Aristotle / 2008-08-02 00:00:00
350 BC
ON MEMORY AND REMINISCENCE
by Aristotle
translated by J. I. Beare
1
WE have, in the next place, to treat of Memory and Remembering,
considering its nature, its cause, and the part of the soul to which
this experience, as well as that of Recollecting, belongs. For the
persons who possess a retentive memory are not identical with those
who excel in power of recollection; indeed, as a rule, slow people
have a good memory, whereas those who are quick-witted and clever
are better at recollecting.
We must first form a true conception of these objects of memory, a
point on which mistakes are often made. Now to remember the future
is not possible, but this is an object of opinion or expectation
(and indeed there might be actually a science of expectation, like
that of divination, in which some believe); nor is there memory of the
present, but only sense-perception. For by the latter we know not
the future, nor the past, but the present only. But memory relates
to the past. No one would say that he remembers the present, when it
is present, e.g. a given white object at the moment when he sees it;
nor would one say that he remembers an object of scientific
contemplation at the moment when he is actually contemplating it,
and has it full before his mind;-of the former he would say only
that he perceives it, of the latter only that he knows it.
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