Memory and Imagination

All learning is recollection; the soul's prior knowledge of the Forms is recovered through questioning.

Imagination produces images that serve both memory and deliberation, standing between sense and thought.

Memory is a vast palace, the storehouse of images and ideas; even forgotten things remain in it, for otherwise we could not search for them.

Memory and imagination are interior senses requiring bodily organs; the estimative power recognizes the useful and harmful by instinct.

Imagination is decaying sense; memory is imagination with the awareness of past perception.

The mind stores simple ideas through retention; contemplation keeps ideas in view, memory revives them.

Memory preserves the order and position of ideas; imagination is free to transpose and combine them; the difference is one of vivacity.

Imagination is the power of synthesis that unifies the manifold of intuition; it makes experience possible.

Retention depends on neural pathways; memory and habit share a common basis in the plasticity of brain tissue.

Forgetting is often repression; unconscious memories persist and shape behavior until brought to light through analysis.