n so doing manifestly show that he is not learning it then, but
recollecting it by his memory. Nor is it to be accounted for in any other
way, how children come to have notions of so many and such important
things, as are implanted, and as it were sealed up in their minds, (which
the Greeks call {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~},) unless the soul before it entered the body had
been well stored with knowledge. And as it had no existence at all, (for
this is the invariable doctrine of Plato, who will not admit anything to
have a real existence which has a beginning and an end; and who thinks
that that alone does really exist which is of such a character as what he
calls {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, and we species,) therefore, being shut up in the body, it
could not while in the body discover what it knows: but it knew it before,
and brought the knowledge with it, so that we are no longer surprised at
its extensive and multifarious knowledge: nor does the soul clearly
discover its ideas at its first resort to this abode to which it is so
unaccustomed, and which is in so disturbed a state; but after having
refreshed and recollected itself, it then by its memory recovers them;
and, therefore, to learn implies nothing more than to recollect. But I am
in a particular manner surprised at memory; for what is that faculty by
which we remember? what is its force? what its nature? I am not inquiring
how great a memory Simonides(62) may be said to have had, or
Theodectes,(63) or that Cineas,(64) who was sent to Rome as ambassador
from Pyrrhus, or in more modern times Charmadas;(65) or very lately,
Metrodorus,(66) the Scepsian, or our own contemporary Hortensius:(67) I am
speaking of ordinary memory, and especially of those men who are employed
in any important study or art, the great capacity of whose minds it is
hard to estimate, such numbers of things do they remember.

XXV. Should you ask what this leads to, I think we may understand what
that power is, and whence we have it. It certainly proceeds neither from
the heart, nor from the blood, nor from the brain, nor from atoms; whether
it be air or fire, I know not, nor am I, as