Doubtless we will have to acknowledge that there are affections which
pass from the body into the soul; but there are also affections which
belong exclusively to the soul, because the soul is a real being, with
characteristic nature and activities. In this case, the soul must have
desires, and recall them, remembering that they have, or have not
been satisfied; because, by her nature, she does not form part of the
things which are (as Heraclitus said) in a perpetual flow. Otherwise,
we could not attribute to the soul coenesthesia (or, common feeling),
conscience, reflection, or the intuition of herself. If she did not
possess them by her nature, she would not acquire them by union with
the body. Doubtless there are activities which the soul cannot carry
out without the assistance of the organs; but she herself possesses the
faculties (or "powers") from which these activities are outgrowths.
Besides, she, by herself, possesses other faculties, whose operations
are derived from her alone. Among these is memory, whose exercise
is only hindered by the body. Indeed, when the soul unites with the
body, she forgets; when she separates from the body, and purifies
herself, she often recovers memory. Since the soul possesses memory
when she is alone, the body, with its changeable nature, that is ever
subject to a perpetual flow, is a cause of forgetfulness, and not of
memory; the body therefore is, for the soul, the stream of Lethe (or
forgetfulness). To the soul alone, therefore, belongs memory.
MEMORY BELONGS BOTH TO THE DIVINE SOUL, AND TO THAT DERIVED FROM THE
WORLD-SOUL.
27. To which soul, however, does memory belong? To the soul whose
nature is more divine, and which constitutes us more essentially, or
to the soul that we receive from the universal Soul (the rational
and irrational souls)? Memory belongs to both; but in one case it is
general, and in the other particular. When both souls are united, they
together possess both kinds of memory; if they both remain separate,
each remembers longer what concerns herself, and remembers less long
what concerns the other. That is the reason people talk of the image
of Hercules being in the hells.[145] Now this image remembers all the
deeds committed in this life; for this life particularly falls to her
lot. The other souls which (by uniting within themselves the rational
part to the irrational) together possess both kinds of memory. They yet
cannot remember anything but the things that concern this life, and
which they have known here below, or even the actions which have some
relation with justice.