Übersetzung ausblenden
The Confessions of St. Augustin In Thirteen Books

Chapter IX.--Not Only Things, But Also Literature and Images, are Taken from the Memory, and are Brought Forth by the Act of Remembering.

16. And yet are not these all that the illimitable capacity of my memory retains. Here also is all that is apprehended of the liberal sciences, and not yet forgotten--removed as it were into an inner place, which is not a place; nor are they the images which are retained, but the things themselves. For what is literature, what skill in disputation, whatsoever I know of all the many kinds of questions there are, is so in my memory, as that I have not taken in the image and left the thing without, or that it should have sounded and passed away like a voice imprinted on the ear by that trace, whereby it might be recorded, as though it sounded when it no longer did so; or as an odour while it passes away, and vanishes into wind, affects the sense of smell, whence it conveys the image of itself into the memory, which we realize in recollecting; or like food, which assuredly in the belly hath now no taste, and yet hath a kind of taste in the memory, or like anything that is by touching felt by the body, and which even when removed from us is imagined by the memory. For these things themselves are not put into it, but the images of them only are caught up, with a marvellous quickness, and laid up, as it were, in most wonderful garners, and wonderfully brought forth when we remember.

Edition ausblenden
Confessiones

Caput 9

Sed non ea sola gestat immensa ista capacitas memoriae meae. hic sunt et illa omnia quae de doctrinis liberalibus percepta nondum exciderunt, quasi remota interiore loco, non loco; nec eorum imagines, sed res ipsas gero. nam quid sit litteratura, quid peritia disputandi, quot genera quaesitionum, quidquid horum scio, sic est in memoria mea, ut non retenta imagine rem foris reliquerim, aut sonuerit aut praeterierit, sicut vox inpressa per aures vestigio, quo recoleretur, quasi sonaret, cum iam non sonaret; aut sicut odor dum transit et vanescit in ventos olfactum afficit, unde traicit in memoriam imaginem sui, quam reminiscendo repetamus; aut sicut cibus, qui certe in ventre iam non sapit et tamen in memoria quasi sapit; aut sicut aliquid, quod corpore tangendo sentitur, quod etiam separatum a nobis imaginatur memoria. istae quippe res non intromittuntur ad eam, sed eorum solae imagines mira celeritate capiuntur, et miris tamquam cellis reponuntur, et mirabiliter recordando proferuntur.