The five days debate at Cicero's house in Tusculum between master and sophister.

SECT. XXIV. From the capaciousness of its memory.

WHat do you think of these other Instances? Take you them to be of less moment? which manifest that there is somewhat Divine in the Souls of men; which could I perceive how they could have been born, I might also compre∣hend how they should dye. For as to the Blood, Choler, Phlegm, Bones, Sinews, Veins, in a word, all the mould of the Limbs, and of the whole Body, methinks I could account for them, whereof they are compounded, and how they were form'd from the Soul it self, if there accru'd no other advantage, but that we liv'd by it; I should think the Life of man as much supported by Nature, as that of a Vine or other Plant; for we say, that they also live. Again, if the Soul of man had no other, Faculties, than those of desiring and avoiding; that too it would have in common with the Beasts. For the first instance, it hath memory, and that infinite, of innumerable things; (f) so that Plato would have it to be the re∣calling to mind what was known in a former Life. For in that Book which is entitled Menon, Socrates asks a certain Youngster some Geometrical que∣stions, about the content of a Square: He answers them, as a Child; and yet the Interrogatories are so easie, that the answer proceeding, step by step, cometh at length to that pass, as if he had learn'd Mathematicks; from which Socrates would con∣clude, that to learn, is nothing else, but to refresh

the Memory. Which Topick he explains much more accurately; yet in that Dialogue which he held, the very day wherein he submitted to the Execution of the Sentence pass'd upon his Life; wherein he teaches, that any one, let him seem utterly illiterate and unexperienc'd, if he answer directly to one that puts apt questions to him, doth make it manifest, that he doth not then learn those Matters anew, but only recollect what he had before in his memory. And that it were wholly impossible for us to have the Notions, which the Greeks call common, of so many, and so great things, from our Childhood imprinted, and as it were registred in our Souls, unless the Soul before it entred the Body, had been employ'd in under∣standing the World. And if it had been nothing, as is in all places disputed by Plato (for he thinks that to be nothing, which cometh by Generation, and turns to Corruption, and that only to have being, which is such always as he calls his Idea, we the Species or Kind) the Soul after it was locked up in the Body could not come to understand them, therefore it brought the knowledge of them with it hither; by which means all admiration of our knowing so many things ceases. Nor doth the Soul discern them on the sudden, after she is remov'd into such a strange and confus'd habitation, till she hath re∣collected and recruited her self, for then she recovers those dormant notices, by remembrance of them; so that Learning is nothing else, than a recalling to mind. Now I must confess, I do after an extraordinary manner, admire the memory; what is that fa∣culty, whereby we remember? what is its force? or whence its nature? I do not demand about such a memory, as Simonides is said to have had; such as Theodectes; such as he who was sent Am∣bassador

from Pyrrhus, to the Senate Cynaeas; such as Charmidas lately; such as in these times, the Scepsian Metrodorus; such as our Friend Hortensius. I speak of the common memory of men, and those especially who are train'd up in any considerable Business or Art; the compass of whose mind, it is hard to estimate, so many things do they remember.

(f) So that Plato would have it to be the re-calling to mind, what was known in a former Life.] It is a known opinion of Plato, the pre-existence of Souls, too much favoured by Origen and Arnobius, perhaps to salve the Do∣ctrine of original Sin, which they thought less reconcile∣able to the Souls Creation in its Infusion. But the truer account of such apprehension, seems to be from the com∣mon Notions, by natural instinct implanted in the rational Soul.