Page:Philosophical Review Volume 5.djvu/107

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91
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. V.

No. i.] SUMMARIES OF ARTICLES. 91 Μνήμη (Theaet. 191 C ff.) is the capability of a soul in union with a body to retain impressions of sense. This capability differs in different individuals owing to differences in corporeal character and the relative intimacy of the union of the corporeal with the psychical. The more intimate the union is, the worse is μνήμη. In a close union of these two natures, the impressions of sense are impure and indistinct. Memory is, therefore, improved by a purification of the soul through asceticism. Aristotle (περὶ μνήμης καὶ ἀναμνήσεως) says that after a sensation is experienced there remains, owing to the action of φαντασία, as a more or less permanent possession of the soul, a memorial image (μνημόνευμα) of the thing sensed. This μνημόνευμα is a deposit, as it were, left in the soul by a presentative factor (φαντασία), and this φαντασία, looked at physiologically, is a stimulus whose nature is to further continue the movement set up by sensa- tion. The blood or warm breath (πνεῦμα) is conductor of this movement, and when it has been carried to the heart, the φαντασία becomes a φαντασμα. The φαντασμα differs from the μνημόνευμα (whose mechanical correlate is also to be found in the heart) only in the fact that in the memorial image we are conscious of a former actual sense experience. This φαντασία as cause of a twofold deposit in the heart as central organ (the opinions of Alcmaeon, Democritus, and Plato on the function of the brain being displaced by this less correct view of Aristotle) gives the following schema :

φαντασία φαντασμα μνημόνευμα

Conscious and voluntary recollection in Aristotle's Psychology is ἀνάμνησις; conscious, but involuntary, memory is μνήμη. He uses, however, μνήμη also in a broad sense to include both voluntary recollection (ἀνάμνησις) and memory (μνήμη). Animals are capable of the latter ; while man alone is capable of the former. Ἀνάμνησις is conditioned by antecedent association, which is grounded in three things : (i) Similarity, (2) Contrast, (3) Succession or Order. W. A. H. La philosophic de Charles Secrdtan. EMILE BOUTROUX. Rev. de Met, III, 3, pp. 253-268. To the work of thinker and apostle to which he devoted his life, Secretan brought a profound moral and religious nature. Duty, faith, responsibility, sin, salvation, were for him living realities. There