Per Caritatem

As Augustine continues his discussion of memory, he investigates the “contents” of our memory, inquiring as to what exactly we find “in” our memory.  Perhaps the most obvious answer is memories of events and so forth that have happened in one’s past-historical recollections (e.g., I remember when I heard Ambrose preach; I remember when my friend died).  Historical recollections, however, are only one aspect of memory. Augustine also speaks of memories of smells, sounds, tastes etc. (Conf., 10.8.13; Boulding trans., p. 245). Memory, as Augustine describes it is a “huge repository,” with “secret and unimaginable caverns,” that houses “all these things, to be recalled and brought out for use when needed” (10.8.13; p. 245).  As mentioned above, in addition to recalling historical facts, we have memories of our sense experiences.  The sensory impressions that we receive (smells, tastes etc.) are somehow turned into images of these various sense-impressions, are stored this “repository,” and then are recalled by us when occasions demand (10.8.13; p.245).

Next, Augustine points out that memory can distinguish things that are not actually being experienced.  For example, he says, “when I am sitting quietly in the dark, I can bring up colors in my memory if I wish, and distinguish white from black and any others I select” (10.8.13; pp. 245-46).  The same is true with the other senses (sound, taste, smell etc.).  One can, for instance, distinguish between honey and grape juice without tasting, feeling or smelling either of the two.  In addition, Augustine speaks of having the sky, earth and sea “readily available” to him via memory (10.8.14, p. 246).  That is, he doesn’t have to be at the sea or actually looking up into the sky to identify and differentiate the two. Likewise, he can draw upon these stored images to create imaginary pictures that resemble things that he has experienced (10.8.14; p. 246).  As he discusses this faculty of memory, it is clear that Augustine finds it beyond his ability to fully comprehend.  For example, he writes,

This faculty of memory is a great one, O my God, exceedingly great, a vast, infinite recess.  Who can plumb its depth?  This is a faculty of my mind, belonging to my nature, yet I cannot myself comprehend all that I am.  Is the mind, then, too narrow to grasp itself, forcing us to ask where that part of it is which it is incapable of grasping?  Is it outside the mind, not inside?  How can the mind not compass it? (10.8.15; pp. 246-47).

Augustine then turns to non-imagistic memories. Here he speaks of memory in connection with his liberal arts education.  In contrast with the images of sense impressions described above, Augustine says the things in his memory that he received via his liberal education are “the realities themselves.”  These realities include his knowledge of grammar, logic, mathematics, kinds of things, etc. (10.10.17; p. 248, cf. also 10.12.19; p. 249).   As he explains, “through no bodily sense whatever have I made contact with the realities themselves, for I have never seen these realities anywhere except in my own mind.  What I have stowed away in my memory is not the images of these things but the things themselves” (10.10.17; p. 248, italics added).  Here Augustine seems to suggest that there are certain concepts or innate ideas that are implanted in our minds and stored in our memory, as we do not learn these “realities themselves” by way of sense experience.  After stating that these realities did not enter his memory through any of the five senses, Augustine then asks a series of questions, and seems to favor a kind of Christian version of Plato’s doctrine of recollection and innate ideas.

From what source and by what route did they enter my memory?  I do not know, for when I learned them I did not take them on trust from some stranger’s intelligence but recognized them as present in my own, and affirmed them as true, and entrusted them to my memory for safekeeping so that I could bring them out again when I wished.  This means that they were there even before I learned them, but not remembered.  Where and why did I recognize them and say, ‘Yes, that’s how it is; that is true,” [...] Surely because they were already in my memory, but so remote, so hidden from sight in concealed hollows, that unless they had been dug out by someone who reminded me, I would perhaps never have been able to think about them.  We are therefore led to conclude that when we learn things which are not imbibed through the senses as images, but are known directly in their own reality inside the mind, as they are in themselves, and without the intervention of images, we are collecting by means of our thought those things which the memory held, but in a scattered and disorderly way (10.10.17-11.18; p. 248).

In some respect this sounds like recollection from a previous life.  If he held that (and he probably did not, given his Christian commitments), he comes to clearly reject it later in favor of the idea that the soul is created immediately.  In other words, God creates our souls ex nihilo with these innate principles.

At 10.12.19, Augustine continues his discussion of these non-imagistic realities stored in the memory, and here distinguishes between images and the truths themselves. He first notes that principles of mathematics/number are not experienced via the senses.  We of course learn about them by way of language; hence, the senses are involved (sounds of spoken names of numbers, marks on a page).   However, as Augustine explains, “the sounds are one thing and the truths themselves something else.  The words sound one way in Greek and differently in Latin, but the truths are neither Greek nor Latin, nor spoken entities of any kind” (10.12.19; p. 249).  Even though the sounds and signs of languages differ, the truths to which these signs point are common among all people, as they are implanted in all.  Augustine adds that mathematical (geometric) lines drawn on a page and seen with his “fleshly eye” represent something completely different, viz. truths known by all “without a physical representation of any kind being involved.  One recognizes them within oneself.  With all my bodily senses I have apprehended the numbers of things as we count them; but the principle of number is something entirely different, and without it we could not think mathematically at all.  This principle is not an image of the things counted, and therefore has a much more real existence” (10.12.19; pp. 249-250, italics added).