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| How a Kind of Trinity Exists in the Mind Thinking of Itself. What is the Part of Thought in This Trinity.
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Chapter 6.—How a Kind of Trinity Exists in the Mind
Thinking of Itself. What is the Part of Thought in This
Trinity.
The function of thought, however,
is so great, that not even the mind itself can, so to say, place
itself in its own sight, except when it thinks of itself; and hence
it is so far the case, that nothing is in the sight of the mind,
except that which is being thought of, that not even the mind
itself, whereby we think whatever we do think, can be in its own
sight otherwise than by thinking of itself. But in what way
it is not in its own sight when it is not thinking of itself, while
it can never be without itself, as though itself were one
thing, and the sight of itself another, it is not in my power to
discover. For this is not unreasonably said of the eye of the body;
for the eye itself of the body is fixed in its own proper place in
the body, but its sight extends to things external to itself, and
reaches even to the stars. And the eye is not in its own sight,
since it does not look at itself, unless by means of a mirror, as
is said above;877
a thing that
certainly does not happen when the mind places itself in its own
sight by thinking of itself. Does it then see one part of itself by
means of another part of itself, when it looks at itself in
thought, as we look at some of our members, which can be in our
sight, with other also of our members, viz. with our eyes?
What can be said or thought more absurd? For by what is the mind
removed, except by itself? or where is it placed so as to be in its
own sight, except before itself? Therefore it will not be there,
where it was, when it was not in its own sight; because it has been
put down in one place, after being taken away from another. But if
it migrated in order to be beheld, where will it remain in order to
behold? Is it as it were doubled, so as to be in this and in that
place at the same time, viz. both where it can behold, and
where it can be beheld; that in itself it may be beholding, and
before itself beheld? If we ask the truth, it will tell us nothing
of the sort since it is but feigned images of bodily objects of
which we conceive when we conceive thus; and that the mind is not
such, is very certain to the few minds by which the truth on such a
subject can be inquired. It appears, therefore, that the beholding
of the mind is something pertaining to its nature, and is recalled
to that nature when it conceives of itself, not as if by moving
through space, but by an incorporeal conversion; but when it is not
conceiving of itself, it appears that it is not indeed in its own
sight, nor is its own perception formed from it, but yet that it
knows itself as though it were to itself a remembrance of itself.
Like one who is skilled in many branches of learning: the things
which he knows are contained in his memory, but nothing thereof is
in the sight of his mind except that of which he is conceiving;
while all the rest are stored up in a kind of secret knowledge,
which is called memory. The trinity, then, which we were setting
forth, was constituted in this way: first, we placed in the memory
the object by which the perception of the percipient was formed;
next, the conformation, or as it were the image which is impressed
thereby; lastly, love or will as that which combines the two. When
the mind, then, beholds itself in conception, it understands and
cognizes itself; it begets, therefore, this its own understanding
and cognition. For an incorporeal thing is understood when it is
beheld, and is cognized when understood. Yet certainly the mind
does not so beget this knowledge of itself, when it beholds itself
as understood by conception, as though it had before been unknown
to itself; but it was known to itself, in the way in which things
are known which are contained in the memory, but of which one is
not thinking; since we say that a man knows letters even when he is
thinking of something else, and not of letters. And these two, the
begetter and the begotten, are coupled together by love, as by a
third, which is nothing else than will, seeking or holding fast the
enjoyment of something. We held, therefore, that a trinity of the
mind is to be intimated also by these three terms, memory,
intelligence, will.
9. But since the mind, as we said
near the end of the same tenth book, always remembers itself, and
always understands and loves itself, although it does not always
think of itself as distinguished from those things which are not
itself; we must inquire in what way understanding
(intellectus) belongs to conception, while the notion
(notitia) of each thing that is in the mind, even when one
is not thinking of it, is said to belong only to the memory. For if
this is so, then the mind had not these three things: viz.
the remembrance, the understanding, and the love of itself; but it
only remembered itself, and afterwards,
when it began to think
of itself, then it understood and loved itself. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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