Chapter IX.—Not Only Things, But
Also Literature and Images, are Taken from the Memory, and are
Brought Forth by the Act of Remembering.
16. And yet are not these all that the illimitable
capacity of my memory retains. Here also is all that is apprehended
of the liberal sciences, and not yet forgotten—removed as it were
into an inner place, which is not a place; nor are they the images
which are retained, but the things themselves. For what is
literature, what skill in disputation, whatsoever I know of all the
many kinds of questions there are, is so in my memory, as that I
have not taken in the image and left the thing without, or that it
should have sounded and passed away like a voice imprinted on the
ear by that trace, whereby it might be recorded, as though it
sounded when it no longer did so; or as an odour while it passes
away, and vanishes into wind, affects the sense of smell, whence it
conveys the image of itself into the memory, which we realize in
recollecting; or like food, which assuredly in the belly hath now
no taste, and yet hath a kind of taste in the memory, or like
anything that is by touching felt by the body, and which even when
removed from us is imagined by the memory. For these things
themselves are not put into it, but the images of them only are
caught up, with a marvellous quickness, and laid up, as it were, in
most wonderful garners, and wonderfully brought forth when we
remember.