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[13] may be said to have had, or Theodectes,[14] or that Cineas[15] who was sent to Rome as ambassador from Pyrrhus; or, in more modern times, Charmadas;[16] or, very lately, Metrodorus[17] the Scepsian, or our own contemporary Hortensius[18]: 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 those men are, ashamed, in cases where I am ignorant, to own that I am so.

If in any other obscure matter I were able to assert anything positively, then I would swear that the soul, be it air or fire, is divine.