3. Treating of memory, we must begin by attributing to the soul a
power which, though surprising, is perhaps really neither strange
nor incredible. The soul, without receiving anything, nevertheless
perceives the things she does not have. The (secret of this) is that
by nature the soul is the reason of all things, the last reason of
intelligible entities, and the first reason of sense-objects.[230]
Consequently the soul is in relation with both (spheres); by the
intelligible things the soul is improved and vivified; but she is
deceived by the resemblance which sense-objects bear to intelligible
entities, and the soul descends here below as if drawn by her
alluring charm. Because she occupies a position intermediary between
intelligible entities and sense-objects, the soul occupies a position
intermediary between them. She is said to think intelligible entities
when, by applying herself to them, she recalls them. She cognizes them
because, in a certain manner, she actually constitutes these entities;
she cognizes them, not because she posits them within herself, but
because she somehow possesses them, and has an intuition of them;
because, obscurely constituting these things, she awakes, passing
from obscurity to clearness, and from potentiality to actualization.
For sense-objects she acts in the same way. By relating them to what
she possesses within herself, she makes them luminous, and has an
intuition of them, possessing as she does a potentiality suitable to
(a perception of) them; and, so to speak, to begetting them. When the
soul has applied the whole force of her attention to one of the objects
that offer themselves to her, she, for a long while, thereby remains
affected as if this object were present; and the more attentively she
considers it, the longer she sees it.[231] That is why children have a
stronger memory; they do not quickly abandon an object, but lingeringly
fix their gaze upon it; instead of allowing themselves to be distracted
by a crowd of objects, they direct their attention exclusively to some
one of them. On the contrary, those whose thought and faculties are
absorbed by a variety of objects, do not rest with any one, and do no
more than look them over.