About the author

Kenelm Digby (1603–65), a founding and governing member of the Royal Society, was among the first to note the importance of ‘vital air’ (oxygen) in vegetative growth. In connection with alchemical experiments, he invented the longneck wine bottle made of translucent glass to protect the contents from sunlight.

About the text

Although aware of Descartes's scientific work, Digby applies Aristotelian principles to develop an atomistic view of cognition in his two major philosophical treatises, The Nature of Bodies and On the Immortality of Reasonable Souls, published together in 1644. His chapter on memory explains the key principles underlying his mechanistic theory of the brain's operations.

The arts of memory

Digby treats the art of memory as a naturally occurring phenomenon in the world that replicates the internal pattern of human cognition. Adapting the earlier doctrine of correspondences (of microcosm mirroring macrocosm) to fit his anatomical observations, Digby stresses the particulate nature of bodies within bodies, viewing the human soul as a conscious monad – a thinking and memorative force – distinguished from mere material monads (animals) and vital forces (plants).

Textual notes

Kenelm Digby, Two treatises (Paris, 1644), Nn2v–Nn4v.

Two Treatises

Chapter 33. Of memory

But let us examine a little more particularly, how the causes we have assigned, do raise these bodies that rest in the memory, and do bring them to the fantasy. The middlemost of them (namely chance) needeth no looking into, because the principles that govern it, are uncertain ones. But the first, and the last (which are, the appetite, and the will) have a power (which we will explicate hereafter) of moving the brain and the nerves depending of it, conveniently and agreeably to their disposition.