Chapter XI.—What It is to Learn
and to Think.
18. Wherefore we find that to learn these
things, whose images we drink not in by our senses, but perceive
within as they are by themselves, without images, is nothing else
but by meditation as it were to concentrate, and by observing to
take care that those notions which the memory did before contain
scattered and confused, be laid up at hand, as it were, in that
same memory, where before they lay concealed, scattered and
neglected, and so the more easily present themselves to the mind
well accustomed to observe them. And how many things of this sort
does my memory retain which have been found out already, and, as I
said, are, as it were, laid up ready to hand, which we are said to
have learned and to have known; which, should we for small
intervals of time cease to recall, they are again so submerged and
slide back, as it were, into the more remote chambers, that they
must be evolved thence again as if new (for other sphere they have
none), and must be marshalled [
cogenda
] again that they may
become known; that is to say, they must be collected
[
colligenda
], as it were, from their dispersion; whence we
have the word
cogitare
. For
cogo
[
I collect
]
and
cogito
[
I recollect
] have the same relation to
each other as
ago
and
agito
,
facio
and
factito
. But the mind has appropriated to itself this word
[cogitation], so that not that which is collected anywhere, but
what is collected,
851
that is marshalled,
852
in the mind,
is properly said to be “cogitated.”
853
851
Colligitur.
852
Cogitur.
853
Cogitari.