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. Just think, I
beseech you: can you imagine this wonderful power of memory to be sown
in or to be a part of the composition of the earth, or of this dark and
gloomy atmosphere? Though you cannot apprehend what it is, yet you see
what kind of thing it is, or if you do not quite see that, yet you
certainly see how great it is. What, then? Shall we imagine that there
is a kind of measure in the soul, into which, as into a vessel, all
that we remember is poured? That indeed is absurd; for how shall we
form any idea of the bottom, or of the shape or fashion of such a soul
as that? And, again, how are we to conceive how much it is able to
contain? Shall we imagine the soul to receive impressions like wax, and
memory to be marks of the impressions made on the soul? What are the
characters of the words, what of the facts themselves? and what, again,
is that prodigious greatness which can give rise to impressions of so
many things? What, lastly, is that power which investigates secret
things, and is called invention and contrivance? Does that man seem to
be compounded of this earthly, mortal, and perishing nature who first
invented names for everything; which, if you will believe Pythagoras,
is the highest pitch of wisdom? or he who collected the dispersed
inhabitants of the world, and united them in the bonds of social life?
or he who confined the sounds of the voice, which used to seem
infinite, to the marks of a few letters? or he who first observed the