1. There Exists in us an Act of Knowing the Past as Past.

83. Now, presupposed to these two questions [n.82] is something certain common to both, namely that there is in us some act of knowing the past as past.

84. The fact is plain, because otherwise we would lack the first part of prudence, which according to Tully [On Invention 2 n.53] is memory of the past.

85. Second it would follow that the virtuous could not rightly know that they are to be justly rewarded, nor the vicious that they are to be justly punished, for reward and punishment are so carried out because of past good or bad; and, ex hypothesi, neither the former nor the latter have knowledge of the past within themselves; therefore justice neither in reward nor in punishment would be known. This conclusion destroys all political life [cf. Ethics 8.12.1160a31-36], because it destroys all agreement as to the just imposition of reward or punishment according to law.

86. Again, the past has more of truth than the future (the proof of which is that the truth of the future is contingent, of the past necessary - according to Ethics 6.2.1139b10-11: “God is deprived of this alone: to make undone what has been done”). But we can have some knowledge of the future as future (as we experience), otherwise we could not have foresight for ourselves and procure what is suitable for our life and avoid what is unsuitable. Therefore, much more can we have some knowledge, and so memory, of the past as it is past.

87. Taking this supposition as certain (that there can exist in us an act of knowing the ‘past as past’ as object of knowing), I add that the act called ‘remembering’ is not directly of just any past, but only of an act that was present in the one supposed to be remembering and that was in him a human act (to exclude acts of the vegetative power and casual acts or acts generally imperceptible); for I only remember the fact that you sat down because I remember that I saw or knew that you sat down. Hence, although I know I was born or that the world was created, yet I do not remember the one or the other, because I do not know any act of mine in the past being about the one or the other.

88. From this meaning of the term, then, ‘memory’ is knowledge of some past act, and of it insofar as it is past, by the very one who remembers.

89. And certain things follow from the fact that memory is said to be of the past, and some follow from the fact that it is memory of this sort of past object [sc. a past object as past].