3. The Contrary Position of Aristotle, which is more Probable

111. These arguments can be responded to by upholding the intention of the Philosopher in On Memory [n.76], that memory is in the sense part, and by turning the arguments to the opposite.

112. For first about the perception of time [n.107], the Philosopher concedes it there saying that by the first sense part by which we perceive magnitude we also perceive time. Nor is it an objection that time is successive, because motion is successive and yet motion is of itself sensible (from On the Soul 2.6.17-21); nor is it an objection that time is number, because number is of itself sensible (ibid.). Also, the Commentator maintains, Physics 4 com.98 ‘On Time’, that if the motion alone of phantasms is perceived, time is perceived. But the exposition of this could be that such motion is perceived by the intellect, not by the power of imagination.

113. To the next [n.108] it will be possible to say that some sense can receive the species of the act of sensing and retain that species after the act passes away and, consequently, it can by that species have an act after passage of time and so remember.

114. And when you make objection about the act of the supreme sense power [nn.108, 99], one can concede that memory of its proper act does not belong to a sense, just as neither does it belong to any other sense to remember its proper act (as is taken from Augustine Free Will 2.3 n.9-10), but this belongs only to a superior sense with respect to the act of a lower sensitive part.

115. If can be said in another way, as the Philosopher seems to think (On the Soul 3.2.425b17-25), that sight in some way senses that it sees, because sight is in some way colored; and so it could be conceded that the sensing of the supreme sense part is in some way continued under the object of the supreme remembering part. And if you evidence the reflecting of that sense part on itself, this proves no more than Aristotle proves about sight perceiving vision.

116. To the final one [n.109], although the acts of brutes could probably be saved by positing, not memory properly in them, but only imaginative knowledge of the object that is past (though not as past), yet the things we see in their acts are more easily saved by positing memory in them.