Book Title: Jaina Concept of Memory Author(s): Mohanlal Mehta Publisher: ZZ_Anusandhan View full book textPage 3
________________ 3TTHETF-819.96 inasmuch as even the exponents of the said view are not prepared to admit the presence of two conscious activities at the same time. Thus, how can retention be defined as the condition of recall ? We recollect out past experience on account of the special capacity of the soul to remember past events. The faculty of retention cannot be regarded as the cause of recollection. Retention, however, can be admitted as a remote cause of recall, and not as the immediate one, since it is not an impossibility to admit so many remote causes of an event.' According to Hemacandra, 'retention is the condition of recollection'." This condition is nothing but the causal stuff capable of change into the effect called recall that consists in the recollection of past events. To express the same idea in a different manner, retention is nothing but the latent mental trace left over as legacy by previous experience. It is, thus the continued existence of a particular perceptual judgment for a certain length of time. Hemacandra further remarks that this latent mental trace should be admitted as a species of cognition on the ground that it is a catagory of comprehension. It should not be supposed that it is defferent from conginition as such, because if it were not cognitive in character, it could not produce recall which is a category of cognition. One kind of existence is impossible to be transformed into another kind of existence which is opposite in nature. If retention in the form of hidden mental trace were not cognitive in nature, it could not be an attribute of the self, inasmuch as the attributes of a conscious entity cannot be non-conscious in nature. 12 Recollection is the cognition that has the stimulus of a latent mental trace for its condition. It refers to its content by a form of the pronoun that'.'? The latent mental trace is nothing but the disposition retained by our past experience, Its emergence to the surface of consciousness constitutes the Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.orgPage Navigation
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