The mnenomic discovered by Simonides is that of “artificial” memory—memory that is the result of training in the selection and use of places to organize images to achieve proficiency in elocutio—to speak on a particular subject, to put thought into words. In 1550, near the end of his life, Giulio Camillo dictated, on seven mornings, in Milan, a little work, L’idea del theatro, published at Venice and Florence. Camillo was one of the most famous figures of the sixteenth century, known to his contemporaries as the “Divine Camillo,” but he has been forgotten by posterity.
Camillo realized that the mnemonic of artificial memory could be transposed from a method of rhetoric to a method of metaphysics. From the idea of the Theatrum mundi he formed the idea of the Theatro della memoria. The artificial memory allows for making a speech on a subject within the theater of the world. The theater of memory allows for making a complete speech of the world itself. Instead of arbitrarily selecting places with which to associate images or mental places, Camillo arranged a theater of master images. These pitture represented the components of mythology upon which culture is based and from which thought originates. Camillo unites Hebraic, Greek, and Roman images. These are the topoi of human memory, those sources from which knowledge is brought forth. They are the metaphors, the archai of the human world itself.
Representations of these were arranged in tiers of seven grades, divided by seven gangways proceeding upward from a stage. Versions of the theater were constructed in France and Italy. The spectator entered on the stage as an actor, facing the audience of the pitture. The entrant faced the contents of the treasure-house of human memory. The unstated secret of the theater was the principle of proportion, the principle of the just soul of Platonism. In this way the theater gave access to the Forms, for the images were imitations of the real order of things. To know all there was to know and hence acquire wisdom, whoever entered the stage of the theater needed to contemplate each of the figures on the seven grades, aided by the writings of Cicero, the greatest of orators, kept in drawers or coffers in the theater. The mind of the individual could thus be aligned with the divine mens.
Only those who were prepared to engage in this process of contemplative alignment could accomplish the purpose of the theater, as Camillo states in the first sentence of his little treatise. The rest of the treatise describes only the contents and arrangement of the theater. It does not explain it. Camillo says: “The most ancient and wisest writers have always had the habit of entrusting to their writings the secrets of God under obscure veils, so that they are not understood except by those who (as Christ says) have ears to hear, namely who by God are chosen to grasp his most sacred mysteries.”1
Those “who have ears to hear” are mentioned in Matthew (11:15), Mark (4:23), and Luke (8:8). Warning not to present lofty themes to the many are to be found in Plato’s Letters (2.314a), in the prologue to the Asclepius, in the Hermetica of Hermes Trismegistus, and in the Zohar of the Cabala. Camillo’s art of memory is a work for the neo-Platonic Friends of the Forms, an extension of the Academy. It is the means to attain the wisdom that the philosopher seeks, the means to produce the complete speech.
Aristotle’s Protrepticus
O philosophy, thou guide of life,
o thou explorer of virtue and
expeller of vice! Without thee what
could have become not only of me
but of the life of man altogether?
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.2.5
Among Aristotle’s early writings, the most important is his Protrepticus, the original of which has been lost in its entirety, but its essential content and narrative has been reconstructed. It is a “hortatory essay” (logos protrepticos), an exhortation intended to urge those who would take up the study of philosophy—to do so. The most famous passage, as it appears in the reconstructed text of Anton-Hermann Chroust, is: “The term ‘to philosophize’ (or, ‘to pursue philosophy’) implies two distinct things: first, whether or not we ought to seek [after philosophic truth] at all; and second, our dedication to philosophic speculation [philosophon theoria]” (par. 6).2
With this assertion as his theme, Aristotle pursues its meaning. He says that “there is a science of truth as well as a science of the excellence of the soul. . . . philosophic wisdom (phronesis) is the greatest of all goods, and, at the same time, the most useful of all things” (pars. 35–36). Aristotle concludes: “Since human life is capable of sharing in this faculty [of reasoning and of acquiring wisdom], however wretched and difficult it may be, it is yet so wisely ordained that man appears to be a god when compared with all other creatures. . . . This being so, we ought either to pursue philosophy or bid farewell to life and depart from this world, because all other things seem to be but utter nonsense and folly” (pars. 105–106). Philosophic wisdom takes two forms, as contemplative speculation (theoria) and as guiding conduct to achieve well-being (phronesis).
Chroust’s reconstruction is as above, but, as Chroust says, there is a tradition, stemming from Cicero, Quintilian, Lactantius, and Boethius, that the passage is more like this: “You say that one should (or must) philosophize; then you should (or must) philosophize. You say that one should not (or must not) philosophize, then (in order to prove your contention) you must philosophize. In any event, you must philosophize.” On the passage, put in this way, Quintilian comments: “Sometimes two propositions are put forward in such a way that the choice of either leads to the same conclusion: for example, “We must philosophize (even though we must not philosophize) [‘philosophandum est, etiam si non est philosophandum’]” (Inst. orat. 5.10.70).
The coming together of these two propositions is what Aristotle would call an aporia, an impass that thought brings on itself by arriving at two equally valid but opposed claims. Such an impass generates wonder (thauma), owing to which philosophy first began and by which it continues to be (Meta. 982b). It is a wonder to philosophy that it itself is. The attempt to preclude philosophy from the activity of thought requires an act of philosophizing. Philosophy is the only form of knowing that is justified by its own attempted act of denial. In this way philosophy imbeds itself in the human condition.
If we pass from Aristotle’s Protrepticus to Boethius’s masterpiece, the Consolation of Philosophy, the dialogue Boethius creates between himself and Lady Philosophy (Philosophia), we gain a further picture of how philosophy speaks to the human condition. Boethius’s work is a prosimetrum, prose interspersed with verse. It became one of the several books to gain universal appeal throughout the Middle Ages. In late Latin, consolatio meant “aid” or “support” rather than “consolation” or “comfort.” Boethius, in prison, facing his death, is visited by Lady Philosophy, who immediately drives away the Muses of poetry whom, Boethius says, had been helping him find the words for his grief. Their instruction in poetry is not enough. Only attention to philosophy will take us to a knowledge of virtue and true justice, as it resides in the human soul. Boethius must come to understand that politics is always the enemy of philosophy, that is, politics that takes the actions of the state as the key to human nature and conduct.
Boethius says: “But you, Lady, dwelling in me, drove from my soul’s depths all desire for mortal things, and to have made any room for sacrilege under your very eyes would