Besides, if desires and aversions were all that belonged to the soul, it would have them only in common with the beasts; but it has, in the first place, memory, and that, too, so infinite as to recollect an absolute countless number of circumstances, which Plato will have to be a recollection of a former life; for in that book which is inscribed Meno, Socrates asks a child some questions in geometry, with reference to measuring a square; his answers are such as a child would make, and yet the questions are so easy, that while answering them, one by one, he comes to the same point as if he had learned geometry.
From whence Socrates would infer that learning is nothing more than recollection; and this topic he explains more accurately in the discourse which he held the very day he died; for he there asserts that, any one, who seeming to be entirely illiterate, is yet able to answer a question well that is proposed to him, does in so doing manifestly show that he is not learning it then, but recollecting it by his memory.
Nor is it to be accounted for in any other way, how children come to have notions of so many and such important things as are implanted, and, as it were, sealed up, in their minds (which the Greeks call ἔννοιαι), unless the soul, before it entered the body, had been well stored with knowledge. And as it had no existence at all (for this is the invariable doctrine of Plato, who will not admit anything to have a real existence which has a beginning and an end, and who thinks that that alone does really exist which is of such a character as what he calls εἴδεα, and we species), therefore, being shut up in the body, it could not while in the body discover what it knows; but it knew it before, and brought the knowledge with it, so that we are no longer surprised at its extensive and multifarious knowledge.
Nor does the soul clearly discover its ideas at its first resort to this abode to which it is so unaccustomed, and which is in so disturbed a state; but after having refreshed and recollected itself, it then by its memory recovers them; and, therefore, to learn implies nothing more than to recollect.
But I am in a particular manner surprised at memory. For what is that faculty by which we remember? what is its force? what its nature? I am not inquiring how great a memory Simonides may be said to have had, or Theodectes, or that Cineas who was sent to Rome as ambassador from Pyrrhus; or, in more modern times, Charmadas; or, very lately, Metrodorus the Scepsian, or our own contemporary Hortensius: I am speaking of ordinary memory, and especially of those men who are employed in any important study or art, the great capacity of whose minds it is hard to estimate, such numbers of things do they remember.
To even speak of something as “divine” can make people feel uncomfortable, though it is not necessary to get caught up in unpleasant memories of Sunday school or that creepy pastor who was always demanding more money. I choose rather to think bigger, to consider what is transcendent, ultimate, and eternal, and to move from the effects back to the causes, from the imperfect to the perfect.
And when I look at my own human nature, I cannot help but wonder about whether there is a touch of something greater than the mortal placed within it, as I find it difficult to explain all that I am from only the parts of the body out of which I am composed.
In so many ways I am not unlike other animals at all, with organs made for respiration, nutrition, reproduction, or sensation. I sometimes hear people say that other animals don’t feel emotions like people do, yet I must respectfully disagree, as the animals that have been close to my life were just as passionate as I was. Even my most basic functions of living are shared in common with the simplest of plant life, and I can hardly say that my soul grants me more “life” than that of an amoeba.
When Cicero brings up memory here, he is not referring merely to the ability of receiving and retaining sensible impressions, but to the richer and deeper power of contemplating and holding onto intelligible concepts. It is reason that makes the human soul stand out.
I have come to deeply respect Plato’s Meno over the years, on multiple levels, and yet I initially had an instinctive aversion to the section where Socrates questions Meno’s young slave. I suppose that is a sign of a challenging and engaging argument, where we are struggling to know where we stand. I appreciate that Cicero here refers to this text.
Meno had earlier asked Socrates whether virtue could be taught, but he quickly found that he wasn’t able to define what virtue was to begin with. Frustrated and embarrassed, he was about to give up, insisting that learning itself is impossible, because if we already know it, we don’t need to learn it, and if we don’t already know it, we won’t know what to look for.
In response, Socrates tried a little experiment, where he took the slave aside to ask him about a problem in geometry, specifically on how to calculate the areas of squares. Now the boy possessed no formal education, having only his natural wits available to him, and yet by thinking about Socrates’ questions for himself, he arrived at the correct answer. Here is concrete proof that learning is indeed possible, for the slave boy now understood something of which he seemed to be ignorant before.
Of course Socrates had offered pointers, but it was the boy himself who worked on his own comprehension. Where had it come from? Since nothing comes from nothing, there must have been something already there within him, only waiting to be awakened and brought forth. Here we have the Platonic doctrine of recollection, where learning is actually the act of remembering something forgotten.
A strict sort of Platonism will claim that this entails the pre-existence of the soul, which, before being joined to the body, once had access to the reality of Ideas, and is now recovering an awareness of that past. A more involved variation on the argument is made in the Phaedo, where it is proposed that the soul is not subject to the life and death of the body, and so exists on a higher level, a divine plane, if you will.
Working all of this out would require a survey of much of the whole history of philosophy, though for the purposes of this topic I think it might be sufficient to offer that learning is far more than passively soaking up information, and instead involves the active involvement of a far greater power within us. If the mind comprehends the nature of matter, then its own nature also transcends such matter, and is somehow prior to it, whether it be a literal remembering or the priming of some innate potency.
The greatness of human “memory” is not limited to those geniuses who can recite all of Shakespeare by heart or play back a whole piece of music from hearing it once. It is just as, if not more, impressive when any one of us can experience one little thing, and from this draw connections to countless other things, providing an awareness of the universal to the presence of particulars. Meno’s slave boy has the same brilliance, and divinity, as a Homer or an Einstein.
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