Soliloquies

³⁴ A. It is as you say, and I willingly yield compliance with your injunctions. But this at least I would entreat, before you decree a term to the volume, that you would summarily explain what the distinction is between the true figure, which is contained in the intelligence, and that which thought frames to itself, which in Greek is termed either Phantasia or Phantasma. R. You seek that which no one except one of purest sight is able to see, and to the vision of which thing you are but poorly trained; nor have we now in these wide circuits anything else in view than to exercise you, that you may be competent to see: yet how it is possible to be taught that the difference is very great, perhaps I can, with a little pains, make clear.

For suppose you had forgotten something, and that others were wishing that you should recall it to memory. They therefore say: Is it this, or that? Bringing forward things diverse from it as if similar to it. But you neither see that which you desire to recollect, and yet see that it is not this which is suggested. Seems this to you, when it happens, by any means equivalent to total forgetfulness? For this very power of distinguishing, whereby the false suggestions made to time are repelled, is a certain part of recollection. A. So it seems. R. Such therefore do not yet see the truth yet they cannot be misled and deceived; and what they seek, they sufficiently know.

But if any one should say that you laughed a few days after you were born, you would not venture to say it was false: and if he were an authority worthy of credit, you are ready, not, indeed, to remember, but to believe; for to you that whole time is buried in most authentic oblivion. Or do you think otherwise? A. I thoroughly agree with this. R. This oblivion therefore differs exceedingly from that, but that stands midway. For there is another nearer and more closely neighboring to the recollection and rekindled vision of truth: the like of which is when we see something, and recognize for certain that we have seen it at some time, and affirm that we know it; but where, or when, or how, or with whom it came into our knowledge, we have enough to do to search our memory for an answer.

As if this happens in regard to a man, we also inquire where we have known him: which when he has brought to mind, suddenly the whole thing flashes upon the memory like a light, and we have no more trouble to recollect. Is this sort of forgetfulness unknown to you, or obscure? A. What plainer than this or what is happening to me more frequently?