Question Three. Whether the Separated Soul can Remember Past Things it Knew when Conjoined

75. Third I ask whether the separated soul can remember past things that it knew when conjoined.

76. That it cannot:

The Philosopher On Memory 1.450a11-14 lays down memory as a sense power, and Damascene ch.34 does the same; but no sense power remains in the separated soul with the possibility of being active;     therefore etc     .

77. Again, the object of the intellect is the universal, Physics 1.5.189a5-8, On the Soul 2.5.417b20-22, but the universal abstracts from the here and now, the ‘has been’ and ‘will be’, and from these sorts of conditions that concern existence; but memory has regard to a determinate condition that concerns existence, namely the past; therefore memory is repugnant to the intellective part of the soul; therefore it does not remain in the separated soul.

78. Again, it then follows [sc. if separated souls did have memory of the past] that, for like reason, blessed souls would have recollection of everything past, and consequently the soul of a blessed would have recollection of sin committed. The consequent is false, because Isaiah 65.16-17 says, “Behold I make a new heaven,” and there follows “former tribulations shall be handed over to oblivion;” and Gregory [Moralia 4.35 nn.71-72], when expounding this statement,a says it is because the blessed will suffer no misery. But this memory [of sin committed] would be cause of great misery, because cause of great displeasure; for the blessed could not be pleased with any sin committed, nor be indifferently disposed, as though neither pleased nor displeased, because this would not stand with perfect charity; therefore the blessed would have displeasure about something irrevocable; therefore, sadness too.

a.a [Interpolated text] which Gregory expounds thus [in fact Jerome, on Isaiah 18.65, nn.17-18, as cited by Lombard Sent.IV d.43 ch.5 n.3], saying, “Perhaps, in the future, memory of former behavior will be altogether destroyed, with every eternal good succeeding to it, so that there be nothing left to remember of the evils of former tribulation.”

79. On the contrary:

Luke 16.25, “Son, remember that you received good things in your life, and Lazarus bad things in like manner.”

80. Again, Augustine maintains this on Psalm 108.17 “Let his sons be orphans,” and in Confessions 9.10 nn.23-25, 4.4. n.8, where he says that the dead have memory of us.

81. Again, if [the dead] did not remember, then they would not have ground for giving thanks to God for his mercy; and this is the argument of Gregory Moralia 4.36 n.72 who, basing himself on Psalm 88.2 “I will sing the mercies of God forever,” says, “How does he sing mercies forever who does not remember his misery?”

I. To the Question

82. As to this question one must ask first whether memory properly speaking (namely, memory that has the job of remembering the past) is in the sensitive part of the soul; second whether it is in the intellective part.

A. Things Needing to be Noted Beforehand about Memory Properly Speaking

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].

2. Four Certainties Consequent to Memory, or to Knowledge of a Past Act

90. Now from the fact that memory is of the past, four things follow that are certain.

The first of these is this, that the remembering power acts after passage of time, otherwise it would not be of the past as past, and this is what the Philosopher says in On Memory 1.449b27-28. The fact that memory acts after passage of time must be understood per se, so that the act of remembering per se follows the remembered thing; and the Philosopher’s words are: “all memory happens after passage of time.”

91. The second is that the remembering power perceives the flow of time between the instant or time when the object remembered existed and the instant of present perception.

92. The third is that the object of memory, when it is the object of memory, is not in itself present, because then there would be no memory of it as past.

93. The fourth is that since the object must in some way be present to the act of memory, and it cannot be present in itself, it must be present through its species, and then the remembering power will be a power of conserving the species, and this in the sense of the total power required for memory. For whether there are two powers, one of which conserves the species and the other remembers, or a single one that performs both acts, I care not; at least there is required for remembering the conserving of the species of the object that can be remembered.

3. Three Certainties Consequent to Knowledge of this Sort of Past Act

94. Now from the idea of ‘this special object’, namely the past act of the very one remembering, three things follow that are certain:

The first is that memory will be of a double object: one as remote or ultimate object, namely the thing about which the one remembering at some point performed a human act; and the next as proximate object, namely the human and past act tending toward that other object.

95. The second thing is that, since the act of remembering must possess the species [of the object] (and by this meaning the whole complete species required for remembering), the species could not be impressed by the object when the object does not exist or is not present; but the proximate object is the past human act; therefore, while this act existed the necessary species was being impressed. Therefore, since the species of the past human act could not be impressed on any power save the power of which this act was the object, it follows that the act of knowing the past is the object of the remembering power.

96. The third is that no one can have a memory save of his own act, and this a human act, because only through the act as proximate object known is its object as remote object known - and consequently there cannot be memory of an act in another of the same idea as the act there is memory of in oneself.

B. First Article: about the Memory of the Past in the Sense Part of the Soul

1. Whether the Remembering Power Knows the Act while it Exists

97. In this regard a doubt can be introduced, and it is whether the remembering power knows the act while it exists, of which act as past, as of immediate object, it is the memory. For it seems that if it does not then know it, neither will it remember it afterwards. But the proof is not necessary, because one sense does not seem to reflect on the act of another sense; and though it not perceive the act of another sense while it is present, there is no clear proof that it will not be able to perceive that act as past after it has passed. At any rate, let the conclusion of this article be examined on the supposition of the above certainties [nn.90-96].

98. It seems that memory cannot be set down as an act of the sense part.

First, from the condition that it perceives time; but “time is nothing but the number of motion according to before and after,” Physics 4.11.219b1-2, and this cannot be perceived without collating the after with the before; but the senses are not able to collate, because this is proper to the intellect.

99. Again, it was said in the fourth inference [n.93] that the remembering. power must perceive the act while it is present. But the sense power cannot perceive the act of sensing while it is present (at least not universally), because the act of the supreme sense power cannot be perceived by any sense, neither by a lower nor a higher one (as is plain), nor by itself, because that power does not reflect back on itself or its act, and yet there can be memory of any sensation in us (as we experience); therefore this remembering does not generally belong to any sense power.

100. But since the argument here is from something that was earlier said to be doubtful [n.97], the argument therefore is taken from something else supposed certain as follows: not only does the sense power not perceive first anything but some sensible quality (hence the Philosopher On the Soul 2.425b17-20, in order to concede that vision is in some way perceived by sight, says that vision is in some way colored), but also it does not receive the proper species of anything other than some such quality. But the sensation of which it is the remembering cannot in any way be set down as a sense quality, because any sensation (whether of color, or sound, or flavor) can equally be remembered; therefore the species required for remembering is not that of any sense as of the receptive power.

2. It Seems that No Sense Operation is to be Posited in the Sense Part that Cannot be Conceded to a Brute

101. Again, one should not posit in the sense part any sense operation that cannot be conceded to a brute (the proof of this is that there can be a sense part in some brute that excels as to all the sense acts that we experience); but this remembering cannot be proved to exist in a brute from a brute’s acts.

102. Proof of the minor [n.101]:

There are all these acts of brutes we see from which the conclusion [sc. brutes have remembering] could the more be drawn, as those that seem to be acts of prudence or foresight, as is plain of ants gathering grain to the same place and at a definite time (as in summer).

103. Similarly, acts of revenge or exacting justice, as it were, such as yielding to benefactors and punishing those that offend, seem to belong to brutes insofar as they know the past as past.

104. Likewise, third, about acts pertaining to preservation of the species (as the nest-building of birds and feeding young and the like), which do not seem regularly to belong to them without knowledge of the past as past.

105. Fourth, because some brutes are teachable (as the Philosopher maintains On Memory 1.430a15-22 and On Sense 1.437a9-14), but teaching is not without memory of the past as past.

106. Now all these acts can be carried out without remembrance of the past as past; therefore, no act proves that this act of remembrance exists in brutes.

107. The minor of this argument [n.106] is proved by running through the acts in question.

For as to uniformity with respect to place and time (as appears in ants [n.102]), this can be saved by mere apprehension and retention of a species of what is delightful, without apprehension of the past as past. For if it was delightful to this ant to deposit grain here, and if the delightful species remains in imagination, it will move the sense appetite to seeking it as delightful, and so to coming again to this place. But as to why ants gather at one time and not at another, explanation must be given from the side of their [bodily] complexion, or why it is delightful for them to gather grain in this way and not in that. And whether this is attributed to natural industry or some other cause, at least this does not prove remembrance of time, for although an ant born this year has never experienced want in winter it gathers in summer just like an ant ten years old (if an ant could live so long); therefore it does not get this act for such time from the remembrance of the past. But if the frequenting of the same place shows it comes from the past, the response is that it comes from the delightful previously apprehended, without apprehension of the past as past.

108. Similarly to the second [n.103], about revenge or benefit from a wounded or placated animal for, in brief, the delightful image of what pleases, or the saddening image of what offends, is formally impressed and always pushes the sense appetite to motion in conformity with the object (namely of avenging or benefiting), at least when any other delightful or saddening thing ceases that was moving more strongly. Therefore, if in the intermediate time this action is suspended by something present, at the end of the time the phantasm at once moves, and there follows in the sense appetite a motion proportioned to the object, which motion did not follow before because it was impeded by some object moving more strongly. There is here, then, no apprehension of the past as past but only of the thing that is past, whose persisting species moves to revenge or thanks when some other thing that was moving more strongly ceases.

109. Likewise about the third [n.104]: because [building nests and feeding young] is delightful to these brutes wherever they are from, it is necessary that at least some intrinsic cause (from a [bodily] complexion disposed or altered now in this way) must convince them to gather such and such twigs for making a nest and for constructing it in such and such way; and this is not delightful otherwise, when their complexion is disposed differently; and from this delight they operate, not from the apprehension of the past as past. The proof of this is that if there were a brute animal propagated in its first year, it would just as much provide for itself things necessary for building a nest as if it were however many years in age; therefore nest building is not from knowledge of the past as past.

110. Fourth, about learning [n.105], this is more easily solved, as it goes along with the second [nn.103, 108]. And it is solved by the fact that, from frequent sensing of things delightful and saddening conjoined, there is impressed on the animal a delightful and saddening phantasm, and in the following way, that when one of them moves it, the other from the conjunction at once moves it. Therefore, when present food moves the appetite to consume, at once the phantasm of a rod beating it moves it at the same time, and consequently moves it as something saddening to be fled from; and if from much frequency the phantasm of the latter is impressed on it as very saddening, the brute withdraws itself from the delightful thing more than the delightful thing attracts it.

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.

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 is always from premises to conclusion, there is no syllogism there (for recollection proceeds from contraries or similars, or from something that has, in its being sensed, an ordering toward what we are looking for), nevertheless neither can such conferring belong to the sense power, as it seems; rather the discursive process and the cognition that terminates it belong to the same power, and recollection terminates this discursive process;     therefore etc     .

123. An objection against this reasoning [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.4 q.4] is as follows:

The Philosopher [On Memory 1.449b6-8, 450b5-12; Book of Six Principles 4 nn.46-47] says that some are good at recollection and others bad, because of diversity in the organ; therefore he attributes recollection to the sense part.

124. Again [Henry, ibid. a.1 q.10] an argument that recollection is impossible is taken from Themistius [On Posterior Analytics 1 ch.1] about a fugitive slave, whereby it is proved that it is impossible to learn anything, because either it was something already known and so it is not learnt, or it was not and so, if it occurs to the intellect, the intellect does not know it to be what it is looking for.

125. This argument there indeed [n.124] lacks evidence, because whatever is necessarily inferred from necessary premises is known by this very fact; nor is it necessary for me to know [sc. first] what I [sc. later] acquired knowledge of, or not necessary for me to know it save in general, because I sought to know whatever I could infer from things I knew.

126. But in the issue at hand there is a difficulty. For the argument goes as follows: has he [the one recollecting] completely forgotten the thing that a is [sc. the thing he is looking for] or not? If he has then, if he could through recollection get back to the memory of it, he does not know it to be what he sought the memory of, and consequently he does not recollect it; because in recollecting he remembers it anew, as a thing having been remembered before and forgotten in the meantime. If he has not completely forgotten a, then he cannot recollect a.

127. The first member of this argument is confirmed by Avicenna from before [n.122]: the desire to remember in particular belongs to no brute, “for if brutes do not remember, neither do they desire to remember.” Likewise the Philosopher [On Memory 1.450a27-30] seems to posit that memory belongs to the imaginative part, “the habit of which,” he says, “we assert to be memory.”a And Damascene, as above [n.76] says, “Memory is imagination left behind by actualized sense.”

a.a [Interpolation] namely, it is manifest that memory is a part of the soul: when and of what there is imagination, of that there is also memory.

128. For the understanding of these authorities [n.127] I say (as was said before [n.94]) that the act of memory has a double object, namely proximate and remote. Now past-ness is sometimes required in each object as it is object, and sometimes in one of them only.

129. Because the senses do not know their object according to any condition save the one they have when they are sensing, according to Metaphysics 7.10.1036a6-7, “when sensible objects are away from the senses, it is not clear whether these objects are or are not,” and so they cannot have memory of their past act as past without also having memory of the sensed object as past, because they have memory of it only in the way it was as sensed when the act of sensing remained.

130. Now the intellect does not require past-ness in each object but only in the proximate one. For because its act can be of something as that something is necessary, as considering ‘a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles’, so its act of remembering this act of considering can have a remote object, not as past, but as always being the same way.

131. As concerns the condition, then, of ‘regarding a past object as past’ [n.88], that is, both remote and proximate object, such that both are known precisely and necessarily as past - memory as concerns this condition belongs necessarily to the sense part and not necessarily to the intellective part, although it could belong to the intellective part, as will immediately be said in the solution [n.136ff.].

132. Another thing [sc. to understand,[n.128] is that memory in the sense part is enough for operation without the intellect, as is plain in brutes; but, conversely, the intellective memory is not enough for operation without the sense memory, just as we cannot understand without a phantasm. And therefore Aristotle [Metaphysics 7.10.1036a6-7] would not say that a man is good or bad at remembering because his intellect is good or bad at conserving the species of something previously understood, but because his sense memory (which goes along also with the intellective memory for intellective remembering) is good or bad at retention. For perhaps any intellective memory always conserves the species, but it has not the power for act because the species has been destroyed from sense memory, without which the intellective memory is not enough for operation.

133. Proof of this:

First because what is received seems to be in the receiver according to the manner of the receiver, and consequently, since the intellect is an immaterial power and not changeable by these bodily undergoings [sc. of the senses], it does not seem that its species remains indelibly. For this reason, therefore, Aristotle [n.129] assigns a falling away of species in the sense memory only, because the sense organ is affected or moved in this way or that.

134. The same is proved secondly because, when someone remembers, he must have something remaining in himself through which he knows that thing to be what he first remembered and later forgot (in the way the argument about the fugitive slave proceeded [n.124]). But this something that remains cannot be placed in the sense part, because it has been destroyed, at least it does not remain perfectly or sufficiently for an act of remembering; therefore it is probable that it is the species remaining perfectly in the intellect. And thus when the species that somehow fell away has been recovered in the sense memory then, by collation of it with the intelligible species that remains, this ‘remembered object’ is known to be that which was known in memory before.

135. So therefore, as concerns primacy or radicality or sufficiency in itself for acting, memory is not in the intellective part but the sense part, even in our case.

2. Scotus’ own Explication

136. I say therefore as to this article [nn.117, 82] that memory and the act of remembering properly speaking are in the intellective part.

137. For given that the intellect not only knows universals (which indeed is true of abstractive intellection, about which the Philosopher is speaking, because this alone is scientific intellection), but also knows intuitively what the senses know (for a more perfect and higher cognitive power in the same thing knows what the lower power knows), and also knows sensations (and both these points are proved by the fact that the intellect knows contingently true propositions, and from them it forms syllogisms; but to form propositions and to syllogize is proper to the intellect; and the truth of these propositions is about objects as intuitively known, namely known under the idea of existence under which they are known by the senses) - given all this, it follows that in the intellect can be found all the conditions previously said to belong to remembering: for it can perceive time and has an act after passage of time, and so of the rest [nn.90-96].

138. And the intellect can, in brief, remember any object that sense memory can remember, because it can intuitively know the act (which is the proximate object) when it exists, and so can remember it after it has existed. It can also remember many proximate objects that the sense part cannot remember (as every past intellection and volition). For the proof that man remembers such things is that otherwise he could not repent of evil volitions, nor too could he collate a past intellection as past with a future one, nor consequently direct himself, from the fact that he has studied them, to study other things that follow from them; and in brief, if we do not remember past intellections and volitions, they are destroyed.

139. But no sense can remember these things, because they do not fall under the object of any sense; therefore this remembering is proper to the intellect, and this by reason of its proximate object. There is also another remembering proper to the intellect, not by reason only of proximate object but also of remote object, namely the remembering that tends to the necessary as necessary as to its remote object, of which sort is the remembering that has for remote object ‘a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles’; for the proximate object of remembrance, namely the act that tends to such [remote] object, can only be an act of the intellective part.

140. Thus therefore it is plain that some remembering is proper to the intellect by reason of both objects of its act, namely both the proximate and the remote object; also some remembering is, by reason of proximate object, so proper to the intellect that it could not belong to the senses, and some remembering belongs, by reason of proximate object, to the intellect, yet it can belong to the senses (as would be if the intellect has intuitively understood that I am seeing white, and the intellect afterwards understands or remembers that I saw white). Here indeed both the proximate and the remote object could be the object of intellective remembering (for also sometimes there occurs a discursive collating from such remembering to syllogistic conclusion of something else); however, the past sensation in some sense part, namely the supreme part, cannot be the proximate object save only of intellective remembering, as was touched on in the preceding article [n.98].

141. However, no remembering belongs to the intellect insofar as it understands precisely by abstraction; also no remembering requires, from the fact that it belongs to the intellect, a double past, namely a past in both objects; also no remembering belongs to the intellect as primarily and radically sufficient for an act of remembering.

142. And it is on account of these three conditions, or some of them, that all the authorities of Aristotle and others denying that memory is in the intellective part [nn.118, 123-124] must be understood and expounded.

143. When therefore objection is made against the second argument in this article (which proceeds from the act of remembering, [n.122]), by the fact that the Philosopher posits that there are rememberers and non-rememberers because of disposition of organ [n. 123] - the answer is plain from what has been said [nn. 125, 128-131], and especially from the third condition [n.116], and it was sufficiently explained above [nn.139-141].

144. As to the objection about the fugitive slave [n.124], it has been solved if it is true that the intelligible species always remains, and the sense species that has in some way been lost is perfectly recovered through a certain collating or use of other like species; for then the fact that this thing now remembered is that thing before remembered (and afterwards forgotten) is known through the species resting in the intellect. It is just as if some species of Peter as seen is resting in the imaginative power, though I never use it, and afterwards when Peter comes into sight I at once recognize it to be Peter by collation with this knowledge (as Augustine teaches On the Trinity 9.6 n.10, 8.6 n.9). But if nothing were set down as remaining in such forgetting, by collation with which it could be known that this is what through recollecting was being sought after, it does not seem that it could in the end be known that it is this, more than in the case of the unknown fugitive slave.

145. To the next objection that is set down [n.127], a habit of imagination at any rate is only got from it as to sense memory. For the fact that, besides sense memory, there is some firmness of intellect is plain later from On Memory 2.451b2-3, where Aristotle says, “science or sense, the habit of which we say is memory,” ‘science’ stands for the intellect, ‘sense’ for imagination, of which he said before that memory was the habit. However, this authority would require expounding if sense memory were posited to be a power distinct from imagination; but it is not to the purpose to discuss this here.

146. And as to what is adduced from Damascene [n.120] “we do not have memory of the substance of them” - it is true as of past objects, and in this way there is no remembering of them that requires a double pastness.That is, pastness of proximate and remote object. For we have memory of learning them (proximate object), but we have knowledge, not memory, of them (remote object), n.130. ²¹

D. Scotus’ own Conclusion

147. As to the question, then, it is plain that, since in the soul conjoined with the body there is an intellective memory, that memory remains in the separated soul, and consequently so does habitual knowledge of everything that remained in the soul up to separation. Consequently too, the separated soul can use what remains for acts of remembering, just as the conjoined soul could, because (as was said in the preceding question [n.16]) all the intelligible forms and consequent operations that could have been had by the conjoined soul will be able to be had by the separated soul. But the sense memory (speaking of the whole power of it) does not remain in the separated soul, just as no sense power remains either. I said ‘whole power’, however, because although the soul is that which is formal in the sense power, yet the sense power formally includes a certain form of the whole that is composed of this sort of mixed body and a soul that perfects it proportionally for acts corresponding to such a whole; and consequently, since remembering belongs to the whole sense part, it cannot belong to the separate soul.

148. Briefly, then, the separate soul can remember all the things that the conjoined soul remembers, because there exists intellective memory of whatever there was sense memory of, on account of the intuitive knowledge that accompanies all sense perceived knowledge; but the separate soul cannot remember with every remembering that the conjoined soul could remember with.

149. If it is objected that the mere species in the intellective memory was not sufficient for remembering in the conjoined soul without another species in the sense memory (as was said in the second article [n.132]), so it is not sufficient now, because it is not more perfect now than before - the response is in the preceding question, in the like case [n.27], because neither can we now use the intelligible species without a phantasm, but then we will be able to, not because of a new perfection but because the order of powers in operating will not exist that exists now.

II. To the Initial Arguments

A. To the First

150. As to the first main argument [n.76], I concede that there is sense memory in man, but from this does not follow that there is no intellective memory in him; for what belongs to the perfection of a lower cognitive power should not be denied to a higher cognitive power. Hence if God could have an act after passage of time (and would not have an act stationary in eternity), he could remember; and thus does Scripture concede that he remembers, “Remember, Lord, what has happened to us” (Lamentations 5.1), namely insofar as the act that is not in him after passage of time is considered as coexistent with a prior time, and as coexistent now with this ‘now’ as if after passage of time. But the angels, because they do not have all their intellections permanently, can absolutely remember; for it is fatuous to say that Lucifer does not remember that he sinned, or that the good angels do not remember that they had such and such intelligible acts, or had also some exterior acts about a body.

B. To the Second

151. As to the second [n.77], that authority is speaking of the intellect as it has scientific intellection, of the sort that is abstractive only - and yet the precise cause does not thus come from the nature of the intellect, because the singular can also be understood by that abstractive knowledge, although not by us now (on which elsewhere, Ord. II d.9 n.122, d.3 nn.320-321).

152. If you object that a power that does not know the singular as singular does not remember, because a rememberer cognizes something as it is here and now, which is proper to a singular - I reply: actual existence belongs to nature first; hence ‘this nature’ is not formally existent because it is ‘this’, but because of nature; now nature, as existent, is what the intellect intuitively knows, and the knowledge of an existent as existent is sufficient for remembrance of it to be possible. When, therefore, you say that the remembering power knows this as this, I deny it. When you give as proof that it knows something as it is here and now, if by ‘now’ you mean ‘existent’ and by ‘here’ you mean

‘present in itself’, I concede that it knows something as existent in its presence in itself. If so, then there are proper singulars beyond the ‘here’ and ‘now’, so that they can be singulars of nature but not as of a singular - though they are not of anything save what is singular by intrinsic or adjunct singularity; however, they do not include, nor do they per se presuppose, singularity as the precise reason whereby they are present.

C. To the Third

153. To the third [n.78] it is said in one way [Richard of Middleton] that the blessed remember the sins they committed, and yet it is not a punishment for them but they rejoice in the mercy of God remitting sin and in their freedom from punishment. And this is proved by Psalm 88.2, “The mercies of God,” where Gregory says [Moralia 4.36 n.72], “How does he sing mercies forever who does not remember his misery?”

154. On the contrary: although the fact that God remitted Peter his sin includes the fact that Peter sinned, yet these are simply distinct intelligibilities, and the second does not include the first in being (the fact is plain about when Peter did the sin), nor consequently does it include it in being understood; therefore it is possible for Peter’s intellect to stop thus at his having sinned without considering that God has forgiven these sins. And though you may contend one act was never without the other in Peter, yet there are at least two objects and two distinct intellections, and also the intellection that Peter sinned is prior in nature.

155. I ask a question therefore about this remembering by which he remembers that he sinned: which act of will does it follow? Either the willing it or being pleased, or the not willing it and being displeased - or neither, not pleased nor displeased? If the first Peter is evil, because he is pleased with the sin he has committed; if the second, he is wretched, because his not wanting to have happened what he knows did happen causes sadness (from Augustine, On the Trinity 14.15 n.21, “Sadness comes from things that have happened against our will” [cf. Ord.IV d.14 n.48]). If neither the one nor the other, he is again bad; for if the wayfarer cannot remember with full remembrance the sin he committed without detesting it or being displeased at it (otherwise he sins at least by omission), how much more are the blessed held to do this! For the common reason binds the blessed more than the wayfarer, which reason is perfect love of God, and this love always impels one to hate what is contrary to God when it is actually thought on.

156. But as to what is added from the Psalm, and Gregory’s argument from this “How does he sing mercies forever who does not remember his misery?” [nn.153, 78, 81] - I reply: he remembers his misery in general terms, because he now knows he is blessed.

157. I say it is possible for God to destroy every sin totally from the memory of the blessed; nor in this is anything taken from the blessed; rather it would seem to belong to some accidental blessedness in them. For if the innocent will rejoice over their innocence with a special joy (as was touched on in Ord. IV d.1 n.356), though these others not be able to rejoice over innocence (because this would be a false joy), yet their guilt can be destroyed from their memory so that they not have any matter for sadness about it.

158. Also, God is able, while habitual memory of committed sin remains, to preserve the blessed from ever proceeding to actually considering they committed it; and this again would suffice to exclude the proximate occasion for sadness, though not the remote one. Nor would privation of such habitual knowledge make one imperfect in anything because, according to the Philosopher [Topics 3.6.119b11-15], it is better to forget certain things, as base things, than to remember them, and this is especially true when speaking of something base one did, the memory of which is penal. Scripture too [Isaiah 43.25, Jeremiah 31.34, Hebrews 10.17, Psalm 31.1] says that God forgets sins and that they are covered up for God. And although one should give exposition of this, because of the infinity of the divine intellection which nothing positively or privatively knowable can escape, yet that they are really hidden or forgotten for those who committed them would not be at all unacceptable.

159. If this view does not satisfy, but it is held that there will always remain habitual memory of sins in them and that they will sometimes proceed to actual remembering, then, to avoid sadness, one must say that either God suspends the causality that memory would be of a nature to exercise with respect to sadness (and this is indeed possible, just as God suspended the natural action of fire with respect to the young men in the furnace [Daniel 3.49-50]), and then it is a miracle that they are not saddened as often as they remember. Or if a miracle is eschewed, one must say that a natural cause can be impeded by a contrary that excels it so that it not cause its effect, and especially when the contrary totally fills the capacity of the passive thing.

160. Thus, in the issue at hand, joy in the beatific object totally fills the capacity of the blessed, and therefore they are not capable of the sadness that is of a nature to follow this memory. For the beatific object in causing joy overcomes the power of the memory in causing sadness, according to the Philosopher Ethics 7.15.1154b13-14, “Strong delight expels every sadness, not only the contrary sadness but also any chance sadness.”

161. On the contrary: the blessed have a ‘not wanting’ with respect to the remembered thing, therefore they do not have what they want; therefore they are not blessed, from On the Trinity 13.5 n.8.

162. I reply: the blessed have whatever they want as regard the present or the future; but as regard the past they do not have whatever they want, that is their wanting it not to have been; and this does not argue misery, because it is impossible for the past not to have been.