Lecture 6 — Recollection’s beginning and its difference from relearning

Recollecting also differs from relearning in this: that one will be able somehow to be moved to what is after the starting point; but when not, but through something else, one no longer remembers.

Often, however, one cannot any longer recollect but can seek and does find. This, however, comes about for one who is moving many things, if he should be moving with the sort of motion as that upon which the thing follows. For remembering is to be a moving potency within; and this is so in such a way that one is being moved from himself and the motions by which he is held, as has been said.

A beginning-point, however, must have been taken.

For which reason they sometimes seem to recollect from places.

The cause of this is that they come quickly from one thing to another, as from milk to white, from white to air, and from the latter to the moist—from which one remembers autumn while seeking this season.

A universal, moreover, seems to be the beginning-point and the middle of them all. For if one does not do so before, when he gets to this point, he will recollect, or he will not do so from anywhere else, either. Thus, if someone should have understood something in which there are A B G D E Z I T: for if one does not recollect at E, he remembers at T; for from there one can be moved to both—both to D and to E. But if one is not seeking one of these, one will recollect on coming to G, if one is looking for I or Z; and if not, he will go on to A, and so on always.

The cause of one’s sometimes remembering from the same and sometimes not remembering is that one happens to have been moved from the same starting-point to many places, as, for example, from G to E or to D.

Hence, if one is not being moved through the old one, he is being moved in a more uncustomary way: for custom already serves as nature. Hence we quickly recollect things that we have frequently understood. For, just as this thing is by nature after this one, so too does action make a nature by doing this many times.

But since just as in things that exist by nature there comes to be what is both outside nature and also by chance, still more is this the case in those that exist by custom, in the latter of which nature does not exist in the same way whereby sometimes to be moved both there and in one way and in another, and when he is drawn hence in any case; and for this reason when one needs to recollect a name we commit a solecism dissimilar to the one we know against it.

It is in this way, therefore, that recollecting occurs.

372. Recollecting also differs (452a4). After the Philosopher shows how recollecting takes place, here he explains two points that were touched upon above. (The first point “above” is dealt with in ch. 4, at 2.2, 451b6–10; the second in ch. 5, at 2.2, 451b31–452a2; cf. n. 358.)

In the first place, he shows how recollecting differs from relearning.

Second, he shows that one who recollects must begin from starting-points, where he says a beginning-point (452a12; [376]).

With respect to the first topic he does two things.

First, he shows how recollecting differs from relearning.

Second, he shows how recollecting differs from rediscovering, where he says often, however, one cannot any longer recollect (452a7; [374]).

With respect to the first point, we must bear in mind that both he who recollects and also he who relearns recover a notion that they lost; but the one who recollects recovers it under the aspect of memory, i.e., in a relation ordered to something that had been known before, whereas the one who relearns it, recovers the notion absolutely, i.e., not as pertaining to something previously known. Now since we do not arrive at a notion of things unknown except from previously known principles, the principles from which we proceed to know anything unknown must belong to the same genus, as is clear from the Posterior Analytics. (Posterior Analytics 1.1; 1.7, 75a38–b20; cf. Aquinas, Commentary on Posterior Analytics, bk. 1, lect. 1–2; lect. 15.) Hence he who is recollecting necessarily proceeds to recover the notion under the aspect of memory from starting-points that have been remembered, but this is not the case with one who is relearning something.

373. Accordingly, he says that recollecting differs from relearning in this: that he who is recollecting has the power somehow to be moved to something that is consequent upon a starting-point that has been retained in the memory (for instance, when someone remembers that such and such a thing was said to him but has forgotten who had told him, one therefore uses what he has in the memory to recollect what he has forgotten). But when one does not arrive at the recovery of a lost notion through a starting-point that has been retained in the memory but through something else that is newly handed on to him by a teacher, that is not memory or recollection but new learning.

374. Then, when he says often, however, one cannot any longer recollect (452a7), he explains how recollecting and rediscovery differ from each other. He says that a human being often cannot any longer recollect what he has forgotten, because the particular movements from which he could arrive at what he is seeking to remember do not remain in him, but, if he should seek the notion of that thing in a new way, he can proceed and often does find what he is seeking as though he were acquiring the science anew. (Cf. Gauthier’s references at Leonine ed., p. 124, lines 39–47: Adam of Buckfield, In De memoria, 1a rec. (Urb. lat. 206, f. 202 rb, in mg. inf.): “a soul existing at rest often cannot recollect, but when it moves itself vehemently to apprehend a principle, running down from it to a consequence, then it recollects”; 2a rec. (Vat. lat. 5988, f. 28 rb; Bologna Univ. 2344, f. 56r, in mg. ext.): “he who does not have a ready starting-point does not immediately recollect when he wants to, but if he seeks out the starting-point, he will then be able to recollect, and has found the starting-point through which he can recollect the things that follow”; Albert the Great, De memoria 2.3 (p. 112a; Borgh. 134, f. 222 rb): “But it often happens that one who at first seeks and searches for something can in no way recollect it, but seeking later on he is able to find it and also does find it . . . and recollection comes into being.”) Now that happens when a soul, while thinking out diverse things, is moved by many movements: if, in addition, it should happen that it arrive at a movement at which a cognition of the thing follows, then one is said to be discovering it.

375. Though one can be discovering something, one cannot, however, be recollecting it, since recollecting comes about because a human being retains within himself a certain potency or power of guiding himself toward the movements that he is seeking of the thing. This recollecting, however, comes about when one can arrive at what is being moved with the movement that he lost through forgetfulness, doing so both from himself, not from someone teaching him, as happens when one relearns something, and from previously held movements, as has been said (452a5–6), not from new movements, as when one rediscovers something.

376. Then, when he says a beginning-point, however, must have been taken (452a12), he shows that one who is recollecting must start from a beginning. Concerning this topic he does two things.

First, he points out the claim under discussion.

Second, he assigns the cause for a defect that we sometimes suffer in recollecting where he says the cause of one’s sometimes remembering (452a24; [382]).

With respect to the first point, he does two things.

In the first place, he shows that one who is recollecting must start from a beginning-point.

In the second place, he indicates what sort of starting-point he must begin from, where he says a universal, moreover, seems to be the beginning-point (452a17; [379]).

Concerning the first topic he does three things.

In the first place, he sets out what he intends to claim. He says that he who wants to recollect must take a beginning-point from which he has begun to be moved either by thinking, by saying, or by doing something.

377. In the second place, he illustrates what he had said by using an example, where he says for which reason they sometimes seem to recollect (452a12). For since he who is recollecting must take hold of a starting-point from which he may start proceeding to recollect, human beings sometimes seem to recollect from the places in which certain things have been said, done, or thought. They do so using a place as a sort of starting-point for recollecting, because the entrance to a place is a sort of starting-point of all the things that are done in that place. This is also why Tully in his Rhetoric (The anonymous pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium 3.16–19, 29–32 (ed. Caplan, pp. 208–12) is the source in question; see also Friedhelm L. Müller, Kritische Gedanken zur antiken Mnemotechnik und zum “Auctor ad Herennium” (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1996) with a Latin-German bilingual appendix of the three capital sources. For a survey by a historian of the Renaissance see Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), which spends some time on Aquinas and Albert while marching from the ancient Latins and Greeks into Camillo, Lull, Bruno, and Fludd. Karl Morgenstern’s Commentatio de arte veterum mnemonica (Dorpat: I. C. Schünmann, 1835) is a 44-page collection of the ancient sources on the art of memory with appendices on later, mainly modern, authors; more discursive is Herwig Blum, Die antike Mnemotechnik in Spudasmata, Band XV (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1969). A brief essay on “mnemonic techniques” by philosopher Richard Sorabji is found in his introduction to Aristotle on Memory (Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press, 1972), pp. 22–34. Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript (Uppsala, 1961; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) discusses mnemonic techniques in Rabbinic Judaism on pp. 148–56. The medieval period is surveyed in Helga Hajdu, Das mnemotechnische Schrifttum des Mittelalters (Leipzig: Franz Leo, 1936; reprint, 1/2 Amsterdam: E. J. Bouset, 1967) whose 135-page coverage, including manuscript material, extends into the sixteenth century. Major medieval authors are examined by Janet Coleman in Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past (Cambridge: University Press, 1992) with whole chapters devoted to Thomas Aquinas (pp. 422–64), John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham; also from Cambridge is Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), with significant references to Aquinas. Fuller treatments are found in J. Castonguay, O.P., Psychologie de la mémoire: Sources et Doctrine de la memoria chez saint Thomas d’Aquin (Montréal: Les editions du Lévrier, 2ème éd., 1964), and in the second part of Marcos F. Manzanedo, O.P., La imaginación y la memoria según Santo Tomás (Rome: Herder, 1978), pp. 275–382. Magda B. Arnold, Memory and the Brain (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1984), especially chapters 9 and 10, finds Aquinas’s account congenial. Touching only lightly on ancient and medieval authors by way of introduction, Paolo Rossi’s Clavis universalis: Arti della memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz (Milan: Riccardi, 1960; 2d ed., Bologna: Il Mulino, 1983) is not to be ignored. Morris N. Young’s comprehensive Bibliography of Memory (Philadelphia: Chilton, 1961) provides a foundation for the more practical mnemonic techniques taught in M. N. Young and W. B. Gibson, How to Develop an Exceptional Memory (Philadelphia: Chilton, 1962; reprint, North Hollywood: Wilshire, 1974). Alan Searleman and Douglas Herrmann’s informative Memory from a Broader Perspective (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), working within the experimentalist paradigm of Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), p. 372, conclude: “Although technical mnemonics certainly work . . . , we do not generally recommend their use.”) teaches that, to remember easily, certain places are imagined to be arrayed in order, and by means of these places we distribute the images of the things we want to remember.

378. In the third place, he illustrates his claim through its cause where he says the cause of this is that they come quickly (452a13). He says that the cause whereby he who is recollecting must get hold of a starting point is that human beings, through a kind of wandering of the mind, come easily from one thing to another by reason of its likeness, its contrariety, or its proximity. (“By reason of . . . propinquity”: cf. above, in ch. 5, at 2.2, 451b19–20.) Thus, if we think or speak about milk we come easily to white, because of the whiteness of milk, and from white to air because of the clarity of the transparent, which causes whiteness, and from air to the moist because air is moist, (“Thus, . . . is moist”: Anonymous, In De memoria (Milano Ambr. H 105 Inf., f. 22 ra–rb): “for when milk is apprehended, there immediately comes about an apprehension of whiteness and brightness, and from what is white one easily comes down to air and from air to the moist. . . .” Adam of Buckfield, In De memoria, 1a rec. (Urb. lat. 206, f. 302v, in mg. inf.): “from milk we run down to white and from white to air, since in composition with the white the fiery nature thrives along with its intensely transparent medium (dyafono), i.e., air; and from air we descend to the humid, which is a quality proper to air. . . .” Albert the Great, Summa de homine, q. 41, a. 1 (ed. Borgnet, t. 35, p. 352b2–5); De memoria 2.4 (p. 112b).) and from the moist one comes to recollect the season of autumn, which one was seeking, by reason of contrariety, since that season is cold and dry. (“And from the moist . . . the dry”: Galen, De complexionibus 1.3 tr. Burgundio (ed. Burling, pp. 12–13): “saying that winter is cold and wet, summer, hot and dry; autumn, cold and dry, yet they say that spring is the well-blended season at once both hot and humid.” For further references on the blending of the seasons, consult Gauthier’s annotation to lines 98–101 in the Leonine edition.)

379. Then, when he says a universal, moreover, seems to be the starting-point (452a17), he indicates what sort of starting-point one who is recollecting ought to get hold of. He says that what is universal seems to be the beginning-point and the middle, through which one can be brought to all things (but here the universal that is spoken of is not that which is predicated of many, as in logic, but rather that by which one is accustomed to be moved to various things; it is as if after milk one is being moved to whiteness and sweetness, and again from whiteness to other things, as has been said (452a13–17), and again from sweetness to the digesting heat, to fire, and to other things thought of in due sequence, milk will be, so to speak, the universal with respect to all these motions).

In addition, one must run back to this universal if one wants to recollect any of the consequent items; since if one does not recollect any of the consequent terms previously through other posterior beginning-points, one will at least recollect it when he has come to the first universal beginning-point; or, if one does not recollect it then, one will not be able to do so from any other.

380. In addition he gives an example about various thoughts by the various letters A B G D E Z I T (he reckons these letters according to the order of the Greek alphabet; (“The order of the Greek alphabet”: ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘ with Η and Θ being transliterated by I and T. Students who use the technique of “conceptual mapping” may find this diagram in Aquinas familiar; others may consult, e.g., The World Book Learning Library, vol. 3: Memory Skills (Chicago, 1986), p. 79, where a triple-branched figure similar to the figure here is introduced as an elementary study technique called a “cue tree.” See the plates accompanying John B. Friedman’s article “Les images mnémotechniques dans les manuscripts de l’époque gothique,” in Jeux de mémoire: Aspects de la mnémotechnie médiévale, ed. Bruno Roy and Paul Zumthor (Montréal: U. Pr.; Paris: J. Vrin, 1985), pp. 169–84.) yet the order is not the same in the recollecting, but we must take it that in thinking or speaking about B one may come to A; in thinking about A, however, sometimes one comes to T, sometimes to G; now from T one sometimes comes to D and sometimes to E; in thinking about G, on the other hand, sometimes one comes to I and sometimes to Z).

If, therefore, one should not recollect what is in E, he will be able to recollect it if he should come to T, from which he used to be moved to the two, viz. to E and to D. But perhaps one was not seeking E and not D, either, but rather was seeking I or Z; then coming to G one will recollect. But since we do not know whether what we are seeking is contained under T or under G, one must run back to A, which is, as it were, the universal with respect to them all. And one must so proceed always; for instance if at that point B is still more universal than A.

381. The aforesaid arrangement can, however, also be understood in another way, so that one is made to come from A to G directly, but to B laterally (although there is no mention of B in the text); moreover, one may be led from G laterally to I on the one hand and to Z on the other, but directly to T, from which one is led to D and E. And so he says that if one does not remember in E, which is last, he comes into T, which is prior; and if perchance one does not remember in T, because what he is seeking is not contained under it, he must run back to G, under which certain other thoughts are contained, namely I and Z, and from there to A, under which, as has been said before (452a23 [280]), B is also contained.

382. Then, when he says the cause of one’s sometimes remembering (452a24), he assigns the cause for a deficiency that is experienced by those who recollect.

He explains this defect in their recollection first to the extent that they do not recollect at all;

and second to the extent that they recollect corruptly, where he says but since just as in things that exist by nature (452a30; [384]).

Accordingly, in the first place, he says that from the same given starting-point human beings sometimes recollect and sometimes do not, since it happens that from the same starting-point from which one is moved toward various things, one is more often moved to one than to another; e.g. if from G one is moved to E and to D more often to the one than to the other, then, once one has got hold on the starting point, one easily recollects the one to which one is more often accustomed to be moved. But if one is not moved through the old one, i.e. through that by which one was more accustomed to be moved, then one is being moved in a less customary way, (“In a less customary way”: at 452a27 the Greek text has epi to synēthesteron: “toward the more accustomed thing,” which is correctly rendered in some of the Latin MSS by in consuetius. Other MSS read inconsuetius: “more unaccustomedly”; Aquinas follows the reading minus consuete, “less customarily.” St. Albert, on the other hand, follows the correct reading in his De memoria 2.4 (p. 113b; Borgh. 134, f. 222vb2): “Therefore if recollection is sometimes moved through an old starting-point, i.e. customary from of old, then it is moved toward the recollectible thing that is more customary to it.”) and therefore one does not recollect easily, because custom is, as it were, a certain nature. Hence, just as those things that exist naturally come into being and are restored easily, inasmuch as things quickly return to their own nature because of the inclination of nature, as is clear in heated water, which quickly returns to coolness, so too do we easily recollect those things that we have often considered, because of our inclination of custom.

383. Moreover, that custom exists as nature does, he explains through this: that just as in nature there is a certain order whereby this thing comes into being after this one, so also when many operations follow each other through an order, they make a certain nature. Now this happens especially in the animal operations in whose principles there is a something impressing and a something receiving an impression, as for example the imagination receives an impression of a sense. And so things that we have frequently seen or heard are the more firmly established in the imagination in the manner of a nature in the same way as the repetition of the impression of a natural agent eventually also leads to a form which is the nature of a thing.

384. Then, when he says but since just as in things that exist by nature (452a30), he points out the cause whereby we sometimes recollect corruptly. He says that just as in things that exist according to nature something happens that is outside of nature, i.e. by fortune or chance, such as monsters in the parts of animals, (“Such as monsters in the parts of animals”: Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals 4.3–4.4, 769b10–771a14; 772b13–773a33. Aquinas, In II Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 1, ad 3; d. 34, q. 1, a. 3; In III Sent., d. 11, a. 1 (ed. Moos, p. 359, n. 14); De veritate 1.23, a.2, lines 98–99; q. 24, a. 7, line 130; SCG. III.2 (Leonine ed., vol. 14, p. 6b5–6); Commentary on Metaphysics, bk. 7, lect. 8, in 1034b3–4.) so much the more does something unordered and unintentional happen in those that exist according to custom, which, even if it does imitate nature, yet falls short of its stability. Consequently, there, too, i.e. in those things that we recollect through custom, recollecting happens sometimes in one way and sometimes in another; this occurs because of some impediment, as when one draws back hence, i.e. from one’s accustomed course, toward any other, as is clear in those who recite something from memory: if their imagination be distracted to something else, they lose what they have to say or they say it corruptly. And for this reason, when one needs to recollect a name or a speech, we make a grammatical error with respect to another in a manner unlike the one that we know.

385. Finally he adds as an epilogue that recollecting occurs (452b6) in the manner just described.