The mind, when unable to collect itself or remember any given circumstance, is termed metaphorically a tabula rasa in post-classical Latin, just as we say “a blank.” Among the Greeks the figure was common. Aristotle compares the mind to a “tablet on which nothing has been written,” ὥσπερ ἐν γραμματείῳ ᾧ μηθὲν ὑπάρχει ἐντελεχείᾳ γεγραμμένον (De Anima, 3, 4,11); and Plutarch (Placita Philosophorum, 4, 11) speaks of the soul at birth, ὥσπερ χάρτης ἐνεργῶν εἰς ἀπογραφήν, as “so much paper ready for https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Composition_(language)