5. Are our notions of intellectual entities actualized by the
potentiality which constitutes memory? If these notions be not
intuitions, it is by memory that they become actualized; if they are
intuitions, it is by the potentiality which has given them to us on
high. This power awakes in us every time that we rise to intelligible
things, in it is that which sees what we later talk about. We do not
perceive intelligible entities by imagination or reasoning, which
itself is forced to draw its principles from elsewhere; it is by our
faculty of contemplation, which alone enables us to speak of them
while we are here below. We see them by awaking in ourselves here
below the same potentiality which we are to arouse when we are in the
intelligible world. We resemble a man who, climbing the peak of a rock,
should, by his glance, discover objects invisible for those who have
not climbed with him.
WHEN SOULS DESCEND FROM THE INTELLIGIBLE TO THE HEAVENS, THEY RECOGNIZE
EACH OTHER.
Reasonable arguments therefore clearly demonstrate that memory
manifests in the soul only when she has descended from the intelligible
world into the (earthly) heavens. Likewise, it would not surprise us
if, when she had risen from here below to the heavens, and had dwelt
there, she should remember a great number of things from here below,
of which we have already spoken, and that she would recognize many
souls which she had known earlier, since these latter must necessarily
be joined to bodies with similar countenances. Even though the souls
should change the shapes of their bodies, making them spherical, they
would still be recognizable by their habits and individual character.
There is nothing incredible in this, for in admitting that these souls
have purified themselves from all these passions, nothing hinders them
from preserving their character. Besides, if they can converse with
each other, they have this as an additional means of recognizing each
other.