisdom and virtue – in which case we have a better man and the argument from MEMORY is given up – or MEMORY of past pleasures, as if the man that has arrived at felicity must roam far and wide in search of gratifications and is not contented by the bliss actually within him. Enneads I,5,

And what is there pleasant in the MEMORY of pleasure? What is it to recall yesterday’s excellent dinner? Still more ridiculous, one of ten years ago. So, too, of last year’s morality. Enneads I,5,

But is there not something to be said for the MEMORY of the various forms of beauty? That is the resource of a man whose life is without beauty in the present, so that, for lack of it now, he grasps at the MEMORY of what has been. Enneads I,5,

To those who assert that creation is the work of the Soul after the failing of its wings, we answer that no such disgrace could overtake the Soul of the All. If they tell us of its falling, they must tell us also what caused the fall. And when did it take place? If from eternity, then the Soul must be essentially a fallen thing: if at some one moment, why not before that? We assert its creative act to be a proof not of decline but rather of its steadfast hold. Its decline could consist only in its forgetting the Divine: but if it forgot, how could it create? Whence does it create but from the things it knew in the Divine? If it creates from the MEMORY of that vision, it never fell. Even supposing it to be in some dim intermediate state, it need not be supposed more likely to decline: any inclination would be towards its Prior, in an effort to the clearer vision. If any MEMORY at all remained, what other desire could it have than to retrace the way? What could it have been planning to gain by world-creating? Glory? That would be absurd – a motive borrowed from the sculptors of our earth. Enneads: II VIII.

And how does this image set to its task immediately after it comes into being? By MEMORY of what it has seen? But it was utterly non-existent, it could have no vision, either it or the Mother they bestow upon it. Enneads: II VIII.

Those that desire earthly procreation are satisfied with the beauty found on earth, the beauty of image and of body; it is because they are strangers to the Archetype, the source of even the attraction they feel towards what is lovely here. There are Souls to whom earthly beauty is a leading to the MEMORY of that in the higher realm and these love the earthly as an image; those that have not attained to this MEMORY do not understand what is happening within them, and take the image for the reality. Once there is perfect self-control, it is no fault to enjoy the beauty of earth; where appreciation degenerates into carnality, there is sin. Enneads III,5,

And note that we do not appeal to stored-up impressions to account for MEMORY: we think of the mind awakening its powers in such a way as to possess something not present to it. Enneads III,6,

Very good: but is it not different before and after acquiring the MEMORY? Be it so; but it has suffered no change – unless we are to think of the mere progress from latency to actuality as change – nothing has been introduced into the mind; it has simply achieved the Act dictated by its nature. Enneads III,6,

Now comes the question, equally calling for an answer, whether those souls that have quitted the places of earth retain MEMORY of their lives – all souls or some, of all things, or of some things, and, again, for ever or merely for some period not very long after their withdrawal. Enneads IV,3,

A true investigation of this matter requires us to establish first what a remembering principle must be – I do not mean what MEMORY is, but in what order of beings it can occur. The nature of MEMORY has been indicated, laboured even, elsewhere; we still must try to understand more clearly what characteristics are present where MEMORY exists. Enneads IV,3,

Now a MEMORY has to do with something brought into ken from without, something learned or something experienced; the Memory-Principle, therefore, cannot belong to such beings as are immune from experience and from time. Enneads IV,3,

No MEMORY, therefore, can be ascribed to any divine being, or to the Authentic-Existent or the Intellectual-Principle: these are intangibly immune; time does not approach them; they possess eternity centred around Being; they know nothing of past and sequent; all is an unbroken state of identity, not receptive of change. Now a being rooted in unchanging identity cannot entertain MEMORY, since it has not and never had a state differing from any previous state, or any new intellection following upon a former one, so as to be aware of contrast between a present perception and one remembered from before. Enneads IV,3,

But what prevents such a being (from possessing MEMORY in the sense of) perceiving, without variation in itself, such outside changes as, for example, the kosmic periods? Simply the fact that following the changes of the revolving kosmos it would have perception of earlier and later: intuition and MEMORY are distinct. Enneads IV,3,

We cannot hold its self-intellections to be acts of MEMORY; this is no question of something entering from without, to be grasped and held in fear of an escape; if its intellections could slip away from it (as a MEMORY might) its very Essence (as the Hypostasis of inherent Intellection) would be in peril. Enneads IV,3,

For the same reason MEMORY, in the current sense, cannot be attributed to the soul in connection with the ideas inherent in its essence: these it holds not as a MEMORY but as a possession, though, by its very entrance into this sphere, they are no longer the mainstay of its Act. Enneads IV,3,

The Soul-action which is to be observed seems to have induced the Ancients to ascribe MEMORY, and “Recollection,” (the Platonic Anamnesis) to souls bringing into outward manifestation the ideas they contain: we see at once that the MEMORY here indicated is another kind; it is a MEMORY outside of time. Enneads IV,3,

But, perhaps, this is treating too summarily a matter which demands minute investigation. It might be doubted whether that recollection, that MEMORY, really belongs to the highest soul and not rather to another, a dimmer, or even to the Couplement, the Living-Being. And if to that dimmer soul, when and how has it come to be present; if to the Couplement, again when and how? We are driven thus to enquire into these several points: in which of the constituents of our nature is MEMORY vested – the question with which we started – if in the soul, then in what power or part; if in the Animate or Couplement – which has been supposed, similarly to be the seat of sensation – then by what mode it is present, and how we are to define the Couplement; finally whether sensation and intellectual acts may be ascribed to one and the same agent, or imply two distinct principles. Enneads IV,3,

In such a process it is at once clear that the sensation is a shared task; but the MEMORY is not thus made over to the Couplement, since the soul has from the first taken over the impression, either to retain or to reject. Enneads IV,3,

It might be ventured that MEMORY, no less than sensation, is a function of the Couplement, on the ground that bodily constitution determines our memories good or bad; but the answer would come that, whether the body happens or not to be a hindrance, the act of remembering would still be an act of the soul. And in the case of matters learned (and not merely felt, as corporeal experiences), how can we think of the Couplement of soul and body as the remembering principle? Here, surely, it must be soul alone? We may be told that the living-being is a Couplement in the sense of something entirely distinct formed from the two elements (so that it might have MEMORY though neither soul nor body had it). But, to begin with, it is absurd to class the living-being as neither body nor soul; these two things cannot so change as to make a distinct third, nor can they blend so utterly that the soul shall become a mere faculty of the animate whole. And, further, supposing they could so blend, MEMORY would still be due to the soul just as in honey-wine all the sweetness will be due to the honey. Enneads IV,3,

But, to begin with, these imprints are not magnitudes (are not of corporeal nature at all); there is no resemblance to seal impressions, no stamping of a resistant matter, for there is neither the down-thrust (as of the seal) nor (the acceptance) as in the wax: the process is entirely of the intellect, though exercised upon things of sense; and what kind of resistance (or other physical action) can be affirmed in matters of the intellectual order, or what need can there be of body or bodily quality as a means? Further there is one order of which the MEMORY must obviously belong to the soul; it alone can remember its own movements, for example its desires and those frustrations of desire in which the coveted thing never came to the body: the body can have nothing to tell about things which never approached it, and the soul cannot use the body as a means to the remembrance of what the body by its nature cannot know. Enneads IV,3,

If the soul is to have any significance – to be a definite principle with a function of its own – we are forced to recognize two orders of fact, an order in which the body is a means but all culminates in soul, and an order which is of the soul alone. This being admitted, aspiration will belong to soul, and so, as a consequence, will that MEMORY of the aspiration and of its attainment or frustration, without which the soul’s nature would fall into the category of the unstable (that is to say of the undivine, unreal). Deny this character of the soul and at once we refuse it perception, consciousness, any power of comparison, almost any understanding. Yet these powers of which, embodied it becomes the source cannot be absent from its own nature. On the contrary; it possesses certain activities to be expressed in various functions whose accomplishment demands bodily organs; at its entry it brings with it (as vested in itself alone) the powers necessary for some of these functions, while in the case of others it brings the very activities themselves. Enneads IV,3,

Memory, in point of fact, is impeded by the body: even as things are, addition often brings forgetfulness; with thinning and dearing away, MEMORY will often revive. The soul is a stability; the shifting and fleeting thing which body is can be a cause only of its forgetting not of its remembering – Lethe stream may be understood in this sense – and MEMORY is a fact of the soul. Enneads IV,3,

Then free and alone at last, what will it have to remember? The answer to that question depends on our discovering in what faculty of the soul MEMORY resides. Enneads IV,3,

Is MEMORY vested in the faculty by which we perceive and learn? Or does it reside in the faculty by which we set things before our minds as objects of desire or of anger, the passionate faculty? This will be maintained on the ground that there could scarcely be both a first faculty in direct action and a second to remember what that first experiences. It is certain that the desiring faculty is apt to be stirred by what it has once enjoyed; the object presents itself again; evidently, MEMORY is at work; why else, the same object with the same attraction? But, at that, we might reasonably ascribe to the desiring faculty the very perception of the desired objects and then the desire itself to the perceptive faculty, and so on all through, and in the end conclude that the distinctive names merely indicate the function which happens to be uppermost. Enneads IV,3,

In other words the desiring faculty has had the emotion, but the trace it keeps of the event is not a MEMORY; it is a condition, something passively accepted: there is another faculty that was aware of the enjoyment and retains the MEMORY of what has happened. This is confirmed by the fact that many satisfactions which the desiring faculty has enjoyed are not retained in the MEMORY: if MEMORY resided in the desiring faculty, such forgetfulness could not be. Enneads IV,3,

Are we, then, to refer MEMORY to the perceptive faculty and so make one principle of our nature the seat of both awareness and remembrance? Now supposing the very Shade, as we were saying in the case of Hercules, has MEMORY, then the perceptive faculty is twofold. Enneads IV,3,

Must we then suppose a common faculty of apprehension (one covering both sense perceptions and ideas) and assign MEMORY in both orders to this? The solution might serve if there were one and the same percipient for objects of sense and objects of the Intellectual-Kind; but if these stand in definite duality, then, for all we can say or do, we are left with two separate principles of MEMORY; and, supposing each of the two orders of soul to possess both principles, then we have four. Enneads IV,3,

And, on general grounds, what compelling reason is there that the principle by which we perceive should be the principle by which we remember, that these two acts should be vested in the one faculty? Why must the seat of our intellectual action be also the seat of our remembrance of that action? The most powerful thought does not always go with the readiest MEMORY; people of equal perception are not equally good at remembering; some are especially gifted in perception, others, never swift to grasp, are strong to retain. Enneads IV,3,

But, once more, admitting two distinct principles, something quite separate remembering what sense-perception has first known – still this something must have felt what it is required to remember? No; we may well conceive that where there is to be MEMORY of a sense-perception, this perception becomes a mere presentment, and that to this image-grasping power, a distinct thing, belongs the MEMORY, the retention of the object: for in this imaging faculty the perception culminates; the impression passes away but the vision remains present to the imagination. Enneads IV,3,

By the fact of harbouring the presentment of an object that has disappeared, the imagination is, at once, a seat of MEMORY: where the persistence of the image is brief, the MEMORY is poor; people of powerful MEMORY are those in whom the image-holding power is firmer, not easily allowing the record to be jostled out of its grip. Enneads IV,3,

Remembrance, thus, is vested in the imaging faculty; and MEMORY deals with images. Its differing quality or degree from man to man, we would explain by difference or similarity in the strength of the individual powers, by conduct like or unlike, by bodily conditions present or absent, producing change and disorder or not – a point this, however, which need not detain us here. Enneads IV,3,

But what of the MEMORY of mental acts: do these also fall under the imaging faculty? If every mental act is accompanied by an image we may well believe that this image, fixed and like a picture of the thought, would explain how we remember the object of knowledge once entertained. But if there is no such necessary image, another solution must be sought. Perhaps MEMORY would be the reception, into the image-taking faculty, of the Reason-Principle which accompanies the mental conception: this mental conception – an indivisible thing, and one that never rises to the exterior of the consciousness – lies unknown below; the Reason-Principle the revealer, the bridge between the concept and the image-taking faculty exhibits the concept as in a mirror; the apprehension by the image-taking faculty would thus constitute the enduring presence of the concept, would be our MEMORY of it. Enneads IV,3,

But if each of the two phases of the soul, as we have said, possesses MEMORY, and MEMORY is vested in the imaging faculty, there must be two such faculties. Now that is all very well as long as the two souls stand apart; but, when they are at one in us, what becomes of the two faculties, and in which of them is the imaging faculty vested? If each soul has its own imaging faculty the images must in all cases be duplicated, since we cannot think that one faculty deals only with intellectual objects, and the other with objects of sense, a distinction which inevitably implies the co-existence in man of two life-principles utterly unrelated. Enneads IV,3,

But the MEMORY of friends, children, wife? Country too, and all that the better sort of man may reasonably remember? All these, the one (the lower man) retains with emotion, the authentic man passively: for the experience, certainly, was first felt in that lower phase from which, however, the best of such impressions pass over to the graver soul in the degree in which the two are in communication. Enneads IV,3,

The lower soul must be always striving to attain to MEMORY of the activities of the higher: this will be especially so when it is itself of a fine quality, for there will always be some that are better from the beginning and bettered here by the guidance of the higher. Enneads IV,3,

The loftier, on the contrary, must desire to come to a happy forgetfulness of all that has reached it through the lower: for one reason, there is always the possibility that the very excellence of the lower prove detrimental to the higher, tending to keep it down by sheer force of vitality. In any case the more urgent the intention towards the Supreme, the more extensive will be the soul’s forgetfulness, unless indeed, when the entire living has, even here, been such that MEMORY has nothing but the noblest to deal with: in this world itself, all is best when human interests have been held aloof; so, therefore, it must be with the MEMORY of them. In this sense we may truly say that the good soul is the forgetful. It flees multiplicity; it seeks to escape the unbounded by drawing all to unity, for only thus is it free from entanglement, light-footed, self-conducted. Thus it is that even in this world the soul which has the desire of the other is putting away, amid its actual life, all that is foreign to that order. It brings there very little of what it has gathered here; as long as it is in the heavenly regions only, it will have more than it can retain. Enneads IV,3,

When we seize anything in the direct intellectual act there is room for nothing else than to know and to contemplate the object; and in the knowing there is not included any previous knowledge; all such assertion of stage and progress belongs to the lower and is a sign of the altered; this means that, once purely in the Intellectual, no one of us can have any MEMORY of our experience here. Further; if all intellection is timeless – as appears from the fact that the Intellectual beings are of eternity not of time – there can be no MEMORY in the intellectual world, not merely none of earthly things but none whatever: all is presence There; for nothing passes away, there is no change from old to new. Enneads IV,4,

Enough on that point: we come now to the question of MEMORY of the personality? There will not even be MEMORY of the personality; no thought that the contemplator is the self – Socrates, for example – or that it is Intellect or Soul. In this connection it should be borne in mind that, in contemplative vision, especially when it is vivid, we are not at the time aware of our own personality; we are in possession of ourselves but the activity is towards the object of vision with which the thinker becomes identified; he has made himself over as matter to be shaped; he takes ideal form under the action of the vision while remaining, potentially, himself. This means that he is actively himself when he has intellection of nothing. Enneads IV,4,

But it leaves that conjunction; it cannot suffer that unity; it falls in love with its own powers and possessions, and desires to stand apart; it leans outward so to speak: then, it appears to acquire a MEMORY of itself. Enneads IV,4,

In this self-MEMORY a distinction is to be made; the MEMORY dealing with the Intellectual Realm upbears the soul, not to fall; the MEMORY of things here bears it downwards to this universe; the intermediate MEMORY dealing with the heavenly sphere holds it there too; and, in all its MEMORY, the thing it has in mind it is and grows to; for this bearing-in-mind must be either intuition (i.e., knowledge with identity) or representation by image: and the imaging in the case of the is not a taking in of something but is vision and condition – so much so, that, in its very sense – sight, it is the lower in the degree in which it penetrates the object. Since its possession of the total of things is not primal but secondary, it does not become all things perfectly (in becoming identical with the All in the Intellectual); it is of the boundary order, situated between two regions, and has tendency to both. Enneads IV,4,

If, on the contrary, the soul gives itself to the inferior, the same principle of penetration comes into play, and it possesses itself, by MEMORY and imagination, of the thing it desired: and hence the MEMORY, even dealing with the highest, is not the highest. Memory, of course, must be understood not merely of what might be called the sense of remembrance, but so as to include a condition induced by the past experience or vision. There is such a thing as possessing more powerfully without consciousness than in full knowledge; with full awareness the possession is of something quite distinct from the self; unconscious possession runs very close to identity, and any such approach to identification with the lower means the deeper fall of the soul. Enneads IV,4,

But this power which determines MEMORY is it also the principle by which the Supreme becomes effective in us? At any time when we have not been in direct vision of that sphere, MEMORY is the source of its activity within us; when we have possessed that vision, its presence is due to the principle by which we enjoyed it: this principle awakens where it wakens; and it alone has vision in that order; for this is no matter to be brought to us by way of analogy, or by the syllogistic reasoning whose grounds lie elsewhere; the power which, even here, we possess of discoursing upon the Intellectual Beings is vested, as we show, in that principle which alone is capable of their contemplation. That, we must awaken, so to speak, and thus attain the vision of the Supreme, as one, standing on some lofty height and lifting his eyes, sees what to those that have not mounted with him is invisible. Enneads IV,4,

Souls that descend, souls that change their state – these, then, may be said to have MEMORY, which deals with what has come and gone; but what subjects of remembrance can there be for souls whose lot is to remain unchanged? The question touches MEMORY in the stars in general, and also in the sun and moon and ends by dealing with the soul of the All, even by audaciously busying itself with the memories of Zeus himself. The enquiry entails the examination and identification of acts of understanding and of reasoning in these beings, if such acts take place. Enneads IV,4,

Still: the space traversed is different; there are the various sections of the Zodiac: why, then, should not the soul say “I have traversed that section and now I am in this other?” If, also, it looks down over the concerns of men, must it not see the changes that befall them, that they are not as they were, and, by that observation, that the beings and the things concerned were otherwise formerly? And does not that mean MEMORY? Enneads IV,4,

But, we need not record in MEMORY all we see; mere incidental concomitants need not occupy the imagination; when things vividly present to intuition, or knowledge, happen to occur in concrete form, it is not necessary – unless for purposes of a strictly practical administration – to pass over that direct acquaintance, and fasten upon the partial sense-presentation, which is already known in the larger knowledge, that of the Universe. Enneads IV,4,

I will take this point by point: First: it is not essential that everything seen should be laid up in the mind; for when the object is of no importance, or of no personal concern, the sensitive faculty, stimulated by the differences in the objects present to vision, acts without accompaniment of the will, and is alone in entertaining the impression. The soul does not take into its deeper recesses such differences as do not meet any of its needs, or serve any of its purposes. Above all, when the soul’s act is directed towards another order, it must utterly reject the MEMORY of such things, things over and done with now, and not even taken into knowledge when they were present. Enneads IV,4,

So it is with the stars. They pass from point to point, but they move on their own affairs and not for the sake of traversing the space they actually cover; the vision of the things that appear on the way, the journey by, nothing of this is their concern: their passing this or that is of accident not of essence, and their intention is to greater objects: moreover each of them journeys, unchangeably, the same unchanging way; and again, there is no question to them of the time they spend in any given section of the journey, even supposing time division to be possible in the case. All this granted, nothing makes it necessary that they should have any MEMORY of places or times traversed. Besides this life of the ensouled stars is one identical thing (since they are one in the All-Soul) so that their very spatial movement is pivoted upon identity and resolves itself into a movement not spatial but vital, the movement of a single living being whose act is directed to itself, a being which to anything outside is at rest, but is in movement by dint of the inner life it possesses, the eternal life. Or we may take the comparison of the movement of the heavenly bodies to a choral dance; if we think of it as a dance which comes to rest at some given period, the entire dance, accomplished from beginning to end, will be perfect while at each partial stage it was imperfect: but if the dance is a thing of eternity, it is in eternal perfection. And if it is in eternal perfection, it has no points of time and place at which it will achieve perfection; it will, therefore, have no concern about attaining to any such points: it will, therefore, make no measurements of time or place; it will have, therefore, no MEMORY of time and place. Enneads IV,4,

But Zeus – ordering all, governor, guardian and disposer, possessor for ever of the kingly soul and the kingly intellect, bringing all into being by his providence, and presiding over all things as they come, administering all under plan and system, unfolding the periods of the kosmos, many of which stand already accomplished – would it not seem inevitable that, in this multiplicity of concern, Zeus should have MEMORY of all the periods, their number and their differing qualities? Contriving the future, co-ordinating, calculating for what is to be, must he not surely be the chief of all in remembering, as he is chief in producing? Even this matter of Zeus’ MEMORY of the kosmic periods is difficult; it is a question of their being numbered, and of his knowledge of their number. A determined number would mean that the All had a beginning in time (which is not so); if the periods are unlimited, Zeus cannot know the number of his works. Enneads IV,4,

What place, then, is there for reasoning, for calculation, what place for MEMORY, where wisdom and knowledge are eternal, unfailingly present, effective, dominant, administering in an identical process? The fact that the product contains diversity and difference does not warrant the notion that the producer must be subject to corresponding variations. On the contrary, the more varied the product, the more certain the unchanging identity of the producer: even in the single animal the events produced by Nature are many and not simultaneous; there are the periods, the developments at fixed epochs – horns, beard, maturing breasts, the acme of life, procreation – but the principles which initially determined the nature of the being are not thereby annulled; there is process of growth, but no diversity in the initial principle. The identity underlying all the multiplicity is confirmed by the fact that the principle constituting the parent is exhibited unchanged, undiminished, in the offspring. We have reason, then, for thinking that one and the same wisdom envelops both, and that this is the unalterable wisdom of the kosmos taken as a whole; it is manifold, diverse and yet simplex, presiding over the most comprehensive of living beings, and in no wise altered within itself by this multiplicity, but stably one Reason-Principle, the concentrated totality of things: if it were not thus all things, it would be a wisdom of the later and partial, not the wisdom of the Supreme. Enneads IV,4,

It may be urged that all the multiplicity and development are the work of Nature, but that, since there is wisdom within the All, there must be also, by the side of such natural operation, acts of reasoning and of MEMORY. Enneads IV,4,

But this is simply a human error which assumes wisdom to be what in fact is unwisdom, taking the search for wisdom to be wisdom itself. For what can reasoning be but a struggle, the effort to discover the wise course, to attain the principle which is true and derives from real-being? To reason is like playing the cithara for the sake of achieving the art, like practising with a view to mastery, like any learning that aims at knowing. What reasoners seek, the wise hold: wisdom, in a word, is a condition in a being that possesses repose. Think what happens when one has accomplished the reasoning process: as soon as we have discovered the right course, we cease to reason: we rest because we have come to wisdom. If then we are to range the leading principle of the All among learners, we must allow it reasonings, perplexities and those acts of MEMORY which link the past with the present and the future: if it is to be considered as a knower, then the wisdom within it consists in a rest possessing the object (absolved, therefore, from search and from remembrance). Enneads IV,4,

The produced universe will contain difference, but its diversities spring not from its own action but from its obedience to superior principles which, again, spring from the creating power, so that all is guided by Reason-Principles in their series; thus the creating power is in no sense subjected to experimenting, to perplexity, to that preoccupation which to some minds makes the administration of the All seem a task of difficulty. Preoccupation would obviously imply the undertaking of alien tasks, some business – that would mean – not completely within the powers; but where the power is sovereign and sole, it need take thought of nothing but itself and its own will, which means its own wisdom, since in such a being the will is wisdom. Here, then, creating makes no demand, since the wisdom that goes to it is not sought elsewhere, but is the creator’s very self, drawing on nothing outside – not, therefore, on reasoning or on MEMORY, which are handlings of the external. Enneads IV,4,

But there is a difficulty affecting this entire settlement: Eternity is characteristic of the Intellectual-Principle, time of the soul – for we hold that time has its substantial being in the activity of the soul, and springs from soul – and, since time is a thing of division and comports a past, it would seem that the activity producing it must also be a thing of division, and that its attention to that past must imply that even the All-Soul has MEMORY? We repeat, identity belongs to the eternal, time must be the medium of diversity; otherwise there is nothing to distinguish them, especially since we deny that the activities of the soul can themselves experience change. Enneads IV,4,

But if they so apply themselves, they must have MEMORY; it is impossible that they should have no remembrance if they are to be benefactors, their service could not exist without MEMORY. Enneads IV,4,

We have declared acts of MEMORY unnecessary to the stars, but we allow them perceptions, hearing as well as seeing; for we said that prayers to them were heard – our supplications to the sun, and those, even, of certain other men to the stars. It has moreover been the belief that in answer to prayer they accomplish many human wishes, and this so lightheartedly that they become not merely helpers towards good but even accomplices in evil. Since this matter lies in our way, it must be considered, for it carries with it grave difficulties that very much trouble those who cannot think of divine beings as, thus, authors or auxiliaries in unseemliness even including the connections of loose carnality. Enneads IV,4,

In view of all this it is especially necessary to study the question with which we began, that of MEMORY in the heavenly bodies. Enneads IV,4,

It is obvious that, if they act on our prayers and if this action is not immediate, but with delay and after long periods of time, they remember the prayers men address to them. This is something that our former argument did not concede; though it appeared plausible that, for their better service of mankind, they might have been endowed with such a MEMORY as we ascribed to Demeter and Hestia – or to the latter alone if only the earth is to be thought of as beneficent to man. Enneads IV,4,

We have, then, to attempt to show: firstly, how acts implying MEMORY in the heavenly bodies are to be reconciled with our system as distinguished from those others which allow them MEMORY as a matter of course; secondly, what vindication of those gods of the heavenly spheres is possible in the matter of seemingly anomalous acts – a question which philosophy cannot ignore – then too, since the charge goes so far, we must ask whether credence is to be given to those who hold that the entire heavenly system can be put under spell by man’s skill and audacity: our discussion will also deal with the spirit-beings and how they may be thought to minister to these ends – unless indeed the part played by the Celestials prove to be settled by the decision upon the first questions. Enneads IV,4,

It follows that, for the purposes which have induced this discussion, the stars have no need of MEMORY or of any sense of petitions addressed to them; they give no such voluntary attention to prayers as some have thought: it is sufficient that, in virtue simply of the nature of parts and of parts within a whole, something proceeds from them whether in answer to prayer or without prayer. We have the analogy of many powers – as in some one living organism – which, independently of plan or as the result of applied method, act without any collaboration of the will: one member or function is helped or hurt by another in the mere play of natural forces; and the art of doctor or magic healer will compel some one centre to purvey something of its own power to another centre. just so the All: it purveys spontaneously, but it purveys also under spell; some entity (acting like the healer) is concerned for a member situated within itself and summons the All which, then, pours in its gift; it gives to its own part by the natural law we have cited since the petitioner is no alien to it. Even though the suppliant be a sinner, the answering need not shock us; sinners draw from the brooks; and the giver does not know of the gift but simply gives – though we must remember that all is one woof and the giving is always consonant with the order of the universe. There is, therefore, no necessity by ineluctable law that one who has helped himself to what lies open to all should receive his deserts then and there. Enneads IV,4,

Even the Celestials, the Daimones, are not on their unreasoning side immune: there is nothing against ascribing acts of MEMORY and experiences of sense to them, in supposing them to accept the traction of methods laid up in the natural order, and to give hearing to petitioners; this is especially true of those of them that are closest to this sphere, and in the degree of their concern about it. Enneads IV,4,

Besides, even on this explanation, the mind must have previously been in contact with the object in the entire absence of intervenient; only if that has happened could contact through an intervenient bring knowledge, a knowledge by way of MEMORY, and, even more emphatically, by way of reasoned comparison (ending in identification): but this process of MEMORY and comparison is excluded by the theory of first knowledge through the agency of a medium. Enneads IV,5,

Sixth tractate – Perception and MEMORY. Enneads IV,6,

Perceptions are no imprints, we have said, are not to be thought of as seal-impressions on soul or mind: accepting this statement, there is one theory of MEMORY which must be definitely rejected. Enneads IV,6,

Memory is not to be explained as the retaining of information in virtue of the lingering of an impression which in fact was never made; the two things stand or fall together; either an impression is made upon the mind and lingers when there is remembrance, or, denying the impression, we cannot hold that MEMORY is its lingering. Since we reject equally the impression and the retention we are obliged to seek for another explanation of perception and MEMORY, one excluding the notions that the sensible object striking upon soul or mind makes a mark upon it, and that the retention of this mark is MEMORY. Enneads IV,6,

Of the Intellectual it is said to have intuition by MEMORY upon approach, for it knows them by a certain natural identity with them; its knowledge is not attained by besetting them, so to speak, but by in a definite degree possessing them; they are its natural vision; they are itself in a more radiant mode, and it rises from its duller pitch to that greater brilliance in a sort of awakening, a progress from its latency to its act. Enneads IV,6,

To the sense-order it stands in a similar nearness and to such things it gives a radiance out of its own store and, as it were, elaborates them to visibility: the power is always ripe and, so to say, in travail towards them, so that, whenever it puts out its strength in the direction of what has once been present in it, it sees that object as present still; and the more intent its effort the more durable is the presence. This is why, it is agreed, children have long MEMORY; the things presented to them are not constantly withdrawn but remain in sight; in their case the attention is limited but not scattered: those whose faculty and mental activity are busied upon a multitude of subjects pass quickly over all, lingering on none. Enneads IV,6,

Now, if MEMORY were a matter of seal-impressions retained, the multiplicity of objects would have no weakening effect on the MEMORY. Further, on the same hypothesis, we would have no need of thinking back to revive remembrance; nor would we be subject to forgetting and recalling; all would lie engraved within. Enneads IV,6,

Observe these facts: MEMORY follows upon attention; those who have memorized much, by dint of their training in the use of leading indications (suggestive words and the like), reach the point of being easily able to retain without such aid: must we not conclude that the basis of MEMORY is the soul-power brought to full strength? The lingering imprints of the other explanation would tell of weakness rather than power; for to take imprint easily is to be yielding. An impression is something received passively; the strongest MEMORY, then, would go with the least active nature. But what happens is the very reverse: in no pursuit to technical exercises tend to make a man less the master of his acts and states. It is as with sense-perception; the advantage is not to the weak, the weak eye for example, but to that which has the fullest power towards its exercise. In the old, it is significant, the senses are dulled and so is the MEMORY. Enneads IV,6,

Sensation and MEMORY, then, are not passivity but power. Enneads IV,6,

And, once it is admitted that sensations are not impressions, the MEMORY of a sensation cannot consist in the retention of an impression that was never made. Enneads IV,6,

Quick MEMORY does not in general go with quick wit: the two do not fall under the same mental faculty; runner and boxer are not often united in one person; the dominant idea differs from man to man. Enneads IV,6,

Yet there could be nothing to prevent men of superior faculty from reading impressions on the mind; why should one thus gifted be incapable of what would be no more than a passive taking and holding? That MEMORY is a power of the Soul (not a capacity for taking imprint) is established at a stroke by the consideration that the soul is without magnitude. Enneads IV,6,

If, at this, the impression is like one made in liquids – as would be reasonable – it will be confused and wavering as upon water, and there can be no MEMORY. If the impressions are permanent, then either no fresh ones can be stamped upon the occupied ground – and there can be no change of sensations – or, others being made, the former will be obliterated; and all record of the past is done away with. Enneads IV,7,

If MEMORY implies fresh sensations imposed upon former ones, the earlier not barring their way, the soul cannot be a material entity. Enneads IV,7,

Sense sees a man and transmits the impression to the understanding. What does the understanding say? It has nothing to say as yet; it accepts and waits; unless, rather, it questions within itself “Who is this?” – someone it has met before – and then, drawing on MEMORY, says, “Socrates.” Enneads V,3,

If the soul is questioned as to the nature of that Intellectual-Principle – the perfect and all-embracing, the primal self-knower – it has but to enter into that Principle, or to sink all its activity into that, and at once it shows itself to be in effective possession of those priors whose MEMORY it never lost: thus, as an image of the Intellectual-Principle, it can make itself the medium by which to attain some vision of it; it draws upon that within itself which is most closely resemblant, as far as resemblance is possible between divine Intellect and any phase of soul. Enneads V,3,

But in what way is the content of Intellectual-Principle participant in good? Is it because each member of it is an Idea or because of their beauty or how? Anything coming from The Good carries the image and type belonging to that original or deriving from it, as anything going back to warmth or sweetness carries the MEMORY of those originals: Life entered into Intellectual-Principle from The Supreme, for its origin is in the Activity streaming Thence; Intellectual-Principle springs from the Supreme, and with it the beauty of the Ideas; at once all these, Life, Intellectual-Principle, Idea, must inevitably have goodness. Enneads VI,7,

That light known, then indeed we are stirred towards those Beings in longing and rejoicing over the radiance about them, just as earthly love is not for the material form but for the Beauty manifested upon it. Every one of those Beings exists for itself but becomes an object of desire by the colour cast upon it from The Good, source of those graces and of the love they evoke. The soul taking that outflow from the divine is stirred; seized with a Bacchic passion, goaded by these goads, it becomes Love. Before that, even Intellectual-Principle with all its loveliness did not stir the soul; for that beauty is dead until it take the light of The Good, and the soul lies supine, cold to all, unquickened even to Intellectual-Principle there before it. But when there enters into it a glow from the divine, it gathers strength, awakens, spreads true wings, and however urged by its nearer environing, speeds its buoyant way elsewhere, to something greater to its MEMORY: so long as there exists anything loftier than the near, its very nature bears it upwards, lifted by the giver of that love. Beyond Intellectual-Principle it passes but beyond The Good it cannot, for nothing stands above That. Let it remain in Intellectual-Principle and it sees the lovely and august, but it is not there possessed of all it sought; the face it sees is beautiful no doubt but not of power to hold its gaze because lacking in the radiant grace which is the bloom upon beauty. Enneads VI,7,

Such in this union is the soul’s temper that even the act of Intellect, once so intimately loved, she now dismisses; Intellection is movement and she has no wish to move; she has nothing to say of this very Intellectual-Principle by means of which she has attained the vision, herself made over into Intellectual-Principle and becoming that principle so as to be able to take stand in that Intellectual space. Entered there and making herself over to that, she at first contemplates that realm, but once she sees that higher still she leaves all else aside. Thus when a man enters a house rich in beauty he might gaze about and admire the varied splendour before the master appears; but, face to face with that great person – no thing of ornament but calling for the truest attention – he would ignore everything else and look only to the master. In this state of absorbed contemplation there is no longer question of holding an object: the vision is continuous so that seeing and seen are one thing; object and act of vision have become identical; of all that until then filled the eye no MEMORY remains. And our comparison would be closer if instead of a man appearing to the visitor who had been admiring the house it were a god, and not a god manifesting to the eyes but one filling the soul. Enneads VI,7,

Such converse, we may suppose, was that of Minos, thence known as the Familiar of Zeus; and in that MEMORY he established the laws which report it, enlarged to that task by his vision There. Some, on the other hand, there will be to disdain such citizen service, choosing to remain in the higher: these will be those that have seen much. Enneads VI,8,