Soliloquies 2.20

A. It is as you say, and I gladly obey your precepts. But let me obtain at least this before you set an end to the volume: that you briefly explain the difference between the true figure, which is contained in the intelligence, and that which thought forms for itself, which in Greek is called phantasia or phantasma. R. You are asking about what no one can see unless most pure, and for the sight of which you are too little exercised; and by these roundabout ways we are now working at nothing else than your exercise, so that you may become fit to see it. Yet perhaps I can briefly make plain how it can be taught that the difference is very great. Suppose you have forgotten something, and others wish to recall it, as it were, to your memory. They say: Is it this, or that?, bringing forward different things as if similar. And you do not see what you wish to remember, and yet you see that it is not what is said. When this happens to you, does it seem to be complete forgetting? For that very discernment, by which what you are wrongly reminded of is not admitted, is a certain part of remembering. A. So it seems. R. Such people, then, do not yet see the truth; yet they cannot be misled and deceived, and they know well enough what they are seeking. But if someone tells you that you laughed a few days after you were born, you do not dare to say it is false; and if the source is one to be trusted, you will not remember but believe; for that whole time is buried for you in the deepest forgetfulness. Or do you think otherwise? A. I agree entirely. R. This forgetfulness, then, differs greatly from that one; but that one is in the middle. For there is another, nearer and closer to remembering and seeing the truth again; like it is when we see something and recognize with certainty that we saw it at some time and affirm that we knew it, but take pains to recover and recall where, or when, or how, or through whom it came into our knowledge. As if it happens with a man, we even ask where we knew him; and when he has reminded us, suddenly the whole thing pours into memory like light, and no more labor is needed to remember. Or is this kind unknown or obscure to you? A. What is plainer than this? Or what usually happens to me more often? R. Such are those who are well educated in the liberal disciplines; for in learning they undoubtedly dig out these things, buried in forgetfulness within them, and in a way unearth them; yet they are not content, nor do they stop until they behold most widely and most fully the whole face of truth, of which a certain splendor already gleams in those arts. But from these some false colors and forms pour themselves, as it were, into the mirror of thought, and often mislead the inquirers, and deceive them into thinking that this is the whole of what they know or what they seek. These are the very imaginations which must be avoided with great caution; they are detected as deceptive when they vary as the mirror of thought varies, while that face of truth remains one and unchangeable. For then thought paints for itself a square of now one size, now another, and holds it as it were before its eyes; but the inner mind, which wishes to see the true, should turn rather, if it can, to that according to which it judges that all these are squares. A. What if someone tells us that it judges according to what it is accustomed to see with the eyes? R. Why then does it judge, if it is well educated, that a true sphere of any size touches a true plane at a point? What eye has ever seen anything such, or can see it, when nothing of the kind can be formed even by the imagination of thought? Do we not prove this when we describe in imagination even the smallest circle in the mind, and draw lines from it to the center? For when we have drawn two, between which a needle could scarcely prick, we can no longer draw others in the middle by imaginary thought so that they reach the center without any merging; though reason cries out that countless lines can be drawn, and that they cannot touch one another in those incredible narrows except at the center, so that in every interval between them a circle could even be drawn. Since that phantasy cannot accomplish this, and fails more than the eyes themselves, since it is through them that it was imprinted on the mind, it is clear both that it differs greatly from truth and that, while it is seen, truth is not seen. These things will be discussed more laboriously and subtly when we begin to treat of understanding, which is the part we have set before us, once whatever troubles us about the life of the soul has been explained and discussed as far as we are able. For I believe you are not a little afraid that human death, even if it does not kill the soul, may still bring forgetfulness of all things, and of truth itself, if any has been found. A. It cannot be said enough how much this evil is to be feared. For what kind of eternal life will that be, or what death is not to be preferred to it, if the soul lives as we see it live in a newborn child? Not to speak of that life which is lived in the womb; for I do not think there is none. R. Be of good courage; God will be present, as we already feel as we seek, who promises something most blessed after this body, and most full of truth, without any falsehood. A. May it be as we hope.