CO Xibran? of philosophy EDITED BY J. H. MUIRHEAD, LL.D. MATTER AND MEMORY SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. " Though it can hardly be claimed that Bergson has completely solved the extra ordinary complex and difficult problem of memory and least of all the mystery of matter, it may be admitted ungrudg ingly that he has clarified the obscurities of the former problem to a considerable extent, and has, above all, rendered great service by the masterly way in which he points out the insuperable difficulties of the materi alistic position. . . . This excellent trans lation." The Quest. " Of M. Bergson s three works the pre sent is that whuh appeals most to the educator because of the excellent treatment of the very practical subjects of memory and attention. We do not look for a final decision of such problems as art here dealt wtth, but no one can rise from reading this book and retain unchanged the vieu s with which he began it. To say this of a book of psychometaphysics is to say much." Journal of Education. "As in the case of the former volume the translator of this second volume has the author s assistance and approval, and the author has also written for it a new Introduction, superseding that which ac companies the original work. In this volume, also, the translators have given a number of useful marginal summaries and a copious index." Westminster Review. By the same Author, uniform with this volume, 10s. 6d. net. TIME AND FREE WILL: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. " A philosopher who can think origin ally and write felicitously is a combin ation rare enough to justify a careful study of his message ; and it is satis factory to note that M. Bergson s three chief works will soon be all accessible in English. We can only hope that the rendering of the two remaining volumes will be as successful as the clear and scholarly version which Mr. Pogson gives of his Les Donn6es immediates de la conscience. The title Time and Free Will has been substituted for the somewhat colourless title given by M. Bergson to his first book and it indicates accurately the chief contents of the volume, mainly a discussion of the real nature of time and the conclusions drawn by the author there from as to the possibility of real freedom. The general line of argument is the same as that familiar to English readers in James Principles of Psychology, but it is worked out by Bergson with incom parable lucidity and a fulness of treatment that make it quite conclusive. It is not easy, by any process of summarizing or selecting, to convey the real force and persuasiveness of M. Bergson s argument. The temperate critic may reasonably doubt whether he has laid this venerable controversy to its final rest, but he will not deny that both his admissions and contentions go far to clear the air, and that many musty idols of the schools crumble at his touch." Times. " Prof. Bergson otcupies to-day in France, and indeed on the Continent, something of the samt position as the late Prof. William Young occupied among English-speaking peoples. Both are apostles of the plain man and the ordinary consciousness. Both approached philosophy proper through experimental psychology, but Professor Bergson has one special stage in his development which gives his work a peculiar interest. He is an eminent mathematician and familiar with the most abstract types of symbolical thought. Prof, Bergson is not an easy writer to translate. His ttylt in its simplicity and clarity and concentration is one of the best that have ever been used in tht service of philosophy ; and for a succinct French style it is a hard mutter to find an English equivalent. Mr. Pogson seems to have done his work ad mirably, for he has succeeded in being always lucid and satisfactory, while re taining something of the grace of the original." Spectator. " The translation reproduces the re markable lucidity of thought and express- sion that distinguish A/. Bergson s pre sentment of a philosophical subject. It will be fairly easy for the educated reader who has any taste for inquiry into ques tions of man s mental life to follow M. Bergson s extremely interesting discus sions." Saturday Review. " The translator of this book has done his work thoroughly well. Prof. Berg son s French style is lucid enough in its own way, but he writes in a highly con centrated fashion, having, moreover, a line of thought to develop which is apt by its sheer unfamiliarity to baffle even the most professional of philosophers. In the present version the meaning is brought out with punctilious exactness as by ant who has weighed each word of the original, yet the effect of the whole is natural and easy. It is indeed no small misfortune to the world of letters that the rendering of those later works in which the Bergsonian doctrine of reality attains its full consummation must become the task of other hands. . . . It is not necessary here to examine in any great detail a book, the conclusions of which are as stepping stones leading on to the maturer, or at any rate, more comprehensive studies represented by Matiere et Mcmoire, and more notably still that triumph of auda cious synthesis, L Evolution Creatrire. The present treatise embodies a highly compact piece of introspective psychology in three chapters, the first two of which are intended to terve as a sort of intro duction to the first." Athcna iim. MATTER I AN D MEMORY By HENRI BERGSON MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE PROFESSOR AT THE COLLEGE I>E FRANCE Authorized Translation by NANCY MARGARET PAUL AND W. SCOTT PALMER LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY FIRST PUBLISHED: January 1911 KKPRINTED: January 1912 tl March 1913 September 1919 July 1929 All rights reserved FEB ! 5 1347 in h g/toiurg* TRANSLATORS NOTE THIS translation of Monsieur Bergson s Matilre el Memoire has been made from the fifth edition of 1908, and has had the great advantage of being revised in proof by the author. Monsieur Bergson has also written a new Introduction for it, which supersedes that which accompanied the original work. The translators offer their sincere thanks to the author for his invaluable help in these matters and for many suggestions made by him while the book was in manuscript. They beg leave to call the reader s attention to the fact that all the marginal notes are peculiar to the English edition ; and that, although Mon sieur Bergson has been good enough to revise them, he is not responsible for their insertion or character, since they form no part of his own plan for the book. N. M. P. W. S. P. INTRODUCTION THIS book affirms the reality of spirit and the reality of matter, and tries to determine the rela tion of the one to the other by the study of a defi nite example, that of memory. It is, then, frankly dualistic. But, on the other hand, it deals with body and mind in such a way as, we hope, to lessen greatly, if not to overcome, the theoretical difficulties which have always beset dualism, and which cause it, though suggested by the immediate verdict of consciousness and adopted by common sense, to be held in small honour among philoso phers. These difficulties are due, for the most part, to the conception, now realistic, now idealistic, which philosophers have of matter. The aim of our first chapter is to show that realism and idealism both go too far, that it is a mistake to reduce matter to the perception which we have of it, a mistake also to make of it a thing able to produce in us perceptions, but in itself of another nature than they. Matter, in our view, is an aggregate of images/ And by image we mean a certain existence which is more than that which the idealist calls a representation, but less than that which the realist calls a thing, an Vlll INTRODUCTION existence placed half-way between the thing and the representation/ This conception of matter is simply that of common sense. It would greatly astonish a man unaware of the specula tions of philosophy if we told him that the object before him, w r hich he sees and touches, exists only in his mind and for his mind, or even, more gener ally, exists only for mind, as Berkeley held. Such a man would always maintain that the object exists independently of the consciousness which perceives it. But, on the other hand, we should astonish him quite as much by telling him that the object is entirely different from that which is perceived in it, that it has neither the colour as cribed to it by the eye, nor the resistance found in it by the hand. The colour, the resistance, are, for him, in the object : they are not states of our mind ; they are part and parcel of an existence really independent of our own. For common sense, then, the object exists in itself, and, on the other hand, the object is, in itself, pictorial, as we perceive it : image it is, but a self -existing image. This is just the sense in which we use the word image in our first chapter. We place ourselves at the point of view of a mind unaware of the dis putes between philosophers. Such a mind would naturally believe that matter exists just as it is perceived ; and, since it is perceived as an image, the mind would make of it, in itself, an image. In a word, we consider matter before the dissocia tion which idealism and realism have brought INTRODUCTION x about between its existence and its appearance. No doubt it has become difficult to avoid this dissociation now that philosophers have made it. To forget it, however, is what we ask of the reader. If, in the course of this first chapter, objections arise in his mind against any of the views that we put forward, let him ask himself whether these objections do not imply his return to one or the other of the two points of view above which we urge him to rise. Philosophy made a great step forward on the day when Berkeley proved, as against the me chanical philosophers, that the secondary qualities of matter have at least as much reality as the primary qualities. His mistake lay in believing that, for this, it was necessary to place matter within the mind, and make it into a pure idea. Descartes, no doubt, had put matter too far from us when he made it one with geometrical extensity. But, in order to bring it nearer to us, there was no need to go to the point of making it one with our own mind. Because he did go as far as this, Berkeley was unable to account for the success of physics, and, whereas Descartes had set up the mathematical relations between phenomena as their very essence, he was obliged to regard the mathematical order of the universe as a mere accident. So the Kantian criticism became neces sary, to show the reason of this mathematical order and to give back to our physics a solid found ation a task in which, however, it succeeded X INTRODUCTION only by limiting the range and value of our senses and of our understanding. The criticism of Kant, on this point at least, would have been unnecessary ; the human mind, in this direction at least, would not have been led to limit its own range ; metaphysics would not have been sacrificed to physics, if philosophy had been content to leave matter half way between the place to which Descartes had driven it and that to which Berkeley drew it back to leave it, in fact, where it is seen by common sense. There we shall try to see it ourselves. Our first chapter defines this way of looking at matter ; the last sets forth the consequences of such a view. But, as we said before, we treat of matter only in so far as it concerns the problem dealt with in our second and third chapters, that which is the subject of this essay : the problem of the relation between soul and body. This relation, though it has been a favourite theme throughout the history of philosophy, has really been very little studied. If we leave on one side the theories which are content to state the union of soul and body as an irreducible and inexplicable fact, and those which speak vaguely of the body as an instrument of the soul, there remains hardly any other conception of the psycho- physiological relation than the hypothesis of- epiphenomenalism or that of parallelism, which in practice I mean in the interpretation of par ticular facts both end in the same conclusions. INTRODUCTION XI For whether, indeed, thought is regarded as a mere function of the brain and the state of consciousness as an epiphenomenon of the state of the brain, or whether mental states and brain states are held to be two versions, in two different languages, of one and the same original, in either case it is laid down that, could we penetrate into the inside of a brain at work and behold the dance of the atoms which make up the cortex, and if, on the other hand, we possessed the key to psycho-physiology, we should know every detail of what is going on in the corresponding consciousness. This, indeed, is what is most commonly main tained by philosophers as well as by men of science. Yet it would be well to ask whether the facts, when examined without any preconceived idea, really suggest an hypothesis of this kind. That there is a close connexion between a state of con sciousness and the brain we do not dispute. But there is also a close connexion between a coat and the nail on which it hangs, for, if the nail is pulled out, the coat falls to the ground. Shall we say, then, that the shape of the nail gives us the shape of the coat, or in any way corresponds to it ? No more are we entitled to conclude, because the physical fact is hung on to a cerebral state, that there is any parallelism between the two series psychical and physiological. When philosophy pleads that the theory of parallelism is borne out by the results of positive science, it enters upon an unmistakably vicious circle ; for, if science inter- XII INTRODUCTION prets connexion, which is a fact, as signifying parallelism, which is an hypothesis (and an hypo thesis to which it is difficult to attach an intelligible meaning *), it does so, consciously or unconsciously, for reasons of a philosophic order : it is because science has been accustomed by a certain type of philosophy to believe that there is no hypothesis more probable, more in accordance with the interests of scientific enquiry. Now, as soon as we do, indeed, apply to positive facts for such information as may help us to solve the problem, we find it is with memory that we have to deal. This was to be expected, because mem ory we shall try to prove it in the course of this work is just the intersection of mind and matter. But we may leave out the reason here : no one, at any rate, will deny that, among all the facts capable of throwing light on the psycho-physiological relation, those which concern memory, whether in the normal or in the pathological state, hold a privileged position. Not only is the evidence here extremely abundant (consider the enormous mass of observations collected in regard to the various kinds of aphasia), but nowhere else have anatomy, physiology and psychology been able to lend each other such valuable aid. Any one who approaches, without preconceived idea and on the firm ground of facts, the classical problem of the relations Of 1 \Ve have laid stress on this particular point in an essay on " Le paralogisme psycho-physiologic/ue " (Revue de Mela- physique et de Morale, Nov., 1904). INTRODUCTION Xlll soul and body, will soon see this problem as centering upon the subject of memory, and even more particularly upon the memory of words : it is from this quarter, undoubtedly, that will come the light which will illumine the obscurer parts of the problem. The reader will see how we try to solve it. Speak ing generally, the psychical state seems to us to be, in most cases, immensely wider than the cerebral state. I mean that the brain state indicates only a very small part of the mental state, that part which is capable of translating itself into move ments of locomotion. Take a complex thought which unrolls itself in a chain of abstract reasoning. This thought is accompanied by images, that are at least nascent. And these images themselves are not pictured in consciousness without some foreshadowing, in the form of a sketch or a ten dency, of the movements by which these images would be acted or played in space, would, that is to say, impress particular attitudes upon the body, and set free all that they implicitly contain of spatial movement. Now, of all the thought which is unrolling, this, in our view, is what the cerebral state indicates at every moment. He who could penetrate into the interior of a brain and see what happens there, would probably obtain full details of these sketched-out, or prepared, movements ; there is no proof that he would learn anything else. Were he endowed with a superhuman intellect, did he possess the key to psycho-physiology, he XIV INTRODUCTION would know no more of what is going on in the corresponding consciousness than we should know of a play from the comings and goings of the actors upon the stage. That is to say, the relation of the mental to the cerebral is not a constant, any more than it is a simple, relation. According to the nature of the play that is being acted, the movements of the players tell us more or less about it : nearly every thing, if it is a pantomime ; next to nothing, if it is a delicate comedy. Thus our cerebral state contains more or less of our mental state in the measure that we reel off our psychic life into action or wind it up into pure knowledge. There are then, in short, divers tones of mental life, or, in other words, our psychic life may be lived at different heights, now nearer to action, now further removed from it, according to the degree of our attention to life. Here we have one of the ruling ideas of this book-the idea, indeed, which served as the starting-point of our enquiry. That which is usually held to be a greater complex ity of the psychical state appears to us, from our point of view, to be a greater dilatation of the whole personality, which, normally narrowed down by action, expands with the unscrewing of the vice in which it has allowed itself to be squeezed, and, always whole and undivided, spreads itself over a wider and wider surface. That which is commonly held to be a disturbance of the psychic life itself, an inward disorder, a disease of the per- INTRODUCTION XV sonality, appears to us, from our point of view, to be an unloosing or a breaking of the tie which binds this psychic life to its motor accompaniment, a weakening or an impairing of our attention to outward life. This opinion, as also that which de nies the localization of the memory-images of words and explains aphasia quite otherwise than by such localization, was considered paradoxical at the date of the first publication of the present work (1896). It will appear much less so now. The conception of aphasia then classical, universally admitted, believed to be unshakeable, has been considerably shaken in the last few years, chiefly by reasons of an anatomical order, but partly also by reasons of the same kind as those which we then advanced. 1 And the profound and original study of neuroses made by Professor Pierre Janet has led him, of late years, to explain all psychasthenic forms of disease by these same considerations of psychic tension and of attention to reality which were then presumed to be metaphysical. 2 In truth, it was not altogether a mistake to call them by that name. Without denying to psycho logy, any more than to metaphysics, the right to make itself into an independent science, we believe that each of these two sciences should set problems to the other and can, in a measure, help it to solve 1 F. Moutier, L Aphaste de Broca, Paris, 1908 ; especially Chapter VII. Cf. the work of Professor Pierre Marie. 2 P. Janet, Les obsessions et la Psychasthenie, Paris, 1903 ; in particular pp. 474-502. XVI INTRODUCTION them. How should it be otherwise, if psychology has for its object the study of the human mind working for practical utility, and if metaphysics is but this same mind striving to transcend the con ditions of useful action and to come back to itself as to a pure creative energy ? Many problems which appear foreign to each other as long as we are bound by the letter of the terms in which these two sciences state them, are seen to be very near akin and to be able to solve each other when we thus penetrate into their inner meaning. We little thought, at the beginning of our enquiry, that there could be any connexion between the analytical study of memory and the question, which are debated between realists and idealistss or between mechanists and dynamists, with regard to the existence or the essence of matter. Yet this connexion is real, it is even intimate ; and, if we take it into account, a cardinal metaphysical problem is carried into the open field of observa tion, where it may be solved progressively, instead of for ever giving rise to fresh disputes of the schools within the closed lists of pure dialectic. The complexity of some parts of the present work is due to the inevitable dovetailing of problems which results from approaching philosophy in such a way. But through this complexity, which is due to the complexity of reality itself, we believe that the reader will find his way if he keeps a fast hold on the two principles which we have used as a clue throughout our own researches. The first INTRODUCTION Xvil is that in psychological analysis we must never forget the utilitarian character of our mental func tions, which are essentially turned towards action. The second is that the habits formed in action find their way up to the sphere of speculation, where they create fictitious problems, and that meta physics must begin by dispersing this artificial obscurity. H. BERGSON. PARIS, October, 1910, CONTENTS PAGES [NTRODUCTION vii-xvii CHAPTER I OF THE SELECTION OF IMAGES FOR CONSCIOUS PRESENTATION. WHAT OUR BODY MEANS AND DOES . 1-85 Real action and virtual action, i 8 ; Representation, 814; Realism and Idealism, 1417; The choice of images, 17-35 ; Relation between representation and action, 3545 ; The image and reality, 4551 ; The image and affective sensation, 5155 ; Nature of affective sensation, 55-59; The image, apart from sensation, 59-62 ; Natural extension of images, 62-69 ; Pure perception, 69-73 : Approach to the problem of matter, 73-81 ; Memory, 81-85. CHAPTER II OF THE RECOGNITION OF IMAGES. MEMORY AND BRAIN ........ 86-169 The two forms of memory, 86-105 ; Movements and Recollections, 105118; Recollections and movements, 118-145 Realization of memories, 145-169. CHAPTER III OF THE SURVIVAL OF IMAGES. MEMORY AND MIND ........ 170-232 Pure memory, 170176 ; What the present is, 176-181 ; The unconscious, 181-189; Existence, 189191; Rela tion of past and present, 191-200 ; Memory and general xix XX CONTENTS PAGES ideas, 201212; The Association of Ideas, 212217; The plane of action and the plane of dream, 217-220; The different planes of consciousness, 220225 ; Attention to life, 225226 ; Mental equilibrium, 227-230 ; The Office of the body, 231-232. CHAPTER IV THE DELIMITING AND FIXING OF IMAGES. PERCEP TION AND MATTER. SOUL AND BODY . . 233-298 The problem of dualism, 233238 ; Description of the Method, 238245 ; Indivisibility of movement, 246253 ; Real movement, 254259 ; Perception and matter, 259-267 ; Duration and tension, 267-277 ; Extensity and sxtension, 277-291 ; Soul and body, 291298. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 299-332 INDEX r ....... 333-339 CHAPTER I OF THE SELECTION OF IMAGES FOR CONSCIOUS PRESENTATION. WHAT OUR BODY MEANS AND DOES. WE will assume for the moment that we know nothing of theories of matter and theories of spirit, nothing of the discussions as to the reality or ideality of the external world. Here I am ir the presence of images, in the vaguest sense of the word, images perceived when my senses are opened to them, unperceived when they are closed. All these images act and react upon one another in all their elementary parts according to constant laws which I call laws of nature, and, as a perfect knowledge of these laws would probably allow us to calculate and to fore see what will happen in each of these images, the future of the images must be contained in their present and will add to them nothing new. Yet there is one of them which is distinct from all the others, in that I do not know it only from without by perceptions, but from within The nniqne / .f . place and by affections : it is my body. I exa- function o! . . . the living mine the conditions in which these t)0(iv affections are produced : I find that they always interpose themselves between the ex citations that I receive from without and the move- MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i ments which I am about to execute, as though they had some undefined influence on the final issue. I pass in review my different affections : it seems to me that each of them contains, after its kind, an invitation to act, with at the same time leave to wait and even to do nothing. I look closer : I find movements begun, but not executed, the indication of a more or less useful decision, but not that constraint which precludes choice. I call up, I compare my recollections : I remember that everywhere, in the organic world, I have thought I saw this same sensibility appear at the very moment when nature, having conferred upon the living being the power of mobility in space, gives warning to the species, by means of sensation, of the general dangers which threaten it, leaving to the individuals the precautions necessary for escaping from them. Lastly, I interrogate my consciousness as to the part which it plays in affection : consciousness replies that it is present indeed, in the form of feeling or of sensation, at all the steps in which I believe that I take the initiative, and that it fades and disappears as soon as my activity, by becoming automatic, shows that consciousness is no longer needed. Therefore, either all these appearances are deceptive, or the act in which the affective state issues is not one of those which might be rigorously deduced from ante cedent phenomena, as a movement from a move ment ; and hence it really adds something new to CHAP, i REAL AND VIRTUAL ACTION J the universe and to its history. Let us hold to the appearances ; I will formulate purely and simply what I feel and what I see : All seems to take place as if, in this aggregate of images which I call the universe, nothing really new could happen except through the medium of certain par ticular images, the type of which is furnished me by my body. I pass now to the study, in bodies similar to my own, of the structure of that particular image which I call my body. I perceive afferent nerves which transmit a disturbance to the nerve centres, then efferent nerves which start from the centre, conduct the disturbance to the periphery, and set in motion parts of the body or the body as a whole. I question the physiologist and the psychologist as to the purpose of both kinds. They answer that as the centrifugal movements of the nervous system can call forth a movement of the body or of parts of the body, so the centri petal movements, or at least some of them, give birth to the representation * of the external world. What are we to think of this ? The afferent nerves are images, the brain is an image, the disturbance travelling through the yetthebrainig sensory nerves and propagated in the amonToS 6 brain is an ima g e to - If the ima g6 images. which I term cerebral disturbance really 1 The word representation is used throughout this book in the French sense, as meaning a mental picture, which mental picture is very o* f en perception. (Translators note.) 4 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAF.I begot external images, it would contain them in one way or another, and the representation of the whole material universe would be implied in that of this molecular movement. Now to state this proposition is enough to show its absurdity. The brain is part of the material world ; the material world is not part of the brain. Eliminate the image which bears the name material world, and you destroy at the same time the brain and the cerebral disturbance which are parts of it. Sup pose, on the contrary, that these two images, the brain and the cerebral disturbance, vanish : ex hypotihesi you efface only these, that is to say very little, an insignificant detail from an immense picture. The picture in its totality, that is to say the whole universe, remains. To make of the brain the condition on which the whole image depends is in truth a contradiction in terms, since the brain is by hypothesis a part of this image. Neither nerves nor nerve centres can, then, con dition the image of the universe. Let us consider this last point. Here are external images, then my body, and, lastly, the The body is a changes brought about by my body in action it ^he surrounding images. I see plainly rettS? and h w externa -l images influence the image movements. fa^ j ca u m y body : they transmit movement to it. And I also see how this bod) influences external images : it gives back move ment to them. My body is, then, in the aggre gate of the material world, an image which CHAP.I REAL AND VIRTUAL ACTION 5 acts like other images, receiving and giving back movement, with, perhaps, this difference only, that my body appears to choose, within certain limits, the manner in which it shall restore what it receives. But how could my body in general, and my nervous system in particular, beget the whole or a part of my representation of the uni verse ? You may say that my body is matter, or that it is an image : the word is of no importance. If it is matter, it is a part of the material world ; and the material world, consequently, exists around it and without it. If it is an image, that image can give but what has been put into it, and since it is, by hypothesis, the image of my body only, it would be absurd to expect to get from it that of the whole universe. My body, an object destined to move other objects, is, then, a centre of action ; it cannot give birth to a representa tion. But if my body is an object capable of exercis ing a genuine and therefore a new action upon so the body ^ e surrounding objects, it must occupy prMieged a privileged position in regard to them. providing for ^ s a m ^ G ^Y mia g e influences other oi 8 choiS ise i ma es m a manner which is determined, Jo3e and even calculable, through what are reactions. called the laws of nature. As it has not to choose, so neither has it any need to ex plore the region round about it, nor to try its hand at several merely eventual actions. The 6 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, t necessary action will take place automatically, when its hour strikes. But I have supposed that the office of the image which I call my body was to exercise on other images a real influence, and, consequently, to decide which step to take among several which are all materially possible. And since these steps are probably suggested to it by the greater or less advantage which it can derive from the surrounding images, these images must display in some way, upon the aspect which they present to my body, the profit which my body can gain from them. In fact, I note that the size, shape, even the colour, of external objects is modified according as my body approaches or recedes from them ; that the strength of an odour, the intensity of a sound, increases or di minishes with distance ; finally, that this very distance represents, above all, the measure in which surrounding bodies are insured, in some sort, against the immediate action of my body. In the degree that my horizon widens, the images which surround me seem to be painted upon a more uniform background and become to me more indifferent. The more I narrow this horizon, the more the objects which it circumscribes space themselves out distinctly according to the greater or less ease with which my body can touch and move them. They send back, then, to my body, as would a mirror, its eventual influence ; they take rank in an order corresponding to the growing or decreasing powers of my body. The CHAP, i REAL AND VIRTUAL ACTION 7 objects which surround my body reflect its possible action upon them. I will now, without touching the other images, modify slightly that image which I call my body. In this image I cut asunder, in thought, point to all the afferent nerves of the cerebro- t!l6S6 possible spinal system. What will happen ? A few cuts with the scalpel have severed a few bundles of fibres : the rest of the universe, and even the rest of my body, remain what they were before. The change effected is therefore insignificant. As a matter of fact, my perception has entirely vanished. Let us con sider more closely what has just occurred. Here are the images which compose the universe in general, then those which are near to my body, and finally my body itself. In this last image the habitual office of the centripetal nerves is to transmit movements to the brain and to the cord ; the centrifugal nerves send back this movement to the periphery. Section of the centripetal nerves can therefore produce only one intelligible effect ; that is, to interrupt the current which goes from the periphery to the periphery by way of the centre, and, conse quently, to make it impossible for my body to extract, from among all the things which surround it, the quantity and quality of movement neces sary in order to act upon them. Here is some thing which concerns action, and action alone. 8 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. I Yet it is my perception which has vanished. What does this mean, if not that my perception displays, in the midst of the image world, as would their outward reflexion or shadow, the eventual or possible actions of my body ? Now the system of images in which the scalpel has effected only an insignificant change is what is generally called the material world ; and, on the other hand, that which has just vanished is my perception of matter. Whence, provisionally, these two definitions : / call matter the aggregate of images, and perception of matter these same images referred to the eventual action of one particular image, my body. Let us go more deeply into this reference. I consider my body, with its centripetal and cen- The brain IB trifugal nerves, with its nerve centres. wi"h e motor ^ know that external objects make in SSth^onsSoM t^ 6 a ff eren t nerves a disturbance which perception, passes onward to the centres, that the centres are the theatre of very varied molecular movements, and that these movements depend on the nature and position of the objects. Change the objects, or modify their relation to my body, and everything is changed in the interior move ments of my perceptive centres. But every thing is also changed in my perception. My perception is, then, a function of these molecular movements ; it depends upon them. But how does it depend upon them ? It will perhaps be CHAP, i REPRESENTATION 9 said that it translates them, and that, in the main, I represent to myself nothing but the molecular movements of cerebral substance. But how should this have any meaning, since the image of the nervous system and of its internal movements is only, by hypothesis, that of a cer tain material object, whereas I represent to myself the whole material universe ? It is true that many philosophers attempt to evade the diffi culty. They show us a brain, analogous in its essence to the rest of the material universe, an image, consequently, if the universe is an image. Then, since they want the internal move ments of this brain to create or determine the representation of the whole material world an image infinitely greater than that of the cere bral vibrations they maintain that these mole cular movements, and movement in general, are not images like others, but something which is either more or less than an image in any case is of another nature than an image and from which representation will issue as by miracle. Thus matter is made into something radically different from representation, something of which, consequently, we have no image ; over against it they place a consciousness empty of images, of which we are unable to form any idea ; lastly, to fill consciousness, they invent an incom prehensible action of this formless matter upon this matterless thought. But the truth is that the movements of matter are very clear, regarded 10 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i as images, and that there is no need to look in movement for anything more than what we see in it. The sole difficulty would consist in bring ing forth from these very particular images the infinite variety of representations ; but why seek to do so, since we all agree that the cerebral vibrations are contained in the material world, and that these images, consequently, are only a part of the representation ? What then are these movements, and what part do these particular images play in the representation of the whole ? The answer is obvious : they are, within my body, the movements intended to prepare, while beginning it, the reaction of my body to the action of external objects. Images themselves, they cannot create images ; but they indicate at each moment, like a compass that is being moved about, the position of a certain given image, my body, in relation to the surrounding images. In the totality of representation they are very little ; but they are of capital importance for that part of representation which I call my body, since they foreshadow at each successive moment its virtual acts. There is then only a difference of degree there can be no difference in kind between what is called the perceptive faculty of the brain and the reflex functions .of the spinal cord. The cord transforms into move ments the stimulation received ; the brain prolongs it into reactions which are merely nascent ; but, in the one case as in the other, the function CHAP. 1 REPRESENTATION 11 of the nerve substance is to conduct, to coordin ate or to inhibit movements. How then does it come about that my perception of the universe appears to depend upon the internal movements of the cerebral substance, to change when they vary, and to vanish when they cease ? The difficulty of this problem is mainly due to the fact that the grey matter and its modifications The brain are regarded as things which are suffi- oannot cfeSe" c i en t to themselves and might be isolated images. from the rest of the universe. Materia lists and dualists are fundamentally agreed on this point. They consider certain molecular move ments of the cerebral matter apart : then, some see in our conscious perception a phosphorescence which follows these movements and illuminates their track ; for others, our perceptions succeed each other like an unwinding scroll in a conscious ness which expresses continuously, in its own way, the molecular vibrations of the cortical sub stance : in the one case, as in the other, our per ception is supposed to translate or to picture the states of our nervous system. But is it possible to conceive the nervous system as living apart from the organism which nourishes it, from the atmosphere in which the organism breathes, from the earth which that atmosphere envelopes, from the sun round which the earth revolves ? More generally, does not the fiction of an isolated material object imply a kind of absurdity, since this object borrows its physical properties from 12 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i the relations which it maintains with all others, and owes each of its determinations, and conse quently its very existence, to the place which it occupies in the universe as a whole ? Let us no longer say, then,that our perceptions depend simply upon the molecular movements of the cerebral mass. We must say rather that they vary with them, but that these movements themselves remain inseparably bound up with the rest of the material world. The question, then, is not only how our perceptions are connected with the modifications of the grey matter. The problem widens, and can also be put in much clearer terms. It might be stated as follows : Here is a system of images which I term my perception of the universe, and which may be entirely images altered by a very slight change in fwo^stems, a cei "tain privileged image, my body. tS c2SSou d This image occupies the centre ; by it ness. a i} t^ others are conditioned ; at each of its movements everything changes, as though by a turn of a kaleidoscope. Here, on the other hand, are the same images, but referred each one to itself ; influencing each other no doubt, but in such a manner that the effect is always in pro portion to the cause : this is what I term the universe. The question is : how can these two systems co-exist, and why are the same images relatively invariable in the universe, and infinitely variable in perception ? The problem at issue between realism and idealism, perhaps even be- CHAP. I REPRESENTATION 13 tween materialism and spiritualism, should be stated, then, it seems to us, in the following terms : How is it that the same images can belong at the same time to two different systems, the one in which each image varies for itself and in the well- defined measure that it is patient of the real action of surrounding images, the other in which all change for a single image, and in the varying measure that they reflect the eventual action of this privileged image ? Every image is within certain images and with out others ; but of the aggregate of images we cannot say that it is within us or without us, since interiority and exteriority are only relations among images. To ask whether the universe exists only in our thought, or outside of our thought, is to put the problem in terms that are insoluble, even if we suppose them to be intelli gible ; it is to condemn ourselves to a barren discussion, in which the terms thought, being, universe, will always be taken on either hand in entirely different senses. To settle the matter, we must first find a common ground on which combatants may meet ; and since on both sides it is agreed that we can only grasp things in the form of images, we must state the problem in terms of images, and of images alone. Now no philosophical doctrine denies that the same images can enter at the same time into two dis tinct systems, one belonging to science, wherein each image, related only to itself, possesses an 14 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i absolute value ; and the other, the world of con sciousness, wherein all the images depend on a central image, our body, the variations of which they follow. The question raised between realism and idealism then becomes quite clear : what are the relations which these two systems of images maintain with each other ? And it is easy to see that subjective idealism consists in deriving the first system from the second, materialistic realism in deriving the second from the first. The realist starts, in fact, from the universe, that is to say from an aggregate of images gov erned, as to their mutual relations, by realism nor fixed laws, in which effects are in strict able to proportion to their causes, and of which there are two the character is an absence of centre, all the images unfolding on one and the same plane indefinitely prolonged. But he is at once bound to recognize that, besides this system, there are perceptions, that is to say, systems in which these same images seem to depend on a single one among them, around which they range them selves on different planes, so as to be wholly transformed by the slightest modification of this central image. Now this perception is just what the idealist starts from : in the system of images which he adopts there is a privileged image, )ris body, by which the other images are conditioned. But as soon as he attempts to connect the present with the past and to foretell the future, he is obliged to abandon this central position, to replace CHAP, i REALISM AND IDEALISM 15 all the images on the same plane, to suppose that they no longer vary for him, but for themselves ; and to treat them as though they made part of a system in which every change gives the exact measure of its cause. On this condition alone a science of the universe becomes possible ; and, since this science exists, since it succeeds in fore seeing the future, its fundamental hypothesis can not be arbitrary. The first system alone is given to present experience ; but we believe in the second, if only because we affirm the continuity of the past, present, and future. Thus in idealism, as in realism, we posit one of the two systems and seek to deduce the other from it. But in this deduction neither realism nor ideal ism can succeed, because neither of the two systems of images is implied in the other, and each of them is sufficient to itself. If you posit the system of images which has no centre, and in which each element possesses its absolute dimensions and value, I see no reason why to this system should accrue a second, in which each image has an undetermined value, subject to all the vicissi tudes of a central image. You must then, to engender perception, conjure up some deus ex machina, such as the materialistic hypothesis of the epiphenomenal consciousness, whereby you choose, among all the images that vary absolutely and that you posited to begin with, the one which we term our brain, --conferring on the internal states of this image the singular and inexplicable l6 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. I privilege of adding to itself a reproduction, this time relative and variable, of all the others. It is true that you afterwards pretend to attach no importance to this representation, to see in it a mere phosphorescence which the cerebral vibrations leave behind them : as if the cerebral matter and cerebral vibrations, set in the images which com pose this representation, could be of another nature than they ! All realism is thus bound to make per ception an accident, and consequently a mystery. But, inversely, if you posit a system of unstable images disposed about a privileged centre, and profoundly modified by trifling displacements of this centre, you begin by excluding the order of nature, that order which is indifferent to the point at which we take our stand and to the particular end from which we begin. You will have to bring back this order by conjuring up in your turn a deus ex machina ; I mean that you will have to assume, by an arbitrary hypothesis, some sort of pre-established harmony between things and mind, or, at least (to use Kant s terms), between sense and understanding. It is science now that will become an accident, and its success a mys tery. You cannot, then, deduce the first system of images from the second, nor the second from the first ; and these two antagonistic doctrines, realism and idealism, as soon as they decide to enter the same lists, hurl themselves from opposite directions against the same obstacle. If we now look closely at the two doctrines, CHAP, i REALISM AND IDEALISM 17 we shall discover in them a common postulate, which we may formulate thus : per- Because they 777 . 7 . * * both imply an cefition has a wholly speculative interest; erroneous . . , _.. . , , . postulate, it is pure knowledge. The whole dis- viz.,that . * J perception cussion turns upon the importance to be has merely a ., , * , , , speculative attnbuted to this knowledge as com pared with scientific knowledge. The one doctrine starts from the order required by science, and sees in perception only a confused and provisional science. The other puts perception in the first place, erects it into an absolute, and then holds science to be a symbolic expression of the real. But, for both parties, to perceive means above all to know. Now it is just this postulate that we dispute. Even the most superficial examination of the structure of the nervous system in the animal series gives it the lie. And it is not possible to accept it without profoundly obscuring the threefold problem of matter, consciousness, and their relation. For if we follow, step by step, the progress of external perception from the monera to the higher vertebrates, we find that living matter, But facts . reaiiy suggest even as a simple mass of protoplasm, is the opposite ,,..,, , ., view. already irritable and contractile, that Evidence bom the it is open to the influence of external structure and . evolution of stimulation, and answers to it by mechanical, physical, and chemical re actions. As we rise in the organic series, we find a division of physiological labour. Nerve cells l8 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. I appear, are diversified, tend to group themselves into a system; at the same time, the animal reacts by more varied movements to external stimulation. But even when the stimulation re ceived is not at once prolonged into movement, it appears merely to await its occasion ; and the same impression, which makes the organism aware of changes in the environment, determines it or pre pares it to adapt itself to them. No doubt there is in the higher vertebrates a radical distinction between pure automatism, of which the seat is mainly in the spinal cord, and voluntary activity, which requires the intervention of the brain. It might be imagined that the impression received, instead of expanding into more movements, spiritualizes itself into consciousness. But as soon as we compare the structure of the spinal cord with that of the brain, we are bound to infer that there is merely a difference of complication, and not a difference in kind, between the functions of the brain and the reflex activity of the medullary system. For what takes place in reflex action ? The centripetal movement communicated by the stimulus is reflected at once, by the intermediary of the nerve centres of the spinal cord, in a centrifugal movement determining a muscular contraction. In what, on the other hand, does the function of the cerebral system consist ? The peripheral excita tion, instead of proceeding directly to the motor- cells of the spinal cord and impressing on the muscle a necessary contraction, mounts first to the brain, CHAP, i THE CHOICE OF IMAGES 1 9 and then descends again to the very same motor cells of the spinal cord which intervened in the reflex action. Now what has it gained by this round about course, and what did it seek in the so-called sensory cells of the cerebral cortex ? I do not un derstand, I shall never understand, that it draws thence a miraculous power of changing itself into a representation of things ; and moreover, I hold this hypothesis to be useless, as will shortly ap pear. But what I do see clearly is that the cells of the various regions of the cortex which are termed sensory, cells interposed between the terminal branches of the centripetal fibres and the motor cells of the Rolandic area, allow the stimulation received to reach at will this or that motor mechan ism of the spinal cord, and so to choose its effect. The more these intercalated cells are multiplied and the more they project amoeboid prolonga tions which are probably capable of approaching each other in various ways, the more numerous and more varied will be the paths capable of opening to one and the same disturbance from the periphery, and, consequently, the more systems of movements will there be among which one and the same stimulation will allow of choice. In our opinion, then, the brain is no more than a kind of central telephonic exchange : its office is to allow communication, or to delay it. It adds nothing to what it receives ; but, as all the organs of perception send it to their ultimate prolongations, and as all the motor mechanisms of the spinal 20 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i cord and of the medulla oblongata have in it their accredited representatives, it really constitutes a centre, where the peripheral excitation gets into relation with this or that motor mechanism, chosen and no longer prescribed. On the other hand, as a great multitude of motor tracks can open simul taneously in this substance to one and the same excitation from the periphery, this disturbance may subdivide to any extent, and consequently dissipate itself in innumerable motor reactions which are merely nascent. Hence the office of the brain is sometimes to conduct the movement received to a chosen organ of reaction, and sometimes to open to this movement the totality of the motor tracks, so that it may manifest there all the potential reactions with which it is charged, and may divide and so disperse. In other words, the brain appears to us to be an instrument of analysis in regard to the movement received, and an instrument of selec tion in regard to the movement executed. But, in the one case as in the other, its office is limited to the transmission and division of movement. And no more in the higher centres of the cortex than in the spinal cord do the nervous elements work with a view to knowledge : they do but indicate a number of possible actions at once, or organize one of them. That is to say that the nervous system is in no sense an apparatus which may serve to fabricate, or even to prepare, representations. Its function is to receive stimulation, to pro vide motor apparatus, CHAP, i THE CHOICE OF IMAGES 21 and to present the largest possible number of these apparatuses to a given stimulus. The more it develops, the more numerous and the more distant are the points of space which it brings into relation with ever more complex motor mechan isms. In this way the scope which it allows to our action enlarges : its growing perfection consists in nothing else. But if the nervous system is thus constructed, from one end of the animal series to the other, in view of an action which is less and less necessary, must we not think that perception, of which the progress is regulated by that of the nervous system, is also entirely directed towards action, and not towards pure knowledge ? And, if this be so, is not the growing richness of this perception likely to symbolize the wider range of indetermination left to the choice of the living being in its conduct with regard to things ? Let us start, then, from this indetermination as from the true principle, and try whether we cannot deduce from it the possibility, and even the necessity, of conscious perception. In other words, let us posit that system of closely-linked images which we call the material world, and imagine here and there, within the system, centres of real action, represented by living matter : what we mean to prove is that there must be, ranged round each one of these centres, images that are subordinated to its posi tion and variable with it ; that conscious percep tion is bound to occur, and that, moreover, it is possible to understand how it arises. 22 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i We note, in the first place, that a strict law con nects the amount of conscious perception with the intensity of action at the disposal of the star7 e fr?m s the living being. If our hypothesis is well founded, this perception appears at the precise moment when a stimulation re- ceived by matter is not prolonged into a necessary action. In the case of a rudi mentary organism, it is true that immediate contact with the object which interests it is necessary to pro duce the stimulation, and that reaction can then hardly be delayed. Thus, in the lower organ isms, touch is active and passive at one and the same time, enabling them to recognize their prey and seize it, to feel a danger and make the effort to avoid it. The various prolongations of the pro tozoa, the ambulacra of the echinodermata, are organs of movement as well as of tactile percep tion ; the stinging apparatus of the coelenterata is an instrument of perception as well as a means of defence. In a word, the more immediate the reaction is compelled to be, the more must percep tion resemble a mere contact ; and the complete process of perception and of reaction can then hardly be distinguished from a mechanical impul sion followed by a necessary movement. But in the measure that the reaction becomes more un certain, and allows more room for suspense, does the distance increase at which the animal is sensible of the action of that which interests it. By sight, by hearing, it enters into relation with an CHAP, i THE CHOICE OF IMAGES 23 ever greater number of things, and is subject to more and more distant influences ; and, whether these objects promise an advantage or threaten a danger, both promises and threats defer the date of their fulfilment. The degree of independence of which a living being is master, or, as we shall say, the zone of indetermination which surrounds its activity, allows, then, of an a priori estimate of the number and the distance of the things with which it is in relation. Whatever this relation may be, whatever be the inner nature of percep tion, we can affirm that its amplitude gives the exact measure of the indetermination of the act which is to follow. So that we can formulate this law : perception is master of space in the exact measure in which action is master of time. But why does this relation of the organism to more or less distant objects take the particular form what then f conscious perception ? We have Sonsdous-* examined what takes place in the or- p?eiiLinary ganized body, we have seen movements hmts - transmitted or inhibited, metamor phosed into accomplished actions or broken up into nascent actions. These movements appear to us to concern action, and action alone ; they remain absolutely foreign to the process of repre sentation. We then considered action itself, and the indetermination which surrounds it and is implied in the structure of the nervous system, an indetermination to which this system seems to point much more than to representation. 24 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. I From this indetermination, accepted as a fact, we have been able to infer the necessity of a perception, that is to say, of a variable relation between the living being and the more or less distant influence of the objects which interest it. How is it that this perception is consciousness, and why does everything happen as if this con sciousness were born of the internal movements of the cerebral substance ? To answer this question, we will first simplify considerably the conditions under which conscious perception takes place. In fact, there is no perception which is not full of memories. With the immediate and present data of our senses we mingle a thousand details out of our past experience. In most cases these memories supplant our actual perceptions, of which we then retain only a few hints, thus using them merely as signs that recall to us former images. The convenience and the rapidity of perception are bought at this price ; but hence also springs every kind of illusion. Let us, for the purposes of study, substitute for this perception, impregnated with our past, a per ception that a consciousness would have if it were supposed to be ripe and full-grown, yet confined to the present and absorbed, to the exclusion of all else, in the task of moulding itself upon the external object. It may be urged that this is an arbitrary hypothesis, and that such an ideal perception, obtained by the CHA*. I THE CHOICE OF IMAGES 25 elimination of individual accidents, has no corre spondence with reality. But we hope to show that the individual accidents are merely grafted on to this impersonal perception, which is at the very root of our knowledge of things ; and that just because philosophers have overlooked it, because they have not distinguished it from that which memory adds to or subtracts from it, they have taken perception as a whole for a kind of interior and subjective vision, which would then differ from memory only by its greater intensity. This will be our first hypothesis. But it leads naturally to another. However brief we suppose any perception to be, it always occupies a certain duration, and involves consequently an effort of memory which prolongs one into another a plurality of moments. As we shall endeavour to show, even the subjectivity of sensible quali ties consists above all else in a kind of contraction of the real, effected by our memory. In short, memory in these two forms, covering as it does with a cloak of recollections a core of immediate percep tion, and also contracting a number of external moments into a single internal moment, con stitutes the principal share of individual con sciousness in perception, the subjective side of the knowledge of things ; and, since we must neglect this share in order to make our idea clearer, we shall go too far along the path we have chosen. But we shall only have to retrace our steps and to correct, especially by bringing memory 26 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i back again, whatever may be excessive in our conclusions. What follows, therefore, must be regarded as only a schematic rendering, and we ask that perception should be provisionally understood to mean not my concrete and com plex perception that which is enlarged by memories and offers always a certain breadth of duration but a pure perception, I mean a percep tion which exists in theory rather than in fact and would be possessed by a being placed where I am, living as I live, but absorbed in the present and capable, by giving up every form of memory, of obtaining a vision of matter both immediate and instantaneous. Adopting this hypothesis, let us consider how conscious per ception may be explained. To deduce consciousness would be, indeed, a bold undertaking ; but it is really not necessary here, be- cause by positing the material world we as- sume an a gg re g ate of images, and more- reflectedfrom over because it is impossible to assume thoiuh by a anything else . No theory of matter escapes mirror. ^his necessity. Reduce matter to atoms in motion : these atoms, though denuded of physical qualities, are determined only in relation to an eventual vision and an eventual contact, the one without light and the other without materiality. Condense atoms into centres of force, dissolve them into vortices revolving in a continuous fluid : this fluid, these movements, these centres, can themselves be determined only in relation to an CHAP, i THE CHOICE OF IMAGES 27 impotent touch, an ineffectual impulsion, a colour less light ; they are still images. It is true that an image may be without being perceived ; it may be present without being represented ; and the distance between these two terms, presence and representation, seems just to measure the interval between matter itself and our con scious perception of matter. But let us examine the point more closely, and see in what this difference consists. If there were more in the second term than in the first, if, in order to pass from presence to representation, it were necessary to add something, the barrier would indeed be insuperable, and the passage from matter to perception would remain wrapt in impenetrable mystery. It would not be the same if it were possible to pass from the first term to the second by way of diminution, and if the representation of an image were less than its presence ; for it would then suffice that the images present should be compelled to abandon some thing of themselves in order that their mere pre sence should convert them into representations. Now, here is the image which I call a material object ; I have the representation of it. How comes it that it does not appear to be in itself that which it is for me ? It is because, being bound up with all other images, it is continued in those which follow it, just as it prolonged those which pre ceded it. To transform its existence into represen tation, it would be enough to suppress what follows it, what precedes it, and also all that fills it, and to 28 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i retain only its external crust, its superficial skin. That which distinguishes it as a present image, as an objective reality, from a represented image is the necessity which obliges it to act through every one of its points upon all the points of all other images, to transmit the whole of what it receives, to oppose to every action an equal and contrary reaction, to be, in short, merely a road by which pass, in every direction, the modifications propagated through out the immensity of the universe. I should con vert it into representation if I could isolate it, especially if I could isolate its shell. Represen tation is there, but always virtual being neutral ized, at the very moment when it might become actual, by the obligation to continue itself and to lose itself in something else. To obtain this con version from the virtual to the actual it would be necessary, not to throw more light on the object, but on the contrary to obscure some of its aspects, to diminish it by the greater part of itself, so that the remainder, instead of being encased in its sur roundings as a thing, should detach itself from them as a picture. Now if living beings are, within the uni verse, just centres of indetermination, and if the degree of this indetermination is measured by the number and rank of their functions, we can con ceive that their mere presence is equivalent to the suppression of all those parts of objects in which their functions find no interest. They allow to pass through them, so to speak, those external in fluences which are indifferent to them ; the others CHAP, i THE CHOICE OF IMAGES 2Q isolated, become perceptions by their very isolation. Everything thus happens for us as though we reflected back to surfaces the light which emanates from them, the light which, had it passed on unopposed, would never have been revealed. The images which surround us will appear to turn towards our body the side, emphasized by the light upon it, which interests our body. They will detach from themselves that which we have arrested on its way, that which we are capable of influencing. Indifferent to each other because of the radical mechanism which binds them to gether, they present each to the others all their sides at once : which means that they act and react mutually by all their elements, and that none of them perceives or is perceived consciously. Suppose, on the contrary, that they encounter some where a certain spontaneity of reaction : their action is so far diminished, and this diminution of their action is just the representation which we have of them. Our representation of things would thus arise from the fact that they are thrown back and reflected by our freedom. When a ray of light passes from one medium into another, it usually traverses it with a change of direction. But the respective den sities of the two media may be such that, for a given angle of incidence, refraction is no longer possible. Then we have total reflexion. The luminous point gives rise to a virtual image which symbolizes, so to speak, the fact that the luminous 3O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i rays cannot pursue their way. Perception is just a phenomenon of the same kind. That which is given is the totality of the images of the material world, with the totality of their internal elements. But if we suppose centres of real, that is to say of spontaneous, activity, the rays which reach it, and which interest that activity, instead of pass ing through those centres, will appear to be re flected and thus to indicate the outlines of the object which emits them. There is nothing positive here, nothing added to the image, nothing new. The objects merely abandon something of their real action in order to manifest their virtual action that is to say, in the main, the eventual influence of the living being upon them. Per ception therefore resembles those phenomena of reflexion which result from an impeded refraction ; it is like an effect of mirage. This is as much as to say that there is for images merely a difference of degree, and not of kind, be- so that tween being and being consciously per- tion results ceived. The reality of matter consists omission oi in the totality of its elements and of that in the , . . r , . , ~ totality of their actions oi every kind. Our re- matter which . .. , has no presentation of matter is the measure interest for . ... . , ,. . our needs, of our possible action upon bodies : it results from the discarding of what has no interest for our needs, or more generally for our functions. In one sense we might say that the perception of any unconscious material point whatever, in its instantaneousness, is infinitely greater and CHAP, i THE CHOICE OF IMAGES 31 more complete than ours, since this point gathers and transmits the influences of all the points of the material universe, whereas our consciousness only attains to certain parts and to certain aspects of those parts. Consciousness, in regard to external perception, lies in just this choice. But there is, in this necessary poverty of our conscious per ception, something that is positive, that foretells spirit : it is, in the etymological sense of the word, discernment. The whole difficulty of the problem that occu pies us comes from the fact that we imagine perception to be a kind of photographic limited by view of things, taken from a fixed point indeterminate by that special apparatus which is called action the .. . . living being an organ of perception a photograph which would then be developed in the brain-matter by some unknown chemical and psychical process of elaboration. But is it not obvious that the photograph, if photograph there be, is already taken, already developed in the very heart of things and at all the points of space ? No metaphysics, no physics even, can escape this conclusion. Build up the universe with atoms : each of them is subject to the action, variable in quantity and quality according to the distance, exerted on it by all material atoms. Bring in Faraday s centres of force : the lines of force emitted in every direction from every centre bring to bear upon each the influences of the whole material world. Call up the Leibnizian monads : each is 32 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i the mirror of the universe. All philosophers, then, agree on this point. Only if when we consider any other given place in the universe we can regard the action of all matter as passing through it without resistance and without loss, and the photograph of the whole as trans lucent : here there is wanting behind the plate the black screen on which the image could be shown. Our zones of indetermination play in some sort the part of the screen. They add nothing to what is there ; they effect merely this : that the real action passes through, the virtual action remains. This is no hypothesis. We content ourselves with formulating data with which no theory of perception can dispense. For no philosopher can begin the study of external perception with out assuming the possibility at least of a material world, that is to say, in the main, the virtual perception of all things. From this merely possible material mass he will then isolate the particular object which I call my body, and, in this body, centres of perception : he will show me the disturbance coming from a certain point in space, propagating itself along the nerves and reaching the centres. But here I am confronted by a transformation scene from fairyland. The material world which surrounds the body, the body which shelters the brain, the brain in which we distinguish centres, he abruptly dismisses ; and, as by a magician s wand, he conjures up, as a thing CHAP, i THE CHOICE OF IMAGES 33 entirely new the representation of what he began by postulating. This representation he drives out of space, so that it may have nothing in common with the matter from which he started. As for matter itself, he would fain go without it, but cannot, because its phenomena present relatively to each other an order so strict and so indifferent as to the point of origin chosen, that this regularity and this indifference really constitute an independent existence. So that he must resign himself to retaining at least the phantasm of matter. But then he manages to deprive it of all the qualities which give it life. In an amorphous space he carves out moving figures ; or else (and it comes to nearly the same thing), he imagines relations of magnitude which adjust themselves one to another, mathematical functions which go on evolving and developing their own content : representation, laden with the spoils of matter, thenceforth displays itself freely in an unextended consciousness. But it is not enough to cut out, it is necessary to sew the pieces together. You must now explain how those qualities which you have detached from their material support can be joined to it again. Each attribute which you take away from matter widens the interval between repre sentation and its object. If you make matter unextended, how will it acquire extension ? If you reduce it to homogeneous movement, whence arises quality ? Above all, how are we to imagine 34 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i a relation between a thing and its image, between matter and thought, since each of these terms possesses, by definition, only that which is lack ing to the other ? Thus difficulties spring up beneath our feet ; and every effort that you make to dispose of one of them does but resolve it into many more. What then do we ask of you ? Merely to give up your magician s wand, and to continue along the path on which you first set out. You showed us external images reaching the organs of sense, modifying the nerves, propa gating their influence in the brain. Well, follow the process to the end. The movement will pass through the cerebral substance (although not without having tarried there), and will then expand into voluntary action. There you have the whole mechanism of perception. As for perception itself, in so far as it is an image, you are not called upon to retrace its genesis, since you posited it to begin with, and since moreover no other course was open to you. In assuming the brain, in assuming the smallest portion of matter, did you not assume the totality of images ? What you have to explain, then, is not how perception arises, but how it is limited, since it should be the image of the whole, and is in fact reduced to the image of that which interests you. But if it differs from the mere image, precisely in that its parts range themselves with reference to a variable centre, its limitation is easy to under stand : unlimited dc jure, it confines itself de facto CHAP. I REPRESENTATION AND ACTION 35 to indicating the degree of indetermination allowed to the acts of the special image which you call your body. And, inversely, it follows that the indetermination of the movements of your body, such as it results from the structure of the grey matter of the brain, gives the exact measure of the extent of your perception. It is no wonder, then, that everything happens as though your perception were a result of the internal motions of the brain, and issued in some sort from the cortical centres. It could not actually come from them, since the brain is an image like others, enveloped in the mass of other images, and it would be absurd that the container should issue from the content. But since the structure of the brain is like the detailed plan of the movements among which you have the choice, and since that part of the external images which appears to return upon itself in order to constitute perception includes precisely all the points of the universe which these movements could affect, conscious per ception and cerebral movement are in strict corre spondence. The reciprocal dependence of these two terms is therefore simply due to the fact that both are functions of a third, which is the indeter mination of the will. Take, for example, a luminous point P, of which The image, the rays impinge on the different parts formed and a, b, c, of the retina. At this point P perceived in IT > , f the object, science localizes vibrations of a cer tain, tain amplitude and duration. At the 36 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i same point P consciousness perceives light. We propose to show, in the course of this study, that both are right ; and that there is no essential difference between the light and the movements, provided we restore to movement the unity, indivisibility, and qualitative hetero geneity denied to it by abstract mechanics ; provided also that we see in sensible qualities contractions effected by our memory. Science and consciousness would then coincide in the in stantaneous. For the moment all we need say, without examining too closely into the meaning of the words, is that the point P sends to the retina vibrations of light. What happens then ? If the visual image of the point P were not already given, we should indeed have to seek the manner in which it had been engendered, and should soon be confronted by an insoluble problem. But, whatever we do, we cannot avoid assuming it to begin with : the sole question is, then, to know how and why this image is chosen to form part of my perception, while an infinite number of other images remain ex cluded from it. Now I see that the vibrations transmitted from the point P to the various parts of the retina are conducted to the sub-cortical and cortical optic centres, often to other centres as well, and that these centres sometimes transmit them to motor mechanisms, sometimes provision ally arrest them. The nervous elements concerned are, therefore, what give efficacy to the disturbance CHAP, i REPRESENTATION AND ACTION 37 received; they symbolize the indetermination of the will ; on their soundness this indetermination depends ; and consequently any injury to these elements, by diminishing our possible action, diminishes perception in the same degree. In other words, if there exist in the material world places where the vibrations received are not mechanically transmitted, if there are, as we said, zones of indetermination, these zones must occur along the path of what is termed the sensori-motor process ; and hence all must happen as though the rays Pa, Pb, PC were perceived along this path and afterwards projected into P. Further, while the indetermination is something which escapes experiment and calculation, this is not the case with the nervous elements by which the impres sion is received and transmitted. These elements are the special concern of the physiologist and the psychologist ; on them all the details of exter nal perception would seem to depend and by them they may be explained. So we may say, if we like, that the disturbance, after having travelled along these nervous elements, after having gained the centre, there changes into a conscious image which is subsequently exteriorized at the point P. But, when we so express ourselves, we merely bow to the exigencies of the scientific method ; we in no way describe the real process. There is not, in fact, an unextended image which forms itself in consciousness and then projects itself into P. The truth is that the point P, the rays which it 38 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i emits, the retina and the nervous elements af fected, form a single whole ; that the luminous point P is a part of this whole ; and that it is really in P, and not elsewhere, that the image of P is formed and perceived. When we represent things to ourselves in this manner, we do but return to the simple convictions of common sense. We all of us began by believ ing that we grasped the very object, that we per ceived it in itself and not in us. When philoso phers disdain an idea so simple and so close to reality, it is because the intra-cerebral process, that diminutive part of perception, appears to them the equivalent of the whole of percep tion. If we suppress the object perceived and keep the internal process, it seems to them that the image of the object remains. And their belief is easily explained : there are many conditions, such as hallucination and dreams, in which images arise that resemble external perception in all their details. As, in such cases, the object has disappeared while the brain persists, he holds that the cerebral phenomenon is sufficient for the production of the image. But it must not be forgotten that in all psychical states of this kind memory plays the chief part. Now, we shall try to show later that, when perception, as we understand it, is once admitted, memory must arise, and that this memory has not, any more than perception itself, a cerebral state as its true and complete condition. But, without as yet enter- CHAP, i REPRESENTATION AND ACTION 39 ing upon the examination of these two points, we will content ourselves with a very simple observa tion, which has indeed no novelty. In many people who are blind from birth the visual centres are intact ; yet they live and die without having formed a single visual image. Such an image, therefore, cannot appear unless the external object has, once at least, played its part : it must, once at any rate, have been part and parcel with repre sentation. Now this is what we claim and for the moment all that we require, for we are dealing here with pure perception, and not with perception complicated by memory . Reject then the share of memory, consider perception in its unmixed state, and you will be forced to recognize that there is no image without an object. But, from the moment that you thus posit the intra-cerebral processes besides the external object which causes them, we can clearly see how the image of that object is given with it and in it : how the image should arise from the cerebral movement we shall never understand. When a lesion of the nerves or of the centres interrupts the passage of the nerve vibration, perception is to that extent diminished. But an injury . to the brain Need we be surprised ? The office of diminishes , . ... - perception by the nervous system is to utilize that lessening the ., . . . . . appeal to vibration, to convert it into practical deeds, really or virtually accomplished. If, for one reason or another, the disturbance cannot pass along, it would be strange if the correspond- 4O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i ing perception still took place, since this percep tion would then connect our body with points of space which no longer directly invite t to make a choice. Sever the optic nerve of an animal : the vibrations issuing from the luminous point can no longer be transmitted to the brain and thence to the motor nerves ; the thread, of which the optic nerve is a part and which binds the external object to the motor mechanisms of the animal, is broken : visual perception has there fore become impotent, and this very impotence is unconsciousness. That matter should be per ceived without the help of a nervous system, and without organs of sense, is not theoretically inconceivable ; but it is practically impossible, because such perception would be of no use. It would suit a phantom, not a living, and therefore acting, being. We are too much inclined to regard the living body as a world within a world, the ner vous system as a separate being, of which the func tion is, first, to elaborate perceptions, and then to create movements. The truth is that my nervous system, interposed between the objects which affect my body and those which I can influence, is a mere conductor, transmitting, sending back, or inhibiting movement. This conductor - is composed of an enormous number of threads which stretch from the periphery to the centre, and from the centre to the periphery. As many threads as pass from the periphery to the centre, so many points of space are there able CHAP, i REPRESENTATION AND ACTION 41 to make an appeal to my will and to put, so to speak, an elementary question to my motor activity. Every such question is what is termed a perception. Thus perception is diminished by one of its elements each time one of the threads termed sensory is cut, because some part of the external object then becomes unable to appeal to activity ; and it is also diminished whenever a stable habit has been formed, because this time the ready-made response renders the question unnecessary. What disappears in either case is the apparent reflexion of the stimulus upon itself, the return of the light on the image whence it comes ; or rather that dissociation, that discern ment, whereby the perception is disengaged from the image. We may therefore say that while the detail of perception is moulded exactly upon that of the nerves termed sensory, perception as a whole has its true and final explanation in the tendency of the body to movement. The cause of the general illusion on this point lies in the apparent indifference of our movements to the stimulation which excites them. It seems that the movement of my body in order to reach and to modify an object is the same, whether I have been told of its existence by the ear or whether it has been revealed to me by sight or touch. My motor activity thus appears as a separate entity, a sort of reservoir whence movements issue at will, always the same for the same action, whatever the kind of image which has called it into being. 42 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAF. I But the truth is that the character of movements which are externally identical is internally differ ent, according as they respond to a visual, an au ditory or a tactile impression. Suppose I perceive a multitude of objects in space ; each of them, inasmuch as it is a visual form, solicits my acti vity. Now I suddenly lose my sight. No doubt I still have at my disposal the same quantity and the same quality of movements in space ; but these movements can no longer be co-ordinated to visual impressions ; they must in future follow tactile impressions, for example, and a new arrangement will take place in the brain. The protoplasmic expansions of the motor nervous elements in the cortex will be in relation, now, with a much smaller number of the nervous elements termed sensory. My activity is then really diminished, in the sense that although I can produce the same movements, the occasion comes more rarely from the external objects. Con sequently, the sudden interruption of optical continuity has brought with it, as its essential and profound effect, the suppression of a large part of the queries or demands addressed to my activity. Now such a query or demand is, as we have seen, a perception. Here we put our finger -on the mistake of those who maintain that percep tion springs from the sensory vibration properly so called, and not from a sort of question ad dressed to motor activity. They sever this motor activity from the perceptive process ; and, as REPRESENTATION AND ACTION 43 it appears to survive the loss of perception, they conclude that perception is localized in the nervous elements termed sensory. But the truth is that perception is no more in the sensory centres than in the motor centres ; it measures the complexity of their relations, and is, in fact, where it appears to be. Psychologists who have studied infancy are well aware that our representation is at first impersonal. Only little by little, and as a result of In perception J fromlne 1 experience, does it adopt our body as a periphery centre and become our representation. the aggregate * oi images, to j^g mechanism of this process is, more- the centre * mS Sversa over > easv to understand. As my body moves in space, all the other images vary, while that image, my body, remains invariable. I must therefore make it a centre, to which I refer all the other images. My belief in an external world does not come, cannot come, from the fact that I project outside myself sensations that are unex- tended : how could these sensations ever acquire ex tension, and whence should I get the notion of ex teriority ? But if we allow that, as experience testi fies, the aggregate of images is given to begin with, I can see clearly how my body comes to occupy, within this aggregate, a privileged position. And I understand also whence arises the notion of in- teriority and exteriority, which is, to begin with, merely the distinction between my body and other bodies. For if you start from my body, as is usually done, you will never make me understand how 44 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i impressions received on the surface of my body, impressions which concern that body alone, are able to become for me independent objects and form an external world. But if, on the contrary, all images are posited at the outset, my body will necessarily end by standing out in the midst of them as a distinct thing, since they change unceas ingly, and it does not vary. The distinction between the inside and the outside will then be only a dis tinction between the part and the whole. There is, first of all, the aggregate of images ; and then, in this aggregate, there are centres of action, from which the interesting images appear to be reflected : thus perceptions are born and actions made ready. My body is that which stands out as the centre of these perceptions ; my personality is the being to which these actions must be referred. The whole subject becomes clear if we travel thus from the peri phery to the centre, as the child does, and as we ourselves are invited to do by immediate experience and by common sense . On the contrary everything becomes obscure, and problems are multiplied on all sides, if we attempt, with the theorists, to travel from the centre to the periphery. Whence arises, then, this idea of an external world constructed arti ficially, piece by piece, out of unextended sensa tions, though we can neither understand how they come to form an extended surface, nor how they are subsequently projected outside our body ? Why insist, in spite of appearances, that I should go from my conscious self to my body, then CHAP, i THE IMAGE AND REALITY 45 from my body to other bodies, whereas in fact I place myself at once in the material world in general, and then gradually cut out within it the centre of action which I shall come to call my body and to distinguish from all others ? There are so many illusions gathered round this belief in the originally unex- tended character of our external perception ; there are, in the idea that we project outside our selves states which are purely internal, so many misconceptions, so many lame answers to badly stated questions, that we cannot hope to throw light on the whole subject at once. We believe that light will increase, as we show more clearly, behind these illusions, the metaphysical error which confounds the unbroken extensity with homo geneous space, and the psychological error which confounds pure perception with memory. But these illusions are, nevertheless, connected with real facts, which we may here indicate in order to correct their interpretation. The first of these facts is that our senses require education. Neither sight nor touch is able at objection the outset to localize impressions. A SKo-cSS ser i es f comparisons and inductions is of d the a senses necessary, whereby we gradually co- i^?o! al s h an " ordinate one impression with another, education. Hence philosophers may jump to the belief that sensations are in their essence inexten- sive, and that they constitute extensity by their juxtaposition. But is it not clear that, upon the 46 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i hypothesis just advanced, our senses are equally in need of education, not of course in order to accom modate themselves to things, but to accommodate themselves to each other ? Here, in the midst of all the images, there is a certain image which I term my body, and of which the virtual action reveals itself by an apparent reflexion of the surround ing images upon themselves. Suppose there are so many kinds of possible action for my body: there must be an equal number of systems of reflexion for other bodies ; and each of these systems will be just what is perceived by one of my senses. My body, then, acts like an image which reflects others, and which, in so doing, analyses them along lines corresponding to the different actions which it can exercise upon them. And, consequently, each of the qualities perceived in the same object by my different senses symbolizes a particular direction of my activity, a par ticular need. Now, will all these perceptions of a body by my different senses give me, when united, the complete image of that body ? Cer tainly not, because they have been gathered from a larger whole. To perceive all the influences from all the points of all bodies would be to de scend to the condition of a material object. Con scious perception signifies choice, and consciousness mainly consists in this practical discernment. The diverse perceptions of the same object, given by my different senses, will not, then, when put to gether, reconstruct the complete image of the CHAP. I THE IMAGE AND REALITY 47 object ; they will remain separated from each other by intervals which measure, so to speak, the gaps in my needs. It is to fill these intervals that an education of the senses is necessary. The aim of this education is to harmonize my senses with each other, to restore between their data a continuity which has been broken by the discon tinuity of the needs of my body, in short to re construct, as nearly as may be, the whole of the material object. This, on our hypothesis, ex plains the need for an education of the senses. Now let us compare it with the preceding explana tion. In the first, unextended sensations of sight combine with unextended sensations of touch and of the other senses, to give, by their synthesis, the idea of a material object. But, to begin with, it is not easy to see how these sensations can ac quire extension, nor how, above all, when exten sion in general has been acquired, we can explain in particular the preference of a given one of these sensations for a given point of space. And then we may ask by what happy agreement, in virtue of what pre-established harmony, do these sen sations of different kinds co-ordinate themselves to form a stable object, henceforth solidified, common to my experience and to that of all men, subject, in its relation to other objects, to those inflexible rules which we call the laws of nature ? In the second, the data of our different senses are, on the contrary, the very qualities of things, perceived first in the things rather than in us : 48 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAK I is it surprising that they come together, since abstraction alone has separated them ? On the first hypothesis, the material object is nothing of ah 1 that we perceive : you put on one side the con scious principle with the sensible qualities, and on the other a matter of which you can predicate nothing, which you define by negations because you have begun by despoiling it of all that reveals it to us. In the second, an ever-deepening know ledge of matter becomes possible. Far from depriving matter of anything perceived, we must on the contrary bring together all sensible quali ties, restore their relationship, and re-establish among them the continuity broken by our needs. Our perception of matter is, then, no longer either relative or subjective, at least in principle, and apart, as we shall see presently, from affection and especially from memory ; it is merely dissevered by the multiplicity of our needs. On the first hypothesis, spirit is as un knowable as matter, for you attribute to it the undefinable power of evoking sensations we know not whence, and of projecting them, we know not why, into a space where they will form bodies. On the second, the part played by consciousness is clearly defined : consciousness means virtual action ; and the forms acquired by mind, those which hide the essence of spirit from us, should, with the help of this second principle, be removed as so many concealing veils. Thus, on our hypo thesis, we begin to see the possibility of a clearer CHAP, i THE IMAGE AND REALITY 49 distinction between spirit and matter, and of a reconciliation between them. But we will leave this first point and come to the second. The second fact brought forward consists in what was long termed the specific energy of the nerves. We know that stimulation of Objection drawn from the optic nerve by an external shock or the so-called specific by an electnc current will produce a energy, of the * * nerves. visual sensation, and that this same electric current applied to the acoustic or to the glosso-pharyngeal nerve will cause a sound to be heard or a taste to be perceived. From these very particular facts have been deduced two very general laws : that different causes acting on the same nerve excite the same sensation; and that the same cause, acting on different nerves, provokes different sensations. And from these laws it has been inferred that our sensations are merely signals, and that the office of each sense is to translate into its own language homogeneous and mechanical movements occurring in space. Hence, as a conclusion, the idea of cutting our perception into two distinct parts, thenceforward incapable of uniting : on the one hand homogeneous move ments in space, and on the other unextended sen sations in consciousness. Now, it is not our part to enter into an examination of the physiological problems raised by the interpretation of the two laws : in whatever way these laws are understood, whether the specific energy is attributed to the nerves or whether it is referred to the centres, insur- B 50 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i mountable difficulties arise. But the very existence of the laws themselves appears more and more problematical. Lotze himself already suspected a fallacy in them. He awaited, before putting faith in them, sound waves which should give to the eye the sensation of light, or luminous vibra tions which should give to the ear a sound/ l The truth is that all the facts alleged can be brought back to a single type : the one stimulus capable of producing different sensations, the multiple stimuli capable of inducing the same sensation, are either an electric current or a mechanical cause capable of determining in the organ a modi fication of electrical equilibrium. Now we may well ask whether the electrical stimulus does not include different components, answering objec tively to sensations of different kinds, and whether the office of each sense is not merely to extract from the whole the component that concerns it. We should then have, indeed, the same stimuli giving the same sensations, and different stimuli provoking different sensations. To speak more precisely, it is difficult to admit, for instance, that applying an electrical stimulus to the tongue would not occasion chemical changes ; and these changes are what, in all cases, we term tastes. On the other hand, while the physicist has been able to identify light with an electro-magnetic disturbance, we may say, inversely, that what he 1 Lotze, Metaphysic, Oxford, 1887, vol. ii, p. 206. CHAP, i THE IMAGE AND AFFECTIVE SENSATION 5 1 calls here an electro-magnetic disturbance is light, so that it is really light that the optic nerve per ceives objectively when subject to electrical stimulus. The doctrine of specific energy appears to be nowhere more firmly based than in the case of the ear : nowhere also has the real existence of the thing perceived become more probable. We will not insist on these facts, because they will be found stated and exhaustively discussed in a recent work. 1 We will only remark that the sensations here spoken of are not images per ceived by us outside our body, but rather affec tions localized within the body. Now it results from the nature and use of our body, as we shall see, that each of its so-called sensory elements has its own real action, which must be of the same kind as its virtual action on the external objects which it usually perceives ; and thus we can understand how it is that each of the sensory nerves appears to vibrate according to a fixed manner of sensation. But to elucidate this point we must consider the nature of affection. Thus we are led to the third and last argument which we have to examine. This third argument is drawn from the fact that we pass by insensible degrees from the repre sentative state which occupies space, to the affective state which appears to be unextended. 1 Schwarz, Das Wahrnehmungsproblem, Leipzig, 1892, pp- 313 and seq. 52 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. I Hence it is inferred that all sensation is naturally and necessarily unextended, Objections .-, , drawn from so that extensity is superimposed upon the so-called , 1^1 r subjectivity sensation, and the process of percep- of affective ,- , ,. f states. tion consists in an extenonzation of internal states. The psychologist starts, whwett is in f act, from his body, and, as the im pressions received at the periphery of this body seem to him sufficient for the recon- stitution of the entire material universe, to his body he at first reduces the universe. But this first position is not tenable ; his body has not, and cannot have, any more or any less reality than all other bodies. So he must go farther, follow to the end the consequences of his principle, and, after having narrowed the universe to the surface of the living body, contract this body itself into a centre which he will end by supposing unextended. Then, from this centre will start unextended sensations, which will swell, so to speak, will grow into extensity, and will end by giving extension first to his body, and afterwards to all other material objects. But this strange supposition would be impos sible if there were not, in point of fact, between images and ideas, the former extended and -the latter unextended, a series of intermediate states, more or less vaguely localized, which are the affective states. Our understanding, yielding to its customary illusion, poses the dilemma, that a thing either is or is not extended ; and as the CHAP, i THE IMAGE AND AFFECTIVE SENSATION 53 affective state participates vaguely in extension, is in fact imperfectly localized, we conclude that this state is absolutely unextended. But then the successive degrees of extension, and extensity itself, will have to be explained by I know not what ac quired property of unextended states ; the history of perception will become that of internal unex tended states which acquire extension and project themselves without. Shall we put the argument in another form ? There is hardly any percep tion which may not, by the increase of the action of its object upon our body, become an affection, and, more particularly, pain. Thus we pass in sensibly from the contact with a pin to its prick. Inversely the decreasing pain coincides with the lessening perception of its cause, and exteriorizes itself, so to speak, into a representation. So it does seem, then, as if there were a difference of degree and not of nature between affection and perception. Now, the first is intimately bound up with my per sonal existence : what, indeed, would be a pain detached from the subject that feels it ? It seems therefore that it must be so with the second, and that external perception is formed by projecting into space an affection which has become harm less. Realists and idealists are agreed in this method of reasoning. The latter see in the material universe nothing but a synthesis of sub jective and unextended states ; the former add that, behind this synthesis, there is an indepen dent reality corresponding to it ; but both con- 54 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i elude, from the gradual passage of affection to representation, that our representation of the material universe is relative and subjective, and that it has, so to speak, emerged from us, rather than that we have emerged from it. Before criticizing this questionable interpretation of an unquestionable fact, we may show that it does not succeed in explaining, or even in throwing light upon, the nature either of pain or of perception. That affective states, essentially bound up with my personality, and vanishing if I disappear, should acquire extensity by losing intensity, should adopt a definite position in space, and build up a firm, solid experience, always in accord with itself and with the experience of other men this is very difficult to realize. Whatever we do, we shall be forced to give back to sen sations, in one form or another, first the exten sion and then the independence which we have tried to do without. But, what is more, affection, on this hypothesis, is hardly clearer than repre sentation. For if it is not easy to see how affec tions, by diminishing in intensity, become representations, neither can we understand how the same phenomenon, which was given at first as perception, becomes affection by an increase of intensity. There is in pain something positive and active, which is ill explained by saying, as do some philosophers, that it consists in a con fused representation. But still this is not the principal difficulty. That the gradual augmen- CHAP, i NATURE OF AFFECTIVE SENSATION 55 tation of the stimulus ends by transforming per ception into pain, no one will deny ; it is none the less true that this change arises at a definite moment : why at this moment rather than at another ? and what special reason brings about that a phenomenon of which I was at first only an indifferent spectator suddenly acquires for me a vital interest ? Therefore, on this hypothesis I fail to see either why, at a given moment, a dim inution of intensity in the phenomenon confers on it a right to extension and to an apparent independence; or why an increase of intensity should create, at one moment rather than at another, this new property, the source of positive action, which is called pain. Let us return now to our hypothesis, and show that affection must, at a given moment, arise out Real of the image. We shall thus under- o?pataTtt fl is stand how it is that we pass from a Unavailing perception which has extensity to an affection which is believed to be unex- tended. But some preliminary remarks on the real significance of pain are indispensable. When a foreign body touches one of the pro longations of the amoeba, that prolongation is retracted; every part of the protoplasmic mass is equally able to receive a stimulation and to react against it ; perception and movement being here blended in a single property, contrac tility. But, as the organism grows more com plex, there is a division of labour ; functions 56 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. I become differentiated, and the anatomical ele ments thus determined forego their independence. In such an organism as our own, the nerve fibres termed sensory are exclusively empowered to transmit stimulation to a central region whence the vibration will be passed on to motor elements. It would seem then that they have abandoned individual action to take their share, as outposts, in the manoeuvres of the whole body. But none the less they remain exposed, singly, to the same causes of destruction which threaten the organ ism as a whole ; and while this organism is able to move, and thereby to escape a danger or to repair a loss, the sensitive element retains the relative immobility to which the division of labour con demns it. Thence arises pain, which, in our view, is nothing but the effort of the damaged element to set things right, a kind of motor tendency in a sensory nerve. Every pain, then, must consist in an effort, an effort which is doomed to be unavailing. Every pain is a local effort, and in its very isolation lies the cause of its impotence ; because the organism, by reason of the solidarity of its parts, is able to move only as a whole. It is also because the effort is local that pain is entirely disproportioned to the danger incurred by the living being. The danger may be mortal and the pain slight ; the pain may be unbearable (as in toothache) and the danger insignificant. There is then, there must be, a precise moment when pain intervenes : it is when the interested CHAP, i NATURE OF AFFECTIVE SENSATION 57 part of the organism, instead of accepting the stimulation, repels it. And it is not merely a dif ference of degree that separates perception from affection, but a difference in kind. Now, we have considered the living body as a kind of centre whence is reflected on the surround ing objects the action which these objects exercise upon it : in that reflexion external perception consists. But this centre is not a mathematical point ; it is a body, exposed, like all natural bodies, to the action of external causes which threaten to disintegrate it. We have just seen that it resists the influence of these causes. It does not merely reflect action received from without ; it struggles, and thus absorbs some part of this action. Here is the source of affection. We might there fore say, metaphorically, that while perception measures the reflecting power of the body, affection measures its power to absorb. But this is only a metaphor. We must con sider the matter more carefully, in order to under- stand clearly that the necessity of affec- t ^ on follows from the very existence of perception. Perception, understood as virtual action. we understand it, measures our possible action upon things, and thereby, inversely, the possible action of things upon us. The greater the body s power of action (symbolized by a higher degree of complexity in the nervous system), the wider is the field that perception embraces. The distance which separates our body from an object 58 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i perceived really measures, therefore, the greater or less imminence of a danger, the nearer or more remote fulfilment of a promise. And, conse quently, our perception of an object distinct from our body, separated from our body by an interval, never expresses anything but a virtual action. But the more the distance decreases between this object and our body (the more, in other words, the danger becomes urgent or the promise immedi ate), the more does virtual action tend to pass into real action. Suppose the distance reduced to zero, that is to say that the object to be perceived coincides with our body, that is to say again, that our body is the object to be perceived. Then it is no longer virtual action, but real action, that this specialized perception will express : and this is exactly what affection is. Our sensations are, then, to our perceptions that which the real action of our body is to its possible or virtual action. Its virtual action concerns other objects, and is manifested within those objects ; its real action concerns itself, and is manifested within its own sub stance. Everything then will happen as if, by a true return of real and virtual actions to their points of application or of origin, the external images were reflected by our body into surrounding space, and the real actions arrested by it within itself. And that is why its surface, the common limit of the external and the internal, is the only portion of space which is both perceived and felt. CHAP, i THE IMAGE, APART FROM SENSATION 59 That is to say, once more, that my perception is outside my body, and my affection within it. Just as external objects are perceived by me where they are, in themselves and not in me, so my affective states are experienced there where they occur, that is, at a given point in my body. Consider the system of images which is called the material world. My body is one of them. Around this image is grouped the representation, i.e. its eventual influence on the others. Within it occurs affection, i.e. its actual effort upon itself. Such is indeed the fundamental differ ence which every one of us naturally makes between an image and a sensation. When we say that the image exists outside us, we signify by this that it is external to our body. When we speak of sensation as an internal state, we mean that it arises within in our body. And this is why we affirm that the totality of perceived images subsists, even if our body disappears, whereas we know that we cannot annihilate our body with out destroying our sensations. Hence we begin to see that we must correct, at least in this particular, our theory of pure percep tion. We have argued as though our That is to say pure perception were a part of the images, perception ; i_ r . i_ , exists only in detached, as such, from their entirety : as theory ; in . . . . . fact it is though, expressing the virtual action of always mixed , " . , , , with aflec- the object upon our body, or of our body upon the object, perception merely iso lated from the total object that aspect of it which 60 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i interests us. But we have to take into account the fact that our body is not a mathematical point in space, that its virtual actions are complicated by and impregnated with real actions, or, in other words, that there is no perception without affection. Affection is, then, that part or aspect of the inside of our body which we mix with the image of external bodies ; it is what we must first of all subtract from perception to get the image in its purity. But the psychologist who shuts his eyes to the difference of function and nature between perception and sensation, the latter involving a real action, and the former a merely possible action, can only find between them a difference of degree. Because sensation (on account of the confused effort which it involves) is only vaguely loca lized, he declares it unextended, and thence makes sensation in general the simple element from which we obtain by composition all external images. The truth is that affection is not the primary matter of which perception is made ; it is rather the impurity with which perception is alloyed. Here we grasp, at its origin, the error which leads the psychologist to consider sensation as unextended and perception as an aggregate of sensations. This error is reinforced, as we shall see, by illusions derived from a false conception of the role of space and of the nature of extensity. But it has also the support of misinterpreted facts, which we must now examine. It appears, in the first place, as if the localiza- CHAP, i THE IMAGE, APART FROM SENSATION 6l tion of an affective sensation in one part of the why aflec- body were a matter of gradual training. tobe iS eSfy * A certain time elapses before the child unextended. can touch with the finger the precise point where it has been pricked. The fact is indisputable ; but all that can be concluded from it is that some tentative essays are required to co-ordinate the painful impressions on the skin, which has received the prick, with the impressions of the muscular sense which guides the movement of arm and hand. Our internal affections, like our external perceptions, are of different kinds. These kinds, like those of perception, are discon tinuous, separated by intervals which are filled up in the course of education. But it does not at all follow that there is not, for each affection, an immediate localization of a certain kind, a local colour which is proper to it. We may go further : if the affection has not this local colour at once, it will never have it. For all that education can do is to associate with the actual affective sensation the idea of a certain potential perception of sight and touch, so that a definite affection may evoke the image of a visual or tactile impression, equally definite. There must be, therefore, in this affec tion itself, something which distinguishes it from other affections of the same kind, and permits of its reference to this or that potential datum of sight or touch rather than to any other. But is not this equivalent to saying that affection possesses, from the outset, a certain determination of extensity ? 62 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i Again, it is alleged that there are erroneous localizations ; for example, the illusion of those who have lost a limb (an illusion which requires, however, further examination) . But what can we conclude from this beyond the fact that education, once acquired, persists, and that such data of memory as are more useful in practical life supplant those of immediate consciousness ? It is indispen sable, in view of action, that we should translate our affective experience into eventual data of sight, touch, and muscular sense. When once this translation is made, the original pales ; but it never could have been made if the original had not been there to begin with, and if sensation had not been, from the beginning, localized by its own power and in its own way. But the psychologist has much difficulty in accepting this idea from common sense. Just if we make as perception, in his view, could be in e?t e ra-s ?atiai tne things perceived only if they had perception perception, so a sensation cannot be in inexplicable, ^g nerve unless the nerve feels. Now it is evident that the nerve does not feel. So he takes sensation away from the point where common sense localizes it, carries it towards the brain, on which, more than on the nerve, it appears to depend, and logically should end by placing it in the brain. But it soon becomes clear that if it is not at the point where it appears to arise, neither can it be anywhere else : if it is not in the nerve, neither is it in the brain ; for to explain its CHAP, i NATURAL EXTENSION OF IMAGES 63 projection from the centre to the periphery a certain force is necessary, which must be attributed to a consciousness that is to some extent active. Therefore, he must go further ; and, after having made sensations converge towards the cerebral centre, must push them out of the brain, and thereby out of space. So he has to imagine on the one hand sensations that are absolutely unextended, and on the other hand an empty space indifferent to the sensations which are projected into it : henceforth he will exhaust himself in efforts of every kind to make us understand how unextended sensations acquire extensity, and why they choose for their abode this or that point of space rather than any other. But this doctrine is not only incapable of showing us clearly how the unextended takes on extension ; it renders affection, extension, and representation equally inexplicable. It must assume affective states as so many absolutes, of which it is impossible to say why they appear in or disappear from con sciousness at definite moments. The passage from affection to representation remains wrapt in an equally impenetrable mystery, because, once again, you will never find in internal states, which are supposed to be simple and unextended, any reason why they should prefer this or that particular order in space. And, finally, representation itself must be posited as an absolute : we cannot guess either its origin or its goal. Everything becomes clearer, on the other hand, 64 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i if we start from representation itself, that is to say from the totality of perceived images. My percep tion, in its pure state, isolated from memory, does not go on from my body to other bodies ; it is, to begin with, in the aggregate of bodies, then gradu ally limits itself and adopts my body as a centre. And it is led to do so precisely by experience of the double faculty, which this body possesses, of per forming actions and feeling affections ; in a word, by experience of the sensori-motor power of a certain image, privileged among other images. For, on the one hand, this image always occupies the centre of representation, so that the other images range themselves round it in the very order in which they might be subject to its action ; on the other hand, I know it from within, by sensations which I term affective, instead of knowing only, as in the case of the other images, its outer skin. There is then, in the aggregate of images, a privileged image, perceived in its depths and no longer only on the surface the seat of affection and, at the same time, the source of action : it is this particular image which I adopt as the centre of my universe and as the physical basis of my personality. But before we go on to establish the precise rela tion between the personality and the images in which it dwells, let us briefly sum up, contrast ing it with the analyses of current psychology, the theory of pure perception which we have just sketched out. We will return, for the sake of simplicity, to CHAP, i NATURAL EXTENSION OF IMAGES 65 the sense of sight, which we chose as our example. Psychology has accustomed us to assume The result of J &J positing sensa- the elementary sensations corresponding tions and J then con- to the impressions received by the rods strncting perception and cones of the retina. With these with them. sensations it goes on to reconstitute visual perception. But, in the first place, there is not one retina, there are two ; so that we have to explain how two sensations, held to be distinct, combine to form a single perception correspond ing to what we call a point in space. Suppose this problem solved. The sensations in question are unextended ; how will they ac quire extension ? Whether we see in extensity a framework ready to receive sensations, or an effect of the mere simultaneity of sensations co existing in consciousness without coalescing, in either case something new is introduced with extensity, something unaccounted for ; the process by which sensation arrives at extension, and the choice by each elementary sensation of a definite point in space, remain alike unexplained, We will leave this difficulty, and suppose visual extension constituted. How does it in its turn re unite with tactile extension ? All that my vision perceives in space is verified by my touch. Shall we say that objects are constituted by just the co-operation of sight and touch, and that the agree ment of the two senses in perception may be explained by the fact that the object perceived is their common product ? But how could there be 66 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i anything common, in the matter of quality, between an elementary visual sensation and a tactile sensa tion, since they belong to two different genera ? The correspondence between visual and tactile extension can only be explained, therefore, by the parallelism of the order of the visual sensations with the order of the tactile sensations. So we are now obliged to suppose, over and above visual sensations, over and above tactile sensations, a certain order which is common to both, and which consequently must be independent of either. We may go further : this order is independent of our individual perception, since it is the same for all men, and constitutes a material world in which effects are linked with causes, in which phenomena obey laws. We are thus led at last to the hypothesis of an objective order, independent of ourselves ; that is to say, of a material world distinct from sensation. We have had, as we advanced, to multiply our irreducible data, and to complicate more and more the simple hypothesis from which we started. But have we gained anything by it ? Though the matter which we have been led to posit is indis pensable in order to account for the marvellous accord of sensations among themselves, we still know nothing of it, since we must refuse to.it all the qualities perceived, all the sensations of which it has only to explain the correspondence. It is not, then, it cannot be, anything of what we know, anything of what we imagine. It remains a mysterious entity. CHAP. I NATURAL EXTENSION OF IMAGES 67 But our own nature, the office and the function of our personality, remain enveloped in equal mystery. For these elementary unextended sen sations which develop themselves in space, whence do they come, how are they born, what purpose do they serve ? We must posit them as so many absolutes, of which we see neither the origin nor the end. And even supposing that we must distinguish, in each of us, between the spirit and the body, we can know nothing either of body or of spirit, nor of the relation between them. Now in what does this hypothesis of ours consist, and at what precise point does it part company Action, not with, the other ? Instead of starting from JnoSdbSthe affection, of which we can say nothing, starting point. s i nce there is no reason why it should be what it is rather than anything else, we start from action, that is to say from our faculty of effecting changes in things, a faculty attested by consciousness and towards which all the powers of the organized body are seen to converge. So we place ourselves at once in the midst of extended images ; and in this material universe we perceive centres of inde- termination, characteristic of life. In order that actions may radiate from these centres, the move ments or influences of the other images must be on the one hand received and on the other utilized. Living matter, in its simplest form, and in a homogeneous state, accomplishes this function simultaneously with those of nourishment and repair. The progress of such matter consists in 68 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i sharing this double labour between two categories of organs, the purpose of the first, called organs of nutrition, being to maintain the second : these last are made for action ; they have as their simple type a chain of nervous elements, connect ing two extremities of which the one receives external impressions and the other executes move ments. Thus, to return to the example of visual perception, the office of the rods and cones is merely to receive excitations which will be subsequently elaborated into movements, either accomplished or nascent. No perception can result from this, and nowhere, in the nervous system, are there conscious centres ; but perception arises from the same cause which has brought into being the chain of nervous elements, with the organs which sustain them and with life in general. It expresses and measures the power of action in the living being, the indetermination of the movement or of the action which will follow the receipt of the stimulus. This indetermination, as we have shown, will ex press itself in a reflexion upon themselves, or better in a division, of the images which surround our body ; and, as the chain of nervous elements which receives, arrests, and transmits movements is the seat of this indetermination and gives its measure, our perception will follow all the detail and will appear to express all the variations of the nervous elements themselves. Perception, in its pure state, is then, in very truth, a part of things. And as for affective sensation, it does CHAP. 1 PURE PERCEPTION 69 not spring spontaneously from the depths of consciousness to extend itself, as it grows weaker, in space; it is one with the necessary modifi cations to which, in the midst of the surround ing images that influence it, the particular image that each one of us terms his body is subj ect. Such is our simplified, schematic theory of exter nal perception. It is the theory of pure percep tion. If we went no further, the part of con sciousness in perception would thus be confined to threading on the conti