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第82节

the six enneads-第82节

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 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。     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。     26。 Now if sensations of the active order depend upon the Couplement of soul and body; sensation must be of that double nature。 Hence it is classed as one of the shared acts: the soul; in the feeling; may be compared to the workman in such operations as boring or weaving; the body to the tool employed: the body is passive and menial; the soul is active; reading such impressions as are made upon the body or discerned by means of the body; perhaps entertaining only a judgement formed as the result of the bodily experiences。     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。     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。     It may be suggested the while the soul is perhaps not in itself a remembering principle; yet that; having lost its purity and acquired some degree of modification by its presence in body; it becomes capable of reproducing the imprints of sensible objects and experiences; and that; seated; as roughly speaking it is; within the body; it may reasonably be thought capable of accepting such impressions; and in such a manner as to retain them 'thus in some sense possessing memory'。     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。     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。     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。     27。 But of what soul; of that which we envisage as the more divine; by which we are human beings; or that other which springs from the All?     Memory must be admitted in both of these; personal memories and shared memories; and when the two souls are together; the memories also are as one; when they stand apart; assuming that both exist and endure; each soon for gets the other's affairs; retaining for a longer time its own。 Thus it is that the Shade of Hercules in the lower regions… this 〃Shade;〃 as I take it; being the characteristically human part… remembers all the action and experience of the life; since that career was mainly of the hero's personal shaping; the other souls 'soulphases' going to constitute the joint…being could; for all their different standing; have nothing to recount but the events of that same life; doings which they knew from the time of their association: perhaps they would add also some moral judgement。     What the Hercules standing outside the Shade spoke of we are not told: what can we think that other; the freed and isolated; soul would recount?     The soul; still a dragged captive; will tell of all the man did and felt; but upon death there will appear; as time passes; memories of the lives lived before; some of the events of the most recent life being dismissed as trivial。 As it grows away from the body; it will revive things forgotten in the corporeal state; and if it passes in and out of one body after another; it will tell over the events of the discarded life; it will treat as present that which it has just left; and it will remember much from the former existence。 But with lapse of time it will come to forgetfulness of many things that were mere accretion。     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。     28。 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。     Yet the perception is very different from faculty to faculty; certainly it is sight and not desire that sees the object; desire is stirred merely as a result of the seeing; by a transmission; its act is not in the nature of an identification of an object seen; all is simply blind response 'automatic reaction'。 Similarly with rage; sight reveals the offender and the passion leaps; we may think of a shepherd seeing a wolf at his flock; and a dog; seeing nothing; who springs to the scent or the sound。     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 awa

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