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CHAPTER 1 449B4–30 449b4 About memory1 and remembering we must say what it is, and owing to what cause it comes about, and in which of the parts2 of the soul this affection3 occurs; and we must do the same about recollecting. For those who are good at remembering are not the same as those who are good at recollecting; rather, as frequently happens, those who are slow to learn are more able to remember, while those who are quick and learn easily are able to recollect. 449b9 Since the question “What sort of things are memorable?” is frequently misleading, this is the first point to be taken up. 449b10 For the future is not remembered, but it can be thought about and expected. Moreover, there will also be a science of expectation,4 which some call divination. 449b13 Nor is memory of the present, but sense is. For by sense we know neither the future nor what’s been done, but only the present. 449b15 But memory is of what has been: now no one will say that the present is being remembered while it is at hand, e.g. this white object while someone is seeing it, no one will say he is remembering it; nor will he say that he is remembering what is being considered while he is considering or understanding it; but they generally call the first act sense and only the second knowing. But since one may have knowledge and sense without the acts,5 one may remember that a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles in this way: This occurs in the one case since he has learned or speculated upon it, and in the other since he has heard or seen it or some other such thing. For when one acts according to memory, one always speaks thus in one’s soul—that one has heard or felt or understood it before. 449b24 Therefore there is a thing called memory, and it is neither sense nor opinion, but with any of these there is a habit or an affection once time has passed. But of the now itself there is no memory in the now itself, as has been said. Rather sense is of the present; expectation, of the future; and memory, of the past. For this reason, only those animals that sense time remember, and they do so by the very thing by which they sense it. 183 Commentary As the Philosopher says in the seventh book on the Histories of Animals ,6 nature proceeds from inanimate to animate things little by little, so that the genus of inanimate things comes before the genus of plants. For plants, when compared to other bodies, seem to be animate, even though when they are compared to the genus of animals they seem to be inanimate. In the same way, nature proceeds from plants to animals in a continuous order; for certain immobile animals—those that adhere to the earth—seem to differ little from plants. So, too, in the order of progression from animals to man, some animals are found in which something like reason appears.7 For although prudence—“the right reason of things one can do,” as it is called in the sixth book of the Ethics8 — is a virtue proper to man, some animals are found to participate in a sort of prudence.9 This is so not because they can reason, but because they are moved to act by a natural instinct.10 Such acts result from an apprehension by the sensitive part11 of the soul, as if they were done from reason. The role of prudence is to direct the prudent man to do what ought to be done by considering not only the present but also the past. This is why Cicero12 sets down as the parts of prudence not only foresight, through which future things are attended to, but also understanding, through which present things are considered, and memory, through which past things are apprehended. Accordingly, even other animals that seem to have something like prudence must have not only a senseawareness of present things but also a memory of past things. Therefore, at the beginning of the Metaphysics13 the Philosopher says that in the case of certain animals memory comes from sensation, and for this reason they are prudent. Just as these animals have an imperfect sort of prudence compared to that of man, so is their memory likewise imperfect. For...

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