C. Second Article: about Memory of the Past in the Intellective Part
1. About the Authorities of the Ancients
117. About the second principal article, Aristotle seems to say certain things in the book [On Memory 1.449b18-21] from which it follows that memory is in the intellective part. For he says that we remember certain intelligibilities, as that a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles etc. “because we have learnt and considered them.”
118. A response is given [Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet 6 q.8] according to Aristotle’s own remark, for later in the same place [ibid. 1.449a12-13] he says “memory of intelligibilities is not without a phantasm.”
119. On the contrary: not for this reason must memory be denied to be in the intellect, just as understanding is not denied to be in the intellect and yet, according to his opinion there, we do not understand without a phantasm.
120. Another response [Henry, ibid. q.8] is that we remember intelligibilities per accidens; hence Aristotle says there [On Memory 1.450a12-13], when speaking of intelligibilities, that intellection will be per accidens. And Damascene (as cited before, n.76), “we remember intelligibilities just as we learn them, but we do not have memory of the substance of them.”
121. On the contrary: any power that knows an act as the act is of an object, in some way knows the object; but this object ‘a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles’ as it is a demonstrated and known truth can only be known by the intellect, such that no sense is similarly able to know this act ‘I have considered the fact that a triangle has etc.’
122. Again the Philosopher concedes there [On Memory 1.450a16-18, 2.453a8-10] that recollection is present only in man (and Avicenna maintains this above [nn.8, 10; On the Soul p.4 ch.3;]), because there is a sort of syllogizing in it. From this there is a twofold argument. First, that the knowledge proper to man himself seems to belong to the intellect itself; second, more efficaciously, that knowledge through syllogistic discourse pertains to the intellect alone; of this sort is recollection, for recollection proceeds discursively from certain known things to what has in some way fallen away, which it wants to recover the memory of. And although, because syllogism