word—from which we may gather that conceptual definitions of terms, while necessary for technical and scientific purposes, are by themselves unfit to assure, much less advance, the soundness of language, as they are generally assumed to do.
But the word "the thanc" does not mean only what we call a man's disposition or heart, and whose essential nature we can hardly fathom. Both memory and thanks move and have their being in the thanc. "Memory" initially did not at all mean the power to recall. The word designates the whole disposition in the sense of a steadfast intimate concentration upon the things that essentially speak to us in every thoughtful meditation. Originally, "memory" means as much as devotion: a constant concentrated abiding with something—not just with something that has passed, but in the same way with what is present and with what may come. What is past, present, and to come appears in the oneness of its own present being.
Inasmuch as memory—the concentration of our disposition, devotion—does not let go of that on which it concentrates, memory is imbued not just with the quality of essential recall, but equally with the quality of an unrelinquishing and unrelenting retention. Out of the memory, and within the memory, the soul then pours forth its wealth of images—of visions envisioning the soul itself. Only now, within the widely and deeply conceived nature of the memory, the contrast emerges between oblivion and retention, what the Romans call memoria tenere. Retention by memoria refers as much to what is past as to what is present and to come. Retention is mostly occupied with what is past, because the past has got away and in a way no longer affords a lasting hold. Therefore, the meaning of retention is subsequently limited to what is past, what memory draws up, recovers again and again. But since this limited reference originally does not constitute the sole nature of memory, the need to give a name to the specific retention and