A Philosophical Dissertation on the Aids of Memory by Caspar Posner
Table of Contents
Elder’s Notes
Aristotle and Galen are the twin pillars of the Western mnemonic tradition, which Caspar Posner’s A Philosophical Dissertation on the Aids of Memory captures quite clearly. His dissertation sheds new light on the post-medieval understandings of memory. He even beefs with the Cartesians.
It’s worth noticing Posner’s multiple citations of the Jesuit Sebastian Izquierdo, a pioneer of combinatorics who was mentioned in Frances Yates Art of Memory.
Presented at illustrious Jena under the presidency of Caspar Posner, public professor of natural philosophy, by Heinrich Behmcken of Konigsberg in Prussia.
Dedication
To the most serene prince, the Elector of Brandenburg, and to the supreme government in Prussia, counselor and man of highest rank; to the most illustrious, noble, and excellent lord, Lord Johann Ernst of Wallenrodt, supreme provincial magistrate and hereditary lord in Puschkaiten, Prockelwitz, Allenfeld, Konigseck, Wilkischken, Neuendorf, Liepe, and other places; to my greatest patron, most gracious lord and protector, and most munificent benefactor.
This dissertation on the aids of memory, which benefactions have placed in my hands as welcome aids to grateful remembrance, I offer and dedicate as a witness of most humble submission and due gratitude. I pray with all earnestness for the prosperity of your most noble house, and I confess and offer, as far as I am able, the devotion of observance and obedience.
Heinrich Behmcken, author
On the Aids of Memory
Among the powers and capacities with which kind mother nature has endowed the human race, many, not to say all, neither possess the same vigor in all persons nor remain unchanged at all times. When they fail, they admit remedies and aids from human studies and arts. Besides sight, hearing, speech, and the very capacity for learning, memory itself teaches this in us. Since memory, in the sound judgment of Marcus Annaeus Seneca the rhetorician, is the most delicate and fragile of all the parts of the soul, we read that certain methods and means have been described for restoring, strengthening, and sharpening it, and that their whole body has been called mnemonics.
Indeed, what Aristotle, prince of philosophers, wrote in the Politics is also true here: every art and discipline seeks to complete what nature lacks. Nor will Flavius Philostratus of Tyre overturn this, however hard he labors, when he writes that the arts of memory neither exist nor ever have existed, for memory has given the arts, but memory itself cannot be contained by any art, since it is a special gift of nature or a part of the immortal soul. Cicero, the father of Latin eloquence, judged far more soundly when he said that he did not deny that what is good can be made better by instruction, and that what is not excellent can still be sharpened and corrected in some measure.
Melchior Zeidler, that immortal ornament of Prussia and our teacher worthy of reverence even after death, explained this clearly in his forerunner to an introduction to the reading of Aristotle. Nothing prevents even that which belongs to nature from being helped by art, so that it may reach its full perfection, just as singing, dancing, and speaking themselves come from nature, yet owe to art that they are done fitly, decorously, and well.
We intend briefly to recount these aids of memory, noted by the professors of wisdom, and to consider how far they conform to the principles and criteria of natural science. We hope that we shall not spend our labor in vain. Experience has generated art, as Aristotle reports from the ancient Italian philosopher Polus; and memory, so to speak, is the mother of experience. As Galen of Pergamum rightly defines it in Aristotle’s sense, experience is the comprehension and observation of what has been seen many times around the same thing. Thus the inquiry into the means by which we can assist a wavering memory can be valued no less highly than the dignity and excellence commonly assigned to the liberal arts and sciences.
Plutarch of Chaeronea seems to have had the same thing in view when he wrote that the force of memory exercised in learning contributes not only to erudition, but also gives no small help in civil actions. The memory of past actions supplies an example for deliberating well about future ones. Peter Lauremberg, the Rostock physician famous in the memory of our fathers, also speaks powerfully in his notes on the mnemonic of Cicero. With the author just praised, he calls memory the treasury and storehouse of things, adding that it is the faculty of the soul by which we grasp, preserve, and repeat the forms of things. Things are kept in memory as in a treasury, so that when use demands, they may be drawn out from there. This treasury alone is ours and immune from thieves. We are believed to know only as much as we hold in memory.
The Nature and Seat of Memory
Before we recount those means and aids, it seems necessary to set out briefly what memory is in its nature and in what order it is taught to stand among the powers of the soul. From our philosopher we note that memory is a habit of an image, that is, of the image of a thing presented to the imagination. Since it is clear, and perhaps no one will doubt or deny it, that images of things perceived by the senses cling in us and occur again when those things are absent, so that we seem to see what we saw before or perceived by other senses, the keeping of these images in the animal is called memory.
Socrates in Plato says that whoever calls memory the preservation of sensation speaks rightly. Alcinous the Platonist gives the same sense: when the form of a thing has been impressed on the soul through the instruments of sense, and so impressed that it is not destroyed by the passage of time but is preserved for a long while, this firm preservation is called memory. Others speak in the same way, especially when they insist that absent sensible objects, previously perceived, belong to memory. Since this was always Aristotle’s settled opinion, and no doubt a very ancient one, it is fitting to clarify it with the words of Themistius, that keen Peripatetic, in his paraphrase of Aristotle’s book On Memory and Recollection.
Memory does not concern what is present to sense or what is seen by the eyes, but what the mind contemplates or beholds in thought. One thing is to sense, that is, to embrace by sense; another is to retain and remember. Whenever the mind wishes to remember, it necessarily attaches past time to the images, not of other things, but of those which it once received. Therefore, when someone remembers something, he says that he previously had some perception or understanding of it. Memory is not imagination or intelligence itself, but a certain habit or affection of one of these, with time joined to it, by which the impression made is preserved like a trace in the soul. For there is sense of present things, expectation of future things, and memory of past things. Every recollection is joined and bound together with time.
From this it follows that memory belongs to those animals which have sense and some knowledge of time, and that they remember by no other part of the soul than the sensitive part. If an animal fell into a pit yesterday and sees the place today, it recognizes it again and remembers that it fell there. Brute animals differ from human beings in this: a human being not only remembers that he once saw or heard something, but also distinguishes future time from past time. Brutes know only that they saw or fell. The human being perceives that he remembers; this is denied to brutes.
Because memory is a kind of cognition through the inner sense, as Aristotle expressly says and the ancient writers agree, the modern Cartesian crowd does not refute this when it assigns to brute animals what are commonly called sensations as mere motions of nerves and animal spirits, bodily passions caused by the impact of sensible objects, while in us they are said to be real thoughts. This opinion is ridiculous and empty. As to memory, even the definition formed by those who deny cognition to brutes proves that cognition belongs to it. Memory is called an inner sense which stores and preserves all judged and known sensible species as deposited things, so that it may present them when needed.
Since Aristotle refers memory to imagination, we may gather his meaning from his statement that memory is in that part of the soul in which imagination is. When he enumerates the powers of the soul elsewhere, he names sense, imagination, and intellect, but not memory. What is received from imagination remains. Themistius explains this well: leaving aside those meanings of imagination that are sometimes transferred to mind and intellect, we speak here of that imagination in which a certain figure and likeness is formed and created in the soul, like an image and phantom.
From this we may also judge in what part of the body memory dwells. It is in the same place as imagination, since it is either actually the same as imagination or at least its minister and storehouse. It would be unsuitable to place it in a seat or place different from imagination itself. Galen, although he recognized three souls distinguished by their seats in the human being, located the rational soul with all its powers in the brain. Avicenna and others placed common sense in the front part of the brain, imagination in the middle, and memory in the rear; whether they differ greatly, or can differ, we purposely leave aside.
For the present question, it is enough that the sensible forms must be carried to that organ in which imagination resides and impressed upon it. Aristotle describes this best and explains it by the examples of pictures and seals. The affection that occurs through sense in the soul, or in the bodily part that contains the soul, must be thought to be something like a picture; its possession is what we call memory. The motion that occurs impresses, as it were, a figure of sensation, just as those who seal with rings make an impression.
Aristotle uses this same example for those who waver in memory through age or through an excessively cold and moist bodily temperament. In such persons, because of some affection or age, many motions disturb memory, as if motion and seal were falling into a flowing river. In others, no impression is formed, or else it is erased because of the coldness or hardness of the part that ought to receive the affection, as happens in old buildings that have grown stiff. Therefore both children and old people are forgetful: the former because they are in increase, the latter because they are in decrease. In the same way, those who are very swift and volatile, and those who are very slow and dull, do not have strong memory. The first are moister than is proper, the second drier. The first cannot retain the impressions of things seen, and the second cannot receive them.
Temperament, Place, and the Body
As for the cold and moist temperament mentioned by Aristotle, the common opinion of later writers also teaches that weak memory arises from it. It is most evident that the air in which we live and the food we use alter our bodies considerably; if these are intemperate, experience teaches that they are causes of slippery memory. Daniel Sennert writes that thin and pure air makes talents subtle, while thick and impure air makes them slow and blunt. Thus Galen says that the Athenians were sharp in talent because of the thin air in which they lived, while the Thebans were dull because the air was thick at Thebes and throughout Boeotia. Hence the verse says that you would swear a Boeotian was born in dense air.
The frequent use of cold and moist food and drink, especially of things that have a stupefying force, such as frequent poppy and repeated drunkenness, are among the greatest plagues of talent and memory. If the two causes of air and food occur together, they are accustomed to weaken talent and memory greatly. Eustachius Rudius reports that in a certain county of Tyrol he saw an extraordinary number of the foolish and dull, and that he recognized the cause of the trouble as the coldness and humidity of the air, the rawness of the waters, the scarcity of wine, and the frequent use of bread made with poppy seed. Plater observed something similar in a valley of Carinthia, where many are found foolish and dull, with misshapen heads, large swollen tongues, and very deformed bodies.
From this it must not be inferred that the organ which is the seat of memory ought simply to be hot and dry. Rather, as Lauremberg explains, the cause of excellent memory is a fit and suitable temperament. That temperament must be neither cold, which makes people dull and forgetful, nor hot, which is too mobile and does not allow forms to stand, nor moist, in which forms are easily effaced, nor finally too dry, which receives forms with difficulty and scarcely lets them be impressed. It must be balanced, not shaken by excessive quality. It is commonly said that memory is in the dry, and that a dry soul is wisest; but this dryness must be understood as moderate, not excessive.
The remedies used by physicians who intend to treat weakness of memory look to the same point. The medicines they advise and give to the weak all tend to lessen coldness and moisture. Such are Lauremberg’s frequently praised apophlegmatic preparation made from fresh juicy tobacco, ginger, pyrethrum roots, and mastic, and his spirit of magnanimity, or Herculean water, containing basil, marjoram, sage, balm, pennyroyal, borage, cowslips, rosemary, and lilies of the valley, all steeped together in a sufficient quantity of the finest malmsey wine and distilled. He writes that this is admirable not only for increasing memory, but also for giving incredible courage to the timid. Such too is Mesue’s anacardine confection, called the confection of the wise, which the compilers of the Augsburg Pharmacopoeia report to help cold affections of the lower belly and the brain, making the blood purer and thereby helping all the senses, apprehension, understanding, and memory by making the animal spirits purer and more subtle.
As to deformity of bodily stature and figure, physiognomists and physicians note from frequent experience that this must especially be understood of the head. Those with very large heads are almost without distinction taken as stupid and unteachable. Concerning heads called disproportionate by Galen, in which the front or rear prominence, or both, is lacking, so that the head appears to rise backward, forward, or upward, one may consult Sennert. Thersites is especially counted among such monsters, a man without measure, cross-eyed and lame in one foot, with rounded shoulders bent inward over his chest and sparse hair on a pointed head. Homer does not relate that he suffered weakness of memory, but that he was the ugliest and most abusive of all who came to Troy, and that he was afterward killed by Achilles, whom he had insolently reviled.
Morning Study
Since the correction of a diseased inability to remember belongs to physicians, our present undertaking now requires us to consider only those supports which are not merely useful but necessary for impressing, retaining, and promptly recalling forms in an organ of memory that is healthy and in need of no medicine. We read that Aristotle noted most of these aids, and we rightly follow his footsteps, since Pliny calls him the greatest man in every doctrine, and Cicero judged that no one was more penetrating in discovering or judging things.
Aristotle names the morning as the right time. In the Problems, when he explains why older persons are stronger in mind but the younger learn more quickly, he says that the young learn more quickly because they have nothing else yet to receive. In the same way, we can remember what first comes to us in the morning; later in the day we do not remember as well, because many things have come to us. Ludovico Settala explains the point more fully: when we are young, we know almost nothing; if the possible intellect has been given to us by God without forms or intelligible species, and like an empty tablet on which nothing has been painted, then while we are young we can apprehend more easily. When we already know many things, we cannot receive others so easily. A white tablet filled with figures does not admit new ones as well as it did at the beginning.
The same point is proved by a beautiful example: we remember better what we first perceived in the morning, while later in the day we do not commit things to memory or preserve them in mind as well, because many things have already occurred, and their images overwhelm or at least darken the images of the other things that were previously in memory. This is supported by what everyone knows from daily experience about the restoration of the body and all its powers through sleep, and it gave occasion to the familiar saying that dawn is a friend to the Muses.
Order
We are also warned to observe a fixed order. Order is of the greatest importance in other matters, and it also makes the easy repetition and remembrance of forms committed to memory possible. Through order, the forms are joined together, and out of many a single connected whole is made. In Aristotle’s words, things arranged in order have their motions in order. He explains and confirms this with the example of mathematics: things that have order, like mathematical propositions, are easily remembered; things badly arranged are hard to preserve.
Themistius speaks well on this point. The work of recollection depends especially on the beginning and is completed from there with the greatest speed. Therefore, since the order in which things are placed and arranged among themselves seems to preserve the motion of those things in the soul, whatever is carefully written down by marking and arrangement is also easily held in memory, especially mathematical and geometrical propositions. By contrast, things heaped up at random, confused, and scattered afterward are preserved with difficulty. Just as sensible things joined and bound together by a fixed grouping and distribution are distinguished more accurately, but are not so when thrown into an indistinct heap, so one must judge the images of the soul.
To this end tend the outlines of disciplines by which we think ourselves instructed, especially by tables, in which at one glance we see the connection and order of the arguments contained in any subject, and likewise the commonplaces that are commonly taught in schools. Their methodical arrangement greatly helps memory, so much so that they are rightly called subsidiary memories. The author of the Rhetoric to Herennius points to this more fully. Just as those who know letters can write what has been spoken or recite what has been written, so those who have learned mnemonics can place what they have heard in locations and recite it from memory. Locations are very much like wax tablets or paper; images are like letters; the arrangement and placement of images is like writing; and delivery is like reading. Locations must be prepared in order and carefully fixed in thought, so that they can cling to us permanently. Images, like letters, are erased when we do not use them; locations, like wax, ought to remain.
Sebastian Izquierdo extends this order also to times and places. In things that happen immediately through cognition, when the cognition of one object excites the species of another, the order of time contributes greatly, according to which the objects to be remembered are known successively and their species are assigned successively to memory. Things are readily recalled in the same order in which they are successively committed to memory. Therefore, when many things are to be remembered word for word, they must often be run through under the same order with repeated conceptions of them; yet one who has a happier and readier memory by nature needs fewer such repetitions. There is great variety and inequality among memories.
On the order of places Izquierdo teaches this: the order of places in which the objects to be remembered are conceived contributes most to memory. When we conceive and mentally place something in a certain place, it is ready for us to find it there whenever we return to seek it there. Therefore, if we mentally locate many things in many places arranged in a certain order, we very easily find them in their own order as we run through those places in the mind, and we also repeat them from memory. All this is evident to anyone from experience, except perhaps the claim that species cannot be repeated in reverse order; everyday experience and examples he himself cites show the contrary.
Thus Marcus Seneca says of himself that his memory once flourished in him so much that it not only sufficed for use, but advanced even to wonder. When two thousand names had been recited, he would give them back in the order in which they had been spoken. And when those who had gathered to hear his teacher each gave individual verses, making more than two hundred, he would recite them from the last back to the first. His memory was swift not only for embracing what he wished, but also for holding what it had received. Izquierdo also reports this of a certain Theodectes, and then adds that many examples of this sort are reported which seem not merely wonderful but preternatural to those who do not know the force of the art.
For an ordinary person, even one of middling memory, to repeat a great number of words immediately after hearing them once, both in the same order and in reverse order, is naturally and without art impossible. Yet through this art it becomes easy, as experience shows, and I can testify to it; anyone else who wishes to try it will be able to do so. To the argument by which some thought they had proved the uselessness of this art, as though it added some weight to our memory, Izquierdo replies that experience demonstrates the reasoning to be false, and reason itself agrees. There are weights that, when joined to other things, lift rather than burden them, and help rather than hinder their carrying, such as wheels on a carriage, wings in birds, and the like. So locations and images help our memory carry the weight of objects to be remembered, even though they too are certain weights.
Number and Measure
A third point commended as important is the number of things that must cling in memory and later be easily recalled. The number must not be too great, lest it hinder reception or at least make it difficult and cause confusion in repetition. The author of the Rhetoric to Herennius teaches that five locations are enough, as a moderate number and one made naturally familiar by frequent looking at the fingers. From this we commonly say of stammerers or simple people that they cannot even count to five.
Aristotle, too, when he discusses style and distinguishes the continuous style from the turned or periodic style like that of the ancient poets, commends the latter rather than the former. Although the continuous style is ancient, because it has no end in itself unless the matter spoken of is remembered, it is unpleasant because of its lack of limit. Everyone wants to see the end. Therefore speakers gasp and give out at the turns; when they foresee the end, they do not labor before reaching it. Periodic style, on the other hand, is pleasant and easy to grasp, because it stands in periods. Aristotle says that a period is an expression that has a beginning and end and a magnitude easily surveyed in itself. It is pleasant because it is unlike what is indefinite, and because the hearer always thinks he has hold of something, since something is always bounded for him. To foresee and finish nothing is unpleasant. The same style is easy to grasp because it can easily be retained in memory, and this because style in periods has number, which is the thing most suited to memory. For this reason everyone remembers metrical verses more than prose, since they have number by which they are measured.
Afterward Aristotle warns that periods, whether simple or divided into clauses, should be neither maimed nor too long. The small and cut-short period often makes the hearer stumble; when he is still reaching out toward what is beyond and toward the measure that terms have in themselves, he is pulled back as the speaker stops, and there is a kind of collision from the recoil. Long periods make him fail, just as those who turn beyond the fixed boundary leave behind those walking with them. Periods that are too long make the diction unshapely and like a dithyrambic antistrophe.
Images and Locations
A fourth counsel is to use images, which are most convenient for repetition and the firmer impression of things we have seen. The author of the Rhetoric to Herennius defines images as certain forms, marks, and likenesses of the thing we wish to remember, for example a horse, a lion, or an eagle. When we wish to remember many things, we must prepare many places for ourselves, so that in many places we may place many images. We must also have these places in order, so that we are not hindered by a disturbance of order, but can follow the images from above or below or from the middle, and bring out and present what has been entrusted to the places.
Izquierdo says the same: images of things placed in locations cause remembrance of the things for which they are placed there when they are revisited. To be fit for this task, they ought to be bodily and of visible size, yet neither so large that they occupy too much space nor so small that they are discerned with difficulty. They will be the more fitting for the purpose the more striking and extraordinary they are, whether in figure, position, color, action, passion, or other sensible circumstances. He distinguishes varieties of images: some are identical, others symbolic; some true, some fictive, some mixed; some simple, whole, or broken, and others composed from simple whole or broken ones. He also proposes a way in which they should be placed for readier remembrance, and certain rules to be observed in placing them.
It is fitting to add the judgment and admonition of the author of the Rhetoric to Herennius on these images and their variety. Since images ought to be like things, and since from all words we must choose likenesses known to us, there must be two kinds of likeness: one of things and the other of words. Likenesses of things are expressed when we arrange images according to the matters themselves. Likenesses of words are established when the memory of each noun and word is marked by an image.
We shall often comprehend the memory of an entire matter by a single sign and one image. If an accuser says that a man was killed by poison by the defendant, and argues that it was done for the sake of an inheritance, and says that there are many witnesses and accomplices, then, if we wish to remember this first point for our defense, we shall form an image of the whole matter in the first location. We shall make the sick man himself lying in bed, if we retain his form. If we do not know him, we shall take some sick man not of the lowest rank, so that he may easily come to mind. We shall place the defendant at the bed, holding a cup in his right hand, tablets in his left, and ram’s testicles on his fourth finger. In this way we will be able to remember the witnesses, the inheritance, and the poisoning. Then we shall place the other charges in order in the locations. Whenever we wish to remember the matter, if we use the arrangement of forms and the careful marking of images, we shall easily attain in memory what we wish.
When we wish to express likenesses of words in images, we shall take up more work and exercise our talent more. It must be done in this way. For the line, “Now the kings, the sons of Atreus, prepare the return,” in one location Domitius must be set up raising his hands to heaven while he is beaten by the Marcii Reges with leather straps. This will stand for “now the return, kings.” In another location one must set up Aesop and Cimber; this will stand for “sons of Atreus prepare.” In this way all the words will be expressed. Yet this forming of images is valuable if we have awakened natural memory by this marking: once a verse has been set down, we first go over it with ourselves two or three times, and then express the words with images. In this way learning will supply what nature offers. Each part separated from the other will be less firm; nevertheless there is much more aid in teaching and art.
Meditation and Repetition
Finally, lest we pass over what seems among the chief things to be observed here, it must be known that intent and frequently repeated meditation contributes very greatly to fixing forms firmly. Alsted says well that vehement imagination unites the known object with the knower, and therefore contributes very much to the integrity of memory. Love and admiration of the thing to be spoken of especially excel here. In this way the affections are tinged by the species of the things known. Affections so tinged cannot fail to tinge the spirits, which are the vehicle of memory. Therefore, if you wish to impress something successfully on memory, take care to stir some affection in yourself. This is done by meditating on the excellence or baseness, usefulness or uselessness, of the thing before us, and by frequent repetition and careful application of rhetorical figures.
On repetition, Aristotle speaks splendidly: meditations preserve memory by recalling, and make it whole again. To recall is nothing other than to look often upon phantasms as images, not as they are in themselves. Since memory, in the words of Seneca the rhetorician quoted at the beginning, is the most delicate and fragile of all the parts entrusted to the soul, and since, as Isidore of Pelusium says, if it is not cultivated every single day it is accustomed to depart, impatient of sloth, dullness, and delay, its diligent cultivation is altogether necessary.
This cultivation is achieved by frequent meditation. As Lucius Annaeus Seneca the philosopher says from the testimony of experience, whatever is exercised and renewed is never withdrawn from memory, which loses nothing except that to which it has not often looked back. The familiar verses point to the same thing:
A drop hollows stone not by force, but by falling often.
So a person becomes learned not by force, but by reading often.
From these things an answer may be given to the question why, as experience testifies, the memory of new and unusual objects is usually stronger. The author of the Rhetoric to Herennius explains its cause very well, and his words deserve to be added again. Nature herself teaches us what must be done. If the things we see in life are small, usual, and everyday, we usually do not remember them, because the mind is moved by nothing unless it is new or admirable. But if we see or hear something especially shameful or honorable, unusual, great, unbelievable, or ridiculous, we are accustomed to remember it for a long time. We generally forget things we see or hear before our eyes every day; yet we often remember best what happened in childhood. This can happen for no other reason than that ordinary things easily slip from memory, while remarkable and new things remain longer.
Looking to this same point, Plutarch of Chaeronea, in his advice on the education of children, enjoins parents among other things to give them exercise and habituation. Youth must be exercised in every way, whether children are strong in memory by nature or skill, or whether they are forgetful. In this way we shall strengthen their natural abundance and fill what is lacking; and as others overcome others, so these will overcome themselves. For Hesiod said well:
If you keep adding even a little to a little,
and do this often, it becomes a great heap.