member, as we have had occasion to remark before, the background given to the whole Aristotelian Psychology by the yuxý as the truth or reality of body. Particularly we must take into account the fact that sense-perception is no mere material assimilation of the outward world but in its last resort depends upon that central faculty of sense, through which we have the power of comparing and combining our sensations. Thus the pictures of imagination, though dependent on the sensations which have passed away, are not of a merely sensuous character: they become through that own dúvaμis of sense generalized conceptions of an object—they are αἰσθήματα but ἄνευ ὕλης: and the images of our imaginative faculty often approximate closely to the ideas of thought'. It is within its semi-sensuous images that reason comes to grasp its ethical ideas; and its images, though immediately limited to the domain of sense, may become the basis of deliberation and thought. Thought indeed, as well as sense, Aristotle himself says, may originate imagination; and in another passage the imaginative faculty is looked at as a species of thought3.

The representative images of phantasy are to Aristotle the stepping-stone to memory and recollection. It seems in fact at first sight difficult to draw any decided line between these reliques of sensation which form the pictures of imagination and those survivals of the past which constitute a memory; and Aristotle himself does not always distinguish them. At the same time there is a real difference between them. The phantasm carries with it little connotation of truth or falsehood in the form of a reference to some external object, and it implies no relation to any time in past experience at which it was originally presented. Memory however carries with it both these attributes-it implies at once an object to which it corresponds, and

1 De An. III. 8, 4329, τὰ γὰρ φαντάσματα ὥσπερ αἰσθήματά ἐστι πλὴν ἄνευ ὕλης.

* Ibid. III. 7, 4311, τὰ μὲν οὖν εἴδη τὸ νοητικὸν ἐν τοῖς φαντάσμασι νοεῖ.

3 Ibid. III. 10, 433 10, εἴ τις τὴν φαντασίαν τιθείη ὡς νόησίν τινα.

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it is attended by a consciousness of some time in the past at which the event remembered actually happened'. Memory then involves time; and consequently, Aristotle maintains, it is only those animals which possess a sense of time that are capable of remembering what has happened.

Memory is accordingly defined by Aristotle as "the permanent possession of a sensuous picture as a copy which represents the object of which it is the picture?," and he adds further that it is the function of our ultimate faculty of sense which is also that by which we gain a consciousness of time3. The strength of memory thus depends to a very considerable extent upon the tenacity with which the original impression was received. Hence, writes Aristotle, memory does not on the one hand attach to those who are under great movement and excitement, whether from passion or from youth, because in such a case the movement in which sense consists and the impression which it involves falls, as it were, on running water: nor, on the other hand, can the impression fix itself in those who are dried up and crumbling away like ruined buildings. Neither, in short, the very young nor the very old are gifted with much power of memory: and similarly, the very quick and very slow are alike deficient in remembering, the one because the image representing their perception does not stay after it is caught, the other because this image never gets a hold at all'.

This retention of our past impressions by the aid of Memory serves as basis for a much more active application of the mental faculties. This new retrospective function is what Aristotle knows as recollection or reminiscence (ἀναμιμνήσκεσθαι)—the faculty, that is to say, of calling back to consciousness the per

1 De Mem. I, 44922, ἀεὶ γὰρ ὅταν ἐνεργῇ κατὰ τὸ μνημονεύειν, οὕτως ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ λέγει, ὅτι πρότερον τοῦτο ἤκουσεν ἢ ᾔσθετο ἢ ἐνόησεν...... διὸ μετὰ χρόνου πᾶσα μνήμη.

2 451 15, φαντάσματος ὡς εἰκόνος οὗ φάντασμα ἕξις.

3 450*12.

4 45032, διὸ καὶ τοῖς μὲν ἐν κινήσει πολλῇ διὰ πάθος ἢ δι ̓ ἡλικίαν οὖσιν οὐ γίνεται μνήμη, καθάπερ ἂν εἰς ὕδωρ ῥέον ἐμπιπτούσης τῆς κινήσεως καὶ τῆς σφραγίδος.

ceptions and ideas which memory has treasured up within its storehouse of the past. Such recollection may take place either intentionally or unintentionally: we may, that is to say, recall some event of past experience either accidentally as it were or by the help of a distinct effort to call it back to mind; but in either case it is regulated by certain laws which it is one of the great psychological merits of Aristotle to have tabulated for us. The laws which thus express the mode in which the mind attempts to recall its past impressions are what have commonly been designated since Aristotle's day, the Laws of the Association of Ideas. But to Aristotle, it must be added, the laws in question have little or none of the significance which they have acquired in the hands of modern inquirers. To him they are simply a statement of the manner in which we seek to regain some fragments of our knowledge which have for the moment got outside our consciousness. Recollection in short being the recalling of our past impressions, it follows that the success of our efforts to recall them will depend to no inconsiderable extent on the degree to which we can recall the order in which other impressions stood to that of which we are in search. But our impressions follow one another in memory in an order similar to that in which the actual sensations succeeded one another. Recollection thus involves a study of the laws of sequence in the order of our ideas: and Aristotle analyses the method of recalling past impressions in the following manner. "When engaged in recollection we seek to excite some of our previous movements, until we come to that which the movement or impression of which we are in search was wont to follow. And hence we seek to reach this preceding impression by starting in our thought from an object present to us or something else whether it be similar, contrary or contiguous to that of which we are in search; recollection taking place in this manner because the movements are in one case identical, in another case coincident and in the last case partly overlap1."

1 De Mem. 2, 451 16, ὅταν οὖν ἀναμιμνησκώμεθα, κινούμεθα τῶν προτέρων

Similarity, contrariety and contiguity are thus to Aristotle the three principles by which for purposes of recollection our ideas and impressions have to be guided. Our sensuous movements and impressions really follow one another in an order corresponding to that of external nature. Thus, the more order and arrangement there is in the elements of our experiencethe better connected our ideas are the more easily will they be remembered'. And again the greater the number of times we have established a connection between our ideas, the greater will be the ease with which we can recall them. Habit in short becomes a second nature: and the constant conjunction of two phenomena in outer experience will lead to their being so connected in the mind that the one will never shew itself without the other2.

With the exercise of recollection we have gone considerably upwards in the scale of animal existence. No doubt this recollection is like all preceding operations in great part a bodily affection (owμatiкòv tábos): it rests upon that theory of physical movement and physical impression which underlies, as we have seen, Aristotle's whole theory of sense-perception. But at the same time this process of reminiscence, though thus dependent upon bodily conditions, involves, to stimulate these conditions, an act of mind which goes decidedly beyond a mere material phenomenon. We have already (p. xxxv.) referred to the passage (1.4, 40815) in which Aristotle views it as starting from the action of the mind just as perception ends in such a mental principle. Recollection in fact would seem to be confined to man. And the reason is that recollection implies a process of reasoning-a distinct selection of means to τινα κινήσεων ἕως ἂν κινηθῶμεν μεθ ̓ ἣν ἐκείνη εἴωθεν. διὸ καὶ τὸ ἐφεξῆς θηρεύομεν νοήσαντες ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν ἢ ἄλλου τινὸς καὶ ἀφ ̓ ὁμοίου ἢ ἐναντίου ἢ τοῦ συνεγγυς. διὰ τοῦτο γίνεται ἡ ἀνάμνησις· αἱ γὰρ κινήσεις τούτων τῶν μὲν αἱ αὐταί, τῶν δ ̓ ἅμα, τῶν δὲ μέρος ἔχουσιν, ὥστε τὸ λοιπὸν μικρὸν ὃ ἐκινήθη μετ' ἐκεῖνο.

1 452 3.

2

45228, διὸ ἃ πολλάκις ἐννοοῦμεν ταχὺ ἀναμιμνησκόμεθα· ὥσπερ γὰρ φύσει τόδε μετὰ τόδε ἐστίν, οὕτω καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ· τὸ δὲ πολλάκις φύσιν ποιεῖ. Mr J. C. Wilson suggests reading here συνηθείᾳ for ἐνεργεία.

ends in what Aristotle calls deliberation'. The mere animal may remember; it may possess the faculty of memory and retain its past impressions and experiences. But of the facts. it thus retains it can make no use; it is unable to call up the treasures of its experience at will: it simply remembers, it never recollects. And the meaning of this is that the animal as such is unable to make the past to bear upon the present, it fails to get outside the limits of its particular sensations, it cannot apprehend the universal, the general idea under which individuals are included. But all this is involved in the work of recollection. To apprehend two sensations as similar involves an understanding of them in their general relations and it is just the universal which is the beginning and the intermediate notion in these links which are presented in the sequence of our ideas (ἔοικε δὲ τὸ καθόλου ἀρχὴ καὶ τὸ μέσον Távτwv). But to allow this is to hold that recollection presupposes thought or reason as the faculty which goes beyond the individual and interprets it as an universal. And thus we pass almost imperceptibly from the recollection of our past impressions to the faculty of Thought or Reason.

XI. ARISTOTLE'S THEORY OF THOUGHT.

The most perplexing part of Aristotle's psychology is undoubtedly his theory of thought. There are many circumstances which explain this difficulty. There is the fragmentary character of the chapters in which Aristotle enunciates his views. upon the subject. There is the apparent contradiction which runs through the whole epistemology of Aristotle and which makes him emphasize now the part of sense, now the work of reason in building up knowledge. There is the further fact

W. AR.

1 453 10, τὸ ἀναμιμνήσκεσθαί ἐστιν οἷον συλλογισμός τις.

2 Eth. Nic. VII. 3, 11474.

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