The Divine Lamp

Article 6
That Memory And Sensitivity Are Not The Same.

75. Nor is Condillac more fortunate when he attempts to identify memory with sensation. He says: ‘Our ability to feel is divided between the sensations we havehad and the one we experience at present. We perceive them simultaneously, but differently; one appears past, the other present. To perceive or feel these two sensations is one and the same thing. This feeling is called sensation when the impression is actually make upon the senses; when it comes to us as a sensation that has already occurred, it is called memory.’ (Extrait…, p. 13)

It seems impossible for one to be so deceived as to affirm that the perceiving of a sensation which is taking place at this moment, and the perceiving of one which hass passed away, are acts of the same nature. Nay, can a sensation which is gone by be perceived? Can that be felt which has ceased to exist?

76. A former sensation may, indeed, exist in our memory; but it cannot then be said to exist as a real sensation. Its reality is past and gone, as we express by the phrase: ‘I remember having experienced such or such a sensation.’ For a sensation really to exist it is necessary that our sensitive organs be actually impressed in that way which causes us to feel; and no sooner does the impression cease, than there is an end to the sensation. the memory, on the contrary, continues; or, to speak more correctly, begins when the sensation has disappeared. Therefore memory is not sensation.

77. What seems to have misled our philosopher is that common expression, ‘Past sensations are preserved in the memory.’ He ought to have known that the expression is, strictly speaking, inexact; for in it the word sensation has not the same meaning as when one speaks of a real sensation. We preserve in our memory, not the real sensation,, but only the recollection of them. Who does not see that to recollect an acute pain or an intense pleasure is a different thing from actually feeling with our senses that pain or that pleasure?

The error arising from the double meaning of the term sensation, as applied to the senses and as applied to the memory, is in part similar to the error of a person who, on looking at a portrait and hearing someone say, ‘This is Manzoni,’ were to take that portrait for Manzoni’s real self. Most assuredly the Manzoni painted on the canvas differe essentially from the great man who bears that name. The former is a mere likeness in oil or watercolor; the latter is the real living personage who, I am sure, would emphatically deny ever having transformed into that likeness and those colors.

The sensation, therefore, which is said to be in us by recollection is not the real sensation which has caused us, for example, such agonies of pain when a sharp splinter of wood happened to be thrust into our arm or foot. This was felt in the arm or foot itself, whereas the other is a pure reminiscence of it, aided, if you will, by some image, preserved or revived in the soul, but always different and entirely separate from the sensation itself.

Therefore whatever dependence or relation may exist between the actual sensation and the sensation as preserved in our memory, and, though they may be even designated by the same name of sensation, they can be neither confounded together, nor the one be called a transformation of the other.

In conclusion, then, sensitivity and memory are two separate faculties, nor can the love of systematic simplicity be a justification for blending them in one; that is, for going directly counter to the fact of nature. Excerpted from The Origin of Ideas, Volume one, by Blessed Antonio Rosmini)

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