CHAPTER XV
23. Now whether all this is by means of images or not, who
can rightly affirm? For I name a stone, I name the sun, and those
things themselves are not present to my senses, but their images
are present in my memory. I name some pain of the body, yet it is
not present when there is no pain; yet if there were not some such
image of it in my memory, I could not even speak of it, nor should
I be able to distinguish it from pleasure. I name bodily health
when I am sound in body, and the thing itself is indeed present in
me. At the same time, unless there were some image of it in my
memory, I could not possibly call to mind what the sound of this
name signified. Nor would sick people know what was meant when
health was named, unless the same image were preserved by the
power of memory, even though the thing itself is absent from the
body. I can name the numbers we use in counting, and it is not
their images but themselves that are in my memory. I name the
image of the sun, and this too is in my memory. For I do not
recall the image of that image, but that image itself, for the
image itself is present when I remember it.
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