HERE BEGINNETH THE THREE AND SIXTIETH CHAPTER
Of the powers of a soul in general, and how Memory in special
is a principal power, comprehending in it all the other powers and all those
things in the which they
work.
MEMORY is such a power in itself, that properly to speak and in manner, it
worketh not itself. But Reason and Will, they be two working powers, and so is
Imagination and Sensuality also. And all these four powers and their works,
Memory containeth and comprehendeth in itself. And otherwise it is not said
that the Memory worketh, unless such a comprehension be a work.
And therefore it is that I call the powers of
a soul, some principal, and some secondary. Not because a soul is
divisible, for that may not be: but because all those things in the which they
work be divisible, and some principal, as be all ghostly things, and some
secondary, as be all bodily things. The two principal working powers, Reason
and Will, work purely in themselves in all ghostly things, without help of the
other two secondary powers. Imagination and Sensuality work beastly in all
bodily things, whether they be present or absent, in the body and with the
bodily wits. But by them, without help of Reason and of Will, may a soul never
come to for to know the virtue and the conditions of bodily creatures, nor the
cause of their beings and their makings.
And for this cause is Reason and Will called
principal powers, for they work in pure spirit without any manner of
bodilyness: and Imagination and Sensuality secondary, for they work in the body
with bodily instruments, the which be our five wits. Memory is
called a principal power, for it containeth in it ghostly not only all the
other powers, but thereto all those things in the which they work. See by the
proof.