Page - 896 - in The Complete Aristotle

mind has not (when starting from E) moved in an old path (i.e. one in which it moved first having the objective experience, and that, therefore, in which un-’ethized’ phusis would have it again move), it tends to move to the more customary; for (the mind having, by chance or otherwise, missed moving in the ‘old’ way) Custom now assumes the role of Nature. Hence the rapidity with which we recollect what we frequently think about. For as regular sequence of events is in accordance with nature, so, too, regular sequence is observed in the actualization of kinesis (in consciousness), and here frequency tends to produce (the regularity of) nature. And since in the realm of nature occurrences take place which are even contrary to nature, or fortuitous, the same happens a fortiori in the sphere swayed by custom, since in this sphere natural law is not similarly established. Hence it is that (from the same starting-point) the mind receives an impulse to move sometimes in the required direction, and at other times otherwise, (doing the latter) particularly when something else somehow deflects the mind from the right direction and attracts it to itself. This last consideration explains too how it happens that, when we want to remember a name, we remember one somewhat like it, indeed, but blunder in reference to (i.e. in pronouncing) the one we intended. Thus, then, recollection takes place. But the point of capital importance is that (for the purpose of recollection) one should cognize, determinately or indeterminately, the time-relation (of that which he wishes to recollect). There is,-let it be taken as a fact,- something by which one distinguishes a greater and a smaller time; and it is reasonable to think that one does this in a way analogous to that in which one discerns (spacial) magnitudes. For it is not by the mind’s reaching out towards them, as some say a visual ray from the eye does (in seeing), that one thinks of large things at a distance in space (for even if they are not there, one may similarly think them); but one does so by a proportionate mental movement. For there are in the mind the like figures and movements (i.e. ‘like’ to those of objects and events). Therefore, when one thinks the greater objects, in what will his thinking those differ from his thinking the smaller? (In nothing,) because all the internal though smaller are as it were proportional to the external. Now, as we may assume within a person something proportional to the forms (of distant magnitudes), so, too, we may doubtless assume also something else proportional to their distances. As, therefore, if one has (psychically) the movement in AB, BE, he constructs in thought (i.e. knows objectively) GD, since AG and GD bear equal ratios respectively (to AB and BE), (so he who recollects also proceeds). Why then does he construct GD rather than ZH? Is it not because as AG is to AB, so is O to I? These movements therefore (sc. in AB, BE, and in O:I) he has simultaneously. But if he wishes to construct to thought ZH, he has in mind BE in like manner as 896